Demons and Botched Rituals Part 23 (Patreon)

"Yes!" Hermione squealed when her Synthesis skill gave her a token for Time Warped Cooking, rather than yet another token for one of her versions of Magical Cooking, she only needed one of each, because of Harry's skill.

River looked up from the cauldron she was watching. "Something interesting?"

"Time Warped Cooking, it reduces the time required to cook by five percent per rank which means eventually we'll be able to prepare food instantly," Hermione explained as she set the bowl on the table for Harry to pick up the skill so he could share it.

Harry picked up the bowl shaped token and used it, causing it to disintegrate as it gave him the new skill. "That should help considering some of the magical food takes hours to prepare. Do you think mixing Mad Mining and the Time Warped Alchemy or Blacksmithing would give us something that reduces the time it takes to craft weapons?"

"It's worth a try," Hermione mused as she accepted the new skill.

"Same thing with your bow crafting skill," Selena suggested as she worked on bottling another healing potion.

Hermione selected the Mad Mining and the Twisted Blacksmithing skills then conjured an adamantite arrow and dropped it in the catalyst box. She hit the button and smiled when she got a token for Stoic Blacksmithing. "Fantastic. It reduces the time blacksmithing takes by 5% a level, items created have a 1% chance per level of having double the durability they should."

"Do you think you can get a forge conjuring skill or are we going to need to set up a forge?" Selena asked as she set the glowing healing potion on the rack and grabbed another conjured bottle to fill the next potion.

Hermione shook her head. "I've tried."

"Have you tried making a second arcane hammer and using it as a catalyst?" Jessica asked without looking away from her bubbling cauldron, figuring she'd want to keep the version the master smith gave her.

"I haven't had a chance," Hermione admitted as she handed Harry the arrow. "It's worth a try if we can talk someone into letting us use their forge."

"Give me a second to share the skill then I'll open a portal," Harry replied as he broke the arrow and read the description of the new skill. He accepted Stoic Blacksmithing then spent the mana to teach everyone the skill. "You should probably try to get something similar for alchemy."

"I'll put it on the list," Hermione replied as she tapped the icon and learned the new skill.

"I love you," Jessica told Harry, as she squealed excitedly and tapped the icon to learn the Stoic Blacksmithing skill. "Have you considered mixing your conjure alchemy lab with the loot drop skill?"

"I tried with coins, I should probably try with a magical item," Hermione replied as she tossed one of the glowing healing potions into her catalyst box. She selected her loot drop skill and her conjured alchemy skill then hit the button. "Huh, Loot Drop, Conjured Lab Equipment."

"How long does the equipment last?" Selena asked.

"It depends on what you killed and your skill. I doubt killing bugs would give you anything particularly useful or long lasting," Hermione offered as she handed Harry the potion.

Harry drank the potion, finding the taste halfway decent unlike the potions that Madam Pomfrey liked using. He tapped the accept icon after glancing over the skill's description to make sure there weren't side effects of picking up the skill. "We're probably going to need a glassblowing skill. Do you know if the guild would let us learn it?"

"We might have to grease some palms, but I know a guy that has an older brother that works for the guild, he should be open to bribery," River offered. "He also knows enough to keep his mouth shut."

"We should probably check in with the girls and see if they want to help with the potions," Jessica suggested.

"Good point." Harry focused on the wall and opened a portal to his pocket dimension.

Hermione stared when she looked through the circular portal and saw two identical, naked and gorgeous mauve skinned teenage girls sprawled on a large four poster bed, in what appeared to be the Gryffindor common room, reading books. "Ruby and Jade?"

Ruby looked over and smiled when she saw Harry and Hermione. "Does this mean you finished the dungeon?"

"Yeah," Harry replied with a grin as he walked through the portal. "Hermione Granger, meet Jade and Ruby."

"Pleased to meet you," Hermione replied as she followed Harry through the portal and looked around the cozy stone room, pulling her gaze off the twins.

"Same," Jade agreed as she put her bookmark in her book. "Did you find anything interesting?"

"Like chalices of eternal youth or flying carpets?" Harry teased as Fred walked down the stairs.

"Yes," Jade replied with a grin, not sure if he was joking or if he'd actually found something neat.

Harry waved at Fred. "Fred, Hermione. Hermione, Fred. I went to Hogwarts with her, she's probably the only reason I didn't kill more professors."

"You killed one of them?" Fred asked in surprise.

"Two and a half," Harry admitted. "To be fair, they were trying to kill me."

"Two and a half?" Hermione asked, not sure which teachers he was talking about as the only one he was responsible for was Quirrell and that was mostly Quirrell's fault.

"Quirrell first year, the half is Lockhart second year, Crouch fourth year," Harry explained. "I'm just annoyed that we left before the curse killed Snape."

"Lockhart was more Ron's fault with his wand and Crouch was killed by the dementors," Hermione argued, not touching the last part with Snape.

"I was the target, I get to claim credit for dealing with the fraud," Harry argued.

Fred glanced between Harry and Hermione. "What about Quirrell?"

"Quirrell made a deal with a homicidal dark wizard for power and tried to strangle Harry, it didn't work out because of the protection spell his mother used," Hermione explained, not wanting her to get the wrong idea.

"In other words, self defense?" River asked as she walked through the portal, not particularly worried about Harry wanting to kill some of his teachers, mostly because they'd sounded a bit suspect when he'd talked about Hogwarts.

"Yes," Hermione stated.

"Actually, Hermione set Snape on fire in first year so that sort of counts as attempted murder and sending Umbridge into the forest should have gotten her killed," Harry mused.

"Snape wasn't incompetent and he had the flames out in a couple of seconds," Hermione argued. "As for Umbridge, I was just expecting the centaurs to shoot her a couple of times before she activated a portkey, nothing that should have resulted in her death."

'Liar,' Harry thought, fairly sure she hadn't misjudged the centaurs that much. "We caught Crouch, so that sort of counts."

"Turning people into the authorities when they deserve it isn't murder," Hermione argued.

"What happened to Lockhart and what did Umbridge do?" Fred asked.

"He had his memory wiped because he used a broken wand when he tried to wipe our memories because he wanted to claim credit for killing a monster," Harry explained. "He'd already done it dozens of times, he stole credit for just about everything in his books that he didn't make up out of whole cloth."

"Umbridge was a sadistic bitch that didn't want to actually teach the students how to defend themselves and used cursed quills to carve lines into people's skins because she could," Hermione explained.

"And Snape?" Fred asked.

Harry shrugged. "He hated my father and he hated children, he shouldn't have been a teacher."

"He made a decent Defense Against the Arts teacher and a horrible Potions instructor, probably because of his natural talent for potions," Hermione explained.

Fred nodded, thinking of some of her old professors. "I've met people like that."

"Carpet?" Jade cut in, having already discussed the books with Willow.

Harry pulled his flying carpet out of his inventory and unrolled it with a flourish. "Take a look."

“Does this mean you actually found a chalice of eternal youth?” Ruby asked in disbelief when Harry pulled a golden chalice out of thin air.

Harry placed the chalice on the table. “It’s also always full and tastes like really high quality grape juice.”

“Aren’t we pretty much ageless, being demons?” Jade asked.

Ruby nodded. “Pretty much is not the same as definitely,” she told her sister before taking a drink. “I don’t want any sagging in the girls when we hit the thousand year mark or however that works, plus now we can ignore aging curses.”

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Jade said, taking a drink herself and passing it to Fred who absently took a drink, deep in thought.

Harry accepted the chalice back and set it on the table with a grin.

"Can you enchant a skateboard?" Fred asked hopefully as she walked over so she could look at the carpet.

"Back to the Future?" Hermione asked Fred as Jade rolled off the bed and headed over to check out the flying carpet.

"Exactly," Fred agreed, glad to have someone that got it.

"That was the movie about time travel, right?" Harry asked, remembering some people in school talking about it now that he was thinking about it.

"The second one had flying hoverboards," Fred replied with a grin as she remembered watching the movie as a kid with her parents.

"Right, didn't make the connection," Harry admitted, making a mental note to see if he could watch the series on tape now that he didn't have to worry about the Dursleys screaming at him.

Hermione glanced at the other portal that looked like it opened to a library. "Where does the other portal go?"

"Sunnydale California, the local high school was built over a portal to a hell dimension which snagged Ruby's portal spell," Fred explained.

Hermione glanced between Ruby and Jade. "Can people see the portal?"

Jade laughed as she jumped up on the flying carpet. "Nah, the librarian tossed up a cloaking spell to make the portal look like a door, he didn't want people freaking out about magic."

"That reminds me, do you want to learn-" Harry stopped talking when Buffy walked through the portal with Azure. "Hey."

Buffy glanced between River and Hermione. "Friends of yours?"

"River is my current summoner and this is Hermione," Harry explained, gesturing towards River and Hermione as he said their names. "This is Buffy, she's a vampire slayer."

"You hunt vampires?" Hermione asked suspiciously, thinking about Remus and the ministry's efforts to make sure people saw werewolves and other unfortunate beings as monsters.

Buffy glanced between Hermione and Harry. "Someone has to, vampires are reanimated corpses controlled by homicidal blood demons in my world unlike in your world where they are still people."

"They're monsters," Azure agreed, thinking about the demons they'd killed on patrol.

"What about werewolves?" Hermione asked, not sure how much to trust the people that Harry had barely mentioned, of course they'd mostly just covered their experiences in the dungeon before they got sidetracked playing with alchemy.

"Werewolves are people with a curse," Giles said as he walked through the portal. "As long as they're being careful and aren't trying to spread the curse, we generally leave them alone."

"I don't suppose you have a cure?" Hermione asked hopefully, subconsciously putting more value in Giles' words because he was an adult.

"Not that I know of," Giles admitted as Xander and Willow walked through the portal carrying takeout.

"What did we miss?" Xander asked as he glanced at the new people.

Buffy glanced between Xander and Willow, noticing how close they were standing together, the fact that both of them looked relaxed in a way she rarely saw and the fact that Willow kept giving Jade and Ruby looks, looks that weren't shy and bashful. 'I'll have to ask Willow for details later, I think she got lucky.'

"Harry has a flying carpet," Fred said cheerfully as she walked over to grab her share of the tacos.

"Can we go for a ride?" Xander asked hopefully as he handed Fred one of the bags.

Willow shivered as she thought about flying around on something that wasn't enclosed and didn't have seatbelts. "That sounds dangerous."

"Only if you hit something," Harry replied with a grin.

"Don't forget fun," Xander teased as he set his hand on Willow's butt, causing Buffy's eyes to go wide as she realized that her friends were together. 'Go Will!' she thought, happy for her friends and excited about getting the details or at least some of the details.

Willow smiled as she thought about Aladdin and the scene with the carpet where he offered to show Jasmin the world. 'It's a flying carpet, live a little,' she told herself, tired of being chained by what ifs, insecurities and regrets. "Maybe," she offered, deciding that it would be fine as long as they weren't going particularly fast or high.

"Speaking of dangerous activities, do you want to learn alchemy?" Harry asked, figuring Hermione and Selena could use the help filling the shelves.

"You picked up alchemy?" Willow asked eagerly. 'Best day ever!'

"Correct," Harry replied with a grin as he selected alchemy and spent the mana to teach Willow Alchemy and the Time Twisted Alchemy skill.

"What's the catch?" Willow asked as she glanced over the description of the skills on the translucent popups floating in front of her.

"The catch is that we're trying to fill up an entire alchemy shop, if we provide the skills, recipes and ingredients are you willing to donate a couple of hours to help us fill some shelves?" Harry asked, happy to help and amused by the idea of being a better alchemy teacher than Snape.

"Provided you aren't making anything exceptionally dangerous, we'd be happy to help," Giles said, speaking up before Willow could agree without restrictions and before Buffy could whine about homework.

"Do you have any decent stain removers?" Buffy asked thoughtfully.

Hermione smiled as she thought about one of the recipes she'd picked up from the guild that worked better than any wizarding spell she’d read on the subject. "Yes."

"Sold, when do we start?" Buffy asked cheerfully.

Harry glanced at Fred who was already working on a taco. "I'm not getting between Fred and tacos."

Fred swallowed the bite she was working on. "Good."

Harry spent the mana to share the alchemy skills with everyone. "It's a lot like the blacksmithing skill, just focus on your skill page and you should be able to pull the interface up."

Willow focused and pulled the alchemy skill interface up, finding it easy after her practice with her blacksmithing interface. "I don't have any recipes."

Selena pulled her attention away from Jade and Ruby and stepped through the portal so that she didn't have to raise her voice. "Don't worry about it, once you make something with a recipe you'll have the recipe in your skill's recipe book."

"That's convenient," Buffy replied as she studied the red haired girl that was wearing a loincloth and looked about her age, wondering what type of deal she'd made with Hermione.

"It's certainly better than walking around with a trunk filled with potion books," Selena replied with a grin, thinking about Hermione's description of her bag at Hogwarts.

"We should probably finish eating first," Xander told Willow when she headed for the portal.

"Right," Willow replied as she leaned against the back of a chair by the table and worked on unwrapping one of the tacos while watching Jade and Ruby. 'Best day ever,' she told herself as Xander leaned against her chair with a smile on her face.

'You could cut the sugar with a knife,' Giles thought, making a mental note to thank Ruby and Jade for giving Willow a push. 'About bloody time.'

"Do you have extra?" Hermione asked hopefully.

"Sure," Xander said as he pulled out one of the tacos and tossed it to Hermione. "What was Hogwarts like?" He picked up the chalice. “Who’s juice is this?”

“It refills itself,” Harry told him, “and it makes it so you don’t grow old, go for it."

“Handy and sounds familiar,” Xander said, taking a drink before setting it down.

Giles stared at the golden cup for a moment before carefully picking it up and examining it. “This is…”

“One of the versions from another reality, not the exact version you are thinking of,” Harry told him, not seeing a point in mentioning that it was a copy. “Picked it up from a quest involving Merlin, Lancelot, and a dragon. So yes, I am a little puffed up about it, but no it’s not the cup from either of our realities.”

“But it, it’s still…” Giles said reverently.

“Yes probably,” Harry agreed. “I didn’t ask for the history of it, I was just happy to get ahold of something that wards off old age, which no one likes, and probably heals people better than anything else you could name.”

“It’s also pretty tasty,” Xander offered.

“Pardon me,” Willow said, taking the cup from Giles and taking a long drink.

“Rude much?” Buffy asked, rather amused that Willow was being assertive.

“I’m not getting old and wrinkly while Xander is staying young and hot and muscled and hun-” Willow’s voice was cut off as Xander covered her mouth with his hand.

“We like the idea of not getting gray hair,” Xander said as he pulled Willow against him so he could put an arm around her waist.

'To hell with it,' Giles thought as he lifted the cup out of her grasp while Willow was distracted and took a drink, instantly feeling better than he'd felt in years, with the exception of his wrist which was burning. He sighed in relief as the burning only lasted a few seconds before it stopped. He glanced down at his wrist and smiled when he saw the ink flaking away. "Do you mind if I grab a sample for testing?"

"Knock yourself out," Harry replied, not particularly worried about the chalice as he could always make another one and he doubted Giles would steal it.

"Thank you," Giles replied as he headed back through the portal to the library to grab his coffee cup and an empty water bottle, wanting to test to see if the liquid retained its magic away from the chalice.

Willow watched Giles walk through the portal, wondering how much the elixir would change him and how he'd explain it. "How much younger do you think he'll look?"

"At least a couple of years," Harry said, fairly sure Giles would end up looking in his early to mid twenties given the description of the chalice but not actually sure as the description of the enchantment implied a range.

"Can I give some to my mother?" Buffy asked hopefully, knowing she didn't want to outlive her family.

"I don't see why not," Harry replied, not worried about giving a couple of people immortality.

'Endless years with Angel,' Buffy thought as she picked up the chalice, not sure dying of old age was in the cards but not seeing a reason to pass up the chance of living forever if she could avoid dying. She took a rather long drink then handed the chalice to Azure, feeling a sense of warmth wash over her.

Jade made a mental note to talk to Harry about sharing his curse resistance when she saw a dozen previously concealed curses or spells that she'd missed break as the magic washed through the slayer, burning away the tainted magic and the grunge the hellmouth left on everything.

Azure glanced at Ruby. "Is it safe?"

"Safe enough, we survived," Ruby replied.

Azure took a drink then set the chalice on the table, closed her eyes and savored the taste as she felt warmth washing over her, leaving her feeling calm and refreshed. "Best grape juice I've ever tasted."

Hermione picked the chalice up and took a drink, curious about the taste. "Perfect…" she trailed off as she felt the magic wash over her and she felt a binding that she hadn't even been able to feel fell away. 'What the hell was that?'

Selena shivered as she felt something pulling on part of her that she couldn't identify before it sort of snapped, leaving her unsure why she suddenly felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. "My turn?"

Hermione absently handed Selena the chalice, curious if one of the hexes she'd been hit with in school had snapped or if the basilisk had left some residue. She pulled open her character sheet and glanced at her stats to see if anything had changed. 'Looks fine, probably nothing to worry about.'

Selena took a drink and smiled as she enjoyed the taste of the juice as the warmth washed over her, healing her old injuries and leaving her feeling refreshed. She handed the chalice to Harry. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, let's do some alchemy," Harry replied as he put the chalice on the table for Giles and headed for the alchemy lab to get started.

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