Dungeon Myst Part 34 (Patreon)

"Can I help you?" Xenophilius Lovegood asked as he opened the front door and saw the red haired young woman standing in front of the door holding an ornately carved wooden door in its own frame.

Michelle Rosenberg forced herself to smile at the blond man that was wearing eye searing yellow robes, fairly sure that grabbing a random journalist or newspaper editor would have been easier. "My name is Michelle Rosenberg, I represent a magical school that is trying to start a newspaper. Considering the bankrupt morals and ethics of the Daily Prophet, I was hoping that I could talk you into doing a lecture on running a magazine or helping us get started. We'd be happy to generously compensate you for your time."

"New school?" Xenophilius asked, surprised since he hadn't heard anything about someone building a new school.

"The Shadow School of Fey Delights, we teach Alchemy, Enchanting, Charms, Dancing, Defense and various muggle subjects such as Math, Science and English to list just a couple of the subjects that we teach."

Xenophilius sighed. "I'd like to help but my daughter has a friend over, I don't want to leave them alone."

"We offer summer classes, they're more than welcome to take a couple of classes while you help us figure out what we need to get our newspaper up and running," Michelle offered, curious what Luna and Ginny were like in person and amused at the idea of stealing them from Hogwarts. "It's located on a flying island in the tropics, worst case, you waste a couple of hours then go home and you have a story for the Quibbler."

"How would we get there?" Xenophilius asked, rather tempted by the idea of writing a story for his magazine before the Prophet heard about it.

Michelle gestured at the door she was holding so that it wouldn't fall over. "You just step through the door, it's like a vanishing cabinet."

"Let me ask my daughter." Xenophilius shut the door and headed for his daughter's room, figuring a change of scenery might help and Ginny would probably appreciate a chance to get away from Molly for a bit, especially since she was upset that she couldn't go to Hogwarts with her siblings leaving her as the only Weasley sibling at home.

'At least no one will believe him if he publishes a story about the school,' Michelle thought with amusement, making a mental note to hit him with a minor confusion charm so that he didn't object to the naked people wandering around.

0o0o0

"Do you think the designer of the binder was a sadist or just lazy?" Sabrina asked as she studied the schematic for an object that would cause people to reduce their max lifespan by half each time they swore an oath on it.

Myst pulled his attention away from the boxes filled with magical items that were in the middle of the new Enchanting classroom and looked at Sabrina. "No clue."

"You shouldn't attribute to malice what stupidity fits," Willow pointed out, not taking her eyes off the magical items she was sorting.

"It can be both," Xander disagreed as he carefully set a mundane if well carved ivory figurine in the box of stuff to enchant since it wasn't magical.

"They didn't have a system and the side effects might not have shown up for a couple of decades and why worry about fixing things when you can just remove the oaths and get everything back in case they made a mistake?" Myst said, not actually sure if it was intentional or just an accident.

"It just seems sloppy," Sabrina complained as she picked up one of the dark purple crystal rods that she'd picked up from the miners and enchanted it to bind channelers without cutting their lifespan or giving them an 'ageless' look. She tossed the newly enchanted rod to Myst. "One replacement Oath Rod, no side effects."

"Thanks," Myst replied as he dropped the rod into his Enchanting box and hit the button to safely reverse engineer it, wanting to make sure he had the pattern and that the rod did what she claimed. "This should make dealing with the Tower and the corrupt idiots in the Blight a hell of a lot easier."

"I'm still surprised that you're not just ripping out their magic and giving it to someone that won't stab you in the back," Sabrina said as she grabbed the next item on her list that she wanted to duplicate, tossed it into her Enchanting box and hit the button to reverse engineer it.

"Most of the Aes Sedai are just annoying, that's not a valid reason to kill people," Myst replied as he checked the new schematic to make sure that everything worked. "We'll probably end up killing most of the corrupted cultists unless the magic girls can purify them."

"It's worth a try," Willow said, thinking about Amy's mother and wondering if hitting her with a bunch of purification blasts would have helped keep her from going insane.

Xander glanced at the ornate metal box that didn't show any sign of rust or damage that he'd moved away from the rest of the boxes. "Have you figured out what you're going to do with the stasis box?"

"Not really, there's a chance that it contains shadowspawn that can read minds, of course there's a decent chance that it also contains treasures or magic users locked in stasis that could help us," Myst replied, not sure what to do with it.

Sabrina glanced at the enchantment that created magical armor then pulled the gold bracelet set with gemstones out of her Enchanting box and set it on the table. "Do you honestly think the forsaken would have kept the zomara around if the Dark One could use them to read their minds?"

Myst considered the question for a couple of seconds then shrugged. "Not particularly but I don't really want to take the chance."

"Especially since we can have someone that doesn't know anything about the series open the box in a dungeon," Xander suggested, not seeing a point in taking a risk when an extra ten minutes would let them avoid the problem.

"I'm good with that," Myst agreed as the door opened and Michelle walked in with a familiar looking man in a set of eye searingly bright yellow robes, a red haired girl that was probably nine or ten, and a familiar blonde girl that looked like a younger version of the actress that played Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies. "Hello?"

"I found Xenophilius, he agreed to help set up the newspaper," Michelle said cheerfully, happy about handing him off to someone else so she could escape his robes.

"Excellent, pleased to meet you, I'm Myst," Myst offered as he walked over and stuck his hand out so that he could shake hands with Luna's father.

"Nice to meet you," Xenophilius replied as he shook Myst's hand. "Where do you want to set things up?"

"I have a classroom set up, we should probably head over there and you can give us a short lecture about running a newspaper, just accept the temporary teaching assignment." Myst sent Xenophilius an invite to teach in the Naturalist Newspaper classroom.

Xenophilius blinked a couple of times when a transparent blue window appeared in front of him asking if he wanted to teach a class then reached out and tapped yes. "I'd be delighted."

Michelle turned to look at Luna and Ginny. "If you don't want to stay for the lecture, we have ice cream in the student store."

"Do you need help setting up?" Luna asked her father.

"I should be fine, go get some ice cream," Xenophilius told her with a smile.

"Let's go," Michelle said as she left, happy to get away from the annoyingly bright robes.

"Do you have enough room for one more?" Willow asked, interested in the newspaper.

"Sure." Myst turned to look at Sabrina. "I'll be back in a bit."

"Have fun, I'll give you a summary of what I found," Sabrina assured him, looking forward to running a bunch of tests on the strange magic items.

"Thanks." Myst turned and walked out of the classroom. 'I wonder if his 'fashion sense' counts as a negative trait,' he mused as he headed for the classroom, doing his best to ignore the urge to set the man's robes on fire.

0o0o0

Harry smiled as he walked back over to where Sirius was talking with Nymphadora, rather amused that a thirty percent boost to her experience had been enough to get her to strip, though the heat of the classroom might have contributed. He sat down at the table with his chocolate sundae. "What did you think about the class?"

"Crazy," Sirius admitted, thinking about the hour they'd spent tossing every light producing spell they knew onto various objects so the students could reverse engineer the charms and turn them into permanent enchantments.

"Which part?" Hermione asked, curious about his thoughts and how the classes compared to classes at Hogwarts.

"Yes," Sirius offered as he took another spoonful of ice cream and chocolate out of his sundae.

Harry glanced at Nymphadora, doing his best not to stare at her breasts. "What do you think?"

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a teacher willingly arranging extra classes, just because a student asked her a question during her office hours," Nymphadora admitted, finding Julia's enthusiasm and helpfulness the strangest part of the school.

"No extra lessons at Hogwarts?" Hermione asked.

Sirius shook his head. "McGonagall gave us a couple of dance lessons our sixth year, but that was mostly so we didn't embarrass her at the school dance."

Hermione glanced between Sirius and Nymphadora. "What if you had questions about the lesson?"

"If it wasn't something they could explain in a couple of minutes they'd usually just point you at a book," Sirius replied with a shrug.

"Flitwick usually taught us extra spells if you could catch him on a day when he didn't have papers to grade, but our Potions teacher was horrible," Nymphadora complained, wishing she'd had a better teacher.

"What was wrong with Slughorn?" Sirius asked, surprised that anyone would call him a horrible teacher, despite his tendency to schmooze everyone.

"Slughorn retired a couple of years before I started, Severus Snape took over," Nymphadora explained.

"Dumbledore must have lost his mind," Sirius grumbled, not sure why anyone would willingly inflict Snivellus on children.

"Why?" Hermione asked.

"Snape wasn't the most pleasant of people, I doubt things have changed all that much over the last ten years," Sirius explained.

"Not really, basically just tossed the instructions up on the board then insulted everyone that couldn't follow what he considered simple instructions," Nymphadora admitted. "We got pretty good at reading ahead so we could figure out what we needed to do."

"That's horrible," Hermione complained.

"Not to mention dangerous," Harry added, thinking about the various potions he knew that could explode or turn into toxic sludge if you screwed up a step because you didn't know what you were doing.

Hermione shook her head, wondering why someone would hire a bad teacher. "Looks like we made the right choice."

"Yep," Harry agreed as he dug into his sundae.

"Makes me wish I could take some classes," Sirius admitted, knowing he was going to have to do something to knock the dust off his skills.

"No reason you can't," Harry told him after finishing his bite of ice cream and chocolate.

"I'm old?" Sirius asked.

Harry shrugged. "So is Petunia and she's taking classes with the gremlins."

"Why is she taking classes with the gremlins?" Nymphadora asked, glad that Petunia had left for a class since she'd been strangely quiet and seemed to put Sirius on edge.

"Officially? The classes are designed for people that have less magic and Petunia doesn't have a lot of magic. Unofficially, most of the gremlins are annoying little shits and the less I have to deal with my aunt, the better," Harry explained.

Sirius sighed as he thought about some of Lily's stories of Petunia. "Makes sense, not having magic broke her heart. I'm surprised that she has enough magic to take classes."

"Same," Harry agreed as he waved at Lara al'Vere when he noticed her looking around for a place to sit. "Lara, can you break a couple of curses?"

"Sure, what do you need?" Lara replied as she walked over and set her sundae on the table in front of an empty seat, happy to get more experience for her curse breaking skills.

Harry gestured towards Sirius and Nymphadora. "They've got a bunch of curses that they need breaking."

"Give me a second," Lara replied as she gestured and hit Nymphadora with a purification spell then a curse breaking spell then did the same to Sirius, causing a wall of alerts to appear on their HUD about the broken curses. "Did that get everything?"

"Thank you," Nymphadora blurted out as she checked her sheet to make sure that all of the curses were gone, feeling strangely energetic and content.

Sirius blinked a couple of times then glanced over the rather extensive list of curses that the girl's spells had broken, feeling better than he'd felt in years and completely horrified by the sheer number of curses that he'd accumulated over the years now that he wasn't cursed and could think straight. "I still have three negative traits but that dealt with all of the curses."

Nymphadora smiled when she checked her stats and realized that her agility had jumped up to twelve. "I'm good, my agility is even five points higher!"

"Nice. Which traits?" Harry asked Sirius.

"Malnourished, Haunted, and Prankster," Sirius replied with a shrug, not sure why being a prankster was a bad thing. "The healers gave me some potions that should fix the malnourished trait and the haunted trait should fade in a couple of months, according to the timer on the icon."

"That's good," Laura said as she sat down and started working on eating her ice cream, wanting to take advantage of the free ice cream before they started charging.

"Why is being a prankster a negative trait?" Dawn asked from the next table, reminding the group that there were a bunch of people close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation.

Sirius turned to look at the pair of twins that had been in the enchanting class that he'd helped with. "No clue."

Thea finished her last bite of ice cream. "Have you tried tapping the icon on your sheet to get a description?"

"No, I had other things to worry about," Sirius replied as he mentally pulled up his character sheet and tapped the icon for the trait, bringing up a description. "It just says that I have a tendency to take my pranks too far and not think of the consequences, which is probably fair," he admitted, thinking about some of the pranks that he'd pulled over the years that had spiraled out of control though only one had actually reached the attempted murder stage.

"Could be worse," Dawn said, thinking about the sadistic gremlins. "Are you planning on taking classes?"

"I was thinking about it. Who do I need to talk to about enrolling?" Sirius asked.

"You're going to want to talk to Myst, he should be in the Spell Creation classroom," Dawn told him, knowing that he'd planned to record a couple of spells.

"He's in the newspaper room with Daddy," Luna Lovegood piped up from where she was sitting, enjoying an ice cream cone with Ginny and Michelle.

Sirius turned to look at the nine or ten year old blonde girl that was sitting next to a red haired girl in hand me down robes that looked about the same age. "Thanks. We'll be back in a couple of minutes."

"Hopefully," Nymphadora said as she followed Sirius, looking forward to taking a bunch of classes that she couldn't take at Hogwarts.

"What type of classes can we take?" Luna asked the group, wanting to grab at least one class while her father was distracted.

Harry smiled when he glanced around and noticed that Ms. Faust was sitting at a table enjoying an ice cream cone. "Ms. Faust, can I talk you into teaching an alchemy class when you're done with your ice cream cone?"

"That depends, can I talk you into helping me with a research project?" Natasha asked with a cheerful grin.

"That depends on the research project," Harry cut in before the girls could agree for him.

Natasha laughed, glad that at least someone had enough common sense to question her motives. "Nothing dangerous, I'm playing with a recipe and I need a couple of new alchemists to test the effectiveness of the changes, they should be perfectly safe and we'll be wearing aprons, gloves, and masks to make sure."

"Works for me," Harry agreed, figuring he could use the time to tweak a luck potion while the rest of the group worked on the easy potion, mostly because he didn't care for the side effects of most of the luck potions he had recipes for.

Natasha smiled as she thought about how much having lab rats… erm assistants would help her research. "Excellent, you have three minutes to finish your ice cream then we'll head to the alchemy lab and get our mad scientist on."

"Wicked!" Ginny exclaimed, looking forward to learning magic.

0o0o0

"You can't just stab people!" Dudley sputtered as he watched the blood around the dead gremlin that had been mouthing off to the teacher.

"Pretty sure I just did," Lisa replied as she walked over and put her boot on Dudley's desk, giving him a nice view up her skirt and distracting him while she spun the knife that she'd used to murder the annoying gremlin.

"Ah…" Dudley trailed off, not sure where he'd been going with his reflexive complaint, because apparently parts of him were finding not just the view but a forceful woman with a sharp knife… attractive.

"Look Bart, if I want to stab my students because they're misbehaving I can, there are absolutely no rules against it, I've checked," Lisa told him.

Dudley closed his mouth and shut up, figuring it was safer that way and because she was still resting her foot on his desk.

"Excellent," Lisa said with a smile as she spun around and walked back over to the chalkboard, ignoring the dead gremlin and letting it serve as a lesson for Bart and the rest of the gremlins. "As I was about to explain before I was rudely interrupted, fractions are important because they help you figure out the split of loot."

"Oh," several of the gremlins said as they stopped fidgeting and started paying attention.

Dudley pulled his attention away from the teacher's butt and tried to focus on the lesson, if only because he didn't want to get stabbed.

"Knowing when people are trying to screw you is important," Lisa replied as she quickly wrote two fractions on the board. "This is one half, this is one fifth," she said as she pointed to each fraction. "Would you rather have a fifth of the loot or half of the loot from a job?"

"Can I fuck you like a redheaded step child if I get it right?" one of the gremlins asked hopefully.

"I don't fuck gremlins, which is another reason to pass the basic classes and advance to something more useful," Lisa told the gremlin as she flipped her dagger into the air and caught the blade, ready to toss it at the gremlin if he gave the wrong answer. "Tell you what, if you get it right, I'll toss the dagger at Bart instead."

"What?!" Dudley sputtered when his brain processed the fact that she was talking about him.

"Five is higher! One fifth!" the gremlin said excitedly.

"Drat, I was hoping he'd get it right," Lisa complained. "While a five is larger than a two, having it in the bottom half of the fraction makes a fifth less than a half which means you'd get less loot, which means you'd have less to spend on alcohol and hookers."

"Shit!" the gremlin complained, quickly writing it down.

"Exactly, you're dividing the top number by the bottom number." Lisa glanced at the tray of cupcakes with the 'Property of teacher, don't touch' note that was sitting on her desk then wrote several more fractions on the board. "Okay, figure out the problems on the board while I get a drink of water."

One of the gremlins waited until Lisa left then darted over to the cupcakes. "Free food!"

Dudley shook his head as the first gremlin got electrocuted and fell to the ground twitching. 'Yeah, I'm not that thick.'

He paused for a second and moved to take the seat next to the gremlin who he was almost positive was going to get stabbed next, just in case she put her leg up on a desk again he’d be in a good position to see it.

His mum had always told him to make sure he got a seat with a good view of the teacher… though he was pretty sure she hadn’t meant it like this, it was still good advice.