Replacement Boy That Lived Part 12 (Patreon)

Hermione glanced around the depressing and dingy looking alley that Myst had teleported them to then looked at the rest of the group. "Are you sure this is safe? Professor McGonagall warned us about it."

"Not particularly," Neville muttered, hoping his gran didn't find out that he'd been in Knockturn alley.

'Not remotely.' Myst frowned and pulled his poison staff out of his inventory when he noticed a hag looking at them from the shadows on the other side of the alley with a less than innocent look on her wart covered face. "What did she say?" he asked as the hag decided that anyone that could conjure a magical staff from thin air probably wasn't a defenseless child or someone she could make disappear without consequences.

Hermione shivered when she saw the shrunken heads in a window display, wondering if the professor had been sugar coating things. "She said there were some unsavory people in it and that I should avoid it."

"It's certainly the wrong side of the tracks," Myst replied as he started walking towards the entrance to Diagon Alley. "Let's go."

Scarlet watched the shadowy nooks and crannies as they left the alley, wanting to make sure no one was waiting to jump them, glad that it wasn't quite late enough to run into problems though it was getting closer from the looks some of the cloaked figures were giving them as they quickly left the creepy alley.

Neville sighed in relief when they left the alley. "If my gran ever asks, I was never there."

"Exactly," Myst assured him. "You're on my friends list, so I should be able to summon you for another dungeon run. When do you think you’ll have time?"

"I should have time this weekend, my gran goes to sleep at about eight or nine," Neville said thoughtfully.

"What happens if you summon him and she stayed up until ten?" Scarlet asked, fairly sure getting teleported while someone was watching would end in hysterics.

"That's a valid point," Myst admitted, not wanting to cause Neville's grandmother a heart attack or get people looking for him.

"How does the wizarding world normally keep in touch?" Hermione asked, wanting to make sure they didn't summon him right in front of people.

Neville turned to look at Hermione. "We normally send letters by owl or use the floo if we want to talk to them face to face."

"Neither of those are viable options for various reasons. What about two way mirrors?" Myst asked, hoping someone actually sold them in this version of Harry's world and they weren't one of a kind antiques or something equally as annoying.

"There's a glassworks shop down the way, they sell all sorts of mirrors, including mirrors to help you decide what to wear," Neville suggested as he started walking. "It's on the way."

Hermione glanced at the crowd filled with people wearing cloaks and weird clothes then glanced at Neville's clothes which actually looked halfway reasonable. "Sounds good, that should give us enough time to swing by my house and call my folks so I can let them know I made it back safe and sound."

"Excellent, we'll make an adventurer out of you yet," Scarlet said cheerfully as she put her arm around Hermione while they headed towards the glasswork shop.

'Hopefully we end up in the same house at Hogwarts,' Hermione thought, not willing to give up having friends now that she had some.

"Won't you get in trouble?" Neville asked Hermione, not used to breaking rules.

"With the way their card games normally go, I doubt they'll check on me until the morning," Hermione assured him, looking forward to running another couple of dungeons while they had time.

'Already breaking rules, how long did that take in the books?' Myst mused, glad the dungeon runs hadn't resulted in any serious injuries or lasting mental traumas.

"This is because of the books, isn't it?" Scarlet teased.

"It certainly helps," Hermione admitted, not wanting to have to explain that she was just glad to have friends to spend time with.

Neville pointed at the glassworks shop. "We should hurry."

"In and out," Myst agreed as they walked into the shop, drawing the immediate attention of the shopkeeper who was giving them a suspicious look. "Excuse me ma'am, where can I find the two way mirrors?"

The shopkeeper pointed towards the glass cabinet under the counter. "Behind the counter, how many do you need?"

"Can any of the mirrors connect to more than one other mirror?" Myst asked.

The woman behind the counter shook her head. "There's a reason they're called two way mirrors."

"How's the range?" Myst asked as he walked over to take a look at the available options.

The woman shrugged. "I talk to a friend in the colonies every week, I've never had an issue."

'Colonies? I can set you on fire,' Myst thought as he plastered a smile on his face. "Great, I'll take three sets."

"They're a bit pricey," the woman warned the kid.

Myst glanced at the price tags on the mirrors. 'Average of five galleons, like twenty five dollars for magic mirrors? Is that expensive? Or do I have the conversion rate screwed up in my head?' he mused as he started putting galleons on the table. "You might as well pick out the mirrors you want," he told the girls, not particularly concerned about the style or appearance since none of them had bright pink plastic cases or anything that was an immediate hell no.

'I wonder if these work across dimensions or in dungeons,' Scarlet mused as she walked over to check out the pocket mirrors.

Hermione smiled when she saw a set of square palm sized compact mirrors with carved ivy borders that looked tasteful and easy to stick in a pocket without worrying about it getting scratched. "I like the one with the ivy border, it would fit in a pocket."

"Flowers," Scarlet said as she pointed at a set of mirrors similar to the ones that Hermione had picked.

"Basic compact?" Neville asked, not particularly concerned with what the mirrors looked like.

Myst finished counting out sixteen galleons then pointed at a durable looking compact, wanting something he could stick in his pocket and not worry about scratching or breaking. "Let's go with that one."

"Coming right up," the woman replied as she quickly counted the coins. She dropped the coins into the lock box then retrieved the mirrors and set them on the counter. "Is there anything else you need?" she asked, hoping to make another sale.

Myst took one of the plain compacts and handed it to Neville. "Best of luck with your grandmother."

"Thanks," Neville replied as he slipped the mirror in his pocket and headed for the door, wanting to get back before his grandmother had to come looking for him.

"Do you have any larger two way mirrors?" Myst asked as he held up his hand at head height.

"No, most people just use the floo if they want to talk to someone in person," the woman explained, not sure why you'd need a larger two way mirror.

"Scrying mirrors?" Myst asked hopefully, not sure how kneeling on stone for the entire length of your conversation was more comfortable than talking to a large mirror.

The woman shook her head. "You've been reading too many muggle stories."

"Fair enough, thanks for your time," Myst replied as he collected the mirrors and handed them out, not seeing a reason to linger.

"How do the fashion mirrors work?" Hermione asked.

The woman smiled at Hermione. "They're charmed with a basic personality and taught fashion skills by a team of experts."

'Team of wizarding 'experts', yeah, I think I'll pass,' Myst mused as he turned and glanced around the storeroom, wondering what other types of mirrors they had. 'Nice tables, I might need to come back when I have time.'

"Sounds complicated," Hermione admitted.

"You get what you pay for," the woman assured her. "I've seen some low quality mirrors that have ghastly taste in clothes."

"I'll be sure to tell my mother," Myst assured her then headed for the door.

"Have fun with your mirrors," the woman offered, glad that they'd bought something and not stuck their grubby little hands on everything, requiring her to go around and clean all the glass again.

'One of the problems with looking like a kid,' Myst mused as they left the shop.

"How are we getting back to my house?" Hermione asked once they were out of the shop.

"Magic," Myst teased as he focused on Hermione's backyard and teleported the three of them, hoping her neighbors weren't looking out of a window.

Hermione jumped when she realized what he'd done. "Can everyone do that?"

"Probably?" Myst replied as he heard the telephone ring. "You might want to get that."

"Crap!" Hermione sputtered as she pulled her key from around her neck as she ran for the back door.

"What's the ringing?" Scarlet asked as she glanced around the yard, looking at the hedges and the tool shed.

"Telephone," Myst replied as he walked over and sat down on the love seat to wait.

"Do you think Hogwarts has a book on making two way mirrors?" Scarlet asked thoughtfully.

"It's worth looking through the library," Myst said as he pulled up his dungeon map and started looking for a dungeon that might have more useful skill books.

"Have you figured out how you're going to get me to Hogwarts?" Scarlet asked.

"I don't recall people actually collecting tickets in the books or the movies for the train and expanded trunks are quite comfortable," Myst teased.

"Worth a shot," Scarlet replied as she sat down next to Myst, hoping they could figure out something that didn't involve sneaking onto a train in a trunk.

"Worst case, we can just teleport to the forest near Hogwarts and walk, once we're there, I doubt they'd turn you away, especially if I offered to pay your tuition," Myst said, fairly sure Dumbledore wouldn't object to having another student as long as he wasn't stuck in a world with an evil or completely insane Dumbledore.

"Where are we heading next?" Scarlet asked, figuring they still had a month to figure out how she was going to get into Hogwarts.

Myst glanced at the window where he could see Hermione talking on the phone. "Not sure, my ability just gives me the names of the dungeons, not a summary."

"Anything interesting?" Scarlet asked.

Myst shifted so he didn't have to twist his neck as much to look at Scarlet. "Nightmare Fuel, Madness of the Eldritch Dark, Oxford Library, Fantasy Witches of Rainbow Island and Warlocks of Darkside look interesting but the first two are black dungeons and the Warlock dungeon is a dark red."

Scarlet laughed. "Considering the names, what were you expecting?"

"Fluffy rabbits and cute puppies?" Myst lied.

Scarlet shook her head. "I don't believe you."

"I wouldn't either," Myst admitted. "I'm leaning towards the Oxford Library dungeon though I wouldn't mind taking a trip to Japan for the Rainbow Island dungeon."

"Do you speak the language?" Scarlet asked thoughtfully.

"Nope," Myst replied with a grin. "That just means we'll probably have to kill everything and loot it to the ground without knowing their backstory."

"In other words, same as the rest of them," Scarlet replied as the door opened and Hermione walked out. "Perfect timing then?"

Hermione shook her head. "Not really, it was a telemarketer, my folks hadn't called."

"Telemarketer?" Scarlet asked.

"They're basically snake oil salesmen that use the phone to try to convince people to buy their products," Myst explained, not particularly amused by the practice, especially since most legitimate companies didn't even bother anymore.

Scarlet glanced at Hermione, trying to figure out if Myst was joking about the snake oil salesman, as she was relatively sure that scraping oil off a snake would give you a rather pathetic amount. "Sounds annoying."

"Especially when they call in the middle of the night," Hermione grumbled. "I called my folks, they're having fun so I should be good as long as I'm back by eight or nine in the morning. Where are we going?"

"We were just discussing that, I'm leaning towards a dungeon at Oxford or a dungeon in Japan that has witches," Myst said, not sure which would end up being more useful.

"Is there any reason we can't hit both?" Hermione asked, excited about the prospect of getting more interesting books.

"Nope," Myst replied as he stood up. "Do you need to grab something before we go?"

Hermione quickly locked the door. "I'm good."

Myst teleported the group to the Oxford Dungeon, hoping they didn't appear in front of anyone.

Scarlet smiled as she glanced around the courtyard, surprised that none of the students walking around had noticed anything suspicious. She turned and looked at the rounded and domed structure then looked at the old wooden door set in the stone wall. "Ready?"

Myst glanced around then opened the old fashioned wooden door to the dungeon, fairly sure there was some type of notice-me-not or somebody-else's-problem charm on the entrance since no one seemed to have paid their entrance any attention. "Let's go."

Hermione followed Myst and Scarlet into the library and stared at the old man in robes that was sitting on the floor leaning against a bookcase, bleeding from a chest wound. "Medic!"

Myst wasn't particularly surprised when his reflexively cast healing spell failed to do anything for the old man's wound. "Sorry."

"Don't worry child, I'm not dying until the thieves are dead and my books recovered," the librarian assured them. "However, I'm in no condition to collect them myself thanks to my injuries, can you please recover my books?"

"We'll do our best," Myst assured him as he stepped over the pool of blood, not particularly concerned about the NPC as he'd already tried and failed to heal him. "What are we dealing with?" he asked as he looked around at the shelves of old leather bound books that lined the walls, noticing the fact that there weren't any electric lights and that everything was lit by the windows or by the dozens of mage lights floating near the ceiling.

"Thieves and cultists," the old man replied.

Hermione took a breath and tried to relax when she realized that she couldn't save him because he was part of the dungeon. "Of course."

"How many thieves?" Myst asked, wondering how many 'monsters' they had to worry about.

"I don't know, I just know that twenty five volumes were taken off the shelf," the old man replied then slumped down and started snoring, as if the pool of blood he was lying in was no more than a minor annoyance and in no way a reason to skip his evening nap.

"Where do we start?" Scarlet asked as she glanced at the various rows of bookshelves that vanished into the gloom.

"I don't think it matters," Myst replied as he walked over and tried to take a book from the shelves and found they wouldn't move. "So much for just looting the library."

"That's unfortunate," Hermione complained. "They'd be worth a lot considering their age."

"Yep," Myst replied, fairly sure most people would just assume they were copies considering he doubted the tests would show the correct age.

Scarlet turned and blasted a shifty looking peasant, wearing dark clothes and a black cloak that walked out of the stacks carrying two books under his arms, with lightning, causing him to scream for a second before he dropped to the ground twitching. She pulled Myst's dagger out of her inventory then ran over and cut the bandit's throat, picking up another point of magic as he fell apart, leaving an additional book and a scroll.

"How did you know he was a bad guy?" Hermione asked.

"He looked shifty and he wasn't being careful with the books," Scarlet replied as she opened the books. "They're just old books on the history of England." She picked up the scroll and opened it, picking up a ritual for permanently absorbing mana from a magic user. "Nice!"

"What did you find?" Myst asked.

"I found a ritual for permanently stealing a tenth of someone's mana pool," Scarlet replied cheerfully as she stuck the book in the party inventory then walked over and handed the scroll to Myst.

Hermione frowned as she considered someone stealing part of her magic. "That sounds like dark magic."

"Probably," Myst replied as he used the scroll. He brought up his ritual skill and looked at his new ritual. "Lovely, you get two to twelve points of corruption for using the ritual and you can only steal up to five times your normal pool."

"Does that mean you'd turn into a raving lunatic before you got any real benefit?" Hermione asked, fairly sure the ritual was useless.

"Unless you have a way to cheat," Myst replied as he looked at his ritual to share corruption, fairly sure he could use it on Voldemort by using his scar as a connection point. “Anyway, using it on cultist and NPCs isn’t like torturing real people.”

"Torturing people?" Hermione asked warily.

"It's not a particularly nice ritual, it basically rips part of their magic out," Myst explained as he stuck the scroll in his inventory and started walking towards the stacks. "Worst case, provided I don't screw up the ritual, it would generate twelve points of corruption, split three ways, that's only four points of corruption, we could soak that using a couple of anti-corruption rings."

"Don't you get corruption for making the rings?" Scarlet asked warily.

"Two to eight points," Myst agreed. "I found two, I just need to find a couple more then we'd have enough rings to tank the corruption and make a bunch."

Hermione frowned when she noticed a cultist in red robes trying to creep down the aisle towards them without being noticed and failing horribly. "What about the cultist?"

"Zuul!" the cultist shouted as he pulled a dagger and sprinted at Hermione, moving faster than an olympic sprinter, almost blurring.

Myst raised his hand and lifted the cultist off the ground with telekinesis. "Not happening."

Hermione screamed and dropped when the cultist's arm blurred and his dagger buried itself in her leg before she could stop it with telekinesis.

"For the glory of Zuul!" the cultist shouted as it thrashed in Myst's grip, unable to escape as it didn't have any leverage.

Scarlet dashed over and cut the cultist's throat with her dagger, quickly stepping to the side to avoid the blood spray.

Myst pulled the dagger out and quickly healed Hermione's leg. "Stupid question time, are you okay?"

Hermione bit back her initial reaction as the pain started to fade. "That hurt!"

Scarlet picked up the scroll he dropped and opened it, picking up a ritual for increasing your speed. 'Calls on various eldritch abominations to permanently double your maximum movement rate, causes five to thirty points of corruption because you looked at things humanity wasn't supposed to see. Can be used twice, that would let me run faster than a horse.'

"That's generally why mages have bodyguards," Myst said as he dropped the dagger in his inventory so he could look at it and helped Hermione to her feet. "Dagger of Vampiric Agility, killing creatures with the dagger increases your agility by two points as long as they have a higher agility."

"Corruption?" Hermione asked, figuring using it on dungeon monsters beat exercising enough that she got her agility to a reasonable level.

"Doesn't look like it," Myst replied after double checking the dagger.

"That's easier than practicing until we're falling over," Hermione quickly pointed out, glad they weren't going to have to exercise to grind their agility up to something reasonable.

"I found a ritual we should probably try if we can figure out how to avoid going insane," Scarlet said as she handed the scroll to Myst. "It gives you five to thirty points of corruption and doubles your maximum movement speed, you can use it twice."

"Ritual of Eldritch Speed acquired!" the voice announced after Myst opened the scroll.

"Something to look into when we can figure out how to make more corruption eating items without getting corrupted," Myst mused, fairly sure he could do a decent amount of damage to Voldemort's sanity if he boosted all of his friends.

"How are you going to avoid thirty points of corruption?" Hermione asked, wondering if he had a plan.

"By finding a large group of people willing to help and making sure they have ways to soak corruption," Myst replied as he continued walking down the aisle. "If I can find nine people to help me, everyone should only have to deal with three points of corruption, we can soak that with the right equipment."

"Assuming things don't go horribly wrong," Hermione couldn’t help but point out.

"Pretty much," Myst agreed as a cultist wearing dirty rags, that might have been robes at one point, charged out of the shadows with long shadowy black talons for fingernails. He used telekinesis to lift the man off his feet then spun him around and slammed his head on the ground, causing his neck to make a sickening crack, but somehow not ending his life.

Hermione winced. "We need to figure out a way to block telekinesis."

Myst pulled the agility dagger out of his inventory, walked over, and cut the man's throat, wanting to make sure he got something out of it. "It's on the list."

"How are you so calm about stabbing people?" Hermione asked.

"Two reasons, they're not actually people and they're insane cultists," Myst replied as he picked up the book that dropped and opened it. "Looks like an old book about various noble houses."

"No skills?" Scarlet asked.

"Nope," Myst replied as he stuck it in his inventory.

"Did you at least get a boost to your agility?" Scarlet asked as she glanced in both directions and up at the ceiling, trying to make sure that more cultists weren't sneaking up on them.

Myst checked his sheet, not surprised to find it two points higher. "Yeah, my agility isn't particularly impressive."

"Do you think you could improve the rituals to cut out some of the corruption?" Scarlet asked thoughtfully as they started walking deeper into the twisted library.

"I'll probably need to increase my ritual skill a decent amount and I'd probably need to draw everything out a couple of times and actually use the ritual," Myst admitted after considering the question for about a minute or so.

"Any idea where we're going to find extra people to help?" Hermione asked, wondering if they knew more magic users.

"I have a couple of ideas," Myst admitted.