Mist of Shadows
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Hermione and the Watch Part 11
🕑 Added 2018-10-02 03:27:09 +0000 UTCGinny froze as she woke up in an unfamiliar bed next to an naked girl. She relaxed as glanced up and saw Hermione’s smiling face. “Please tell me this is going to be a thing.”
Hermione smiled as she looked at the naked redhead. “I certainly hope so.”
Ginny glanced at Hermione’s breasts as she sat up then pulled her attention to the rather thick book her friend was reading. “What are you reading?”
“An occlumency book that Sirius had, I’d rather not have anyone with a bit of training be able to look through my memories with a flick of their wand.”
“That would be useful,” Ginny replied as she glanced past Hermione at Harry’s naked behind. “So…are you and Harry an item?” Ginny asked trying to figure out how everything worked now that her brain was functioning a bit better.
Harry muttered something into his pillow that might have been yes.
“Does that leave any room for me?” Ginny asked hopefully.
“Minion?” Hermione asked half jokingly.
“Minion?” Ginny asked with a pout.
Harry turned his head enough that he wasn’t talking into his pillow. “Top minion?”
“How much does it pay?” Ginny asked half serious and half joking.
“How much do you want?” Harry asked with amusement.
“That depends on what I’d have to do?”
“Wear a skimpy outfit, follow orders, keep track of the rest of the minions and fuck us?” Harry offered.
“Is that my duties or my pay?” Ginny asked. “Because that sounds like loads of fun!”
“Bit of both but honestly, we’ll be increasing your magic and giving you tons of galleons if you like,” Harry said as he sat up.
Ginny glanced between Harry and Hermione. “Wait, you’re serious aren’t you?”
“I’d make a joke about not being my godfather but yeah, we’re serious,” Harry said.
“Ron is going to lose his mind, I’m in,” Ginny agreed happily.
“Maybe he’ll find a better one,” Hermione muttered as she marked her page and closed her book.
“So what did the ritual do to me? Because I feel like I overdosed on pepperup potion.”
“Filled you with the magic of a phoenix. You’ll probably be able to flame teleport.”
Harry said, “You might even be able to lift heavy objects like Hermione.”
Ginny turned to look at Harry. “Did you get phoenix magic?”
“No, thestral, Hermione got the phoenix upgrade, it was a lot more effective so that’s what we went with for you.”
Hermione handed Ginny the occlumency book. “You need to read this because we’re not explaining anything else until you’ve learned how to defend your mind.”
“Not to sound like Ron but can we get breakfast first? You guys wore me out,” Ginny admitted.
Harry laughed. “Sure, I tossed a preservation spell on the roast we didn’t eat last night.”
0o0o0
Flitwick smiled as he opened the door to the dueling chamber. “I believe this should meet your needs nicely.”
Hermione made a mental note to explore the rest of the castle as she walked into the empty dueling chamber she hadn’t realized existed. It looked a bit worn though in surprisingly good shape for something that probably hadn’t been used in decades. She’d half expected to be told that they couldn’t form a dueling club, never mind the rules didn’t prohibit them from forming one. What she hadn’t expected was Flitwick’s rather enthusiastic response, he’d basically looked over her notes for what they were going to teach then grabbed his coat and hustled them through the castle. “It’s certainly enough space.”
“You need a bit of space for a proper duel, let me refresh some of the defensive spells then we’ll get started.”
“Get started?” Harry asked warily, noticing the almost fiendish gleam in the professor’s eyes.
“I want to make sure you have a good start,” he glanced at Luna then looked back at Hermione, “it’s the least I can do for some of my favorite students.” Flitwick smiled as he walked over to the dueling circle.
Luna glanced around the empty stone room with a smile on her face, happy to have friends that cared enough about her to help. “No nargles in here.”
Ginny gave Luna an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, if nothing else, we’ll ask Flitwick about some charms to stick on your trunk to keep the ‘Nargles’ out.”
Flitwick made a mental note to show Luna a couple interesting and non lethal if embarrassingly painful defensive charms to put on her trunk, it would be the ‘nargles’ own fault if they were trying to get into things they had no right to get into. He raised his wand and started refreshing the various defensive charms on the dueling circle.
What followed was a rather thorough and exhausting grounding in what do during an official duel and what to do in a less than official duel, sure Flitwick framed it as things a less honest wizard might do but everyone could read between the lines.
After two hours of Flitwick putting the group through their paces they headed to the quidditch practice to watch Harry and Ginny fly around, both looking like they were born on a broom. No one was all that surprised when the team snapped Ginny up for a reserve after seeing her fly. The choice of keeper was a bit harder, with Ron being the best of the admittedly lackluster candidates.
0o0o0
Harry shivered slightly as the flames from Hermione’s teleport vanished, revealing Knockturn Alley in all its frozen ‘splendor’. He frowned slightly as he glanced around at the various dark wizards, witches and hags hanging around the poorly lit alley. “You’d think robbing Borgin and Burkes would have put a damper on things or increased the auror presence.”
“You’re giving them too much credit,” Hermione replied as she walked over to the door for Fledermaus and Tanner, Bats & Skins. “Let’s see if they have any interesting spells for tanning leather.”
“Might as well,” Harry agreed as he followed her into the dimly lit shop. “Would it kill them to get electric lights in here?”
“Probably,” Hermione muttered as she glanced between the various stacks of strange and exotic leather and the cages filled with strange bats. “I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the wizarding world.”
Harry wandered down the aisle absently reading the labels below the stacks. “Cows, sheep, dragon, gryphon, baby deer…” he trailed off as he noticed half a stack of nogtail leather then an entire collection of stuff that was just labeled leather which was probably cow or horse or something as it looked normal enough and was decently cheap unlike the stacks of dragonhide.
“That’s not that surprising,” Hermione replied as she walked around the counter and looked at the selection of leather the man kept behind the counter. “Werewolf hide? What the hell is wrong with the wizard…” she trailed off as she saw the next couple items on the shelf. “Muggle vellum?! How the hell do places like this stay in business?”
“People like Malfoy,” Harry replied absently as he continued walking down the aisles examining the various types of leather on display. He knew he should be more appalled than he was but the last four years had proven that the wizarding world was more concerned with staying hidden than being decent people. “As long as the right bribes are given and the rest of the world doesn’t find out, why should the ministry care about muggles?”
“Because…” Hermione trailed off as she recalled the park ranger the wizards had kept obliviating at the World Cup because they were lazy idiots that couldn’t be bothered to just rent the entire area and deal with it themselves. “Fine! Still... people?”
Harry shrugged. “You’re expecting decency from a bunch of dark wizards?”
“Point,” Hermione grumbled as she headed for the back room to see what type of equipment and books they had.
“If you find any books on tanning unicorn hide, grab them,” Harry called out as he continued looking through the shelves for interesting stuff.
The edges of Hermione’s scowl twisted upwards as she saw a small shelf of books as well as a table and a large wizarding fireplace. “I found a decent collection of books, with any luck they’ll have something useful.”
“Hopefully,” Harry replied as he headed for the counter.
Hermione quickly transferred the books to her expanded bag then walked back into the main room. “You’d think he’d label it something else.”
“It might be charmed to change if someone that isn’t supposed to see it gets a look at it.”
“Now who’s giving them more credit than they deserve?” Hermione asked as she glanced down at the rather sharp looking knife sitting on the shelf.
“Probably. Ready to go?” Harry asked as he walked around the counter and started looking through the shelves that were out of sight.
“How close are you to getting the house elf head charm down?” Hermione asked as she glanced at the shopkeeper’s neck and considered another possible use for the spell that Harry was learning for the sole purpose of pranking Sirius and possibly calming down Kreacher a bit.
“About as sure as I can be without using it on an elf,” Harry replied as he picked up an extremely expensive stack of veela vellum. “I’m not sure if I should be more shocked at the price or that he has as much of it as he does.”
“Front and back… maybe legs, at least two veela died for this much vellum. To say nothing of the number of people they killed for the human vellum.” She reached down and grabbed the knife sitting on the shelf. “No time like the present.” She reached up and cut the man’s throat then started working on sawing his head off.
Harry jumped back as blood gushed from the man’s neck. “A little warning next time!”
“Sorry,” Hermione replied absently as she worked on cutting his head off. “We should probably grab an actual sword at some point.”
“That might be easier,” Harry agreed as he set the stack of vellum on the counter well away from the blood splatters.
“Gotcha,” Hermione replied as she finished removing the wizard’s head from his body.
“Why are you beheading him anyway? Not that I object, I just think we should restart time and then do it,” he said, picturing the Delacour sisters getting caught by the man and deciding he was going to make sure the dark wizard paid for his crimes and could claim no more victims.
“I was thinking he’d be a good test for the spell, ironically,” she said with a grin.
Harry glanced at the severed head Hermione was holding by its hair. “Any idea what we should mount…” he trailed off as he noticed the large stag head mounted on the wall. “Never mind.”
Hermione watched as Harry jumped up on the counter then stepped on the shelf so he could pull the mounted stag off the wall. “I wonder if you could freeze and mount a patronus.”
Harry snorted as he jumped back to the ground with his prize being careful not to hit anything with the horns. “Doubtful, though we could probably eat one.”
“Point,” Hermione admitted as she watched Harry disconnect the stag head from the plaque.
Harry set the stag head on the ground then walked over and set the large plaque on the counter. “Let’s see if we can get this to work.”
Hermione carefully lowered the man’s severed head until his neck was resting against the middle of the plaque. “Do your magic.”
Harry carefully cast the sequence of spells the black journal had laid out for reanimating the heads of their dead house elves, first came a preservation spell then a loyalty spell then a sticking charm followed by the reanimation spell itself. Despite the fact that he’d managed to reanimate a couple of chicken heads, he was a bit surprised when the man opened his eyes and he screamed.
Hermione jumped back in surprise. “It worked!”
“Stop that!” Harry snapped at the head. He sighed in relief when the man’s jaw snapped shut as the magical bindings kicked in. “That’s better. I’m going to ask you a couple questions, you’ll answer them to a reasonable level of completeness. No biting your tongue. Did you kill the veela for the veela vellum?”
“No,” the head snarled as he fought to keep his mouth shut then blurted out, “I know a guy with connections, he has a couple of veela slaves he skins and then gives potions to make the skin grow back. Why can’t I feel anything below my neck?”
“Modified stunner, it’s rather effective,” Harry lied.
“Did you kill the muggles for their skin?” Hermione demanded.
The animated head laughed. “Of course. I was minding my own business hunting in the forest when they came up screaming something about me not having the right to hurt animals and something about them being veal or something.”
“Veal?” Harry asked, trying to figure out why someone would call themselves veal.
“Eh, it started with a V, to be honest I wasn’t really listening, they were pretty strange, even for muggles. You should have seen their faces when I turned and shot each of them with an arrow, I mean fuck, what did they expect was going to happen?”
“You to act like a civilized person?” Hermione snapped.
“I told them to shove off, they ran their mouths about reporting me, I was never that good with obliviate so I shot them and sold their bodies to some werewolves after I skinned them, I know people that will pay good money for vellum that nice. They took real good care of their skin.”
Harry cut in before Hermione could go off on a rant, “Fine, give me a list of your clients and if you have any curses on your library then I want to know if you have any valuables at home that would make it worth us hitting it.”
“Go to hell,” the head replied then started spilling his secrets looking absolutely shocked while Hermione took a pen and notepad out of her bag.
0o0o0
Harry waited until Hermione paused for breath then cut in before she could finish her rant about the ministry, “It won’t matter.”
Hermione looked up from the tanner’s client list. “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? If we get enough evidence we can get them arrested.”
“Why bother?” Harry asked as he walked over to the piano, rather sick and tired of all of the dark wizards getting away with things.
“What do you mean?” Hermione asked as she watched him play a couple notes absently.
Harry sighed as he turned to look at Hermione. “I mean, what’s the point? We gave Ms. Bones a memory of Pettigrew, several in fact but Sirius is still a wanted felon. Even if we gave them a couple weeks or months, do you honestly think Fudge would allow Sirius’s name to be cleared when it would make the ministry look bad?”
Hermione sighed as she realized Fudge was short sighted enough not to just blame the whole mess on Crouch and get in Harry’s good book or at least try. “Considering he tossed Hagrid into Azkaban so that he could be seen as doing something, I can’t see them doing the right thing. So… what’s the plan?”
“We go headhunting. We use the tanner’s list of people that knowingly bought fucked up shit and we hack their heads off then put them on a board and question them about their life choices. If they’re irredeemable fucks, we stab them in the heart and let them die.”
“It would certainly make sure they’re guilty,” Hermione agreed wanting to make sure she didn’t kill anyone that didn’t deserve it. “Where do we start?”
“Malfoy manor, we know he’s guilty of a whole lot of shit.”
“The question becomes how do we find their manor? I’m not sure asking Dobby is the best idea considering we’re going to kill everyone there.”
“Let’s cut off Draco’s head,” Hermione suggested enthusiastically as she thought about all of the times he’d called her a mudblood or made another disparaging remark.
“Sure, we might as well grab Snape’s head while we’re at it and Dumbledore and McGonagall’s while we’re at it.” Harry grinned as he realized there was someone else on his list. “Trelawney.”
“Trelawney?” Hermione asked with amusement, she would have expected Trelawney to be higher on her list than his for people to question.
Harry shrugged. “I’d like an honest answer about how much of her shitty predictions were real.”
“Fair enough, I wouldn’t mind collecting heads from all of the teachers so we can get some straight answers about certain previous events and what we need to read up on for class.”
‘At least some things don’t change.’ Harry had a feeling they weren’t going to like some of the answers they received but he was tired of being left in the dark and fed shit. “We might as well start with Snape and Draco.”
“Any idea where they are?” Hermione asked as she headed over to grab her expanded bag.
“I’ll check the map.” Harry pulled the Marauder’s Map out of his pocket. “I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good.” He frowned as he found Snape and Draco in the great hall for an early dinner. “They’re in the great hall.”
“In that case, we might as wait until we can catch them without witnesses.” Hermione glanced over at the taxidermist’s frozen head that was sitting on the piano. “Speaking of witnesses, where are we going to hide the heads?”
“I’m torn between renting a warehouse in disguise and stashing them in the Chamber of Secrets. If Dumbledore hasn’t asked about touring the place in the last two years I doubt he’s going to.”
“I’m a bit surprised he never asked to see the Chamber if for no other reason than to make sure it was safe,” Hermione grumbled.
“To be fair, he probably had Fawkes teleport him down there so he could check to make sure everything was safe.”
Hermione rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Which means he probably warded the Chamber so he’d get an alert if anyone went down there.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“In that case, let’s just toss the head in one of the smuggler’s trunks and hang out with Ginny and Ron a bit then grab some dinner. That should give Draco and Snape enough time to get somewhere can kidnap them. If nothing else, we’ll grab one of the other teachers.”
“Works for me,” Harry agreed.
Comments
Mist of Shadows
Yeah, that's sort of the danger of the book. The more you use it... the less certain things matter. Some time and distance away from it would help... but yeah, they're not really following instructions...
Jason N. Lundquist
I find it amusing that they still don't realize how compromised their ethics are right now. They still have some which is why they felt guilty about Hermione feeling up Ginny without permission, but the bits that stop them from dealing with existential threats are definitely not working at the moment.
Mist of Shadows
Yeah, it's a useful collection of spells.
Patrick Sandhop
That is one useful set of spells, especially in conjunction with their watch.
