Myst at Hogwarts Part 11 (Patreon)

“Metallum deprehendare,” Myst whispered as he waved his wand over the rings sitting on the library table. “Metallum deprehen-dere?”

Hermione waved her wand over the rings with a look of concentration on her face. “Metallum deprenhendere.”

Tracey snickered as glowing symbols appeared over the rings then winced as she realized that laughing at her new friends wasn’t nice. “Sorry, it just slipped out.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Myst replied as he ran his finger down the list of symbols in the book, slightly irked that pronunciation was annoyingly important for most of the spells they had to use. “Looks like nickel and pewter for the green and blue rings and silver for the protection rings.”

“Shouldn’t there be trace amounts of impurities in the silver ring?” Hermione asked as she glanced at the book.

“Probably not enough to matter,” Myst replied with a shrug. “I’m guessing the mistakes were costume jewelry.”

“That doesn’t explain the blue ring creating water,” Tracey complained as she looked at the pewter and nickel symbols over the blue ring.

“We’ll have to run some tests once I get some more rings.” Myst started carefully copying the symbols from the book into his notebook. “Any luck finding a spell to identify magical items?”

“Not yet,” Tracey complained, “I’m half tempted to just send a letter home and ask my grandmother.”

“That’s certainly an option, Merlin knows there are tons of enchanted objects at Hogwarts you could be interested in.” Myst glanced toward the restricted section as he whispered, “I wish the librarian was more useful or less vigilant.”

“It would be nice,” Hermione grumbled slightly, thinking about the one time she’d asked help to find a book and gotten a glare and lecture about the different sections of the library that was less than useless as they were labeled.

Tracey said, “I know there are charms that curse breakers use, I’m just not sure where to find them.”

“We could always just ask Professor Flitwick,” Hermione pointed out.

“Good point, we can probably ask if he can point us in the right direction after dinner. Should we call it for the day?” Myst asked as he glanced between Tracey and Hermione.

“I’d rather work on a project or something until dinner, Draco is going to be running his mouth off about the duel and I’d rather avoid the common room for a bit.”

“In that case, do you want to help with an anti-possession amulet?” Myst asked as he handed Tracey his notes on the process.

Tracey smirked slightly as she opened the spiral notebook and looked over the notes Harry had written. “It’s too bad there aren’t any dark rituals for improving penmanship.”

“Are you implying that my penmanship is horrible?” Myst asked with a grin.

“No, I’m implying that a dark ritual might make it better,” Tracey teased as she read through the notes.

“I feel like I should protest this but…” Hermione trailed off with a grin on her face knowing that Harry wouldn’t be offended.

“I’d certainly consider using a ritual to fix my penmanship depending on what the ritual required,” Myst admitted, knowing that the only way his penmanship was ever better than a mostly-legible scrawl was by using far too much focus and a couple of rough drafts and it just wasn’t worth it normally.

Tracey glanced back over the potion recipe and directions. “I won’t say it looks simple but we should be able to follow the recipe.”

Hermione glanced at Harry’s watch. “If we hurry, we should be able to get everything simmering by dinner which means it will be ready to use before curfew.”

“What are you hoping it protects against?” Tracey asked as she handed him back his notebook.

“Ideally? Ghosts, Peeves, boggarts and dementors, but I’m not planning on testing that last one,” Myst explained as he worked on putting the books he’d checked out into his bag, trusting the librarian or the house elves to reshelf the books. He wasn’t sure how much protection it would have against boggarts, but anything that blunted the creature’s ability to figure out his greatest fear would be better than nothing. 

Tracey frowned as she thought about the local poltergeist that liked to harass the students. “I wouldn’t mind being able to ward off Peeves.”

“Same,” Hermione agreed thinking about some of the stories she’d heard about the poltergeist.

0o0o0

“That should do it,” Tracey muttered as she turned the burner down. She scowled slightly as she heard someone moving outside the potions lab as she stood up. “Great, we’ve got someone paying more attention than they should,” she said in a whisper.

“Which means leaving the potion to simmer without someone watching it might be problematic,” Myst grumbled as he compared the color of the potion to the description in the book, fairly sure that it was closer to dark green than clover green but not sure how much that actually mattered at this stage. “Time to go to dinner,” he said in a voice that carried but shouldn’t sound all that out of place.

“I can stay,” Hermione offered wanting to make sure the potion came out right.

Myst shook his head when he heard hurried footsteps outside. “I’ve got a better idea, Petal, I need your help.”

Petal smiled as she popped in wearing her tie dyed pillowcase. “You have work?”

Hermione stared at the strange creature, not sure what she was other than adorable.

“Sort of,” Myst agreed not sure how Petal would take not being able to help directly. “We’ve got a potion that needs to simmer for a bit and someone lurking outside.”

“And you need me to blast them if they mess with your potion?” Petal asked eager to help.

Myst shook his head, fairly sure that Draco or some of the nastier Slytherins would try to get Petal killed if she attacked them, even if she just stunned them. “Nope, we don’t need the hassle. I was hoping you could ask a Hogwarts elf really nicely to watch the potion and report anyone that messes with it so the teachers can deal with it,” he explained in a voice just above a whisper as he glanced at the slightly ajar door.

“I can do that, I know just the elf to talk to,” Petal said with a grin then popped to the kitchens to talk to Tipsy.

“Hogwarts has elves?” Hermione asked as she glanced between Tracey and Harry.

“They’re basically large brownies like the folktales,” Myst replied as he started picking up their supplies. “They cook and clean and generally keep the place running.”

“I’ll have to remember to thank them,” Hermione mused, wondering where she could find a book on them.

“Not a bad idea,” Myst replied as he picked up his bag and headed for the door, making sure to make a bit more noise than he really needed to on the off chance that the person lurking outside hadn’t already moved away from the door. “The potion should be ready by the time we get done eating.”

“Which should give us enough time to finish the project before curfew,” Hermione said as she followed Harry into the hall.

Myst felt like rubbing his nose or maybe banging his head against the door when he spotted the inch of boot sticking out from behind the corner down the hallway. Thankfully it wasn’t the way they needed to go to get to the great hall for dinner. He held up his index finger to his lips when Hermione opened her mouth having spotted the boot. “We should be good as long as no one tries to sabotage our potion,” he said loud enough to carry, but not loud enough that someone should be suspicious.

Tracey rolled her eyes, not sure why Harry was encouraging someone to screw with their potion but willing to play along. “That would be a tragedy,” she agreed as she followed Harry down the hallway.

Myst avoiding snickering until they were around two corners. “Hopefully they took the bait.”

“Why were you encouraging them?” Hermione asked.

“Because the color was off on the potion which means that we’ll likely have to try again anyways. If they don’t mess with the potion, great, we use the potion to test the spells and see what we get, if we manage to get someone trying to screw with us in trouble great.”

“What if it was one of the Weasley Twins?” Hermione asked warily.

Myst shook his head. “If it had been the twins, we wouldn’t have heard or seen them. Not to mention their shoes would be larger. If the person is just snooping then they’ll see the note I left and leave the potion alone, if they’re not, they’ll mess with it and hopefully get in trouble and have to replace the ingredients so we can make the potion properly next time.”

“How did you end up in Gryffindor?” Tracey asked a touch sarcastically.

“They sorted us alphabetically,” Myst replied with amusement as they headed toward the moving stairs..

“How does that matter?”

Myst pointed at Hermione. “G is before P. The hat asked where I wanted to go, I told him Gryffindor.”

“Just like that?” Tracey asked in surprise, as Hermione tried and failed to hide her blush burying her face in her notebook as she pretended to write something down.

Myst smiled at Hermione who was beginning to resemble a fuzzy haired tomato. “Partially, the hat did try and argue with me a bit, but as I pointed out, I’m decently brave and I don’t really care if people think I’m intelligent, which makes Ravenclaw a bad fit. I’m loyal to my friends, but I’d rather work smart than hard most of the time, which makes me a poor fit for Hufflepuff.”

“Slytherin?”

Myst grinned at Tracey. “Generally speaking, if you’re not a Slytherin the first person that you suspect of causing any trouble is a Slytherin, unless it’s a prank.”

“At which point you go looking for the Weasley Twins,” Tracey agreed, having already heard a number of stories about some of their previous pranks.

“Or the idiot framing them, yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are plenty of decent wizards or witches that were in Slytherin, but I also figured no point in having to share a dorm with Malfoy.”

“I can’t fault you there,” Tracey agreed as they stepped on the stairs, “his posturing and bragging gets annoying.”

“How rich is his family?” Hermione asked, curious how much wealth one needed before they were considered rich in The Wizarding World.

Tracey wasn’t sure exactly how much wealth the Malfoys had other than a lot. “They’re wealthy enough to bribe the minister on a regular basis and Lucius managed to stay out of prison by tossing money at his problems.”

“That’s insane,” Hermione complained.

“Welcome to The Wizarding World where talent rarely matters and blood and money are everything,” Tracey replied a touch sarcastically. “And this is where I start walking faster, unless I want people getting too curious about me hanging around with you two.”

“Best of luck,” Myst said as he slowed down a touch.

“How can you be okay with this?” Hermione asked as she looked at Harry.

“I’m not remotely okay with the way The Wizarding World works, but no one is going to listen to a child about anything remotely important, which means we’re going to have to take the long view,” Myst pointed out.

“You have a plan?” Hermione asked, reassured that he knew and agreed The Wizarding World needed to change.

‘You mean other than feeding all the remaining Death Eaters into a blender along with Fudge?’ Myst frowned slightly as he tried to figure out a socially acceptable way to say ‘Bribe the right people so that they could replace the governors with people that would actually upgrade the education standards.’ He glanced at the portrait of a noble as they walked past, idly wondering how much the portraits reported to Dumbledore. “Honestly the best thing we can do right now is to get a decent education so we’ll be in a better position to affect change when we are older.”

“Doesn’t that mean you should pay attention in History?” Hermione teased.

Myst snorted. “Not a chance, I can read faster than Binns talks and he just reads out of the book in a horrible monotone voice that makes me want to scream. Seriously, it should be next to impossible to make magical warfare boring and yet he somehow manages it, Every Single Day!”

Hermione frowned slightly as she thought about Binns. She’d like to argue that he was just warming up, but Harry was right, he’d just read out of the book so far and in the most boring voice she’d ever heard. “I wish we had a better history teacher.”

“Yeah, I can’t see the board of governors firing him, considering they probably don’t have to pay him.”

“They don’t pay him?” Hermione asked in disbelief.

“He’s a ghost, he can’t exactly touch the money. Besides, what would he spend it on, decorations?” Myst asked, fairly sure Binn was way too boring to spend his coin on ghost hookers even assuming they existed in The Wizarding World. He made a mental note to look through the porn sampler he’d gotten from Borgin and see if they had them, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else. 

“It’s still not fair that he isn’t paid,” Hermione grumbled.

“Life isn’t fair, I don’t see why death would be either,” Myst replied as they walked into the great hall. “On the upside, the food is decent and the library is impressive.”

“It’s just frustrating,” Hermione grumbled as they made their way over to the Gryffindor table.

Myst didn’t care if Binns got paid or not, as that was between Binns and the headmaster, not that he was going to tell Hermione that. The only reason he wasn’t looking into ways to exorcise Binns was that he’d have to pay attention to the replacement and he really didn’t care about the wizarding world’s history other than as a source of names of people with spectacular skills that he could summon once he acquired the Resurrection Stone. He glanced at the Gryffindor table, noticing the small space next to Ron and the thankfully larger space next to Katrina. He walked over and sat down next to Katrina. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Katrina replied as she turned to look at Harry and Hermione. “What terrifying creation of mad science were you working on in the lab?”

“We’re trying to make a golem dance,” Myst lied with an exaggerated wink letting her know he was joking.

“What?” Ron asked in disbelief. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because it would be fun,” Myst replied as he started adding food to his plate.

“We should probably add that to the list of research topics,” Hermione mused as she worked on filling up her plate.

Katrina snickered. “Zombie dance.”

“You realize you’re mental, right?” Ron asked with a shudder.

“Yep, the madness place is fun, just ask the Twins,” Myst said in the creepiest and most enthusiastic tone of voice he could then followed it with an evil laugh.

“Great, everyone has lost their marbles,” Ron grumbled.

Myst snickered then started eating, happy that he’d managed to put a smile on Hermione’s face.

Sadly the friendly banter came to an end when Professor McGonagall stalked into the great hall ten minutes later and walked directly over to the Gryffindor table with a stern look on her face.

“Potter, Granger, the headmaster has requested your presence in his office,” McGonagall said after glancing at Harry and Hermione’s empty plates.

“Probably about that project,” Myst said as he stood up, seeing no reason to let people gossip about him being in trouble when it was easy to avoid with one statement.

Hermione barely managed to stay quiet as they followed the professor through the halls, wanting to ask for more information, but not wanting to admit to anything at the same time.

“Mars Bars,” McGonagall said as she walked up to the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmaster’s office.

Myst kept his expression blank as he walked up the stairs and noticed an annoyed looking Dumbledore and an angry looking Snape. ‘Well shit, something went drastically wrong.’ “Professors?”

“Mr. Potter, perhaps you could explain exactly what was in the potion you left in the potions lab,” Snape drawled, eyes flashing but controlling himself through force of will and a hefty amount of occlumency skill.

“And what it was supposed to do,” Dumbledore added.

“Let me grab my notes,” Myst replied as he reached into his bag and pulled out his spiral notebook, slightly annoyed that McGonagall hadn’t decided to stay, but then again, she probably needed to deal with the parents of the idiot in the infirmary, if things had gone as wrong as he suspected they had.

“Did something happen?” Hermione asked nervously.

Dumbledore said, “One of your yearmates decided to disregard basic safety procedures and added something to your potion. He is currently being treated in the hospital wing, which is why we need to know what you were making.”

“The potion is part of a charm that protects against ghosts,” Myst handed Dumbledore the spiral notebook. “The first page is the list of ingredients, the next couple of pages have notes on all of the interactions and what to avoid while making the potion.”

Dumbledore looked over the notes, eyebrows raising in alarm as he realized that the only reason Malfoy wasn’t dead was sheer blind luck. “Where did you find this?”

“I copied it out of a book. It seemed simple enough and I checked the reaction chart to make sure it was safe. Of course that is based on the assumption that no one was going to deliberately sabotage it.”

“I imagine not, most wizards and witches have more common sense than to interfere with another’s potion, especially when they have no idea what it is,” Dumbledore grumbled. “I will certainly be having words with the individual in question.”

“What made you try that particular potion?” Snape asked as he glanced between Harry and Hermione.

“Have you ran into Peeves?” Myst asked a touch sarcastically. “I’m not entirely sure that he can’t possess people and I don’t want to risk it if I can help it, as that seems like something he’d do for fun.”

Dumbledore looked over his glasses at Harry. “To my knowledge he can’t possess people or at least he hasn’t, but please avoid mentioning that thought anywhere he might overhear as I’d rather not have to make amulets for everyone in the castle, it would cut into my less than copious freetime.”

Snape winced as he looked at the reaction charts that Potter had written out. He couldn’t even claim the potion was dangerous, bar someone being stupid enough to toss something into the potion that had no business being in a potion. “Why did you write out the reactions?”

“I’m assuming that you or Professor Dumbledore vetted any potion book that you assigned, I see no reason to assume that a random book in a junk store would have the same quality. Working my way through the reaction table helps make sure it won’t blow up in my face, I’m rather attached to it.”

‘At least he has some sense, unlike Malfoy,’ Snape thought darkly, not sure what he was going to tell Lucius, other than his son was an idiot that had nearly killed himself. “Prudent,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Do you mind if I make a copy of your notebook so I can explain in exacting detail why potions should not be tampered with?” Dumbledore asked.

”If it helps, feel free,” Myst offered seeing no point in refusing the professor’s request as the recipe wasn’t secret or anything, just rare from what he could tell.

Dumbledore pulled his wand out of his sleeve and tapped the journal making a duplicate. “Thank you.”

“Of course. I’m guessing this means that our potion wasn’t salvageable?” Myst asked.

”I’m afraid not,” Dumbledore replied, “nor was your cauldron, or the table, or the flooring.”

“Ouch,” Myst said with a sigh. “I suppose I can spring for a new table while I am buying new ingredients, though I will have to floo into Diagon to purchase them.”

“In this case, the parents can afford to replace everything, if nothing else it should teach the student in question not to interfere with other students’ projects in the future,” Dumbledore decided. “I’ll see to the requisitioning of replacement ingredients myself, and lend my expertise if you don’t mind to insure that it’s brewed properly and no further incidents occur.”

“That would be great, Headmaster,” Hermione enthused.

“I would also like to offer my expertise,” Snape told Dumbledore. “If in some small way to make up for the failings of one of my house.” Normally he wouldn’t have expended any effort to assist a student of another house in such a manner, but he hadn’t seen this variation of potion brewed before and a chance to work with Dumbledore on such a project was not to be missed.

“I have no objections,” Myst offered before Dumbledore could object or agree as the man was more than competent at potions, just not teaching or at least not teaching potions in a classroom setting.

“In that case, I will let you know when we are ready to brew the potion,” Dumbledore said, rather pleased that Harry wasn’t unduly upset by recent events and seeing a chance to show Severus that Harry was not simply a clone of James Potter as well. 

“Thank you Professors,” Myst said then turned and left, happy that things had worked out as well as they had.

“Professors,” Hermione said then followed Myst out, trying not to giggle as she thought about what they could learn.

“This should be educational,” Myst said after they were around the corner.

“WIthout a doubt,” Hermione replied finally breaking into giggles. “Should we invite Tracey?”

“I think she’d poison us if we didn’t,” Myst replied, only partially joking.

0o0o0

“Can you forgive me for thinking you were guilty?” Remus asked looking at Sirius.

Sirius studied his friend’s face, noting the age lines and general weariness as well as the fact that he still had his horrible mustache. “Are you going to shave your porn stash?” he asked sarcastically.

Remus snorted. “Sorry, I sort of need it for my job, besides the girls love it.”

“What?” Sirius sputtered, thinking his friend had actually fallen on times hard enough that he had to do porn.

Remus laughed. “You should see the look on your face!”

“You’re a bastard, you know that right?” Sirius asked with a grin.

“I’ll have you know, my parents were and are happily married,” Remus pointed out with amusement as they left the courthouse, satisfied that Sirius wasn’t holding the past against him as they fell back into an easy banter.

“How is Harry doing?” Sirius asked, wanting to avoid thinking about Azkaban.

“He seemed excited to learn magic when I met him over the summer,” Remus assured him.

Sirius’s expression brightened. “You got to see Harry?”

“Yeah and he gave me an idea which lead to my current job,” Remus said proudly.

“You got a job?” Sirius asked with a smile, glad to hear his old friend was doing well.

“Do you want to see it?”

“Lead the way,” 

Remus grabbed Sirius’s arm and apparated them to an old gas station with a sign reading Remus’ Repair & Gasup.

Sirius grinned as he looked around and saw dozens of motorbikes in various states of repair. “Nice, I wonder what happened to my old bike.”

“Last I heard, Hagrid still had it,” Remus replied, rather proud of his new business as his old friend looked around eagerly.

“Hmm, this gives me an excuse to build a new one,” Sirius said cheerfully. “Any idea what type of bike Harry would like?”

“He’s eleven, get him a minibike,” Remus suggested. 

“Hmm, what do you actually do here?” he asked, thinking this place was more his speed than Remus’.

“As much or as little as I want, I own it,” Remus said smugly.

“How?” Sirius asked with a raised eyebrow, knowing werewolves weren’t well regarded in The Wizarding World which made it hard for them to get by much less thrive.

Remus shrugged. “Turns out repairing antiques for muggles is a lot more profitable than I thought and a simple Repairo charm isn’t considered against the law, as long as you cast a finite on the item afterwards to insure the muggle item can’t be considered enspelled.”

“Brilliant work around,” Sirius said, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it himself. “How does that translate into buying a garage and all these bikes?”

“I didn’t like the people I met in the business,” Remus admitted. “So, once I made enough money, which took so little time I am still adjusting, I quit and bought my own little place to fix things for people I actually wanted to be around.”

“Had to deal with posh twats?” Sirius asked with sympathy.

“More than I’d like,” Remus agreed, thinking about some of the idiots with overpriced furniture and their nose in the clouds. “Some of them made Malfoy seem reasonable.”

“You lie!”

“No, I wish I was, but I’m not,” Remus said. “One woman insisted that I fix her bloody dog bed ahead of someone who was paying me a pile of money to repair an antique vase that belonged to their grandmum for her funeral.”

“What’d ya do?”

“Charged her enough to buy stock in the company that made the dog beds,” Remus said with a snort. “I mean, I still got it all done on time, but the sheer brea… balls on that woman. Rude doesn’t begin to describe it. Malfoy would have been practical enough to replace the bed, if not the dog, but she was insisting her little demon needed his own bed, which he had practically destroyed, be repaired before nap time.” 

“Eh, at least you got to make her pay for her rudeness,” Sirius said with a grin.

“Paid enough that I could afford this place months in advance of when I thought I would,” Remus said. “I still get a call out to come to her place and fix it at least once a week and she has not gotten any less rude.”

“But you don’t need the money,” Sirius said, wondering why his friend would continually put himself through that when he didn’t have to.

“Need? No, but for the kind of money she pays me she could turn the hose on me to drive me off when I was done and I’d still do it,” Remus replied. “It’s enough that I’ve been able to hire half a dozen people to work for me and pay them a decent wage and still make some damn good profits.”

“That’s impressive.”

“So’s her rack,” Remus joked, “but that’s neither here nor there. Do you want to meet the crew?”

“Sure, are they magical?” Sirius asked, wondering how careful he had to be with what he said.

“Muggleborn witch and a werewolf,” Remus said as he headed into the shop. 

Sirius grinned slightly as he saw the attractive witch wearing overalls and sporting an unnatural shade of red for her short hair that didn’t match her red eyebrows, reach for her pocket while the large sort of beaten down man put his hand on a large wrench. “Don’t worry, I was innocent,” he assured them.

“Lord of the house innocent or actually innocent?” the girl asked as she glanced at Remus then looked back at Sirius.

“If it was the first, I wouldn’t have been in prison for a decade,” Sirius replied, making no move for his wand.

“Don’t worry, there will be a Daily Prophet article about it,” Remus assured them. “Oscar and Erin, meet Sirius Black.”

Sirius shook his head. “Fairly sure I’m The Loveable Sirius Black.”

“More like tolerable and even that is pushing it sometimes,” Remus teased.

“I’m surprised you two recognized me so fast,” Sirius said, ignoring his friend’s ribbing.

“Well, Remus has pictures of you and the rest of his old crew up in the garage where he works,” Erin said. “Even told us some stories when we asked.”

“Like the time you were drunk and propositioned a guard troll at Gringotts,” Oscar said with a grin. 

“He told you that one, did he?” Sirius asked with an evil grin. “Well, did he mention who he was propositioning at the time?”

Remus groaned. “I’d completely forgotten about that part until you reminded me.”

Sirius laughed. “Well, I’m sure Griphook hasn’t.”

“Oh, this I have got to hear,” Erin said eagerly. “Tell me everything!”

“Well it started off with the four of us….”