Mist of Shadows
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Hermione and the Watch Part 14
🕑 Added 2018-10-14 20:37:45 +0000 UTC“Neither can live while the other survives,” Hermione mused to herself as they loaded their bags with time turners and various other priceless artifacts from the Hall of Time.
“I love you but give it a rest,” Harry replied with a sigh. “You’ve been playing with the wording for the last twenty minutes.” It was almost enough to wish they hadn’t listened to the stupid prophecy sphere. “It’s not going to change the fact that my parents are dead or that Voldemort is a lunatic.”
“I know, I’m just trying to figure out if it contains any leads for killing him,” Hermione pointed out as she stuffed the last time turner in her bag.
“I doubt it,” Harry replied, a touch of annoyance seeping into his voice as he gave the room another glance, he’d much rather just forget about the damned vague as shit prophecy. While they hadn’t tossed everything like a bad detective show, they’d certainly collected just about anything that wasn’t nailed down and a couple things that were. “That should be everything unless you can think of something we missed?”
Hermione shook her head. “Not that I know of, we stole all of their notes and emptied every library we could find, including the minister’s personal library which he probably never used.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, it’s Fudge,” Harry muttered the last part as he made sure his expanded bags were tied shut. “Where are we going next?”
“We need to check everything for tracking charms before we restart time but I wouldn’t mind rescuing the veela girls now that we know where to find them or checking out some of the other dark shops in Diagon Alley.”
Harry scowled as he thought about the floo registry they’d copied that had all of the names and locations of the various wizarding fireplaces in Britain. “Remind me to figure out a way to prevent people from remotely connecting our fireplace to the floo network like what happened with the Dursleys.”
“Yet another example of backroom deals,” Hermione grumbled as she teleported with Harry and their loot to the floo department.
Harry blinked as he glanced around the room at the frozen ministry employees. “The wizarding world pretty much runs on backroom deals and bribery from what I can tell. How many of them do you think would sell out the wizarding world if it came down to it?”
“All of them,” Hermione replied without any hesitation as she set her bags down, walked over to one of the fireplaces and grabbed a pinch of powder out of the copper urn on the mantelpiece. “Let’s hope Mr. Grendel is as stupid as the rest of the idiots.”
“Probably,” Harry agreed, not sure if he should be annoyed or happy about the lack of security in the wizarding world.
She tossed the powder into the fireplace as she said, “Grendel Place, 9th street.” She leaned down and stuck her head into the green flames. She frowned slightly as examined the metal grate over the fireplace that kept people from coming through the floo but did very little to block her sight of the man’s workroom, including the human shaped skins on display. ‘You’d think, you’d stick that in a backroom or at least have a cover you can put over the fireplace to keep people from knowing you’re a monster.’
“Any problems?” Harry asked warily as Hermione pulled her head out of the fire with a look of annoyance on her face.
“No, I’m just trying to wrap my head around someone being stupid enough to have illegal objects on display where anyone that calls you can see,” Hermione complained as she walked back over and grabbed her bags.
“To be fair, the ministry probably isn’t going to call him and his clients already know he’s insane,” Harry pointed out.
Hermione flame teleported herself and Harry to the idiot’s workroom with their bags. “I’m starting to wonder if magic rots your brain or if the culture is the problem.”
Harry scowled as he looked around the man’s rather grizzly workshop then glanced at the oversized two tailed crup that was frozen in the process of gnawing on a bone that looked suspiciously like a human femur. “I’m fairly sure we can blame it on the culture. How come the more I learn about the wizarding world, the less I like?”
“Because it’s run by a bunch of elitist bastards,” she complained as she set her bags down and headed for the partially opened door with several locks on it rather than the door without a lock. “Hopefully they’re alive.”
“Hopefully,” Harry replied, uncomfortably reminded of the Dursleys.
Hermione stared as she opened the door and saw the bright pink room that looked like nothing so much as an oversized dollhouse complete with a glass shower and toilet on the far side of the room. “What the hell?” She scowled as she noticed a half dressed man in his late twenties with a camera looking at something she couldn’t see. Her eyes were drawn to the two mostly naked stunning red haired teenage girls frozen in place on the overly ‘cutesy’ bed as she stepped into the room. “Attractive girls in tiny white panties and black metal collars, I think this is the place.”
Harry did his best to ignore the half dressed wizard as he stepped into the room. His breath caught as he saw the identical pale skinned girls that were almost kissing. “Fourteen? Fifteen?”
“Rather large breasts for fourteen,” Hermione muttered a bit enviously. It wasn’t that she really wanted larger breasts but they were damned near perfect from what she could see.
“Maybe sixteen?” Harry asked absently as he pulled his attention off the girls’ rather spectacular breasts as he focused on their rune covered collars. “Do you think we’ll be able to free them?”
“Let’s hope so,” Hermione replied softly as she pulled her attention off the girls so she could look at the rest of the room. She twitched slightly as she noticed the creepy looking older man hidden in the corner with his right hand down his pants. “Just what I didn’t want to see.”
Harry turned and looked to see what Hermione was looking at. “Is it just me or does his bracelets match the girls’ collars?”
Hermione pulled her attention off the man’s leering face and focused on his bracelets. “They look like it which means we should probably cut his head off and see if he knows anything useful.”
“Have fun, I’m going to check the rest of the house and see if he has a journal or something that explains how to take the bracelets off.” Harry gave the girls a ‘brief’ look as he turned to head back into the workroom. ‘Hopefully they’re not completely insane.’ He ignored the little voice in the back of his head whispering about sanity being overrated when you’re that hot as he walked into the other room.
“Sounds good,” Hermione replied as she drew her knife and walked over to the creepy looking wizard. She spun the wizard around so that his blood would hit the garishly pink wall rather than anything else in the room then slit his throat. ‘At least scourgify does a decent job on blood.’
Harry walked over to the other door and opened it, revealing a somewhat sparsely furnished living room/kitchenette. He frowned as he walked into the room and noticed the couch had a crup hair covered blanket on it and the dirty windows showed nothing but darkness outside which wasn’t that surprising considering it was night. “I guess he’s never heard of a scourgify charm,’ Harry muttered to himself as he walked over to the table and opened the leather bound ledger to a random page and started reading the first row, ‘Skins JK, Dec ‘90, 5 galleons… yeah, great.’ He glanced over the dates then back at the column of words. ‘Skins JK, photographs DG, skins UO… more skins and a photograph date that matches the date he skinned the girls, great, complete psycho.’
He shook his head as he read down the second line of numbers and realized the man made a pretty good living off the girls which meant it probably didn’t matter if someone found his creepy cabin, he’d just set up elsewhere or bribe them. He flipped through the ledger looking for notes or anything, sadly other than the initials or short two letter codes and the amounts he sold things for the only interesting bit of information he could find was a couple unnamed potion recipes near the front of the book. He wasn’t sure what the faded potion recipe did but the second one used essence of dittany which might imply it was some type of healing potion. He was fairly sure Hermione would have a better idea as he’d never really gotten past needing a recipe. He looked up from the ledger as he heard Hermione curse from the other room, “Shit!”
He dropped the ledger, drew his wand and sprinted for the other room. “Hermione?”
“I might have made a mistake,” Hermione admitted as Harry burst into the room with his wand drawn.
Harry winced as he noticed the black rune covered bracelets were on Hermione’s wrists. “What happened?”
“The bracelets vanished and appeared on my wrists when I cut off his head,” Hermione complained, more than a little annoyed with the bracelets.
“Let me guess, they won’t come off?” Harry asked, trying not to laugh or worry too much about the potentially cursed bracelets.
“No,” she huffed as she handed him the wizard’s head with a touch more force than strictly necessary.
Harry set the man’s head on the table then cast the spells that would reanimate him and force him to obey his commands.
The old man screamed as he woke up, “Who are you!?”
“A wizard in a mask,” Harry answered flippantly. “What exactly do the collars do?”
The man scowled as he replied, “They let me control and retrive the girls and gives them a decent amount of regeneration.”
“How?” Hermione asked, curious how the bracelets worked.
“By verbal or written commands and I don’t know how it grants them regeneration,” he replied as he glanced at the girls who he could just barely see out of the corner of his eye, “Kill them!”
“Yeah, I’m guessing you need the bracelets for that to work,” Harry replied smugly. ‘You’d also need the girls to not be frozen in time.’
“What did you do?” the man replied frantically as he realized he couldn’t feel his body.
“I might have cut off your head and reanimated it,” Harry replied absently as he glanced between the girls and the photographer.
The man sputtered as he tried to call Harry a liar and found that he couldn’t. “What did you do?”
“You’re bound to tell the truth. What do you know about the bracelets?” Harry asked, curious why a dark wizard would need to resort to magical trinkets.
“Not much, I acquired them a couple years ago in Africa from a witchdoctor for dealing with the village chief in a way that couldn’t be linked back to him. He claimed I wouldn’t be able to take them off unless someone killed me, he even demonstrated on one of his prisoners. Even cutting off the girl’s limbs wasn’t enough to get the bracelets off,” the severed head replied smugly.
Hermione shook her head. “The regeneration sounds useful but why not just use the imperio charm?”
“Because I’m a squib,” the man snarled out. “You filthy wizards have it so easy!”
“Is that why you skin the girls?” Harry asked with annoyance.
The man snorted. “No, I do it because it’s fun and profitable.”
Harry winced as he realized the man was completely deranged. ‘Yeah, you’re not making it out of here alive.’
Hermione gestured at the man with the camera. “What about your friend with the camera?”
“He just pays to take pictures of the girls fucking each other. I ordered the girls to behave and not tell the guy they were being controlled.”
“How old are the girls?” Hermione asked as she glanced over at the girls on the bed.
“Fourteen or fifteen. It’s easy to lose track.”
“What happened to the other girls you kidnapped?” Harry asked, fairly sure he didn’t want to know but willing to ask on the off chance they could rescue any of them..
“I sold a couple of them to hags and fed three or four to my crup after I got bored with them. I auctioned one of them off for a night of fun for some dark wizards, you should have heard her screams. Pretty sure the rest were sold to werewolves to be released during the full moon.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Hermione demanded.
“Do you want the list or was that rhetorical?” the man asked with amusement.
Harry cut in before Hermione could launch into a rant, “Fine, how do we get the collars off the girls?”
“You can’t,” the man replied smugly. “The collars don’t come off until the girls die.”
Hermione winced as she realized she’d probably have to cut off the girls’ heads. “Will the regeneration heal missing limbs?”
“Eventually, you’re generally better reattaching the limb.”
Harry glanced at Hermione. “Do you have anymore questions for the guy because I’m down to my last couple questions.”
“Where do you keep your money and your books?” Hermione asked as she scowled at the animated severed head.
“That and what the initials in his ledger mean,” Harry replied, hoping he could track down the people that had done business with the crazy bastard.
“That’s a good idea,” she agreed. “If you want to work on that, I’ll work on figuring out if the ministry has any tracking charms on the loot.”
“Sounds good,” Harry agreed as he picked up the severed head by his hair and headed back to the living room to grab the ledger.
0o0o0
Selena blinked as her sister went completely still under her. “Are you okay?” She twitched slightly as she turned to look at Ralph to see if he’d done anything and realized he was standing there in his underwear when the last time she’d looked he’d been fully clothed. “What the hell?”
“Sorry,” Hermione apologized as she stepped back and finished putting her watch back in her pocket.
Selena conjured a ball of fire as she twisted to look at the stranger. “Who are…” she trailed off as she realized the masked girl had their bracelets. “How did you get my bracelet and what did you do to everyone?”
“I stole it from the lunatic and I froze everyone, is that a problem?” Hermione asked, hoping the girls wanted the lunatic dealt with.
Selena’s ball of fire pulsed as she tried to control her anger as she thought about her old master. “No Ralph is a monster. Can you unfreeze my sister?”
Hermione shook her head. “I need some answers first.”
“What do you need?” Selena asked wearily.
“Do you have any family left?” Hermione asked as her gaze wandered over the girl’s perfect skin.
“Just my twin, Mum’s dead, dad was never around and we’re only half veela which means we’re not wanted by the rest of the veela,” Selena replied as she sat up.
Hermione pulled her attention back to the girl’s face as she asked, “If you were free what would you do?”
“You mean after I set Ralph on fire?” Selena asked as she glared at the mostly naked wizard.
“Sure,” Hermione agreed.
Selena took her master’s ‘sure’ as permission and tossed the ball of fire at Ralph. “I’m not sure, we don’t have anywhere to go which means we’re sort of screwed.” She frowned as Ralph showed no reaction to her ball of fire hitting him in the face. “Huh, I was expecting more screaming.”
Hermione frowned slightly as she looked at Ralph’s half melted face, ‘That’s nastier than I was expecting.’ She turned her attention back to Selena. “You’re welcome to stay with me until we figure out something more permanent.”
“I can cook and I’m pretty good at back massages,” Selena suggested helpfully.
“What do you want to do about the photographer?”
Selena shrugged which caused her C-cup breasts to bounce. “Nothing, he was just taking pictures.”
“Really?” Hermione asked a touch surprised that Selena wasn’t angry with him all things considered.
“I like fucking my sister and we love showing off though if you find the other photographer, I’d like to have words with him.” Selena scowled as she thought about the son of a bitch that had gleefully taken pictures while Ralph had skinned her.
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Hermione assured her.
“Sweet, you’re the best! Can I hug you?” Selena asked hopefully.
“If you want…” Hermione trailed off as Selena stood up and hugged her.
“You’re the best master, ever!” Selena said enthusiastically as she buried her face in Hermione’s hair.
‘Great, she’s worse than a house elf,’ Hermione thought to herself as she hugged the girl back for a minute before letting her go. “Better?”
“Yep. Can you unfreeze Beth?” Selena asked hopefully as she sat on the edge of the bed. “She’s going to want to see Ralph set on fire.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Harry stated as he walked into the room.
Selena smiled at the masked wizard with messy wild black hair. “I like him already, can we keep him?”
Harry smiled behind his mask, trying to keep his gaze on her eyes rather than her breasts or creamy white skin. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. I have a new master and I’m looking forward to setting Ralph on fire,” Selena replied enthusiastically.
“That’s one way to look at it,” Harry replied, rather amused at the idea of Hermione ending up with a servant considering her stance on house elves. “What about the photographer? I found the lunatic’s photo album...”
Selena shook her head. “The twisted shit was probably Frank or Ralph. Phil isn’t a bad guy.”
“What do you want to do with Frank if we can find him?” Harry asked.
“He needs to be set on fire,” Selena stated firmly.
“That’s going to be your solution of a lot of things, isn’t it?” Hermione asked warily.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Selena replied as she glanced between the two masked people.
Harry scowled as he thought about the twisted photo album. “I was going to suggest fire and a beater’s bat.”
“He’s my new favorite person, can I hug him?” Selena asked hopefully.
“If you want,” Harry agreed.
Selena giggled as she bounced to her feet and pulled Harry into a hug.
Harry twitched slightly as his pants got a bit tighter as Selena breasts her breasts against him. “Now what?”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Selena glanced at the photographer as she absently moved Harry’s hands to her bottom, “I’d like copies of the pictures that Phil was taking.”
Hermione snickered at the blush on Harry’s face. “That should be easy enough, anything else?”
“Some of the clothes aren’t completely useless and I’d like to set Ralph’s dog on fire if you’re feeling generous.”
“Not a fan of crups?” Harry asked as he gave her bottom a gentle squeeze, not wanting to be rude but not really wanting to do more than that until they figured out how much the collars had messed the girls up.
“Crups are fine,” Selena replied as she rubbed her breasts against Harry. “I’m a witch, that particular creature on the other hand is damn near feral.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Harry replied, thinking about his aunt’s stupid dogs.
Selena glanced over at the shower. “I don’t suppose you want to steal the shower?”
“You like being on display?” Hermione asked in surprise as she looked at the glass divider.
“Unless they’re assholes like Ralph,” Selena replied as she let go of Harry.
“I’ll see if I can shrink it while you pack.”
“Thanks, you’re the best,” Selena replied enthusiastically as she skipped over to her dresser filled with naughty, half useless ‘clothes’ they mostly used for photoshoots.
Harry glanced at Ralph. ‘You’re lucky, we’re just going to kill you.’
