Hermione and the Watch Part 19 (Patreon)

Snape scowled as he watched the other Severus’s legs and left arm wither and then turn to dust as Harry completed the durability ritual, the runic circle flaring with gold flames that turned black. “You’re enjoying this way too much Potter.”

“Probably,” Harry admitted as he pulled out a knife and jabbed it into Snape’s remaining arm only for the blade to skitter off his skin. “It’s certainly an improvement.”

“How long until the other Severus is immune to your method of healing?” Snape asked warily as he glanced around his office that was partially packed up into boxes, there was a small part of him that was going to miss Hogwarts, not the students of course, gods no, but the peace and quiet when only the teachers were around in between school years.

Hermione hit Snape with the most powerful enervate she could then pushed the button on her watch to unpause time, causing Snape to instantly regenerate. She quickly touched the watch to the back of the severed head and paused time again as Snape twitched. “I’m more worried about trying to keep him stunned considering it took hitting him with two overpowered stunners to drop him last time.”

“We should probably quit while we’re ahead,” Harry agreed. He was fairly sure that even Voldemort would need help to stun Snape now that they’d used the ritual on him a couple times.

“Now what?” the severed head asked, deciding to ignore the comment as while it was fairly witty, for a Potter, it had been at his expense.

Hermione glanced over at the stacks of copied books and journals near the door. “Now we head back to the lab and figure out how to connect your hands while Harry puts the other Snape back in his chair.”

“I’m still not sure how you destroyed the dark mark,” Snape complained.

‘We fed him a phoenix heart while you were frozen,’ Hermione thought to herself, still a little annoyed that they hadn’t managed to remove the dark mark themselves. They’d tried burning it off, cutting it off and otherwise destroying it but it had always regenerated or reappeared. Thankfully the mark had been completely absent when Snape had reappeared after being turned to ash. “Trade secret.”

Harry reached down, grabbed Snape by his arms and worked on dragging him back to his desk. “I really need to find a strength ritual or some re’em’s blood, the boost from the thestral just isn’t cutting it, in terms of strength anyway.”

Snape snorted. “If you’d bothered to actually read a real alchemy book on the subject you’d know that the boost from re’em’s blood only lasts a week and that you build up a tolerance to it over time. If it was as easy as drinking the stuff once, re’ems would be everywhere and we’d hand the stuff out like candy or at least the purebloods would.”

“Bastards,” Hermione muttered, as she thought about much the various families were concealing.

“Rituals?” Harry asked, hoping Snape knew of something they could use.

“Nothing you’d want to use, there are rumors that one of Crabbe’s ancestors botched a strength ritual. I’m not willing to risk the side effects for a ‘minor’ boost to my physical strength. The only ritual I know of that isn’t dark magic would leave you looking like a mutated abomination.”

“Mutated abomination?” Hermione asked warily.

Snape smirked. “The ritual basically uses troll blood to magically grow your muscles, the process is unstable and leaves you looking freakish at best because the growth is uneven and unnatural.”

“Could you stabilize it?” Harry asked hopefully.

“You want me to fix a ritual that has been around for over a thousand years?” Snape asked in annoyance. “Get realistic Potter, if there was a better version of the ritual I would already have it.”

“Would you? This is the wizarding world we’re talking about, how many people do you think seriously tried to fix it?” Harry asked as he dropped the other Snape back in his chair.

“What do you mean?” Snape asked, curious if Potter actually had a point in his rambling.

“You’d have to be at least a little insane to come up with the ritual in the first place, right?”

“One would assume or at least unconcerned about your test subjects,” Snape agreed.

“In other words, the typical dark wizard would be looking at them as soldiers or guards. Having them look like abominations would be a feature, right? Would they actually bother ‘fixing’ the ritual?”

Snape scowled as he realized Harry might actually have a point. “It can’t be that easy.”

Harry shrugged. “Why not? By the time someone else found the notes, they’d probably just assume the ritual couldn’t be fixed or maybe they tried and failed. Either way, I doubt they were as good at the dark arts as you are.”

“It’s possible,” Snape admitted as he ran through what he remembered of the ritual. ‘It might be possible to apply the doses more evenly if I borrow a couple ideas from muggle doctors.’ “What do you suggest we use for test subjects, Slytherins?” he asked acerbically.

“Not to start with, too much hassle,” Hermione cut in, fairly sure they’d close the school if a bunch of purebloods started vanishing.

Harry said, “I was thinking garden gnomes to start with. No one is going to care if we blow up a couple dozen garden gnomes trying to perfect the ritual.”

“Refreshingly pragmatic of you,” Snape admitted, knowing that Mrs. Weasley wouldn’t see it that way as she happened to like the damned things or at least that was the only reason he could think of for her keeping them around.

“I’ve had to help Ron degnome a garden, it’s pointless and stupid tossing them over the fence when they’ll just come back after a couple hours. I can understand not wanting to kill them as they’re semi intelligent but sticking them in a box then relocating them elsewhere sounds better than continually tossing them over the fence.”

“There are probably rules against relocating them like that,” Hermione pointed out.

“They’re magical pests which means you can’t legally relocate them like that, just in case muggles see them,” Snape explained.

Harry shrugged. “Either way, we should be able to find plenty of them at the Weasleys and the ministry has security trolls.”

“Sounds good. Was there anything else you wanted us to copy?” Hermione asked.

“No,” Snape muttered, still a bit annoyed that they’d managed to copy his personal library and potions journals without his other version being aware of anything, despite all his protections and copyright charms. “The note you had me write, warning him about the missing mark, should be sufficient to start a bloodbath.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people,” Harry said as he walked over and picked up one of the stacks of books and waited for Hermione to teleport them to the shack.

“Probably not,” Hermione agreed as she walked over and grabbed her own pile of books and journals. She smiled, placed a hand on Harry’s arm and they both vanished in a burst of flames.

“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” Snape grumbled as he ran through what he remembered about the strength boosting ritual.

0o0o0

Snape looked up as someone knocked on his office door. “Yes?”

“Can I have a moment of your time?” Harry asked, not sure he really wanted to have this conversation but knowing that Snape would be risking his life hunting down Death Eaters and that he was a far better person than anyone had ever imagined.

“It’s open,” Snape replied as he worked on packing everything up.

Harry opened the door and stepped into Snape’s office. “I wanted to wish you luck with the Death Eaters, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. I may be the ‘chosen one’ according to Voldemort and Dumbledore, but it looks like other hands than mine are going to be doing the heavy lifting on this one, even if you never get the recognition you deserve, just know that I admire and respect you.”

“Hands?” Snape asked, flashing back to the prophecy that had started the mess as Harry turned and left. 

0o0o0

“George, have you noticed Ron scowling at us lately?” George asked in a stage whisper as he helped himself to a chicken leg.

Fred glanced at the staff table where Tonks was sitting then over at Ron. “Sorry Fred, I can’t say I have, too busy looking at the attractive new Defense teacher.”

Tonks smirked slightly as she continued eating, knowing the twins were just messing around.

“Come off it, I know you’re the one that cursed Filch’s cat to curse like a sailor,” Ron complained.

George shook his head. “It was brilliant work and I’d love to know who gave him the ability to talk but it wasn’t us, we’ve been too busy with potions.” He glanced over at Dumbledore who was having a whispered conversion with McGonagall.

“Back me up here Hermione, do you know anyone else that could have done it?” Ron demanded.

Hermione finished chewing her bite of salad. “Maybe Dumbledore thought we needed a distraction after Umbridge or Flitwick decided to upgrade the cat so he could give us extra credit if we could figure out which charms he used.”

Flitwick laughed. “While that is a decent theory Miss Granger, I assure you I’m just as confused as the rest of the students.”

Dumbledore smiled, having checked Mrs. Norris over fairly well to make sure she wasn’t a threat. “Magic is a wonderful and sometimes terrible thing but no, I wasn’t testing intelligence boosting potions on the cat.”

Harry tried not to laugh as the thankfully light hearted discussion continued about how Filch’s cat might have gained the ability to talk. He was just glad that the cat hadn’t exploded when he’d used the hag ritual on her with a jarvey heart and tongue. He figured he’d wait another two days to make sure she was still stable then use the ritual on Ron’s owl with a phoenix heart as a last test before using it on Hedwig.

Of course, giving Hedwig the powers of a phoenix was just the first step, there was no guarantee that she’d be able to reach his parents or that she’d be able to bring a letter back. Even if she could, he had no idea what he was supposed to tell his parents. He’d been bouncing ideas around in his head for the last couple days and hadn’t come up with anything. ‘I’ll just have to ask Hermione.’

“I still think it’s the twins,” Ron grumbled as he went back to putting more food on his plate.

Tonks clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention as the discussion started to get a bit heated and the students started pointing fingers. “Don’t worry, either the cat will return to normal in a couple days or we’ll get used to it. It’s no worse than having a talking parrot flying around screaming about students being out of bounds.”

“At least she can’t fly,” Hermione said as she refilled her glass of apple juice.

“Yet,” Flitwick said, looking forward to finding the person responsible for Mrs. Norris’s ability to talk. He was torn between giving them detention and giving them points for a brilliant piece of magic.

Harry grinned at Hermione then went back to eating, knowing that he’d be up late working on the strength boosting ritual with Snape’s head. He was fairly sure they’d figured out what caused the garden gnomes to explode after puffing up like a pro wrestler on steroids but he wanted to make sure before he ran some human trials.

0o0o0

Harry scowled as he looked at the small pile of ash that used to be Hedwig. “I still think we should have tested things on Pig first.”

“Even if everything had worked perfectly, Pigwidgeon would have given the game away by teleporting around in excitement,” Hermione pointed out as she put her thumb on the stopwatch button. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be…” Harry trailed off as Hermione pushed the button and time unfroze. His sigh of relief as Hedwig reappeared completely unhurt turned into a pained gurgle as she burst into flames a second later. He barely managed to avoid screaming as Hedwig was reduced to ash and reappeared as a small white baby phoenix with blue highlights on her wings. “Hedwig?” he asked hopefully.

Hedwig looked up at Harry, looked down at her wings in amazement then chirped. 

“I’ll take that for a yes,” Harry said in relief as he carefully picked the phoenix up and studied her new form. “Congrats Hedwig you are now one of the most noble creatures on the planet and are basically immortal. I can’t tell you how many dark lords wish they were you right now. You can tank a killing curse easy.”

“There must have been too much magic for her old form to contain,” Hermione mused, more than a little shocked that Hedwig had apparently turned into a phoenix.

“Are we going to turn into phoenixes if we die?” Harry asked absently as he glanced toward the owlery. “There’s no way she can stay in the owlery without someone noticing the change.”

Hermione reached over and touched Hedwig with the watch then froze time. “We’ll just have to leave her with Sirius and visit often or the girls.”

“How long do you think it will take her to get large enough to take a letter?” Harry asked then winced slightly as Hedwig nipped him for implying that she couldn’t deliver a letter.

“I’d give it another couple days. Have you figured out what you’re going to say?”

“Basically, hello and that I just found out about them and that I’d love to hear from them…” he trailed off as he noticed the look on Hermione’s face. “What?”

Hermione shook her head. “They haven’t seen you in close to fourteen years, I don’t think a ‘Hello I heard you might still be alive’ letter is going to cut it.”

“What do you suggest?” Harry asked, not exactly having a lot of experience writing letters to adults other than Sirius.

“Pictures would be good, maybe stories of some of our saner adventures together?” Hermione offered, not really sure what to tell them either.

“Pictures should be easy enough, I’ll just ask Colin.”

“That’s usually the person I talk to when I need to send my parents a picture,” Hermione agreed as she put her stopwatch in her pocket and pulled out a bag for the phoenix ash. “You’ll probably have a couple days to collect everything before Hedwig is large enough to teleport there.”

“You’ll help, right?” Harry asked hopefully.

“Sure, it’s not like we don’t have extra time,” Hermione reminded him as she worked on collecting the ash.

0o0o0

Tonk glanced up as the clock chimed. “That’s it for today, make sure you do your reading for the weekend, class dismissed.”

“Lunch,” Ron said as he grabbed his bag and hurried toward the door. 

“We’ll catch up,” Harry muttered as he watched Ron leave. ‘You’re going to end up bigger than Dudders.’

“At least some things never change,” Hermione whispered as she worked on putting her notes and book back in her bag.

Tonks grinned as she watched the students leave the classroom, at least most of them weren’t rushing out of her classroom like the hounds of hell were after them. She smiled at Harry as he walked over to her desk. “Having fun so far?”

“It’s certainly better than Umbridge, Quirrel, and Lockhart’s classes and you’re certainly better looking than Remus and Mad Eye,” Harry replied with a grin.

“I should hope so,” Tonks replied with a smirk as her face changed to resemble Moody’s face. “I don’t think I could sell the look nearly as well as he can.”

“Yeah, probably just as well,” Harry replied with amusement as Tonks let her face return to normal.

“Are you done flirting with our attractive and yet unavailable Defense teacher?” Hermione asked with amusement as she walked over.

“Never,” Harry replied dramatically then shrugged. “Or at least not until she asks me to stop.” He looked at Tonks with puppy dog eyes. “You’re not going to crush my fragile hopes and dreams are you?”

Tonks laughed as she glanced between Hermione and Harry, glad that Harry was actually having fun, which was a nice change from the summer. “Wouldn’t dream of it, just remember there are rules and so your quest is doomed while I’m a teacher in these halls.”

“Ah but I’m the master of impossible things,” Harry teased. “What was it Luna said, ‘Seven impossible things before breakfast?”

“Alice in Wonderland,” Hermione replied.

“Seven impossible things?” Tonks mused. “Nah, I’m not greedy, I’d do anything and everything you want for a weekend if you can cure lycanthropy.” She doubted he’d be able to do anything but having him look into things might shine some light on some of the stupid laws the wizards had put in place. ”Is that impossible enough for you?”

“One person or everyone?” Hermione asked, thinking about the hag ritual they’d been planning to use on Remus anyways. She was reasonably sure using a phoenix or unicorn heart would burn the disease out of his body. “Tracking down everyone with the disease to cure them could take decades and we’d never actually know if we got everyone.”

“Fair enough, if you can cure Remus, I’ll do anything that you want for an entire weekend that won’t get me a stay in Azkaban,” she replied with amusement, knowing that if they actually managed to cure Remus it would be years down the line. Besides, knowing Hermione they’d end up looking into the various anti-werewolf laws and that was a better project for her than trying to free house elves that didn’t want to be free.

“Deal,” Harry agreed quickly. “The next full moon is the eighth, he should be cured by then.”

“You’re that sure of yourself, eh?” Tonks asked with amusement knowing people had been trying to cure lycanthropy for centuries without any luck. “What do I get if you can’t cure him?”

“What do you want?” Hermione asked curious what Tonks would ask for.

“How about help looking into the various anti-werewolf laws to see if we can get some of them revoked? From what I hear, you did an excellent job with Buckbeak’s defense.” She grinned, proud of having gotten one over on the brilliant witch.

“Deal,” Hermione agreed, not seeing a problem with helping Tonks look up a bunch of corrupt laws so they could get them revoked. At least this time Fudge wouldn’t be in a position to screw up her case.

“In that case, best of luck, you’ll need it,” Tonks said. She would have felt guilty about taking advantage of Harry and Hermione but the grin on Hermione’s face wiped away the guilt as obviously they both knew it was a hopeless task and were just having fun with her while planning on helping their friend.

“Thanks, now if you’ll excuse us, we should get to lunch before Ron eats it all,” Harry said as he headed for the door.

“Don’t worry, we’ll help him one way or another,” Hermione assured her then turned and left.

“Hopefully,” Tonks agreed. ‘At least I’ll get some help looking through those stupid legal codes.’

0o0o0

Harry frowned as he watched Snape’s hand crawl over the table far faster than it had any right to, jump the five feet to the piano, crawl down it like a spider and then start playing it. “There is something a bit disturbing about that.”

“You’ve never watched the Addams Family, have you?” Selena asked absently as she worked on braiding the other Selena’s hair. 

Harry turned to look at Selena who was sitting on the couch with ‘her’ severed head in her lap. “I caught part of an episode at Mrs. Figg’s house once but the Dursleys aren’t big on anything freakish so not really.”

Selena’s severed head spoke up, “Yeah, the Addams Family certainly counts as unusual, unlike the rest of us.”

“The worst part is, I’m not sure if she’s joking,” Snape complained as he worked on playing the piano to test his hand’s range of motion. He was looking forward to being able to turn the pages on his journals and notes rather than having to ask for help.

Hermione winced as she listened to the tortured sounds coming from the piano. “That’s enough, we obviously need to fix your fingers or your piano skills.”

Snape’s hand twisted around and made a rude gesture toward Hermione, jumped off the piano, skittered across the ground, and climbed up the table leg as he replied, “The hand works fine, playing the piano just isn’t one of my skills.”

Selena’s severed head giggled. “This is going to be awesome!”

“I’m looking forward to seeing how many hands I can control at once,” Harry said as he watched Snape’s hand scramble up onto the table. 

“You’ll probably run into a problem with multitasking eventually, but we should be able to manage a couple of extra hands now that we figured out how to link everything together,” Hermione mused as she made some notes in her journal. “We should probably test the charmed gloves next then we can feed the mutated gnomes to Filch and see what the effects are.”

“You do realize he was only half serious about locking students up in chains, right?” Snape asked, trying to figure out why they disliked the caretaker enough to test dangerous experiments on.

“Half?” Harry asked sarcastically.

“A quarter?” Snape asked after a moment’s consideration. “Can you really blame him? He’s spent the last couple decades cleaning up after wizards, wishing he had magic while being sneered at by those that look down on squibs or servants and he was both.”

“I’d be more than a bit grumpy about not having magic,” Selena agreed.

Harry winced as he realized Snape had a point. “I think I would have looked into alternate work personally but I can see where that might cause some bitterness…” he trailed off as Hedwig appeared in a burst of fire over the table carrying a letter. He was just glad that she’d grown up over the last couple days so she didn’t look like a hatchling anymore. “From Sirius?”

Hedwig let out an affirmative chirp as she dropped the letter in front of Harry then flew over to her perch.

Harry opened the letter and smirked as he scanned Sirius’s rant about us finding a phoenix. “Looks like it worked though he’s still freaking out that we found a white phoenix.”

“At least we know she can flash teleport to Sirius.” Hermione smiled at Hedwig. “Are you up for finding Harry’s mum?”

Hedwig took a drink of water then flew over to the table.

“I’ll take that for a yes,” Harry said as he handed Hedwig the envelope they’d stuffed the pictures and letter in. “Take this to my Mum or Dad. Go ahead and wait for a response.”

Hedwig nodded then carefully picked up the envelope with her talons and flame teleported.

“Let’s hope this works,” Snape whispered under his breath, wanting to write to Lilly as well, and perhaps send a howler or two to James.

“We should probably test the gloves next,” Hermione suggested, trying to distract Harry from worrying about the letter.

“Good idea,” Harry agreed, glad to have something else to concentrate on.