Mist of Shadows
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Harry Potter and the Magical Girls Part 6
🕑 Added 2021-02-16 10:52:06 +0000 UTCNeville's mind skipped a couple of tracks, causing him to almost drop the two wrapped up firebolts he was carrying towards the owl post office when he saw a girl on a blindingly pink bicycle ride out of the wall of a shop in front of him, spin the muggle bike around and come to a stop a couple of feet in front of him. "What the hell?" he blurted as he looked at the ten or eleven year old girl in shorts and a t-shirt that rode like Harry flew.
"Are you Neville Longbottom?" the girl asked, looking directly at Neville.
"Yes?" Neville asked hesitantly, not sure what else to say but fairly sure lying wasn't a good idea.
"Excellent, I'm here to sell you some trinkets," the girl said cheerfully. "I don't suppose you want a potion that will let you turn into a cloud of mist three times a day?"
"Not particularly," Neville said, wanting to know what else she had before he bought anything.
"How about the Ace of Winchesters?" the girl offered with a grin, knowing he had a dark lord problem that the gun would help solve.
"Sorry, I don't know what that is," Neville admitted as she pulled a black rifle out of thin air.
"Seriously?" the girl asked with a pout. "It's one of the best demon killing weapons around, they're not walking away as long as you can hit them," she promised.
Neville briefly wondered if the gun would work on Voldemort then decided that he didn't have enough practice with guns to make it worth it. "Sorry, I've never shot a gun in my life."
"Ah, that makes it slightly less useful," the girl admitted as she put the gun back in her storage ring. "How about schematics for a legendary alchemy apparatus would allow you to become the best alchemist your world has ever seen?"
"I doubt I have enough points," Neville admitted, fairly sure something like that would cost more than one point.
The girl glanced at the people walking by that were ignoring them then looked back at Neville. "Tell you what, if you're willing to trade away the ability to sleep more than six hours a night, I'd be willing to give you five points which is enough to buy the schematic and a notebook that will explain how to create spells to replicate the effects of the various items you bought so you'll never have to worry about losing them."
"Let me guess, they like to wander?" Neville asked, fairly sure most wizards would love to steal his collection of magical items.
"Not so much wander as attract trouble," the girl admitted. "It's the rare wizard that can resist bragging about having a genie or the elder wand."
Neville considered the deal. "Does the curse prevent me from taking naps?"
The girl grinned, glad the kid was using his head. "No, just getting a full night's sleep."
"In that case, I'll take it. Any other deals for points?" Neville asked, figuring he might as well check.
The girl shook her head. "Technically one of the other merchants in the group offers points for stealing ten years of your memories but I wouldn't recommend it, especially not at your age. The trash man offers points in exchange for the curse of wilting but you should probably avoid that considering your skill with plants, none of the items he offers are remotely worth it."
"In that case, I'll take the schematics and the book. Can you tell the rest of the merchants that I'm done without upsetting them?" Neville asked hopefully.
"Of course," she replied as she pulled two notebooks out of her storage ring and handed them to Neville. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going home," she said as she put her foot on the pedal and pushed, sending her bike rocketing forward like a bat out of hell.
Neville stared at the girl as she flew into the air, leaving a trail of fire where the bottom of her wheels 'touched' the sky. He glanced around at the people pointing at the trail of fire then glanced at the door for the post office. 'On second thought, no point leaving any traces.' He focused on McGonagall's office and used his crown to teleport, fairly sure she'd be away for the summer.
He nearly squeaked when he appeared in her office and saw Professor McGonagall grabbing a bottle out of her cabinet with her back to him. He quickly ducked down behind her desk, wincing when he accidently hit the desk with one of the broom handles.
McGonagall drew her wand and spun around, feeling a bit like Moody for jumping at shadows until she saw the gift wrapped broom leaning up against her desk that hadn't been there a second ago. "Hello?" she asked warily as she circled around the desk, half expecting to see a house elf. She glanced at the wrapped brooms then looked around the room, wondering if the Weasley Twins had set up a prank before they left for the summer.
"Weird," she muttered and cast a couple of detection spells on the wrapped brooms. "Nothing obvious," she mused as she walked over and read the note in vaguely familiar handwriting that she couldn't place, "Once a Gryffindor always a Gryffindor. I heard about Malfoy's deplorable attempts to buy his son's way onto the team and figured Gryffindor could use some new brooms to make things 'fair'. Crush the greasy bastard's team!"
McGonagall's smile transformed to a look of disbelief when she ripped the broom paper and saw a familiar looking ash broom handle. "What?" she blurted as she quickly finished ripping the paper off, confirming that she was looking at a firebolt. She couldn't help the smug grin on her face as she quickly unwrapped the next broom. "Severus is going to come unglued."
0o0o0
"Evanesco!" Ron practically shouted as he slashed his wand at the broken plate he'd been trying to vanish for the last couple of minutes. "This sucks."
"Restoration," Harry said as he gestured at the dusty cabinet, causing the dust and grime to vanish and the wood to be restored to mint condition.
"I don't think that's a spell," Ron said absently as he glared at the broken plate that refused to vanish.
"If it works, it works," Harry said as he opened the drawer. "Shit!" he cursed, reflexively summoned his sword and swung as a spider as large as a dinner plate jumped out at him.
Ron turned and stared in disbelief when he saw Harry cut a spider in half with a sword. "What the hell is that?"
"I'm guessing the spider ate something weird," Harry replied, letting his sword vanish.
"Not the damned spider, you had a sword," Ron said, refusing to be sidetracked by the large spider.
"Yeah, it was pretty cool," Harry said as Hermione and Ginny walked in with Tonks. "I'm going to have to practice."
"Harry summoned a sword," Ron said excitedly.
"Inanimatus Conjurus?" Tonks asked thoughtfully as she studied the boy's attempt to reclaim the dining room. 'Not bad, he's better at cleaning than I am.'
"Maybe?" Harry offered, making a mental note to look up the spell when he had a chance. "I just reacted when the spider jumped at me."
"I can't say I blame you. Have you found anything worth nicking yet?" Tonks asked with a grin.
"Not really," Harry replied as he gestured towards the cabinet where he was sticking the goblin silver cups and silverware. "Sirius wanted an inventory before Mundungus stole everything."
"He actually cared?" Tonks asked in surprise knowing her cousin's opinion of the family.
Harry shrugged. "He mentioned something about a bet with Remus."
"Ah, that makes sense," Tonks agreed as she walked over and started looking through the cabinet, curious if there was anything worth keeping.
"It must be nice to be wealthy enough to not care," Ron muttered, glaring at the bit of pottery that wouldn't vanish as he waved his wand at it. "Evanesco."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "If you ever get back to cleaning, you'll get paid."
"I'm trying to vanish this stupid piece of crap!" Ron snapped, frustrated that Harry wasn't having any trouble vanishing things or cleaning entire sections of the room with a spell he was fairly sure wasn't real.
"It's more of a twist," Tonks suggested as he pulled her wand out of her holster to show him. "Like this," she said as she waved her wand, putting a slight twist at the end.
Harry gestured at the next group of cabinets. "Restoration."
Tonks' hair turned white as she stared at the dust free and completely repaired cabinet. "That's a nice trick."
"Thanks," Harry replied as he opened the next drawer and found a locket that was leaking dark magic. "Ron, can you grab Sirius, I found something he needs to see."
"Sure, I could use a break," Ron admitted, giving one last glare at the broken plate before leaving the room to find Sirius.
"What did you find?" Tonks asked as she walked over to take a look.
Hermione stared at the locket in the drawer, getting an uneasy feeling from it. "That looks like the locket in Slytherin's portrait."
"Great, what is it doing here?" Ginny asked.
"No idea," Harry admitted, glad that he didn't have to mention the fact that it was leaking dark magic. "We should probably have someone check it for curses."
"Not a bad idea," Tonks agreed as she set the goblin silver goblet she'd been looking at back in the cabinet. "There's something insane about drinking out of something that will absorb poisons and gain their qualities."
Harry frowned as he realized she had a point and that he should probably summon his gloves when he had a chance. "It wouldn't be my first choice."
"What wouldn't?" Sirius asked as he walked into the dining room with Remus and Ron.
"Drinking out of a goblin silver goblet when goblin silver absorbs anything that makes it 'stronger', including basilisk venom," Harry replied as he took a step back from the drawer so the adults could look at the necklace.
"Point," Sirius agreed, wondering if some of his family's insanity was caused by poison.
"What did you find?" Remus asked as they walked over.
"A necklace that looks like the locket Slytherin was wearing in his portrait," Hermione explained.
"He died a thousand years ago, it can't be his," Ron trailed off as Kreacher appeared with a pop.
"Leave it alone!" Kreacher ordered, glaring at Remus.
"Leave what alone?" Sirius asked.
"Regulus told me to destroy it, you can't have it," Kreacher snapped, glaring at Sirius when he realized he'd said too much.
Sirius stared at Kreacher. "Why did Regulus tell you to destroy it?"
"Because it had part of Voldemort's soul in it and Voldemort left me to die," Kreacher replied, the words forced from his lips despite his best efforts.
"Part of his soul? That's possible?" Ron sputtered.
"Unfortunately," Remus admitted. "It's dark magic and not something anyone with a lick of sense would do."
"If you were told to destroy it why haven't you?" Hermione asked Kreacher.
"I tried! I blasted it, I tossed it in a fire and I even tried to drop it in a muggle furnace, nothing worked," Kreacher complained. "I failed."
"No, you told me, I'll destroy it," Sirius promised. 'At least you came to your senses before you died Reg.'
Kreacher stared at Sirius in disbelief. "You will?"
"He might have been an ass but he was my brother," Sirius replied, feeling like he owed Regulus at least that much for finding one of Voldemort's horcruxes.
"Does that mean he'll die if we destroy it?" Harry asked hopefully.
"I doubt we're that lucky," Sirius admitted, fairly sure Voldemort wouldn't have stopped at just one. "I have a feeling he created more than one."
"Three or seven," Hermione mused, knowing the numbers were magically significant or at least that wizards believed they were. "How are you going to destroy it?" she asked, knowing Voldemort would have done his best to make sure it couldn't be destroyed.
"If nothing else, I'll use fiendfyre but I'm hoping we can just stab it with Gryffindor's sword," Sirius admitted, seeing no reason to risk using fiendfyre if he could avoid it. He pulled his wand out of his pocket and levitated the necklace. "Kreacher, let's go. Better late than never," he said, knowing letting Kreacher complete his mission was the least he owed his brother for doing the right thing in the end, if for the wrong reasons.
"Yes sir," Kreacher replied then snapped his fingers and teleported with Sirius and the locket to the kitchen where Dumbledore was having tea.
"Nice catch," Remus told Hermione, relieved that Sirius hadn't just tossed the necklace out with the trash. He glanced at the dead spider on the ground. "Spiders?"
"In the drawer," Harry said as he gestured towards the drawer in question. "Any suggestions on how to get rid of them?"
"I might have a few," Remus replied, happy to share his skills with his old friend's son. 'I wish you could see him, you'd be proud.'
0o0o0
Neville felt like an idiot once he'd had a chance to calm down and realized that he should have been using one of the cloaks he'd picked up. "Stop moping, you're not Harry, you don't go on adventures," he reminded himself as he finished potting one of the new plants he'd pulled out of his mirror. "You're not a genius like Hermione and even she makes mistakes, just look at SPEW," he reminded himself, fairly sure that he couldn't have picked a worse name if he'd tried. "I wish there was a school I could go to for hero training…" he trailed off when he realized he could go anywhere he had a picture of.
"New plan, learn the spells so I don't need the items then find something to improve my memory and get some training," he mused as he wiped his hands off on his pants then picked up one of the notebooks and opened it, nearly screaming as the magic flowed through his mind, leaving him seeing sounds and hearing colors for a couple of seconds before everything sort of flipped back to the way it should be leaving him feeling like he'd just eaten an entire container of ice cream in seconds.
"Merlin!" Neville cursed as he realized he knew several spells as if they were engraved on his soul or if he'd spent years practicing them with his new wand rather than his father's wand. He stared at flakes of ash that fell to the ground as the notebook disintegrated. "So much for sharing the book with people."
"Probably for the best," he admitted after considering the damage someone could do with the ability to jump into a memory and acquire stuff they probably shouldn't have. "Teleport," he said as he focused and teleported to his bedroom, happy that his version wasn't like apparition. He took the tiara off and dropped it on the bed then blinked across the room, proving to himself that his new spells worked. "So much better than apparition!" he squealed and teleported back to the greenhouse.
"This, this is what magic should be!" He laughed as he picked up the other notebook and flipped through it, looking at the complicated schematics for the so-called legendary alchemy apparatus. "Yeah, I'm going to need help," he admitted after staring at the various schematics for a minute without understanding any of it.
He quickly ran through his rather small list of friends and realized that Hermione was the only one that would have a chance to understand with the possible exception of the twins and he wasn't sure letting them have the schematic or even a copy was a great idea. "Okay, it shouldn't be that hard to find her address."
Twenty minutes, several dozen jumps and some confused muggles later, Neville found himself at Hermione's house. Unfortunately he wasn't alone, thankfully, he'd remembered to wear his invisibility cloak or he'd have probably been cursed the second he arrived as a group of five masked Death Eaters strolled towards the house with their wands drawn as if they had nothing to worry about.
Neville considered the situation for half a second then proved why he'd ended up in Gryffindor despite his protests. He reached out with his magic and ripped a portal open in front of the Death Eaters that were coming for his friend into a world filled with strange and wondrous plants as he drew his new wand and pushed as much magic into it as he could.
Lucius Malfoy had half a second to stare at the impossible portal before he heard a voice scream something behind him and his world exploded in pain, the force of the blast tossing him through the portal into something that looked suspiciously like a Whomping Willow's much nastier older sister.
Neville shivered as the bits and pieces of the Death Eaters he'd killed were pulled through the portal by vines. He winced when he realized he'd just used magic in a muggle area which was almost certain to get him expelled or in a great deal of trouble. It took him a couple of seconds before he remembered that the Ministry couldn't actually tell who used which spell, just that magic was used near someone with the trace. 'I'm so grounded,' he complained mentally as he headed to check on Hermione.
0o0o0
"Sorry I'm late, someone donated a pair of brooms to the Gryffindor team," Minerva said as she walked into the kitchen carrying a pair of brooms.
"So much for the cup," Severus muttered as he stared at the professional racing brooms his fellow teacher was holding.
"What's wrong with them?" Sirius asked, fairly sure his old teacher would have looked a lot happier if there wasn't anything wrong with the new brooms.
"Nothing and everything?" McGonagall said as she set the identical brooms on the table. "If I didn't know better, I'd say they were perfect. They fly like a dream but they're identical and the serial numbers match Mr. Potter's broom."
"Why would someone copy Harry's broom?" Molly asked in concern.
"They are obviously dangerous inferior copies that shouldn't be used," Severus suggested.
Minerva gave Severus a stern glare. "Are you saying that I'm incapable of checking a broom for curses?"
"No, I'm just trying to give my team a chance," Severus admitted, knowing that the Gryffindors had a better team and would crush his house if she let the chasers use the insanely quick and maneuverable brooms. "You already have Potter, isn't that enough?"
"No," Sirius cut in smugly.
"We have more important things to discuss," Moody pointed out.
"Unfortunately," Albus admitted. "We have good news-" he stopped talking as Severus winced and grabbed his dark mark. "Severus?"
Snape forced himself not to scream as he pushed past the pain. "He's furious about something."
"Do you think he noticed?" Sirius asked warily, wondering if he knew about the locket's destruction.
Albus shook his head. "No, if he was going to notice it would have happened immediately."
"Any idea what got his panties in a bunch?" Sirius asked, trying not to take too much pleasure in Severus' pain or at least look like he was.
"No," Severus admitted as Mundungus appeared with a crack.
"We've got a problem!" Mundungus blurted when everyone turned to look at him.
"Death Eaters?" Albus asked as he pushed his chair back and stood up, knowing he'd had Mundungus watching Hermione's house in case the Death Eaters showed up.
"No, they're dead," Mundungus replied, wishing he'd stopped for a drink. "I was just about to bug out and tell someone about the attack when someone or something ripped a portal open to some nightmare forest and demolished the group of five Death Eaters with a single spell."
"A portal? Have you lost your mind?" Moody asked, fairly sure it would take an entire team of wizards to create anything you could reasonably consider a portal.
"I know what I saw, one second they were walking towards her house and the next someone ripped a portal open and hit them with something that turned half of them into salsa and tossed the rest through the portal," Mundungus explained, more than a little unnerved by the ease that the stranger had torn the Death Eaters apart.
"Why didn't you tell us they were going to raid her house?" Molly demanded as she glared at Severus.
Severus shook his head. "They shouldn't have been anywhere near the Granger residence, we're supposed to be laying low." He turned to look at Mundungus. "Did you see the caster?"
"Nothing, just the portal and the blast," Mundungus replied with a shiver, wanting nothing to do with whatever had taken out the Death Eaters.
"Five less Death Eaters," Sirius mused, sounding entirely too happy about the whole thing.
"He's going to retaliate," Severus pointed out.
"Fair point," Sirius admitted, making a mental note to talk to Harry about assigning a group of summoned magic girls to guard her house in case the Death Eaters came back for revenge.
"I'll take a look around and see what I can find." Albus drew his wand and disillusioned himself then apparated to the Granger residence, knowing the sooner he got there the better.
"We should wait to tell her until we know something," Molly pointed out.
"I'm not looking forward to telling her," Sirius admitted.
"I need to make the rounds," Severus admitted, not looking forward to dealing with Voldemort but knowing something serious had happened to push him into a murderous rage. "With any luck, he'll have calmed down by the time I get there."
