Mist of Shadows
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Hermione and the Watch Part 29
🕑 Added 2019-02-26 07:36:26 +0000 UTCVoldemort glared up at Harry. “My followers will restore me to my proper form then I will kill you!”
Harry pulled his attention of the shelves of the Malfoy’s library and looked down at the severed head he’d mounted on a wooden tray he’d found in the kitchen. “I knew you were insane but that’s a new level of insanity.”
“What do you mean!” Voldemort demanded.
“You died trying to murder a child, you have to admit that’s rather pathetic. If I was a dark lord and there was a prophecy about a child that was going to kill me, I would have kicked the child in the head a couple times before I tried to death curse him to make sure that even if he survived he had brain damage. Truth be told I would have brought a minion with me to break his neck or stab him a couple dozen times with a knife.”
“You expect me to show fear of a child?”
“How the hell should I know? You’re fucking insane but obliviate is a pretty common spell. Hell just killing the guy and claiming it was your target’s parents would have worked nicely. Sure, it costs you a minion but at the time you had plenty and if it lets you duck out of a prophecy, all the better.”
Voldemort scowled unwilling to admit that the boy had a point.
Harry sighed. “This is fucking embarrassing. Link gets a demon king, Mario the next best thing to a dragon for an enemy and I get a dark lord that doesn’t even know how to be a proper villain.”
“What do you mean?” Voldemort demanded.
“You wanted people to fear you more than you wanted to be immortal.”
“I am immortal, this is just a temporary setback,” Voldemort declared.
“How many horcruxes do you have left?”
“Five.” Voldemort’s eyes went wide. “What did you do?!” he demanded frantically.
“Bringing you back would have been pointless if you wouldn’t answer my questions honestly,” Harry replied with amusement.
Voldemort stared at Harry in shock. “Where did you learn that?”
“It’s amazing what you can learn in old libraries and with a bit of research.”
“You’re a mediocre wizard, you couldn’t have discovered something that useful,” Voldemort denied.
Harry laughed. “Yeah, you really should consider your sources of information. Draco sees what he wants to see. Let’s see, which horcruxes are left and where are they?”
Voldemort twitched as his mouth opened and spilled his secrets despite his best efforts, “Slytherin’s locket is hidden in a cave near the orphanage where I grew up, Helga’s cup is in Bellatrix’s vault, Ravenclaw’s Diadem is hidden in a concealed room at Hogwarts, my familiar is in the manor, and my family ring is in the shack my mother’s family lived in.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Harry asked with amusement.
“My followers will hunt you down and kill you!”
“Really? This again? I think you’re overestimating their ability and your importance to them. I’m sure it sounded interesting to start with, cause a bit of chaos, make some gold and have some chums to laugh with but the reality was far different wasn’t it? How long did it take for them to realize that they’d chained themselves to a psychopath half blood?”
Voldemort glared at Harry. “It won’t matter, they’re still afraid of me.”
“Maybe so but I have people hunting down your Death Eaters, I’m not remotely worried about your pathetic followers.”
“What does Dumbledore think of you going dark?”
Harry considered his answer for a couple seconds. “I could argue that none of the spells I’ve used are actually dark spells or claim a soldier’s morals that I haven’t hurt any noncombatants but let’s be honest, he barely batted an eye when I put Professor Quirrell out of his misery after you possessed him so I doubt he’ll honestly care. Still, I’m a touch curious about something, why Britain?”
“It was a path to power,” Voldemort replied with a sneer.
Harry shook his head. “That’s what I don’t understand. Even if you’d taken over the ministry and leveraged that to control the muggle government, that would be the beginning of the end. You could never give your followers the freedoms they want without causing a revolt and let’s be honest, eventually someone is going to hit your base with bombs so why bother?”
“They would have been too afraid of crossing me,” Voldemort snapped.
“Eventually the Americans would show up with a couple thousand aurors and burn the government to the ground.”
“They wouldn’t dare!”
“Why?” Hermione cut in as she walked out of the stacks. “Because you might kill a couple of them or because the other countries would complain?” She snorted. “At that point you’d be a threat to the Statute of Secrecy and they’d do just about anything to make you go away. Did you actually have an end game or were you just seeing how far you could get before they stopped you?”
Voldemort sneered at Hermione. “I think you’re giving wizards too much credit. What would you have done if you were me?” he asked, expected some pathetic scheme to help people.
“You mean a sociopath with a bunch of minions that don’t matter?” Hermione asked, wanting to be clear what she had to work with.
“Yes,” Voldemort replied, seeing no point in hiding the truth of his opinion on his idiot followers.
“Given a complete lack of morals, I would have looked for a reasonably small tropical island nation ruled by some less than decent people then I would have quietly taken some followers over there and taken out or conscripted the local magic users.”
“Then what?” Voldemort asked, curious where the muggleborn was going with her idea.
“Once I had a base of power, I would have put the leader of the country under the imperius or found a way to take control behind the scenes,” Hermione explained as she walked over. “Do it well enough and no one knows they’re under control. Once I have control, I bring in a couple wizards that have a clue about the muggle side of things and put them in a position of power.”
“So that you have a replacement when the current leader dies tragically?”
“Yes though I wouldn’t kill him yet, he’s too useful as a scapegoat. One of the reasons you pick a complete bastard to control is so that no one’s surprised when they prove to be a complete bastard.”
“That makes sense, continue,” Voldemort said, curious where she was going with her idea despite himself.
“Once you have your people in place, you bring in a Nundu and let it run around the island causing a plague. This gives you cause to put in place some rather draconian rules that don’t actually help keep the disease contained. This allows your people who have no official ties to the government to help get the poor muggles to safety elsewhere. Of course, the official leadership can’t have the population deserting so they pass a law that says anyone leaving forfeits their property.”
“So you can ‘legally’ take it when they disappear?” Voldemort asked with amusement.
“That and you want them willing to sell their property and flee the country. This is where you bring in some minions to buy the land for a fraction of the cost using leprechaun gold and conjured gold. In order to conceal this from the rest of the wizarding world, you make sure the ship sinks.”
“You’d need some of them to escape otherwise it would look suspicious,” Harry pointed out.
“Of course but honestly you’re looking at a small amount in the grand scheme of things.”
“You’d never get all of them without going through and killing people,” Voldemort argued.
“If I was an amoral sociopath I wouldn’t really object to kill people except on the grounds that it would just draw attention you don’t need. You don’t have to get rid of all of the muggles, you merely have to get rid of a decent amount which the diseases should take care of. This is when I have someone take over the education system.”
“So you can brainwash the muggles?” Voldemort asked, liking her idea despite himself.
“Not as such though I would certainly paint magic use in a good light without telling them about it. No, the real reason you take over the education system is so you can hit the useless muggle males with a sterility curse. This leaves you with a lot of girls looking for partners which is where your wizards come in.”
“They wouldn’t go for it, you’d be diluting the bloodlines,” Voldemort pointed out.
Hermione shrugged. “I wouldn’t be asking them to marry the girls, just knock them up. We could make it a tradition, see how many girls they can knock up. The wizarding world loves their traditions after all,” she said sarcastically.
“It would drastically increase the number of magicals on the island,” Voldemort admitted.
“That’s the idea. Sure, your followers are probably stupid enough to think the children will be second class citizens but they need someone to lord over. Once you’re done buying most of the people out, you start confounding people into leaving. No one is going to look all that closely at people fleeing a sinking ship. At some point in there you deal with the nundu and get declared the leader’s successor. You put in place some reforms that work and you start turning things around enough that people will want to enjoy a tropical vacation again. At which point you kill the old leader in his sleep if you had to imperius him and take over all legal and official like.”
“You should probably cremate his body to make it harder to figure out what happened,” Harry added helpfully.
“Good idea,” Hermione agreed.
“Then what?” Voldemort asked. “You’re in charge of a ravaged country.”
“No, you’re in charge of a ravaged tropical island with a growing population of magic users and barely enough muggle population to run your tourist city. Duplication charms, house elves and spells for crops means you could easily afford to feed your people. Toss some low powered muggle repelling charms around the rest of the island and you should be able to make sure your island is muggle free in twenty years.”
“I can’t see my followers being that patient,” Voldemort pointed out.
“It’s not like they wouldn’t have things to work on. A couple vanishing cabinets and you could have them raiding other countries or even schools for recruits.”
“To what end? They’d never be loyal.”
Hermione shrugged. “That’s where you’re lacking creativity. A bit of polyjuice, a couple hairs and some obliviates and you now have magic using cat girls or crup human mixes that can’t remember their families, their country of origin or much of anything that you don’t need them to. Split them up into groups around the island, helping with farming or construction work once you don’t have enough muggles around to matter.”
“You’d have problems if the obliviates broke,” Voldemort said with a sneer.
“That’s only a problem for the first batch. Cross breed house elves with the cat or curp girls and you’d have an insanely loyal next generation.”
“That would take too long,” Voldemort complained.
Harry shrugged. “That’s why you look into ways to become immortal.”
Hermione nodded. “In five years, you’d have a country where wizards can spread out. In twenty, you’ve probably replaced most of your population with wizards and are busy working on your army of fanatically loyal minions to replace your old minions and if you do it right, your current minions would never know. In fifty years, you have a magical population to rival any two major nations and you’d probably have your people everywhere and be the immortal puppet master behind the scenes.”
“But that’s not enough for you is it?” Harry asked with a sigh. “You’d always want more, you’d always want them to know that you have your boot on their throat, that you’re the one making them dance.”
“Of course,” Voldemort said. “What’s the use of having power if you don’t use it?”
“This is why you suck as a dark lord,” Harry said. “Speaking of sucking, you’re going to tell me about the defenses on each of your horcruxes and how to retrieve them so that I can destroy them and render you mortal.”
Voldemort glared in impotent rage as he once again found himself spilling his secrets despite his best efforts.
0o0o0
Voldemort watched with horror as the muggle truck hit his family home, crashing through the various wards he’d placed over the shack to discourage trespassers. “I’m going to kill you when my followers rescue me.”
“You mean the followers that you’ve tortured every chance you got since you’ve been back?” Harry asked sarcastically as he studied the remains of the shack. “We’ve been over this, your followers aren’t going to help you.”
Hermione gestured and ripped the broken floorboards apart then levitated the box Riddle had concealed there. She gestured with her other hand and turned the box to water which destabilized the curses on the box causing them to lash out randomly. “Why would you even put one of your horcruxes here?”
“It’s the last place anyone that knew me would expect,” Voldemort complained.
“And yet here we are,” Harry said smugly as Hermione levitated the ring that had been inside the box. “Any reason we can’t just transfigure the ring to water?”
“You’d need enough power to overcome the protection spells,” Voldemort said snidely.
“Like the box, yeah I can work with that,” Harry replied as he pulled his wand out from behind his ear, pointed at the ring and pushed with his magic as he transfigured the ring into water, causing the stone to drop to the ground. He stepped to the side as a bolt of energy jumped toward him then brought Voldemort’s severed head up and blocked the spell as it changed directions to hit him. He dropped Voldemort’s screaming head and jumped back as it turned black and started smoking. “Huh, yeah, that’s nasty.”
“At least we have the locations for the rest of the horcruxes and don’t need to worry about the locket,” Hermione said as she watched Voldemort’s head melt. “Yeah, he gets top rank for stupidly lethal curses.”
Harry took a couple more steps back as the head started bubbling and spitting bits of blackened flesh. “Yeah, he had some serious issues.”
Hermione floated the stone into the air so she could take a better look at it. “Strange.”
Harry shrugged. “Drop it in a box or something, we can always ask James and Sirius later.”
“Or Bill,” Hermione suggested as she transfigured a broken board into a box. She dropped the stone in the box then closed the lid and dropped the box in her bag. “Where are we going next?”
“Gringotts for the cup or Hogwarts for the diadem?” Harry said as he glanced toward the graveyard where Riddle’s family was buried.
“Might as well grab the diadem first then loot Bellatrix’s vault and drop Snape and Fudge off when we kill the snake. We can always come back and loot the room of lost and found later.”
“Sounds good,” Harry agreed.
0o0o0
Snape blinked as he went from being in a seedy tavern tracking down information to standing in the dining room of Malfoy Manor holding his wand, looking directly at the flames over Voldemort that said, ‘No more horcruxes! Kill him!’ He slashed his wand, taking advantage of Voldemort’s distraction and his lack of wand or dueling robes to cut his arm off. He ignored the screaming from the various guests as he slashed his wand again, gutting Voldemort.
Voldemort stared in shock at Snape as he fell to his knees. “Why?”
Snape flicked his wand again, cutting Voldemort’s throat. “You should have stayed dead.”
Fudge stared in shock as he found himself somewhere he really didn’t want to be, looking at someone that should have been dead and gone for over a decade. “What is going on?” he squeaked.
Snape glanced around the room, noticing the various death eaters starting to choke and grasp their throats. “It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out, my friend Narcissa contacted me about a roach problem,” he lied as he gestured at Voldemort. “I dealt with him.”
Fudge sputtered. “What am I doing here?”
“How should I know?” Snape nodded his head toward Narcissa. “You might want to ask the lady of the house,’ Snape finished in his head, ‘or Potter.’ He was fairly sure it was his fault even if he couldn’t prove it. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have places to be.”
“Now see here, you can’t just…” Fudge trailed off as he noticed all of the people at the table other than Narcissa clutching their throats and twitching as they fell to the floor. “What is going on here?!”
“What does it look like?” Snape snapped. “Voldemort obviously had a death clause built into the Dark Mark that killed them when he died.”
“That would have happened when he vanished the first time,” Fudge sputtered.
“I didn’t enjoy being imprisoned in my own home,” Narcissa complained, not sure what was going on but running with the story that might keep her out of Azkaban now that the Dark Lord seemed to be dead for a second and hopefully final time. “Thank you for the assistance Severus.”
“My pleasure,” Snape said as he strode from the room like he owned it, robes flowing behind him. ‘This has to be Potter’s fault.’
“We need to call the aurors!” Fudge shouted as he realized that over a dozen extremely wealthy purebloods were dead, some of whom gave him campaign contributions.
“Oh course you must,” Narcissa replied as she directed the minister toward the floo, trying not to roll her eyes at just how gullible the minister was. ‘I’m going to need to sell another copy of my Van Gogh to cover the bribes for this shit. Still, I should probably thank Severus for killing the bastards and giving me an out. Maybe my red slip or maybe the black number, yes the black silk dress should work quite well.’
0o0o0
Hermione watched Harry’s legs wither and turn to dust as he finished the ritual to boost his wrists, which was the last spot on his body that he hadn’t already hardened several times. “At least you’re getting a decent amount of practice with Blackbeard’s ritual.”
“More than I really wanted,” Harry complained as he flexed his hands, trying not to look at his missing legs. “That should be the last of the rituals. How do you think Fudge is doing?”
Hermione pushed the button on her stopwatch twice, resetting Harry’s legs and freezing time again. “Even if no one killed him, he’s probably a gibbering wreck.”
“To be fair, he went from getting a late night snack to watching Voldemort die.”
“Assuming everything went according to plan,” she grumbled as she helped him to his feet.
Harry sighed as he grabbed his invisibility cloak off the piano. “On that note, are you ready to make sure he’s dead?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Hermione said as she held her hand out for Harry.
Harry put his cloak on then covered Hermione as best he could. “This was a lot easier when we were eleven.”
“A couple of years will do that.” Hermione smiled as she flamed teleported with Harry to check on Voldemort, hoping he was dead but wanting to make sure.
0o0o0 99
Comments
Mist of Shadows
I have a number of projects already... besides, I'd have to deal with politics if I actually wrote the story, and that always gets messy.
Tom smith
Oooo please do a story where you have a si do what you had Hermione and harry tell Voldemort. Maybe him just before he kills lily or Harry or the first time her splits his soul someone else takes his place with his memory and like fuck this I’m out
William Jackson
Nice. Dead enemies are the best enemies.
