Mist of Shadows
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Traveling Magic Shop Part 10
🕑 Added 2024-04-09 05:14:01 +0000 UTC"Idiot," Rose grumbled under her breath when they rushed back into the main room and realized that her brother had entered the adventure book.
"He's four," Myst replied as they walked over to check the book.
"Doesn't change the fact that he should have waited," Rose argued.
Myst sighed in relief when he saw the title of Harry's adventure. "Godric's Hollow, it could have been worse. Do I need to read the story out loud?"
Rose rolled her eyes. "I'm not four."
"Cool, I can skip the voices," Myst teased as he sat down at the table to read the book.
"Nope, that's the best part," Rose replied with a grin as walked over so that she could read over Myst's shoulder, thinking about all of the times he'd read to her growing up, even if they did take place in an alternate reality.
Myst smiled as he flipped to the first page and started reading, "So our young hero found himself waking up with memories and magical items that he shouldn't have, this as one can imagine caused a bit of a stir which involved taking the questionable items to a magical shop that specializes in identifying suspicious items from the dungeons and Harry to a curse breaker to make sure he wasn't cursed."
"Seems reasonable," Rose said.
"Especially for a group of magic users," Myst replied then continued reading, "Of course, the fact that the curse breaker found Voldemort's soul hiding in Harry's scar horrified the Potters."
"Five minutes?!" Rose sputtered when she read the part about the curse breaker removing Volemort's soul fragment in five minutes. "I had to make a deal with a demon to get rid of that bastard, how is that fair?!"
"Life isn't fair," Myst replied. "Would you rather read about a long complicated and annoying quest to deal with Harry's scar or would you rather read about his adventures with the dungeons?"
"Dungeons," Rose replied without hesitation.
"Exactly," Myst replied then continued reading, "After exhaustive tests, Harry was allowed to keep the protection bracelet and the snow globe that held memories of the shop. Of course, seeing the memories in the snow globe went a long way toward convincing Harry's family that he wasn't crazy or at least no worse than before."
"Yeah, that tracks, Mum and Dad were pretty cool," Rose agreed, glad that they hadn't freaked out more.
"Once things settled down, Harry went back to running the local dungeons for a couple of weeks, killing goblins, ogres and evil witches."
"They're skipping a lot of details," Rose complained.
"Yeah, we'll just have to ask him for details when he gets back," Myst replied and continued reading, "of course, things changed a bit when he finally found the crystal unicorn that his teacher wanted."
"Right…." Rose trailed off when Myst flipped the page and she saw a rather detailed drawing of her brother fucking a naked woman in a classroom. "I didn't need to see that."
"At least he has good taste," Myst offered as he skimmed the text describing the sex in lurid detail, glad that Harry wasn't the type to talk dirty while having a good time.
"Let me know when they get back to doing something other than my brother," Rose complained as she headed over to the shake machine to get a drink, feeling a bit sad that she'd probably never see Dawn and Xander again unless she used the book and tracked them down.
"Sure," Myst replied as he continued reading, wondering how many pages they'd devote to Harry having sex with his teacher.
Rose came back after making a milkshake and dropping a coin in the box to pay for it. "Are they done?"
Myst pulled his attention away from reading about Harry having sex with one of the librarians and looked at Rose. "Five pages of smut, a page of dialogue with the librarian about the books that Harry found, then another seven pages of smut. You have to admire his stamina."
"You can skip the voices on that," Rose told him then went back to drinking her shake, glad that he couldn't see her checking out the drawings at the top of the page. 'Way to go Harry.'
"Finally, some plot," Myst said after another couple of pages of librarian smut, "he's in the dungeon!"
"Cool," Rose replied as she went back to reading over Myst's shoulder.
0o0o0
"Any ideas?" Rose asked quietly as she studied the orcs that were holding a young woman hostage in a bamboo cage in the middle of a badly constructed camp.
"Yeah, I'll take the three on the right and you take the two on the left," Harry replied sarcastically as he tried to figure out how much time they had before something unfortunate happened to the hostage.
"No problem," Rose replied as she carefully stuck her wand just outside of their father's invisibility cloak that they were borrowing for the run and cast a rage hex on the orc that was standing behind the other orc on the left, causing him to rip his club off his belt and start looking around for something to hit.
"I was being sarcastic," Harry complained in a whisper as he used an illusion to change the other orc on the left side into an elf and have him scream, "Attack!" causing the enraged orc to start smashing the confused orc's skull in. He placed another illusion on one of the orcs on the right side, causing his features to melt and change into an elf's features and scream, "For glory!"
Rose tagged the other two orcs with her rage hex, figuring they'd be easier to get them to fight to the death if they were angry. "This always feels like cheating."
"There's nothing wrong with using illusions," Harry argued as he layered on the illusions, making all of the annoyingly durable and stupidly strong orcs think they were being attacked by elves and causing the group to tear themselves to pieces fighting each other.
"Beyond the fact that the dungeon doesn't drop loot if they kill each other?" Rose asked dryly.
"As long as we kill the last one, we'll get credit with the hostage," Harry replied as he slipped out from under Rose's cloak and summoned his sword. "Victory or Death!" he shouted as he started running at the orc.
"I'm hiding all his anime," Rose muttered as she watched her brother charge the much larger orc.
'Shit!' Harry thought as the orc started glowing red, causing his sword to catch fire and ruin Harry’s plan to simply ignore it and let his Ironwill talent protect him from the blade. He raised his left hand and conjured a blindfold over the orc's eyes then shadow stepped behind him and stabbed the orc in the back. He tossed himself to the side when his blade barely managed to scratch the orc and the monster spun around and tried to cut him in half with his flaming sword.
"Die!" the orc shouted as he tried to kill whoever had just tried to backstab him.
"Grim, Consumer of Souls!" Harry shouted as he rolled to his feet, causing his conjured blade to glow with purple flames. He dashed forward and hacked the orc's blade in half then stabbed him just below the solar plexus and thrust it into the monster's heart.
"Show off!" Rose teased as Harry cut the orc's head off.
Harry let his blade vanish then turned to look at Rose when the orc dissolved, leaving behind a couple of gold coins. "I wanted a fight."
"If you wanted an actual fight, you shouldn't have blindfolded the orc," Rose teased as she walked over.
"Fine, I just wanted to stab him," Harry admitted. "I'll save a fair fight for the practice ring."
"Damn straight," Rose agreed as she pulled the hood of their father's invisibility cloak back so that the hostage would be able to see her. She headed over to the cage in the middle of the camp to release the prisoner that looked like she'd been kidnapped straight out of a fancy ball.
Harry levitated the gold coins to his hand then walked over to the treasure chest near the boss's tent and used his Ironwill talent to check the chest for mechanical traps or at least metallic traps.
"You saved me!" the rescued woman exclaimed cheerfully.
"You're welcome," Rose replied, wondering if they'd actually get anything useful out of saving her, since the reward for rescuing 'hostages' in the dungeon was all over the place.
The woman licked her lips as she glanced over at Harry. "Do you think the valiant young hero would want to be rewarded with a night of fun?" she asked Rose quietly.
"Probably," Rose replied, slightly annoyed that the hot blonde hadn't asked her.
"Delightful, can you help me get out of this dress?" the blonde asked as she gestured at the back of her dress. "It has too many laces."
"It would be my pleasure," Rose replied as she walked around the woman that looked to be in her late teens to early twenties and started working on untying the laces.
0o0o0
"That's completely unfair, I helped rescue the girl and she jumps into Harry's arms," Rose grumbled when the story swapped from talking about Harry and Rose's adventure through the orc infested forest and swapped to yet another smut scene where her brother banged the attractive and extremely naughty lady while she grumbled and looted the orc camp.
"No accounting for taste," Myst offered as he skimmed over the smut.
"I know it's his story, it's just weird imagining Harry having sex with anyone," Rose admitted, still used to Harry being thirteen rather than almost fifteen or even four. "He's nowhere near that smooth."
Myst laughed. "Everyone is the hero of their own story and heroes generally get the girl."
"Fair," Rose admitted with a smile, glad that Harry was enjoying himself. "How come my story didn't go into graphic detail?"
"Would you have wanted it to?" Myst asked as he flipped the page.
"Point, I might have gotten stuck in the book until you got Lyanna to read it for you," Rose replied with a grin, picturing the attractive girl reading about her having a threesome with Dawn and Xander.
"Entirely possible," Myst replied as he glanced at the drawing of Harry having sex with the hostage while Rose was sorting loot in the background. "Changing the subject, how long does the magic sight from the milkshake last?"
"It's permanent," Rose replied.
"Does it stack?" Myst asked.
"Not enough to matter, but they're delicious and I needed a distraction," Rose replied, wishing the book would get back to the plot since she didn't need to read about her brother fucking yet another random girl that he'd rescued.
"That's fair," Myst replied as he continued slogging his way through the overly descriptive smut, feeling a bit like he was trying to read a romance novel.
0o0o0
"How much did you make?" Lily asked when Harry and Rose walked into the living room looking like they'd won the lottery.
"Twenty seven gold, fifty nine silver and four copper pieces," Rose replied as she took her father's cloak off and hung it on the hook by the door.
"We should have more than enough for a computer if we can take a portkey to America, can we?" Harry asked hopefully.
Lily turned to look at Rose. "Do you have enough?"
"We'll probably make a couple of hundred pounds or even a couple of thousand if we can sell them in America or take a trip to London," Rose replied as she took her belt off and set it on the table by the door. "We also got a couple of spellbooks off an orc shaman that he hadn't used for toilet paper that should sell quite well."
"I hate that dungeon," Lily grumbled, thinking about the orcs that were a pain in the ass to deal with since most of them were at least moderately magic resistant and annoyingly durable and to top it off they didn't drop anything worth the trouble unless they were elite units.
"Did you run into any problems?" James asked as he walked into the room from the kitchen.
Harry turned to look at his father. "Just a couple of idiots we had to save from the orcs."
"What were they doing?" Lily asked.
"They were trying to hunt orcs with peashooters and didn't appreciate the suggestion that they needed better weapons if they wanted to kill the orcs," Harry complained, thinking about the idiots that had screamed at them that they'd hunted plenty of dangerous animals and monsters with their guns and that guns were the ultimate weapons.
"What were they using?" James asked.
"Twenty twos and the rounds weren't even charmed," Harry complained.
"Did someone move the warning sign again?" James asked, wondering if someone had decided to move the sign that was supposed to be next to the dungeon entrance.
Rose replied as she walked over and flopped down on the couch. "It was there when we went in and when we left, I checked. I think they were just stupid."
James sighed, not sure if it was a failure in the guards’ training or if they were trying to kill the muggles. "I'll talk to Amelia about getting the guards another class about firearms, if we keep losing people the monsters are going to mutate."
"That could explain some of the loot," Rose mused. "We picked up a couple of things that the shopkeeper hadn't seen before."
"Anything useful?" Lily asked, wondering if it was worth dusting off some of her old orc hunting skills.
"I picked up a bracelet that creates illusionary clothes and a Spell Training ring that has a spell to conjure realistic training dummies that are hard to kill and work great as distractions," Rose replied, rather happy with the two items she was planning on keeping.
"What did the curse breakers say about the loot?" James asked, looking forward to borrowing the ring and learning the spell if it wasn't cursed.
Rose gestured toward the belt pouches on the table by the door. "Nothing flagged the curse detectors but the local shops were pretty busy so we're supposed to come back tomorrow or get an expert to check everything over."
James glanced at the belt pouches that were filled with potentially cursed items then pulled his magical cell phone out of his pocket and called Remus. "Give me a minute."
"What's up?" Remus asked after the second ring.
"Rose and Harry recovered a bunch of potentially cursed magical items from the orc dungeon but the curse breakers were swamped at the dungeon and the shops are busy, are you free for a bit of contract work? I could use a second opinion and someone to sign the paperwork."
"Sure, I'll be right over," Remus replied then apparated to the apparition point behind the cabin, curious what they'd found. "What did they find?"
"They found a couple of new items and a group of idiots trying to kill orcs with small caliber ammo, which means enough people are dying that the orcs are mutating and no one mentioned any of the regulars going missing," James replied.
"Which means that someone isn't doing their jobs," Remus grumbled as he headed for the back door. "Do you want me to ask Tonks to come over?"
"Sure, any reason to watch you and her dance around each other like idiots," James replied with a smirk.
"Bugger off," Remus replied, knowing his friend meant well didn't change the fact he could be an arse about things, like the fact that he still wasn't married. "I'll be there in a minute," he told him then ended the call and called Tonks, knowing she'd want to know that some of her fellow dungeon guards were fucking up by the numbers or that someone was doing something they shouldn't which the guards should have caught.
James smirked as he put his cellphone back in his pocket. "He should be here in a minute, he's calling Tonks so we can let her know that some of the dungeon guards are corrupt or need to go back to training."
"Or the idiots stuffed the guns into an expanded bag and walked into the dungeon," Lily pointed out.
James shook his head. "The wards should flag anyone with guns, even if they're in an expanded space."
"Shite," Rose cursed when she realized that she'd walked through security with a gun in her bag without anyone noticing or the wards lighting up.
"What's the matter?" Lily asked.
"I walked into the dungeon with a gun in my bag, none of the wards lit up," Rose told them.
"Where did you get a gun?" James asked, wondering if someone had warded it.
"Off the goblin pirate that occasionally shows up in the goblin dungeon," Rose explained.
"The flintlock?" James asked as he felt the hairs on his arms rise since the flintlock definitely should have triggered the ward.
"Yeah, I forgot about it," Rose admitted.
"That should set off the wards unless someone sabotaged them. We're going to need to find a better way to make sure the teams have enough firepower to kill the orcs if they're walking in there," James said, wondering if some idiot in the Ministry or the Delver's Guild was intentionally trying to feed the dungeon so that it would grow to make better loot or if they were just trying to kill muggles and ignoring the risks of creating a situation where the monsters rampaged out of the dungeon like what happened to Africa, China, Mexico, Russia and Texas.
Lily turned to look at the back door as it opened, revealing Remus and Nymphadora. "Thanks for coming."
"I'm always happy to help," Remus replied as he walked in.
"Remus mentioned something about idiots in the dungeon, what's going on?" Tonks asked as she walked in and closed the door.
"We found a group of idiots that were trying to hunt orcs with twenty twos, they either ignored the sign or didn't see it, because they claimed that it wasn't there," Harry explained.
"A muggle repelling charm would do that and you wouldn't even notice," Tonks mused, knowing the size of the sign would make it hard to ignore without 'help'.
"Without a permit, those will get you two months in lockup. It's worth checking," James said, figuring it would give Amelia an excuse to look into things since mind magic was illegal without a ministry permit since magic had 'returned' with the dungeons and the ministry had realized that they needed to crack down on that sort of shit if they didn't want people to lynch them.
"We also figured out that you can take guns into the dungeon with one of the dungeon dropped bags without the wards going off or the wards aren't working," Rose added, not sure which was worse.
"Did you ward your bag with anything weird?" Tonks asked, trying to get all of her ducks in a row before she dropped the entire mess on her boss.
"It's enchanted to stay clean and it has extra space but that shouldn't cause the wards to fail," Rose replied.
"The extra space might, it depends on how it interacts with the wards," Remus offered. "There's a chance that it could have been next to something that screwed with the wards, we should probably check the loot before we light a fire under the guards."
"Go for it, you're the experts," Rose said as she pointed at her bag.
“And then we’re going to have a little family discussion about checking your gear before going into potential danger,” Lily said pointedly. “You can’t just assume your gear is ready for battle, you have to check or you might not be able to make it back out.”
Rose winced, knowing her mum was right. “It was my spare bag for odds and ends I haven’t bothered to sell yet, not my actual gear,” she offered.
“The point still stands,” James said, backing up his wife.
“Yes, Da,” she conceded, knowing she was in the wrong and wouldn’t be able to cute her way out of it like she could when she was younger.
“Not going to comment?” Tonks asked Harry, knowing the twins tended to tease each other when they could get away with it and even sometimes when they couldn’t.
“Nope,” Harry replied, still feeling pretty mellow from the many maidens he’d rescued while Rose had done the scut work. He’d feel guilty if the situation hadn’t been the exact opposite the last time. “Got a check list so I don’t forget and I’ve probably made the same mistake before, so I’m just going to keep mum.”
“You can’t, she’s mine!” James said, hugging Lily to him and making her roll her eyes while the others groaned at the ‘dad’ joke.
0o0o0
Comments
Mist of Shadows
Yes, yes it was... I'm not sorry. :)
Mist of Shadows
Yeah, it was basically a fluke and some competent people scrambling for a way to keep things from getting really bad.
Chichi son
that joke was terrible lol
ZeroLink21
The ministry doing a somewhat competent job is how you know this is a story book world
