Mist of Shadows
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Hermione and the Watch Part 12
🕑 Added 2018-10-06 20:33:39 +0000 UTCHarry frowned as he glanced at the frozen portrait on the wall eight feet ‘behind’ where Draco had taken a tumble thanks to his shoelaces ‘spontaneously’ tying themselves together. “I’m a touch surprised Dumbledore hasn’t covered every inch of the castle with his magical spies.”
“I’m fairly sure there are limits, even the purebloods would notice if every surface was covered with portraits,” Hermione replied as she glared at Draco’s frozen face. “Do you want to behead him or should I?”
Harry pulled his attention off the portrait of some forgotten wizard and focused on Draco’s frozen expression of shock. Sure, it was a bit petty freezing time and tying his shoelaces together but they needed Draco to be focused on something other than being naked for a split second when time reset. “I’ll let you go first if I get to be the one that stabs him for real.”
Hermione frowned slightly as she studied the arrogant asshole sprawled on the ground. “We might not have to kill him.”
“Fair enough,” Harry agreed, not particularly concerned about Draco. He knew what it was like to be raised by lunatics.
Hermione drew her recently acquired knife as she walked around to Draco’s side. She bent down and grabbed his hair with her left hand. “Weird, I was expecting it to be greasier.”
“Really? With how vain his father is?” Harry asked in surprise.
“I guess you have a point,” Hermione agreed as she reached down and put her knife to his throat. “Do you mind teleporting his clothes off?”
Harry gestured and summoned Draco’s clothes, leaving him in his boxers. “If you want his boxers gone you can burn them off or something.”
“No thanks, the blood shouldn’t spread that far,” Hermione replied as she slit his throat then quickly stepped back to avoid getting blood on her clothes.
Harry watched Draco’s blood pool on the corridor. “I wonder if he would have been a better person if he’d been raised by a halfway decent human?”
“Probably,” Hermione muttered as she watched the flow of blood slow down.
“Any idea what we’re going to do with the body?”
“I was thinking about cooking it,” Hermione replied absently as she bent down and worked on ‘sawing’ his head off with her knife.
Harry turned a bit green at the idea of eating Malfoy. “What?! You want to eat him?”
“Of course not, he doesn’t have any special magical talents and it’s Malfoy but you could use the practice cooking a roast and there is always Filch or Ginny,” she pointed out.
“Nope, not happening, friends don’t let friends eat Malfoy. Though I’ll admit Filch would be a good test case.”
Hermione shrugged. “You can’t honestly tell me you’ve never wanted to ram a spike up his arrogant ass.”
“Just as long as you don’t expect me to eat him,” Harry muttered.
“Yeah no,” Hermione replied as Draco’s head finally came free. “Hey, he actually has a spine.”
Harry couldn’t help his smile even as he shook his head. “That was bad.”
“I know,” Hermione admitted with a grin as she put her foot on Draco’s back. “I’ll be back in a second.” She flame teleported back to the shack’s backyard with Draco’s body, leaving his underwear to drop to the floor.
Harry searched through Draco’s robes then grabbed his wand and pointed it at the pool of blood. “Evanesco!” He frowned as an entire swath of the hallway went from bloody and or stained to sparkling and shiny in an instant, all traces of blood and dirt gone. “Yeah, I’m going to have to work on that.” He put the wand back in Draco’s robes then set the pile of clothes on the freshly cleaned floor.
Hermione reappeared. “I’m going to have to work on my…” she trailed off as she noticed the sparkling clean hallway. “A bit too much oomph on the scroogify?”
“Evanesco actually and just a bit,” Harry replied as he put Draco’s wand back in his robes then set the bundle on the ground.
“Ready to grab Snape’s head?” she asked.
“If we can do it without one of Dumbledore’s spies seeing us,” Harry grumbled as he pulled the Map out of his robes and looked at it. “I solemnly swear I’m up to no good.”
“Anything?” Hermione asked.
Harry frowned as he found Snape in Filch’s office with the caretaker and his cat. “He’s in Filch’s office with Filch.”
“It might have had something to do with Filch having a wand on him at dinner.”
“I didn’t notice,” Harry replied as he made sure the rest of the teachers were elsewhere.
“That’s because you were conspiring with the Twins about their latest project,” Hermione replied as she walked around so that she could stand where the portraits and Draco couldn’t see them. “Ready to restart time for a second?”
“His body is significantly hidden?” Harry asked.
Hermione pulled her watch out of her pocket. “Hidden enough for the couple seconds we’re going to be unfreezing things.”
“Fair enough,” Harry replied as he walked over next to Hermione so he was out of sight of Draco and the portraits. “We probably only have three seconds at most before someone turns around and checks on his screaming.”
Hermione pushed the button to unfreeze things then quickly pushed it again once Draco reappeared in the same position he’d been in when they froze him without a stitch of clothes. “I almost want to leave him like that.”
Harry quickly looked away from Draco’s naked ass. “Gah, a little warning next time.”
“At least it’s not Crabbe or Goyle,” Hermione teased as she raised her wand to use a levitation charm to start dressing Draco. She paused as she realized she really didn’t see the point in giving him his clothes back after all of the crap he’d done over the years. “Two questions, do we really care if we leave him like this? I mean technically, we’re in another part of the castle, they’ll never connect the dots.”
“Other than inflicting emotional distress to anyone that has to see his bits?” Harry asked.
“You share a dorm with a bunch of guys. Besides you should see the magazines the girls pass around, nothing they haven’t seen either.”
“Okay… what was the other question?” Harry asked, curious what was running through her head.
“I was just thinking about who we should frame for Lucius Malfoy’s ‘tragic’ death,” Hermione mused.
“We might as well blame the surviving Death Eaters by painting words in blood on the wall about how traitors will be punished.”
“If nothing else it might distract the ministry from smearing your name,” Hermione pointed out as she started walking toward Filch’s classroom. “Let’s take a number of heads, since we need the practice.”
Harry shook his head as he glanced at Draco’s clothes on the ground then shrugged and followed Hermione. “Before we get carried away, do you have a list of people we want to take heads from?”
“A decent number of Slytherins but I was also thinking of stripping a bunch of people just to confuse the issue,” she decided.
“No objections here, I think everyone could use a laugh after Umbridge,” Harry agreed. “Actually, if we get the memory out of Draco’s head of going to his family’s vault, could you teleport in?”
“Probably, are you thinking about looting it before you kill the Malfoys?” Hermione asked absently as she mentally reviewed her list of purebloods that had called her names over the years.
“I was planning on looting their vaults before we killed them, so the next generation can’t continue in their footsteps,” he explained.
“If we spin it right, Draco will spend the rest of his life thinking the Death Eaters screwed him, he might even improve as a person. Assuming we don’t find a reason to kill him.”
“Don’t you mean ‘more’ of a reason?”
Hermione shook her head. “We’re not going to kill him just because he’s an ass.”
“Not just because, I have plenty of ‘more’ reasons to want him dead.”
“Fair enough,” Hermione replied as they stopped in front of Filch’s office. “What’s the plan?”
“Open the door, walk in and cut Snape’s head off then we vanish the body because no one needs to eat Snape, not even Filch.” Harry opened the door then glanced between Filch who was holding a wand pointed in Snape’s general vicinity and Snape who looked a touch annoyed. “Hand me the knife, you got to cut off Draco’s head.”
Hermione handed Harry the knife. “Have fun.”
Harry smiled as he went to work on Snape’s neck, thinking about all of the vanished potions, bad grades and general abuse the bastard had put him through over the four years.
“You know this is going to traumatize Filch, right?”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Harry asked thinking about all of the times Filch had tried scaring the hell out of kids with talk of torture devices.
“Point,” she conceded.
Harry beamed as he held up Snape’s head. “That felt every bit as good as I thought it would.”
“I’d say something about teachers and respect but it is Snape.” Hermione reached out and grabbed Snape’s wand then vanished his body letting his clothes drop to the ground. She dropped his wand on the pile of clothes. “I always wanted to bite Pansy’s head off but I’ve always been too polite. I guess I’ll just have to settle for cutting it off.”
“I’m sort of surprised you didn’t, considering the shit she’s said.” Harry handed her Snape’s head as they walked around a corner and saw a group of Slytherins. He wandlessly removed the girl’s clothes then dropped them at their feet as he walked by.
“You’re hitting random people?” Hermione asked as she studied the attractive naked sixth year girl with abundant cleavage. ‘Not that I’ve complaining.’
“Best way not to get caught. If we only hit the people we hate, someone may put the pieces together.”
Hermione smiled as she followed Harry as he walked through the hall, teleporting clothes seemingly at random, though he tended to skip the guys more than the girls, not that she could blame him.
0o0o0
Hermione looked up from reading the occlumency book as Harry walked back into the wizarding tent they were using for their little project carrying Draco’s severed head. “How long until we can feed him to Filch?”
“I hate you!” Draco shouted as he glared at the unfamiliar scantily dressed blonde haired woman wearing a white mask that made her voice sound dark and disturbing.
Harry snorted. “We heard you the first fifty times Draco.” He smiled behind his mask as he ran his eyes over Hermione’s curves or at least the curves the polyjuice potion had given her. “We have a couple hours.”
“You’d think he’d stop screaming.” Hermione sighed as she put her bookmark in her book then glared at Draco. “We’re in the middle of a forest, no one will hear your screams.” She finished the rest of the thought in her head, ‘That and time is frozen.’
“You know how well he listens,” Harry complained as he walked over and set Draco’s head on the folding table they’d set up.
Draco glared at the masked wizard with brown hair and a nasty looking burn on his arm. “When my father hears about this!”
“What exactly do you think he’ll be able to do?” Harry asked with a touch of amusement.
“He’ll have you tossed in Azkaban!”
Harry laughed as he pictured the ministry trying to find a couple random people when all they had for a description was that the woman was smoking hot and had blonde hair while the guy was basically average with a scar on his arm. He wasn’t worried about them tracking the muggles down considering the scar was fake and he’d never seen their faces. “How? We’re wearing masks and he’ll be dead within the hour.” He doubted they’d manage to kill Draco’s father in an hour but he was near the top of his list.
“You might have gotten the jump on me but he’s a fully trained wizard and behind the best wards money can buy!” Draco shouted, trying to cover how terrified he was, sane wizards didn’t run around using dark magic to reanimate the dead or cook people over a roaring flame. The worst part was he’d smelled delicious.
“You’ve already told me about the wards Draco and how little you know about them, I’m not worried.” Harry was getting a little tired of Draco’s blustering but at least he’d stopped crying about losing his body.
“They’ll feed you to the dementors!” Draco blustered.
“Really? That’s all you have?” Hermione asked with a touch of amusement. “You’re not going to claim that Riddle will avenge you?”
Draco sputtered as he realized the strange masked woman was completely unhinged, “Who the hell is Riddle?”
“Tom Marvolo Riddle, otherwise known as Voldemort. You know the blood golem your father licks the boots of.”
“Blood golem?” Draco asked in confusing.
Harry shrugged. “They brought him back to ‘life’ in a cauldron with blood stolen from an enemy in a patched together dark ritual. I’m half surprised he hasn’t fallen apart yet.”
“What do you want?” Draco demanded, expecting his question to be ignored like all the other times he’d asked the insane people that had mounted his head on a board.
“I want to kill Riddle’s death eaters and watch his soul burn!” Harry did his best impression of an evil laugh.
Hermione had to resist the urge to laugh at Harry’s attempt at sounding insane. “I want to find a way to give the entire world magic and watch the sparks ignite.” She grinned evilly rather than try to laugh like Harry.
Draco gulped as he realized they were completely insane. “You’re mad!”
“You don’t say,” Harry replied with a laugh as he picked up Draco’s head by his hair.
“Damn bastard, that hurts!”
“Don’t be such a crybaby, the spells should keep you ‘alive’ for a couple hundred years. Of course, you’ll probably be completely mad by that point, sitting in the dark with no one to talk to.”
“I don’t know, we could always drop a couple crabs in there to fight over his nose,” Hermione pointed out.
“True.” Harry held Draco’s head out at arm’s length. “Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well.” He tossed Draco’s head into the trunk he’d used a silencing charm and a cushioning charm on then shut the lid.
“Alas poor Yorick?” Hermione asked with amusement.
“What else do you do with a severed head?” Harry asked in amusement.
“Fair enough,” Hermione admitted as she reached up and took her mask off. “On the upside, I can’t imagine Draco keeping quiet about his weird nightmares if there’s a connection.”
“That’s something,” Harry admitted as he took his own mask off then worked on peeling off the fake scar on his arm.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea how we’re going to get through a bunch of dark wards that Draco didn’t actually know all of the details of?” She didn’t want to flame teleport on the off chance that someone had set a nasty trap for the headmaster.
“I’ve got a couple ideas how to bypass the wards but I doubt we’ll need to,” Harry replied with a smirk.
“Why?” Hermione asked, wondering what he was thinking.
“Politics. We just embarrassed a bunch of wealthy purebloods and sent Fudge’s pet packing, he’s going to be looking for any excuse he can find to lash out at Dumbledore.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him and Draco is the type of spoiled ass that would run crying to his head of house to contact his father.”
Harry nodded. “Who will run to his dear ‘friend’ Fudge. I doubt it will take more than an hour for them to ‘storm’ the gates with a group of aurors and cause problems.”
“That’s assuming he doesn’t contact the headmaster directly.”
Harry shook his head. “After his smear campaign? Nah, he’ll want to have a bunch of aurors with him when he confronts Dumbledore which means flooing from Hogsmeade and walking to the castle.”
“In other words, we might be able to ambush them if we get lucky.”
“That’s the plan,” Harry agreed. “We’ll need a place we can watch the path leading to Hogwarts without attracting suspicion.”
“My window has a decent view from the dorm, they’ll be using their wands for light, it shouldn’t be that hard to spot them. As long as I have a book, no one is going to bother me.”
“Do we have a plan if Lucius is with them?” Harry asked as he walked over to steal Hermione’s chair.
“Easy, we grab him and teleport to the forest then cut off his head and ask him about all of his friends. We can probably grab the minister’s head while we’re at it.”
Harry picked up the occlumency book then sat down in Hermione’s chair. “I have a feeling this is going to cause some of the aurors to get a bit twitchy.”
“Probably,” Hermione replied, unconcerned about the emotional wellbeing of the corrupt ministry. “What do you want to do with the roast?”
Harry paused as he considered what to do with Draco’s body. He’d used a spell to gut Draco and then he’d used another spell to shove a conjured pole up his ass, something that was way more satisfying than it really should be. The best or the worst part of the whole experience if you ignored him ‘shitting’ out his guts was the smell, it reminded him of roast pork. “We could toss him to the spiders but it seems a waste and I’d like to know how much he boosts Filch.”
“We could always toss a stasis charm on it but we have plenty of books to sort from the shop and you should probably try to make it through another chapter of the occlumency book. Besides, we need to wait for the polyjuice to wear off anyways.”
“Works for me,” Harry agreed, knowing he’d set the timer to remind him to check the roast.
0o0o0
Tonks glanced away from the path leading to Hogwarts and over at Fudge and Lucius fucking Malfoy who was strutting like a damned peacock next to the red faced minister. ‘I knew I should have taken an early dinner.’ She glanced over at Percy Weasley, at least he had the grace to look slightly ashamed about the farce of a mission, at least when the minister wasn’t looking at him. Fudge had barged into the squad room with his smirking piece of shit friend and demanded a couple of aurors to get to the bottom of an assault on the dignity of the future of the wizarding world. In other words, someone had gotten pranked and Lucius had clinked some coins together and Fudge had come running. She glanced over at Dawlish who was at least keeping an eye out for trouble.
Fudge puffed himself up. “Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this then we’ll arrest Dumbledore.”
“Are you sure that’s wise…” Tonks trailed off as Lucius Malfoy vanished without a sound. “What the hell?”
Percy quickly drew his wand as he scanned the path, half expecting Death Eaters to jump out at them in some attempt to discredit Dumbledore.
Fudge spun having seen his friend vanish out of the corner of his eye then spun back as Dawlish slumped to the ground. “Help! Save me!”
“Shit!” Tonks snapped as she brought up her wand and sent out a stream of fire as she spun, hoping to catch whoever was attacking them before they killed her.
Precy blinked as Lucius Malfoy reappeared stark naked with a look of horror on his face then fell apart into dozens of different pieces of bloody meat. “Merlin!”
Hermione pushed the button on her watch, freezing the scene in place as the stream of fire moved closer to where Harry and her were hiding under his cloak. “Tonks is a lot scarier than we gave her credit for.”
Harry stood up and glanced over at Percy. “So is Percy.”
“He grew up with Fred and George without going completely insane,” Hermione reminded him as she walked over to where Fudge was cowering in fear. “Is it too much to ask that the minister of magic isn’t a complete coward?”
“Probably though to be fair, he did just see his friend fall apart,” Harry said with a hint of amusement in his voice.
“You’re enjoying this way too much,” Hermione replied with a grin. She felt a touch bad about giving Percy nightmares but they needed to test if the goblins had a way to tell if someone died or if they used mundane methods to keep track and the best way to do that was to fake Lucius’s death.
“You’re the one that wanted to see if we could cut him up like a jigsaw puzzle,” Harry reminded her.
“It was that or go with your plan to teleport into Fudge’s room at night and leave pieces of Lucius in his bed.”
“I still think we could have driven him completely barking mad in a week, maybe two,” Harry complained as he gestured at Fudge and teleported his clothes to his hand leaving him in his underwear.
“You probably could have but I’d rather not know what goes on in his bedroom.” Hermione turned to look at Tonks, her face frozen in a look of concentration. “You know Tonks is going to kill you if she figures out you’re the reason she had to see Fudge’s bits.”
“I’m sure she’s seen worse, she’ll get over it, probably,” Harry grumbled as he set the Minister’s expensive looking robes on the ground then drew his knife. “We can pick her up an expensive bottle of firewhiskey when we loot the ministry to the ground.”
Hermione sighed. “She’ll probably need it after all of the paperwork she’s going to have to do.”
“I’d get Percy one but he’d probably just think it was a bribe,” Harry complained as he walked up behind Fudge and slit his throat then stepped back as he waited for him to bleed out.
“Probably. It’s a pity we can’t put him to work sorting through the ministry’s corruption.”
“Yeah…” Harry trailed off as he realized that was a great idea. “I bet we could. We still have some polyjuice, a bit of Fudge’s hair and we could tell Percy to do anything we want including assigning him to a special project to uncover corruption and straighten out the ministry.”
“He’d jump at the chance even if he had to stay in a safe house for a while.”
“Where are we going to find a safe house?” Hermione asked with a touch of amusement.
Harry smirked. “We don’t need one, we’ll just stick him in a hotel for a week or two.”
“What happens in two weeks when the job is over and Fudge tosses him in prison for having government papers?”
“We should be able to drive Fudge completely insane by that point which means no one should question Fudge assigning Percy a special project to figure out who was out to get him,” Harry replied as he worked on cutting off Fudge’s head so they could get some answers. “Worst case, we rescue him before it gets that far.”
“I guess it’s worth a try depending on what we find out from Fudge’s head,” Hermione agreed, looking forward to the next couple of days even if they were going to be rather busy between framing the Death Eaters for the attack on Fudge and Lucius’s ‘death’ and looting the ministry to the ground.
