Hermione and the Watch Part 28

Harry glared at the severed head that was translating for the other severed head Hermione was holding. “So you’re telling me that we need to walk five feet to the left then push on the knob that will appear on the stone wall so that a path will open?”

“Fairly sure that’s what he’s saying,” the tour guide’s severed head said with a touch of annoyance. “He’s still a bit hysterical about being a severed head and keeps spouting something about national loyalty.”

“We’re not going to hurt any of the fire crabs,” Hermione assured the severed head.

“He doesn’t believe you, which I don’t really blame him for considering you cut off our fucking heads!” the tour guide shouted.

“He’ll get over it,” Harry lied as he walked forward five feet and looked at the wall. He sighed as over a hundred protrusions that looked like door knobs with strange symbols carved into them pulled themselves out of the wall. “Ask him which knob.”

The tour guide said something in what Harry was guessing was Fijian, then listened to the response. “He says that it’s different for everyone and that you’ll never understand the philosophical principles used for the key.”

Harry rubbed his temples, more than a little annoyed about having to track down a string of people and a translator so they could get to the fire crab enclosure. “Any reason we can’t just demolish the wall?”

The tour guide said something in Fijian then listened to the response. “He said something about folded space and that you’d destroy the enclosure and the fire crabs. His accent is pretty terrible.”

“Of course he did,” Hermione grumbled.

“If he doesn’t help us get into the enclosure so we can grab a couple gems and blood for a ritual then we’ll blast the arch out of spite and mount his head on the wall of an American nightclub with the worst music we can find.”

The tour guide winced. “That’s just cruel.”

“I’ve spent the last three hours tracking people down and putting heads on boards because no one will give me a straight answer, I’m more than a little tired of it!” Harry snapped.

The tour guide explained things to the other head then listened to the response then said some more words before shouting something else.

“Don’t worry, we have all the time in the world Harry,” Hermione assured her boyfriend as the severed heads discussed things.

“I know, it’s just frustrating. One of Fiji’s official languages is English and we had to grab the one caretaker that doesn’t speak it. We should have just grabbed the fire crab in the Magical Menagerie and called it a night.”

“Look on the bright side, we got to see part of the Fijian wizarding world and we’ll have a much better selection of gems this way. Besides, if we quit now, he wins.”

“Point,” Harry muttered as he glared at the annoying caretaker.

The tour guide said, “It’s always the seventh knob on the eighth row unless it looks like a four then it’s the eighth knob on the seventh row unless it has the Japanese symbol for four on it in which case it’s the 7th row and the eighth knob unless that has the symbol for nine on it.”

“Which is?” Harry asked, not particularly fond of riddles at the best of times.

“I’d draw them for you but I don’t have hands,” the tour guide replied sarcastically. “I also don’t know Japanese.”

Hermione tossed the caretaker’s head to Harry then looked through her bag for the tourist guide she’d picked up for traveling the world. She flipped to the section on Japan then looked at the section on language and numbers, something made slightly more complicated by the fact that she could only sort of use her right hand as she was holding the tour guide’s head by his hair. “Found it.”

“Good.” Harry smiled as Hermione walked over and handed him the book. “I wonder if Atlantis has translation magic.”

“Probably not,” Hermione replied as she handed him the book and took the caretaker’s head back, ignoring the severed head’s sputtering.

Harry looked at the bug squiggles for four and nine in the guide book then looked at the wall. “Let’s see, seventh row, eighth knob, right?”

“Eighth row, seventh knob unless you see the symbol for four or nine,” Hermione corrected.

Harry looked at the eighth row then counted over seven. “Looks like it has a four on it.”

“They read right to left rather than left to right in Japan which means it should be the knob two to the left which doesn’t have a four or a nine on it. That’s assuming he didn’t reverse it intentionally.”

“Worst case it kills the crabs.” Harry reached out and grabbed the knob then turned it and pulled the door open revealing a lush looking jungle area with a large pond and hundreds of fire crabs scattered around the area frozen in place. He scowled slightly as the caretaker started laughing. “Ask him why he’s laughing.”

The tour guide pulled his attention off the thousands of gems glittering in the fake sunlight and asked the caretaker why he was laughing then listened to the response. “Apparently opening the door triggered an alert, hit wizards should be here in moments.”

“That’s it?” Hermione asked, slightly amused and yet strangely disappointed that they hadn’t set up additional defenses.

The tour guide listened for a couple seconds. “He’s gloating about the superiority of Fijian hit wizards over the spineless cowards they have in Britain.”

“In that case, nothing to worry about,” Harry said as he stepped through the doorway into the enclosure and looked around at all of the turtle like creatures. “This could take awhile.”

“We’ve got plenty of time,” Hermione replied as she walked into the enclosure then dropped the caretaker’s head face first on the sand so she didn’t have to listen to what she was guessing was gloating. “You should work on taking the spells apart on the heads unless you want to start deshelling the fire crabs?”

Harry pulled his attention off the collection of fire crabs. “Go for it, I doubt you’ll finish before I deal with the heads.”

“Deal with us?” the tour guide asked warily. “I’d rather not die.”

“You’re already sort of dead,” Harry pointed out.

“And still sort of alive! If you need a tour guide, I’m your head. If nothing else, stick my head on the wall of a muggle strip club with a muggle repelling charm on me. That way if you ever need a tour guide, you can just take me off the wall.”

“I guess I wouldn’t mind a proper tour of the island and some of the local magical world once we’re done here.”

“Excellent,” the tour guide said, happy they weren’t going to kill him.

Hermione pulled out her knife and headed toward the closest fire crab. “We should feed Filch some of the fire crab meat to see what happens.”

“You just want him shitting fire, don’t you?” Harry asked with amusement.

Hermione scrunched her nose up at that horrible mental image. “No and yuck but that’s a good point.”

“I’d suggest some cross breeding spells if we weren’t going to harvest the entire collection.” Harry pulled his wand out from behind his ear and pointed it at the caretaker and started working on removing the charms he’d layered on the man’s head. Normally he would have just vanished the head but he needed the practice removing spells beyond just using finite incantatem.

“I’d rather not have more blast-ended skrewts,” Hermione replied as she worked on cutting the fire crab’s shell off.

Harry paused between whispered spells. “I’m reasonably sure that was the manticore’s influence. Though now that you mention it, we could probably make decent armor out of the skrewts.”

“Wouldn’t the people in charge of the tournament have disposed of them?”

“The goblins were after Bagman and Dumbledore probably left that to Hagrid.” Harry smiled as he managed to get the severed head to stop moving and cursing at them through the sand then frowned when the severed head started twitching uncontrollably. ‘Not quite right.’

“And he would have released them in the forest to give the little monsters a chance the second no one was looking,” Hermione grumbled as she continued working on cutting the shell off, wishing there was an easier way.

“Yeah, we really should take some time to look through the Forest to see what we can harvest.” He hit the head with another finite then smiled as it stopped moving completely. “I wouldn’t mind some manticore hide armor.” He wouldn’t mind eating part of a manticore if he could be sure that it wouldn’t turn him into some type of abomination but he wasn’t sure who to test that on as he didn’t really want a nearly indestructible Filch running around or insane friends.

“Manticores are extremely dangerous,” the tour guide pointed out.

“We also have a basilisk fang to stab them with.” Harry set the tour guide’s head on the ground then walked over to watch Hermione deshell the first fire crab so that he had some idea what he was doing with the rest of them.

0o0o0

Harry sighed in relief as Hermione pushed the button on her watch twice and they went from being completely overstuffed on dragon meat and transforming rabbit to could eat but really didn’t need to thanks to the watch resetting them. “That’s better.”

Hermione grinned as she stood up now that she didn’t feel like she’d had way too much to eat at a holiday feast. “Much…” she trailed off as Harry transformed into a furry black top hat with a pair of green lumps of glass for eyes. She studied the slightly lumpy top hat sitting on the couch, not sure if it was a decent first attempt or a horrible first attempt. “Huh, I wasn’t expecting it to be that easy.”

A slightly ragged mouth near the brim of the hat opened as Harry asked, “How do I look?”

“Like someone made a top hat out of a rabbit that had only a vague idea what a top hat was supposed to look like,” Hermione teased.

“At least I’m recognizable as a top hat,” Harry replied as he shifted his form into that of a baseball cap with a smiley face painted on the front. “How about now?”

“Strangely more disturbing,” Hermione admitted watching the painted mouth and eyes move as he looked around.

“How about now?” Harry asked then changed into a bowling ball.

“How the hell?!” Hermione reached out and poked the solid bowling ball. “Seems solid enough.”

Harry changed back to his normal form. “Apparently I need some type of mouth to talk.”

“I can sort of see the baseball cap but how did you change into a bowling ball?”

Harry smirked. “If I had to guess, I’d say the rabbits are natural shape changers and aren’t technically limited to top hats.”

“That makes sense considering the top hat has only been around since the late 1700s.” Hermione glanced at the expanded trunk near the piano where they’d stashed the fire crab shells. “Considering our mistake with Dumbledore, we should probably move everything we shouldn’t have to the island or talk Lily into setting up some protections against Dumbledore and other snoops.”

“I’d like to say that he wouldn’t snoop but I know better.” Harry didn’t really begrudge the headmaster his curiosity but he’d rather not have to explain how he’d learned about the various rituals he’d used or the choices he’d made since Hermione told him about the watch.

“Let’s get everything moved then we can deal with Voldemort, it should be easy enough to bring down the wards and cut off his head while he’s frozen.”

“We can hope,” Harry agreed as he glanced at the expanded trunk they’d stored the fire crab shells in. “If nothing else we can probably use some manticore hide clothes to get through the wards without getting fried.”

Hermione nibbled on her lower lip as she considered Harry’s idea. “If you want to take a look in the forest while I’m moving everything to the island, and get in some flying time, go for it.”

“Thanks, I love you!” Harry replied as he dashed over to grab his broom then ran for the door.

Hermione snickered then walked over to the trunk with the fire crab shells and flash teleported to the island.

0o0o0

Hermione frowned as she watched Harry tie a bungee cord to the steering wheel of the garbage truck they’d appropriated for their current mission as Harry hadn’t been able to find a manticore or anything else durable enough to survive walking through the annoyingly complicated wards. “I’m not sure this is the best idea.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Harry asked as he climbed out of the truck and grabbed his brick off the seat.

“We could always read through the ward breaking books again to see if there is anything we missed or grab James and Sirius to help break the wards.”

“The wards were probably upgraded by Voldemort which means we’d need an actual expert or maybe a curse breaker like Bill.”

“I could grab him,” Hermione offered, knowing it wouldn’t take all that long to teleport to Egypt and back with Bill.

“But then I couldn’t slam a garbage truck into Draco’s gate,” Harry complained as he used a touch of wandless magic on the steering wheel to make sure the truck stayed on course.

Hermione shook her head. “I’m reasonably sure he’d help, he’s a Weasley and we’re wrecking Malfoy’s manor.”

“Then we’d have to explain the teleporting and being able to freeze time,” Harry pointed out as he set the brick on the gas pedal then closed the door. “Besides, this will be fun,” he said as they watched the truck pick up speed.

Hermione winced when the garbage truck slammed into the manor’s gate with an unholy crash and a generous amount of black fire as the truck ripped through the warded gate and barreled toward the front doors of the manor as they started to open. “What the fuck?!”

Harry was already reaching for his wand when Voldemort apparated into the square with his wand at the ready, letting the truck slam into and through the front doors.

Voldemort glared at Harry and the bushy haired girl he was guessing was Hermione Granger from Draco’s reports via Narcissa. “How did you stop time!” It had been rather disturbing to go from talking to some of his few remaining followers that hadn’t been viciously killed by whatever or whoever was hunting them to looking at people frozen in place. The only reason he suspected temporal manipulation rather than a mass petrification charm was the ‘frozen’ stream of tea Narcissa had been pouring herself.

“Experamus!” Harry shouted as he flicked his wand at Voldemort, hoping to hell he could stall long enough for Hermione to get them out of there now that he knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as walking up and cutting off the bastard’s head.

Voldemort casually deflected Harry’s attempt to disarm him with his borrowed wand. “Now, now, is that any way to start a polite conversation?”

“How the hell are you still moving?” Harry asked, his mind running through various horrible possibilities, notably that he was somehow related to the bastard.

Hermione did her best to use Harry’s body as cover for her anti apparition jinx that might keep him from leaving if they managed to get the upper hand.

“I’ve lost track of the number of protection rituals I’ve used Harry,” Voldemort replied with a touch of dark amusement. “Now if you’re not going to tell me what I want, I’m going to torture you until you do. Crucio!”

Harry gestured and tossed a piece of the broken gate into the path of the curse. “It’s not going to be that easy Tom.”

Hermione pulled the magically silenced handgun she’d picked up from one of Dung’s contacts out of her pocket and shot Voldemort in the chest three times then scowled as the bullets failed to penetrate, their force dispersed over most of his torso by a shield woven into the fabric of his robes.

Voldemort glared at Hermione. “Stupid girl, guns have been around for centuries as have cutting charms. You’ll find the basic dueling robes are prespelled to spread out the force and neutralize them as a matter of course. Still, just for that lapse of basic understanding, I’m going to make Harry watch as I kill you-” whatever else he was going to say was cut off when Harry vanished and reappeared next him with a crack of thunder and drove his fist into his chest, ripping through bone, muscle and enchanted fabric with alarming ease.

Voldemort stared in shocked disbelief as Potter ripped his heart out. ‘What the fuck?! Since when do heroes do that?’ ran through his mind before everything faded to black.

Harry stared at Voldemort’s still beating heart then crushed it in his hand. “I know he’s not really dead but that felt cathartic.”

Hermione kept part of her attention on Voldemort as she walked over and part on the manor, wondering if anyone else had managed to avoid being frozen. “Any idea why he wasn’t frozen?”

“It could be dark rituals or it might be because he used my blood to come back,” Harry replied after a few second’s thought, not wanting to voice the remote possibility that he was related to the bastard close enough for that to save him from the watch’s effect.

“Considering Snape froze, I’m guessing it was your blood,” Hermione replied as she searched Voldemort’s pockets for his original wand.

Harry studied Voldemort’s yew wand as Hermione pulled it out of his pocket. “Are you going to break it?”

“I’ll probably give it to Dumbledore to deal with once we’ve destroyed the rest of his horcruxes and made sure he was good and dead. Hopefully Voldemort can tell us how to find the rest of the horcruxes and destroy them.”

Harry shrugged. “He’s paranoid enough that he’d want to keep track of them so I doubt they’re impossible to get to, just hard to find.” He turned to look at the manor. “Any idea what to do with the rest of his followers?”

“I was thinking of stealing their wands and filling their lungs with molten led, they’ll be dead in seconds once time restarts even if the heat and burns can’t kill them.” Hermione handed Harry her knife. “Have fun.”

Harry smiled as he started cutting Voldemort’s head off. “Sounds rather nasty and obvious, we should probably just poison everyone’s tea so it looks like Narcissa got fed up and killed them.”

“What about Voldemort?” Hermione asked.

“We’re going to have to get creative considering he saw our faces and I ripped his heart out,” Harry admitted.

“If he didn’t have a reason to kill you before, he certainly does now,” Hermione teased, trying to stay positive about their chances of dealing with Voldemort, which was a lot easier now that she’d seen Harry kill him with alarming ease. 

Harry snorted. “Trelawny gave him plenty of reason with that stupid prophecy.”

“Joking aside we’ve got a little under twenty hours before things reset and Voldemort wakes up and goes on a rampage, do we have a plan? I doubt we’ll be able to take him by surprise twice.”

“You mean beyond animate his head, steal all of his secrets, destroy his horcruxes and tell Snape and Dumbledore where to find him and let them deal with it while we kidnap Tonks and teleport to the island for a much needed vacation? Nope, no plan,” Harry said smugly.

“That’s at least a start,” Hermione agreed, fairly sure that would be enough to screw Voldemort over if not kill him for good but she wanted to hedge their bets as much as possible.

“I was thinking about abusing the hell out of Blackbeard’s ritual now that we’ve absorbed some dragon magic so that we’re nearly unstoppable juggernauts just in case we get hit by a death curse.”

“Let’s avoid getting hit by a death curse but the ritual is certainly a good start. If we can find his horcruxes and make sure he’s mortal, we can drop Snape into the room with him, he sets up his shot and the second Voldemort reappears he kills him while everyone is choking to death on the poison we’ve poured down their throats.”

“Actually, I have a better idea...”

“Better than having Snape take his shot the second Voldemort is back?” Hermione asked dubiously. 

“Most of our current problems with the ministry is because Fudge really doesn’t want to believe Voldemort is back, what if we dropped him off in the room with Voldemort as a distraction? That would give Snape an extra couple seconds as Voldemort tries to figure out what just happened and why Fudge is in the room.”

“Or we could drop Fudge in the room, poison him with the rest and come out looking like roses as the press rips Fudge apart for having been part of it.”

“Nah, we want him alive and disgraced but I like your idea of putting him there.”

0o0o0