Population Boom, Hogwarts part 8

"Mine!" Bellatrix snapped as she reached through the bars and grabbed the leatherbound book that had dropped out of thin air in the middle of the hallway before one of the other inmates reached for it.

"Fine," Antov replied, deciding that it wasn't worth pissing the crazy bitch off.

Bellatrix tilted the book vertical and pulled it between the bars of her cell then looked at the title carved into the cover. 'Ancient Summoning rituals? Property of Miskatonic University? Your loss is my gain,' she thought as she opened the cover. She stared in shock as the book turned to ash in her hands before vanishing, leaving her with knowledge of how to cast several spells that she'd never heard of. 'Conjure slave collar? That could be amusing. What the hell is a Sticky Side Delivery Girl? Summon Man Without Fear? At least that makes sense but I think summoning the Being of Fiery Vengeance would be more appropriate.'

She stood up and focused on her new spell. "Hear me creature from beyond the gates, I call upon you to enact vengeance!"

0o0o0

Twist looked away from the empty bathtub and focused on Mist. "Do you have a plan if she tries to kill you?"

"My clones start loyal, I should be fine, unless I manage to set her off," Mist explained, sort of expecting things to go south despite the inherent loyalty of the clones, as Bella wasn't playing with a full deck.

"I reserve the right to say I told you so," Twist replied with a smile, fairly sure Bellatrix's clone would end up causing some sort of trouble.

"Noted," Mist replied as he focused on Bellatrix's pattern and created a clone in the bathtub.

Bellatrix's clone blinked a couple of times when she appeared standing in an unfamiliar bathroom looking at her boss and a strange girl with shoulder length blue hair and pointed ears. "Hey boss, who do you want me to kill?" she asked reflexively, finding it curious to discover that she was a clone, though it did mean she was still a pureblood which was comforting.

"I just need the cup out of your vault," Mist replied, ready to jump to the Shadow Realm if she lost it and trying not to get distracted by looking at her breasts, which were in remarkably good condition for the clone of someone that had spent thirteen years in a horrible prison with questionable food even if they looked like they could use a good wash.

"We have a lot of cups in the vault, can you narrow it down?" she asked, feeling calmer than she remembered feeling in years or rather Bellatrix had, trying to figure out how to refer to her memories of events in the past that hadn’t actually happened to her and deciding just to consider them her own and hex anyone who disagreed.

"The one Voldemort handed you for safe keeping," Mist told her.

Bellatrix's clone frowned slightly, fairly sure she should feel loyalty toward her old master but just not finding it for some reason, which was odd since she'd spent the last thirteen years obsessing about getting out so that she could find him. "What are you going to do with it?"

"I'm planning on copying the original enchantment on the cup then I'm going to toss Voldemort's soul fragment through the Veil of Death. He doesn't care about anything or anyone, including his Death Eaters and he certainly doesn’t deserve a second chance to cause trouble."

The clone sighed as she thought about how things had gone and the orders her former master had given her, realizing her boss was right. "What are we supposed to do, continue hiding like rats from the muggles?"

"Or you buy an old muggle mine, use expansion charms and turn it into a paradise with transfiguration," Mist replied with a shrug. "There's no reason to ever see a muggle if you don't want to."

"How are we supposed to get immortality if we can't experiment on muggles?" she complained, knowing those sorts of rituals needed to be tested before being used. Voldemort was probably a good example of the reason why she decided.

"We can probably use lab rats for most of the research and if we actually need to test things on people, we can always look for morally acceptable targets," Mist told her.

"Like mudbloods?" the clone asked thoughtfully.

"No, I was thinking about violent criminals," Mist replied with a sigh, knowing there were plenty of violent and insane criminals no one would miss. "Most muggleborn are probably the result of squib lines building up enough magic to reawaken or one night stands with a wizard. That occasionally results in a wizard that isn't particularly great and sometimes, you get someone that can shake the world. Take your sister, she married a wizard from a new bloodline and has a daughter that is a metamorphmagus, a trait your family hasn't seen in years."

"Filthy half blood," she grumbled reflexively but with no heat in it.

"Bullshit, both of her parents had magic, which means that she should probably be a couple of steps above an actual halfblood. Voldemort was a true halfblood that hated the wizarding and muggle world because they both let his mother die."

"He's a halfblood?" Bellatrix asked in disbelief.

"His real name is Tom Marvello Riddle, his mother used love potions to snare a muggle. It didn't end well for her because her pureblood family abused her, making her desperate for love and affection so she became convinced that the muggle she’d potioned actually loved her, never having experienced even a scrap of honest affection in her entire life. It broke her heart when she realized that he didn't love her, casting her aside and fleeing when she stopped using Amortentia on him and she ended up dying shortly after Tom was born. I don't think Tom actually wanted to rule the world, I just think he wanted to watch it burn because he was unstable and deranged either from birth or the damage he did to his soul making horcuxes."

"That explains a number of things," she admitted reluctantly.

"You have a choice, you can cling to Bellatrix's madness or you can follow me and I'll show you magic that you've never seen, including a way to live forever or at least until you're killed."

"You have a ritual that actually grants immortality?" she asked in disbelief.

"No, but I can make a magical item that can turn people into teenage girls and I have a belt that swaps people's gender which means that we could live forever as long as we avoid getting ourselves killed. The transformation also heals people which means you'd be healthy and young."

"That's better than Voldemort's vague promises of immortality," she admitted, knowing that Voldemort had never actually shared a method to live longer with any of his followers. "What do you need me to do?"

Mist gestured at the shower. "I need you to take a shower while I make you a wand, then head to Gringotts and grab the cup from your vault and enough gold for all the sundries you need."

"That's it?" she asked, surprised.

"I need you to come back and give me the cup, but yeah, that's basically it. Once I have the cup I'll give you the bracelet that will restore your youth and health," Mist told her as he started pulling clothes out of his inventory and setting them on the sink.

"And then what?" she asked, looking forward to getting a wand and dusting the rust off her skills.

"That depends, I'm willing to let you walk away as long as you swear a magical oath to never harm innocents since you're not actually responsible for Bellatrix's crimes or you can help me make the world a better place," Mist told her, not actually sure how to feel about the clone since while she wasn’t responsible for Bellatrix’s crimes she had the exact same morals of the witch who had committed them.

"If I'm not responsible for her crimes, why do I have to swear anything?" she asked.

"Because I'm not insane and because you're incredibly dangerous. I'm giving you a chance to prove that you're better than the original," Mist told her.

Bellatrix's clone considered her future plans as she started the shower, trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life since she didn't feel like helping a lunatic burn the world to the ground, especially since he would probably try to kill her new boss. 'There are worse things than working for someone that can give me eternal youth and probably has plenty of people that need torturing.' She smiled as she thought about torturing all of the people in the ministry that would try to stop her new master from improving the world. "I'm willing to swear my loyalty, my Lord."

"Perfect," Mist lied, fairly sure he'd just jumped on a tiger that would eventually try to eat him judging by her smile and the glitter of insanity in her eyes that reminded him of Wednesday Addams. 'Yeah, I don't care how hot she is, she's way too high on the crazy scale.'

0o0o0

Bellatrix tried to blink the flashes of light out of her eyes, wondering why Severus was leaning against the wall of her cell looking vaguely bored. "What the hell?"

"Not exactly," the man who looked like Severus Snape replied dryly. "You've summoned me for vengeance, how can I help you?"

"You're not Severus are you?" Bellatrix asked when she realized that the man was wearing a muggle suit jacket and a pair of slacks.

"We've got a smart one there," the man replied dryly. "What exactly do you want?"

"I want you to save us," Bellatrix replied, realizing there was a chance to rescue all of her master’s loyal followers from this wretched place.

The man stared at the stains on Bella's soul and looked at what might have been if things had been different. "You'll pay a price."

"Can you do it?" Bellatrix demanded, willing to pay any price to assist her master.

"Oh yee of little faith," the man replied as he summoned a flaming sword. "Be free of sin!" he proclaimed, his voice thundering through the island fortress and causing Bella to realize that she might just have made a slight miscalculation before a wave of blinding light washed over her.

0o0o0

Mist glanced at the door to the bathroom where Bella was taking a shower, suddenly wondering why his power had recreated the dirt and grime that was on the original since the clones didn't come with clothes. 'Was she dirty because that's how I think of her or was there something strange about Azkaban?'

He considered the question for a minute before deciding that he'd probably just considered the dirt part of her. He reached into his inventory and pulled a chunk of walnut out of the box where he kept wood for wands. 'I can't match the shape of your original wand but I should be able to match the length and type of wood,' he mused as he pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and used his wood shaping power to turn the chunk of wood into a 12 ¾" wand. He played around with the handle until he had something that seemed to work. 'Close enough.'

He picked up the blue hair that Twist had handed him and used his magic to sink it into the middle of the wand. 'I really need to find a book on wand making or copy Olivander so I can learn his secrets,' he mused as he pulled the box of wands that he'd taken from the Shadow Realm version of the guard tower on his way out. He looked through the collection until he found Bellatrix's distinctive talon shaped wand. He spent half a minute adjusting Bella's new wand handle so that it would be a touch more familiar then dropped the dark wand into his enchanting box and hit the analyze button, curious if he'd get anything interesting.

He glanced over the runes that would let him reproduce the magic in her wand. 'Yeah, that's a hell of a boost for dark magic and curses.' He quickly swapped the shadow version of Bellatrix's wand for one of the other shadow wands and hit the button to analyze it. 'That's a slightly better rune for transfiguration, should I try to upgrade the sequence for her new wand or leave it alone?'

'Screw it, I can always grab another hair from Twist and pick up another chunk of wood,' he mused as he started scanning the rest of the wands he'd picked up from the prison, a touch surprised that most of them didn't actually boost dark magic all that much. 'Maybe she just got lucky or unlucky with her wand since it doesn't seem like the rest of the death eaters influenced their wands.'

He quickly put the shadow wands back in the box and shoved the box in his inventory when he heard the shower stop. He analyzed Bellatrix's wand again to bring up the sequence of runes then tossed the wand in his inventory and started looking for runes that would improve the final result from the new runes he'd picked up.

He'd just finished assembling what he thought would make a better wand when the door to the bathroom opened, revealing Bellatrix's clone dressed in the clothes that he'd left her. 'She looks almost normal like that.'

"I'd rather have robes," the clone complained as she walked out of the bathroom, looking less than comfortable in the muggle clothes.

"You'd also be more likely to get recognized," Mist pointed out as he dropped the wand blank into his enchanting box and hit the button. He checked the new wand's information then pulled it out of his enchanting box and handed it to the clone. "It's not the same as your old wand but it should work until you can find something better."

"I'm surprised that you're willing to give me a wand," the clone admitted as she tested the grip of her new wand, finding it surprisingly comfortable and oddly familiar.

"Trust has to start somewhere," Mist replied, ready to jump to the Shadow Realm if she pointed her wand at him. "Besides, I'm basically immune to mental influence via magic and Twist is nearly immune to magic."

"I'm also really good at tracking people down," Twist said as she walked out of the bathroom, having been keeping an eye on the clone.

Mist conjured a pair of magic detecting metal frame sunglasses, dropped them in the enchanting box and enchanted the glasses with the identity protection enchantment that he'd learned from the masks he could conjure. He checked to make sure he hadn't screwed the enchantments up and tossed the glasses to Bellatrix. "These should help with people recognizing you, just take them off before you walk into the bank."

"It's been nearly thirteen years, do you honestly think people are going to recognize me?" the clone asked.

"Yeah," Mist replied dryly. "You're a witch, you haven't changed all that much and you were more than a little bit infamous when you were tossed into Azkaban."

"And you think the sunglasses are going to help?" she asked.

"They're enchanted to conceal your identity," Mist explained. "You can ditch the glasses once you get back and you've changed into a teenager."

"Fine," Bellatrix conceded as she put the glasses on. "Are these enchanted to see magic?" she asked, not sure what else the glow around Mist and most of his gear would be.

Mist yawned. "Yeah. They make detecting magical poisons and subtle spells a lot easier."

"On second thought, do you need these back?" the clone asked thoughtfully.

"I can always conjure more," Mist replied with a grin.

"You conjured these?" Bellatrix asked in surprise.

"Like I said, stick with me and I'll show you things you've never imagined," Mist told her, hoping that he could build on the clone's inherent loyalty.

"Noted," Bellatrix replied with a smile that sent shivers down Mist's spine as she headed for the door.

'Yeah, she's fucking nuts,' Mist thought as he watched the clone leave.

0o0o0

"Some of these might be a bit dodgy," Twist admitted as she pulled a book out of the box that Mist had pulled out of his inventory. "Dancing Naked in the Moonlight with a Goth?"

"Even if the spells are questionable, they generally give decent runes," Mist replied as he grabbed another copy of the book and opened it, picking up several new spells.

"What did you get?" Twist asked, curious if he'd picked up anything worth sharing.

"A spell to summon a half naked goth girl that will stab you if you can't dance, a spell to speak with the dead that might actually be useful, a spell to summon an eldritch abomination made out of coffee cake and a spell to summon a demon to knock people up that is a death sentence because the half demon children will burst out of the girls and devour them."

"Could be worse," Twist replied as she used the book, picking up the new spells. "What else do we have?"

"Several copies of a Hag's Guide to Cooking Children," Mist replied as he used one of the books, picking up several new spells. "Huh, some of those are actually useful."

"How?" Twist asked, giving him a look that said she didn't believe him.

"The Create Wart spell lets the caster give a target a single wart anywhere they want, meaning I can probably get some useful targeting runes from it."

"What else?" Twist asked, curious what else he'd picked up.

"The Conjure Sadistic Gym Teacher spell lets you summon a gym teacher that can get people in shape in five hours at the cost of a fair bit of mental trauma and bludgeoning damage. Transmute Skin: Green temporarily turns your skin green and gives you a severe allergy to water and a permanent, if small boost to your magic if you eat a child while it's active."

"How small?" Twist asked thoughtfully, wondering if it was worth the moral issues and the fact that you'd melt in the rain.

"Ten points of magic," Mist replied.

Twist shook her head. "I'd rather kill ten monsters while wearing the loincloth."

"Same," Mist replied, curious if he could tweak the spell so they could eat something else for the boost. "It also gave me a spell for conjuring a globe of vinegar, a spell for conjuring spices, another one for garlic stuffing, a spell to conjure a roasting pit that reduces the time the meat has to cook depending on how much mana you push into the spell and a spell that lets you summon a chef's knife."

"Sounds useful," Twist replied as she glanced at the next book. "Witch's Guide to Chocolate Porn?"

"I'm probably going to regret this," Mist admitted and opened the book, causing it to vanish as the magic burned several spells into his soul. "Huh, they're better than I was expecting. It has a spell for manipulating the shape of chocolate that I can probably redesign to manipulate the crystal I can conjure and a spell for conjuring milk chocolate dildos that don't melt in a girl's pussy but will in her mouth."

"Sounds fun," Twist replied with amusement.

"It also has a charm that you can apply to a jello mold that causes the jello to become animated and amorous and a spell for conjuring desert food that tastes so good your clothes will literally explode off of you and another spell for conjuring normal looking chocolate clothes that only melt if they're licked."

"Do you have an extra copy?" Twist asked hopefully, looking forward to having fun with the girls.

"Sure," Mist replied as he handed her one of the copies. "It also comes with a spell that lets you conjure a wizarding polaroid camera, the camera vanishes when you're done with it, the photos don't."

"Perfect," Twist replied as she used the book. "We should probably pick up some photo albums before we head back."

"Probably," Mist agreed as someone knocked on the door. "It's open."

Bellatrix's clone slipped into the room with the chalice and a bag filled with coins and closed the door behind her. "Mission accomplished."

"Excellent," Mist replied as he cast his mage hand spell. He used the mage hand to drop the chalice into his enchanting box and pushed the analyze button. He stared at the confusing collection of runes the spell gave him, feeling the urge to torture Riddle rising as he stared at the jumbled collection of runes. 'You're not half as good as you think you are Tom, you turned a priceless relic with unique enchantments into a piece of shit to hold a chunk of your worthless soul.'

"Did you vanish the cup?" Bellatrix's clone asked in surprise.

"No, I just stuck it in a pocket dimension so I could check something," Mist replied as he moved the cup to his inventory. He pulled the bracelet that he'd enchanted with the youth enchantment out of his inventory and tossed it to Bellatrix. "A promise is a promise."

"How long does it take to work?" Bellatrix's clone asked as she slipped the bracelet on.

"It takes an hour," Mist replied as he started putting the scattered books into the box he'd been looking through back into the wooden box he'd been using to store them.

"What type of spells are you working on?" Bellatrix's clone asked, curious about her new boss.

Mist cast his camera conjuration spell, summoning something that looked like someone's version of a steampunk polaroid camera. "A couple of cooking spells and a spell to conjure a camera."

"Does the spell to conjure a camera actually work?" the clone asked, surprised that he could conjure a camera, let alone without a wand.

Mist took a picture of Twist, causing a photo to slide out of the slot in the camera. "Looks good."

"How long are the photographs supposed to last?" Bellatrix asked, curious why her boss wanted a spell to conjure a magical camera.

"They're permanent," Mist replied as he handed the camera to Twist and went back to packing the books that he'd unpacked while waiting for Bellatrix's clone to get back.

Twist giggled as she took a picture of Mist. "The girls are going to want copies."

"I'll make some spell crystals," Mist replied as he swapped over to his spell creation tab of his enchanting menu and selected his spell to conjure cameras.

"Spell crystals?" Bellatrix's clone asked.

"They're basically crystals that let someone with magic cast a spell without actually knowing the spell, if you cast it fifty times, the crystal will burn the spell into your mind so that you can't forget it," Mist explained.

"Or you could just practice the spell," the clone replied dryly.

"It took my brother weeks of one-on-one instruction to learn to cast a patronus last year, I'd rather just cast it ten times a day for the better part of a week and be done with it. I can also tweak most of the spells so that they can be cast wandlessly and silently, which means I could hand the crystal to a magical child and they could learn spells that aren't taught until the last couple of years of Hogwarts," Mist told her.

'That would make training an army a lot easier,' the clone mused. "Does the crystal actually teach the theory or just how to cast it?"

"A bit of both," Mist replied as the alarm on his watch went off, letting him know that he only had a few minutes to get back to Hogwarts before he was missed. He pushed the button and turned the alarm off. "It's mostly how to cast it but you get some of the theory as well. I need to get back to Hogwarts before I'm missed, stick around and share combat tricks with Twist."

"I can do that," Bellatrix's clone replied, figuring it would be a good chance to ask questions about her new boss.

Mist put the box of books in his inventory then held his hand out to Twist. "Let's go."

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Twist told Bellatrix's clone then grabbed Mist's hand and teleported back to Hogwarts, happy that the wards didn't stop registered house elves.

Bellatrix's clone cast a couple of locking charms on the door to the hallway then walked over and flopped down on the bed, deciding that she might as well take advantage of the comfortable bed while she had it.

0o0o0