Harry, Draco and Ron: Vampire Hunters

Chapter V. The clouds are gathering.

Now is the time to reach for the sky,
Gather the wind, and hear the voice to fly,
To know why they sing about heroes and kings,
Who were brave and not afraid to die...

- Manowar, "King".

The end of the feast was coming near as the doors to the Great Hall opened and two men (well, according to their way of walking, Harry supposed they were men) entered. Both were wearing identical black cloaks with their hoods pulled over their faces, they walked past the House tables towards the staff table and people around them looked like they all awaited for the repetition of getting a new DADA professor that is paranoid and missing most parts of his face (as most of the school was oblivious to the fact that the Mad-Eye Moody that taught DADA last year was a fake).

"What's that all about?" Ron asked.

"I have no idea," said Harry.

The two men reached the staff table and, evidently, had a short talk with professor Dumbledore (here Harry noticed that Snape's face was full of his infamous (and probably registered as a trademark) hatred), as when they finished he rose and said "Oh, and please give a warm welcome to your new," at this point he smiled, "Defense Against The Dark Arts professor, Remus Lupin!"

One of the men took his hood off to reveal a face very familiar to Harry - Remus Lupin, the werewolf, a school-time friend of Sirius Black and James Potter. Most of the hall exploded with applause immediately, as the almost unanimous idea of the students was that professor Lupin was the best DADA teacher they've ever had. Upon seeing this display of affection, Lupin bowed slightly and he, along with the other man that still kept his hood up, settled themselves at the staff table, the extra sets of plates and silverware (some-other-metal-ware in Lupin's case) appearing out of thin air.

"After the events that took place in this school for the last few years, the staff has decided that re-instating the Dueling Club would be a nice idea. This year, the club will not be limited to magic only though, as our Dueling professor decided to give all those willing fencing lessons. And here he is himself," the other man took off his hood, "Adrian O'Brien!"

The idea of having a Dueling Club that gave fencing lessons as well raised some unwanted associations with Lockhart in Harry's mind, as the only thing he learned properly from the time Lockhart ran the Club was the disarming spell (though it did prove quite useful). But since the man that was to do it arrived along with Lupin and seemed to be friends with him, Harry cast these thoughts away.

"We all have a busy start-of-term day tomorrow," Dumbledore said about a quarter of an hour later, "so let us now retire for the night! Fifth-year prefects, be kind enough to escort your House's first-years to their dormitories, please."

"Alright, see you then," said Hermione, getting up.

"Alright then," said Harry and Ron in unison as they got up as well.

*****

Harry could swear that it was a traffic jam over at the Gryffindor Common Room entrance as there were dozens of students trying to get in, but no-one knew the password. Finally, Hermione seemed to have forced her way through the crowd as her voice came flying through the murmurs.

"The password is "Moonlight"!" she yelled.

"Right you are," the Fat Lady responded, her portrait swinging open, letting the crowd in.

Harry didn't get another glimpse of either Hermione, who seemed to be too occupied with getting the first-years to order, nor Ginny, to whom he wanted to explain everything, begging for forgiveness (even if Ron would kill anybody if anybody touched Ginny, even if she loved that anybody, he'd kill anybody who made her unhappy by refusing her love, so it was hard to survive, being the person Ginny was interested in); so he turned in for the night, drifting off into a calm dreamless sleep...

*****

The next morning, at breakfast, Hermione was running around, giving timetables to every fifth year in Gryffindor. Harry looked at his, finding that they had Double Potions to start the day with ("Pure nightmare!" said Ron), then came Dueling, and last but not the least came Arithmancy. Harry of course did his revision of what he would've learned if he took it from the start, but he was quite unsure of how well he would handle the situation. Ron, as it turned out, hadn't dropped Divination, and now was looking at Harry as if Harry was a horrible traitor that went over to the Dark Side and became a Death Eater, if not more.

"It's your own fault, you know," said Harry, Hermione nodding as if to prove that he was right. "You could've dropped it last year."

"And what then? Go nuts with all the revising?"

"Hey, it your choice, Ron. Nobody's forcing you to take Arithmancy," said Hermione.

"But nobody's forcing you to take Divination either, if you don't like it," said Harry.

If Ron knew Latin and history of Ancient Rome he might've said something like "Et tu, Brute!" to Hermione, but he did not know Latin, so he didn't.

"Let's get to Potions if we don't want Snape to murder us," he said instead, the accusation of betrayal still in his voice.

*****

Snape, however, thought that "The Golden Trio", as Hermione, Harry and Ron were sometimes called for always being seen together, arriving exactly on time with the bell was a nice enough reason to take five points from Gryffindor for each of them, thus making the first day at school even more horrible than it already seemed to be.

They were going over their summer homework, Snape doing his usual comments that all followed the simple rule "If you're in Slytherin, you're good at potions, if you're in some other House, well, then I take points from you." and that cost Gryffindor a total of thirty-seven points lost over the lesson.

When the bell finally rang, signifying the end of the hell called Potions, Ron had utilized all of the swearing words in his vocabulary (to his astonishment, Harry found out that there were quite a lot) in reference to Snape. Unlike the ordinary, however, Hermione did not protest against it, as she herself had added a few words Ron didn't know.

"Where's Dueling, anyway?" Harry asked when their usual session of restoring calmness after Potions was finally over.

"Over at the third floor," Hermione answered, "where Fluffy was."

"Oh," said Ron, "wonder where they put Fluffy himself?"

"Hagrid probably let him go..." Hermione said thoughtfully, "... you know, into the wilderness."

Harry pictured the giant three-headed dog that Fluffy was running through a forest and the tremendous damage to the trees that would mean and shook his head.

"Let's go, or we'll be late!" he said finally.

*****

The once-forbidden corridor received a face-lift, and a major one that was. There was a podium, just large enough to let two people duel, positioned over the place where the trapdoor that led to the resting place of the Mirror of Erised used to be (and, probably, still was).

Adrian O'Brien was there already, wearing common-looking black robes. Only now did Harry look at him to see that O'Brien had black hair, brown eyes and that all-too-familiar look of an ex-Azkaban inmate in them. Somehow, he reminded Harry of Sirius.

As the students gathered up (Harry noticed that the lesson was along with the Slytherins, pure hell that meant) Harry looked around the room, noticing the racks with swords of various shapes and sizes, all looking very cool and deadly. When everyone seemed to have arrived, O'Brien clapped his hands together several times to attract attention.

"Hello students, my name is Adrian O'Brien and I will be tutoring you in the arts of using spells and swords to overcome your opposition. The skills that will be taught here are not for attack, but for defense only. I suppose you lot are the Gryffindor and Slytherin fifth-years?"

Several loud yells of "Yes!" were heard. Harry thought of what was about to happen.

"Alright, then we'll get on with it. But first I'd like you to know that this lesson is strictly voluntary, nobody's forcing you to visit it if you see no need in doing so. But before you leave," he added as some Slytherins rushed towards the door, they now froze in mid-move, "I'd like you to sit down and consider the usefulness of it."

Ron elbowed Harry, and, when Harry turned to ask him why he did it, nodded at the door. In the lead of the Slytherins attempting to escape was Malfoy. It seemed that O'Brien noticed that as well.

"Why are you so eager to leave, Mr. Malfoy?" he asked. "I thought that of all the Slytherins you should be the one most eager to stay."

"Oh, and why so?" Malfoy asked, acting as if O'Brien was not a teacher (well, technically he wasn't).

"I don't know... Like keeping up the fame of Malfoys being outstanding fencers?"

"I am keeping that fame up, thank you very much," said Malfoy, trying to leave again.

"Then prove it," O'Brien said, picking a saber from one of the weapon racks. "Choose your weapon."

Malfoy walked up to one of the racks, looked at it intently for a moment or two and pulled out a longsword that looked like it would be fit for a female - it was as long as a usual longsword, but it was a bit thinner, thus making it lighter.

"Fine choice, Mr. Malfoy. You prefer to wear robes during fencing?" said O'Brien.

"Not really," Malfoy replied, dropping his robes onto the floor. He was wearing a plain white shirt and even more plain black trousers underneath them.

"Now he can even pass for a Muggle if he drops his usual MalfoyTM sneer®", Harry thought.

O'Brien dropped his robes as well, it turned out that he was wearing a black leather vest with a multitude of pockets over a vanilla-colored shirt along with trousers of a matching vanilla colour.

"We fight till the first hit upon the torso. Ready?" O'Brien asked. "Then let's go!" he said when Malfoy nodded in response.

Watching them go at it was engulfing, as Malfoy moved fluidly, parrying every attack, feinting occasionally, trying to breach through O'Brien's defence, but failing. O'Brien was a bit more slow and thoughtful in his movements, while Malfoy tried to confuse his opponent with additional, completely unnecessary moves; he simply parried the real direction Malfoy was attacking. Either he was very good and saw through Malfoy's tricks or Harry knew too few about fencing to understand what exactly Malfoy was doing. Anyway, the fight was over in a few minutes, as Malfoy lost his breath and O'Brien put him onto the floor with a well-placed swing, leaving a bloody cut across Malfoy's chest, not too deep, but his shirt was definitely ruined, as it was covered in his own blood. Several girls in the audience screamed (Slytherins only, Harry noticed).

"Nice fight, Mr. Malfoy, though your style might use a little improvement. But just a little," O'Brien said, helping Malfoy get up. "Alright, you all saw how good a fencer Mr. Malfoy is," there were several boos from the Gryffindor crowd and a short applause from the Slytherins at these words. "So, I suppose, now you can make assumptions concerning the usefulness of these lessons."

After these words Pansy Parkinson got up, turned around dramatically, and left. Malfoy, who was currently trying to fix his shirt with his wand, looked at her back with the same glare he always looked at Harry with.

"So not everyone in Slytherin likes him after all!" Harry thought triumphantly as all other girls present, aside from Hermione and Parvati, and a few Slytherin boys left. The ones remaining now were Malfoy, Harry, Ron, Dean, Seamus, Neville, Hermione and Parvati. Moments later, however, Blaise Zabini returned, saying "I've changed my mind."

O'Brien tsk-ed a bit and sat down on one of the unoccupied benches.

"I suppose this will be the group I'll be teaching," he said. "So there are two things I want you to know - firstly, I am not going to push you harder and harder - you decide how hard (and usually, well) you will learn; secondly - you have to choose your weapon of choice on your own, I'm not the one to tell you what to use, but I can teach you whatever it will be. Agreed?"

Everyone present nodded almost synchronously.

"Alright, now I shall write down your names so I can keep track of your progress."

After doing so, he glanced at the time.

"We don't seem to have much time left for this particular lesson, but let us move over your ideas on what you are willing to use as your weapon."

Hermione raised her hand silently. He nodded at her, as if letting her talk.

"When will we learn magic duelling?" she asked.

"We'll be going over both ways of duelling at once, I'll be giving more tutoring to those weaker in magic or swords as necessary," he replied. "Stay calm, Miss Granger, I know of your reputation of a more magically-inclined person, you will not be wasting your time here, believe me."

*****

"How'd it go?" George asked.

"Yeah, how was it?" Fred added.

"Well, he told us a lot of stuff about usage of what he teaches us in self-defence only, et cetera, et cetera. Then he duelled Malfoy!" said Ron, his eyes lit up with some kind of unholy fire.

"With swords?" George (or was it Fred?) asked.

"Yeah! And Malfoy lost! He got himself cut up. Not too much though." Harry explained.

"So is he cool or what?" the other twin (Harry once again lost track of which twin was which) asked.

"That depends on how you are geared towards violence that involves extreme usage of steel," said Hermione.

"That means he is cool!" the twins concluded.

*****

Arithmancy did not prove to be as difficult as Harry expected it to be, at least he was doing something that followed strict mathematical rules, not making up a hundred ways of himself dying (and hearing about lots more from Trelawney). On their way to the Great Hall, Harry and Hermione met Ron.

"How'd it go?" Harry asked.

"Oh, awesome! She started with not seeing you and asking if you finally died!" Ron answered happily.

"And what did you say?" Hermione asked.

"Well, I was going to say that you were kidnapped by a giant black dog named Snuffles when Parvati ruined it all by saying that you decided to go in for Arithmancy instead," Ron replied.

"She always ruins everything!" said Harry in mock mourning. "I wonder when she and Lavender will see that Trelawney is a fraud?"

"Nah, not gonna happen," said Ron as they walked into the Hall. "Those two just worship our dear Divination teacher!"

The three laughed heartily as they sat down to eat. Everybody at the table was discussing the events of the day - how bad Snape is, what a madman (or a genius - that depended on who were you listening to) O'Brien is and what happened on Divination or Arithmancy or some other lesson.

Harry had only then noticed that he was sitting close enough to talk to Ginny.

"Listen, about yesterday..." he started as she waved him away.

"I don't care what you say, or what you think, mister. You may go and snog that Chang girl as much as you want, I won't be in your way!"

Having said that, she moved herself away from him, so that the space freed up was instantly filled with more students arriving.

"Damn me and my tongue, damn Parvati for being too nosy and damn me again for being so stupid!" Harry thought angrily.

"Harry, can I have a word with you?" Ron asked.

"Sure," was the reply.

"What have you done to Ginny?"

"No-nothing. She is just a bit offed by the fact that you and Parvati began discussing my private life yesterday and she made rushed assumptions about me and Cho."

"So there is nothing between you and Cho?"

"No, it's not what I meant, I mean... Damn, this is hard... I meant that no, Cho is not my girlfriend (at least not to my knowledge) and Ginny thinks that she is, so she acts like I gave her promises that she's my first, my last, my everything."

"Listen Harry, I know you're a good bloke and all... Don't hurt Ginny or you'll regret it, believe me."

"Ron, it's already life-threatening being The Boy Who Lived, and having a relationship with Ginny is making it worse - if I touch her you'd probably kill me, if I refuse to touch her, she'll be offended and you'll kill me anyway. It's a bit hard being me, you know," Harry forced a weak smile onto his face, but Ron remained adamant.

"Harry's right!" Hermione said, cutting in. "Don't you think you're a bit overprotective of her? Not to mention the fact that Ginny did rush to incorrect conclusions about her and Harry."

"Alright, let's say I believe you. What do we do about it then?" said Ron.

"We tell her what had really happened and try to calm her down. It's not really easy to convince a girl thinking her guy is cheating on her of the other way around..." said Hermione.

"What? Who ever said that Ginny's my girlfriend? Who do I look like, a snog & forget kind of bloke?" Harry yelled.

"What's the yelling about?" Parvati asked, noticing a possible source of interesting gossip.

"Oh, nothing, thank you very much. Everybody's just playing the daily game of "Let's guess who's Harry Potter's girlfriend and make Harry Potter miserable in the process", you know," Harry replied angrily.

He looked down at his hands, he was still wearing Ginny's ring... A thought of suspicion crawled into his mind, as he took it off when no-one saw it and pocketed it.

"Alright, that means you're trying to cover something up, aren't you?" she asked merrily.

"No, it means that you are intruding on such a fragile and personal thing as my private life, thank you very much. It's just because of your matchmaking game last evening, Ginny won't talk to me now," Harry replied, feeling a lot calmer. Was the ring the cause of his rages?

"Oh, that's what it is..." said Parvati. "Then I think I have to apologize..."

"No, I can forgive you only if you make so that Ginny forgives me. Understood?" he said.

Parvati thought about something for a moment and nodded.

"Good," said Harry.

*****

That night Harry tossed in his sleep, unable to lie still for a single moment, as it seemed. He was seeing another dream...

...Two men in black robes were talking. Harry did not know why he was seeing them and not Voldemort, but he paid attention nevertheless. Both turned out to be vampires as their fangs were a thing they seemed not to be hiding - the reason for it, as Harry thought, that wherever they are, it was the place where Voldemort kept those vampires hidden.

"...I'm freaked out by that Reilak dude, he acts as if he owns the place!" the first one said with a heavy American accent.

"As a matter of fact, he does," the other replied, this one had an Irish accent. "And if you don't act accordingly you'll probably be fried in the sun by Reilak himself."

"Won't he burn then?"

"Nah. 'Tis a strange thing, he's a child of a true-born vampire and a true-born werebat, the result was that he has the vampire's thirst, but the werebat's resistance to sunlight."

"Not the nicest guy to meet, is he?"

"Well, he gives us a place to hide and if he and that Dark wizard he made an alliance with aren't fooling us, we'll soon be drinking more blood than we can handle," having said that, the second vampire looked around himself, "Let's get back to our patrol."

*****

Harry woke up in cold sweat. Now this was getting even worse. Not only the vampires united with Voldemort to take over the United Kingdom, and, possibly, the rest of the world, but he had this ring to deal with... He was definitely sure that he had to ask Ginny where she got it. And then take the ring to McGonagall, so that she could study it and say what the ring actually does and what this had to do with Harry's outbursts of rage.

*****

A/N Here's a new after-the-new-year chapter for y'all! I don't think the next one will be out soon (unless an act of divine intervention somehow spares me from the need of studying for my exams...) so hang onto this one and keep guessing whatever you want to guess. This is getting a bit slower now, since I'm writing two more fics along with this one, but I won't put either one up until I finish 'em. Sorry.

Thanks again to all who have reviewed this story so far: Irini, Technomad, lovelyginny, Squall, MinyMe, Lauren Malfoy, witchy babie 939, Aryiona, Racky, monkeymouse.

In the next chapter: Harry seeks the ring's source... and power. Ginny is in tears, McGonagall's in surprise, Hermione decides that her life needs a drastic change... and Malfoy gets to kick some ass.

P.S. This is a slightly re-worded and re-formatted version.