Population Boom, Hogwarts Part 9

"Where the hell is Severus when I actually need him?" Peter grumbled as he glared at the potion that he was supposed to be making for Voldemort, wondering how the hell things had gotten to the point where he was the one brewing potions.

"Caw," a brightly colored blue and red bird announced from the windowsill, causing Peter to jump and reach for his wand.

Peter stared at the package the bird was carrying in surprise, wondering how it had found him because the wards should have prevented that sort of magic. He walked over and checked the package, a bit disturbed to realize that it was for him. He cast a couple of charms to check for traps and pranks then took the package, causing the tropical bird to fly back outside now that the package was delivered. 'I can't blame you, I'd leave if I could.'

Peter cautiously pulled the brown wrapping paper of the bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey, causing a note to fall off the bottle. He reflexively caught the note and read the somewhat messy writing, not noticing the concealed magic on the note. 'You owe Harry a life debt for sparing your life and I'm calling it in. I've arranged for the rest of Voldemort's horcruxes to be destroyed, all you have to do is destroy Voldemort's homunculus and I'll convince Sirius and Remus to let you flee to America without hunting you down and torturing you, Mist Potter.'

"He'd kill…" Peter trailed off as the magic in the note dispelled some of the charms he'd been subjected to and he realized that Voldemort was currently possessing a pathetically weak homunculus that required a number of potions to keep it from melting every couple of hours and that making sure the bastard was dead was in his best interest. 'I doubt you can keep them from coming after me, but there are plenty of places to hide and maybe this will keep them from trying all that hard.'

Peter uncorked the bottle and took a long pull to help his nerves, the magic in the note keeping him from realizing that there might be something wrong with the firewhiskey. He re-corked the bottle then walked over, grabbed the large iron stirring rod that he'd been using on the foul smelling potion and stalked into the back room where Voldemort was reading about the ritual he'd need to use to restore his health. He didn't give the bastard a chance to grab his wand before he lunged forward and swung the iron rod down with all his strength, caving in Voldemort's head before he realized that there was something wrong.

"I hate potions!" Peter screamed as he continued smashing the iron rod into the creature's skull, wanting to make sure the bastard was dead and venting his anger at the fact that he'd fucked his life up by being a coward.

0o0o0

"How long are we going to stand here listening at the window before we grab him?" Bellatrix's clone asked in a whisper as they listened to Pettigrew rant about Voldemort and his fucking Death Eaters.

"I just wanted to make sure he was properly sloshed and drugged to the gills with truth serum," Twist replied cheerfully and teleported behind the extremely inebriated wizard, making sure she was out of range of the severely bent stirring rod. She hit him in the back of the head with a stunner, causing him to slip off the old chair that he'd been sitting in. 'You should have known better than to drink the whiskey, especially since Mist signed the note.' She spent a couple of minutes stuffing the various books on magic, the bottle of whiskey and the note into her belt's inventory then grabbed Peter and teleported back outside.

"Are we done?" Bellatrix asked, feeling strangely content with Voldemort's death.

"Just about," Twist replied as she looked in the direction of the old Gaunt shack. "We need to collect and de-curse a ring then we can drop Pettigrew off at the ministry and start grabbing Death Eaters for the boss to copy."

"Some of the Death Eaters are terminally stupid, we should probably find someone saner to knock up their wives," Bellatrix mused.

"It's worth a try," Twist agreed as she hit the shack with a blasting charm, figuring some polyjuice and a bunch of American wizards would help the gene pool in the British wizarding world a lot.

"Where is the ring?" Bellatrix asked.

"It should be in a box under the floorboards," Twist replied as she continued blasting.

"Perfect," Bellatrix replied as started helping demolish the shack.

0o0o0

"Have you lost your mind?!" McGonagall's clone demanded, glaring at Fudge.

"My hands are tied," Fudge's clone replied defensively, wishing he'd had the meeting in the ministry rather than in Dumbledore's office.

"There has to be somewhere else to put them," she argued, glancing at Dumbledore for help.

"Even if I was willing to deal with the political fallout and send a bunch of innocent children to prison, Someone with a capital S obliterated Azkaban and killed every dementor in existence which means we don't have anywhere to put them."

"Anywhere else," McGonagall muttered.

"Believe me, I'd love to drop the little shits on a deserted island and wash my hands of the entire problem but I can't, the prison's destruction made the paper," Fudge complained.

"Innocent?" Flitwick asked in disbelief.

"We checked, we even broke out Veritaserum, most of the children don't remember anything past fourteen or fifteen years of age, seventeen at the latest with the exception of a protestor that keeps getting herself tossed in prison every couple of years. Legally, the children are criminals, even if they can't remember their crimes or anything dark or evil about their lives, that presents some ethical challenges."

"He's telling the truth, I helped check the children," Percival Dumbledore offered.

McGonagall turned and glared at Dumbledore's duplicate. "So we're just supposed to let a bunch of murderers into the school?"

"If we don't give them a second chance, they'll have to go back to their families, the same families that failed to prevent their troubles or even caused them in the first place or they'll have to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they can't even remember," Percival pointed out.

"Which is a problem," Albus agreed.

"Why can't we send them to another school?" Flitwick asked, wondering what he was missing.

Fudge sighed in frustration. "I had the legal department look into it, because of a number of old laws, it has to be one of the three old schools. Beauxbatons won't take most of them and I'm not willing to send the students to Durmstrang for a number of reasons related to the current headmaster and their stance on the dark arts which leaves Hogwarts as the only real choice."

"A third of the school lost family members to the 'children' you're trying to dump on us," McGonagall complained.

"If you ignore Bellatrix Lestrange or Black as she calls herself, the worst of the death eaters had their eyes burned out with fire and are stone cold dead," Fudge told her.

"Bellatrix wasn't exactly sane the first time around," McGonagall argued, remembering her from when she started teaching.

"I remember, I was still teaching when she started," Albus cut in. "The girl I interviewed might have the same name but she was a nice young lady that is missing large chunks of her life and barely remembers her family beyond her grandfather and sisters. She also lost most, if not all of her knowledge of the dark arts except as they pertain to why you should avoid the dark arts while keeping the rest of her collection of spells and skills."

"Which means she's dangerous," McGonagall's clone argued.

"If you don't take them, we'll have to let most of them return to their families because we can't prove that they're actually criminals," Fudge warned her.

"What do you mean you can't prove it?!" McGonagall demanded.

"Every marked Death Eater in the prison either died when their eyes were burned out of their sockets or lost their marks and were reduced to children and the memories of the rest of their lives are gone, they've been wiped clean or they were never there in the first place. Even with the best memory charms I know about, you're just covering the memories up or breaking the connections, in this case there's nothing left of their old lives which shouldn't be possible. We hired a Gringotts team to do some blood tests, they narrowed things down to families but most of the families are going to claim that the children were merely copies and with the strangeness that is happening at Hogwarts, it would be hard to argue against."

"Moody wasn't able to find any evidence of cracks between worlds but there is a good chance the fire that destroyed the prison would have concealed it," Percival said, making a mental note to ask Mist if he'd been duplicating people in Azkaban.

"The donations are already pouring in, if it comes down to a vote, the children are going to be 'returned' to their families and we'll have a lot of trouble on our hands," Fudge warned them.

Albus glanced at McGonagall who reluctantly nodded. "We'll take the school age children."

"Excellent," Fudge replied cheerfully, glad that he could wash his hands of things. "I'll redirect some of the donations that are pouring in for their legal defense to make sure they have proper supplies."

"I'll get you a copy of the current list," McGonagall's clone offered. "Are we going to re-sort them?"

"Probably a good idea," the sorting hat piped up from his spot next to the wall. "While I can't share any family secrets with you, I should be able to make sure they aren't dangers to the rest of the students."

"Excellent, everyone deserves a second chance," Albus offered as he handed Fudge a list of the supplies the students would need, hoping he wasn't making a mistake and feeling a great deal of relief that the worst of the Death Eaters had ended up dead because some of them were quite deranged the first time around.

"I almost forgot," Fudge said as he pulled a scroll out of the pocket of his robes and handed it to Albus. "If you see Sirius Black, let him know that he's a free man."

Albus glanced over the official bit of parchment declaring Sirius a free man on account of the person that he'd supposedly killed having turned up. "The aurors managed to capture Pettigrew?"

Fudge sighed. "No, a blue haired girl wearing a hockey mask dropped him off with Madam Bones, drugged to the gills with Veritaserum. Sadly, after a couple of hours of insulting people and telling everyone exactly what he thought about prominent members of society, the portkey he'd stuffed up his ass activated and he vanished."

"He what?" McGonagall asked.

"I mean, it would work," Percival mused, causing everyone to look at him in disbelief.

"Nothing says a portkey has to be a large object," Albus pointed out and tossed a lemon drop in his mouth.

0o0o0

"What the hell?" Mist sputtered when he saw the front page of Harry's copy of the Daily Prophet, trying to figure out if killing the dementors had activated a failsafe or something because Azkaban hadn't spontaneously exploded in the books or even the movies. 'I know the voice said the world wasn't quite like the books but the prison spontaneously exploding seems a bit out there, almost like the producer lost his marbles.'

"Blimey!" Ron exclaimed when he noticed the front page, surprised that the entire prison had been reduced to molten rock.

"What?" Hermione looked up from the letter she'd received from her parents and looked at the paper. "How did the prison blow up?" she asked, wondering if the twins had created a fake newspaper for a second before quickly glancing at the rest of the papers she could see and realizing that it wasn't a prank.

"No clue," Mist admitted. 'Everything was fine when I left.'

"At least Voldemort won't be able to recover his minions," Harry offered, not seeing a problem with the prison and the dementors being gone.

Hermione's clone glanced at Mist, wondering how much he knew about the prison's destruction. 'He seems legitimately surprised, either way, asking him in the middle of the great hall isn't a good idea.' She glanced at Hermione. "We're going to have to do some research."

"I doubt Hogwarts has anything in the library about killing dementors, they're supposed to be unkillable since they're not really alive," Ginny pointed out.

"Dead or destroyed, close enough," Mist argued, happy that something had managed to destroy the rest of the dementors even though the changes made him a bit uneasy. 'At least the timeline doesn't seem to be self correcting or on plot rails since we could get rid of Snape.'

"If I can have your attention," Albus called out from the staff table, his voice cutting through the chatter. "As some of you might have noticed from the paper, Azkaban was destroyed along with all of the dementors. While the loss of life is tragic, I'll sleep easier knowing that the dementors are gone."

"Right, tragic," Neville muttered sarcastically, happy that the people that tortured his parents were dead and wondering if it had something to do with his parents 'waking up', alive and in perfect health.

Albus couldn't really blame the students that disagreed with him on the tragic part, mostly because he agreed with them. "On brighter news, I'm pleased to announce that we'll be receiving a number of new students because of a tragic accident with their former accommodations, so without further ado, let's get to the sorting."

McGonagall plastered a smile on her face as she headed toward the passage that led to the lake to collect the 'students' that the ministry had dumped on them.

"What the hell?" Mist muttered under his breath, wondering what was going on.

"Since when do we get new students in the middle of the year?" Ron asked.

"We got a transfer student in second year, but they're generally just sorted in the headmaster's office and slipped into their house without a lot of fanfare," George offered.

"At least they fed us before they started sorting people," Ron muttered when an entire line of nervous looking students followed McGonagall out of the door that they used for the new students.

"Bella, Black," McGonagall announced as Fawkes appeared in a flash of flames and dropped the sorting hat into her hands.

"Black?" Harry mused as he watched Fawkes vanish in a burst of flames, wondering if the nervous looking girl was related to Sirius.

"We'll have to ask," Hermione whispered as she focused on the familiar looking thirteen or fourteen year old girl with black hair that was walking over to the stool that held the sorting hat. 'Shouldn't Sirius have mentioned a daughter?' She glanced over at the Slytherin table where Malfoy had gone white as a sheet and was staring at the new girl. 'Weird, we'll have to ask him what he knows.'

Mist stared at the attractive girl that could have been Bellatrix's daughter or possibly Nymphadora's younger sister based on her appearance. 'I need to have a discussion with the voice when I get a chance, this isn't even close to the books.'

Bella nervously sat down on the stool, wanting to make a good impression on people.

McGonagall set the hat on Bella's head, hoping they weren't making a mistake.

"Interesting, there's quite a bit of courage and loyalty here," the Sorting House mused, his voice only reaching Bella's ears. "Not a bad mind for spells but I think we have to go with," the hat announced, "Gryffindor!"

Mist clapped with the rest of the Gryffindor students, fairly sure something strange was going on since the girl's name was suspicious. 'Time traveler? Sirius's daughter? No, he'd never name her Bella or anything close to Bellatrix, unless he was drunk?' he mused, thinking about some of the weirder stories he'd read over the years. 'Alternate world? You're getting as bad as Moody, just relax and you can ask Percival later.'

"Victor Brown," McGonagall announced, causing an eleven year old to hustle over and sit down on the stool.

'No clue,' Mist admitted, trying to place the name and failing. 'Maybe taking out Voldemort screwed something up or maybe it just wasn't important enough for the voice to mention, they were in a hurry,' he mused as he opened his gift menu that he'd forgotten to check after getting back from Azkaban. 'Cursed Elixir of Cold Generation, this elixir will permanently give the being that drinks it the power to create and control ice and snow but results in their heart freezing, which typically results in the user's painful death. I might have to give that to Percival to see if he can duplicate it.'

He checked the next item in his menu and froze when he realized that he might be able to bring Harry's parents back from the dead, assuming that someone had actually used the standard spells to preserve corpses that Flitwick had mentioned a couple of weeks ago. 'Frankenstein's Jumper Cables, using these cables on a corpse will restore life if the corpse is in good condition. The Frankenstein estate isn't responsible for any loss of motor control, zombification of test subjects, or any other negative side effect that results from using the cables. As long as they're technically living, the Regeneration spell should be able to fix their physical issues and might even drag their souls back. If it doesn't, I'd probably have to find someone that can stick their souls back in their bodies because of the killing curse.'

'That's assuming they want to come back,' Mist admitted, knowing there was a chance that Lily and James wouldn't want to come back. 'They've been dead for close to thirteen years, the preservation magic might not be enough. Worst case, it doesn't work and I don’t tell anyone I tried.'

'Alastor Faust," McGonagall called out, causing a shifty looking sixteen year old boy to walk up to the stool and sit down.

'Faust? You'd think they'd ditch the last name,' Mist mused as he looked at the next item in his menu. 'Collar of Public Use? Having sex while in a library permanently increases the wearer's mana by ten points as long as there are at least five people in the library and it's open to the public. Having sex on a stone tower is worth fifteen points? Is that because of the rarity? In a store is worth seven points, in a changing room is only worth three? Is that because it's easier? National monuments depend on the location and time of day, beaches… yeah, I doubt I'd be able to convince Hermione to use this.'

'It would be a hell of a lot of fun though,' Mist mused as he checked the next item. 'Bone Necklace of Pure Fortitude, near endless stamina and poison resistance, I'll probably have to put the enchantment on something that doesn't look like I'm an aspiring Dark Lord or necromancer but that's fine.'

"Hufflepuff!" the hat shouted, causing Alastor to head over to the Hufflepuff table.

'Huh, I figured he'd end up in Slytherin or Ravenclaw,' Mist thought as he checked the last item he'd picked up. 'Shadow Ring of the Perverse. Wearing this ring doubles any mana gains you might receive, temporary or permanent but comes with the side effect of increasing your libido and weakening decorum. Yeah, that's a match made in heaven or hell depending on how you look at it.'

"What happened to your old school?" Ron asked Bella who had sat down next to Lavender.

"A potions experiment went wrong," Bella replied, going with the ministry story they were supposed to spread. "I'd rather not talk about it. What's Hogwarts like?" she asked, wondering if the school matched her fragmented memories of the place.

"It's great, we have a proper Defense teacher this year and the headmaster's duplicate is teaching Potions which is fantastic. What classes do you have?" Ron asked, wanting to get to know the attractive girl.

"The standard ones plus Care of Magical Creatures, Runes, and Arithmancy," Bella replied.

"What's wrong with Divination?" Lavender asked with a touch of annoyance.

"It didn't fit my schedule," Bella replied, not seeing a reason to get off on the wrong foot since she'd moved over to make room.

"It happens," Hermione's clone said. "I'm Puck, welcome to Gryffindor."

"Thank you, I'm Bella Black but you probably knew that since I was the first name McGonagall called," Bella replied with a smile, feeling a bit better about the situation since everyone was being nice.

"Welcome to the party," Mist told her as he closed his gift menu and held his hand out.

"Thank you," Bella replied as she shook his hand.

"If you need something just ask, we're usually pretty good at helping each other out and if anyone gives you trouble, talk to the Weasley twins," Mist replied as he pointed at Fred and George, "they're pretty good at pranking people."

"We try," George said with a grin.

"Can't prove anything," Fred added with a smirk.

"Don't worry, you'll fit right in," Ginny offered.

"Welcome to Gryffindor," Neville offered, doing his best to ignore the fact that she looked like a younger Bellatrix Lestrange. 'It's not her fault she looks like that lunatic, relax the bitch is dead,' he told himself.

"Thank you," Bella replied as she grabbed some food.

'At least we have a couple of weeks to get used to things before the other schools get here and things get crazy, I should probably cut back on duplicating things for a bit so they don't call things off,' Mist mused, figuring that gave everyone plenty of time to take advantage of the collars and the copies of the shadow rings that he was planning on handing out.