Chapter 37
A Pair of Noobs, Some Plans, and Some Animals.
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Mindy looks at Dave and the two seem to be generally annoyed at the answer that they come up with. Flitwick has been a good guy, and while they don't have any real problem hiding things, outright lying to the man doesn't sit well with them.
Luna just looks pleased. While she understands why her new brother and sister would want to keep things under wraps, the reality is that once they are inevitably taken away the only proof they'll have of any of this is a memory of Mindy watching a movie. That's a great resource if it is believed to be genuine, but not only can memories be manipulated but muggles have been doing strange things with moving pictures that they project onto a wall since well before Grindelwald's war. With not one, but two ways that it could have been falsified? The more people that can be convinced before they are gone the better, as far as she is concerned.
Finally, after the most awkward twenty seconds ever, when it looks like Filius is about to simply apologize for asking and leave, Mindy finally speaks.
Dave has been adamant that this is 'her world' and simply steps back with a smirk whenever these kinds of decisions are being made. It's a petty vengeance from the way she left him holding the bag in Half-Life. Unfortunately, it's hard for her to really argue too loudly considering that it made sense when it was her doing it, and it still kinda does.
"Dave, we have got to get better at keeping shit under wraps, this is getting beyond fucking ridiculous."
His look pretty much says it all, and then she turns to her teacher.
"Look, Professor Flitwick? There's a lot we can tell you and even more we can show you. But I need your word that you won't tell anybody or talk to anybody about it aside from the three of us."
Luna breaks in. "And my Daddy. He knows too."
Mindy nods, grimacing a bit. There are getting to be entirely too many people in the know as far as she is concerned.
"Yeah, her Dad knows too."
Filius looks around at the three curiously and taps his lips with the end of his wand a few times as he is thinking about it. Finally, he nods hesitantly.
"As long as you aren't trying to hurt the school or the students, I don't have any kind of problem with not tattling concerning whatever this is. But I won't swear a wizard's oath without hearing it first if that is what you are gearing up for. It's just basic common sense not to put oneself in that kind of position."
Dave snorts in response to this as he sits back down.
"Are you kidding? We're trying to save this place. Or at least keep the death toll to a minimum."
Flitwick's eyes widen a bit, but before he can respond to that, Mindy breaks in.
"Your word, professor. I don't need a wizard's vow, I trust your integrity to keep your word, and..." She pauses for a moment, scowling. "And your intelligence to understand when or if the time comes that you have to break it. But for now, I do need your word."
The half-goblin nods slowly. "Very well. I give my word that as long as it isn't going to result in innocent people or the school itself getting hurt, I'll keep whatever this is to myself. Now, I think you've built this up enough. Whatever it is, I'm sure we can deal with it."
Mindy gives Dave one last look, and when he motions her to continue, she groans in annoyance.
"We're not eleven, professor. We're adults from another dimension that have been conscripted to be trouble-shooters, basically. When we got sent here it just so happens that this world is showcased as fiction in ours, and I've read the books and seen the movies. So we've been learning what we can while trying to keep the worst from happening."
The charms professor was looking interested at first but by this point, he appears disappointed and is obviously assuming they are having him on. Dave breaks in at this point.
"So, last year? I know Hagrid brought the Cerberus and I am guessing that Quirrell supplied the Troll, given the crap he pulled on Halloween. It doesn't take a great leap of faith to assume it was Snape that did the mind game with the potions, and the devil's snare is obviously Sprout. But I never could decide if you were the best candidate for the flying keys or the chessboard." He raises an eyebrow while he pulls the Pensieve out of his inventory.
Flitwick is beginning to pale, but he rallies a bit. "Harry Potter could have told you that. As could Hermione Granger. Ron Weasley, I don't think he made it to the end, but..."
Dave breaks in again as he steps away so Mindy can copy her memory of the first few movies again.
"I could also ask the shade of Voldemort why he was so damn stupid. I mean, he's standing there in front of Dumbledore's stupid mirror trap while possessing Quirrell and basically waits to get caught. It's a mirror, for crying out loud. It's not like it was bolted to the floor, as soon as the idiot realized that the stone was hidden in it, why the hell didn't he just shrink the whole thing down and leave? He literally got caught because he decided it made sense to hang out at the scene of the crime and then monologue when the plucky hero shows up. He might make a nasty 'dark lord' but he's a miserable thief."
The way that the professor is looking completely floored by this gives the game away. Mindy speaks up as she has the first three movies in the Pensieve now.
"Dumbledore didn't tell you about that, did he? About that Riddle cocksucker that decided to swap out for a scary-sounding name? Yeah, Albus's willingness to keep everything to himself is at least half the reason we'd like to keep the great bearded dipshit from getting involved as long as possible."
Dave rolls his eyes at her and then turns back to the teacher in the room. "Granted, he's been a lot better than we expected since we got here. But it doesn't change the fact that he was so concerned with keeping the way Voldemort manages to come back from getting out that he managed to let it happen. We've talked about it and based on some of the things he's pulled? We're pretty sure he'd do his best to obliviate us back into diapers if he had any idea that we even knew what the word 'Horcrux' was." Dave sighs at the look the professor is giving him. Apparently, at some point, Flitwick had learned something about the things. Given his goblin heritage, and the goblins maintaining a thriving business dealing in tomb raiding and old artifacts it makes sense that he wouldn't be completely flat-footed. "And no, that is definitely not what happened with us. We got 'soul blended by some kind of godlike busybodies. Totally not our fault, and the only people that had to die for it was us. They nabbed us after we got taken out in an explosion."
Seeing where things are going with the professor, Mindy shakes her head. "Look, it's what, about seven in the evening right now? How would you like to know a whole lot about what happened last year, could have been happening this year if we weren't trying so fucking hard to prevent it, and what we're hoping won't even come to pass next year because we'll have already wrecked that future altogether. Once you have some idea what the hell we're talking about, then we can discuss this shit. Right now I think all we're managing to do is convince you we need a stay in the mental ward at St. Mungo's. Come on out after the first one and we can chat about it." She frowns. "Unfortunately, since the whole damn place thinks we're eleven we have a curfew."
Filius nods then looks at them curiously. "You know, if you are not trying to pull one over on me it could be worth it to involve your head of house. Not only would she be able to cover for whatever you are doing far better than I can, but another mind on the problem can't hurt if it turns out you are not... Needing that room at Mungo's that you mentioned."
She and Dave look at each other. Dave shrugs.
"Your call, but for what it's worth? The worst that can really happen to us is that we end up getting yanked out of here early. I mean, it'd be pretty inconvenient. But it wouldn't be the end of the world, for us anyway."
Filius looks at them confused, and Dave flops down on the couch they were using as a place to rest between attempts at the spells they were working on. Mindy ends up answering.
"This isn't the first other world we've been sent to." A strangled laugh escapes her throat. A sad and pathetic thing, dying on the vine as it were. "It's actually the fourth since our home dimension. Fifth total. We kinda walk a tightrope where we try to do some good and learn as much as we can before we end up changing too much and they haul us out of here and throw us at some other problem like we're fucking human band-aids for the woes of a world." She stops talking for a moment, and Filius finds himself actually beginning to believe them a bit. The poor girl is sitting down next to Dave, holding her head in one hand and with an expression on her face as though she has been through far more than anyone their age could have possibly experienced.
"Fine, I guess. If you think Sprout can keep her mouth shut, go grab her. We'll be here. But please, don't tell anybody else until you've seen what we have to show you?"
Dave looks up at Mindy and mutters something that Flitwick can't make out. Mindy shrugs.
"Sure, why not? It isn't like we haven't told him every other damn thing." Her voice gets a touch louder. "Professor? Something we haven't mentioned because with how ignorant of muggles magicals seem to be it didn't seem like it would matter, but for the record? We started learning magic for the first time about a week and a half before classes started. If you want a taste of how that happened, press the 'Y' button."
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It's two o'clock in the morning. Flitwick and Sprout are just now coming out of the third movie in the Pensieve, having gone ahead and started the third without speaking to them when they got done with the second and found a pile of sleeping 'Puffs on the couch.
The two look at each other in silence for a few seconds, then seeing that the three are still asleep they move deeper into this huge and strangely designed muggle-looking room that is somehow located in Hogwarts. Finally, when they are fifty or so feet away Flitwick hops up to sit on a box while Sprout leans heavily against another. When she speaks, it is in a whisper.
"Filius? What do we do? If this is true, then there is an innocent man in Azkaban, a murdering servant of You-Know-Who in the Gryffindor dorms, and a book that is destroying the mind of a first-year so it can release a fifty-foot basilisk to terrorize the school and then kill her so it can bring back the nastiest dark lord since Grindelwald. One even worse, in a lot of ways. Never mind that Snape was worse than even we thought and the savior of the wizarding world, now multiple times and apparently due to continuing to do so, is stuck living with people that despise him and treat him terribly."
The half-goblin is looking every one of his years.
"For now? We do nothing."
Sprout is giving him a look that is all but screaming that this answer is not acceptable. Filius continues before she can get too much more upset.
"Pomona, there are still five more movies. Five of them. Plus, we still don't know what they have been planning. They seem to think they can do something about all of this. We owe it to them to hear them out at the very least. Remember the explanation they gave when I brought you up?" She nods but doesn't look any less concerned. "This is the fifth separate world they've done this on, to hear them tell it, and they've been heroes on each. Frankly this whole explanation? Even as ridiculous as it first seems, it does tie up a huge number of loose ends with just how quickly those two are learning. At first, I genuinely thought they had just been heavily trained in the States before they came over and were coasting. But that quickly became obviously false, and now, with all this? Everything is becoming so much clearer."
They hear Mindy's voice from a few feet away, as she pops into view from seemingly nowhere.
"Thanks, Flitwick. Seriously. Means a lot to us."
The two teachers look up and see that Dave is also awake and looking at them, with Luna cuddled up and apparently still dead to the world. Mindy continues.
"And yeah, we do have a few plans. But when you get a little further along in the movies it'll be pretty obvious why we're taking this slow."
Filius puts his Ravenclaw mind to the task and comes up with an answer fairly quickly.
"That book that Ginny Weasley has, it's a Horcrux, isn't it? You need the venom to get rid of any others that fool made. How many?"
Mindy starts walking back to the couch, and they follow with Flitwick pulling his wand and conjuring a second couch for the two of them. Once she's sitting she continues. Her voice low so as to not awaken her foster sister.
"There's a bunch. We know where most of them are, but we're trying to set things up so we can get the most good done we can before we get pulled, and it isn't easy to tell what is going to tip things off. Fortunately, so far it hasn't ever been words, it's always actions. That's why one of the first things we did is give a complete set of these memories to the Lovegood family along with a second Pensieve they can use to get the word out in the event we get pulled before the job is done. But once we have the venom so we can dispose of the things, most of them won't be impossible to get. We'll get the book the day we kill the basilisk, assuming nothing goes horribly wrong. Ravenclaw's Diadem is actually in the castle, we just haven't bothered because the things are dangerous to have around you and we don't have a way to destroy it yet."
She pulls a bottle of chilled water out of her inventory, chugs a third of it, and puts it back. The two teachers look on interested, both considering how something so convenient might be accomplished with magic.
"Marvolo Gaunt's house ring was made into one and Riddle hid that one in the old Gaunt shack. Dumbledore actually finds that one the summer after Harry's fifth year, but he gets ass-plowed by a withering curse trap that Riddle left on it. Technically Snape kills him, but he was already about dead by then anyway. They staged it to get a little more out of Snape's attempts at spying. There's a bunch of other bullshit tied into the stone on that ring, Dumbledore's wand, and Potter's invisibility cloak, but I'll let you work that crap out on your own when you see the movies. There was a time I'd have called it superstitious hogwash, but now? Whatever. Not important to getting rid of the Horcrux, and you'll see it in the movies. Everything has got to be about getting rid of those fucking things, anything else is just a distraction at this stage. If we can get rid of the things none of the rest of it will happen anyway.
Slytherin's locket was supposed to be in a cave somewhere with a retarded number of inferi guarding it and some potion trap thing besides, but that one already got nabbed by Regulus Black. It's in the Black's townhouse in London. I don't think anybody alive but Voldemort and us in the room here even know what it is though, Regulus died getting it out of there. The only other being that even knows it exists is the Black house-elf, and all he knows about it is that Regulus gave him the task to destroy it. Apparently, not being able to complete the last wish of his master has been wrecking the thing's brain for a while, because when you run into him in the fifth movie he's basically an asshole to everybody and he doesn't get any better until they finally destroy the thing."
She shakes her head at Filius.
"It never really gets into your relations with the goblins, but the hardest one to get a hold of in a physical sense is Hufflepuff's cup, and the douche gave it to that bitch Lestrange. Her response to being told to keep it safe was to shove it in her vault in Gringotts. Gonna be honest, that one? Not sure how we are going to get it. Just, after you've seen it in the movie? Maybe don't ever tell the goblins about the way Harry got it done if you don't absolutely have to. Poor fucker has enough problems without that.
Sprout looks at her in confusion. "You said in a physical sense? So there is easy to get but hard to destroy or something?"
Dave sighs. "There's one hiding behind Harry's scar, Professor. That right there, that tidbit, is about ninety percent of why Dumbledore is such a pain to deal with we think. He's trying somehow to set things up to save Potter by getting Voldemort to nail him with a killing curse and destroy his own soul piece. It's a one in a million shot, but it's all he can think of."
Mindy nods as the two teachers are staring at each other as if hoping the other will have something intelligent to say as the horror of what Albus must be going through floods their minds.
"Honestly? If we have gotten rid of all the others and we still haven't been yanked out of here..." She rolls her eyes. "And nobody's managed to kill us yet, our tentative plan is to just cut the damn thing off of him, dump him in front of Pomfrey, and hope for the best. That has to be a better idea than sucking a killing curse and praying for divine intervention, anyway."
Flitwick shakes his head, trying to wrap his mind around the avalanche of bad tidings. After a few seconds, he decides the best thing do is to concentrate on the here and now.
"How... How are you planning to kill the basilisk?"
Mindy looks at Dave. "Give 'em the lowdown, boy scout."
After explaining his idea, Flitwick nods but is frowning thoughtfully as he does so.
"I suppose it is just as well we learned of this first, that wouldn't have worked. At least not using the gate. Albus would know immediately if the gate was breached, it's part of the ward scheme I'm sure. Perimeter protection is a standard, even when these wards were constructed."
Mindy yawns, which sets off everybody else.
"Yeah, we were a little concerned about that. But the only two ways we know to destroy the stupid Horcrux are that venom and fiendfyre. Killing curse maybe, that worked on Harry but we have no idea if it would work on something that wasn't actually alive. Point being, we need the basilisk dead and we need to not get killed by the eyes of the damn thing, but we still need the head largely in one piece."
Flitwick rubs his eyes and takes in the two students with their sleeping partner.
"I assume that you are avoiding Gryffindor in an effort to not tip off Riddle, which would mean that you are planning to make your move on Halloween?"
At their look, Flitwick nods. "The hat did put me in Ravenclaw for a reason, you know. That being the case, I suggest that the three of you go to bed. We'll continue watching this after dinner this evening. You-Know-Who can be counted on for a flair of the dramatic, and with the entire school in the Great Hall for the feast to make that even more enticing? It would make sense that this book would make its move on the same day that Quirrell did last year with the Troll. Regardless of the memory verifying it, the theater of it all would draw the lunatic in. Assuming that holds true, we have time." Then his eyes harden. "The first weekend after Halloween, I will make a trip to Gringotts. My relations with the bank are not wonderful, but they are far better than your average wizard. I can at least let them know that they have an illegal artifact in one of their vaults. It isn't likely they will offer any other assistance. But I assure you that even if they don't precisely believe me they will check it out, and the goblins are quite capable of destroying such a thing." He chuckles. "The fines levied for putting something like that in a vault is truly beyond the reckoning of any mere mortal. I suspect that if Lestrange actually knew what was likely to happen to her vault over this, she'd have never done it. That will handle at least one without getting our own hands dirty. Now off with you."
After Dave collects the Pensieve, they are indeed 'off.'
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"We'll have to stay out of view of the astronomy tower, I think there is a class tonight," Luna says as the three sneak out of the RoR while Flitwick and Sprout are watching the last of the movies.
Nodding absently, Mindy leads them towards one of the side doors to the school.
It's a full moon tonight, and according to the wizarding wireless they are expecting a thunderstorm of epic proportions in just two days' time. Mindy and Luna are pretty excited about finally getting in touch with their inner animals.
Dave mostly is just thrilled about getting this damn leaf out of his mouth finally.
In the end, after all the worry and all the prep, including at one point having broken into the potions classroom so they could do the beginning work on the potion they would be finishing tonight? The actual deed was more than a little anticlimactic. Cancel the sticking charm, spit in the leaf, and then add a few other bits that the solution called for. After that, it just can't be disturbed too much before they use a lightning storm to drink the things and finish the process. At that point, at least according to the book they bought, it's all about practicing the transformation until it's second nature. But all the hard and ridiculously time-consuming parts will be done.
Dave and Mindy place theirs in their inventory, while Luna opts to hide hers at the bottom of her trunk after turning down Mindy's offer to store it.
Her reasoning being that if the two get 'yanked' as they so often put it, she really didn't want to have to start over. They are on their way back to the castle when Dave smirks, barely visible in the light of the moon.
"Think we should invite Flitwick down for the storm? I think he'd get a kick out of it."
Luna giggles, while Mindy looks thoughtful, but ultimately shakes her head.
"If you really want to I guess I'm not that concerned about it. But I'd rather keep this between us if we can."
After a quick stop by the dorm, so Luna can drop off her potion, the three slowly creep their way back up the seven floors to the RoR, keeping an eye on the mini-map as they do. The last thing they need is for the caretaker Filch or his damn cat to find them wandering around. It's only a few minutes after curfew, but that wouldn't stop the old bastard from giving them a hard time about it if they didn't have a teacher escort.
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The two professors pop out of the Pensieve, the last movie watched, and see that Dave and Mindy are seemingly in a fight for their lives against strange, two-legged creatures with enormous mouths. Not only that, but there is a wide band of yellow around the couches that they have been using, and Luna is sitting on their traditional spot looking quite disgruntled. When she sees the teachers moving about, she perks up some.
"Oh, hello professors. Finally done?"
Flitwick is pulling his wand in a panic. "What in the world is going on here?!"
Luna's expressive eyes open wide and she stifles a giggle. "Oh, that?" She motions vaguely to the two gamers. "This is just the training they are doing to try to get combat worthy with their wands. They are in no danger, if they get touched by one it merely fades away. But then you have to come over and spend time in the penalty box."
She pouts, just a tiny little bit, and they note that she is slowly counting with her fingers.
"I still have three and a half minutes before I can get back into it. I got overwhelmed in a corner."
Flitwick and Sprout gaze in astonishment at just what these two are actually capable of. Thirty and forty-foot leaps from a standing start spells flying out as they go and moving with a grace and speed that they had never shown on the club days. They are not sure how long they are watching this endless assault, but eventually, they see Dave get tagged and turn to make his way toward them.
"Dang. On your own, Mindy."
They faintly hear an expression of amusement from the near blur that is McReady as the entire room turns to converge on her.
"We really need to get you quicker, Dave. I swear you're getting worse. Maybe a bikini wax to cut down on drag from all that back hair?"
When Dave sees the teachers are up and about, he calls out.
"Looks like they're ready to talk, Mindy. Shut it down please."
The now hundreds of creeps suddenly fade away en masse, and they can see all of Mindy for the first time without it being a blur they can barely make out. Chest heaving as her lungs bring in fresh oxygen to her aching muscles during her walk back to the sitting area. They had been at it for a solid hour and a half, and she had increased the spawn rate again. Double what it was compared the first night at this point.
"Welcome back. So, any thoughts you want to share now that you are caught up with us?"
Mindy sits and once again pulls out a water bottle. The two teachers are looking at each other. Finally, Sprout speaks up.
"You have a plan for Halloween, but what about Cedric and Sirius? One is set to die in just a couple of years, and the other is languishing in Azkaban. How can we let these things go?"
Mindy shakes her head.
"We're not. But we need that basilisk dead. That has to happen before anything else, we need that venom unless you want to play around with Fiendfyre or one of the unforgivables. Once we have that, a lot of options are real possibilities. But right now we're stuck in a holding pattern. We learn, and train. Teach on the side, and prepare."
Dave perks up. "Hey, Filius. Any luck getting the blade you were talking about?"
The old professor nods hesitantly.
"I did, however as it is a goblin-crafted artifact, it will need to be returned to the nation at some point, and the cost for us to use it is substantial. They wanted a thousand Galleons a month."
Dave shrugs. "That's fine I don't know that I need something like that on a day-to-day basis anyway and I can drop a couple thousand to use it and not feel too bad about it. Should make things a hell of a lot easier."
After having given it some thought Flitwick had offered a potential alternative. A massive stone cutting blade that the goblins designed for expanding their nation under London. One of more than a hundred, actually. Used primarily for making stone blocks out of boulders and shearing smooth the walls of tunnels, it is a ten-foot-wide by six-foot-tall construction that looks not terribly dissimilar to a utility knife blade built to a grand scale. Covered in runes, it is heavily enchanted to work with a control stone that is matched with it, allowing a magical, goblin or otherwise, to move the thing with their mind. Not quickly enough to be generally useful as a weapon, but with enormous strength. He proposed it as a possibility for three reasons. First, it has a rune scheme on it that allows it to shrink to a size that would fit in a pocket and grow to its full size on command. Second, with the stone in hand, it should be extremely easy to set in place, and finally, they shouldn't require any other structure to make it work. Simply dropping the control at the proper time should get the job done, and then using it they ought to be able to quickly move the basilisk out of the way to save Ginny. The blade itself being all but indestructible and heavy enough on its own, now they are just looking for a way to deal with the creature's eyes. They are hoping that it won't even be needed, that they can drop the blade and be done with it. But having a back-up option is simply good sense.
Dave continues, looking thoughtful. "So, seeing the eyes directly will kill you, and seeing them in a reflection will petrify you. Actually seeing them seems like it is required, in any case." He turns to Mindy. "Remember how we got into the tower to kill Breen back on Half-Life?"
Mindy glances his way and then smirks. "You mean just fill the air with so much crap that visibility is six inches and it can't smell anything? That might actually work. We'd need some way to see though, not sure I want to rely entirely on the mini-map for this."
Flitwick speaks up. "There is a spell for temporary echolocation that might be useful here. The Chiroptera Auris charm, also known as the 'bat-ears' charm. Needed it on the circuit occasionally when somebody tried to be clever with darkness spells, smoke, or blinding lights." He sighs in fond remembrance of what was, for him, a simpler time. "The sight picture it gives you isn't the best, and because you are actively creating noise with your magic to make it work in the form of little clicking sounds, you need to be quite light on your feet. But between that and your mapping ability, I would think that it might be just what you need."
Mindy looks at him, interested. "What's the range? And can you cast other stuff while it's up?"
The old dueler nods. "Maybe fifty or sixty feet and still be useful? Enough to reach the far end of a regulation dueling platform, anyway. Beyond fifty you can still make out something, but it isn't nearly as useful as everything starts to become a bit of a blur. And yes, you can cast while it is up, but it isn't exactly the least costly charm there is to maintain. Not the worst by far, but once cast it is best to take advantage quickly and end things if you understand what I am saying. As for the smoke, that is easy enough to do. There are any number of spells for that, though since we have the ability to prepare ahead of time I may brush up on my Ancient Runes a bit and see if I can come up with a rune set that will just do it for you when activated. The less you have to worry about the better, I would think. It is really too bad that we have to keep everything so hushed up. I understand your reasoning, truly. But Babbling, the ancient runes professor? She is at least as much an expert in her chosen field as I am my own. It would be incredibly useful to have her assistance with this entire situation. My skills lend themselves more to action and reaction. Runes and wards tend to be where one goes for planning ahead, and she is a prodigy in the fields."
Then he looks away, annoyed. "Unfortunately, while Sprout could dismiss you from the feast we cannot do so for ourselves without drawing entirely too much attention. For now, let's see if I can have any luck teaching you three a charm before we have to pack it in for the night."
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The thunder crashes down on them as they skulk their way to the lake while buckets of rain fall on them. All three are once again grateful for the warming charms they had covered a couple of weeks ago, or this could easily have been a simply fantastic way to get horrifically ill. The three pull out their potions, and Mindy looks around at them.
"So, who goes first?"
There is a pause. None of them having done this before they have been desperately trying to get their skill in transfiguration and potions up to scratch for this project, basically since they arrived. Largely in the RoR, though by necessity any potion that is going to take more than a few hours has been skipped in the curriculum as the RoR has a nasty habit of shuffling anything left in it to the massive room of trash that Riddle had found.
Assuming that they are still here after Halloween, doing something about that room and the Horcrux it contains will become the top priority.
But for now, Luna pops the cork out of hers and downs it with a cheery smile that lasts until the taste hits her tongue.
She almost seems to melt into the ground, leaving behind a brown and gray rabbit with a pale yellow fringe on the tips of her ears. That she then hops about with the same gleeful abandon as her Patronus gives the other two the encouragement they need, and Mindy follows suit. Becoming a dark brown and black speckled Kestrel with the slightest sheen of purple in her feathers and claws when the lightning flashes across the sky. Then she looks up balefully. Being wet is slightly more annoying as a falcon, something she hadn't really considered before this moment. Rather than try flight just this second, she instead makes an effort to become human again. It isn't the easiest process, but the time spent on meditation before sleep and their fanatical devotion to transfiguration for the last two weeks, plus their gamer learning abilities do see her through. A few moments later, Luna steps back over to them.
"Wet fur is going to take some getting used to." Is her only comment, though the way her nose is wrinkled up a bit really says it all.
Dave looks down at his vial. Then he walks away a few steps from them, pops the cork, and chugs the nasty goop as quickly as possible.
Nothing happens for a good few seconds. Then his body erupts into motion, growing in nearly every dimension as hands and feet are replaced with green-tinged hooves, while a mane sprouts from the back of his head and neck that is far too neon green to be anything natural and his tail does the same.
Mindy looks up at the now huge creature in awe. It's one thing to be next to a mist-like apparition of a Patronus. This? This is probably shy of two tons worth of muscle and bone... But it isn't shy of it by a lot. She can't help the giggle as she steps up to pat him on the neck, barely reaching while standing on her tiptoes.
"Your mane, tail, and hooves are the same color as your Aura. It looks like you've been to the beauty parlor."
The horse that is Dave tilts its head as if considering, and suddenly a green blaze like a bonfire spreads out from him, feet in all directions. His Aura unleashed, it bathes the area in a bright light that is most likely visible for miles or would be without the howling winds and sheets of rain falling on them. Even at that, it is most definitely visible from the castle. Mindy and Luna are looking at the spectacle in awe, and after a few seconds, Mindy's smile becomes outright vicious as she considers the possibilities.
In a panic and not wanting to get caught, he quickly shuts down his aura and concentrates on being human again, which while it isn't easy he does manage within a minute or so.
Unknown to them as they make their way back to the RoR to practice this new skill for a while, he had been seen from the castle by no less than two dozen students who were unable to sleep because of the thunder and were looking out into the storm.
By breakfast, the rumor has spread to the entire school. The ghost horse of Hogwarts. By lunch, one Deputy Head McGonagall has run the recent history of the moon and weather through her head and is on the warpath to discover which of their foolish students decided to take such a risk without a professor at hand.
Sprout and Flitwick, when they hear? Sprout shakes her head in awe combined with horror at what might have happened to three of her 'Puffs, no matter how old the two may claim to be.
Flitwick just starts smiling, and the thought of it carries him for the entire day. He'll get his answers tonight.
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HP HP HP HP HP HP
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Author's Note:
Barring the muse being a truly obnoxious bitch about things, the next chapter should be Halloween.
So, yes. They got their animagus forms. Yes, they can use aura and semblance in those forms. And no, we are not yet completely done with animagus silliness, but the next step is going to be a while, so don't stress on it.
Thanks for reading, and reviews make the world continue to turn. :)