CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

I woke up from my nap about ten minutes before Hermione arrived at the Cullen's mansion via portkey in a swirl of sleek robes, chestnut curls and red lips, a beaded handbag hanging casually at her elbow. I was surprised by the make-up she was wearing, but my attention was quickly turned away from her, as she hadn't arrived alone.

The sight of Luna had a huge, beaming smile cross my face that even Mal–Draco's presence did little to dampen.

Luna's robes swished around her as she crossed the room, over to where I was sitting propped up on the couch. The robes were... well the only word that really could be used, was 'shawly'. It appeared that at least twenty, possibly thirty, different shawls had been sewn together to create an interesting ensemble of clashing colors and patterns. Around her neck, she had a multitude of chains and beads while her arms were covered with at least a dozen different bangles each. The bangles dug into my back as she hugged me, but I honestly did not give a damn.

"I can't leave you alone even for a minute," she scolded me, and I just laughed and hugged her back as tight as my weak limbs were capable of.

"I'd never want you to," I told her, kissing her cheek. "Where have you been?"

I'd wondered where she'd been upon my return to Forks, but nobody had seemed to know anything other then she'd been sending back owls to say she was safe. I thought she might have dragged Draco off to Switzerland or something, to go try and photograph a crumple-horned snorckack or fligby flutterloo or three-legged gimblechock.

"We were in Britain," Luna said, though, and I pulled back slightly so I could look at her in surprise.

"Britain? But I thought..." I glanced over at Draco, who was looking down at his hands.

It felt too awkward to mention the fact that he'd been banned from Britain out loud, but I quickly realised that not saying it was proving just as awkward.

Hermione, thankfully, saved me from the awkward silence.

"Narcissa's cooperation on this whole vampire matter has earned her certain privileges." My fellow muggleborn explained. "She asked to be able to see Draco. It took a bit of finagling but I managed to make it happen."

"Which isn't so surprising, considering you're one of the people writing major parts of Wizarding Britain's new legislation." Luna said, giving Hermione a warm smile. Hermione's cheeks turned pink.

"It's not just me." She muttered, embarrassed. "Kingsley's helping too, and so is Arthur. I'm mostly just responsible for going through the Archives to find and sort all the old, out-dated laws that are still technically in effect."

"Gra– Hermione," Draco corrected himself before continuing on, "you're reworking an entire government from the ground up and anyone capable of logical thought knows it."

"Then it's a good thing most wizards don't have an ounce of logic in them." Hermione said dryly, before shaking her head. "Ah, old joke." She explained, a touch sheepishly. "There was a logic puzzle involved."

"You're doing the right thing." Draco said, his steel-grey eyes turning back to staring at his hands, like they were somehow incredibly fascinating. "The old system wasn't working– the way my f-father was able to manipulate it so easily, and that He was able to take control of it with so little resistance, proved that beyond any doubt."

"Oh," Hermione said, looking startled. I felt startled too. Nobody spoke until I cleared my throat, awkward with the silence.

"So what have you crazy kids been up to while I was away?" I asked.

"Oh, this and that." Hermione said lightly. "Like I mentioned, a lot of studying old laws as well as sales marketing with goblins, cultural relations with werewolves, the odd Wizengamot elder who needs to be taken down a notch; the usual stuff. Though at the moment I've mostly been focusing on this vampire situation. It's... well, I heard you had visitors come to warn you that you're being targeted, and there's... there's a situation."

"That sounds vaguely ominous." I said. She nodded grimly.

"You might want to call in any of the Cullens here right now." She said, though I didn't actually have to say anything as Edward, Rosalie and Emmett appeared in the entrance of the living room before she'd even finished her sentence.

"Luna," Rosalie greeted my best friend warmly, gliding across the living room, over to where Luna had sat down beside me on the couch, leaning down to gently press her lips against Luna's forehead

I blinked in surprise at the sight of the blonde vampire, as I'd never seen her dressed so casually before. Sections of her long golden hair had been pulled back on either side of her face and woven into precise braids, each fastened with barrettes that looked suspiciously like little wrenches. She was then wearing old jeans, hand-knitted aqua-coloured socks with a pattern of silver butterflies that were lazily flapping their gauzy wings– my guess was they were a gift from Luna, and one of Emmett's t-shirts. Well, at least I assumed it was Emmett's; Rosalie didn't seem the type to own a baggy t-shirt with a faded picture of a scantly clad woman holding on to a stripper pole with text proclaiming 'Supporting Single Moms' in curvy letters.

"Rosalie, Emmett, Edward," Hermione greeted the three vampires. "I love the barrettes." She added warmly to Rosalie who smiled dazzlingly at the curly-haired witch.

"Thank you. I love your lipstick, it suits your skin tone."

Hermione smiled back at her, all straight shoulders, red lips and strength. "Thank you– I was in a meeting earlier today, discussing the vampire situation." She said, as if that explained it.

"Why did you wear lipstick to it?" I asked, curious because I'd never seen her wearing lipstick before today– not even at my bachelorette party.

Hermione turned her smile towards me, her lips a playful, bright crimson curl. "The international task force assembled to hunt down all the remaining vampires wants blood," she said, the curve of her smile widening to show teeth. "And Narcissa told me I should give it to them."

I swore I could feel the hairs prickling on the back of my neck. "Oh wow," I said, a bit stunned. "Wow. Anyone who tries to disagree with you are so doomed." Hermione laughed, looking infinitely satisfied.

"Oh yes." She said. "They're all, as Ginny puts it, my 'bitches' now, which is how I got this." I watched as she summoned two items from the depths of her beaded handbag. One was a long potion phial filled with a silvery substance that wasn't quite a liquid, but not quite a gas either– a memory, I realised. The other item was one I hadn't seen before except as an illustration in a book; a shallow stone basin on which runes and strangle symbols were carved and a number of some sort of precious stone I couldn't identify were embedded. It was a pensieve; an almost priceless magical artefact.

"With the aid of all the members of the Auror strike team that dealt with the Volturi coven, I had a collection made of the memory of every vampire that was killed in the destruction of the coven. It's not a pretty sight, but from the timeline that we've created of the mystery vampire's actions, our assumption right now is that whoever is causing trouble is one who escaped that particular cull." Hermione said grimly. "We need someone familiar with the Volturi to identify who is missing."

"I can do it," Edward offered immediately. "I'm confident I know at least the faces of all of the guard from both my own visits and from Carlisle's memories of the time he lived here."

"Thank you," Hermione said, looking relieved. "Having some sort of progress right now would be a relief– a fair number of the task force is getting antsy. Even despite my current influence, keeping them from going after the vampires who took a Vow is getting harder; we've lost people to this fight and like I said before– those left behind want blood, especially after the recent disaster."

"Recent disaster?" Rosalie asked, a heavy frown on her lovely face. I bit my bottom lip, having a feeling I knew where this was going from Alice's phone call.

"Somehow, the last coven the team faced managed to get their hands on objects spelled with very strong protection charms," Hermione said, confirming my suspicions. "It was a slaughter. The strike team didn't figure it out fast enough, and every Auror we sent in died."

"Fuck," muttered Emmett as we all traded grim looks.

"When can I look at the memories?" Edward asked, determined.

"If you're alright with it, then right now." Hermione told him.

"I want to see them too," I said, lifting my chin up high when everyone barring Luna and Emmett seemed unsure. "I've been to Volterra too– I could spot something Edward misses."

Truthfully, I doubted that very much– I had a fairly good memory, but not compared to that of a vampire. But I couldn't just sit around, all helpless and useless. I desperately wanted to help with this whole bloody situation, any way I could, to not feel like a burden.

Seeming to read the steely resolve on my face, despite her doubts Hermione didn't try to argue with me. "Alright." She said instead. "The more eyes the better."

Edward looked like he was about to protest, but Rosalie harshly pinched his side and he shut his mouth, turning to glare lightly at her instead. She looked back, extremely unapologetic.

I turned my attention back to Hermione and watched, intrigued, as she poured the phial of memories into the pensieve, the liquid/gas swirling almost cloud-like in the shallow basin.

"So how does this work?" Edward asked, leaning forwards slightly to examine it.

"It's very simple, actually," Hermione told him. "Memories or excess thoughts are siphoned from the mind and poured into the basin of the pensieve so they can be viewed from an outsider's perspective, a non-participant third person point of view. For example, do you remember when Bella got sick after the Final Battle from Bellatrix Lestrange's curse?"

"Vividly." Edward said darkly, "You mentioned at the time using a pensieve to look over memories of the Battle, to figure out what curse Lestrange used." He added, in realisation.

"I did– when you can examine your memories at your own leisure, it's easier to study them. Our memories process so much more then what we manage to recall." Hermione explained, before giving a tired sort of half-smile and waving a hand of the pensieve. "Are you ready?" she asked.

"How do we do this?" Edward asked, reaching to grasp my hand in his cold stone one. Hermione flicked her wand, levitating the pensieve and directing it over so it was hovering before me– I wouldn't even have to leave the couch to touch it. 

"It's simple." Hermione said, with a small smile. "All you have to do is submerge your head in the basin."

"Alright." Edward said, seeming to steel himself. His dark gold eyes flicked over to meet my own. "Ready?"

"Ready." I confirmed, taking a deep breath before leaning forwards as much as my ballooning stomach would let me, which proved to be just enough that I could dip my head inside the basin.

For a moment nothing happened, and then I was tilting forwards, pitched headfirst into a whirl of colour and shadow. I felt my feet hit solid ground, and stood, shaking, as the blurred shapes around me came into sudden focus.

It was... not pretty.

Fast-paced and ugly, the memories half blurred into each other as they changed from one to the next. Some memories lasted only a handful of seconds before I'd be sent tumbling into the next. Others took up to five or six minutes, the now-dead vampire featured in them putting up more of a fight.

Despite the fact five Aurors had apparently lost their lives, there was one thing that was almost painfully clear about the destruction of the coven– it wasn't a battle or a fight, it was a fucking slaughter.

An international team of Aurors had been put together to dismantle the Volturi and they had fucking done it.

I watched the systematic destruction of vampire after vampire wide-eyed and silent, barely aware of Edward's presence beside me as oily purple smoke drifted upwards, and white 'rubble' and half-intact dismembered limbs littered the cracked marble floors. I could see a single severed finger determinedly inching its way across the room. It was crawling like a worm, and I hoped that the special force had remembered to burn every part of the bodies of the vampires.

Coming out of the pensieve was almost a shock, the sensation not unlike that of being tipped backwards.

I gasped as I became aware of my return to the living room of the Cullen's mansion. My entire body was shaking, adrenaline coursing up and down my limbs.

Beside me, Edward appeared even more shaken up then I did. I could only imagine how confronting it must have been, to see the relative ease in which the witches and wizards had wiped out the most powerful vampire coven in the world. Still, he pulled himself together remarkably well.

"There were only six vampires missing, as far as I could tell." He told Hermione. "Felix, Demetri, Corin, Heidi, Alec and Athenodora. Out of those six, only two of them had the motivation to really organise this– Alec, because Bella killed Jane, and Athenodora, because her mate was killed in the attack."

"Athenodora?" I asked, startled. "You mean Caius's mate?"

"Yes," Edward confirmed, face settling into grim lines. "She's an Ancient too, older then Aro, Caius and Marcus all."

"If she's that old, then the possibility of her having old talismans with protective charms from before the Statute of Secrecy was created, and witches and wizards went into hiding from muggles, is very real." Hermione said, looking concerned. "And while some spells decay with age, others can grow stronger. It could also explain how she knows about the existence of the magical world, which whoever is responsible for handing out the protective talismans must be. And if the knowledge that your coven is responsible for bringing our attention to the Volturi, which resulted in an attack that left her mate dead, then that certainly explains why she's targeting you."

"Great." I said, bitterly. "That's just great. We're officially in the cross-hairs of the fucking Queen of Vampires because I've managed to piss off yet another vengeful vampire because I killed her mate, and this time I can't even use magic."

"Is there some sort of plan in place to deal with this mess?" Edward asked, looking equal parts frustrated and troubled.

"Oh, I am very much a firm believer in 'de inimico non loquaris sed cogites'," Hermione said with a sharp smile. It had teeth.

"Don't wish ill for your enemy," Edward translated it for those in the room who didn't speak Latin, "plan it."

"And maybe that's ruthless, but sometimes you have to be ruthless to win a war. And we won the war." Hermione said, her red lips making her teeth look very, very white as she smiled at us. "Yes, I have a plan."