Harry Potter and the Monster Books Part 7

Harry smiled as he walked back into the bedroom and saw Hermione and Titania sitting on one of the beds looking at a spiral notebook. "What are you working on?"

Titania glanced up from the notebook and smiled at Harry. "We're trying to idiot proof a set of directions."

"Ron?" Harry asked as he walked over.

Hermione glanced at Titania then focused on Harry, wishing she could disagree with the description. "I just wanted to make sure he didn't run into trouble, he's a bit clueless when it comes to anything in the normal world and dealing with a video game might be a bit of a stretch."

"He'll figure it out…" Harry trailed off as Ron appeared standing over the book on the floor holding a leather bag. "Any luck?"

"It was great!" Ron replied enthusiastically. "I appeared in the saloon then headed outside and stunned the lookout that was watching the bank. I was sort of expecting someone to notice me slipping into the bank or propping the guy up against the wall but it was dark and raining so everything went off without a hitch. I'm going to need a better way to see in the dark but Lumos worked well enough once I got inside since the shutters were closed. From there it was just a matter of walking over and unlocking the vault door and tossing everything in the bag."

"Sounds easy enough," Harry agreed.

"Hermione made it easy, she bookmarked the right chapter," Ron replied with a grin, feeling pretty damned good about his first score.

"It wasn't that hard, the book has a chapter list," Hermione pointed out. "Have you figured out where you're going next?"

"That depends, how much do I need to buy a Secondary Class?" Ron asked as he reached down and picked up the paperback that he'd jumped into.

Titania ripped the page out of her notebook that had her notes and handed it to Ron. "Fifty gold for the secondary class and a hundred gold per five points of negatives you want to buy off."

"I should have more than enough and if I don't, I'll just hit the next bank," Ron replied smugly.

Titania set the Craven Dungeon book on the bed with it open to the page where the future villain got to the Class Hall. "Best of luck."

"Thanks," Ron replied with a grin as he dropped the paperback on the bed, not seeing a point in taking it with him since he knew he couldn't jump into a book while inside of a book. He touched the picture of the Guild Hall and used his magic to jump into the book.

Hermione turned her attention back to Harry. "Did you figure out what the stranger said with the pensieve?"

"It was some type of cursed item that should weaken Voldemort if we can destroy it," Harry replied as he flipped through the dungeon picture book.

"Seems strange," Hermione mused.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Are you telling me that you don't find the entire thing a bit dodgy? A stranger from another world just happens to show up at the exact moment that you need it with a collection of impossible spells and the knowledge of a cursed item that will cripple the villain if someone can break the curse?"

"That's probably why Dumbledore asked Bill for help." Harry sighed. "I just figured my luck was finally changing."

"Considering the crazy things we've survived, I think our luck is pretty good," Hermione argued.

"I don't think getting stuck with the Dursleys is lucky, the fact that I survived fighting the Basilisk was a miracle, same with the Dursleys really," Harry admitted then shook his head. "You might be right about the stranger, he shows up and gives me a spell to create the pocket dimensions and right after we get done testing it Voldemort snaps and starts ranting about being burned alive in the middle of the Death Eater meeting."

"What?!" Hermione blurted out. "Burned alive?"

"He's still alive," Harry complained. "Snape stumbled out of the fireplace covered in blood and mentioned that Voldemort snapped and started trying to kill his followers after screaming at them to leave."

"And you didn't start with that?" Hermione asked.

"I got distracted and then Ron appeared and he seemed enthusiastic about the bank heist. I was going to explain but he jumped into the book before I came up with a good way to bring it up," Harry explained.

"Bank heist?" Sirius asked from the doorway, causing the teens to jump as they hadn't seen him.

Hermione relaxed when she realized that it was just Sirius. "Ron picked up the ability to pull mundane things out of books, he wanted a bag of gold so I handed him a Western."

"Not a bad choice," Sirius replied as he stepped into the room, a bit surprised that Titania looked exactly like Hermione if you ignored her purple hair. "They usually have gold or silver coins and they don't have magic."

"Where did you run into Westerns?" Harry asked.

"Lily, she used to haul us to the movies every chance she got," Sirius replied with a grin. "It wasn't a hard sell, the Wizarding world doesn't have a lot going for it entertainment wise beyond Quidditch games and stuffy parties."

"What's Qudditich?" Titania asked.

Hermione turned to look at Harry. "Do you want to take this one?"

Harry glanced at the various bags scattered around the room. "Sure, I'll explain while we move all of the bags to a mine."

"It's in the hallway, Molly was giving it the evil eye," Sirius offered.

"Thanks," Harry replied as he grabbed one of the bags. "Quiddich is basically a game that you play by flying around on enchanted brooms," he offered as he grabbed another bag and headed for the hallway.

"Sounds fun," Titania replied cheerfully as she grabbed two of the bags and followed Harry.

'Until you're stuck in the stands for six hours in the rain because the snitch is hiding,' Hermione grumbled as she grabbed two of the bags and followed Titania.

Sirius pulled his wand and flicked it at the various bags, causing them to levitate into the air and float after Hermione. 'The sooner we're done, the sooner we can get out of here and get something to eat that Kreacher hasn't spit on.'

0o0o0

Hermione glanced up from her Monster book when Remus knocked on the doorframe of the open door. "Professor."

"I'm not a professor anymore, just call me Remus or Moony," Remus told her.

"Alright," Hermione agreed. "How are you feeling?"

"Better than I've felt in years," Remus replied with a grin. "It's strange having the ability to control the change and having an extra form."

Sirius glanced up from Hermione's monster book. "You'll get used to it. Have you ever heard of a blood moon doing anything weird to werewolves?"

"No, it's just a full moon, why?" Remus asked.

Sirius gestured at the picture of a female werewolf howling at the moon in Hermione's book. "One of the stories has a werewolf in London that is running around and turning people into werewolves that regenerate almost instantly and I was trying to figure out if it was a blood moon thing or just a book thing."

Remus walked over and looked at the werewolf that looked far more humanoid and movie-like than an actual werewolf. "Must be a different type of curse unless there's a curse on the moon or something but that seems less likely."

"We should probably avoid that one until we figure out a good way to capture her without hurting her, since she's a Potter and we have a werewolf cure," Harry suggested, not interested in fighting a magic resistant werewolf that could regenerate from anything short of having her head cut off.

"So, Snakes on a Train or something else while we wait for Ron to get back?" Titania asked thoughtfully.

"Snakes on a Train?" Remus asked.

Harry flipped the pages back to the Snakes on a Train story, being careful not to touch the pictures. "Some nameless ministry flunky decided to use the Hogwarts express to transport an extremely dangerous and cursed chest to Hogwarts for study."

“As you do,” Sirius said dryly, his lips twisting into a brief smirk.

Remus glanced at the picture of the red haired man in ministry robes that bore a striking resemblance to Percy Weasley talking to a man dressed like an auror while a blond Slytherin snuck into the compartment. "Nameless?"

Harry scowled at the picture of Draco opening the cursed chest. "The story didn't give anyone other than Hermione and Rose Potter names but it's not exactly hard to put names to faces."

Sirius flipped the page, revealing a collection of pictures that showed a bunch of students partially transformed into snakes. "The curse turned everyone in the first five cars into large venomous snakes other than Hermione and Rose. They avoided the curse because they were in Rose's magical trunk when the curse activated."

"What happened to the rest of the students?" Remus asked.

Sirius flipped the page, revealing a gorgeous young dark haired lady wearing a low cut silk shirt that left little to the imagination and a black skirt that only came down to her mid thighs. "The new librarian was on the sixth car, saw the wave of magic coming and severed the connection between the cars before tossing up a shield."

"If you get a chance, you should try to recruit her, Dumbledore is still looking for a Defense teacher," Remus suggested, figuring anyone that was that quick on their feet would make a decent Defense teacher.

"I'll certainly try," Harry agreed, wondering if it was too late to make Ms. Pince vanish for a couple of weeks so they could replace the cranky bitch. "If nothing else, we're going to need someone to organize all of the books we're going to recover."

Hermione reluctantly pulled her attention off the librarian, wondering what it would be like to have a librarian who didn’t hoard books like a goblin hoarded gold. "It should be easy, we just have to jump into the picture of her trunk and then make our way through the snakes to the cursed chest and recover the spellbooks."

"Can you save the students?" Remus asked.

Hermione shook her head. "I doubt it, that's one of the reasons that the chest was so dangerous, once you're transformed, you're a snake. I don't think I could stun him before he touched the chest in the first picture and I'm not willing to take the risk. Also, Rose and Hermione probably count as potential people, but they're not real until we pull them out and I doubt the rest of the students are even that complex to start with."

"Are the books even worth it?" Remus asked, not sure why they wanted to take the risk.

"There's supposed to be a spell to bring people back from the dead and several books on building ancient magical structures. It should be safe enough to grab the books as long as no one closes the lid and resets the curse," Hermione argued.

"And the giant venomous snakes?" Remus asked.

"The snakes don't have opposable thumbs, they can't open the doors," Harry pointed out. "We can probably just levitate them and toss them out the windows."

"It's worth a try," Sirius agreed.

Remus scowled at Sirius. "You're talking about tossing students to their deaths."

"Again, they're not real, at least not yet," Sirius reminded him. "By the time we can safely drop into the story, they're already snakes. They're also durable enough to shrug off a blasting charm in the story, they'll survive. If we can actually bring people back from the dead, we could bring Lily and James back and it's not like they'll be any less screwed if we never jump into the book."

Remus glanced between Sirius and Harry and realized that he wasn't going to be able to talk them out of at least trying. "Fine. Grab your firebolt and let's go before I come to my senses."

"My firebolt?" Harry asked, not sure why he wanted him to grab his broom.

"We need a decent Defense teacher and having the ability to fly along the outside of the train might be useful," Remus pointed out.

"Good point," Harry replied as he walked over to his trunk to grab his broom.

Titania wrote a quick note in her notebook in case Ron got back first then grabbed three of her empty expanded bags. "Do you think three bags is enough or should I grab some of the expanded trunks?" she asked Hermione.

"That should be fine, we can always shrink the trunks," Hermione replied as she flipped to the page that had a picture of her sitting on a couch surrounded by books with a red haired teenage girl sprawled across her lap. 'Is this because I was wondering what it would be like if Harry had been a girl or because we would have ended up together sooner if Harry had been born a girl?' she mused, doing her best to ignore the fact that her alternate had slipped her hand under Rose's overly large t-shirt.

Titania grabbed Hermione's hand then grabbed Sirius's. "Grab hands."

Hermione waited for everyone to grab someone's hand then touched the picture, pulling the group into the picture and into Rose's trunk.

Rose Potter jumped and nearly fell off the couch when Sirius and Professor Lupin appeared out of thin air with a girl that looked like a purple haired version of her girlfriend and someone that looked like her father. "What the hell?!"

Hermione blinked a couple of times when she realized that she was sitting on the couch looking at the group and that she could remember having sex with her girlfriend before they'd decided to sprawl on the couch and read for a bit while they waited for the train to reach Hogwarts. 'This is going to be a mess.'

Harry twitched when he realized that Hermione wasn't with them. 'What the hell?!'

"Relax, we just needed a safe spot to appear because Malfoy managed to turn half of the students on the train into giant snakes," Sirius told her, trying to calm things down before someone got hexed.

Hermione looked Harry in the eye and tapped her temple with a finger, trying to let him know that everything was fine or at least reasonably fine, causing him to relax.

"If this is a prank, I'm going to hex you," Rose grumbled as she grabbed her clothes off the coffee table then walked around the couch and worked on getting dressed since she was going to smash Draco's face in for ruining a perfectly good chance to cuddle with her girlfriend.

"If you give me the broom, I'll grab the teacher," Remus told Harry, wanting to avoid an awkward conversation, glad the back of the couch was high enough to hide everything.

Harry handed Remus his broom. "Have fun."

"Thanks," Remus replied as he headed for the ladder.

"Where did you find someone that looks like my father?" Rose asked as she pulled her skirt on.

"Harry's actually your alternate/brother from another reality," Sirius replied with a grin.

Rose turned and glanced between Sirius and Harry, noticing the familiar scar on Harry's forehead. "Okay."

"Okay?" Harry asked, surprised that she wasn't asking more questions.

"Remus wouldn't pull this sort of prank and Tonks is the only metamorph that you could rope into this and she would have already broken character," Rose replied as she turned around so that her back was to the group and pulled off the shirt she'd gotten from Dudley. "How did you manage to jump worlds?" she asked as she dropped the overly large shirt on the back of the couch and pulled her shirt over her head.

"We jumped into a book," Harry told her, surprised that she didn't seem to have all that much modesty. "Can we exchange notes after we loot the cursed chest? I want to get everything sorted before something else goes wrong."

"Sure, no point in letting Draco get away with this shite," Rose replied with a grin as she walked over and grabbed her wand from the coffee table. "Do the snakes have any special abilities that we need to know about?"

"They're exceptionally durable but they're not magic resistant so using Leviosa to toss them off the train should work just fine," Harry offered.

"I can work with that," Rose replied with a wicked grin. "Hermione?"

"I'm not letting you fight snakes by yourself," Hermione told her as she picked up her wand and stood up. "But you're going to want shoes."

"Right," Rose replied as she sat down on the couch so she could pull her boots on.

Harry turned and focused on Hermione when he realized that Rose's skirt was a bit short and she wasn't being all that careful about how she was sitting. 'At least it doesn't look like the Dursleys starved her since she's taller than Sirius.'

Hermione checked her own feet then gave Harry a nod when she noticed that he was looking at her, reassuring him that everything was fine. 

Rose quickly finished putting her boots on then headed for the ladder. "Dibs on Draco!"

"Deal," Harry replied as he followed her up the ladder, trying not to look up and get an eyeful since she was his 'sister' and she looked enough like the picture he'd seen of his mother to make the entire thing a bit weird.

Hermione was a bit too distracted by the upcoming fight to pay attention as they made their way into the car where Rose had set up her library trunk.

Rose flicked her wand at the large snake in the hallway that she could see through the window of their compartment, causing the snake to hiss, float off the ground and twist wildly as it tried to escape. "At least they're smaller than the basilisk."

"Yeah, we can never tell Hagrid about these," Harry added as he walked over to the window to watch.

"I don't know, it might be interesting to see what happens," Rose mused as she floated the person sized snake through the doorway across from them.

"Then we'd have to deal with them every class," Harry argued as he watched Rose try to shove the snake through the open window, having a fair amount of trouble because it kept twisting and was almost as fat as Dudley.

"I don't think this is going to work," Rose admitted.

"We could try greasing it," Harry offered 'helpfully', trying not to laugh at the absurdity of the entire situation.

"We'll just have to blow up the wall," Sirius suggested.

Rose laughed. "Yeah, no, that sounds like a good way to get expelled."

"Just blame it on Harry," Sirius suggested as he opened the door to the hallway and stuck his wand out. "Bombarda!" he chanted, causing the wall in the other compartment to explode.

"You're having way too much fun," Rose complained as she flicked her wand and tossed the snake off the train.

"It's the little things that make life worth living," Sirius replied as he flicked his wand at the snake that was slithering down the hallway at them, causing it to float in the air. He ignored the fat snake's frantic struggles to escape as he floated the snake over to the hole in the wall and tossed it off the train. 

"Let's move to the next door, we can float all of the snakes then toss them through the missing wall if we can't fit them through the windows," Rose suggested as she started walking toward the next door, keeping her wand at the ready.

"Sounds good," Sirius agreed, wanting the teens to get some practice dealing with the snakes before they made their way to the cursed chest.

"Did you end up living with the Dursleys?" Harry asked as they followed Rose.

"Yeah, they were a bit annoying and Dudley's a bit of a pervert but they could have been worse, at least I didn't have to deal with Marge after I killed Ripper," Rose replied as she moved up to the door of the next compartment.

"What happened?" Harry asked, thinking of Marge's annoying dog.

"Vicious little shit tried to bite me," Rose complained as she pointed her wand at the skinniest snake in the compartment. "Leviosa." She floated the snake up to the window and tossed it off the train, finding it a lot easier than the fat snake. "I grabbed one of Vernon's golf clubs and cracked his skull open then I ran to my room and locked the doors."

Harry winced. "I'm surprised that she didn't have Vernon break it down."

"He probably would have if I hadn't moved the bed against the door. I only stuck around long enough to record Marge threatening to kill me with my tape player then I slipped out of the window and down the rope."

"Good call," Sirius assured her as he levitated one of the snakes up and slammed it into the open window, trying to cut the number of snakes down to something more reasonable before they opened the door.

"I hoofed it to Mrs. Figg's house and called the bobbies, they weren't impressed with Marge."

"What happened?" Harry asked, surprised that they hadn't been able to bribe their way out of trouble.

"She got three years in prison for threatening to kill me and all of her dogs were put down on account of one of them biting an officer when he showed up to her house. Last I heard she was in a mental hospital because of her time in prison. I'm pretty sure her questionable mental health had more to do with Sirius paying her a visit because I told him that she was planning a visit in a letter last summer."

"Some people just crack," Sirius offered. 'I probably should have had a chat with Vernon about his behavior but he's stupid enough that he would have taken it out on Harry. She obviously got a whitewashed version of the Dursleys, is that because of Hermione's lack of knowledge of them or because she's a girl?'

"And some people have help," Rose countered as Hermione levitated one of the snakes and shoved it out of a window.

"Leviosa," Harry said as he flicked his wand at one of the snakes in the chamber. "Sounds like you had the better Dursleys."

"I think one of the bobbies mentioned that he'd take it personal if something happened to me and that he'd be checking in now and then. That kept them mostly honest until Hogwarts at which point they decided to ignore me during the summer other than making sure I had enough to eat and stayed out of sight when they had company. Did you have a collection of insane Defense teachers?"

"Three out of four," Harry replied as he managed to shove the snake out the window. "Quirrel and Lockhart the first two years then the fake Moody last year?"

"Same," Rose agreed. "Did you get to see the World Cup with Lupin and Hermione?"

Harry shook his head. "We saw it with the Weasleys, they got some tickets because Mr. Weasley helped someone in the Department of Games out of a sticky situation."

"Huh, you're probably friends with Ron, aren't you?" Rose asked.

"You're not?" Harry asked.

"Not really," Rose replied with a shrug. "He got a lot better after I decked him in first year for making Hermione cry because she was trying to help but he's just one of the guys. I know the twins a lot better because of Quidditch."

"Huh," Harry muttered, surprised that he hadn't held more of a grudge. "How did Lupin get tickets?"

Rose gestured over her shoulder at Sirius. "Sirius bought them, they weren't in the top seats but they were decent. Krum caught the snitch but Ireland won, it was a great game."

"When did you get together with Hermione?" Harry asked.

Rose turned and gave Hermione a smile then looked at Harry. "We met on the train and there were sparks but nothing really caught fire until the ball, we got a bit tipsy and we ended up having a bit too much fun. You?"

"We ended up jumping into a magical book together and I realized that she'd always have my back and that she was comfortable in a way that no one else was," Harry admitted.

"Does that mean you didn't ask her to the Yule Ball?" Rose asked.

"No," Harry admitted with a sigh. "I was stupid and didn't want anything to do with the ball because my name came out of the Goblet despite the fact that I didn't put it in."

"Been there, done that," Rose grumbled. "Most of the school turned on me because of that shite. Either because they were jealous that I didn't share the secret about how I cheated or because Draco paid them to harass me."

"That's low even for Draco, what happened?" Harry asked.

Rose shrugged. "He called me a Weasley when we first met because of my hair and my secondhand clothes. I might have told him to fuck a duck and things went South from there. It didn't help that I curb stomped him in a duel back in second year and he blames me for getting his father killed at the end of our second year."

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"He drew his wand on me after I gave him back the diary with a sock in it and Dobby hit him with a blast, he cracked his skull on the wall and never woke up. Draco blamed the entire thing on me despite not having any evidence. I should probably thank him because I got really good at dueling but third year sucked."

"That sucks," Harry agreed as Hermione levitated one of the snakes and tried to shove it through the open window. "I don't think that one is going to fit through the window."

"It would probably fit if it stopped wiggling," Hermione argued.

Sirius used a quick spell to check the compartment for more snakes then levitated the other snake into the air and opened the door. "Back up a bit, we'll float them to the other compartment and toss them through the hole then hit the next one."

Rose moved back from the door, working on her list of questions for her brother, wondering if she could talk Hermione into going with her if she left but knowing she wouldn't want to leave her family which ruined the idea of leaving, since she wasn't going to leave her behind.

0o0o0