Population Boom, Hogwarts Part 15

"You look so handsome," Lily offered as she finished adjusting Harold's bowtie.

"Thanks Mum," Harold replied with a grin, looking forward to having fun at the dance.

"They're certainly roguishly handsome," James agreed, well aware that his sons took after him in looks, especially since he'd also gone with dress robes tossed over slacks and a white dress shirt.

"Thanks…" Mist trailed off as the girls walked out of the adjoining room with Vanessa, looking like they'd just stepped out of a movie, though it certainly wasn't the Goblet of Fire as Ginny and Jenny's dresses weren't abominations someone should have been stabbed for suggesting, let alone using like in the movie. Instead, they'd gone for dark blue gothic dresses that looked amazing while Rose was wearing a black robe over fitted slacks and an almost sheer white shirt that made it hard to remember she was only thirteen. He pulled his attention off his sister and glanced between Hermione and Puck, not used to seeing them in dresses. "We're going to need a shovel."

"Or a really large stick," James agreed.

Puck smiled as she twirled around, causing the bottom of her crimson dress to flare out and crackle with harmless magical flames.

"Behave," Hermione told Mist, glad to know that the boys liked their outfits.

"Impossible," Harold replied with amusement, glad that he'd taken Mist's suggestion and asked Jenny immediately rather than waiting like an idiot for someone else to scoop her up.

Mist smiled at Hermione and made a gesture like he was zipping his lips.

"You look adorable," Lily told them.

"Thanks, Vanessa helped," Rose replied with a grin.

"More like saved the day," Ginny muttered, glad that Vanessa had saved her from having to wear the abomination her mother had sent her.

"My pleasure," Vanessa replied with a smile. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to track down my date."

"Have fun," Mist told her. "We appreciate all of the help."

"You're welcome," Vanessa replied with a smile then headed through the door with a spring in her steps, looking forward to dancing and having fun.

"Ready?" Puck asked Rose as she held out her hand.

"Absolutely," Rose replied with a smile as she took Puck's arm and headed for the door, looking forward to dancing.

"Do we grab Luna or Ron first?" Mist asked as he held his hand out to his 'date', not particularly concerned about the fact that they'd both agreed to take a Luna, since the Lunas were third years and couldn't attend the ball without an invite.

"Luna, Vanessa already fixed Ron's robes and McGonagall is checking to make sure everyone isn't going to embarrass themselves," Hermione replied as she took Mist's hand and headed toward the door, happy that the second clone he'd created of Neville was taking Luna's second clone so that all of the Lunas could go to the ball.

"Holly is going to be annoyed that she didn't get to go," James mused as he watched the children leave.

"She'll get over it," Lily assured him. "Even with the expansion charms Albus was tossing around like candy at a parade, it's going to be crowded, I'm just glad that he let the third years attend if they could get a date."

"Probably for the best," James agreed. "Rose might have gotten creative and we don't need her stuffing people in trunks and using polyjuice so she can attend."

Lily shook her head. "She'd probably just bribe one of the house elves to apparate her in so she could grab a quick dance before vanishing the same way."

"I’d take points off for style, but it would certainly result in less trouble," James mused, making a note to suggest it to their younger twins so they could have at least one dance.

"We should probably get going so we can make sure the Weasley twins haven't spiked the punch," Lily pointed out.

"That's half the fun," James teased as he headed for the door.

"Do you want to deal with a drunk Rose?" Lily asked with amusement as she followed her husband out of their quarters.

"Yeah, no," James admitted, thinking about the one and only time someone had given her cider that had a bit too much sparkle in it. "I don't think we need everyone turned into dolls or stuffed bears."

"Or spiders," Lily replied as they headed for the great hall, happy that the transfigurations hadn't been permanent.

0o0o0

Snape glared at Harry, doing his best to ignore the urge to pull his wand and hex the bastard that had slept with his daughter. "What the hell were you thinking?!" he demanded, not sure if he meant his daughter or Harry.

Harry glanced at the attractive redhead that he'd gotten to know over the last couple of weeks since she'd walked up and asked him for a dance at the ball then looked at Dumbledore who was standing behind his desk. "To be fair, how was I supposed to know the attractive redhead was Snape's daughter?"

"He has a point," James offered, adding fuel to the fire.

"Not the point," Lily warned her husband, glad she'd managed to talk Severus into dealing with things privately, rather than at breakfast in the middle of the great hall.

"Relax, he was a perfect gentleman, he kissed my ass after spanking it," Sarah told her father, barely able to keep a straight face.

Snape pulled his wand, pointed it at Harry and attempted to stun him, causing the wand to squawk like a chicken. "What?!"

"Performance issues?" James asked 'innocently', glad that the children had filled him in on the prank.

"What the hell did you do to my wand?!" Snape demanded as he turned and glared at James.

"That's not helping," Albus told James.

"I replaced it with a fake wand when you weren't looking," Mist offered as he turned visible, having been leaning against the wall so that no one would bump into him. "Sarah has a warped sense of humor and I figured there was a chance you'd actually try to curse Harry."

"You need to relax," Sarah complained. "You've sent me fourteen letters in the last couple of weeks, every single one of them complained about me dancing with Harry."

"That's because you're twelve and he's a Potter," Snape complained.

"I'll admit to sneaking into the ball and having a dance, I'll even admit to falling asleep on Harry and Luna when we were listening to music after the dance, but honestly, that's the only thing that happened," Sarah lied, not seeing a reason to mention the fact that she'd jumped into the hot tub with Harry and the girls without any clothes after the dance or that she'd taken advantage of Rose's offer to help increase her mana pool by having sex with her around the castle for the last couple of weeks.

"Where did you put my wand?" Snape demanded, annoyed by the prank and the fact that he'd probably deserved it.

"That's a good question," Albus mused, trying to prevent Severus from trying to kill Mist which would result in James killing him.

"Right here," Mist replied as he pulled Snape's wand out of his inventory as he walked over to Dumbledore's desk and set it on the desk. "I needed time to enchant it so that I could make it explode the next time he annoyed me."

"You should have been in Slytherin," Severus grumbled with a hint of approval as he walked over and picked his wand up, fairly sure it wasn't charmed to explode but fairly sure he didn't want to call his 'bluff' since he might not in fact be bluffing.

"I'm a bit too blunt," Mist replied with a shrug, knowing that he didn't really have the ambition for it.

Severus sighed then turned and looked at his daughter. "I'm sorry about the letters and telling you to stay away from the Potters, but just because Voldemort is dead, doesn't mean his followers are."

"You're a half blood, Mum is a muggleborn, they were never going to play nice, which is why I'm using Mum's last name," Sarah argued. "As long as you don't run around telling people that I'm your daughter, they're not going to figure it out, I get most of my looks from mum."

“Thankfully,” Snape said.

"If it makes you feel better, Bella adores her and she's still a terrifying duelist," Mist offered, glad that Bella was doing better now that she had friends and was dating Neville's clone.

"A bit," Snape admitted, then focused on his daughter. "You're grounded."

"Worth it," Sarah replied with a grin, knowing her mother would back her up, if only because the prank was her idea because her father had been a bit neurotic since they'd gotten back.

"Gryffindors," Severus complained, trying not to show how proud he was of his daughter for planning the prank and nearly causing him a heart attack.

"Can we leave?" Mist asked Albus. "I've got a test in Transfiguration that I need to study for."

"That depends, how often are you planning on pranking your former professor?" Albus asked.

"As long as he remains our former professor, I'm willing to let things remain in the past. If you reinstate him as a professor then I'll do my 'legal' best to drive him insane," Mist warned him.

"I'm done being a professor," Severus assured them. "Riddle is dead and gone, I'd rather do research."

Albus nodded. "In that case, feel free to leave, since you were just making sure Severus didn't do anything he'd regret and we seem to have passed that point."

"Speaking of research, did you have any luck with your pocket dimension spell when you went to the past?" Mist asked Severus.

"I found a way to stabilize the portals but they only last fifty seven minutes and the portals rarely open to the same place twice which limits their usefulness," Severus admitted.

"Do you want a solution?" Mist asked with a grin.

"How?" Lily asked, wondering what he'd figured out.

"How much?" Severus asked, knowing Mist wouldn't offer unless he actually had something that could help.

Mist glanced at Sarah then focused on Severus. "I want a promise that you won't try to kill or maim anyone if your daughter ends up with a Potter or a Granger and I want five percent of the profits if you end up selling the pocket dimensions."

"In general or specific, as in I can't maim anyone or just the people involved?" Severus asked thoughtfully, not seeing a problem with him getting five percent if he could fix the problem since he'd spent years on it and hadn't been able to.

"There are a lot of idiots in the wizarding world, I just meant my family," Mist replied.

"If you can actually fix the problem… to Lily's satisfaction, I can agree to those terms," Severus agreed, not having a problem with his daughter ending up with a Potter at some point in the future, preferably a decade.

Mist pulled a spell crystal out of his pocket. "This should teach you how to create a pair of mirrors that allow you to travel between them by walking through a shadow realm."

"Where did you find that?" Severus asked.

"Same place where I get most of my weird spells," Mist replied as he handed Severus the crystal, not seeing a point in explaining the lab coats or everything he could do. "Either way, it doubles the distance between the mirrors but it's a straight path, which means you can avoid stairs or inconvenient physical barriers. It also shortens the path between dimensions, meaning you could cast your spell to rip open the dimension and then place a mirror inside of it and you'd have a base or a vacation home."

"If this works, we're going to make a fortune," Severus said, wonder in his tone.

"That's the idea," Mist agreed.

"Why assist me? I was a horrible teacher," Severus argued.

"You're a horrible teacher, but you're an excellent researcher and this should give you enough money to create something impressive," Mist told him, then turned and left, knowing that having Mist responsible for a portion of his success would probably drive Snape nuts for a while.

0o0o0

"Eventually, we're going to run out of Death Eaters," Mist mused as he copied the unconscious young man that Belltrix's clone had dropped on the floor in the Shrieking Shack.

"I could always swap to dealing with corrupt politicians, they multiply like doxies," Bellatrix replied, not particularly worried about running out of assholes in the wizarding world.

"Let's avoid that for the moment," Mist replied as he used a switching spell to put the clothes on the clone. "How many Death Eaters are left?"

"Of the people that matter, Snape and Karkaroff, I've already grabbed the rest," Bellatrix replied.

"Might as well leave Snape, he's clean and you should be able to grab Karkaroff when he goes to Hogsmead for a drink," Mist replied.

"That shouldn't be a problem…" Bellatrix trailed off as a vaguely familiar man in his twenties dropped the hood of his invisibility cloak.

"Moody," Mist offered, slightly annoyed that he'd missed him when he'd checked for invisible people. 'Probably hiding behind the couch.'

"Mist, how many secrets do you have?" Moody asked.

"If I answered that, they wouldn't be secret would they?" Mist asked, wondering if Bellatrix could drop him before he got the drop on her.

"Is there a reason you're working with a woman that I assume to be a clone of Bellatrix Lestrange?" Moody asked.

"She knows all of the Death Eaters and the defenses of their houses or she can figure it out," Mist replied with a shrug.

"And you've been what, replacing them?" Moody asked, trying to put all of the pieces together.

"With more reasonable copies, yeah," Mist admitted, figuring they were past the point where he could bluff his way out of things.

"What did you do with the originals?" Moody asked.

"They're helping make the world a better place."

"Fertilizer?" Moody asked thoughtfully, not at all disturbed by the idea.

Mist shook his head. "No, I'm increasing the population of endangered animals in the zoos."

"Huh, I'm not even sure that's legally a crime," Moody mused. "But I'm going to insist that you never tell the Weasley twins about it or their uncles or your parents… actually just don't tell anyone about this."

"Wasn't planning on it," Mist replied.

"So, you're responsible for the rest of the duplicates aren't you? Why copy people?" Moody asked.

"We were running really low on reasonable magic users that wouldn't cause problems, the numbers haven't been this low in centuries. I'm fixing it," Mist replied.

"If the wrong people find out," Moody told him.

"Which is why I'm making sure no one knows. Speaking of, have you ever played the obliviation game?" Mist asked brightly.

"No and a vow should cover it," Moody told him, not interested in having his mind screwed with. "Besides, if you obliviate me, I can't help."

"Help?" Mist asked, wondering if he was actually planning on helping or just trying to get information out of him.

"I have lots of notes on people that got a slap on the wrist that should have gotten serious time, you can't fix the system if the same people just screw it up," Moody argued.

"I'm listening," Mist replied.

“Before we get into that I have to ask, why so many Luna Lovegood clones?”

Mist shrugged. “When I get bored I make a Luna and the boredom goes away.”

“Yeah, that would do it,” Moody agreed.

Ballatrix shook her head. “And people call me crazy.”

0o0o0

"Is this why you were pushing for the Your Home is your Castle Doctrine?" Lucius's clone asked Mist as he glanced around at the untouched wilderness that made up the pocket dimension they were exploring.

Mist glanced over at where Fudge was talking to Albus and a group of goblins. "Basically, I don't really have a problem with dark wizards, I have a problem with senseless murder and mayhem."

"So you don't have a problem with me bidding on it?" Lucius asked, wanting to make sure.

"Of course not, if you want to run around as a lord or build something useful where you never have to worry about non-magical people, fantastic. You'll probably have to call in some favors to afford it. No dragging in slaves and be nice to the house elves, they prepare your food."

"That's an excellent point," Lucius admitted, thinking about the original's idiotic behavior toward Dobby and how one sock had let him escape his bonds, where being kind would have built enough loyalty to avoid that bit of stupidity.

"How large is the pocket dimension?" Narcissa asked.

"You can go a hundred miles in every direction before you hit the mists and end up coming out the other side," Mist told her. "It's damned near perfect for a couple of magical villages and a couple of dragon preserves. No statute of Secrecy, no ministry presence at all, you'd be the rulers of everything you see."

"What's the catch?" Narcissa asked, figuring there had to be a catch.

"You have to buy it first and you have to be reasonable on Earth, that way, no one storms your castle and you can be selective about the types of magical creatures you let through," Mist pointed out.

"No hags," Cassy stated.

"No werewolves or vampires," Narcissa mused as she glanced at her ‘daughter’, not having a problem with killing any hag that tried to trespass. "We'll have to be able to outbid the ministry."

"That shouldn't be a problem, the goblins have already said they won't take promissory notes or give loans, so it's hard coin only," Lucius said, fairly sure he could outbid most of the wizarding world himself but knowing that he'd have trouble if the Blacks started bidding against him which meant they needed to pool their resources. "If you'll excuse me, I need to talk to some people."

"Of course," Mist replied as Lucius left, rather amused that Snape's plan to extract a bunch of money from the dark families would probably result in everyone being a lot more polite while they were in the wizarding world, since they'd have to care about the mirror that let people travel back and forth.

0o0o0