Population Boom, Hogwarts Part 12

"We might need a soundtrack," Mist mused as he watched Dawn hack apart a group of goblins with her lightsaber as she made her way toward the hobgoblin standing in front of a fancy looking treasure chest made out of a silver metal.

"Or a shrink," Hermione muttered as she watched Anakin use the Jump boots that he'd purchased from Dawn to leap over the mob of goblins that were trying to kill them and land in front of the hobgoblin.

"Probably," Mist admitted as Anakin started dueling the hobgoblin, a touch surprised that the hobgoblin's blade wasn't melting from the nearly constant clashes with Anakin's lightsaber.

"Die!" the hobgoblin shouted as he raised his hand and unleashed lightning on Anakin, causing him to scream in pain as the lightning passed through his force field like armor like it wasn't even there.

"Tag!" Dawn shouted as she gestured and sent the hobgoblin crashing into the wall with a force push.

"You might have a point about mental trauma," Mist admitted as the goblins swarmed Anakin while he was on the ground and started stabbing him, trying to get through his force field. He quickly cast his Regeneration spell on Anakin to make sure the lightning didn't do any permanent damage.

"Fuck!" Anakin cursed as he tried to get his limbs to cooperate enough to start killing the goblins.

"I'm going to fuck you and roast you over a fire!" the hobgoblin taunted and unleashed lightning on Dawn.

Dawn raised her left hand and absorbed the goblin's lightning as she stalked toward the goblin. "Give me power! Give me your soul!"

"Fuck!" the hobgoblin cursed and bolted for the tunnel, intent on getting away from the crazy bitch since she could absorb his lightning.

Bella created a fire whip out of the end of her wand and swept it through the horde of goblins that were on Anakin, causing the ones that weren't cut in half to scatter.

Ginny's clone hit the fleeing hobgoblin with a leg locking jinx, causing him to crash to the ground. "Got him!"

Anakin rolled to his feet and started hacking his way through the confused and terrified goblins that had survived Bella's spell.

"Off with their heads!" Luna shouted as she cheerfully decapitated one of the nasty goblins with her new lightsaber, the pink blade easily carving through flesh and bone alike.

'At least they're on our side,' Neville thought as he continued dropping goblins with stunners for Luna's duplicates, making a mental note to pick up more combat spells.

Hermione worked on blasting the goblins near the edge of the horde with her eldritch blast, working on her aim.

Dawn grabbed the hobgoblin with Telekinesis and slammed him into the cavern wall repeatedly until he lost his sword and had a dazed look in his eyes. "I'm going to…" she trailed off as a lightsaber flew through the air and impaled the hobgoblin in the middle of his forward. She turned and looked at Anakin. "Seriously?"

"You were going to start monologuing like a villain," Anakin replied as he used his mana to pull his lightsaber back to his hand.

"I never get to monologue," Dawn complained good naturedly as she walked over to loot the hobgoblin.

"Good, it's a bad habit," Mist teased as he conjured a wall of dark fire to block off the other tunnel so that they'd have the chance to loot and rest a bit before they continued clearing the labyrinth his spell had created.

"Isn't that half the fun of being a villain?" Puck asked as she blasted the last goblin that wasn't stunned as it tried to flee.

"That depends on the villain and the setting," Mist replied with a smile as he headed over to the treasure chest, glad that everyone seemed in good spirits and not completely traumatized by their 'adventure'.

"Do you think they're sick?" Ginny asked as she studied the green skinned goblins with large heads.

"Not enough to matter, they're just a different type of goblin," Mist told her as Dawn walked over and used the key she'd grabbed from the hobgoblin to open the chest, revealing a chest that was larger on the inside and filled with gold coins and loot. "Shiny!"

"Okay, Kaylee," Mist teased absently as he cast his enchanting spell so he could check the loot, forgetting for a second that Firefly wouldn't come out for a few years.

"Kaylee's awesome," Dawn replied with a grin, not seeing a problem with being compared to one of her favorite characters.

"Yep," Mist agreed as he started checking the jewelry that was mixed in with the gold coins, hoping for something interesting or at least useful and wishing he'd kept his mouth shut as Hermione was probably going to drive herself crazy trying to find a show that didn't exist and wouldn't for years, if ever.

"Kaylee?" Hermione asked as she glanced between Mist and Dawn.

"She's a mechanic on Firefly, it's a show about a loveable band of space smugglers," Dawn explained.

"I'll have to check it out," Hermione said, wondering where Mist had watched the show since the Dursleys didn't like anything that wasn't 'normal'.

"Huh," Mist muttered when he saw the enchantment on the third ring that he picked up. "That's going to make dealing with the goblins a cakewalk."

"What did you get?" Dawn asked, curious about the magical ring that was going to make fighting the hordes of goblins easier.

"A ring of lightning resistance, which means we can start using the lightning gloves that I can conjure and just blast everything that comes near us," Mist explained as he checked the runes that he'd need to duplicate the enchantment.

"Why would we need electrical resistance?" Anakin asked.

"The gloves don't give you electrical resistance and the lightning spell is basically a storm of lightning centered on the person using the gloves so you'd end up frying yourself if you use them without the proper gear," Mist explained. "On the upside, using the spell thirty times teaches you a lightning spell that might be useful."

Harry pulled his attention off Luna's duplicates who were almost cheerfully beheading the goblins that Neville had stunned and focused on Mist. "Sounds better than trying to kill the goblins one at a time considering their numbers."

"At least the underwear seems to be counting each goblin for increasing our mana," Ginny offered, glad that the dead goblins faded away after a few seconds so they didn't have to figure out how to dispose of a few thousand corpses.

"It certainly makes it easier," Mist replied as he enchanted another mundane ring with electrical resistance.

"Let's grab the loot from the dead then we'll put the gloves on and pretend to be sith lords," Dawn suggested as she headed toward a silver bracelet that was on the ground where a goblin had dropped it.

"Loot!" Luna declared cheerfully as she pulled a cloth bag out of her pocket and started looting.

Harry shook his head then headed for the nearest pile of coins.

Anakin walked over to one of the glowing crystals embedded in the wall of the cavern and focused on it, trying to get a feel for it to see if it would make a good lightsaber crystal. He smiled when he realized that the glowing crystal would make a fantastic lightsaber crystal. "Can I take some of the crystals?"

"Go for it," Mist told him, not particularly worried about the glowing crystals since he could just enchant glass orbs to glow.

"Thank you, they resonate with the Force meaning they should make excellent lightsaber crystals once they're cut," Anakin told him as he worked on extracting the crystal from the wall without breaking it.

0o0o0

"Die!" Neville shouted as he stepped out from behind a large rock and unleashed a storm of lightning on the horde of goblins that were surrounding a large hobgoblin that was probably as tall as Hagrid.

"Blood!" the hobgoblin shouted as he charged through the storm of lightning that was killing his minions.

Anakin stepped out of cover, raised his left hand and cast his new lightning spell, sending a stream of lightning into the horde of goblins. He raked the beam of crackling lightning over the goblin horde, killing hundreds of them and filling the cavern with the screams of the dying.

Puck peeked out from behind cover and waved her wand at the ground in front of the goblin and hit it with a lubrication spell that she'd picked up from one of Lavender's magazines, causing the giant hobgoblin to slip on the rock he was trying to jump over.

Bella flicked her wand at the hobgoblin and conjured shackles, trying to keep it from closing the distance.

"Thunder and Lightning!" Neville shouted as he cast his new spell causing a thirty foot diameter storm cloud to appear twenty feet over the hobgoblin's head. He closed his eyes a second before the first bolt of lightning appeared causing the hobgoblin to scream in agony.

'Fuck!' Mist thought as he covered his ears and looked away from the cloud as the dark cloud unleashed hell on Earth on the boss, soaking him with near freezing water, continually blasting him with lightning and shaking the cavern with thunder.

Anakin continued raking his lightning spell back and forth over the horde until there was nothing left of the monsters. "Can you dismiss your spell?!"

"What?!" Neville shouted, unable to hear much of anything over the thunder or dismiss his spell.

Mist pulled his wand out of his inventory, pointed it at the cloud that seemed to be growing and chanted, "Finite!". He scowled when his spell didn't even make the cloud twitch. "Fuck it!" he complained, knowing that leaving the spell to continue growing would probably result in getting caught and a lot of detentions or worse. He put his wand back in his inventory and cast his Regeneration spell on Neville, knowing his dispelling ability would hurt his friend if it actually worked.

"Sorry," he offered as he gestured at the cloud and started hitting it with the Voracious Dispelling Invocation that he'd picked up from his warlock powers, causing the cloud to vanish after the fifth time he hit it, causing Neville to scream in pain as the backlash from his spell being dispelled hurt him.

"What the fuck?!" Neville demanded as he spun around, looking for whatever the hell stabbed him.

"Give me a minute," Mist told Neville as he cast Regeneration on himself so that he could hear him. He quickly cast the spell on everyone in the group to deal with the hearing loss and any damage to their eyes from the lightning.

Neville sighed in relief as the pain vanished. "Thanks, what happened?"

"The cloud was growing and my finite didn't work, so I had to use one of my warlock abilities, Voracious Dispelling hurts the caster of the original spell when you dispel it but it's a bit more powerful than a simple finite," Mist explained. "If it makes you feel better, I tossed my Regeneration spell up before I broke the spell."

"You need a better spell," Neville complained.

"It's on the list," Mist assured him as he headed toward the pool of water where the boss used to be. "Let's loot everything then we can fly back up to the tunnel and make another cavern under the Shrieking shack, we should be able to get another couple of caverns cleared before Anakin and Dawn have to leave."

"Yay, nobbits and griggle snacks," Luna said cheerfully as she headed into the cavern to start looting the dead.

"Do you think she just makes up random words and creatures to see if anyone calls her on it?" Puck asked thoughtfully as she watched Luna and her clones walk away.

"Probably," Hermione agreed, not sure what to make of Luna.

"Or she's a seer and we're screwed," Ginny offered then followed her friend with a spring in her steps, looking forward to killing more monsters so she'd get enough mana to use the enchanting spell.

"Seventy, thirty," Ginny's clone offered and followed the girls.

Hermione shook her head then headed over to the chest to see if they got anything useful.

0o0o0

Moody jumped out from around the corner, figuring he'd remind Potter and his friends to be careful since it didn't look like they were paying attention to their surroundings. "Constant-" the rest of his catchphrase was lost when Mist nailed him in the chest with a stunner, causing his eye to pop out when his face hit the stone floor.

"Whoops," Mist offered dryly, not feeling bad about blasting the professor with a stunner when he'd jumped out at him after he'd spent most of the last twenty four hours killing monsters in a collection of labyrinths.

"Mist," Hermione complained.

"He's lucky I didn't blast him with lightning," Mist grumbled as he reached down and grabbed Moody's magical eye, glad that the Nevilles and Lunas had already headed off to grab some sleep as he didn't really want to explain attacking a professor.

"I was complaining about the sarcasm, not the fact that you hit him with a stunner," Hermione explained.

"That's fair," Mist admitted as he tossed the eye into his enchanting menu that he'd left up from when he'd finished the mental defense stamps for Anakin. He pushed the button and analyzed Moody's eye. He stared at the collection of runes. 'Vision focus, Artifact Durability, Divine Sight? That explains how it was able to see through the cloak, where the hell did you get the eye?' he mused as he took the eye out of his enchanting menu and set it next to Moody, not seeing a reason to steal it. "I'm going to have to copy his eye."

"You're not ripping one of your eyes out," Hermione told him firmly.

"What?" Mist replied as he stood up and focused on Hermione. "No, I just need to copy the detection rune. I should be able to enchant a pair of sunglasses to see invisible creatures, magic and dimensional weak points just fine."

"You should probably fix the Defense professor," Ginny suggested. "They're a bit hard to find locally."

"Give me a minute." Mist pulled his notebook out of his pocket and quickly copied the sequence of runes down for the focusing and movement runes that let the magical artifact work as a replacement eye. "I might have to make this in layers, some of the runes cost a lot of mana."

"What do you mean by a lot?" Harry asked as he pulled the Marauder's Map out of his pocket and checked to make sure no one would see them standing next to the unconscious professor.

"It would be cheaper to make another monster-filled cavern than to copy his eye," Mist replied as he finished copying the runes down. He turned and looked at Harry. "The string of runes you'd need to give the user working vision isn't cheap but the detection runes are expensive, probably because of the quality and power. Speaking of interesting magical items, check the map, what's the professor's first name?"

Harry double checked and nearly froze when he saw Snape's name moving toward him on the map. "Alastor, why?" he asked as he glanced down the 'empty' hallway where he'd seen Snape's name.

"I was making sure that he's actually our Defense teacher," Mist replied as he cast Regeneration on the professor, causing his missing body parts to instantly start regenerating despite the various curses that should have prevented someone restoring his health. "Can you write a note for me?"

"Sure. Why?" Dawn asked as Harry scratched his left wrist.

"He'd recognize my handwriting and I want a paper thin excuse," Mist replied as he handed Dawn his notepad and the pen.

"What do you want it to say?" Dawn asked as she got ready to write.

"Constant Vigilance," Mist replied with a smirk.

"That's fair…" Hermione trailed off as Harry pulled his wand out of his sleeve, pointed it down the hallway and chanted, "Stupify!"

Anakin grabbed his lightsaber when he saw the ball of light hit something and vanish. "What was that?"

Harry put another stunner into Snape to make sure he was unconscious. "Someone that shouldn't be in the castle, our old Potion professor."

Mist reached down and touched Moody's arm then walked over and pulled the invisibility cloak off Snape, making sure to touch Anakin's hand on his way past the Jedi. "This is going to complicate things."

"We should be able to keep him unconscious long enough to finish enchanting Anakin's gear then we can haul him to the headmaster's office," Hermione suggested.

"Or we cheat," Mist replied as he touched Snape's hand and shoved him into his inventory. "I have an inventory, I don't want him waking up in the middle of enchanting things, especially since I think he saw some things he shouldn't."

"Constant Vigilance," Dawn teased as she wrote it on the note.

"That was horrible," Mist replied as she handed him the note, making sure to touch her hand so that he'd get an updated pattern.

"What are you going to do with him?" Bella asked, not sure why she remembered bits and pieces of conversations she'd had with the professor.

"I'll probably turn him over to the headmaster…" Mist trailed off as he used his cloning power to create a clone of Dawn and a clone of Anakin, causing Hermione to give him a look that said he wasn't fooling anyone.

"And Hogwarts' duplication problem continues," Puck offered cheerfully as she enjoyed the view. 'Damn, running around as a Jedi gives you muscles in all the right places.'

"It's not a bug, it's a feature," Mist offered as he pulled out two pairs of shorts out of the box of clothes in his inventory and tossed them to Anakin and Dawn's clones.

"Thank you," Anakin's clone replied, not particularly interested in dealing with people complaining about his lack of clothes since he was going to have to stick around.

"Do these give us mana when we kill things?" Dawn's clone asked as she put the shorts on, not seeing a point in admitting that Mist felt like her boss.

"Yeah, they also make sure no one will complain if you're not wearing anything else," Mist replied with a grin as he conjured a pair of inventory belts and handed them to Anakin and Dawn's clones.

"Does this mean they're stuck here?" Bella asked.

Dawn's clone put the belt on. "I should be able to use the standard transportation ritual to get back-" whatever else she was going to say was cut off when she vanished along with both versions of Anakin.

"What the hell?" Dawn asked, surprised that her clone had vanished. "Shouldn't my duplicate have gotten sent back with me?"

"You'd think," Mist admitted, not sure why the clones had vanished.

"That means I'll probably vanish in a minute or two. This was fun, summon me again if you need more stuff or if you just want to kill more goblins," Dawn told Bella then vanished with a smile, sent back to her world.

"I think I'm going to get some more shut eye before I explain things to Professor McGonagall," Bella told them.

"Probably for the best," Mist agreed, figuring he'd get a couple of hours of sleep before he dealt with Snape.

0o0o0

“Not sure how we are going to explain this,” Anakin told his clone as he felt the Force reach out for him, roiling in confusion.

The clone nodded. “Yeah, we could just claim the Force did it and leave it at that.”

“I’m sure they’ll love that,” Dawn said dryly, reaching for the Force to get a feel for the future and finding it a lot more chaotic than she expected.

“The Truth is too crazy to believe,” the pair chorused.

“True,” Dawn agreed as she glanced around the small shuttle they'd appeared on. “If you have some gold I can summon a lightsaber, as you are the only one without one and we’re…”

“Yeah,” Anakin said. “Life is never simple for me or us?”

“I say us, that way I can duck out of whatever lecture you’re going to have to sit through,” the clone said cheerfully.

“You’re all heart,” Anakin said dryly as he handed his clone one of the coin purses from his inventory belt.

“He’s you,” Dawn reminded them as she accepted a handful of gold coins from the clone and exchanged it for a purple lightsaber. “So, off to Tatooine?”

“Yep,” Anakin agreed, “we can figure out how to explain things after Mom is safe.”

0o0o0