Hermione and the Watch Part 27

Harry opened his eyes and smiled when he saw Hermione. “Morning.”

Hermione looked up from her book on wards with a smile. “Welcome back to the land of the living, I’d say I had coffee but I’d be lying.”

Harry yawned as he sat up, glancing at the curtains of his bed and wondering if Hermione had hit them with a muffling charm. “What time is it?” he asked in a whisper.

“A bit after nine or a bit after two, take your pick,” Hermione answered as she put her bookmark in her book and closed it.

“In other words, you woke up and froze time so you could visit?” Harry asked as he opened the curtains enough to see the night sky out of the windows.

“That and I wanted to upgrade some people and it’s easier to hit them with a stunner while they’re asleep. I tossed the dragon roast in the oven a couple hours ago which means it should be just about ready to eat.” Hermione smiled as she flame teleported with Harry to the couch in the Shrieking Shack.

Harry twitched slightly as the flames vanished. “You enjoy doing that way too much.”

“Probably,” Hermione admitted as she stood up.

Harry smiled as he let his gaze travel up Hermione’s legs to her bottom that her t-shirt was just barely concealing. “In case I don’t say it enough, you’re beautiful.”

“Thanks.” Hermione grinned as she headed into the kitchen with a spring in her steps. “Hopefully the roast is done enough that we can have a bite to eat before we work on upgrading people.”

“If not, I’m sure we can figure out ways to entertain ourselves,” Harry suggested playfully as he watched the hem of her shirt bounce.

Hermione chuckled as she grabbed pot holders. “Then we’d get distracted and the roast would burn.”

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” Harry replied as he stood up and walked into the kitchen. He smiled as Hermione reached down to check the roast, giving him an excellent view of her bottom as her shirt rode up. “Any idea what we’re going to tell Rose about the ritual?”

“Nothing, Lily mentioned that they’d love to be able to travel back and forth so I figured I’d just stun everyone and upgrade them without explaining the details.”

“Probably for the best,” Harry agreed.

Hermione lifted the large roasting pan out of the oven and set it on top of the stove. She lifted the lid off and looked at the onions and cooked potatoes she’d cut up to go with the dragon. “At least it smells good.”

Harry looked at the delicious looking roast. “It looks good.”

Hermione pulled her oven mitts off, grabbed the thermometer off the counter and stabbed the roast. “Worst case, we toss it to Fluffy and try again.”

Harry grinned as he placed his hand on her bottom. “Worst case, we cut it up and put enough ketchup on it to drown a horse and never mention it again.” 

Hermione chuckled as she worked on washing her hands. “At least it’s not burnt to a crisp.”

“Considering the watch resets our health, I’d rather have it a touch under cooked than over.” 

Hermione looked at the thermometer and smiled. “I don’t think that will be a problem considering it’s 162. A bit higher than beef but probably reasonable for dragon if I’m doing the time comparison correctly. It would be nice if the wizarding cookbooks actually used thermometers.”

“New fangled tech and all that,” Harry teased as he gave her behind a gentle squeeze. 

“Considering they’ve been around for a couple centuries, not really,” Hermione muttered, a touch annoyed at the wizarding world’s lack of advancement. “Can you actually think of anything the wizarding world has that wasn’t invented hundreds of years ago?”

“Invented? Not really though brooms might count,” Harry replied after a few seconds consideration.

Hermione shook her head. “They’ve had brooms for centuries.”

Harry shook his head. “They’ve also had wagons for thousands of years, that doesn’t mean the wagons we have today aren’t better than the wagons the Romans used. The concept might be old but the broom companies are always tinkering with the designs, trying to get just a little bit more oomph or control out of their brooms which means that brooms are an active field of study.”

“I guess that’s fair,” Hermione replied as she wandlessly floated the roast over to the cutting board and pulled the thermometer out, being careful not to touch the top. “Do you want to cut the roast?”

“Nah, I’d have to stop molesting you,” Harry teased.

“Point,” Hermione agreed as she grabbed a knife and started cutting the slices off the roast. “Anything else?”

“What about the Marauders map?” Harry asked as he walked over to the sink and started washing his hands so he could set the table.

“I’m not counting that,” Hermione replied as she levitated a platter over so she had somewhere to drop the slices.

Harry scrubbed his hands under the hot water. “Why not?”

“It was basically a prototype and they never really refined the process or shared it thus it was basically a unique invention which the wizarding world has plenty of.”

“Albus discovered some uses for dragon’s blood so alchemy is still a growing field.”

“Fair.” Hermione dropped the slices of dragon roast on the platter. “We should probably make a copy of all of his notes at some point assuming he hasn’t written them in code.”

“Or some strange obscure language that is just as good,” Harry agreed as he turned off the water and grabbed a dish towel. “Should we start with Rose then upgrade Dumbledore or start with Dumbledore and upgrade Rose after?”

“We might as well start with Dumbledore, Rose isn’t going to want to leave once she’s here and upgrading her means she can come find you any time she wants which might complicate things with Voldemort.”

Harry winced. “In other words, let’s deal with Voldemort before we upgrade her. I don’t suppose you can flame teleport to his general location?”

Hermione shook her head. “If it was that easy, Dumbledore would have dealt with him years ago.”

“Assuming he’d even thought about it or wasn’t worried about jumping into an ambush or magical trap.”

“Something to test after we eat and upgrade the Headmaster.”

Harry replied as he finished drying his hands. “Speaking of being sneaky, how much C4 do you think it would take to blow a Gringotts vault?”

“It depends on how the doors are put together, why?”

“I was thinking about using it to cover our tracks and I want people to know Gringotts was robbed or at least I want them to know the Death Eaters were robbed by one of their own.”

“They’d still pull their gold out of the bank which could destabilize things with the goblins,” Hermione pointed out.

Harry laughed. “No, that’s what reasonable people would do, wizards aren’t reasonable. No one reasonable would keep their gold with goblins if they had a choice.”

“You have your gold in Gringotts, what’s your excuse?” Hermione teased.

“I’m a minor which complicates everything and the Dursleys are still my legal guardians as far as I know which means they’d probably try to sue me for expenses.” Harry grabbed a piece of dragon meat off the platter and took a bite. He grinned as the taste rolled over his tongue, a combination of chicken and beef with some rather exotic spices mixed in that he couldn’t quite place.

Hermione smiled as she watched Harry’s expression. “That good?”

Harry finished his bite. “A combination of beef and chicken with exotic spices, I don’t think we’ll have a problem eating it.”

Hermione grinned as she grabbed a plate and dished up some potatoes and onions to go with the roast. “In that case, we might as well eat as much as we can.”

0o0o0

Hermione finished scooping up the last of the ash that Dumbledore had turned into. “Moment of truth...” she trailed off as she pushed the button on her watch and a man in his early twenties appeared where Dumbledore should have. She quickly pushed the button and froze time as the red haired man started to stir. “Shit!”

“What?” Harry turned to look then blinked as he saw the red haired man, thankfully he’d appeared on his side so he didn’t have a view of his family jewels but his arse was bad enough. “The hell?!” he asked as he turned to look at Hermione.

“Oops?” Hermione asked as she looked down at the man’s face, comparing it to the headmaster’s aged features. “It looks like him if you shave off about eight decades.”

“What happened?”

“If I had to make a wild guess, I’d say he got restored to his physical prime.”

“Are you saying, you’re immortal?” Harry asked curiously.

“Maybe? We’re sort of breaking new ground here.”

“So now what?” Harry asked as he looked down at the lake, enjoying the view.

“We can either upgrade Hagrid or Neville or we can go rob Gringotts and frame the minister.”

Harry shook his head. “No one is going to believe it.”

Hermione smirked as she thought about ruining the bastard that had complicated Harry’s life for no good reason and sent Hagrid to prison to be seen as doing something. “They don’t have to believe it, it just has to embarrass him.”

“In that case, let’s just stick Fudge’s family jewels in a bear trap in Malfoy’s vault after we loot it.”

“So what you’re saying is that by taking Malfoy’s money to start with he was putting his balls in a bear trap?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Harry lied, mostly he’d just thought the idea of Fudge getting his nuts ripped off by a bear trap was funny.

Hermione nibbled on her lip a touch as she thought about ways to turn Harry’s joke into an actual plan. “Let me get Dumbledore back in his bed then we’ll try to figure out how to turn your idea into an actual plan.” She reached down and grabbed Dumbledore’s right arm then flame teleported to the headmaster’s bedroom with him.

Harry glanced over the ledge at the lake and did his best to zone out and enjoy the view rather than think about all of the ways restoring Dumbledore’s youth could screw them over. ‘So much for flying under the radar. Ah well, if we’d wanted to do that we shouldn’t have upgraded Snape.’

He spent a minute just enjoying the view then went through the list of ritual supplies and items that he wouldn’t want Dumbledore or anyone at the ministry seeing. ‘I really should look into building a place on the island to store everything we don’t want people knowing about. Something to ask Mum and Dad about.’ He smiled, still not quite used to having people he could ask for help.’

He smiled as Hermione reappeared in a blast of fire. “All tucked in?”

“Snug as a bug,” Hermione agreed as she held her hand out toward Harry. “Ready to castrate the Minister?”

“Always,” Harry agreed as he grabbed her hand, rather amused by the crazy plan. He doubted they’d be able to make anything stick but making things stick wasn’t the point, the point was to cause the minister a nervous breakdown or at least cripple his ability to harass them. 

Hermione flame teleported them to Malfoy’s vault. She glanced around at the glittering piles of gold. “He doesn’t have nearly as much as I was expecting.”

“A bit more than double my trust vault,” Harry agreed as he glanced around at the various art objects. He frowned slightly as he realized that at least half of the portraits weren’t moving. “Some of these are muggle.”

Hermione blinked as she recognized one of the portraits. “That’s a Van Gogh…”

“As in the famous artist that cut his ear off?” Harry asked.

“That’s the one,” Hermione replied as she carefully studied the art collection. “If these are real rather than just copies they’re worth a fortune.”

“How many of them are stolen?” Harry asked as he set his expanded bags on the ground.

“I’m guessing most of them,” Hermione replied as she noticed another painting that had been missing for twenty years. “We should probably ask Lucius’s head about the artwork before we turn it over to the Museum.”

“If you want,” Harry agreed, not caring either way as none of the paintings were particularly attractive pieces, merely old and historic. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the Malfoys being art thieves, not that I put being criminals past them or anything, it just seems a bit mundane.”

“Mundane or not some of the pieces are worth tens of millions each. If you did things right you could copy the art and sell them several times as long as you were reasonably careful.”

“That’s a lot of bribes,” Harry admitted as he worked on using wandless magic to fill his expanded bags with galleons.

Hermione ignored the sound of the clinking coins as she looked around the rest of the vault. “Some of these necklaces should be in museums.”

“As in they’re stolen or they’re that expensive?” Harry asked absently as he focused most of his attention on directing the coins into the expanded bags.

“Probably both.”

Harry glanced over at the necklaces Hermione was talking about. “That reminds me, we should grab a firecrab when we’re done framing the Minister.”

“Why?”

Harry smirked. “Firecrabs are living gem farms and you have a watch.”

“That’s an excellent idea, especially if we look up some gem cutting and metal working spells.”

“Might be a decent distraction from reading the books on wards,” Harry agreed as he turned slightly so he could continue wandlessly pulling coins into his bags. “Remind me to ask Lucius about muggle accounts on the off chance he’s not as stupid as we thought.”

“Good idea, I’m off to find a bear trap and grab the minister.”

“Have fun,” Harry replied as she vanished in a burst of flame. ‘At least she’s smiling again.’

0o0o0

Harry glanced back at where Fudge’s family jewels were sitting on the bloody bear trap in the middle of the empty vault then looked back at Hermione who seemed a bit too smug about her frame job. “He’ll probably just claim they were a gift from Lucius.”

“Considering several of them are dark objects it won’t matter. If we’re lucky, it might be enough to force him out of office but I’m not holding my breath,” Hermione explained as she worked on stuffing the last of the duplicated puttylike explosives into the space between the vault door and the door frame.

“If nothing else, it should cause a couple cracks in what passes for Fudge’s sanity. Where to next?”

“I was thinking about finding Mundungus Fletcher and cutting off his head. He should know a good place to get firecrabs if he doesn’t have a couple tucked away. I’d just ask him but then he’d have blackmail on us.”

Harry grinned as he thought about the shifty wizard he’d met at headquarters. “If nothing else, he should know where to find the really interesting stuff people have hidden away. That reminds me, we should grab Randolph Spudmore’s head at some point.”

“Who?” Hermione asked absently as she stuck the contacts into the putty, not recognizing the name.

“He founded the Firebolt company and is the lead designer which means he should know how to replicate them. We’ll probably have to track down the goblins that do the ironwork to get their heads but with any luck we could figure out how to make decent or maybe even amazing brooms.”

Hermione frowned as she carefully attached the timer to the vault door with some double sided tape. “Crafting professional brooms requires a great deal of skill.”

“I’m not expecting miracles, I just want a decent starting point and the Firebolts are the best broom around. Rose managed to make her own broom which means we can probably come up with something better with his notes and help.”

“Lily mentioned the broom when we were shopping, it barely went twenty miles an hour.”

“She’s also fourteen and working with limited resources and no wand which means that we should be able to do better, especially if we can pick an actual broommaker’s mind.” Harry glanced at the explosive clay Hermione had stuffed around the vault door then at the timer. “Speaking of skill, how sure are you that you know what you’re doing?”

“I read the directions. You set the timer then run or in our case, teleport out of the blast zone before the timer goes off.”

“What happens if it goes off early?” Harry asked warily.

“Then we’re dead,” Hermione replied as she held out her hand. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Harry agreed as he took her hand.

Hermione pushed the button that started the five minute countdown then flame teleported to Mundungus, wanting to be a long ways away when the explosives went off.

Harry blinked as they appeared in a dark alley rather than Mundungus’ room or a tavern where he’d been half expecting to find him at a bit past two. “At least we’re not dead.”

Hermione wasn’t terribly surprised to find the scoundrel in a dark alley frozen in the middle of a conversation with some dark witch. Sure, technically the woman with the form concealing hooded cloak might have a perfectly legitimate reason to be making a deal in a dark alley with Mundungus while trying to conceal her identity but she doubted it. “Have a little faith. Dark objects or stolen cauldrons?”

Harry grinned as he circled around enough that he could see the rather thick tome in Dung’s hands. “I’m guessing banned books.”

Hermione frowned as she glanced between the large tome and Dung. “Probably experimental breeding charms or dark magic.”

Harry walked over and read the cover of the book. “101 Ways to Accidentally Charm Your Flying Carpet That You Should Avoid In Britain.”

“He’s dealing in books you can buy off the shelf in France?” Hermione asked in disbelief.

Harry reached up and pulled the witch’s hood off, revealing a woman in her early twenties. “She probably just assumed the laws were the same or didn’t want to be caught transporting the book.”

“Having a book about enchanting flying carpets isn’t illegal, you just can’t import, buy or sell them.”

Harry raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Wait, if you made a flying carpet, you could legally fly it?”

“Technically. You’d have to weave the carpet from magical threads yourself so that you’re not enchanting a muggle carpet but it’s technically legal. You could also technically fly a family antique but you’d have to prove that it was an actual antique and the ministry would likely fine you if you didn’t have the proper bribes paid, I mean paperwork filed,” Hermione said the last part sarcastically.

“That explains how they got a bunch of old wizards to give up their family carpets, they didn’t, they just screwed over the rest of the wizards who didn’t have enough money to get an exception. You have to appreciate the sheer level of corruption in the ministry.”

“Not really,” Hermione grumbled darkly as she pulled out her wand and tapped the book and copied it. “On one level, I can understand licensing carpets to make sure the people using them know how to properly disillusion them but setting up a system where you can only have them if you’re an elitist pureblood with money is more than a little disgusting.”

“Welcome to the wizarding world,” Harry said sarcastically as he looked through the witch’s pockets for anything interesting.

Hermione put her wand behind her ear then put the copied book in her bag and pulled out her knife. “Would it be too much to ask for an honest government?”

“Without binding magical contracts on every government official to be a decent human being, probably,” Harry complained as Hermione started cutting Dung’s head off. “Look on the bright side, with how common cameras and computers are getting, it’s only a matter of time before the Statue of Secrecy will come apart at the seems.”

“I can’t see that going over well with the rest of the world, especially when people find out the wizards have been mind raping people for centuries to keep their dirty little secret.” She grabbed Dung’s hair then finished cutting his head off. “Next stop Randolph Spudmore’s house so we can grab his head.”

“Works for me,” Harry agreed. He would have felt worse about stealing Randolph’s secrets except he wasn’t planning on starting a broom company, at least not any time soon. “We’ll probably need to track down the goblins that do the iron work so we can steal their secrets. We should ask James if there are any blacksmiths on Atlantis that would be willing to show us the ropes.”

“Probably. If nothing else, we can always trade supplies from the outside world for instruction.” Hermione stuck Dung’s head in an empty bag then held hit Dung with a scourgify to deal with the blood covering his clothes. “Ready?”

Harry flipped the woman’s hood back up then held out his hand. “Ready.”