Population Boom, Hogwarts Part 3

Snape smirked as he vanished Mist's fountain pen with a wave of his wand. "Is there a reason you think the rules don't apply to you Potter?"

Mist looked up from his potion notes and glared at Snape. "Point of contention, the school rules require that all homework be written with a quill, it says nothing about notes or anything I'm not turning in. That pen was my personal property and you destroyed it, I'll be registering an official complaint with my head of house."

"Fifteen points from Gryfindor," Snape replied smugly.

"That's not going to stop me from lodging a formal complaint for destruction of property," Mist replied with a shrug, not particularly concerned about the fountain pen as it didn't have any sentimental attachment. 'Give me a reason, asshole.'

"Fifty points for your flak," Snape snapped.

"You might as well make it a hundred or a thousand," Mist replied, ignoring Seamus's glare. "I don't care about the house cup as you've made every attempt to unfairly steal the cup ever since you took over as the head of Slytherin which makes it worthless."

"Fine, you'll be serving detention with me scrubbing cauldrons," Snape sneered.

"I'm afraid you're delusional if you think I'm serving detention with you for the 'crime' of using a reasonable writing instrument or calling you on your shit. You've shown my brother and I contempt from the moment we've arrived at Hogwarts, you don't deserve even a token amount of respect so either banish me from this farce that you call a classroom or shut the fuck up and actually teach."

"Class dismissed," Snape told everyone, wanting to deal with the little shit. "You're coming with me to the headmaster's office."

"Fine," Mist replied with a smirk as Snape stalked toward him, knowing it would piss Snape off. "Fair warning, if you touch me in any way that can be considered sexual I will be prosecuting you for line theft."

"Shut your mouth!" Snape snapped as he grabbed Mist's arm, carefully making sure not to touch him anywhere else.

Mist briefly considered breaking Snape's jaw then beating him unconscious before he decided that he might as well see how things played out. "Harry, send a letter to Sirius."

"I can do that," Harry agreed, wishing Mist had just kept his mouth shut as he knew none of the adults were going to do shite and Snape would be more of a pain in the arse because he'd called him out on his behavior.

"Follow," Snape told Harry then left the room, forcing Mist to hustle or get dragged by his arm.

"Shite," Ron complained under his breath.

Neville stood up and glared at some of the Slytherins when it looked like they were going to follow.

"Don't bother," Draco told Blaise when it looked like he was going to start something with Neville and follow their head of house. "Snape will deal with them."

"Point," Blaise admitted.

'You're lucky I'm trying to avoid looking like a psycho,' Mist thought as he followed Snape with Harry and Hermione following him. He kept his calm as Snape marched him to the headmaster's office.

"Lemon drops," Snape told the gargoyle, causing it to move out of the way. "Up the stairs."

Mist rolled his eyes and walked up the stairs, slightly annoyed that he'd remembered not to burst into Dumbledore's office while holding his arm.

"What seems to be the problem?" Albus asked as he glanced between Snape and the group of students that had followed Severus.

"Potter thinks that he's above the rules and refuses to serve detention," Snape replied as he gestured at Mist.

"Is this true?" Albus asked.

"He vanished a valuable fountain pen that I was using to take notes, I told him that I'd send him a bill for destruction of property and that there was no rule against using them in class to take notes. He got snippy and took points from Gryfindor. I told him that he might as well take a hundred or a thousand points as the cup is worthless because of his blatant favoritism," Mist explained.

"We use quills for a reason," Snape cut in.

"I don't really care why the wizarding world insists on staying in the dark ages, nothing in the school rules prevents using a fountain pen for notes, I checked. He gave me detention for what I'm guessing is a lack of respect. I told him that he deserves no respect and that he could either kick me out of his class or actually teach."

"Blatant lack of respect," Snape complained.

"At which point he moved to grab me, so I told him that if he touched me I'd consider it… improper, he ignored me which is why I'm going to be writing a letter to the paper," Mist told them.

"A letter?" Albus asked, getting a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"I would take the matter to my house of house but she doesn't see the problem with Snape's behavior or she's been told to ignore it so I'm going to deal with it by writing a letter to the Daily Prophet."

"Saying what?" Albus asked.

"That he basically turned traitor to Voldemort to stay out of prison and I'm going to question the sanity of a Death Eater teaching at Hogwarts and how many dark families he sold out to keep himself out of prison."

"What?" Snape asked, not expecting a rather Slytherin reaction to his behavior.

"You're obviously talented at mind magic, both finding out secrets and hiding your own, you're a marked Death Eater and it shouldn't be hard to paint you as someone that is stealing the secrets of the children of Death Eaters and selling them out."

Snape scowled at Mist. "That's ridiculous."

"You're a marked Death Eater, what possible reason would Dumbledore have for hiring you if you weren't a spy? But honestly, I doubt it would take all that much work for people to start putting things together if I just give them a place to start. I'm sure Harry would be willing to provide memories of your shite from the last couple of years."

"Of course," Harry offered, wanting Snape gone.

"It's not that simple," Albus argued. "You'd be risking his life."

"Every potion class he 'teaches' is a risk to our lives," Mist replied in annoyance. "He allows the Slytherins to toss shit in our potions that could and have caused them to explode."

Albus glanced at Hermione and sighed when she nodded. "Severus."

"I can't see everything," Snape replied lazily.

"I'll make you a deal," Mist told Dumbledore. "If he resigns effective immediately, I'll agree to let the past stay in the past, if he doesn't, I will do my legal best to completely destroy his life."

"Do you seriously expect that to be enough?" Snape demanded.

Mist smiled coldly at Snape. "I don't know but I bet I can bribe some aurors into looking into your life and making it a living nightmare or maybe I'll just buy a dose of polyjuice and pay someone to look like you and explain that you're willing to drug students with love potions so that I can send the paper a memory."

"I'd never use love potions on students," Snape argued.

"Prove it," Mist replied coldly. "You've taught potions for over a decade and most of your former students hate you. How many of them would love the chance to screw you over?"

"Lots," Harry agreed, as he was done dealing with his shit.

Hermione sighed, knowing that things were going to go badly but sort of curious if they could get a real teacher.

"They wouldn't even have to lie," Mist continued, "they'd just have to turn green with the revolting thought that you might have drugged them and tell the nice aurors that I've bribed to look into the case that you might have and that would give them enough evidence to search your room. Maybe they don't find anything, or maybe they find a package that someone asked a house elf to drop in your room."

"That wouldn't hold up in court," Snape sneered, knowing that it wouldn't have to.

"It wouldn't have to, you'll be dead by Christmas," Mist told him. "Besides, it wouldn't be a bribe, it would just be a donation for their hard work, nothing illegal there."

"Mist, you're being unreasonable," Albus argued, fairly sure the child was serious about his threat.

Mist turned and glared at Dumbledore. "I consider hiring teachers, librarians and caretakers that hate children to be unreasonable, you've done all three. Unreasonable is believing that we'd work with Malfoy to mess with Neville, that was what McGonagall said when we told her there was a threat to the stone back in first year, something we weren't supposed to know about that she basically blew off because she had to go yell at someone for something minor. I consider allowing Snape to treat students like shit to be unreasonable, any 'cover' would have been more believable if he'd had to maintain some sort of minimum standard of behavior. So yeah, most of the staff don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to reasonable behavior. If you don't fix your mistake, I'll do everything I legally can to ruin his life."

"I'll tell the aurors where to find Black," Snape told him.

Albus winced as any chance of talking Mist around evaporated.

Hermione quickly covered Harry's mouth with her hand before he could say something that would get him in trouble. "Let Mist handle it."

"I'm going to take that as a no," Mist replied with a smile that didn't reach his eyes then turned to look at Dumbledore. "I'm going to need the paperwork to withdraw from potions or the school if you refuse to allow me to skip potions or fire Snape."

"Did Mist's story match the events in the classroom?" Albus asked Hermione as he pulled a leave of absence form out of his desk.

"Yes," Hermione agreed. "This isn't the first time Snape has done something unreasonable, the pen was merely the tipping point as it was a gift."

Dumbledore sighed as he handed Snape a resignation form. "I told you to be more reasonable, this doesn't count as being reasonable."

Snape scowled as he grabbed a quill from Albus' desk and started filling out the form.

"I'll reverse the points and ignore the detention," Albus told Mist. "I believe you have classes, I need to have a discussion about acceptable behavior with my former professor."

"Thank you professor," Hermione told them then hustled the boys out of Dumbledore's office, glad that they didn't get in trouble.

Albus waited for the door to close then sighed. "Why did you pick Mist rather than Harry?"

"I needed a valid excuse to leave," Snape replied calmly as he finished filling out the form. "Harry wouldn't have pushed things far enough."

"Was the crack about Sirius really necessary?" Albus asked.

"I had to sell it," Snape replied unconcerned. "Something strange is going on with the new students, I need time to investigate and this will make my cover more believable, he wasn’t wrong when he said you were letting me get away with too much."

"I’ll have a talk with him about not going after you since he has ‘won’," Albus assured him.

"That would be appreciated," Snape admitted, wondering how the child had managed to avoid getting put in Slytherin since his stated plan would have seriously complicated his life for a modest expenditure of gold. To say nothing of whatever he'd been planning that he hadn't mentioned. Frankly Snape was a bit impressed.

0o0o0

Mist scowled as Colin Creevy nearly stepped on his head so that he could get a picture of Harry and Ginny dancing in the common room. "Hey!"

"Sorry," Colin called out absently as he snapped a couple of pictures of Harry and Ginny.

"Be careful," Hermione scolded Colin, worried that he'd fall since he was balanced between the railing of the stairs and the back of the chair Mist was sitting on.

"Permission to hex him?" Mist asked Hermione, only half jokingly.

"Permission denied," Hermione told him with a giggle, fairly sure he was joking. "Get down Colin."

Colin jumped down to the ground, doing a remarkably good job of sticking the landing. "I just wanted a good picture."

'Screw it, he's not related to any of the purebloods and his brother has magic, that should count for something,' Mist mused as he reached out and poked Colin's hand with his finger, picking up the ability to duplicate the amateur photographer. "You could have stepped on my head."

"You would have been fine, I don't weigh much," Colin assured him.

'He'll grow out of it,' Mist told himself, not sure if he was lying. 'At least no one will think someone willingly copied him.' He focused on the middle of the room on the table and created a naked clone of Creevy facing away from Colin, causing Colin to reflexively snap a picture of the naked kid in the middle of the room.

Colin snapped another picture as the naked kid turned around then went sort of pale when he realized that he'd just taken a picture of himself or another version of himself. "Shite!"

"Shake it like you mean it!" Lavender called out to the naked Creevy, a bit tipsy because of the spiked punch that she'd drank.

"I didn't need to see that," Mist complained as Colin's clone actually danced off the table and headed for the stairs to his dorm, doing a remarkable job of keeping his composure.

"Right there with you," Ron agreed.

"Can we get some naked ladies?" one of the seventh year boys asked hopefully as he looked up at the ceiling.

"Hell yeah!" Lavender called out as she reached for the buttons on her shirt, too buzzed and happy that Snape was gone to think of the consequences of stripping in the middle of the common room.

"We should probably stop her," Hermione told Mist as she grabbed Colin's camera when he turned to point it at Lavender. "Don't, she's drunk."

"Fine," Colin agreed, deciding it wasn't worth getting hexed.

"Yeah," Mist admitted as he used his cloning ability to create a naked McGonagall on the table, using the pattern that he'd picked up when she'd accidently touched his hand on the way out of the common room after telling everyone to keep the party to a 'reasonable' level.

"Not what I meant!" the seventh year complained, not willing to admit aloud that McGonagall still looked pretty good for an older lady.

McGonagall glanced down at her state of dress then snapped her fingers and conjured a toga, having spent more than a couple of nights practicing her party trick in her younger days. "Grab the camera," she ordered Hermione then turned and looked at Fred Weasley. "Toss me the firewhiskey and I'll ignore the fact that you have it."

Fred tossed McGonagall the bottle, not seeing a point in getting in trouble over the bottle when he'd already used most of it to spike the punch. "Deal."

"Crank the music," McGonagall ordered, deciding that she'd worry about being a clone in the morning since she felt like indulging since she'd had to put up with Snape for years without being able to hex him into a grease stain.

"Do you want to lose everything on your camera?" Hermione asked Colin.

"No," Colin replied, thinking of the pictures he'd managed to snap of Tracey Davis when she'd appeared in the hallway. "I'm going to check on the other Colin and put it away."

"Good idea," Hermione told him, glad that he was actually learning.

Mist reached out and poked Katie Bell's hand as she danced past with Oliver Wood. He waited until Colin left then focused on the table and created a clone of Katie.

"Hell yeah!" the seventh year shouted when he spotted the naked Katie.

"Piss off Price," Katie replied.

"Damn nice piece of ass," Price replied with a smirk.

Katie's clone reached out and grabbed the wand that George handed her and stunned the seventh year then handed the wand back to him. "Snape is gone! Party!" Sure there were now two of her and it would be an adjustment, but that paled in comparison to no longer having to deal with having Snape as a Professor!

"Do you want to dance?" Hermione asked Mist, glad that dealing with the strange cracks in reality wasn't her problem and wondering how she would deal with a second one of herself suddenly appearing or one of Mist…

"Sure," Mist replied, figuring it would be a good excuse to move around the room and pick up some patterns while everyone was distracted.

'This is going to be our best year yet,' Ronald Weasley thought as he started dancing with Lavender, glad that he'd picked up memories of dancing from whatever the hell had happened with the World Cup and that she was a very touchy feely drunk.

0o0o0

'What the hell are you waiting for?' Moody complained as he watched Draco Malfoy through the wall with his magical eye, trying to figure out what the junior Death Eater was up to. He twitched when a masked figure appeared out of thin air behind Draco, leaving a sort of crack in the air. 'Strange, he didn't appear naked like the rest. What are you up to?' he mused, annoyed that his eye couldn't see through the domino mask or that the mask was blocking his ability to recognize what he was seeing as he could see through it, he just couldn't put the pieces together to get a face.

Draco twitched and cursed, "Fuck!" when he turned and realized that Mist had been standing behind him, despite the fact that he'd checked the hallway a couple of seconds ago. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"

"Nothing," Mist lied, rather proud of his warped sense of humor. "Did you get the list?"

"Yeah," Draco replied as he handed the list of names that Mist wanted. "Shouldn't you be in the common room celebrating the fact that you got Snape fired?"

"Polyjuice is a wonderful thing," Mist replied with a grin as he put the list in his pocket, not seeing the point in admitting that he'd 'borrowed' a time turner from a third year that was tipsy as hell from the spiked punch he'd drank. He used his cloning ability and created clones of Astoria and Daphne Greengrass from when he'd poked their arms as they were walking toward the Slytherin common room. "Make sure they get to the infirmary."

"Eeek!" Astoria squeaked when she realized that she was naked in the hallway. "Can I borrow your cloak?"

"What's going on?" Daphne asked, knowing that she was a clone and that the masked man was her boss but not sure why he'd copied her or her sister.

Draco took his cloak and handed it to Astoria. "Let's go to the infirmary, you obviously fell through a crack between worlds."

"Right, obviously," Astoria replied sarcastically as they headed down the hallway, wondering if anyone was actually stupid enough to believe that.

Mist used his cloning ability to create copies of some of the more reasonable sixth and seventh year Slytherin girls. "Best of luck." He smiled as he slipped into the shadow realm, vanishing without a trace, if you ignored the crack in the world that only Moody's eye could see.

'Did the masked man bring them or was it a coincidence?' Moody mused as he headed toward the door, wishing he'd had a better angle for reading their lips. 'I need to figure out what they're saying,' he thought, trusting his disillusionment charm to keep him hidden now that the strange wizard with the mask wasn't there.

Mist quickly made his way down the hallway, doing his best to ignore the creepy shadowy mist that covered everything in the shadow realm despite his ability to see in the dark. 'At least it doesn't have shadow wizards or demons.'

He twitched as something moved out of the corner of his eye. He pulled his wand out of his wand and pointed it in the direction where he thought he'd seen some type of figure. He took a breath then let it out slowly as he tried to calm down when he realized that it was just a particularly large clump of shadow. 'You're jumping at shadows, literally,' he told himself as he forced himself to continue walking, not noticing the glowing blue eyes that appeared in the darkness where he'd been looking.

Mist walked another twenty feet then slipped out of the shadow realm and continued walking, trusting his invisibility to keep people from noticing him. 'This would be a lot easier if I didn't have to touch people,' he mused as he walked past a couple of fifth or sixth year Hufflepuff girls that were rather cute, touching their hair and picking up two new patterns. 'Screw it, I might as well make more while I have an alibi.'

He used his cloning ability to create a naked copy of each of the Hufflepuff girls along with a copy of Ginny and Harry.

"What the hell?!" Ginny's clone complained when she found herself in the hallway naked, drawing the group's attention, including the two Hufflepuffs.

"Bullocks!" one of the Hufflepuffs complained when she realized that another version of her had appeared. "You're going to steal half of my wardrobe aren't you?"

"Hell yeah," the girl's clone replied, rather amused by the way Harry was trying to cover his privates with his hands and failing. "It's a good excuse to go shopping."

"Point," the girl replied.

"We should probably head to the infirmary," the other Hufflepuff suggested.

"So much for having a relaxing year," Harry's clone complained.

'Screw it, you can never have too many Lovegoods,' Mist mused as he used his cloning ability to create another naked Luna clone. 'Unless you value your sanity.'

'Meh, sanity is overrated,' Mist mused as he headed toward the Hufflepuff dorm to make some more clones while he had an alibi. 'I just have to get the time turner back and copy it before they search the school, at least I have an inventory so they won't find anything they shouldn't.'

0o0o0

"What did you do?!" Molly Weasley demanded as she glared at the twins, ignoring the rest of the people in the headmaster's office, annoyed at having been woken up far too early by a floo call requesting her presence at Hogwarts.

"Nothing," George assured his mother. "We're actually innocent."

"I find that hard to believe," Molly argued.

"We're not responsible for this prank," George promised, not surprised his mother didn't believe them.

"As much as I'd love to take credit for increasing the number of twins running around Hogwarts, we're actually innocent this time," Fred assured his mother.

"We've got an alibi, along with most of Gryffindor, we were celebrating Snape being sacked," George offered.

"They were in the middle of the party all night," Ginny offered.

"No clue, I appeared in a hallway with Harry. I missed a couple of hours of the party while Madam Pomfrey checked us out," Ginny's clone complained, slightly annoyed that she couldn't have appeared in her bed or Harry's bed rather than in the middle of school where she'd had to run through the school naked.

"We think the students have slipped across from an alternate timeline," Dumbledore offered, deciding not to share Moody's observations about Malfoy working with a masked individual until they were able to get to the bottom of things since his presence might have been a coincidence and Molly wasn't particularly rational when it came to the Malfoys.

"Cracks in the world," Ginny's clone offered with a shrug.

"Have you had any luck finding these cracks?" Molly asked, knowing she'd be terrified if her children vanished.

"Our Defense teacher has found several and he's working with an expert to figure out how to return the students, for now the best thing to do is simply let them attend classes so that they aren't missing any important subjects when they return," Albus explained, not actually sure how they were going to send the students back or how they arrived in the first place.

"What can you tell us about your world?" Molly asked Ginny's clone.

"Nothing?" Ginny's clone replied with a shrug. "Unless I missed something, everything was the same until we found ourselves in the hallway with no idea how we got there."

"What's the last thing you remember?" Molly asked.

"We were celebrating the fact that Snape had been sacked in the common room and I was dancing with Harry," Ginny's clone explained, hoping no one mentioned the fact that the clones appeared naked since she didn't need her mother pulling her out of the school.

"How is Harry taking it?" Molly asked.

"He seems fine, it's not like he doesn't already have a twin," Fred offered with a grin.

"We have people working on it," Albus cut in before Molly could explode. "I'll let you know when we find something but we haven't lost any students, rather the reverse, which means no one is in danger."

"Are you sure you don't know anything about this?" Molly asked the twins.

"Not a clue," George admitted, making a mental note to ask the other Ginny what she knew since she was obviously hiding something given the way she was fidgeting.

"Are we going to need to come up with enough for another wand?" Molly asked warily.

"No, there is an emergency fund that we'll be using to cover wands and basic supplies," Albus assured her, not seeing a point in mentioning that the other Harry had volunteered to cover Ginny's wand and their Harry had backed him up without hesitation as he didn't want her to argue since Harry could easily afford to be generous.

"Fine," Molly grumbled, unhappy with the situation. "Let me know if you figure something out or if we'll have more people for the holidays, I need to let Arthur know."

"I'll let you know," Albus assured her.

0o0o0