"Kage Bunshin No Jutsu!"... *Sigh*
'Oh god damn it.' Crookshanks thought as he stared at the scene in front of him in frustration.
He had just finished his daily training with his two disciples, and had come back to his masters room hoping to take a quick nap before he went off to screw with Snape some more. But nooooooo, of course he can't have nice things.
Instead he came back to a room filled with Hermione's.
Yes, multiple Hermione's.
Sixteen to be exact. Not that the exact amount mattered of course. No, the more important problem here was that there was more than one, which, according to the laws of physics, probably shouldn't happen.
""""CROOKSHANKS!"""" They all yelled at the same time upon noticing him, the noise momentarily stunning the cat as they ran toward him, trying to pick him up into a hug.
He was able to dodge the grabs for a few moments, but was caught from behind by one of the Hermione's that he hadn't seen when he first came in. Was she in the bathroom?
"OH! Crookshanks look! I cloned myself!" She yelled in his ear, making him cringe again.
'Yeah, I can see that.' The cat thought as he looked at the now seventeen perfect copies of Hermione now staring at him.
"I have been trying to figure out a way to know if Harry fancies me like I fancy him." One of the clones started.
"But even after watching him for months I couldn't think of a way to ask." Another continued.
"That's when I saw him writing in a journal after he finished his afternoon workout yesterday!"
"So, I figured that if he did like me, he might write something like that down."
"So, I... uh, might have...you know..." The one that said that looked at the ground, blushing.
This was mirrored by all of the other Hermione's as well, who all looked at the ground in shame.
""Taken a little peak."" Multiple Hermione's mumbled at the same time, blushing for a few seconds, before recovering.
"Anyway, it doesn't look like he was writing any thoughts down in it, just these weird spells." One of the Hermione's said, losing all sense of shame as she switched to academic mode.
'That is an extreme invasion of privacy. You should be ashamed of yourself.' Crookshanks reprimanded, not actually mad, just doing it out of habit. He wanted the Harmony ship to sail after all, and since Harry had become a Shonen protagonist, he lost his ability to help things progress, so Hermione is the only one that could move things along.
"I would have just put it back and pretended that I never saw anything."
"But then I saw this cloning spell written down."
'Cloning spell? Where did he learn one of tho-Oh, wait... fuck.' Crookshanks sighed, hoping that he was wrong. There's no way his disciple was dumb enough to write those down right?
"And I thought that if I learned it, I wouldn't need to use the time turner anymore."
"So I copied a few of the spells down and put his journal back where it was."
"And when I got back to my room earlier I started practicing with it."
"But it was a really weird spell so it took me a while to figure out."
"OH! Did you know that it doesn't have a wand movement?"
"And the incantation is really weird too!"
"Lostvayne."
'God damn it.' The cat thought. He had told Harry about the abilities that Meliodas had, leaving out the weakness's in hopes that his student would be able to recreate a better version of the powers. Judging by how there are more than six clones, it would seem that he succeeded.
"I don't think it's Latin like other spells."
"And it's got really weird mechanics."
"All of us only have one thirty second of the originals strength, both physically and magically!" One of them recited, pouting a bit at the end as she gave the Hermione holding him a pointed look.
"With all of us here right now the original is the only one that can actually pick you up." Another moped, glaring at the original.
'Then why did you chase me earlier?' Crookshanks mewled with annoyance.
"Yeah, why did you have to make so many right now?"
"You already know why! Your me!" The one holding Crookshanks said as she glared back at them.
"If you wanted to test how many you could make you could have just created us then dispersed us immediately after!"
"You didn't need to wait so long. Now your just taunting us with Crookshanks!"
"Your just keeping us around now to assert your dominance aren't you!"
Original Hermione blushed a bit before looking away from them. "Of course I'm not! How was I supposed to know that Crookshanks would come back right now? I planned on waiting for you to disperse by yourself to see how long you would last."
"The journal said that we're permanent until we're dispersed or destroyed!"
"And you believed it? The book also said that you can summon unlimited clones, but there are only sixteen of you!"
"Well obviously there are only sixteen! You have to copy AND divide your strength to create a clone, and we have barely practiced the dividing part!"
'Is this a rant or a conversation?' Crookshanks wondered absently as he tuned the girls voice (voices?) out.
He didn't really want to think to hard about the implications of multiple Hermione's. Who was he supposed to call master? If it's all of them then who is he supposed to listen to? Is Harry going to have an orgy with them when they get older? Dumbass questions like that came and left his mind, but he focused on one.
If there are this many Hermione's all of the time, then surely one of them will screw up eventually and reveal their feelings right?
'YES! This could work! If there are sixteen of them running around then eventually one of them will slip up! And to top it all off, master won't need to keep using that damned time machine! This is perfect. Thank god Harry doesn't know how to hide his shit. Though, I should probably talk to him about that later.' Crookshanks said to himself, ignoring the now shouting Hermione's all around him.
"Fine! How about I just go ask Harry! He's the one who wrote the spell down after all!" The Hermione that was holding him yelled, bringing the cats attention back to the present.
'Wait, what were we talking about?' The cat blinked trying to remember.
"But, won't he be mad at us for looking through his things?" One of the clones asked nervously.
"Maybe, but I didn't plan on keeping this a secret from him anyway. I was actually going to tell him that I looked through his things after I was done learning the spell anyway. I don't want to go behind his back anymore." Original Hermione stated as she put Crookshanks on her head to sit.
"*Sigh* I know." The same Hermione responded despondently.
"Then why'd you ask?" Another yelled at her.
"Because I don't like it!" She snapped back.
"I know. Neither do I." Original Hermione said with crossed arms. "But we have to do it anyway."
"""I know.""" They all said at once.
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"""HARRY"""
Harry jumped upon hearing the chorus of voices that all sounded strangely similar to each other. Quickly turning to see what was happening, Harry's jaw dropped.
17 pairs of identical brown eyes were staring at him expectantly.
"Uh..." Was his eloquent reply as he looked at them confused.
There were only a few people in the common room right now, and all of them were staring at the scene with baffled expressions.
Then the one with Sensei (who was glaring at him angrily) on her head stepped forward.
"Harry, I'm so sorry. I borrowed your journal without asking and tried one of the spells. I thought it would make it easier to go to classes without using the... you know." She said, glancing at the other people in the room.
"Uh..." Harry didn't quite understand what he was just told though as he was still looking at the sixteen other Hermione's.
"Anyway, I tried that Lostvayne spell, and I got it to work! I had created a lot of them so I could know how many I could make right now, but I kept them around to long. Now they don't want to leave until they get to hold Crookshanks, but since they each only have a small fraction of my strength they cant lift him up. So I thought it would be best to just come ask you since your the one that had the spell so you probably know more about it." She explained in one breath (somehow).
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Uh..." Harry replied helpfully.
"Honestly Harry, can't you just listen! I need your help because all of the Lostvayne clones are to weak but don't want to leave until they can hold Crookshanks, which they can't do because their too weak!" Hermione repeated, exasperated.
"Lostvayne?" Harry said finally, his brain starting to catch up. Then his eyes widened and he understood his Sensei's angry expression. 'I shouldn't have written that down.'
"Yeah, you know, that spell that you had written down in your journal!" One of the clones said from the back.
"Uh... yeah..." Harry said slowly, to busy trying to think of something. He would have asked her why she was going through his journal in the first place, but judging by his Sensei's expression he probably had bigger things to worry about.
"Well..." He said after a second, "Do your clones want to do anything else? Maybe something that doesn't require extra strength?" He asked.
Hermione turned back to her clones with a questioning look. They all contemplated for a moment before they all looked up at the same time. "We all want to spend a day with Harry!"
Crookshanks burst out laughing immediately (which just came out as a noise that made everyone that wasn't Hermione or Harry extremely uncomfortable). 'Holy shit! Did that actually just happen? Did my disciple just get asked out on sixteen dates all at once? I'm so proud!'
Harry, who was initially extremely confused by what they were talking about, began to blush furiously at his Sensei's comment.
"W-w-what do y-you mean?" Harry asked, hoping that he had heard wrong, or that his Sensei understood it wrong.
"Like a date of course!" One of them said matter of factly.
'Well that was much easier then I thought it would be.' Crookshanks thought with delight between chuckles.
Original Hermione swerved around to glare at her clone. How dare she? She was the original! She should get the first date!
"Oh don't look at me like that! You get to spend as much time as you want with Harry so you don't need to worry about holding off on asking until later, but we do!" The clone explained.
"Wha-? I don't know what your talking about!" Original Hermione immediately denied, though her tomato red face betrayed her.
Good thing Harry now had the density of an anime protagonist, otherwise he might have noticed. Or maybe not. He was still to busy trying to understand what had just happened. Did he just get asked out on a date?
No, he couldn't believe it. Though his confidence had grown, he still believed himself to be repulsive to the opposite gender, after all, there was no way Sensei's training could improve someone looks right? (Wrong, do to the physical training, Harry currently had a body that was far more muscular then any thirteen year old had any business being. All of said muscles covered up his originally skinny frame, getting rid of the only thing that made girls hesitant to approach him.)
'Maybe it's a side effect of the Lostvayne spell? The clones become partially brain dead!' Harry concluded, adding a note to himself to work out that weakness later.
"Sure you don't." The clone said to the original, then she turned to Harry. "So why don't we go now? Maybe we should go to the library first."
The clone-along with all the other clones- walked forward and grabbed Harry, pulling along as they talked about their date. Of course, they weren't strong enough to actually pull him, but he didn't want to hurt them so he just went along with it, far to confused to think of a reason not to go.
They left through the portrait hole, leaving behind a jealous Original Hermione, a hysterical cat, and a common room full of speechless students. All of which were thinking the same thing,
'What the fuck just happened?'
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(Lostvayne is the magic weapon of Meliodas from SDS. It basically just lets him clone himself up to six times. If he makes one clone, it will have half his power, while if he makes six clones each will have a twelfth of his power. Other than the power level difference the clones are the same as him and can do everything he can do. Here though, Crookshanks didn't tell Harry about those weakness's. He just told him that it was a cloning spell that created clones. So now the spell can create any amount of clones and can be done with a wand. Though, the clones do still only have a fraction of the power that the user has, depending on the amount of clones.
Does this count as a harem novel now? I genuinely don't know. Harry obviously won't be getting with multiple women, he's to noble for that, but multiple of the same women? I don't know if that counts as a harem or not.
If you feel bad for Hermione getting cucked by herself here, don't, as the original she receives all the experiences of her clones, so she doesn't just get one date, but sixteen. (Also, you snooze you lose, OG was to nervous to try anything because she had the time to try things, but the clones didn't have any time at all so obviously they would be a bit more forward with their intentions.) This way she will finally stop using the time turner and instead use the clones, passing them off to the teachers as time travel counterparts instead of clones.
Anyway, sorry for not posting yesterday. I sat there staring at the blank Inkstone page for hours trying to think of a chapter idea and just couldn't. Writers block was hitting hard. I guess all it took was a good nights sleep since the moment I woke up I got the idea of cloned Hermione.
Thanks for reading.)