Mist of Shadows
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Reluctant Villainy Part 14
🕑 Added 2021-05-25 08:43:30 +0000 UTCMyst pulled his attention away from his hoard of duplicates that were looting and demolishing the various vaults and businesses that the Death Eaters from Ivy's world owned and focused on the teenage waitress walking out of the kitchen with someone's fish and chips. 'How many magical bindings do you need on a fourteen year old?' he mused as he used his Kingmaker ability to give her the Power Hub ability then unlocked his magic immunity.
Ivy shivered and turned to look at the short haired waitress that could have easily passed for her sister when a halo of light sprang up around her and she felt a warm summer wind wash over her. "What was that?"
"Magic," Myst replied with a grin.
One of the other diners snorted. "No such thing."
"Really?" Myst asked with a grin as he conjured a ball of fire over his hand.
The man stared at the ball of fire in disbelief, fairly sure that fire wasn't supposed to behave that way, nor could he see anything pouring fuel into the fire. "What the hell?"
Myst used his Pyrokinesis to toss the softball sized ball of fire to his other hand then conjured another two balls of fire and started juggling. "It's called magic."
"Magic doesn't exist," the man snapped.
"Are you sure?" Myst asked as he gestured and caused the balls of fire to start spinning around in a ring. "Maybe I'm just psychic or maybe you're just having a psychotic break. That's probably more likely."
"That's cool!" one of the kids squealed.
"Yeah…" the kid's mother trailed off, starting to wonder if the man was serious about magic being real.
"Hey! Get rid of that before the sprinklers go off!" the waitress ordered.
"Sure, no worries," Myst replied as he let the ball of fire vanish.
"Magic isn't real!" the man snapped before bolting for the door.
"You have to pay!" the waitress snapped at the man as he ran out of the diner looking like the hounds of hell were after him.
Myst gestured towards the door and dark orbed the man's wallet to his hand. "Don't worry about it, I'll cover it."
"Did you just steal his wallet?" the waitress asked.
"Of course not, he merely dropped it in his haste to leave," Myst replied as he pulled a twenty out of the wallet then folded the wallet back up. He dark orbed the wallet back to the man's pocket. He held out the twenty towards the waitress. "That should cover his meal."
Violet gave Myst a look then took the twenty and headed over to the cash register and handed it to Mrs. Mitchell. "Here."
"Thanks Violet," Mrs. Mitchell replied as she quickly rang the man's order up and then stuck the change in an envelope on the off chance the man came back in the next couple of days.
"How did you get his wallet?" Ivy asked.
"Magic, more specifically Dark Orbing which is a form of Teleportation," Myst replied as he picked up his last fry and dipped it in tartar sauce.
"If magic is real, why don't we see more of it?" one of the other diners asked.
Myst finished his fry then turned to look at the twenty something year old woman. "Because most of the magic users running around in the shadows don't want people to know about it. It's easier to ignore the mundane world or take advantage of it if people don't know you exist."
"If that's true, why are you showing it off?" one of the other people asked.
Myst glanced at the man in his thirties. "Why not?" He smiled when a pair of aurors popped into the diner with their wands drawn. "You really shouldn't just pop into places."
One of the aurors turned to look at Violet. "I'll check the girl, start erasing memories."
Myst snorted. "If you try to modify my memories, I'll break your arms and snap your fancy stick."
The auror almost lazily pointed at Myst as he said, "Obliviate!"
Myst gestured and countered the magic, sending the spell into the wizard and causing him to forget the last day of his life. "You were saying?"
The auror glanced around, not sure why he was in a muggle restaurant. "What's going on?"
"You barged in here dressed like cultists and tried to obliviate me and hit yourself like an idiot," Myst supplied 'helpfully' as he used Projection to suppress the wizard's magic. "If you can't use magic responsibly, I'll give it to someone else."
"What the hell are you talking about?" the wizard near Violet demanded.
"You have no right to erase memories, you sure as hell don't have the right to erase memories because you're lazy shits-" Myst stopped talking when the auror he was suppressing said, "Stupefy!" and waved his wand at him. "Having trouble?" he asked mockingly.
"Stupefy!" the wizard said with more force before he stared frantically blurting out spells and gesturing wildly enough Myst wasn't sure any of the spells would have worked even if he wasn't suppressing the man's magic.
"Performance issues? It happens to everyone eventually," Myst paused long enough to counter the other auror's stunner, knocking him unconscious, "but you shouldn't worry, there are pills for that."
"What the hell are you!" the auror demanded as he tried to get his wand to work.
"I'm a god," Myst replied sarcastically then hit the distracted wizard with a stunner before he decided to take someone hostage or apparate out.
"Ghostbusters?" one of the cooks asked from the door to the kitchen.
"Yeah," Myst admitted as he walked over to the unconscious auror.
"What's going on?" Violet asked, wondering when the world had stopped making sense.
"Good question." Myst used his telepathy on the unconscious auror that still had all of his memories, trying to figure out why they were there. "Apparently the Ministry had an alarm tied into the binding on your magic which I accidently tripped when I broke it."
"I have magic?" Violet asked in surprise.
"Yep," Myst replied as he stuffed the unconscious auror into his inventory.
"What's going on?" Mrs. Mitchell asked warily, wondering how he'd made the unconscious man vanish and not sure she wanted the answer.
"The idiots are basically enforcers for a council of magic users that think they're in charge of everyone with magic in the British Isles," Myst explained as he walked over and stuffed the second auror into his inventory.
"Please don't take this the wrong way but can you pay and leave?" Mrs. Mitchell asked hopefully.
"Can you teach me magic?" Violet asked hopefully.
"Sure," Myst replied as he pulled a twenty out of his pocket and handed it to Mrs. Mitchell. "How attached to this place are you?" he asked Violet.
Violet glanced at the owner. "They've been nice and they let me stay in the loft but I'd rather learn magic."
"In that case, we should probably leave before they send more thugs, grab your stuff." Myst dark orbed Violet to the small loft the owner let her use so she could collect her stuff then looked around the room at the rest of the people in the diner. "You should probably pay and leave before they send people to erase your memories."
"They can do that?" one guy asked warily.
"Unfortunately," Myst admitted as he reached into his pocket and pulled out two gold coins. "On second thought, in the interest of making sure everyone is gone by the time the thugs get here, is this enough to cover everyone's meal?"
Mrs. Mitchel smiled as she looked at the gold coins. "Pleasure doing business with you and keep Violet safe, you hear."
"I will," Myst replied as he set the coins on the counter. He felt the world twitch and split as the man in the corner booth pulled his gun and shot him in the back, managing to instantly kill him despite his various defenses. He blinked as he turned and realized the various people were grabbing their stuff and calmly, if quickly leaving the restaurant and that no one had been sitting in the corner booth the entire time they'd been there. 'What the fuck was that?' he thought as he reviewed the memories of tracking down his 'killer' and murdering him ten minutes before he got to the diner which had caused the timeline to shift. 'Yeah, that's creepy as hell, at least I'm immune to paradox and have plenty of duplicates.'
"Where are we going next?" Ivy asked.
"To camp so you have a chance to practice a bit before you head to school." Myst used his Precog to check on Violet's relatives. 'Dudley ends up a rapist, Vernon ends up in prison for tax evasion and embezzlement, Petunia ends up living in the Caribbean with a retired drug lord and Vernon's sister has a mostly decent life despite the fact that she's a caustic bitch, lovely.'
"Sounds fun," Ivy replied as she watched the last of the diners leave.
"Cool," Myst said as he opened a small portal back to the trunk and dark orbed Violet and Ivy through with their stuff. He closed the portal then smiled at Mrs. Mitchell. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to deal with some rats."
"Have fun," she offered, rather happy with the gold coins he'd given her until she realized she'd have to hire a replacement for Violet. "I don't suppose…" she trailed off as the stranger vanished in a shower of black and blue orbs of 'light'. "Damn it."
Myst glared down at Azkaban from where he was floating a thousand feet over the water. He sent one of his duplicates to collect Dudley, Petunia and Vernon while he worked on making sure everyone in the prison was actually guilty of something worth dying for. He felt the world come to a halt and everything sort of lurched when he found a rather thin and less than completely sane Hermione Granger who had been locked up for killing Lockhart after he tried to rape her with love potion.
"You're all going to die," Myst muttered as he conjured a metal platform and held it up with telekinesis. He finished checking the prison then dark orbed the couple of innocent aurors and mostly innocent prisoners to the ministry of magic and the Dursleys other than Vernon to one of the empty cells after giving them magic with his conversion ritual. 'There's no fixing Dudley and Marge and Petunia got away with everything. Killing Vernon would be a kindness considering his future.'
He dark orbed Hermione and Sirius Black to the platform. "Are you interested in escaping?" he asked the girl huddled on the floor in tattered prison robes and the large and alarmingly skinny dog.
Sirius blinked a couple of times then nodded.
Hermione shivered as she hugged her arms to her chest, softly repeating, "I'm a bad girl, I need to be punished." to herself several times.
Myst mentally clamped down on his desire to burn the wizarding world to ash as he did one last check for innocent people in the prison with Precog then swapped it for a cosmic ranged attack that would take care of the prison and the dementors. 'On second thought, to hell with the ministry and fuck the dementors!'
He activated his boost for his Duplication power then started spawning duplicates as fast as he could under the metal platform. He let his destruction power charge as his duplicates opened portals and flew into various other worlds. 'Just because you can't die doesn't mean I can't destroy you,' he mused as he swapped his Specific Immunity to Magic for a cosmic Boost to his Heartless power. He shivered slightly when the prison went from holding a couple of hundred criminals to holding over a million corrupt magic users and soul eating monsters stacked like cordwood covering the island and prison cells.
He activated the Boost to his Heartless power so that he'd get more than ten percent then raised his hands and gestured towards the prison. "Vanish!"
Sirius stared in disbelief as the prison, the island it was on and a decent amount of water was consumed by crimson fire.
"Fire bad! Cauldron bubble!" Hermione squealed excitedly then broke into giggles as she watched the water cover the missing island.
Sirius changed back to his human form. "What the hell was that!"
Myst took a deep breath then let it out slowly as he tried to get his rage under control. "Cosmic fire or an object lesson in not using soul eating monsters as prison guards or tossing innocent people in prison. Just because you can't kill something doesn't mean you can't destroy it."
Sirius shook his head. "Not everyone in the prison deserved death."
"I sent the mostly innocent people back to the ministry before I torched it," Myst assured them as he opened a portal on the edge of the platform to the inside of the trunk. "Let's get you and Hermione some food and a couple of cleaning spells then I'll answer your questions."
"I could eat," Sirius said as he helped the girl to her feet.
Myst used his Kingmaker ability to give Hermione and Sirius copies of Power Hub then locked the power down with his Administration power so it could only copy his powers. He unlocked his mental sanity and regeneration abilities then followed them through the portal, hoping Mione could help the younger Hermione recover.
0o0o0
"What is this about Malfoy losing a hundred points and having a detention for 'threatening you with necromancy?" Severus demanded after barging into Myst's office.
Myst didn't bother to look up from the essay he was trying to read. "I have a door, try knocking next time."
"I want an explanation!" Severus snapped. "You've taken a thousand points away from Slytherin already and refused to allow several promising students into your class."
"Technically, I've taken 1120...5," he said, changing what he'd been about to say as one of his duplicates caught a Slytherin shoving someone in the hallway so he could get through the overly crowded hallways.
"It's the first week," Severus complained.
"I'll be taking 10 points for 'stupid and pointless reasons' per point you take for stupid and pointless reasons or when I get a report from one of the students about you hovering and being a creepy asshole," Myst replied.
"That's ridiculous!" Severus snapped.
"You're an adult, grow the fuck up," Myst replied sarcastically. "As for the necromancy bit, Lucius Malfoy is dead which means that Draco was 'obviously' planning on using necromancy to bring him back so that he can threaten me, thus the detention."
"He's barely started his fifth year, there's no way he's able to do anything with necromancy and you know it," Severus complained.
"It's not my fault he's a slacker." Myst gestured and used telekinesis to close the door. "Let me be blunt, if you take points for crap, I'll take more, if one of your students attacks one of mine, I'll make sure they end up regretting it one way or another. I'm not a particularly petty person unlike some people I could name but I am a vindictive bastard when it comes to people hurting my friends, which means you should probably tell your snakes to behave like civilized people."
"You don't think I've tried?" Severus complained.
"I'd suggest explaining that we have over three thousand new students but I'm not sure how many of them can actually do basic math," Myst admitted. "Out of three thousand and ninety five new students, Slytherin got fifteen first years. You'd have gotten at least seven more first years but I made sure to have people on the train mention the advantage of not being seen as a 'manipulating little shit' which sent them to Ravenclaw."
Severus scowled at Myst. "Would it have killed you to recruit more Slytherins?"
"It's not my fault Slytherin doesn't take muggleborn," Myst pointed out. "Hufflepuff got a respectable four hundred and ninety seven which isn't too bad considering I was looking for the best and the brightest students around which normally go to other houses. Gryffindor got eleven hundred and seventy three which means Ravenclaw got fourteen hundred and ten students. Either way, your snakes are vastly outnumbered and all of the new students I recruited know enough combat magic to put them in the ground, I made sure of it."
"They're children," Severus argued.
"Which is why they're getting a chance to show that they aren't terminally stupid," Myst replied as he marked the essay acceptable and tossed it on the stack of completed essays. "Some of the Slytherins have already impressed me with their work ethic and I've handed out a couple of magical powers. I'll probably hand out a decent collection on Halloween and the solstice because of the holiday cheer but most of the Slytherins aren't worth my time or attention."
Severus raised his eyebrows. "Because they're evil?"
Myst shook his head. "No, because they're lazy and stupid. I can deal with people doing questionable things for power or people that don't want it, I just have a hard time respecting people that use hate and fear to gather political power when they could be working on interesting research. Riddle was by all accounts a gifted student then he went insane and decided that splitting his soul into pieces was the way to go when various warlocks and demons would have happily sold him agelessness that he could have used to research better ways to stay alive."
"Fair point," Severus agreed. "Can you give people immortality?"
"I can give people agelessness and a decent amount of magic resistance and durability but actual immortality, the only way I know of to do that is a complicated mess." Myst used his Precog ability to find the Fountain of Youth and the Chalice that went with it.
"Oh?" Severus asked, curious about the ex-genie's method for that particular trick.
"There's a sacred pool in a hard to reach pocket dimension that grants immortality but it doesn't give you immunity to being transfigured. You might get something close if you mixed the pool with other types of magic resistance but you'd probably run into someone that would figure out a curse or a way to deal with you if you caused too much trouble," Myst mused as he opened a portal to the safe the Golden Chalice was in and grabbed it.
"What's that?" Severus asked.
"It's a sacred chalice, it's the only way I know of to drink from the Fountain of Youth without being cursed," Myst explained as he scanned the chalice. "Do you want eternal youth?"
Severus raised his eyebrows. "What's the trick?"
Myst laughed. "No trick, I need to scan the Fountain so I can reproduce it."
"In that case, sure," Severus said, figuring there wasn't much he could do to stop him if he wanted to screw him over so he might as well take the chance.
"There's a spell you need to chant," Myst explained as he conjured a piece of paper with the spell and handed it to him with the chalice.
Severus glanced at the spell. "With these offerings… Goddess of fertility, eternal youth?"
"Pretty much," Myst replied as he opened a portal to the cave where the Fountain of Youth was stored. "Go for it, one decent drink should be enough."
Severus stepped through the portal then started chanting the spell the ex-genie had given him.
Myst ignored Severus' chanting as he scanned the Fountain of Youth, wanting to make sure he could reproduce it. He relaxed slightly when he got a pattern for magical fountains and a pattern for a Fountain of Youth. 'Age reduction and it grants an infinite lifespan, not bad.' He smiled when he watched the years melt off Severus after he drank the goblet, restoring him to a healthy looking man in his early to mid twenties. "Looks good."
Severus drew his wand and conjured a mirror. "That's better than I was expecting." He handed Myst the chalice as he didn't want to look younger.
Myst grinned as he walked over and stuck the fountain in his inventory. "How do you feel about hunting pirates?"
Severus glanced around the cave filled with treasure then smiled as a group of pirates charged into the room. "It would be a shame to let it go to waste."
"Exactly," Myst replied cheerfully as he dropped the chalice in his inventory. 'He might be an ass but at least he's competent,' he mused as Severus made short work of the pirates, including the captain by blasting him to pieces. 'Apparently the protection against dying of old age on the island doesn't help against extreme levels of violence, good to know,' he mused as he scanned the area to see what type of pattern he could get.
"You could have helped," Severus pointed out.
"You looked like you were having fun and blowing off steam," Myst replied as he looked over the pattern for the cave. 'Not quite what I was looking for, I probably need to scan the rest of it,' he mused as he walked over and scanned the captain's dagger.
"Fair point," Severus admitted. "How much of it is cursed?"
Myst deconstructed the dagger for materials then started scanning the piles of gold. "Less than you'd think, you're welcome to loot as much as you can carry, I just wanted the Fountain and the dagger."
"What did the dagger do?" Severus asked as he conjured a large sack and started loading it with gold coins after hitting it with a featherlight charm.
"It caused rapid aging," Myst replied as he walked around scanning the various antiques and treasures on the off chance he needed to recreate a treasure vault.
Severus snorted. "Sounds like a good way to kill yourself accidently."
"Pretty much," Myst agreed as he continued checking for cursed items.
