Hermione and the Watch Part 5 (Patreon)

Harry yawned as he woke up curled up with Hermione, his first thought ‘Oh shit, we’re late!’ then he realized it was still dark outside. “We never restarted time, did we?” 

Hermione yawned as she woke up. “What did you say?”

“I asked if we’d restarted time?” Harry asked as he ran his eyes over Hermione’s naked body, enjoying the fact that for one glorious moment or a chain of moments, his life didn’t suck.

“We sort of forgot about that,” Hermione admitted unconcerned.

“That means it’s still night and we’ve gotten enough sleep that we’re not going to be able to sleep, doesn’t it?” Harry asked as he sat up.

“Then I guess we’ll just have to keep things frozen for another 16 hours so we don’t screw up our sleep cycle like I did when I was using the time turner,” she said with a smirk. “Now Mr.Potter I have a question for you, we have 16 hours… what should we do with them?”

“Get a shower, eat breakfast, return to our couch… if we can’t think of somewhere more fun, and do some more exploring and book liberation in between,” he suggested.

Hermione considered his suggestions. “Well, I suppose some food and a shower are probably a good idea before round five… Wait, did you mention books?” 

“Yes, I was thinking of finishing off the Restricted Section and then maybe Flourish and Blotts.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Hermione said with a beaming smile.

“In that case, let’s head back to the school and grab a shower and a change of clothes then get some food from the kitchen.

An hour later they were back in the Leaky Cauldron, as it turned out that taking a shower together did not in fact save time. It wasn’t until they got into Diagon Alley proper that they realized there was a rather large flaw in their plan, Flourish and Blotts was closed as were most of the shops in the alley. 

“So… now what?” Hermione asked as she glanced around the mostly empty frozen streets.

“Well…” he said trying to think of something that would remove the look of disappointment on her face, “Knockturn Alley is still open and I recall a shop with quite a lot of books that we probably wouldn’t find even in the Restricted Section.”

“Which they’d probably never sell to a muggleborn,” she replied with an evil grin.

“Exactly. So, what say we do a little shopping?” Harry asked glad that he could get her to smile even if she looked a touch too gleeful about the idea.

“That would be perfect Mr. Potter,” she replied as she playfully held out her arm like she was an old fashioned lady.

Harry laughed as he took her arm and they headed toward Knockturn alley. He frowned as they walked into the creepy alley and realized it was a lot worse at night, hags, vampires, creepy dark wizards and witches were scattered around the alley, making deals or talking to various disreputable people. On the upside, almost all of the shops were open for business. “So where to first? Borgin and Burkes?”

“Might as well.” Hermione frowned as they walked by a witch that looked to be selling what could only be a child’s hand to a hag. “Is she selling body parts?”

“We all know what hags like to eat,” Harry pointed out.

“That’s illegal!” Hermione snapped.

“The ministry probably doesn’t care who they eat as long they don’t get caught or cost them money, if they actually cared, they’d hunt the hags down and kill them.”

“That’s barbaric,” Hermione complained.

“That’s the wizarding world,” Harry replied as he walked over and opened the hag’s bag to see what was in it. “Found a book.” He pulled the book out then blinked as he read the title. “101 excellent muggle recipes.”

“That doesn’t doesn’t sound so bad.”

Harry opened the book and looked at the table of contents. “Muggle roast, Muggle pork chops, spaghetti muggle…” he trailed off as he noticed the last item on the list. “Lamb chops, ala muggle born toddler.”

Hermione twitched. “Did you say, toddler?”

“It’s apparently a cookbook for eating people,” Harry opened up to the last page in morbid curiosity.

“Why aren’t they dead?!” Hermione demanded, her fingers caressing her wand as she restrained herself from beheading the vile being, knowing it would do no good. 

“The ministry is filled with purebloods?” Harry asked absently as he read through the ingredient list. He blinked as he got to the description of the dish. “This claims it boosts their magic… that can’t be true can it?”

“What?” Hermione asked as she dashed over to look at the evil book. It didn’t take her more than a couple seconds to realize the dish was basically a potion in the hands of a hag with some very odd magical ingredients. “I’m not sure this would work…” She shook her head. “This is vile!”

“And this is the magical world, warts and all, which Hogwarts says nothing about,” Harry said feeling his former good mood turn dark. 

Hermione slashed with her wand, cutting off the hag’s head which caused the hag’s body to fall to the ground and the head to roll down the street. “I know she’ll be fine when time restarts, but I don’t care, it made me feel better.”

Harry nodded in complete understanding doing the same to the witch. “Well, we can at least rob them of everything they have on them, so they won’t come away completely unaffected.”

“What?” Hermione asked.

“Let’s take all their gold and jewels, in fact everything, but their clothes and then restart time for a moment while hiding under the cloak, just because we can’t kill them doesn’t mean we have to let them get away completely unscathed,” he said with a grin as the idea took hold. 

“Agreed,” Hermione said as she started going through the dark witch’s robes for coins and trinkets. She smiled darkly when she found the witch’s wand and vault key. “I found a vault key and a wand she certainly doesn’t need.”

Harry tentatively searched the hag, not wanting to touch her greasy green flesh. “This is worse than Snape.”

“When have you searched Snape?”

“Than I image it would be,” Harry quickly corrected himself. He grabbed the hag’s bag. “Yeah, she can keep her robes, I’m not reaching in there.”

“Not without gloves,” Hermione agreed as she finished searching the headless witch.

“Want to restart time and see the expression on their face when they realize they’ve been robbed?” Harry suggested, with a smirk that looked almost Sirius like in nature.

“I think I do,” Hermione admitted with an evil grin. “If this is how you feel playing pranks I can see the attraction.”

“Only pranks on a deserving target,” Harry said. “Even I’ll cop to that one.” 

They grabbed their loot, then moved back against the storefronts so they were out of the way then covered themselves with his invisibility cloak so they could see the shocked look on their faces when they realized they’d been robbed. No one could have said which group was more shocked, Hermione and Harry because the bodies didn’t vanish or the suddenly reappearing hag and witch who were both quite naked. 

Hermione quickly pushed the button again as the witch noticed the naked headless body at her feet. “Shit, the bodies didn’t vanish.”

Harry covered his eyes. “Shit the hag is naked!” 

Hermione shivered slightly as she glanced at the naked wart covered old green skinned woman. “Yeah, that’s disgusting.”

“I thought you said your nails reset?” Harry demanded.

“They did, I tossed them in the wastebasket, I didn’t check if they stayed around when I reset things.”

Harry took a peek at the rather attractive naked witch then at the robe covered headless body. “Great, we’re going to have to do something with the bodies.”

“Let’s worry about that after we loot the shop, they might have some trunks we can stuff them in.”

“Then what?” Harry asked, curious what her plan was.

“Then we toss them in the forest with the spiders. I wouldn’t mind harvesting a bunch of spider silk, this would be a good chance.”

Harry glanced over at the dark witch’s severed head that was looking up at the sky. “Let’s go.”

Hermione led the way into Borgin and Burkes then looked around at the various enchanted items sitting innocently or not so innocently on shelves. “Do you remember where the trunks are?”

“No, I wasn’t in there all that long and it was a couple years ago,” Harry replied as he headed toward the back, knowing that the darker stuff would be out of sight or at least away from the door. “I’ll check the back.”

“I’ll see what’s behind the counter,” Hermione replied as she walked around the counter to see what he was keeping behind the counter. She frowned as she looked at the collection of odds and ends the man kept out of sight, she picked up the three books and set them on the counter then continued looking for interesting items. She had a feeling it was going to take a while to sort through everything.

Harry was a bit surprised to find a decent collection of magical trunks until he read the note above the section, ‘Smugglers’ trunks, don’t ask for the specifics until you’ve bought them.’ He grabbed the nicest looking chest and opened it, revealing a space that looked like you could fit a small car in it. “I found a couple trunks, I could fit a car in this one.”

“Three books on breaking dark curses and a bunch of trinkets, including a monocle that was sitting on the top shelf by itself.”

“In that case, I’m going to start grabbing books and anything else interesting. I want to see if he still has the Hand of Glory, it lets you see in the dark, just like the muggle legends say.”

“That could be useful,” Hermione agreed as she walked down the aisles looking for more books to grab.

Harry glanced at the decent sized stack of books in the corner of the trunk they’d spent the last twenty minutes assembling. “We should probably loot the rest of the shop just to be safe.”

“How is that safer?”

“If we only loot the books, they’ll be looking for you,” Harry teased.

“I’m not the only person that likes books,” Hermione replied as she rolled her eyes.

“No but you’re on the list. This way, they won’t know where to look.”

“Fine, then I guess you’ll have to pack everything, just to be safe,” she teased back.

Harry smirked and waved his wand, levitating an entire case of cursed items into the trunk.

“I wasn’t serious, but if we’re going to do this… do you think we should steal the doors as well?” Hermione said thoughtfully.

“Yep, and his robe,” Harry said with amusement. “I want him to completely freak out. We can hide the chest in the Acromantula’s territory for a week or two, just in case there are tracking charms on anything.”

“Do they have tracking charms?” Hermione asked, not having run across any spells like that.

“Hell if I know,” Harry replied, “but they’d be stupid not to develop them so I’m going to assume they do.”

“Makes sense,” she agreed as she summoned a Turkish rug off the floor behind the counter and smiled as it revealed a hidden trap door. “Looks like we have more to loot.” Rather than mess with any possible spells or wards on the trap door she cut off the hinges and levitated it over to Harry to add to their haul, revealing a staircase leading down into the darkness. 

“Man, this trunk is amazing,” Harry said as the opening expanded to accept a large cabinet that was on display. 

“Glad there is more than one,” Hermione said, “because I have discovered a back room that contains… well god knows what, because I am not going down there alone.”

Harry grinned as he looked around the empty shop then cast a couple of cleaning charms to remove all of the spider webs and dust, giving the freshly robbed store an eerie feel. “That ought to brown some trousers,” he growled out in a bad Irish accent.

Hermione laughed. “I think you took the term cleaning someone out a little too literal.”

“I want them to think there is a magical item or a fearsome spell or something, just because they have no chance of figuring out what it is, is no reason not to leave them false clues,” Harry replied, recalling a detective show he’d orderheard from the cupboard..

“Good, now come here and let’s see what is down there,” she said casting a light charm. “Harry, get over here and look at this.”

Harry walked over and looked down at the various crates with some very familiar names on a few of them. “Malfoy, Crabbe, Macnair, Parkinson…” Harry listed off with a grin. “I don’t know if this is something they ordered or a place to store their more illegal possessions, but I do know it gives me a warm feeling to relieve them of their swag. Heck, I would even go so far as to say it is my civic duty to remove these assets from their possession.”

“Someone has a word a day calendar,” Hermione teased.

“Someone has overheard quite a few detective shows, since Petunia prefers them to soap operas, thankfully,” Harry replied cheerfully. 

“That would be worse,” Hermione agreed.

“But Hermione,” Harry said his eyes looking like they were watering, “I’m pregnant… by your twin sister!”

Hermione faked a gasp. “That slag! You know she just wants you for your money!”

“No, say it isn’t so!”

“It is, while I want you for,” her eyes dipped below his beltline, “other things,” she leered.

The pair couldn’t keep it up, bursting out laughing a moment later.

“But seriously, let’s loot these swine to the bedrock!”

“As my lady commands,” Harry said with an overly serious nod before levitating crates into the massively expanded trunk. 

0o0o0

Harry frowned as he watched the naked hag look at her severed head then immediately run over and pick it up with an almost ecstatic expression of her face. ‘What the hell?’ He watched as she spirited over and grabbed her corpse then tossed it over her shoulder, looking like someone who had just won the lottery, completely unconcerned about her nudity as she bolted for the entrance to the alley.

The dark witch looked down at her own headless corpse and the bag of childrens’ body parts scattered at her naked feet and trembled in shock.

Hermione clicked the stop watch. “Mischief managed,” she said with a grin, seeing the attention the naked witch was drawing and an auror approaching from the opposite direction the hag had fled.  

Harry frowned as he studied the naked witch. “It makes me want to grab a camera, except that would be evidence and that’s how people get caught, at least on the telly.”

“Let’s go check out our new books,” Hermione said excited about having an entire collection of books to look through.

“Back to the Shack?” Harry asked, a little tired of using the floo.

“We have enough stuff to last for a while, we might as well head out.”

“In that case, let’s go.” Harry said as they headed back toward the Leaky Cauldron. Ten minutes, a case of butterbeers from the barkeep and a little walking and they were back at the shack with time frozen once more. “Where do we start?”

“Books?” Hermione asked sarcastically, knowing they’d found a decent stash. “We should probably start with the curse breaking books.”

“And maybe something on hags if we can find anything, her behavior was weird even for the wizarding world.”

“Research,” said gleefully as she grabbed the curse breaking books she’d left on top. “Grab your dragonhide gloves and see if you can find anything on hags and maybe house elves.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” Harry agreed as he pulled on his dragonhide gloves and had to half empty the trunk so he could sort out all the books and place them on the table.

As the two settled down to read he felt like something was off and in a flash it came to him. Harry snapped his fingers and Hermione’s clothes appeared in his hand which he set on the floor. Not even looking up, Hermione snapped her fingers and set his clothes on the floor as well. Leaning against one another the two naked teens let out a happy sigh and began to read.

Harry shivered as he finished reading through the book on hags that he’d found. “Our defense books didn’t mention half this crap.”

“What?” Hermione asked as she looked at Harry.

“It talks about how most of the ancestors of the current hags became hags,” he explained

“What were they before?” she asked.

“Squibs or low powered witches or wizards for the most part. They used corrupt aztec rituals to try to enhance their magic,” he expanded.

“I know they’re cursed but did their magic actually improve?” she asked morbidly curious.

“Their magic improved but the downsides were rather horrifying,” he said making a face.

“Let me guess, green skin, cannibalism and warts?” Hermione asked, recalling the naked hag with a sour look on her face.

“The original ritual doesn’t mention the green skin or warts… the cannibalism is actually a factor of their immortality.”

“They’re immortal?” she asked, surprised.

“Until you kill them or if they stop eating sentient beings they start aging as normal,” Harry added. “As they get older and more powerful they become targets for each other, so they tend to keep their own population in check.”

“Wait, as normal?”

“The older version lived longer even if they didn’t eat people, but yeah, pretty much, if they just wanted to live a normal lifespan they don’t have to eat people, which pretty much makes it worse.”

“Older version? If the original ritual was so ni-useful, why didn’t more people use it?” Hermione asked warily.

“I didn’t say it was nice, it was Aztec and two reasons, it had to be done on a solstice and the ritual took longer than you had which means they needed a method to have more time which is where the pyramids came in. They used them to ‘stop the stars in their path’ or at least that was how the book describes it. People found a workaround later, but it wasn’t as useful and caused some personality changes and was all around less effective creating what we know as Hags,”

Harry explained. 

“I’d love to see the math for that,” Hermione muttered to herself.

Harry shrugged. “Some people tried to use time turners to have enough time to make it work like the original method, but that ended up with a closed loop where they actually ended up cooking and eating their own hearts, needless to say that was considered a failure.”

“If it was a failure and the original doesn’t work anymore why do we still have as many hags as we do?” Hermione asked, curious despite herself.

“Because they found a workaround using a unicorn’s heart and part of the old ritual instead. It leaves them with a cursed half life, devoid of almost all of life’s joys but lets them gain power by eating people though it’s said to be nowhere as effective as the older version. Baba Yaga is rumored to be one of the older versions, though most aren’t sure if that’s true or not.”

“Stop the heavens, like the watch?” Hermione asked thoughtfully.

“Possibly,” Harry admitted. “The pyramids wouldn’t function without all the muggle worshippers so the wizards who drove off the native population to use them to ‘stop the stars’ made the whole point moot. Baba yaga had a large following both magical and muggle, so it’s thought that she got them to provide the proper worship on the solstice to cause the pyramids to stop time just long enough to complete the majority of the ritual, but possibly not all of it.” 

“How horrible is the ritual?” Hermione asked.

“You basically have to eat the heart of a magical creature, the more magical the better, dragons were quite popular,” he said, “of course they were Aztecs so human hearts were also on the menu quite a lot. If done properly, time rewound and the being sacrificed was restored, meaning they received no bad karma for it. The time rewound bit is probably what made them try and use a time turner but you know what happened there.”

“But we wouldn’t have to, right?” Hermione asked, considering the fact that she hadn’t minded beef heart so it shouldn’t be that out of line to eat another animal’s heart if it helped improve their magic and gave Harry a better shot against Voldemort.

“I know I said I’d give you my heart, but I didn’t think it’d be that literal,” he teased.

Hermione blushed heavily, not even registering the joke as she realized what he’d just admitted. It wasn’t that she didn’t know he loved her or that she doubted it, it was just that this was the first time he’d flat out said it aloud.

Mistaking her silence for consideration he mused, “Actually, since the death of the creature isn’t permanent that might actually be possible, if not for the fact that we might actually be able to die while time is stopped and I don’t know how to test that without, it being insanely dangerous, unless we touched an animal with the watch and then…” he trailed off as he realized they might actually be able to pull it off. “This could work.”

Hermione’s eyes shot wide open as Harry seemed to be planning on actually giving her his heart, it was, crazy. OK, maybe a lot crazy. Still… why were they thinking of this again? “Couldn’t we just go with animal hearts? How about a Thestral?”

“The Thestral heart would work fine as far as I can tell. You’d have to go over the math but it should work.”

“Hand me the hag book, I’m curious if this would actually work.”

Harry handed her the book then walked over and grabbed the house elf book they’d borrowed from Sirius as he replied, “Sure that gives me a chance to read up on house elves.”

“Hopefully it has something in it that will let us help them,” Hermione replied absently as she started reading through the book.