Bear's Beauties - Existential Crisis 10 (Patreon)

[center]<<Rhonda Weasley>>[/center]

At breakfast, Mione and I made sure to keep Harry between us, and noticed the small flinches whenever any of the men walked by. I know there were laws about cursing Muggles, but I’m sure Mione could find some that wouldn’t get us caught. If not, she could make some.

“Heya sweetie!” one of the women that arrived with Harry yesterday greeted as she sat down across from us.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we got your name?” Hermione asked, one hand on one of the bracelets we’d made last year to serve as focuses for our coven magic.

“Doctah Quinzel, registah’d psychiatrist. Call me Harley. Hermione Grangah, right?”

It was a few seconds before I’d realized that Mione hadn’t answered, so I peeked over Harry’s head to see a rather rare expression on Mione’s face. We’d been friends for years, so I’d seen her gobsmacked once or twice, but on those occasions (typically in response to Harry or I doing something stupid) there was an undercurrent of exasperation. This time there was an undercurrent of fear.

Our visitor seemed to recognize it and wilted, looking like Luna when Mittens had died, “I see ya recognize mah name. Don’ worry, Ah left Him ovah a year ago.”

I had no idea who ‘Him’ was, but the sheer amount of hate and vitriol in the word told me it was a bit worse than just a past ex. Hermione’s gaze hardened as she stared across the table, “We’ll see. If I see anything that suggests you’re like what I suspect, I will turn you into a newt.”

“Will I get better?” Harley asked with a bad accent and a cheeky grin, clearly referencing something muggle from the way Harry snorted and Mione started fighting a grin.

“Let me guess, it’ll be but a scratch?” Professor Lupin asked as he walked by to sit further down.

I just stared in confusion as Harry, Mione, and Harley all burst out laughing, “Am I missing something?”

“Just a reference to a muggle movie, don’t worry about it,” Harry answered.

“O…kay?”

“We’ll show ya latah,” Harley offered.

“Thanks. But, why exactly did your name freak out Mione?”

“Cause Ah’m from a different Earth, and somebahdy got an inklin’ o’ it and made a bit ‘ entahtainment outa it. Ah made some really bad choices a few years back.”

“Working for a murderous psychopath with no interest in anything but causing chaos is a bit worse than a ‘bad choice’ I think,” Mione responded, making both Harry and I stare at Harley in surprise. She didn’t look anything like what Mione was describing, but from the way Harley was looking away in shame…

“Enough of that,” another of the women that showed up last night said, while the man put a hand on Harley’s shoulder.

“Being in an abusive relationship is a lot different than what you’ve seen in the cartoon,” he said. Mione just raised an eyebrow, skeptical, until he said one word that made the three of us all wince. “Dobby.”

We were quiet for a bit, before Harry cleared her throat and asked the tall, black haired woman, “So are you all from a different Earth too?”

“Most of us are, Lana and I aren’t. We were part of an interstellar Empire, Lana was born on the capital world of Dromund Kaas, I was born on the old capital world of Ziost,” she said.

“And… is your world part of muggle media too?”

“Of a sort, from what Bear’s told us,” she nodded to the man. Bear was certainly an appropriate name. “At this point the majority of any media you would have seen is over three and a half thousand years after Lana and I were born.”

“Meaning comparing Lana and Nikhol to the eventual inheritors of their society’s name would be like comparing people in the Dark Ages to the people of the Enlightenment,” Bear said.

“Okay, I can read between the lines,” Mione groused. “What franchise, and which villains in said franchise?”

In response, the dark haired woman (Nikhol, I’m guessing) pulled out a metal cylinder from her belt. A moment later, a red beam of light shot out of the top of the cylinder and a humming noise filled the dining room.

“Oh bloody hell!”

Harry and I both turned to look at Mione in surprise, the brains of our coven leaned back in her chair, a look of surprise and terror on her face. There was a long moment of silence, before Harley turned to Sirius and asked, “Hey Dog-boy, ya got anything hardah than apple juice for the girl here?”

“No, I drank all of it after the earlier revelation,” he responded, rubbing his head before muttering under his breath, “Bloody elf, putting a sobriety curse on the bottles.”

I’d heard about those, from when the twins tried to filch some firewhiskey from one of their earlier Defense professors. They made it so that you don’t experience getting drunk, but still got the hangover, or maybe enhanced the hangover, I don’t remember for sure.

“Peace, Miss Granger. Keep in mind what I said. Besides, there is more to the Sith religion than Palpatine or Vader. Much as there’s more to Christianity than, say, Cardinal Richelieu,” Bear said as Nikhol put her deactivated cylinder back on her belt as she sat down with a plate of food.

Mione shook her head, before asking, “How’s that even work? Shouldn’t the amount of wards, charms, and other magic in the house prevent it from working?”

“I don’t know for sure, but my personal theory is that magic generally doesn’t actually interfere with electronics. Otherwise there’d be massive dead zones in the middle of London,” Bear pointed out.

“But in Hogwarts, a History… although if it’s a side effect of the wards to prevent lightning from hitting it…”

“And she’s gone,” I joked as Mione raced off to get some parchment and a quill.

[center]<<Taylor Hebert>>[/center]

“If you don’t mind my asking,” I began as I sent a small swarm of bugs into the curtains, flushing out the blue imp-like things that had been living in them, “Why Harry? It’s not even remotely close to Hyacinth.”

The girl in question chuckled, “One of the few things I got from Dudley that never bothered me. He had trouble pronouncing my name when we were young, to be fair so did I for a while, so he just started calling me Harry. It stuck, and by the time I got to Hogwarts, the weirdest part of adjusting to the Wizarding World wasn’t the magic, it was everyone calling me Hyacinth.”

“By the way, at breakfast Nikhol said you were from a different Earth? How’s that work?” Rhonda asked, flinching away from one of the imps as it flew past her, a spider the size of my hand on its back.

“I don’t know the specifics behind how it works, but yes, I can assure you that this is not the Earth I was born on. We had parahumans, people with specific powers like my bug control, but we didn’t have magic.”

“Wizards and witches keep ourselves separate, I don’t see why it’d be any different on other Earths.”

This was going to be awkward, but… “I can say my home doesn’t have magic because of the Endbringers. There are three of them: Behemoth, Leviathan, and the Simurgh. Every few months, they attack a city and, if we’re lucky, are driven off before they cause much damage. More frequently the city’s lost.

“The Simurgh is the worst. Behemoth has the highest kill count and Leviathan’s sunk islands, but the Simurgh’s known as the Hopekiller for a reason. If you spend too long in range of her scream… you’re a puppet. Somehow, someway, some day, you’ll do something that will cause untold death and destruction. The second city she attacked was London. The resulting chaos went on for years, but if there were wizards then their going crazy would have resulted in spill over.”

As I had been expecting, everyone in earshot was staring at me. This was starting to get annoying. Yes the Endbringers were bad, but Earth-Bet wasn’t that bad. It’s still my home, I didn’t like it being seen as a shithole by people.

“Bloody hell…” Rhonda muttered.

“Language,” the bushy haired brunette responded, the tone suggesting it was from force of habit rather than anything else.

“Oh no, you don’t get to say ‘language’ like that after this morning, Mione. That reminds me,” Harry said before turning to look at me. “Where did Bear and Nikhol go? I saw them talking to Professor Dumbledore this morning, but haven’t seen them since.”

“I don’t know for sure,” I began, “but at a guess I’d say they’re dealing with something related to, well…”

I drew a quick lightning bolt on my forehead, and a full body shudder went through her, “Bleg. I’m feeling sick just thinking about it.”

“I know what you mean, I can’t imagine what it would be like, having part of someone or something else stuck inside my head.”

“Where’s the rest of your group?” Hermione asked. A quick check through the house showed that Kara was the only one missing besides Bear and Nikhol.

“I think Kara went with Bear, Nikhol, and Dumbledore. Lisa’s in the kitchen talking to your mother,” I said with a nod towards Rhonda. “Harley’s on the fourth floor chasing two redheads with her mallet, and Lana’s talking to another redhead who… I think that’s a gator fang earring?”

“Don’t know what a ‘gator’ is, but that’s Bill. He works at Gringotts, and it sounds like the twins managed to make Harley angry, probably a prank of some kind,” Rhonda mused with a grin as we started picking up the bodies of the imps. “Kinda want to see what she does to them.”

“You’re about to get your chance,” I muttered, shortly before the far door opened and the redheaded twins barreled through the room. They would have made it through the opposite door, were the twin in front not slipped over an imp body we hadn’t yet picked up.

Crawling on their knees, one of them grabbed my leg and babbled, “Save us! It was an accident, we didn’t mean to leave it out! It wasn’t ready! She went crazy, it’s just a short…”

Whatever it was would have to wait, because Harley came in, panting heavily with a furious look on her face (Rachel would probably want some pointers) and a white knuckled grip on a wooden mallet, “WHERE ARE DEY!”

Before Harley could wreak vengeance on the twins, Hermione stepped in front of Harley and asked, “Harley! What did they do?”

“Dey made me look lahk HIM!”

Hermione froze, before turning to glare at the twins, “Explain. Now.”

“It was a test product we hadn’t finished yet, it was supposed to be like the Canary Creams, but for swans,” the one that wasn’t clinging to my leg explained, hands held up in a gesture of surrender.

“We’ve been having trouble getting the feathers to form, all it does right now is turn the skin white and change the hair color. We think there’s something wrong with our potion supplies, because for some reason it turns hair green,” the other one continued.

Oh. Yeah, from what Harley and Bear had told us, that would do it. Glaring down at the twin holding onto my leg, I had a wasp of some kind land on his nose and said, “Let go.”

He let go. Walking up to Harley, I pulled her into a hug. Slowly, the tension in her body left and she returned the hug. Behind us, I heard Hermione whispering, telling the twins about her abusive ex. Who had white skin and green… hair. Goddamn, no wonder Harley freaked.

“It’s okay Harley,” I whispered.

“Dey made me look lahk Him, Ah can’t even look in a mirror anymore,” she whispered back, fighting back a torrent of emotion.

“It’s already worn off, see for yourself.”

Harley leaned back from the hug, and hesitantly looked at her hands. Seeing her normal skin tone, she pulled some of her hair in front of her face, and nearly collapsed from the relief.

“Doctor Quinzel,” one of the twins said, causing Harley and I to turn to face them. Both had ashamed and somber expressions on their faces. “We are truly sorry for what our being sloppy caused. We’ll take any punishment you want.”

Harley glared at them with narrowed eyes and a deep frown. Finally, as the twins started to shuffle and twitch nervously, she said, “Turn ahround, an’ don’ move.”

Hesitantly, they did so as Harley broke the hug and walked over. “Ya clothes have magic, make’s ‘em fit bettah, righ’?”

“… yes,” one twin whimpered.

“Good,” Harley said with an evil grin as she reached down before grabbing the boxers of one and pulling up, the fabric stretching to the point that Harley was able to wrap the band around the twin’s forehead. Then she reached over and did the same to the other twin.

“Keep ‘em lahk that for a full hour, an’ we’re good,” Harley declared before she skipped out of the room.

Using bugs to keep an eye on them, I followed Harley, just to make sure she was really okay. I found her in the room she’d been loaned, hugging her knees and shaking as she took shuddering breaths.

“It’s okay Harley,” I whispered as I hugged her again.

“Seein’ tha’ skin, tha’ hair… I…”

“Shh…”

[center]<<Molly Weasley>>[/center]

I admit, it had been ages since I’d seen any of my children with their underwear stretched around their foreheads, especially Fred and George. The fact that they weren’t immediately pulling them off but were gingerly walking told me that something other than sibling bullying was going on.

“Fred, George. Care to explain?”

“We fucked up,” George swore, no sign of their hallmark joking to be found.

“Come here boys, get your boxer off your head and I’ll make some tea.” If they were this serious, something major had to have happened.

“This is our punishment, we need to leave them like this for at least another hour forty five,” Fred said, his voice as somber as George’s.

Right, time to bring out the special brew. As the tea steeped, I turned to the twins, so much like my late brothers, and asked, “What happened?”

“We were working on different variations of the Canary Creams, trying to make some that were different birds. The one we’ve had the most success with were swans, but even then, it wasn’t by a lot.” Fred began.

George picked up, “We weren’t thinking and put what we thought was a more successful variant on one of the pastry trays in the fourth floor library. Well, it wasn’t. Doctor Quinzel ate it, her skin turned chalk white and her hair dark green, and she freaked.”

“She chased us with a wooden mallet, until we ran into Harry, Rhonda, Hermione, and Taylor cleaning out doxies. Taylor calmed down Doctor Quinzel, while Hermione told us why she freaked out.”

“She was more than justified to do so, so we told her we’d take whatever punishment she decided on. This was it.”