Harry Potter, Hero of Legend, Stories and Elves Part 5

Neville stared at the twenty foot black stone walls that surrounded the town as they walked out of the forest. "How long do you think it would take the demons to break the walls?"

"They'd probably just toss a bunch of demons over the wall so they could open the gates," Xander suggested.

Harry used his appraisal ability on the wall as they walked closer. "It wouldn't work, the top of the wall projects a magical shield that prevents monsters and demons from moving or teleporting through it. You'd have to destroy the wall if you wanted to get through and they reinforced it with magic and an ancient blessing, it's five times as durable as it should be and it regenerates."

"Do you think they have notes?" Hermione asked hopefully.

"It's worth checking once we've built up some good will," Tonks said as she studied the elves that were waiting to be let in. "At least no one would confuse them with house elves."

"They're basically people with pointy ears as far as I can tell," Sirius offered.

Harry glanced at the wooden sign over the massive metal doors that were currently shut. "Shady Haven." He turned his attention to the smaller metal door where a dark haired elven woman wearing dark blue robes was standing with a group of guards in chainmail.

"At least it's not called Pleasantville," Xander offered as they walked over.

"What's wrong with Pleasantville?" Neville asked.

"I grew up in a town called Sunnydale, it was built over a portal to several hell dimensions and it was anything but nice once you scratched the surface," Xander explained.

Hermione smiled slightly. "You're probably just being paranoid."

"Are you telling me that you'd be happy about staying in a place called Sleepy Hollow or something from Lovecraft?" Xander asked.

"Point," Hermione admitted, knowing that she'd want to poke around a bit before she'd feel comfortable, especially if weird things were going on.

The woman dressed in blue robes frowned as Harry's group walked up to the gate. "You don't feel like demons but you're suffering from several curses and you're not elves."

"Curses?" Hermione asked warily, her previous amusement vanishing.

Tonks pulled her hood back, revealing the fact that she didn't have pointed ears. "We were brought here to help with the demons. What type of curses?"

"It varies," the elven priestess replied as she studied the curses she could see layered on Tonks. "You're suffering from four curses, a bloodline curse to limit your Metamorph ability, a clumsiness curse, a tragic love curse that will probably result in your death if you marry someone you love and a curse that prevents you from liking your first name."

"Huh, I was sort of expecting a curse that encourages you to go after older men," Sirius mused.

"Remus isn't that much older and I'm pretty sure the fact that my Mother decided to name me Nymphadora is why I don't like my first name," Tonks argued.

"I'm just telling you what I can see," the priestess replied as she gestured toward Harry. "The young man with glasses is suffering from a family blindness curse that has weakened over the generations as well as a curse to track his magic and a curse to give him nightmares."

"That tracks," Sirius admitted, fairly sure the magic tracking curse was the trace. "The Potters have needed glasses for a while."

Harry shrugged. "I just figured we had bad eyesight."

"The man with one eye has half a dozen, 'May you live in interesting times' curses along with a curse about never finding a normal girlfriend, a failed possession curse, a broken twin curse that lingers and a servant curse. One of the 'interesting times curses' involves love spells so I'd avoid using them," she warned Xander.

"Got it," Xander assured her, having learned his lesson on that particular subject.

"And Sirius?" Tonks asked as she glanced at Sirius.

"He's suffering from a curse that impairs his judgement when it comes to pranks and a broken or accidental curse that is causing guilt and reinforcing his desire to protect his godson to an unsafe degree," the priestess offered.

"That would explain some of my old pranks," Sirius mused, wondering if the curse was responsible for not realizing that feeding Snape to Remus would have resulted in Remus getting into a lot of trouble or if it was just the result of teenage stupidity.

"What about me?" Hermione asked, wondering what she'd say in her case.

"You have the same curse that lets people track your magic as your young friends and you have a curse that makes you trust authority and follow rules more than you should. You also have traces of multiple failed love spells or potions."

"That's reasonable…" Hermione trailed off as she realized that trusting a stranger's world wasn't actually reasonable, especially since she didn't remember drinking any love potions. "Do you have any proof?"

"Your curse showed up when I used my Appraisal ability on you," Harry admitted. "I just didn't say anything because we were in the middle of stuff and I didn't have a way to fix it."

"Fine, how do we fix it?" Hermione asked, wondering when she'd gotten cursed to follow the rules since she couldn't remember a time when she didn't follow the rules, at least before meeting Harry and getting pulled into his adventures.

"You follow me to the temple and we'll have the head priestess break the curses, she should be able to break anything that wasn't a result of a god cursing you," the priestess assured them.

"Am I cursed?" Neville asked, curious if that explained some of his issues.

"You have the same magic tracking curse as the other two children, a memory curse that is falling apart and a black thumb curse which makes you worse at growing plants."

"Can you check that Harry?" Hermione asked, finding the idea that a curse was making Neville worse at Herbology a bit hard to swallow.

"She's telling the truth," Harry assured her.

"Fine," Hermione agreed, doing her best to ignore the voice in the back of her head that was telling her that the priestess was mistaken.

"This way," the priestess said as she headed through the gate.

"Might as well," Sirius agreed, wanting the curses dealt with, even if he was fairly sure he deserved to feel guilty for not killing Peter or realizing that he'd lost his mind before everything went to shit.

Hermione followed the priestess through the door and was a touch surprised that the town smelled of mint and evergreen rather than the less than pleasant odors she would have expected from a medieval town. "I would have expected more wooden buildings considering you live in the middle of a forest."

"Stone is more durable and it doesn't burn when someone knocks over a lamp or has an accident with fire magic," the priestess explained as she stopped in front of a small stone building with stained glass windows. She smiled as the head priestess for the city walked out of the temple wearing a red robe. "I found them Kella, can you break some curses?"

"I'll certainly give it a try if they wish," the grey haired old elf replied with a smile. "Do I have a volunteer?"

"I'll do it," Sirius offered as he took a step forward.

"Excellent," Kella replied as she gestured and cast Remove Curse on Sirius, breaking his curses and making most of the guilt drop off his shoulders. "Next."

"I'll do it," Neville said as he stepped forward.

Kella gestured and cast Remove Curse on Neville, causing a patch of wild flowers to sprout from the dirt and grow around his feet as the spell broke the curse holding his magic back. "I think we found Drell a new apprentice."

"Drell?" Neville asked.

"He's our druid, they're not particularly common since most people like elemental magic or arcane magic more than nature magic and it's a rare talent but they're useful for keeping the forest healthy," Kella explained. "Next."

Harry used his Appraisal ability on Neville and smiled when he realized the curses were completely gone. "I'll go."

Kella quickly hit the rest of the group with Remove Curse, breaking all of their curses on the group with the exception of one of the 'May you live in interesting times' curses on Xander along with the curse that would keep him from finding a normal girlfriend. "Did you piss off a god of love or something?" she asked Xander.

"I might have," Xander admitted, thinking about the love spell that he'd blackmailed Amy into casting after Cordelia broke up with him.

"That would explain why one of the 'May you live in interesting times' curses refused to break along with the 'curse' that will keep you from finding a boring girl to settle down with," Kella mused.

'Nymphadora? Yeah, it's still weird, just not quite as annoying,' Tonks mused.

'Do I still want to follow authority?' Hermione mused, trying to figure out if her thoughts were different. 'Mum and Dad? Still my parents and I love them, that hasn't changed. Ministry? Setting Fudge and Umbridge and their cronies on fire would probably fix a lot of the problems. Is that a new thought or just me being honest?'

"I appreciate the help with the curses," Xander assured her. "I don't suppose you can do anything about my missing eye?"

"That depends, was the injury caused by a god?" Kella asked.

"Corrupted priest stabbed it with his thumb," Xander replied.

"Worth a try." Kella gestured and cast Regenerate on Xander, causing his eye to quickly regenerate and for any trace of the rest of his old injuries to completely vanish over the next couple of seconds. "No worries."

"Thank you," Xander told the priestess, overjoyed to have his eye back.

"That's why I'm here," Kella replied with a grin. "Now that I've taken care of your magical maladies, are you ready to help us repopulate the elven race?"

"I'm down," Sirius replied with a grin.

Tonks glanced at Sirius then focused on the priestess, still not sure how she was supposed to feel about knocking up a bunch of women. "Where are we supposed to set up?"

"Wherever you want," Kella replied with a grin. "As divine heroes, you're immune to any of the local decency laws which means you could set up in the middle of the street if you wanted to without having to buy everyone a round of drinks."

"How did that particular law come up?" Xander asked.

Harry opened his Property Translocation interface and dropped two of the children enhancing rings into the boxes so he could start trying to make a ring that wasn't cursed or dangerous to use while they figured out how to organize everything.

"We had a group of fat guys that were hiring girls to have sex with and blocking the street in front of a local business they were trying to drive out of business about eighty years ago. It was annoying so the city council came up with an annoyance tax or at least that's how my mother explained things when I asked about it. It's mostly just used if people are being particularly annoying or at least only really abused if people are being particularly annoying."

"Most girls these days grow up dreaming of finding a guy that loves them enough that they're willing to risk the fines," the priestess wearing a blue dress added.

"What do you think?" Xander asked the group.

"I don't have any shame," Sirius replied with a grin. "I'm perfectly willing to conjure a bed and set up in the street."

Tonks shook her head. "I'm not and I'm going to need someone to make sure I don't go too far off the rails and I'm going to need something to drink."

"We could split up," Sirius suggested. "You could take the inn, I'll take the street. Xander could take a different street or tavern."

"And the others?" the priestess in a blue robe asked.

"They're a bit young, maybe they should leave this to the professionals," Sirius joked then quickly raised his hands when Harry and Neville glared at him. "Yes, I'm joking and it's your choice."

"Good, I didn't want to have to do something drastic, like stick you in a pet carrier," Harry told him as he spent the mana to swap the shield property to a slot on the other ring with a less impressive trait so he could swap the shield property back into a slot with a higher chance of their future children getting the ability.

"That's fair," Sirius agreed with amusement, not sure if Lily would want to murder him for not stopping Harry or if she'd be proud of Harry for helping to save an entire species. 'Knowing Lily, probably both.'

"I'm still not even sure I want to have sex…" Hermione trailed off as she turned slightly and spotted a pale skinned busty teenager with wavy blue hair that came down to her butt that was walking up the street toward them holding a long wooden scroll case and a book with glowing eldritch runes.

Harry glanced over to see what had drawn Hermione's attention and stared at the attractive girl wearing a short red skirt and a long sleeved blue silk shirt that was nearly see-through walking toward them with a determined look on her face. "You were saying?"

"Sorry, I was distracted by the book," Hermione replied, curious about the obviously magical book.

"Book?" Harry asked, having to take a second look at what she was carrying to see what she'd been talking about. "Okay, sure, let's go with that and yeah, there's nothing wrong with being distracted."

"Is it weird to want to get to know someone first?" Hermione asked, finding the entire situation with having to repopulate the elves weird.

"Nothing wrong with that," Harry assured her as he swapped the shield quality back to the original ring in a better spot so more children would have a better chance of having innate magical shields while naked. 'That drops the chance of having one of their arms mutated to a one percent chance every time they get a mutation result.'

"Magical books can certainly be distracting," Xander offered as the girl made her way over, wondering why it felt like the girl's black leather boots were the wrong color.

Kella glanced at the scroll case that Kara was holding. "Let me guess, the librarian had a vision?"

"Probably, she just handed me a book on magical plants and a map of the region with a smirk and told me that if I hurried, I'd get to flirt with a cute couple while I helped explain everything on the map," Kara explained as she checked out the people that had the same rounded ears as the people in her dreams.

"Magical plants?" Neville asked with interest.

"There are a lot of them in the forest," Kara replied, making a mental note to introduce him to some of her friends that were into plants since he was obviously interested in plants.

"Having an actual map would be fantastic," Harry admitted.

"We'd love the help," Hermione told her, doing her best to keep her focus on the girl's face since her gaze kept drifting to her breasts. 'Is there a spell for larger breasts or perfect breasts or maybe the reverse of a notice-me-not charm? Lavender would kill for some of their makeup secrets.'

"Kara Sundancer is one of our library apprentices. Kara, these are the heroes of legend, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Xander Harris, Sirius Black, Tonks and Neville Longbottom," Kella said as she pointed to each of the heroes as she said their names.

"Nice to meet you," Kara replied, looking forward to working with the Heroes of Legend and being part of history, if only a little bit. 'It certainly doesn't hurt that they're attractive.'

"You as well," Hermione assured her since the boys weren't speaking up. 'Probably just distracted, boys.'

"Right, nice to meet you," Harry offered as he continued swapping various qualities between the rings, trying to limit the chance of getting the negative effects and increase the chance of getting good effects and doing his best not to stare at her chest.

"Can we use the table in the temple?" Kara asked Kella, knowing her boss would tan her hide if she wasn't careful with the map.

"That's fine," Kella agreed. "That gives me a chance to talk to some people and organize things so we won't have all of the women in town mobbing you at the same time."

"Speaking of that part of the quest, how is the town's food situation doing?" Harry asked Kella.

"It's fine, we do a bit of hunting but most of the town's food is grown in magical gardens, why?" Kella asked.

"Because the demons I killed had a magical bracelet that increases the number of children that result from a pregnancy and a ring that cuts the length of time a girl is pregnant to a tenth of the normal duration and gives them interesting abilities with a small chance of negative traits. It also causes the children to grow to about four years old over the next couple of days after they're born and pick up the skills and life experiences as if they'd lived in a town for the lost years."

Kella shook her head. "That sounds dangerous."

"We have perks to remove most types of pregnancy complications and the bracers help. If I can find a similar ring, I should be able to completely remove any chance of negative traits from the rings using one of my abilities."

"Nice," Kara offered, not seeing a problem with avoiding the messy stage of having children, especially if it gave any children she had extra abilities.

"How sure are you that you can remove the negative traits?" Kella asked Harry, knowing that having everyone knocked up for weeks instead of months would be worth the 'cost' of missing out on the children being screaming shit boxes for the first couple of years of their lives.

"If I can't remove everything, I can at least give you the odds," Harry told her.

"Do you think you can find another ring in the next couple of days?" Kara asked, wondering if it was worth waiting.

"I managed to question one of the demons, I have a pretty good idea where to find more rings. Either three days to the Northwest or near Breezewood, it's supposed to be attacked soon and the commander has a powerful ring. That's assuming you don't have any enchanters that can duplicate the rings in a reasonable time frame."

"No, Enchanting requires a lot of research or following recipes and we haven't had any luck duplicating demonic enchantments." Kella turned to the other priestess. "Send a message to Breezewood, it might be nothing but it doesn't hurt to give them a heads up."

"Alright," the priestess with the blue dress replied as she headed into the temple to use the communication stone.

"You might as well head inside and look at the map while I talk to some people," Kella told them then started walking down the street to talk to the librarian about her vision, hoping it would help.

"Let's go," Kara said as she headed into the temple.

"Sure," Hermione replied as she followed the other girl into the small temple. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting but the simple room with a statue of a handsome man in a kilt with a claymore wresting on his shoulder hadn't been in the top one hundred guesses.

"That's Mac, he's a god of stories," Kara explained as they headed through one of the doors into the study. She handed Neville the book on magical plants then walked over to the table in the middle of the room and pulled the cap off the scroll case so she could grab the map.

"Can I read it?" Neville asked.

"Sure, I needed a free hand and you sounded interested," Kara replied as she pulled the map out of the case.

Hermione glanced at the modest collection of books on the shelves and the comfortable looking wooden chairs with cushions then glanced up at the sconces that were glowing with a nice blue light that was easy on the eyes. "Do you come here a lot?"

"Part of my job is delivering books, I've been here a lot," Kara replied as she set the map on the table and secured the edges with a couple of books that people had left on the table.

Neville walked over to the table and carefully set the book on the table and opened it so he could look through it.

Kara pointed to Breezewood on the map. "You're looking at a four day ride if you want to get to Breezewood, three if you're willing to ride like a lunatic but the trails aren't all that great so you'd probably just kill your horse."

"I wish I had my firebolt," Harry said wistfully as he studied the map, trying to get a better idea of the local geography. 'Map added!' the words appeared on his heads-up display as a map icon appeared on his display. 'Nice,' he thought as he mentally pulled up his new map on his display.

"Firebolt?" Kara asked.

"It's a type of broom that was enchanted to fly, I could probably make the trip in a couple of hours," Harry explained as he studied the map on his display. 'This should make exploring easier.'

"Do any of the shops have any magical items that let you fly?" Neville asked as he glanced over the table of contents.

"I wish, I've always wanted to fly," Kara said, thinking about the flying cars from her dreams and how it wasn't the same since she couldn't control anything in her dreams.

"It's relaxing, everything else sort of falls away while you're flying," Harry offered.

"Do you think you could charm a broom?" Hermione asked Sirius.

"It won't be as fast as a professional broom or as stable but I looked up the spells when I enchanted my bike, it should get you in the air," Sirius assured them.

"Do you mind making a couple or showing me the spells?" Harry asked, figuring he could do some mixing and matching to get a better broom. "I have a couple of ideas I want to try."

"I guess I've got some time if we're not going to jump right into making sure the elves have a future," Sirius admitted, a bit disappointed that he'd have to put things off for a couple of hours even if he agreed with the reasons.

"Great," Harry replied as he closed his map and focused on Kara. "Do you know where we can find a couple of brooms that he can enchant? They need to be made out of decently hard wood so they don't break when we're sitting on them."

Kara smiled as she thought about her friend whose mother was a woodworker. "I know someone that probably has what you need. What type of supplies do you need to enchant the brooms?"

"Just my wand," Sirius replied with a shrug.

"In that case, I can probably talk Fianna into giving me a couple of brooms if you're willing to enchant one for him," Kara offered.

"Not a problem," Sirius assured her.

"Do you need any help explaining the map or should we check on the brooms?" Kara asked.

"That depends, have you ever been to Breezewood?" Harry asked, curious if she knew anything that would help him find it from the air.

"A couple of times, my folks have some friends there, why?" Kara asked.

"I'm curious if there are any landmarks that I could see from the air to make finding it easier," Harry explained.

"The Archmage of Storms has a tower there, it's over a hundred feet tall and made out of black stone like our wall, it's pretty hard to miss and you can see it for leagues."

"Good to know," Harry replied, wondering if the demons knew about the archmage or if they had a way to deal with him. "Let's go check on the brooms, unless we need to stay here for some reason?"

"Not that I know of," Kara replied with a shrug. "It's going to take Kella at least a couple of hours to talk to everyone she needs to."

"Does anyone care if I stay here and read the book?" Neville asked, wanting a chance to relax and decompress.

"Shouldn't be a problem," Kara replied as she headed for the door, excited about telling her friend about the heroes.