Travels in the Multiverse Part 7 (Patreon)

"Next time a little warning might be nice," Vicky said as she glanced around the area, surprised that everything looked nicer than she remembered, it wasn't any one thing, just a general sense that there was less graffiti and more fresh paint on fences and houses. "It's certainly less worn down."

"And less gloomy," Amy added as she looked at the freshly painted wooden fence across the way.

Glory Girl glanced at the girl that looked like a more athletic version of her sister's normal look as she walked out of the house then looked at her alternate. "Damn, I look good."

'Not going to argue that,' Panacea mused as she followed her sister, surprised that her alternate looked like she got a lot more exercise than she did.

"Powers?" Glory Girl asked as she studied the girls standing with Myst.

"Just your basic Alexandria package with an aura," Vicky replied as she looked at the unfamiliar girl with her alternate that could have been a model. "Where's Amy?"

"Hi," Panacea offered, surprising both of the girls with her familiar voice.

"Amy?!" Vicky blurted out.

"Changer?" Amy asked as she studied her alternate, having to force herself not to stare at her breasts.

"No, just a healer," Panacea replied as she turned to look at Myst. "Myst was nice enough to share a changer power with me, so I took advantage of it."

"Very nice," Amy said cheerfully. "Healer or full Biokinetic?"

"The second but don't tell anyone," Panacea warned her, not wanting people to know the full extent of her powers even if she was fairly sure some of the doctors at the hospitals had to know she was more than just a healer or a limited biokinetic.

"No worries," Amy replied as she mimed zipping her lips. 

"What brings you here?" Panacea asked.

"Problems with werewolves," Vicky grumbled.

"Werewolves?" Glory Girl asked in disbelief.

"Their world has a bunch of supernatural creatures." Myst teleported back to the base with the girls. 

"You have to stop doing that," Amy grumbled as she glanced around the lounge they found themselves in then focused on the messy haired teenager sitting in a chair reading a dictionary sized leather bound tome, that smelled of dust and magic. "Are those spellbooks?" she asked excitedly, hoping she could talk the mage into letting her take a peek.

"Most of them are books on rituals, we're trying to figure out if there's anything worth modifying for use," Harry explained.

"May I?" Amy asked, giving Harry her best puppy dog eyes.

Harry looked at the adorable healer and gestured at them. "Help yourself."

"She does an amazing puppy dog eyes for a cat girl," Vicky said with a grin.

"Polyjuice?" Hermione asked as she walked in, having only caught the last bit of the conversation.

Amy turned to look at Hermione then glanced at her alternate before glancing at Harry's forehead. "A little bit of face paint for the scar and you'd be an excellent Harry Potter, way better than the actor they got to play him."

"They're making movies about me now?" Harry in disbelief.

"Amy Dallon, meet Harry Potter and Hermione Granger and yes, they went to Hogwarts," Myst said cheerfully.

"Hogwarts is real?" Amy asked, fairly sure Myst was joking.

"Not here, but it's real enough," Myst assured her as he started growing a small crystal that should keep the user mentally and physically stable during the ritual.

"Shouldn't you have a scar?" Vicky asked Harry. 

"That's a reasonable question," Harry admitted. "Amy was kind enough to remove it for me."

"Amys are awesome," Amy replied as she flashed her alternate a grin. "To answer your question, I'm a Ceilican, basically a werecat."

"You can pat her head, just don't rub her belly," Vicky teased.

Amy punched her sister in the shoulder.

Vicky smirked. "See."

"Do you still change on the full moon?" Hermione asked as she walked over and sat down next to Harry.

"No, that's generally a garou problem," Amy replied as she walked over and picked up the top book, surprised that they'd let her look at the books, most mages were more secretive. "Is Hogwarts really the best school around or was Hagrid lying?"

"I'm not sure Hagrid knows how to lie and it might actually be the best school in Britain, they just had a hard time keeping Defense professors and our History of Magic professor was more like an audiobook than a professor," Harry explained.

"Not to mention Divination is a joke," Hermione grumbled, thinking about Trelawney. "On the other hand the Transfiguration and Charms professors are top notch and the library is the best around."

"Oh, I'd love to see that," Amy said, practically purring at the thought of an entire library filled with magical books she could 'steal' secrets from. 

"I can probably talk Professor McGonagall into giving you a tour at some point," Harry offered, figuring McGonagall would love the chance to pick her brain about being a werecat.

"That would be fantastic," Amy said cheerfully.

"Shouldn't we get the show on the road?" Glory Girl asked.

"Probably." Hermione turned to look at Myst. "Do you need help setting things up?"

Myst finished creating his second Inviolate crystal then looked at Hermione. "Sorry, I missed that, what?"

"Did you want help setting up the ritual?" Hermione asked, wanting a chance to study the ritual before she used it.

Myst smiled at Hermione. "Sure, you can draw the triangle while I work on drawing the symbols."

"Why a triangle?" Glory Girl asked.

Myst turned to look at Glory Girl. "Part of the ritual involves using a geometric binding shape to contain the magic, I could do something else but I have two Inviolable crystals which should keep you from mutating or going insane."

"That's a concern?" Harry asked warily.

Myst shrugged. "The ritual is designed to prevent corruption and physical changes but I'd rather hedge my bets, I don't want to look like Voldemort because we botched a ritual."

Harry scowled as his mind flashed back to the graveyard, remembering Voldemort's less than human appearance. "Yeah, like my nose."

"Who are you boosting first?" Panacea asked.

Myst glanced between Harry and Hermione. "Any objection to boosting the people without magic first?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm not in a hurry."

"Same," Hermione agreed. 

"Cool," Myst said cheerfully as he headed for the door, eager to get started.

0o0o0 

Myst wasn't sure how long it took him to draw and redraw the complicated symbols for the ritual until Hermione was satisfied but he was starting to have a touch more sympathy for Ron, mostly because she was a perfectionist and never stopped asking questions. To be fair, he'd encouraged the questions and none of them were anything he'd consider stupid but the sheer number of questions was causing him to regret letting her help. "Ready?" he asked hopefully as Sirius, Vicky and Panacea walked into the conference room.

"You bet," Vicky said cheerfully as she studied the arcane looking symbols drawn on the floor.

Panacea glanced over at her alternate who was standing near the equilateral triangle on the ground taking notes on a pocket sized spiral notebook. "Having fun?"

Amy grinned at her alternate. "Yes. Most people don't let me take notes or invite me to watch their rituals."

"You're welcome," Myst replied as he tossed Amy a twisted crystal wire bracelet set with Infer and True Sight crystals. "That should let you see the magic and help with understanding."

"That would have been nice to have at Hogwarts," Harry muttered under his breath as he focused on recording all of the symbols in his notebook, mostly because Hermione was insisting he practice.

Amy slipped the bracelet on and tapped into the magic, looking around the room at the glowing people. "You're my new favorite human."

"Ouch, I see how it is," Vicky teased.

Amy stuck her tongue out at Vicky. "Do you have any idea how much this will help with rituals?"

"Fair enough," Vicky admitted, knowing her sister loved collecting magical secrets even more than she liked collecting clothes. 

Hermione sighed as she realized Myst wasn't going to answer her last question. "You're ignoring my question, aren't you?"

Myst turned to look at Hermione. "No, I'm just trying to figure out a way to answer your question that doesn't result in an Arithmancy lecture."

"What's wrong with Arithmancy?" she asked.

"I'm fairly sure the rules of Arithmancy you know are only applicable in your dimension," Myst explained, hoping she didn't overreact.

Hermione opened her mouth to argue then closed it, realizing he might have a point. "We'll have to run some tests."

"Sounds good," Myst replied absently as he held out his hand and created a purple tapered nine inch crystal focusing wand, using up the last of his improvement ability for the day. He pulled Slytherin's locket out of his inventory and dropped it in the triangle.

"That's nasty," Amy complained as she stared at the fragment of a silently screaming soul stitched to the front of the locket with black thread.

"Yeah, no one in their right mind sticks their soul in a blender," Myst replied as he stepped up to one of the points of the triangle. "Let's start with Panacea and Glory Girl and go from there."

"How long will this take?" Sirius asked as Panacea and Glory Girl stepped up to the other points of the triangle drawn on the concrete.

"Anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour depending on how much the wand speeds things up," Myst explained, wishing he had a nice computer interface for his ritual so he could just push the button and be done with it as he was having second thoughts about the dangerous ritual. "You're welcome to stay and watch but if you're going to stay, please remain quiet."

"Don't worry, we'll be quiet," Hermione assured him.

"Kreacher is going to be annoyed that he missed this," Sirius said cheerfully.

Myst waved his wand at the points of the triangle as he reached out with his magic and pulled at the soul fragment's essence, the Traver's 'stolen' knowledge and talent turning a complicated ritual into something he could accomplish by will alone, if only because he'd already drawn all of the symbols on the concrete that would keep the magic from escaping.

Hermione gave Sirius a stern look but kept her mouth shut as she realized Myst had already started the ritual even if he hadn't used any words or incantations. She shivered slightly as she watched dozens of ribbons of black magic spiral out of the locket, reaching almost eye level before being pulled back to the ground into the various symbols, creating arcs of dark energy. 

Harry stumbled backwards as the middle of one arc jumped towards Panacea, crashing into an invisible field above the lines of the triangle, a bare wisp of purple energy flowing through the shield and into the healer while the rest of the black energy acted like sludge and flowed down the line into the symbols on that side of the triangle. 'I guess that explains why the return sucks. Still, I'd rather just kill twenty more Death Eaters than screw myself over trying to get everything from one of them.'

Amy stared at the magic in fascination as she furiously took notes, doing her best to make sure she could duplicate the ritual if she needed to. 'This is certainly going to make stealing garou rituals easier.'

The next twenty minutes were probably some of the most nerve wracking of Myst's life, making sure the lines of crackling energy went where they were supposed to or at least stayed in the triangle so that no one got corrupted. It felt a bit like driving on a foggy night, you could sort of see the lines but the rest was up in the air and you were always worried about that one idiot that would randomly decide to step out in front of you or in this case, some last minute trap that Voldemort had placed on the locket because he wasn't quite as stupid as the books made him out to be. 

Thankfully, nothing of the sort happened and the soul fragment disintegrated as the last of the magic left it. He kept the magic flowing into the triangle for another twenty seconds then dropped the ritual when it became clear that they wouldn't get anything else out of it. He wasn't sure how much of Riddle's magic the girls had picked up but his own reserves had barely increased or at least it didn't feel like much compared to the vast amount of magic the Traveler had left him. 'That explains why he didn't bother draining people. Still, that was just a fragment of Riddle's soul and quantity has a quality all its own,' he mused as he stepped back from the triangle and smiled at Panacea and Glory Girl. "We're done."

"Any adverse side effects?" Hermione asked, hoping everything went well.

"Not that I know of," Panacea said as she stepped over, grabbed her sister's hand and checked her biology. "Her genetics are slightly different."

"Which means her children might have magic," Hermione mused as she took notes in her notebook.

"Sweet!" Glory Girl replied with a grin as she floated into the air and held out her hand towards the concrete wall and shouted, "Magic fire blast!"

"Careful!" Hermione snapped at Glory Girl then felt slightly silly as absolutely nothing happened from her attempt at magic.

Sirius laughed. "Relax, she has a fragment of a fragment of Voldemort's magic, she'd need a lot of practice or a wand to set something on fire."

"If nothing else, it should let them recharge the crystals." Myst levitated the locket into the air so that he could examine it, wanting to make sure that Riddle's soul fragment was completely gone. "I don't suppose Hogwarts teaches enchanting?" he asked, not sure where to even start figuring out how the broken enchantment worked.

"I wish," Harry muttered.

"They teach permanent charms in NEWT Charms but most people don't bother as they're complicated and difficult," Hermione explained.

"In that case, we might as well give the locket to Albus with the rest of the Horcruxes after we drain them," Myst grumbled as he levitated the locket over and stashed it in his pocket dimension.

"No luck puzzling out the enchantment?" Amy asked with a pout, hoping that he'd had better luck figuring out the 'broken' lines of magic than she had.

Myst shook his head. "It's like looking at a circuit board that someone broke and tried to glue back together."

"Do you think Professor Dumbledore can repair it?" Hermione asked hopefully.

Myst turned to look at Hermione. "It's worth asking."

"Who are you boosting next?" Sirius asked.

Myst glanced at between Amy and Vicky. "I was thinking about the other Amy and Vicky, that would give you a chance to see if you can teach Panacea and Victoria how to cast Reparo while we drain a dementor."

"How are you planning on containing the dementor?" Sirius asked warily.

"They're not ghosts," Myst replied as he worked on creating a heavy crystal disk on the ground in the middle of the triangle out of the strongest and most durable crystal he could make, "I should be able to lock them in place."

Harry flashed back to some of his Uncle Vernon's threats when a thick crystal pole grew out of the center of the disk and flowed into a board like rectangle with holes cut for a creature's head and wrists. "You're going to lock them in stocks?"

"Technically the stocks only locked up someone's feet, that's a pillory," Hermione pointed out.

"I'll be sure to tell my uncle that the next time I see him," Harry said as he turned and headed out the door, "he's been using the wrong term for years."

"Or we could just set him on fire," Sirius suggested as he followed Harry out of the room.

"At least Carol wasn't that bad," Panacea muttered as she handed Amy her mental defense crystal, sighing when she felt the calm of the last half an hour slip away.

Glory Girl handed Vicky her crystal. "Best of luck, I'm not getting near a dementor."

"I can't say I blame you," Vicky replied as she focused on the crystal as if it was a spirit bound item and activated the Inviolate power, feeling a sense of calm sweep over her. "How do I talk you into making me one of these?"

"I'll put it on the list," Myst replied as he walked around the triangle, making sure that the crystal base of the pillory hadn't crossed the lines. "Can you hit the base with a sticking charm?" he asked Hermione.

Hermione pulled her wand out of her pocket and waved it at the crystal base, whispering the incantation under her breath. "That should do it."

"Thanks. You should probably get going so we can get started," Myst said, reminding her that he couldn't start until she left.

"If you run into trouble, scream, I'll send Harry," Hermione offered as she headed for the door.

"We'll be fine," Myst assured her. He waited for the door to close then turned to look at Amy and Vicky. "Have you activated your mental shields?"

Amy activated her crystal, rather surprised at how easy it was to activate compared to most of the spirit bound items she'd used over the years. "Done."

"Great," Myst replied as he pulled the dementor out of his pocket dimension, levitated the skeletal monster over to the pillory, and locked the thrashing creature in place.

Amy glared at the cloaked soul eating abomination that wasn't setting off any of her wyrm detection trinkets. "Either my trinkets are broken or the dementor isn't actually wyrm tainted."

"It's certainly ugly enough," Vicky said as she walked over to the spot by the triangle her alternate had used, being careful to avoid the dementor's cloak touching her as it flailed around.

"Not everything twisted and evil is tainted," Myst said as he studied the struggling creature, briefly wondering if there was a way to save Dudley's soul before deciding that he didn't care, it wasn't his job to fix everything, "especially in worlds where creation and destruction are in balance. Either way, the ritual should keep us from getting corrupted and they have plenty of magic so we should get a decent boost."

"Good," Amy said as she stepped over to her spot, looking forward to increasing her available magic and learning some actual spells.

"Starting in 3, 2, 1!" Myst said cheerfully as he raised his wand and started the ritual to drain the dementor of its power, curious if the ritual would actually destroy the 'immortal' creature.

0o0o0

Myst was amused when the dementor crumbled to dust twenty five minutes later with a last soul wrenching shriek. "So much for them actually being indestructible."

"Most things aren't," Amy replied as she studied the ragged cloak on the floor that was the only thing left of the monster. "You just have to find the right secret."

"Or hit it really hard," Vicky said smugly.

Myst levitated the cloak over to his hand and dropped it in his pocket dimension. "Let's go see if the girls have managed to learn any magic tricks."

"We can hope," Amy replied as she headed for the door.

Myst smiled as he followed the girls out of the conference room and down the hallway to the room they were using as a break room. "Any luck?"

Panacea waved Hermione's wand at the torn up strips of paper. "Reparo!"

Myst grinned as one of the scraps of paper fused together, forming a larger scrap of paper. "Nice!"

Panacea turned to look at Myst with a grin. "I'm a long way from being able to repair a broken light by waving a wand but I'll take it."

Hermione glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall. "To be fair, you've had less than twenty minutes of practice and you're using a wand that isn't a proper fit."

"It should get easier once you get a proper wand," Harry said, not looking up from the book on rituals that he was using.

Amy smiled as she bounced over and pulled Panacea into a hug. "This calls for ice cream!"

Panacea blinked then looked over at her sister's alternate. "Is she always this enthusiastic?"

"Only about magic, otherwise she's generally rather snarky," Vicky replied with amusement.

Amy spun Panacea around so that she could stick her tongue out at her sister over her alternate's shoulder. "Excuse me for being happy, I just went from having a puddle sized gnosis pool that I had to meditate for hours to fill to something pond sized that actually regenerates on its own."

"Fair enough," Vicky admitted, looking forward to actually learning magic or at least using it now that she could. "Where do we start?"

Harry smiled as he looked up from the ritual book he was reading. "With the basics."

Myst glanced at the clock on the wall. "I was thinking about doing a food run before I boost everyone else, tacos, pizza or burgers?"

"Pizza," Amy said at the same time Vicky said tacos and Sirius said burgers.

"Pizza has options," Hermione suggested.

"I vote for pizza," Panacea said.

"As long as it's better than the cardboard I had at school," Harry muttered.

"It better be," Myst replied as he turned to look at Panacea. "What's the best place to get pizza?"

"Best place in town or best place?" Panacea asked with a smirk, knowing he was a teleporter.

"Best place is fine," Myst replied, lifting the location of a New York pizza place from her head. "I'll boost everyone else when I get back."

"Mario's Pizzeria on seventh," Panacea replied with a grin, thinking about the delicious pizza she'd had on one of her family trips.

"Nice choice," Glory Girl agreed. "Don't forget the drinks."

Myst turned to look at Glory Girl. "There's probably some soda in the cafeteria but I'll grab a case of root beer or Coke from the store while I'm waiting for the pizza." He quickly checked their thoughts for which toppings they liked then teleported to the pizza place in New York.