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Chapter Text

Intercession

A Worm / Harry Potter crossover

Taylor had expected death. An end. To be put down, a dangerous attack dog who had finally outlived her usefulness and developed a case of rabies in the process.

She hadn't fought it.

And yet, when she next woke, decidedly not dead, she found that she very much did not want to die after all… and it seemed someone else felt the same.

She came to in a hospital bed, one that seemed to be situated in a totally normal, if somewhat old-fashioned hospital. She was hooked up to something that looked a bit like a dialysis machine, but with extra parts attached, and Contessa was plugging in another bag of dark-colored blood.

Contessa looked over at her. "Ask," she said neutrally.

"What are you doing?" Taylor rasped.

"Exchanging your blood for someone else's, and using Tinkertech to change your body accordingly," Contessa answered.

"Why?" Taylor tried to reach for the IV bag, but it was on the side of her missing arm, so she ended up just waving the stump that remained of her upper arm. Her powers were absent, leaving her mostly helpless for the moment.

"Part of the Path," Contessa said, as if that was all Taylor needed to know. She plugged another little bag into the machine, and the world fuzzed before Taylor's eyes, fading to black with an alarming speed.

Some time later, still missing an arm but otherwise feeling wonderful and oddly light-headed, Taylor once again found herself in the same old-fashioned hospital room, this time without any obvious Tinkertech hooked up to her.

Contessa was there, but she was missing her usual fedora and instead wearing a nurse's outfit.

Also, she was holding a sleeping baby.

"Listen carefully," Contessa told her. "This is an entirely normal world. No powers, no entities, no knowledge that either ever existed. I am going to leave you here, and no parahuman will ever return to this dimension."

So it was to be exile, then. An upgrade from execution, at least. Taylor tried to cross her arms and scowled when she was once again reminded that she only had one.

"You will find paperwork establishing your existence on the chair behind me," Contessa continued. "Personal identification, a document trail under your real name as a British citizen with deceased parents, tax records, all of that. A deed to a small house in a nearby town, and the keys to a used car that is currently parked in the driveway there. There's enough money in the house to last you a year. Legally, you have always existed in this world, and all documentation associated with that is in place."

Taylor spared a moment to contemplate exactly how fucked she would be if she didn't have all of that, but was still stranded in a new world. Perhaps not entirely fucked, but at least halfway there, at minimum. "I'll take it."

"You will," Contessa agreed. "You are here in this hospital as the aftermath of being struck by a car. Your arm needed to be amputated. You have a medical history, but that, your current visual prescription, and childbirth are the only things on it."

"Childbirth." She might still be on some sort of medication, because she couldn't will up more than a mild curiosity as to why that made the list when all of her old injuries – concussions, back-alley surgery to remove metal fused inside the shoulder socket, temporary bisection – for some reason didn't make the cut. She hadn't given birth, but she had been cut in half. She understood omitting the latter, but why lie about the former?

"Your son according to all governmental records." Contessa held the child out to show her. "Harry."

"You stole a baby to give to me." She was definitely on something strong, because that seemed eminently reasonable. Why not go all the way when forging a fake identity? It would be hard to prove she was an interdimensional refugee when there were records of her giving birth here at least a year before she arrived, and a child to go along with the paperwork.

"The Path specifically directed me to picking this child up from where it was abandoned on a porch in the middle of the night," Contessa explained. "This child is optimal for ensuring you never attempt to leave this dimension, or to you being happy here. Or both."

"Okay. Fine." Her new identity included an optimized baby. Okay. That made sense. "Anything… else?"

"No. The Path ends with this explanation. I will leave the baby with you, suggest you wait to leave until they wean you off the painkillers so that the Tinkertech drugs are fully flushed from your system, and then I will deconstruct the means by which I reached this dimension and leave."

"I knew it." She was on drugs. That was the only reason suddenly having a new life, in a new country, in a new dimension, with a baby she had never seen before in her life seemed in any way reasonable. "Don't… Don't let the door hit you. On the way out."

"You managed to succeed where Cauldron failed." Contessa walked over to her bedside and gently set the baby boy in Taylor's lap. "You cannot go back. Only forward. Enjoy living."

"Sure." She looked down at the sleeping child.

Black hair. Pale skin. A cute little green onesie. An odd lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.

When she looked up, Contessa was gone.

She was pretty sure she was going to appreciate being drugged for this conversation in retrospect, because at the moment she felt pretty good about how things were turning out, and that was probably going to be a rare feeling when she was lucid.

It was nice to have a moment of peace before everything went to hell again.

Raising a child was difficult. The diapers, the feeding, the crying, the sleeplessness, doing it all on her own with one arm…

Contessa had not baby-proofed the furniture.

Taylor worked with packing tape and extra diapers, blunting every sharp edge she could find. Awkwardly, with only one hand available, and all the while keeping one eye on the baby crawling around on the carpet in the living room.

She had come home – this place was her home now – from the hospital, driven back by a taxi – the nurse had called it a 'minicab' – and dropped off in her new house's driveway just as the sun set behind it. Harry was hungry, she had to figure out what he was able to eat, she had to set up the crib, and she still had to go find a grocery store to stock the bare cupboards. All before it got too late for any stores to be open.

Harry shrieked, and she dropped the diapers and tape as she spun around, but he was just shrieking to himself, for no particular reason.

Baby-proofing came first, because she didn't know if Harry could walk yet and the last thing she needed was her new baby bashing his brains out on a coffee table because the extradimensional alien somehow forgot to foresee baby-proofing the furniture as essential.

Her stomach growled at her. Her head hurt. Harry was going to start crying soon, if she didn't get him something edible. She didn't even know what he had eaten for lunch; a nurse handled that while the doctors were giving her the last dose of unnecessary painkillers. She didn't know if a real mother would have let a nurse take her year-old son away to feed him out of sight.

She didn't know how to do any of this, and another thing Contessa had not provided was a how-to manual.

Little Harry did a wonderful job of keeping Taylor from dwelling on what she had lost, mainly by virtue of running her ragged.

The house – three bedrooms, one bathroom, a cozy little place in a suburb an hour's drive from London – was strewn with dirty clothing and take-out boxes for the first two months, and Taylor rarely left except to buy supplies. Her car was in good condition, but driving on the other side of the road took some getting used to, and driving without the aid of her powers in sensing the condition of traffic two blocks and a corner away took more adjustment.

Her power was mostly gone.

Mostly.

Some days she felt like the divide between her current state and her power coming back was a wall of cardboard. Like she just had to push, somehow, in a dimension she couldn't see or feel, and it would be back.

Harry wasn't where she had left him.

Two minutes to use the bathroom; that was all. He hadn't moved from his spot on the floor for half an hour, lining up toy blocks and then moving them into a new line. He could sit still for another two minutes. She was ten steps and a door she hadn't even bothered closing away from him.

But when she came back, he was gone.

Her head hurt, even though the momentary panic. It felt like something was buzzing in her skull, an insistent push. Temptation.

If she had her bugs, she would be able to keep track of him from anywhere in the house.

But she didn't have her bugs, her headache failed to reopen any old wounds or old connections, and Harry's burbling laughter led her to the kitchen, where he was trying and failing to walk more than a few steps before falling on the – thankfully – thick safety carpet she had put over the tile floor.

She snatched him up with her good arm, feeling protective despite him being in no danger at all, and took him back to the living room.

"Mama," he said, pushing at her arm. "Down!"

She set him down, her momentary panic if not forgotten then at least buried. Next time, she was going to put a mirror in the hallway so she could keep an eye on the living room from the bathroom. Or just put him in his crib.

Her headache remained for most of the day, but it didn't come to anything. She neither expected nor wanted it to.

Most days even that phantom pain was absent, and she was normal. A normal single mother with an abnormal handicap and a very, very active son.

It was an adjustment. A big one. But she wasn't completely oblivious when it came to children, there was a public library with books on parenting nearby, and Harry wasn't that bad as babies went. She muddled along, slowly gaining her footing with every passing day.

Toast popped up in the toaster. Scrambled eggs sizzled in the pan. Taylor took a plate from a stack in the cabinet under the counter, set it down, and quickly seized the spatula to dish up some eggs.

Harry toddled by, precariously placing every step. He saw her legs and latched on, using her to hold himself up. She took his surprisingly dense weight in stride, pulled the pan off the burner, dropped her spatula in the sink for later, and flicked the knob to turn the burner off, all in rapid, practiced succession.

Then she reached over, grabbed a banana from a bunch she had left out on the counter overnight, and snapped it off to hand to Harry. "Here," she said.

He smiled and took it, letting go of her leg to sit down right behind her and pull at the peel. He probably wouldn't get it open, or if he did the insides would be shapeless mush, but he could eat that just as well and she had other food for him.

Momentarily freed of his encumbrance, she stepped over him to open the refrigerator, took out the milk, and then stepped back to take the toast and drop it on her plate.

All without a single dropped item, burned hand, or startled toddler. Breakfast was served.

She was getting the hang of all of this.

Harry turned two in April, according to his possibly incorrect paperwork, and she realized that she didn't know when her own birthday was. This world was thirty-some years behind her own, and Contessa had dropped her off at a completely different time of year, meaning it wasn't an even difference in years. Adding in that she had no idea how long, chronologically, had passed while she was in Contessa's custody…

She decided to just celebrate her own birthday on the day her birth certificate said it was, June first. By that same measure she was twenty-three.

She celebrated by finding a daycare for Harry and going job hunting. A temporary position working in a library was first, intended as a stepping stone to keep the bills paid while she looked for better work. The library was close and she knew the librarians from her time spent brooding over parenting books.

"You'll only be shelving books to start," the old woman in charge of the library staff told her. "Irwin will teach you the system, it couldn't be simpler. I expect full productivity from you, one arm or not, you understand?"

"I'll do my best." She wasn't certain she liked her new boss, but nothing was holding her to this job except the need to fund the rest of her life. Shelving books didn't pay highly enough that she would be devastated to see it go if she couldn't deal with the people involved.

Irwin was a young man who broke all of the 'old lady librarian' stereotypes their boss fulfilled, though he was wearing a very ugly sweater that made Taylor wonder whether there was a dress code she was exceeding with her normal, serviceable pants and blouse.

"Don't mind Irma, she's retiring next year," Irwin told her as he led her into the back room. "Here," he indicated a slot in the wall with a big bin under it, "is the book return. Your job is to get the books from here to the shelves after checking them in and examining them for damage." He took a paperback from the bin and tossed it onto a table, presumably to demonstrate. "I've heard word of fancy sorting systems, but here we still do it the old-fashioned way."

Having grown up more than a decade in the future of this current timeline, Taylor had expected their process would seem old-fashioned to her even if it was cutting-edge. "Works for me."

"You take the book by the spine," Irwin demonstrated, picking the book up again. "One hand on top and bottom of the spine, hold it up, then fan the pages out with your other hand…" He glanced at her, mid-inspection of the book. "Or, if you've got something in your other hand, just flip it over and shake it out, we're only looking for gunk, stuck pages, or ripped pages, nothing fancy," he concluded.

"I can do that." She demonstrated for him, taking a book from the bin to flick open. It was awkward, but everything was awkward at first with one hand. This wouldn't be any different.

"Next we check it in, take it to the scanner," he continued.

His enthusiasm wasn't at all infectious, but they were the only ones in this back room and the library itself was mostly empty. As far as jobs went, this would be a good one for easing back into a society she had in truth never been part of in the first place.

It wasn't a bad job, even if she was stuck reshelving books and dealing with the occasional bout of old-lady spite from Irma. Quiet, no real pressure, no customer service or waiting tables or hunting down homicidal serial killers to save the world. The hours matched neatly with the hours covered by Harry's new daycare, too.

When she was offered a promotion to a less drudgeworthy position by Irma's more agreeable replacement, she took it and stopped hunting for better jobs. The salary was modest, but aside from the ever-present money pit that Harry represented she didn't have much to spend on, so she didn't mind.

Harry turned three, and she realized that she hadn't thought of Earth Bet in at least a week. Not that Harry knew or cared.

She turned twenty-four, according to her records, and was thrown a little surprise party by the other librarians. Her reaction to being jumpscared when she walked into work was… Not minor. Nobody was hurt, thankfully.

She considered going to therapy, but in the end that seemed more likely to open up a new can of worms than actually help.

'Hello,' she imagined herself saying, 'I'd like to sign up for therapy.'

'For what?' she imagined her therapist asking, or asking something that amounted to the same thing.

And then what?

She lay in bed late at night, contemplating the thorny little problem her circumstances forced on her.

Nothing was wrong, per se. Her life was on track, Harry was a mostly happy toddler who was only just starting to demonstrate what 'the terrible twos' referred to. Her job was tolerable. She wasn't a bundle of lethal nerves and paranoia.

Maybe a little paranoid and nervous, but not so bad it was crippling her.

But she wasn't okay. Couldn't be, not after everything that had happened. Now that she had a steady source of income and some time when Harry was at day care every day, she could theoretically go get professional help.

If only her problems were things she didn't have to lie about.

'I was in a gang war,' she imagined saying instead of telling the truth. Or 'I'm in witness protection after fighting organized crime.' Or just 'I hurt people, and I was hurt, and I want to make sure I'm not going to hurt anyone else by accident.'

The more vague her excuse, the more likely her therapist was to pry and poke. That was their job, or at least part of it. To understand her problems so they could help her cope. The more specific she made it, the more likely they would catch her in inconsistencies.

At its core, her problem was that she didn't think she could lie and properly benefit from therapy founded on a lie, and she knew she couldn't tell the truth.

She supposed she would just have to do without.

She was doing fine without therapy. The past was the past, and it had no bearing on the present.

The years kept slipping by, rushing to pass as quickly as possible whenever she wasn't looking. Harry was a bright kid, growing up in leaps and bounds, and he fit into her new life like they had both always been there. Like there was nothing more to them than the false history Contessa had established.

The classroom was filled with bright toys and tables and other children, and Taylor barely had time to say goodbye before Harry rushed off to join them for his first day of preschool.

"You've got an enthusiastic one," the woman behind her commented. Her son was still clinging to her side, silently refusing to let go. "What's your secret?"

Being so overly careful out of worry that she had turned out to be a halfway decent mother through overcorrection, maybe. Taylor smiled as she watched her son claim a half-dozen crayons and paper. "I don't think there is one."

"Thomas, you've got to let go," the woman pleaded. "It'll be fun! You can make new friends."

"Don't wanna," her son said into her shirt hem.

There were other parents behind them, so Taylor took her leave to make room in the doorway. Nobody gave her a second look, aside from the few who stared at her stump.

Going back to being unimportant didn't sting as much as it could have. This world, still stuck way back in the past, was actually a pleasant place, relatively speaking. There were no Endbringers. No S-class villains. Not even any minor villains. It was still the era of letting the kids out to play and not seeing them all day, not that she ever did that. Britain felt mostly safe.

There was almost nothing she could have fixed with insects and brutal pragmatism, had she the means. So she didn't miss it.

She was normal. Harry was normal. He liked books about airplanes and dinosaurs and toys and running around screaming. She liked reading, and was looking at maybe going back to school once she had some money saved up, and working out as much as her body and schedule would allow.

Maybe she was a bit too wiry and fit for a single mother who worked as a librarian. Maybe she still occasionally reached for a weapon she didn't have when startled, or lashed out with a debilitating strike aimed at a throat or crotch. She definitely was more wary than anyone she knew in this world, and any would-be mugger would find himself swiftly beaten to a pulp if the situation ever arose, but that wasn't so abnormal. She was missing an arm, but plenty of people had disabilities, and Harry was a sweetheart about helping her on the rare occasion she genuinely struggled with something because of it.

She liked her new life. It could certainly be better, and she missed her father, Lisa, the other Undersiders… But not so much that she would go back if she could. That had to be what Contessa was aiming for, putting her here with Harry, and if so she had succeeded.

Or so Taylor thought, for a few years.

They were stuck in traffic. Worse, they were stuck in traffic within view of their destination, and had been for the last hour. Worse still, it was Harry's seventh birthday, their destination was an amusement park, and they were burning daylight sitting in the car while she resisted the urge to try out her repertoire of British curse words on the jackass who had rear ended the car in front of him out of impatience, and subsequently broken both of their cars so badly the single lane was blocked.

"Stupid cars," Harry complained. "Can we walk there?" He had started out as well-behaved as a little boy could be, but that was an hour ago and now his voice had a whiny undertone Taylor hated to hear. This was not the first time he had asked that question…

And it was not the first time she said, "no, we can't." Mostly because every so often someone tried to drive up the strip of grass on the side of the road, and discovered that there was nowhere to go but to hope someone would take pity any let them merge back onto the road proper once the traffic let up. The road was badly designed, with the edge of a pond on one side and a craggy hillock too steep to climb on the other. It would be scenic under other circumstances, but it clearly had not been intended for this level of traffic, accident or not.

Harry tried the door handle. The child lock was engaged, so his door stayed closed. "Mum, please," he whined.

A car horn blared ahead of them, and she could see figures waving their arms at each other in the distance, in front of the wreck. One of the two damaged cars revved the engine. A cloud of black smoke leaked from under the hood, and the car juddered to a stop before it could go anywhere.

"Look, they're getting out!" Harry pointed out. Closer to them, a mother and father helped their two younger children out of the car to sit on the trunk.

"Only to get some fresh air." That wasn't a terrible idea. She reached to unbuckle herself, planning on getting out and letting Harry out from the outside of the car to do the same–

The child lock flipped to 'off' and Harry's door popped open. Harry himself almost tumbled out of his seat. "Let's go!" he cheered.

Taylor quickly got out of the car and caught him before he could charge off towards the amusement park, her mind on the sudden failing of the child lock. She had not disengaged it. No part of her was anywhere near it when it flipped. Harry couldn't have, the whole point of a child lock was that the child couldn't get it open.

But it had turned off nonetheless.

He didn't seem to know he had done anything, and for a while she didn't think he had, either. The car's child-proof locking system had simply chosen a coincidental time to break. She took a screwdriver and fiddled with the internal mechanism for a bit, just to be sure it wasn't totally broken, and it seemed fine. That was the end of it.

Two months later, Harry had a bad experience with a home-given haircut and a sudden noise resulting in a reverse-mohawk.

Taylor was expecting her son to either still be grumpy, or to have totally forgotten about his hair. She hadn't; she already had an appointment set up for him later in the day, with a professional who might stand a chance of salvaging her mistake the night before. But in the meantime–

Harry tromped down the stairs, his full weight hitting each step as he walked without a care in the world.

His hair was back to normal.

Taylor blinked, then rubbed at her eyes as her son came into the kitchen. Was she imagining things?

She reached out and ran a hand through his hair. "Hey!" he complained, pulling away, but she just followed him, feeling at the place she was sure she had accidentally buzzed down to stubble. There was no glue or other sign that Harry had somehow come up with a convincing disguise; his hair was actually there!

"How did you do this?" she asked, her voice distant.

"Do what?" Harry asked.

Taylor, as a general rule, didn't drink. She worried about getting drunk and saying something she shouldn't. But she went out and bought a case of cheap beer that night, once Harry was in bed.

Under the dulling haze of alcohol, she tried to figure out what could possibly have given her son a trigger event. What she had done so wrong that he now had powers?

She wasn't her father. She wasn't obliviously drowning in her own grief. She was coping. He was a happy kid. Sure, he had his quirks. He made as much trouble and got disciplined as often as any other seven-year-old. But his life was fine. He had friends at school, she had seen him playing with the others, his class didn't have any bullies. He wasn't stressed, he wasn't tearing himself apart over some perceived failing. She didn't work too much. She didn't hurt him. She didn't scare him.

But normal children did not regrow their hair overnight. It wasn't possible. She knew of exactly one thing that could make him capable of that, and it was the same thing she still on some days felt was mentally looking over her shoulder, waiting for her to let it back in.

She drank too much, cried into her beer, and fell asleep at the kitchen table feeling like a failure.

The next morning, she suffered through the hangover, threw the rest of the beer away, and marched up to Harry's room and sat down with him. She asked him, point-blank, what was wrong.

"Wrong?" Harry asked, looking at her guilelessly as only a seven-year-old could. "Nothing is wrong."

Taylor sat on the edge of his bed, her head still pounding through the tailend of a hangover. "Are you unhappy about anything?" she tried.

"No?" Harry screwed his face up at her. "I don't think so?"

"Are you being bullied at school?" she asked. She would not be like her father–

"No," Harry said innocently.

"You know you can tell me anything," she offered.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"But you're not being bullied."

"No!"

"Your teachers are nice?" she asked.

"Yes," he assured her.

"Is something wrong with your friends?" she guessed.

"No?" Harry looked at her. "I don't think so?"

Nothing he knew of, then. "Is there anything you want that I'm not giving you?" she asked, increasingly at a loss. Harry had a good life, she didn't spoil him rotten but she wasn't mean or distant, or maybe she was and she didn't know it…

"I think…" Harry smiled. "A television in my room!" he said enthusiastically.

He didn't have a deceptive bone in his body, not at this age, and she couldn't for the life of her think of anything in his life that would traumatize him to the extent necessary to even open the possibility of powers.

Neither could he, apparently.

She backed off then, unconvinced and uncertain as to what was going on. She hadn't failed as a mother, but something strange had happened.

In the following months, nothing further happened, and she began to think it was just some random medical miracle. Not powers. He would have used them by now, and she might not have her bugs but nothing got past her when it came to Harry. Not when she was forewarned.

That winter, Harry might have made it snow after having a small tantrum about it not snowing on Christmas day.

"You said it would snow!" Harry complained, his face pressed to the window.

Taylor sighed. There was a tree in the living room, there were presents waiting to be opened, but the weather was Harry's first priority. Christmas morning was supposed to have snow, and instead Britain's contrary weather had decided today was a day for pissing rain. "Maybe it will snow later," she offered, knowing that it probably wouldn't.

"I want snow!" Harry yelled childishly. He was a child, she reminded herself, and a little disappointment was expected, though she wasn't going to encourage what looked like a budding temper tantrum if it continued. "Harry, inside–"

"Snow!" he yelled again, but this time he sounded happy, and she noticed that the rain had sometime in the last few seconds quite abruptly frozen into fluffy chunks of crystalline white that drifted in picturesque flurries.

"What the…" She joined her son at the window, twisting her neck to look up at the clouds. How in the world had that happened?

It was a freak weather event, for sure. Their neighborhood and nowhere else got two inches of snow. But Taylor chalked it up to coincidence at the time.

Little oddities continued to stack up, one every few months. By his tenth birthday, she was absolutely certain that something abnormal was going on, and that whatever it was, he had no conscious control of it.

"She called everyone in from recess early," Harry recounted over dinner. "Way early. Thomas asked her why, and she told him it was because we were all being too rowdy, but we weren't, Jasmine wasn't even there today."

Jasmine was a girl in Harry's class that Taylor only knew by hearing of her various escapades. She put every boy in the class to shame for the sheer amount of trouble she could cause the moment no adult was looking, if half of what Harry said was true.

"Then the sub went off on Thomas," Harry continued, ignoring his steak in favor of telling the story. "Said something about him being a little worm, and nobody knew why she was being so mean, he hadn't done anything. Then her hair turned blue!"

Taylor's fork paused halfway between her plate and mouth. "Blue?" she asked.

"Bright blue!" Harry nodded. "All of it! She didn't even know until we all laughed. Then she went to tell the Principal, and he came to talk to us all, but nobody told because nobody got in trouble. I told him what she had called Thomas, and she didn't come back after he left."

So the substitute teacher had been taken off teaching Harry's class – which was good, Taylor already had a reputation at Harry's school for confronting teachers that she didn't want to reinforce – but there was no explanation for the hair.

She thought of Harry's hair, and how it always grew back if she cut it too short, and said nothing. Another incident to add to the list, but she was nowhere closer to understanding the cause.

She suspected her power had a hand in it, budding off to cause a second-generation cape but somehow breaking along the way due to Contessa's meddling. So long as the incidents remained small and deniable and there was no other explanation, she was happy to ignore them.

Scion was dead. There was nothing to fear. She taught Harry a few basic self-defense things, mostly ways of paying attention to his surroundings and how to not draw attention when he didn't want to, and contented herself with waiting and watching.

The sun was shining, birds were chirping, bacon was sizzling in the pan, and Taylor could hear Harry running down the stairs, his sneakers thumping on the carpeted steps.

"Thomas wants to know if I can go swimming with him today," Harry blurted out as he entered the kitchen.

"When did Thomas ask that?" Taylor glanced out the window. It was sunny, but it was also very windy, and Britain didn't tend to have many swim-worthy days, even in the summer. This might be one of them, but it also might not.

"Well…" Harry reached into the cupboard for a plate. "Wednesday."

"It's Sunday now," Taylor noted. "He asked you to go today?"

"Yeah, his mom is going to pick us up." Harry held the plate out.

She lifted two pieces of bacon out with the tongs and dropped them on his plate, then pointed at the fruit bowl. "Eat something more than just bacon and I'll consider it. When is she coming?"

"Noon," Harry admitted.

"If the weather is still nice you can go." She would speak with Thomas' mother beforehand, just to get an idea of where they were going and how long they would be gone, but he was a good kid and his parents were reliable. Not like the parents of some of Harry's other friends.

Harry cheered and ran back up to his room, off to do something or other. He had taken to drawing recently, though Taylor remained unconvinced he would stick to that particular hobby any longer than the others.

She spent the morning cleaning up and then working out in their modest backyard, enjoying the windy, nicely warm day while she could. Thomas' mother pulled up just after noon, and a few quick assurances had Taylor sending her son off to the pool, confident that he would be in no real danger.

She could have gone herself, but Harry deserved time to play with his friends without her hovering nearby. She wouldn't smother him.

The weather was still good and she had a collection of old nordic myths she had meant to read, so she set out a lawn chair and continued to make the most of the weekend.

Hours passed, and the sun began to descend in the West. She'd just gotten to a story about Loki and a very questionable plan involving a horse and a gift for Odin when an elongated shadow passed over her face. A bird. She paid it no mind…

Until it passed over again, and she heard the fluttering of heavy wings.

"What…" She looked up, squinting against the sun, and could have sworn she saw a massive brown owl flapping over the roof of her house, barely missing the tacky weathervane she had never cared enough about to bother removing.

Owls didn't fly in the day. Not often. She dropped her book on the lawn chair and stood, peering up at the roof. Maybe it was injured. There was a news story about two big owls getting trapped in a chimney a few months ago. And one about an owl flying right into an open window and refusing to leave a house a few weeks before that… The birds seemed to be stupid here in Britain, owls especially.

She went inside and walked to the front door, intent on looking to be sure there wasn't a big bird carcass decorating the front yard or something equally ridiculous.

There was a bit of yellow parchment on the floor in front of the mail slot. It was the wrong time of day for mail.

Taylor stopped in the front hall, a peculiar old feeling creeping in on the edges of her mind. A stifling paranoia.

Something was off.

She wished she had her bugs. Being able to instantly know that the house was as empty as it was supposed to be would have been ideal. As it was, she casually entered the kitchen and took one of the long, serrated kitchen knives from the block.

Then, and only then, did she approach the front door, leaving the anomalous parchment alone for the moment.

Someone rang the doorbell just as she was putting her eye to the peephole. She jumped back, knife at the ready.

They rang again.

The fish eye view of her front porch given by the peephole revealed the visitor to be an old man with a startlingly long white beard, wearing an old-fashioned suit, his hands empty. Some salesman, perhaps, or a government official of some sort.

She backed away from the door, the kitchen knife heavy in her hand.

"Get ahold of yourself," she muttered, returning the knife to its block. The doorbell rang a third time. Her car was in the drive, so anyone with a modicum of common sense would assume there was probably someone home.

It was nothing. This world didn't have capes, didn't have a reason to hunt her down. She hadn't even worried about such things in years, a little bit of weirdness shouldn't be enough to set her back.

She wiped her sweaty palm against her jeans, set her shoulders, and forced a stiff smile onto her face. "One moment!" she yelled, then went back to the front door.

The old man was indeed old, and his face crinkled up into a spiderweb of wrinkles as he smiled disarmingly at her. "Hello, is this the residence of a Mister Potter?"

She frowned. "No? I think there are some Potters up the road, but don't hold me to that." All of that stupid misplaced paranoia for an incorrect address? It just went to prove that it was stupid and misplaced. In this world, anyway, and this was her world now.

"Are you certain?" the old man pressed. His eyes flicked down, and she realized as she shifted her foot that she was standing on the bit of parchment. It crinkled forlornly as her sneaker scuffed it.

"I'm Taylor Hebert, not a Potter," she offered, resisting the urge to look down. "You are…"

"Ah, where are my manners." He smiled. "I am Albus Dumbledore. May I come in?"

"Why?" she questioned. "I've said there are no Potters here. Whatever business you have with them, I'm sure you need to get to it, and I wouldn't want to delay you any longer." Maybe a bit rude, but she still had an American accent and he was probably going to assume she was rude regardless. It wouldn't hurt to let the old man in and give him some tea, but she would rather just return to her book and he clearly had something else he needed to be doing at the hypothetical Potter household. Selling vacuum cleaners, maybe.

"Ah, but I…" He frowned briefly. "Perhaps you could humor me… Do you have a son?"

She thought of her Harry. Green eyes, a charming smile, messy hair that she had yet to convince him was worth getting some hair gel for, that odd scar on his forehead… "Yes."

"I must simply have the wrong last name," the old man said, beaming with sudden comprehension. "I'm terribly sorry. I do indeed have the right house, though. He would be just about to turn eleven?"

"Eleven a few months ago, actually," she said carefully. "What are you here for, though? My Harry hasn't gotten into any trouble lately, and he's never mentioned anyone with such a memorable name."

"Ah, he would not know me. I am headmaster of a special school, and we would like to offer him a… may I come in?" He ran his hand through his beard. "I confess, it is quite hot out here and I am sure you would like to hear about this opportunity at length. You strike me as a curious young woman."

"Come in," she offered, stepping back from the doorway. She still wasn't a hundred percent certain this man was legitimately what he claimed to be, but refusing him outright might seem suspicious. If he did try something she could break his elderly kneecaps with next to no effort, so she didn't feel like she was in any physical danger.

He winced as he stepped into the shade of her home. "Ah, thank you miss Hebert. Might I ask if a mister Hebert is home? You may appreciate not having to explain this to him all over again. And Harry, of course."

"There is no mister Hebert, and Harry is out with friends, but I'm sure I can pass on whatever it is you have to offer," she suggested, leading him into their modest living room.

"We could wait," Dumbledore offered as he sat down on the worn old couch.

Taylor took the armchair in the corner, leaving a healthy amount of space between them. "No, please go on. You mentioned a school."

"Yes." Dumbledore nodded. "You could consider us a trade school, of sorts. We always offer places to children of alumni when they reach the right age, and our records listed one Harry Potter as living here."

Taylor frowned, outwardly nonplussed. Inwardly, she was more than a little concerned. Babies didn't come from nowhere, Harry did of course have actual parents – likely miserable deadbeats given Contessa claimed to have found Harry abandoned on a porch in the middle of the night – but until now she had never even known his true last name. As far as the world and Harry himself were concerned, he was Harry Hebert, and for this man to say otherwise…

How did he know?

"I didn't go to any trade school," she said suspiciously. "What was the name of your school?"

"Hogwarts," Dumbledore said seriously. "School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

She waited for the punchline, but there wasn't one.

"Right," she said, deadpan. The thumping of her heart seemed abnormally loud in her ears. "Prove it."

"You had only to ask," Dumbledore said, removing a stick from the sleeve of his suit. "Something simple, I think…" He tapped the coffee table, and it turned into a dog. A living, breathing black Labrador that immediately set to scratching itself behind the ear.

Taylor realized far too late that it was not normal to maintain a poker face under such circumstances, but any belated reaction would seem even odder, so she didn't bother trying to fake more than a detached, matter-of-fact sense of surprise.

So much for this being a normal world.

"That does explain some things," she said thoughtfully.

"I imagine it does," Dumbledore said knowingly.

Everything was wrong.

It was a nagging feeling, baseless but persistent. A lingering pain from her past, perhaps, but not one that would go away, no matter how often she got blackout drunk and was late for work the next morning.

The other librarians were worried about her. It had been getting worse these last few months, as she had more and more bad days.

"Taylor, dear, you must stop drinking so much," one of the older women said to her as she rubbed at her forehead. She said something else unimportant.

"I'm fine," she replied, and said something to assure her coworker that it was indeed fine, and went about her day. Then she went home, like every day.

There were children playing in some of the front yards lining her street, enjoying the little bit of light between school letting out and the early but lengthening spring sunset catching up with them.

Her yard was empty. As it should be.

One of the neighborhood children came up to her as she got out of her car. Thomas, a teen around… Thirteen years old. He asked her something trivial, and she replied, then shooed him away.

She didn't know why he insisted on talking to her. She was a thirty-year-old single librarian with no children of her own. Maybe it was her arm making her mysterious in the eyes of a child.

Maybe something was wrong. The nagging feeling was back, amplified by the sensation of eyes over her shoulder.

"No," she grumbled, seeking out a bottle of wine.

That was getting worse too. Any day, it felt, she could accidentally breach the thin wall keeping her power out.

She wasn't sure why she was holding it back. The rest of her life was a bland daze that she had trouble caring about. Having control over insects wouldn't make it any worse. She couldn't be any more alone than she already was.

Meeting people just… didn't work. Her job was mostly fine but the librarians had gotten pushy in the last year and she wasn't sure why. Didn't help that she didn't feel like getting into any real relationships, and that the bars she went to were the kind to help her drown her sorrows, not meet people.

Her problems were self-inflicted, but at the same time…

"Fuck you," she said as she raised her bottle in toast. "Contessa."

What had Contessa said? Go forward. Be normal. Tossed enough paperwork at her to prove she existed, and then buggered off.

Taylor brought the bottle to her lips, then realized as cork hit lips that she hadn't opened it. She had already slumped into her armchair – at some point – and didn't feel like getting up, so she set it on the floor and let her eyes slip closed.

She didn't understand why her life was so hard to engage with. Some days she felt mostly normal, but other days she could barely remember anything she said to anyone, or what they had said back. The doctors all said she was mentally and physically fit, and no psychiatrist could help her when she couldn't truly unburden herself. So she just… drifted.

Maybe it'd been stupid to assume anyone who had gone through what she had could ever settle into a normal life.

She had entertained thoughts along those lines often enough in the past year, but on this particular night of no importance, she reached a tipping point. She was sober, miserable, and she didn't know why except to blame it on not being the person she used to be.

"Fuck it," she said aloud to her empty house, and mentally gave in.

The last vestiges of the decade-old barrier between herself and her power crumbled, and she could feel it coming back. Little blips of sensation beyond her body, old familiar friends. Starbursts popped against her eyelids, painless but distracting.

Her power settled back into her head slowly, in stages. It fit like a long-dormant extra limb, much like getting her other arm back might be, but more cerebral.

There were thousands of insects within two blocks of her, hundreds of thousands, and they all snapped into focus, bundles of sensations.

It was invigorating. The fog over her mind lifted, piece by piece.

There was a distinct impression of satisfaction somewhere other than her own thoughts. It came from without, not within, and it came so strongly she could recognize it for what it was.

Back on Earth Bet, she had never managed to communicate with her power, but not for lack of trying. That had just changed, and she had a dull awareness of satisfaction morphing to… anger?

"Didn't know powers could be angry," she huffed, her eyes flicking open. She probably shouldn't have said that out loud, Harry…

Who was Harry? She felt foggy again.

The feeling of external anger intensified, and the fog parted. Harry was her son.

Since when? Since… Contessa gave him to her as a baby… A full decade ago!

"What the hell?" she choked, memories flooding back. Insects all over the neighborhood spasmed and started marching in formation as she shuddered and bolted to her feet, her hand on her forehead as an abominable headache sprang into existence behind her right eye. "What the absolute buggering fucking shitting–"

She slammed her hand against the wall, cracking the drywall, and sprinted upstairs. There was a door on the left of the second floor hallway, a doorknob coated in dust. She flung it open, and inside there was a boy's room, decorated in posters and pictures and with a dresser still flung partly open from a hurried packing spree. The bed wasn't even made.

Harry's room. Her son Harry. She had a son.

Her power radiated consternation, or something akin to it. She had a son, and she had forgotten him.

No. She gripped the doorknob so hard her hand hurt, pulsing in time with the pain behind her eye and in her stump.

She had been made to forget.

'I can take young Harry to the train,' Dumbledore – Dumbledore, the old man with the beard – had said. She remembered now, that morning. She had helped Harry pack, gone through his new textbooks with him one more time, plied him with advice on people and school and superpowers, the latter barely disguised as uninformed speculation. He'd hugged her and promised to write every week. They were going to get into the car. Dumbledore had shown up and offered to take Harry to the train.

'I'd been looking forward to driving him to the station,' Taylor remembered objecting. 'Why are you really here?'

'To do what needs to be done,' Dumbledore told her, and his stick – wand, Harry had one too now – was pointed at her face and she was stumbling back.

Dumbledore went inside, and by the time she had recovered from her inexplicable haze, he and Harry were gone.

Then she had gone about her day, not once thinking about how the old man had all but kidnapped her son from under her nose after assaulting her with some spell.

Not once thinking about her son at all.

"Fuck!" she screamed again, anger like nothing she had felt in years making her heart race. She had been violated, her mind toyed with, and she had never even been allowed to notice.

More memories came to her, restored – yes, that was it, restored, they had been fogged or taken entirely – by her power. By the alien consciousness looking over her shoulder all these years, blocked but not blind.

She remembered Diagon Alley, a culture shock and a half. Her and Harry, Dumbledore escorting them from shop to shop. Magic, magic everywhere, moving objects and shady people and strange robes, all pointing to a vibrant, impossibly well-hidden society nestled in the heart of the normal world. Harry got his wand; she waited outside because the wandmaker was an odd fellow who didn't appreciate normal people.

No, she had been told that. She didn't know it was true. Dumbledore went in with Harry, and they left with Harry's wand, but she had left her son alone with that man then. Who knew what had been done to him while he was out of her sight. She hadn't thought it long enough to be a problem then, and she hadn't suspected Dumbledore of anything.

Dumbledore had been polite. Inquisitive, perhaps, but she remembered…

'Are you certain you do not know the Potters?' he had asked her while they walked through the Alley. 'It is only that the letter is magically addressed…'

'I am no Potter, and Harry's father…' she had hesitated, thinking about what lies would best fit an unknown world with unknown investigative capabilities. 'Maybe he was a Potter. That wasn't the last name he gave, but it was a one night stand and I couldn't honestly tell you much more.'

The old man had nodded and not pressed her any further. He asked other questions, though. About her reaction to magic, which she explained as having expected something was strange because of Harry's own accidental magic. About her arm, which she had attributed to a car crash. About her parents, who she truthfully said were dead, and her accent, which she attributed to living in America for the first few years of her life, something backed up by the documentation Contessa had given her all those years ago.

In the present day, she stormed out of Harry's room, restraining the urge to break things for her son's sake, as it would be his wall she punched through if she let herself. The various insects under her command weren't so lucky, and many died as she worked out a tiny fraction of her wrath.

Harry had wanted to go to that magical school. She had wanted him to go, despite not possessing a lick of magic herself, according to Dumbledore. Why kidnap him anyway? Why erase her memory? Dumbledore had thrown a monkey wrench into her head, and now she could see exactly how massive and intrusive it was!

She remembered her coworkers asking her about Harry. She remembered spouting lines like 'oh, he's doing great at his boarding school' and not so subtly steering the conversation away, all without actually remembering her own words or the subject of conversation at the time. Whole conversations and encounters were blanks she was only now filling in, ripped from her mind by some sort of continuous Stranger effect even as an associated Master effect had her unwittingly hide her own selective amnesia to avoid arousing suspicion.

It was clever. Clever like taking a wrecking ball to a mailbox and not caring that there was nowhere for the mail to go after. Her life had gone rotten with Harry's absence, partly because of her intermittently foggy memory hindering her and partly because not remembering his existence stripped one of the few truly bright points of her life away, leaving her with nothing. Less than nothing, almost a decade that she had been forced to retroactively remember as empty and pointless, a blur that lacked the center focus of her life.

She fled her son's room, retreating to her own bedroom. Dark, muted colors and a nice bookshelf greeted her, as pleasant as always…

She leaped at the bookshelf, a shaking thumb running across spines to find a photo album, right where she now remembered it. A picture of Harry as a baby graced the front cover, apparently enough to trigger the Stranger effect and ensure she didn't touch it for months.

Months. Harry had been taken from her at the end of August, the start of the 1991 fall semester. It was March of 1993 now.

Her son had been stolen from her life for nineteen months and counting.

Angry did not begin to describe how she was feeling. Murderous was closer, but not quite there yet.

She hadn't been Skitter, or Weaver for that matter, in a long time. She had grown soft by choice, leaving her power behind and trying to live a normal life. She had been happy. Genuinely happy.

Now, though?

"Thank you," she whispered. "For bringing my memories back."

Her power conveyed a sentiment close to her own, vindictive determination.

"Now let's get him back."

Chapter Text

The Leaky Cauldron was a grimy magical pub. It hosted all manner of interesting humans and plausibly-human creatures, and acted as an airlock of sorts between the magical world and the mundane world. Taylor had been there before, with Harry and Dumbledore, and she knew that a wand was necessary to open the brickwork to enter Diagon Alley.

When she set out in the morning, armed with a simmering rage, a mental passenger, and several tens of thousands of insect footsoldiers in the trunk of her car, she had expected the first major roadblock to be the need for a wand.

As it turned out, the first roadblock was that she wasn't magical.

She strode down the sidewalk, walking the walk of an average passerby, facing forward. Five times, she had walked this path, and her memory could be trusted now. The Leaky Cauldron was here, on this street.

She couldn't find it, though.

There were thirteen buildings between the two intersections marking off this particular block. Seven on the right, six on the left. She knew every single one, and she was certain that there were supposed to be seven on each side.

More than that, she knew which two buildings had somehow picked up and moved into the space the Leaky Cauldron was supposed to occupy. She distinctly remembered the red sign one of them was sporting, and the Leaky Cauldron had been to its right. Now a cheap restaurant named 'Just Chips' abutted the red-sign store, not even an alleyway between them.

She had known, going in, that it wouldn't be obvious. Dumbledore told her as much when he took them in. 'Muggles, nonmagical people, cannot see it,' he had said. She had expected her eyes to deceive her.

But it wasn't just her eyes. Her insects were everywhere, and she could feel their relative locations. None were in the Leaky Cauldron, but there was no empty space her insects could not penetrate, either.

She continued to circle the block, working at her senses and brainstorming ways to get around the magical Stranger effect. The obvious plan was to pick out some wizard or witch on the street outside, somehow, and follow them in. That required a target, though, and so far nobody on the sidewalk with her stood out as magical. Until she found someone to trail, she could stare at it all sorts of ways, try and catch things in her peripheral vision… She had already let her hand run across the brickwork of the two buildings, and she didn't feel a gap, but there had to be something.

The headache behind her right eye made a resurgence as she walked, but she was no stranger to ignoring pain. Dozens of cockroaches and flies crawled around the brickwork and slime and unmentionable nastiness in the walls of the two old buildings, searching for cracks. If they could pass from the wall of one mundane building to the wall of the next… It would seem totally normal, because according to her mental topographical map those two walls were right next to each other, but she knew a whole building was magically nestled so that it let out there for those who could see it.

If it was a pocket dimension without physical dimensions here, she was going to have to follow someone in, but if her inability to perceive the entrance was purely sensory, running her mental, alien-provided sensors – the most flattering description anyone had ever applied to cockroaches – might reveal a crack.

She was not magical. A Muggle, in their terms. The only thing extra she brought to the table was her connection to her power, so if there was no mundane means to bypass their protection, it would have to be something exploiting that.

Her headache grew worse as she circled around for her sixth pass. Her passenger radiated determination. A prompt, as Taylor interpreted it. To keep going, to ignore the pain. Having her memories restored had hurt, and much in the same way.

This was not how it had been, back before Scion. Her power didn't give her headaches, not like this, not when she was barely utilizing the bugs. It didn't send emotions over to her, not so clearly she could identify them as separate to her own. Then there was restoring her memory, which it also had never done before.

But that was before Scion's death. Before her restoration at Contessa's guided hands, and who knew what else. Before coming to this world with magic, before having her mind twisted and then untwisted…

It would have been more surprising for the balance between them to come back exactly the same. This, at least, allowed some rudimentary communication.

Her awareness cracked in time with the throbs. Little flashes of light in her vision, in her senses. Bugs popping in and out of existence, shifting back and forth. A seventh storefront flashing in and out of sight when she looked to the right place.

Like a radio being tuned, her fluctuating perceptions flickered more to the knowing side than to the unknowing over the course of several minutes. She circled around again, feeling nauseous from looking at the flickering too long, and by the time she came back around once more, the Leaky Cauldron was there like it had never disappeared at all. New insects skittered around under the floor and in the back room, and in the massive space that had opened up beyond the magical pub.

Her power felt satisfied, immensely so.

Never before had her power actively worked to bypass other powers… But this wasn't another power. Scion was dead. This was something else entirely.

"Bending the rules for me?" she murmured as she approached the Leaky Cauldron.

'Solidarity' was the closest match to the emotional response she received. A heady mix of companionship and determination.

"Us against the world." She would take whatever allies she could get.

The interior of the Leaky Cauldron was exactly as she remembered it, down to some of the same patrons frequenting the same booths. A few looked at her as she walked through, and some continued to stare, but none stopped her.

As far as she knew, the only thing that visibly marked her as a Muggle was her clothing. That was the first thing she was going to fix if she ended up having to spend any time in Diagon Alley.

As she walked, she continued to run insect exploratory expeditions through the pub and beyond. Most bars had some form of a lost and found box, and if every Witch and Wizard carried a wand, there was a chance–

Yes, there were two smoothed sticks nestled among a few coin purses and other anachronistic detritus in a box behind the bar. Neither was very big, so she had her bugs take them both, conveying them like tiny pallbearers down under the bar.

"Buying or just passing through?" the bartender asked her as she loitered, waiting for her delivery.

"Passing through," she said. "I'm new to these parts."

"That you are, with an accent like that," he agreed. "Passage is there," he pointed to the blank brick wall in the back of the pub. "You tap your wand on it."

"Thanks." Her roaches deposited her new wands under an unused table, and she feigned tripping over herself when she walked by it, deftly snatching both with her hand and slipping one into the pocket of her jeans without looking at it. The other was a dark oak thing, with little runes carved over one half. She held it by the non-rune end, though for all she knew that was the wrong way around.

Unbridled curiosity radiated from her power's little corner of her mind. She agreed, somewhat, but for now the wand was just a potentially dangerous tool. One she raised to the brickwork and tapped around with, searching for the trigger.

Hopefully it only needed a wand. If it also needed a magical person to be holding the wand, she was going to have some explaining to do to whoever happened to be watching.

Her headache spiked, and the bricks folded away.

"So that's how it is?" she asked as she stepped into Diagon Alley.

Maybe she wasn't magical… But either her power was, or was smart enough to brute-force a way for her to fake it. She wouldn't put it past her power to be capable of such a thing.

Curiosity continued to be the dominant emotion sent her way, entirely failing to explain the inner workings of aliens attempting to wield magic.

So long as the end result worked for her, she could deal with not knowing the specifics.

She walked among the magical denizens of the alley, mostly unnoticed. The shops almost universally called to her, each one advertising a glimpse of culture and power that she knew next to nothing about. Magical clothing, magical potions, magical artifacts, magical food, magical books and books about magic…

'Potions, real potions,' she remembered Harry exclaiming as they looked over his new textbooks the night before he was set to leave. 'Do you think it's like cooking?'

'Cooking explosives, maybe,' she had said, running her finger over a warning in the textbook about concussive shockwaves if one stirred Popcap Shrooms too roughly under a full moon.

The books about magic were probably her best bet for learning quickly. She would have to look for a magical library here in the Alley. There were bookstores, she had passed two already, but she didn't have that much money to spend and none of it in magical currency.

The bank might be a place to stop soon, but she was looking for something else first. An Auror, the magical police. She couldn't imagine that what had been done to her was legal, and Contessa's forged documentation had never let her down before, giving her no reason to fear legal scrutiny. She wasn't a criminal in this world, she was an upstanding citizen without a single mark on her record.

She found an Auror outside the big marble pillars of the bank, standing a good distance from the armed and armored goblin guards but obviously keeping watch on the entrance.

"You're an Auror, are you not?" she asked politely, stopping in front of him.

"Yes. What do you need?" He graveled like an old, grizzled chainsmoker despite his young, clean-shaven face, which threw her off a bit.

"Where do I go to report a crime committed against me?"

"I can take a statement," he exhaled, pulling a roll of parchment and what looked like a self-inking quill from somewhere in his robes. "What's the crime?"

She quickly explained her situation; mother of a child with magic, visited by a man claiming to be Albus Dumbledore, obliviated of all memory of her son and left to wallow for years before she finally remembered what she had been made to forget.

"... I have to assume that is some sort of crime," she concluded. "Kidnapping at the very least."

"Kid's name?" the Auror asked, still sounding utterly disinterested as he scratched down her testimony.

"Harry Hebert."

"I'll kick it up the chain." The Auror waved dismissively and folded up the parchment, tucking it into his robes. "Rest assured."

Taylor was not assured. Not at all. But it was one approach. She could check back in with the magical police in a few days if nobody followed up.

In the meantime… She spent the rest of the day scoping out Diagon Alley. What the shops were, where they were, who tended to go into which places to buy what things, and a heaping helping of as much gossip as she could eavesdrop. Much of it might as well have been in a foreign language for how little she understood the context, but they were still speaking English and even nonsensical statements might be made retroactively important once she knew more.

Over the following weeks, Taylor learned three very important things.

First, that the magical police were either disinterested, bribed to look the other way, or otherwise ignoring her case. One Auror had shown up at her home to ask her questions, but she was told after he was done that her son would 'probably be on the Express' and that she must be mistaken about something.

Second, that there were two factors that likely went a long way to explaining why she was getting nowhere with the Aurors. Dumbledore occupied a position of fame bordering on hero worship in the British wizarding society. Worse, his only detractors were a rather large faction of magicals with magical heritage who despised anything to do with those outside their little bubble, the nonmagical most of all.

So the only political faction inclined to question – or, more cynically, to throw mud at – Dumbledore was also the one that at best didn't like Muggles like her. At worst, she might be made to 'disappear' if they could get away with it. The laws and possibly the magical police force would be biased against her, as a Muggle. It was possible that also influenced the lack of interest in her claims.

The easy, legal way was out, at least until she knew a lot more about the underlying structures and politics behind it all. Wizarding government was much more chaotic than anything she knew from this world or Earth Bet.

The third thing she had learned, though, gave her some hope. All Hogwarts students, it was said, came home for the holidays on the Hogwarts Express, regardless of where they were going afterward. It was a tradition, and it meant Harry was going to be in London, on platform nine and three-quarters, at a certain date and time.

That magically hidden train platform was open to Muggles in the know, and Dumbledore had obliviated her, so he wouldn't expect her to be there.

So long as news of her trying to get Aurors involved didn't reach him, that was. Taylor decided to let the legal route drop to keep her head down, in the hopes that she could just physically take her son back. The school term's end was not far off, less than a month from the day she finalized her plan, so she spent that time preparing.

Her house needed to be put back into shape; nineteen months of wallowing in a forgetful haze had taken its toll on the place she spent most of her alcohol-fueled blackouts. There were bottles to throw out, walls to patch over, and other little things, like cleaning Harry's room of more than a year's worth of dust. She left all his things exactly where they were, though. He would be home soon to make his bed himself.

Then there was weaning herself off alcohol. She had never wanted to become her father, and truthfully while Danny drank, he only really tried to drown himself in alcohol in the months immediately after Annette's death. Taylor didn't like that she had fallen to the same vice, even if she could blame it on outside influence affecting her thoughts. So she emptied the house of alcohol, sat on her hands, and forced her way through several weeks of tired, irritable suffering. It helped that the last few years didn't properly feel real in retrospect, so any habits she had developed under the influence weren't hard to shake.

She still went to work, of course. Rebuilding the fraying relationships with her coworkers was a task and a half, though telling them that she was going cold turkey, and then following through, worked wonders in reassuring them.

On the weekends and in the evenings, she went to Diagon Alley. Magic was an unknown, and she worked to build a basic understanding of what was and was not possible. Her funds weren't limitless, so she couldn't buy any book she liked, but the bookstores didn't discourage lengthy browsing sessions. As public libraries were not, it seemed, a thing in the wizarding world, that was the next best way to read to her heart's content. Aside from reading, a lot could be learned just by walking into random shops and letting the old-timey salesmen tell her about things she didn't actually end up buying.

There was, of course, one expensive item she absolutely had to have, even if she had to buy it for herself. The two wands she had taken from the pub were mostly useless in her hand, but that might only be because they weren't hers. She also learned that they might have magical tracking on them if they had belonged to children, which could call unwanted attention if she or her power ever managed to do something with them, and that wands were personalized enough that it was possible somebody would realize they were stolen if she was seen using them.

So, she went to the one source of personalized wands in Diagon Alley. The same shop Dumbledore had kept her out of the first time around.

It was a gloomy place, putting her in mind of a photography darkroom but with more light and more wooden sticks. The old man who greeted her gave her a piercing look that went on for long enough that she blinked first.

"I'm here to see if you can match me with a wand," she supplied, hoping to jump-start the process.

"Yes, yes… I don't know you." He squinted at her arm, then waved his hand in front of her, like he was feeling something invisible. "I would say you are a Muggle. But that's not right. You know I cannot legally sell wands to non-humans?"

"Is that something that often comes up?" she asked.

"No, most don't want wands and those who do don't come to me…" He shuffled into a back room, then quickly returned with a gnarled old oaken staff right out of a fantasy book. "This is an amplifier. No good for directing magic, but it will tell me whether you are wasting my time or not. Push magic into it."

She held the staff loosely and tried to concentrate on it, but so far as she knew she wasn't magic at all. The localized headache she had come to associate with her power working with magic rose from a background throb to a near-migraine, but nothing happened at first.

Ollivander reached out to take the staff back, but Taylor moved it away. It had taken time to let her see the Leaky Cauldron. This might be the same.

And indeed, the gnarled rounded top of the staff eventually began to glow. The light was… Not light, not that Taylor understood it. It didn't cast shadows, and it was a silvery red that dripped and flowed like a slow, liquid bubble of glass lit from behind.

"That…" Ollivander breathed. "That is magic, all right, but so dim and sluggish you might as well be a Muggle for all the good it does you. What bloodline curse are you suffering from?"

"Couldn't say," Taylor answered as she handed the staff back. "It's so bad I didn't know I was magic at all until very recently." It wasn't the truth, but it matched the outward look of the truth quite nicely for her purposes, so she resolved to remember this particular excuse for future use.

"My usual selection will do nothing for you," Ollivander informed her. "A custom fit would be little better. No wand can fix this. I can make you a wand as attuned to you as magically possible, but it will be little more than an exorbitantly expensive stick, and it would be so customized no other Wizard or Witch could use it either."

"If I grew more adept at using my magic despite the curse?" Taylor asked. "Would it be useful then?"

"No," Ollivander said flatly. "Be thankful you have enough innate magic to see through the anti-muggle charms on this Alley. I have never seen magic so mangled and weak. That amplifier staff is strong enough to blind when in the hands of the most depressingly pathetic wizards. You let off less light than a proper Squib, even if yours does flow."

Taylor got the distinct impression that her power was disgruntled. She didn't know what she had expected, herself.

"How much are we talking?" she asked. Ollivander was working on incomplete information; her power had gone from not knowing about magic at all to breaking obliviations and other magical enchantments in a few years. It was possible the wand could end up useful to her, if not immediately than in the future.

"Thrice my usual charge," Ollivander said flatly. "And you must pay up front. It will take me months to source the most matching possible exterior and core. Be warned, your wand may be made from extremely unusual components. Perhaps even… distasteful ones." He frowned at her. "Are you fully human?"

"Yes, I'm certain of it." That, at least, was nothing but the truth.

"Then this will not be illegal. Just a waste of your money."

"And your time?" she guessed.

He shook his head. "Crafting wands is never a waste of time. Yours will be a masterwork. But the blind cannot appreciate masterful paintings, and such will you be with your wand. Twenty-one Galleons."

She did the math in her head to convert that to pounds. Then did it again, just to be sure. That was a lot of money. Not out of her reach… But she would be exclusively eating cheap pasta for a few weeks to compensate.

"I'll go exchange some money at Gringotts and be right back to pay." Wands were weapons in this world. Weapons, identification, and status symbols. She would need at least one of those before she was done, even if it was just a fancy stick for her.

Her wand wasn't finished by the day of the Hogwarts Express' arrival, so she ventured out to the train station without it. The station was busy, and finding platform nine and three-quarters was laughably easy; she just followed the people in robes through the invisible wall.

The other side looked fairly mundane, save for the oddness of the people standing around waiting. Some were Muggles, like herself; their clothing set them apart at a glance, and the way they watched the magical parents was very much like normal people watched parahumans back home.

The train arrived exactly on schedule, a red beast of a machine that surely hadn't been built with that particular color in mind. It slowed to a stop at the station, and robed children disembarked in droves, hauling trunks, bookbags, cat crates and owl cages in a big, tumultuous mass headed by the more composed upper years and steadily falling into disarray from there as the younger children got off.

It was chaos, but Taylor was uniquely suited to keeping track of many individuals. Her insects scoured the platform and then the train itself, searching for any sign of her son even as she steadily eliminated individuals from the search by visually confirming that they weren't him before planting a bug on each of them to keep track.

A family of redheads embraced four of their members, the mother's strident voice rising above the crowd, saying something about a Mungo and visiting… Probably a grandparent. A bushy-haired girl had her face buried in a book her parents had presented her, even as she was led out off the platform by a guiding hand on her shoulder. A pale-haired boy with a very cultured look spoke urgently to his pristine wizard father, and two bulky goons – however unfavorable it was to say that about preteens, it was nevertheless obviously true – met with their carbon-copy fathers nearby.

It was chaos, but the chaos cleared out surprisingly quickly. The magical families apparated away or walked out as they willed, while the mundane parents escorted their children back out into the station to begin the walk back to their cars.

Nowhere in the press of chaotic reunion was her Harry. He wasn't meeting another family, he wasn't on the platform, and he wasn't on the train.

So much for finding him on the sly. There were Aurors stationed along the platform, and she thought that it was time for some strategic hysterics. If she made a scene of it, they couldn't possibly ignore her. Refuge in audacity; if she was lucky it would get her answers and her son.

The abominable headache that had plagued Taylor all morning finally receded, just before she sent out her application for a passport.

Memories of the last two days fell into place like puzzle pieces.

She was no actor, but she didn't have to fake any of the worry or 'take me to your superior' attitude she unleashed on the unwitting Aurors at platform nine and three-quarters. It worked at first. Got her an interview with someone who seemed to be taking her seriously.

Then they stepped out for a moment, and Taylor heard Dumbledore's soothing voice from the other side of the door. Not soothing to her, though, especially not as she couldn't make out what he was saying, even with bugs all over the room.

She had tried to leave, but one of the Aurors caught up to her and pointed his wand, and that was that. She woke up in her bed with no memory of the last day, her son, or magic. Also, as best she could tell, she had been compelled to move back to America, ignoring the fact that she didn't have a passport or any setup to immigrate, which thankfully delayed her from just hopping on a plane and going.

"Should never have bothered with the legal system," she groused, more upset with herself than the obviously corrupt workings of the magical police. It stank of systematic apathy, to her. The Aurors all seemed interested in her story in theory, but the moment she said 'Dumbledore' they discounted her as unreliable or just crazy. Dumbledore was famous and could do no wrong, and she was a Muggle for all they knew. If he told them she was just a nutter with no kid to speak of, they would probably believe him.

Thankfully, their 'permanent' solution to the problem she posed wasn't lethal. Her stupid, naive attempts to get her son back would have been her only attempts if they were more violent in dealing with her.

She truly had grown soft and trusting. Too trusting. The repeated memory wipes probably weren't helping.

She was done with the Aurors and reporting the crime. It didn't work. Dumbledore had too much influence, and she had less than none. If she got caught again, they were going to start wondering how the hell she kept losing their memory wipes, and they might do something her power couldn't fix.

Taylor had no idea where Dumbledore was keeping Harry over the summer, but she managed to listen in on enough conversations between school-age children and their parents in Diagon Alley to confirm that 'Harry Hebert, who looks like Harry Potter but always says he isn't' had attended Hogwarts the last two years and would be going back for a third. Meaning that Dumbledore for some unknown reason hadn't taken the obvious precautionary step of erasing Harry's memories of her.

She gleaned a few other things about Harry, too. He was in the Hufflepuff house. He was 'definitely not Slytherin's heir', which seemed to be considered a good thing. He was smart, and spent a lot of time with a Ravenclaw girl who was known for being brainy even by their standards, and pushy to go along with it.

All of that was filtered by the mouths and minds of unwitting children, so it was undoubtedly a warped accounting of some version of the truth as they saw it, but the bare facts were enough to paint a very vague picture of the son she so desperately missed.

She spent the three months of summer preparing. She had never infiltrated a magical castle before, and it wouldn't be easy.

"Wingardium Leviosa." She waved her borrowed wand, going through the motions.

The apple on her table in the Leaky Cauldron didn't move.

Her headache pounded fiercely.

"Magical tracking methods?" the shopkeep asked. "Living or an object?"

"Either. Living, preferably. Doesn't have to work on humans." She shrugged. "I have a dog who keeps getting away…"

"Aye, I know the feeling… My Kneazle is the same." The woman led Taylor down the crowded shelves of the magical artifact shop. "Live in a high-magic area?"

"Yes, and I'd like it to work at Hogwarts in case my son wants to bring the dog," she said.

"That'll limit your options, but we can see what's in stock…"

"Wingardium Leviosa." She knew she had the wand movements down perfectly. The pronunciation, too. Willpower couldn't possibly be the sticking point.

The apple stubbornly refused to move.

"Oy, lassie, you hit your head?" a gruff man called out from the bar, apparently considering her worthy entertainment to go with his flaming drink. "Squibs don't use wands!"

Her headache was fast approaching migraine levels.

'Hogwarts is protected by ancient wards, and the exact specifics of the ward scheme are a closely-guarded secret.'

She reshelved the book on magical warding and took down another. Hogwarts was at least mentioned in most of them, but from what she could tell most of the authors knew nothing about its warding scheme except that it was old and strong.

'Wards are, by definition, an incomplete art,' the next began, managing to capture her attention where the previous half-dozen had not. 'Wards cannot be both effective and unassailable. Any effective ward will be visible to the trained eye and specialized too narrowly to provide an unbreachable defense. As such, the true art of defense treats wards as a delaying tactic and a deterrent, not a defense system. The strongest wards are the most cumbersome.'

Interesting, but not what she was looking for. She took down another book and flipped to a relevant passage.

'The Hogwarts wards are shrouded in mystery, but it is agreed upon that they do not forbid entrance to any individual. As of the 1931 Wizengamot ruling, no lethal wards can be raised on the grounds except in the case of an announced lockdown. That Hogwarts has optional lethal wards can thus be inferred, but nothing more is known.'

"That's good to know," she said to herself.

Her power radiated agreement.

"You don't want me fried by a magic fence either." She took down another book. This was going to take time. A lot of time.

"Wingardium Leviosa, you fucking fruit," she gritted out between clenched teeth.

The apple shuddered.

Suddenly, the migraine pounding behind her eyes was worth every agonizing moment.

"Pathetic," someone in the small crowd of onlookers crowed.

"Oy, she moved it!" another yelled. "I want my money!"

"Pretty girl comes looking for blood?" the hunched old woman crooned from her place tucked away behind a bubbling pot. The liquid was alarmingly black, the color of dried blood but with the consistency of mud.

Taylor crouched in front of her to look her in the eye. "Can you sell me a blood charm or not?"

"Too pretty to buy such things," the crone warned. "Pretty gets its throat slit here in Knockturn Alley." Her long fingernails glistened with an unknown liquid, and they twitched menacingly.

Taylor smiled. A long, brown centipede worked its way out of her hair to crawl across her face, wrapping across her neck and up her left cheek to twitch its antenna in front of her left eye.

"I can be ugly too," she whispered as more insects rustled through her hair and peeked up from the collar of her robes, twitchy and numerous and just barely obscured from view. "Do you want to see?"

The crone cringed away from her. "You hide it well," she said. "What kind of charm?"

"Magical sight."

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Her hand trembled and her head throbbed abominably, but the apple lifted to exactly the height she imagined when she cast.

"Now you can settle your bets," she told her spectators, as she took the apple in hand and stood. "I did it."

"Never seen a Squib will her way to magic before," one of the grimy men whispered to another.

"She's just a weak hedge witch, idiot," his companion snarled. "So poor she just got her first wand, probably."

Taylor ignored them. They were as right as she could expect them to be, and having witnesses to her 'beating her blood curse' could come in handy in the future. Magic was status in this world.

The moment she stepped out into the mundane street, she pitched the apple under the tires of the nearest automobile, where it was instantly turned into muddy applesauce.

"Miss blood curse," Ollivander greeted her. "How do you fare?"

"I think I'm beating my blood curse, little by little," she told him.

"I highly doubt that," he sighed. "But your wand is ready. It is some of my best work, and I do thank you for providing a commission for one of my most unique pieces to date."

He rummaged around under the counter and brought out a padded black box. "Before I show it to you… What do you want from it? What was it you imagined yourself accomplishing with it?"

"I want a wand that can maximize my capabilities. Nothing more, nothing less." She wanted a wand her power could use, but the line between her power and her when it came to magic was blurry and confused, and she doubted Ollivander could make a wand for a shard of an alien entity if he tried.

"You are a curious one," Ollivander said. "Your wand is curiouser. Your magic does not resonate with normal wood. It will be a reservoir maximizing the little sustenance it is given from a provider that is mostly barren. As such, the exterior is a cactus wood, harvested from a desert under the full moon."

Cactus wood… She wished she had the money to buy up an entire bookstore, and the time to read through everything in it. Wandmaking seemed like a very interesting subject. "With the needles stripped off, I assume?" she asked.

"Inverted, facing inward to fix the core in place." He eyed her, his stare no less piercing than she remembered. "You would have resonated well with the unwillingly taken blood of an old high elf, but I am not willing to have this be my last piece. The best attainable core was a strip of Hydra vocal cord. Hydra are nigh-unkillable beasts, sporting many heads and persistence outstripping all that oppose them. Strike them down, and they will return twice as fierce."

"Sounds right." She would be sure not to face any real Hydras if she could avoid it. Britain probably didn't have any; they weren't in the 'local dangerous beasts' books she had skimmed.

"My wandmaking colleagues all want to meet you," Ollivander concluded as he opened the case to reveal her wand. "You are world famous within our small circle, though they do not know your name. Yours is a wand that will never pass for normal."

Her wand did not, she agreed, look anything like the other wands she had seen. The cactus wood was a dark stained brown, but while it held the shape of a cylinder, it was not solid. The wood itself was formed into a lattice shape, either by the natural growth of the cactus or Ollivander's work, and a wet, red strip of flesh was visible through the holes, pierced by little cactus needles.

She reached out to touch it, careful not to slip her fingers into any of the holes, and found that they were lacquered over, filled but perfectly translucent.

She felt nothing when she took her wand up for the first time. There was no resonance, no surge of magical energy. She was a Muggle.

Her power sent her a powerful flash of satisfaction.

"It does nothing," Ollivander sighed. "As I told you. It is but a macabre stick for you, and if others wield it they will never be able to concentrate their magic into anything useful. It is tuned to be as sensitive as possible where most wands must be dulled to fit their wielders. Any successful magic from another, however unlikely, would see them losing their hand and possibly their life."

He sounded genuinely disappointed, and she couldn't resist showing him that his work wasn't for nothing. "Wingardium Leviosa," she said, waving her wand.

Several boxes of premade wands floated up to the ceiling. It was no easier or more powerful than her work with her stolen, unmatched wands…

But her headache barely intensified at all.

"Worth every Galleon," was her verdict.

Three months of preparation was a long time. Taylor didn't feel ready, but she had a good plan, all the magical aid she needed to carry it out, and a rudimentary grasp of a few basic wand magics.

When it came time for the children to board the Hogwarts Express to begin their next year of schooling, Taylor was as ready as she could be.

She went to the platform, this time outfitted in practical witch robes. Her hair was tied back, and she wore enough makeup to make herself look completely different than normal. A mundane false arm hung from her stump, filling out her left sleeve and terminating in a gloved fake hand. It was little more than a crude shape to fill the space, but it would do. She looked nothing like the Muggle Taylor Hebert who had made a scene three months ago in this very spot.

"Visio," she subvocalized. Her blood charm activated, a creepy little chunk of cauterized flesh in her pocket, and she saw magic. Lines, shapes, waves of color, all awash and ever-shifting in the magical environment. It was all completely useless to her… Save for the pulsing yellow lines that stretched from her other pocket, terminating all over the station as her insects transported little tracking tags the size of raisins.

Some tags, she left on the train. In the undercarriage, buried in the cushions of the seats, stuck to the top in clandestine locations, each one was placed by insect, the automatic sticking charm activated, and subsequently abandoned.

Other tags went to the children themselves. Their sticking charms had been altered by a grumpy charmsmaster who worked in Diagon Alley, intentionally sabotaged to fall off after twelve hours. They were clipped to the hems of robes, the undersides of shoes, and other places where they wouldn't be noticed before they fell.

Each and every tag drew a yellow line from itself to her master key. The line had a range of a hundred kilometers before it broke, and if she got within a hundred kilometers of the tag at any time after such a separation it would reestablish itself. Ward interference cut down on that range by more than half, but it was better than nothing.

Hogwarts itself might not have a publicly known physical location, and she didn't know how to get to Hogsmeade – neither of them being on any Muggle maps, and magical maps not being a thing so far as she could tell – or what security there might be between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, but she was entirely capable of following a magic line through any part of Britain. She would have snuck on the train, but she was certain there were security measures in place to prevent such an obvious ploy. Magical trackers were far more likely to escape notice, being a ruse only someone like her could benefit from. Best-case scenario, she could follow them right to the castle and could then scope it out without anyone knowing she was even in the area.

The deployment went off without a hitch, leaving Taylor free to think of other things. Harry wasn't in the crowd; she had her bugs checking everyone who got into the train. Dumbledore wasn't here either, though she hadn't expected him to be.

The train whistle blew once, the five minute warning, and Taylor considered her work to be done. She left through the invisible wall–

And smacked right into a gaggle of redheads. "Oh, sorry dear," the matriarch said, sounding incredibly put-upon. "Must hurry though, children, through now!"

"Into the unknown!" two identical teens said in unison, before turning to walk backwards into the wall. A slightly younger boy moved to follow, clutching a rat of all things in his hands.

Taylor had just turned away from the mildly amusing sight when a boy yelled, a rat squealed, and a dog snarled right behind her. She whipped back around to see a big black labrador or similar pouncing on the boy, and his parents pulling their wands out.

Hers was already out, clutched the moment she felt threatened, but she found herself stepping forward to drive her shoe into the dog's ribcage instead of using it. Her kick sent the canine sprawling with a yelp, and the rat disappeared among the carts and startled Muggle passerby.

"Oh, for– Accio Scabbers!" the man yelled, flourishing his wand. The rat came flying to his hand, and half a dozen Muggles shouted or screamed.

Taylor noticed the men moving before the Muggles did; half a dozen plainclothes Aurors broke cover and started pointing their wands at faces, while another three set up a barricade of shimmering opaque light. It all had the feel of a well-practiced routine, and the redhead parents barely looked back as they ushered their children through the wall.

"Miss?" one of the Aurors came up to her. "You can go, we've got this covered."

"Looks like it." She much preferred being on the privileged, presumed-magical side of the mental fiddling this time around. Her wand was worth the price for that alone.

"We always stick around to keep an eye on Arthur, he's a good bloke but his family is conspicuous at the best of times," the Auror confided. "Nice kick. No idea what the Muggles are doing, letting dogs into the station."

"Yes, it is odd." The dog didn't have any fleas or intestinal worms, but she'd managed to stow a few big horseflies on his shaggy coat as he fled. He had made good on his escape, and was currently creeping under a row of plastic chairs. "Are you going to track it down?"

"Dog's not our concern," the Auror shrugged. "Probably some pet off a leash, anyway. The Muggles will find it." He wandered off, checking the very confused people who had just had their memories tampered with, and the opaque barrier disappeared, leaving the station just as it had been a few minutes ago.

Only one loose end remained. The Muggles wouldn't find the dog; Taylor only still knew where it was because she had a superpower. The dog was a keen hider and seemed to know exactly how to avoid notice. It had just snuck into bathroom of all places–

Taylor's jaw dropped as the dog disappeared, stretching out to form a man in the toilet stall. A ragged, robed man who definitely had seen better days.

She set out at a fast walk, moving to intercept the man as he left the bathroom and slipped away. Turning into an animal, that was useful, and the Aurors hadn't even suspected he was anything more than a dog.

She turned a corner and caught sight of the man her bugs proved had been a dog moments ago.

His face was shadowed by the ballcap he wore, but there was no mistaking him. His picture had been plastered on the front of the magic newspapers for weeks.

Sirius Black. Famed betrayer of the Potters, escaped convict, assumed armed and dangerous.

A criminal on the run, sneaking around a guarded area to assault schoolchildren.

She could take him down. Just to do a good deed. It would be easy.

But she had spent too long as a criminal and a warlord to think that was the only opportunity this chance encounter offered.

"Visio," she murmured, activating her blood charm once more.

Not a single yellow line sprang from her pocket, though the train had only left a few minutes ago.

Well, that made her decision for her, didn't it?

"He's at Hogwarts," Sirius told himself, over and over again as he waited for his cheap Muggle food. The waitress kept looking at him like he was going to pull a knife on her – which he wasn't. He must still look like a crazy homeless man. A good cover.

He'd missed the rat by a hairsbreadth. Peter definitely knew he was being hunted now. The train, the school, there would be Dementors. But he had to get the rat!

The waiter brought his sandwich and chips on a tray. He gave her muggle money, more than enough – he didn't have the time to count it out – and took the food and the tray, ignoring her protests as he left the shoddy restaurant.

"Hogwarts," he said again, a mantra, a promise. He had to get there, to get in, to get Peter and gut him and swing his gutted corpse at every witch and wizard who came around to prove he wasn't supposed to be in Azkaban, and he had to do it before–

The alleyway he'd been absently walking through ended in a wall. A shuddering, moving wall composed of thousands of little spindly things and round shells and clicking limbs and wings.

A living wall of insects.

He dropped his food and whipped his stolen wand out, but his fingers shook and he dropped it too. A veritable carpet of cockroaches flooded out from all sides to cover it.

"Bloody bleeding fuck!" he chanted, stomping his thankfully sturdy boots to a cacophony of cracks. That bug wall was taller than he was, there was another one behind him – he hadn't looked but he knew there would be – and he had to be hallucinating but it definitely felt and sounded real.

"Sirius Black." A figure walked through the bug wall, their body carpeted in a layer of all manner of insects. "Death Eater."

Sirius was not his happy pre-Azkaban self, and he might be more than a little unhinged, but it didn't take a stable genius to know that anyone commanding dark magic of the caliber needed to do this wanted a Death Eater even if he wasn't actually one. "Yeah?" he rasped, hoping to any higher power that would listen that this wasn't the dark tosser himself back from the dead… Or worse, only mostly back.

"You seek Hogwarts," the figure said, their voice obscured by the chitter and gnashing claws of the insects all over their body and face.

"Yeah," he grunted.

"Why?"

Why, why could he be going to Hogwarts, the papers all seemed to think he was after Harry which would make sense if he was what they thought he was, but he was after Pettigrew, but if this was a Death Eater or their master they wouldn't want him to kill the traitor that Pettigrew surely was, so "Potter," he lied. "I want Potter."

The figure hesitated. At his feet the bugs scurried away, revealing his wand.

"I want Potter," it said. "We have a common interest."

Sirius envisioned a rat skeleton, stripped to the bone by thousands of insects. Then he envisioned himself suffering the same fate if he refused. Then little baby Harry if he wasn't around to intervene.

"I could do with a team up," he rasped, his mouth dry as a bone.

"So could I." The insects fled, flying and scuttling and crawling into the cracks and shadows of the alleyway. The bugs on the dark witch's body fled last, many crawling under feminine robes to hide.

The woman the insects left behind was an unassuming witch, but Sirius knew better. He didn't think he could ever forget. Something terrifying lurked behind those eyes, ready to come out the moment it thought he was crossing it.

Taylor regarded the ragged Death Eater with suspicion, even as she offered to work together. He didn't look like much, but he wanted Harry and was a trained wizard.

"Do you know how to get to Hogwarts?" she asked. The tone of her voice implied that she would have no use for him if he didn't, which was entirely true.

"Yeah, that's the easy part," the Death Eater assured her.

Easy? Not for her. He would be useful. Once he outlived his usefulness, she could throw him to the Aurors. So long as he thought she wanted Harry for the same vaguely nefarious purposes he did, he wouldn't turn on her.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, finding Hogwarts was trivial when one was an actual, bona-fide wizard who had graduated from there. Not because of some arcane magic they only taught at the school, or some secret knowledge Taylor wasn't privy to, though. No, in truth it was much simpler than that.

Sirius Black, escaped Death Eater convict, could do side-along apparition, the act of teleporting himself and another person. Further, while one could not apparate to Hogwarts, one could apparate to Hogsmeade, the magical village adjacent to Hogwarts that was only reachable through such magical means.

Magical means that were frustratingly out of reach for Taylor. Apparition and the Floo both, as she understood it, required magic and had potentially fatal side-effects to failure. She was not going to try to learn either with her trial and error method, not when learning normally involved losing pieces of one's body and stepping or pushing one's face into a fire, respectively. As far as she knew, those or brooms – which would require she know where she was flying – were the only forms of magical transportation. Hence her failed plan to use tracking charms to figure out where Hogwarts was.

She maybe could have finagled her way into someone magical taking her along, but that would run into the opposite problem: once she had Harry, how would she get back? Relying on a random good Samaritan or someone there under false pretenses just wasn't feasible. The tracking charms were a better plan, though they had failed almost immediately.

But side-along apparition just required that she let the Death Eater hold onto her arm after waiting a few days for him to regain some of the strength Azkaban and being on the run conspired to keep from him. She bought her passage to the outskirts of Hogwarts with cheap sandwiches and the occasional thinly veiled threat to his life. The way back, ideally with her and Harry, would be the same. Assuming she couldn't secure an alternate means of exit in the meantime.

She had prepared for an extended stay in Hogsmeade and the surrounding area, knowing that she would be relying on an unreliable fugitive for any back-and-forth transportation. Thankfully, she had vacation time aplenty saved up at work – a positive consequence of her nearly two years of befuddled aimlessness – that she set out to use, all at once. She also dipped into her savings to secure a room in Hogsmeade on a weekly basis, so that she wouldn't have to camp out.

From there, things got harder. The Forbidden Forest was a huge swath of hostile territory that bordered Hogwarts on one side, and crucially it was the only place one could approach the castle on foot without needing to get through the front gate or over other physical defenses, because nobody had bothered to extend the perimeter wall into the deepest parts of the forest.

The giant spiders, hostile centaurs, and other assorted nastiness that lurked in the forest were supposed to be enough of a disincentive.

Black was crazy enough to go in anyway, and Taylor followed. The forest wasn't actually that bad, when one had three blocks worth of forewarning for the bigger creatures.

The Dementors were the real problem.

Taylor huddled beneath an earthen overhang, her robes muddy at the hems and her breathing ragged. All around her, the forest shuddered with subtle terror. A chill graced the air, one not borne on the wind, a radiating, unnatural cold.

The Dementors were above the trees, this time. On the last rotation, they had flown between the trees, gliding from trunk to trunk and checking around every corner, morbid seekers looking for prey.

She was reminded, more and more, of Ringwraiths and Shelob and gibbering goblins, of Tolkien's works. The books existed here, too, and she had read them in both worlds. They were remarkably close on several different 'fantasy' creatures. The similarities to Dementors and Acromantula and the like would have had her believing Tolkien was a wizard who drew inspiration from the world he knew.

But it couldn't be; he had written exactly the same on Earth Bet, and Earth Aleph. There was no magic there. There were no Dementors there.

The chill passed. She made note of the approximate time between passes with a shaking hand. Their aura was a dark inverse to Glory Girl, wide-ranging and creepingly subtle on the outskirts. Though at this distance, according to Black and her guide to Britain's magical creatures, she shouldn't have been able to feel it at all.

A dog bounded into view, shaggy and wild. It shifted to a man, a fellow conspirator. "I counted five," he reported.

She made a note of that, too. They both had their strengths. He was good for visual assessments, unafraid of being noticed, one more animal in a forest full of them. She was good for spatial awareness, the Dementors' aura of depression leading to terror ineffective on insects, but their cold entirely trackable.

She didn't attempt to place insects on the dark creatures. Not to track them, and not to explore their contours and what lay under their cloaks. The one time she tried, the cold killed her bugs just as the Dementor stopped and looked directly towards her, despite being at the very edge of her range at the time.

They were very much like Ringwraiths to her Frodo; dark specters capable of seeing her influence when it was at its most invisible to everyone else. Her power resented them, but it was a resentment tempered with caution when conveyed to Taylor.

The chill returned, coming back around and passing over her bugs. "More," she whispered.

The man gave way to the dog, while she hunched beneath the earthen overhang, ready to run if the Dementors began to close in.

This time, the Dementors were on the ground; running might be necessary. They moved in pairs, floating a meter off the ground.

Two came her way. She ran well before they were anywhere close, retreating deeper into the forest. They never saw her, not with how thick the forest was, and in truth she had fled well before they were actually a threat, but her breathing still came in short gasps for more reasons than just the sudden exertion.

Only her range made such risks palatable. The Dementors did not move at a pace above that of a fast walk, not when they were simply on patrol. Observing their patrols to see if there were noticeable patterns or gaps came with little direct danger, save for that of repeatedly being exposed to the edges of an aura that should not have had the effect it did.

Black, the dog as of that moment, ran past her, then circled back around, shifting in form. "Running away again?" he asked, leering rudely.

She knew what was required of her; Black would pounce on any sign of weakness. "If I can feel them, they may be able to feel me," she said coldly, speaking with a formal air she thought made her sound more highbrow. "It's your soul they seek, not mine, but I don't doubt they would take mine if they knew it was available." She let her wand slip out of her sleeve and into her hand, the tip visible to him. It was a bluff, in the event of a fight the real threat would come from all around him, but it might ward him off for now.

"Not how it works," he told her. "They can't feel you, they have to see or hear you to know you're there."

"Not how it works for you," she retorted. "But you evade them by being uninteresting. You cannot feel them from so far out. Don't assume it works the same way for others with different tactics." Put that way, her vulnerability – and it was vulnerability, there was no doubt in her mind about that – could be cast as a strength. Or at least a double-edged sword, an advantage and disadvantage intertwined into one.

"You can't be that dark, if they bother you," Black challenged. If he were any more direct, she might think he was overcompensating for something, but as it stood he just seemed to be a stereotypical evil thug.

"Stare into the darkness for too long and it will stare back," she retorted, hoping he wouldn't recognize what she was almost certain was a bastardization of a quote he would consider Muggle.

Instead, he shuddered and turned away. "Don't tell me you've done any staring," he muttered. "Some things aren't meant to be disturbed."

Ringwraiths, Shelob, goblins, and now hints that there might be more esoteric things in the depths… It was too bad all of Tolkien's prescience seemed centered on the bad things inherent to the real-life fantasy world. She would have appreciated a few hobbits or ents right about now.

She would appreciate not being under the lingering aftereffects of Dementor exposure more. Her hotel room in Hogsmeade looked awfully tempting…

But they needed more information on the Dementor patrols. She, and Black, would be back at the edges of Hogwarts' grounds by nightfall. Harry was in the castle, and the Dementors defended the castle. She needed to find a time and place where they wouldn't be if she was to get in. She held no illusions as to whether she could face one up close.

The guidebook to Britain's magical creatures that she had bought said Dementors dragged up bad memories and amplified the feelings associated with them, the worse the memory the more effective. Taylor understood why she was particularly vulnerable and thus particularly sensitive, but it wasn't something she could fight.

Especially as her power had flat-out failed to learn the specialized counter-charm, the first time that had ever happened to her. The pain associated with failing to cast the charm even stopped, like he power wasn't trying anymore.

So… patrols. Probing the defenses for a crack. An unbeatable enemy needed only to be outmaneuvered to be ineffective…

And she thought she was beginning to see their patterns. There were only so many of them.

The Dementors had patrol routes. Unerring, irregular in the short term but reliable in the long-term. They flocked to a particular clearing deep in the forest during the witching hour. Between the late morning and early afternoon they retreated, stealing away to hover, as best Taylor could tell, in the clouds. If there were no clouds, they haunted the castle's exterior, perching like gargoyles under outcroppings of masonry. At all other times they made sweeping passes of the grounds and the borders of the forest, never leaving any given location alone for more than an hour.

It took weeks of tracking their movements, weeks of recurring dark thoughts and subtle outside influence on her mind, but she and Black confirmed these habits, quantified them, made schedules and plotted out potential routes.

There were almost a hundred Dementors around Hogwarts, but they were predictable, and that made them avoidable. Once they were confident they knew the Dementor routes and times inside and out, Black sprang the next complication on her.

"We can go in at these times without having to worry, and if we spend less than an hour inside, we can get out before the opening in their coverage closes again," Taylor concluded. She stood opposite a fallen log, looking down at their Dementor tracking notes scratched in the dirt.

Black, who looked slightly better than he had when she first met him, but still gaunt and grubby, jabbed his toe at their sketch of Hogwarts, digging it into the Quidditch field. "Good. Next problem. The map."

"Map?" she asked, subtly augmenting her voice with insects. Their chirping and clicking always unnerved him. For a terrorist who considered her an ally, he was remarkably uneasy around her. Then again, that might just have meant he was not stupid. Semi-unhinged, immoral, murderous, but not stupid or oblivious.

"The Marauder's Map, and the Marauder who watches it." He looked up, his eyes bright with some unspoken emotion. "Pettigrew has it."

"He's dead," she asserted. That was all she knew about Pettigrew, and even that was only from the newspapers with their sordid gossip-mongering. She had been under the impression he was on the side of the light in the last war.

"I didn't kill him back then, and he's still here, I saw him," Black objected. "He's a rat. Like I'm a dog. He's living with the Weasleys, hiding out, and if he has the map he'll see us the moment we step onto the grounds. We need to eliminate the rat and make sure the map is out of play before we go after Potter."

This map was some kind of live security camera… Yes, she could see why it had to go, and this neatly explained what Black was doing at platform nine and three-quarters attacking a boy and his pet rat. "A two-pronged strike? I take the boy, you take the rat and map at the same time?" That might do nicely.

"No, we need to deal with Pettigrew first," Black objected. "Go in at night when he sleeps, get him, take him out and interrogate him to find out if anyone else knows about it. We don't know who he told about the map or where he keeps it, or when it's likely to be watched. If we don't find that out first, we can't be sure we'll get Potter on our first try. They might raise the alarm the moment we step onto the castle grounds."

There were some holes in Black's reasoning, but he was at least a little crazy and definitely evil, and his plan worked with her true motivation, so she nodded. "Yes. The rat first. Then we go for the boy."

If she happened to find Harry while in the castle, before they had the map? Well, the distraction of Sirius Black being captured breaking into Hogwarts could cover for any number of things.

Pretending to be a Death Eater was surprisingly, unsettlingly easy. Sirius had plenty of material to crib off of, hearing the yells and tormented cries of actual Death Eaters for over a decade, but he had expected more of a challenge even so. Having to talk his way out of some recreational Muggle-hunting, or at least some Pureblood bigotry gossip around the campfire. Bluffing his way through talk of evil deeds and accomplishments. Fending off probing questions about how, exactly, he had served their dark lord in the past. He was apparently famous for that, though he'd be damned if he could figure out how everyone had gone from 'one instance of betrayal' to 'Voldemort's most trusted right-hand man' while he was sitting in Azkaban, doing nothing, with only three – falsely attributed – magical kills to his name.

Instead, the woman who had allied herself with him was quiet. Still. Unnaturally so, some of the time. No gloating, no prying, no casual racism…

It was possible, he realized after a week or so, that she wasn't a Death Eater. There were other kinds of dark criminal scum in the world, after all. Not just Britain's homegrown variant. She didn't even sound British.

This possibility made her, if it was possible, more dangerous. Especially as she had so willingly shown him her face. Either she was confident he wouldn't betray her to the authorities… Or she expected him to learn nothing from seeing the face she wore. Maybe Polyjuice, maybe a Metamorphmagus. Maybe an intent to kill him once the job was done. He knew nothing about her.

As such, after he sold her on getting Pettigrew – a brilliant piece of motivated reasoning, if he did say so himself – he knew his time to figure out her deal was growing short. He had to start digging. Metaphorically, that was.

"We get Pettigrew, we get the map, we get the kid," he opened, using his 'gruff Death Eater scum' voice. They'd just hammered out the final infiltration plan, and barring one little detail – one hilarious little detail he was going shout to the rooftops once this was all over – they were ready. It was late, and his campfire was dying. She would be tired, just like he was, and feeling confident. A good combination. "Then what?"

She sat, her legs mostly covered by her robes but showing bare skin from the shin downward, on a rotten log. The bugs from its wet core streamed out and around her, crawling over her robes and across her legs, ants carrying maggots and larger stick insects in a little flood of chitinous bodies. Her face was drawn, her overly wide mouth set into a distant frown, and her hair was tied back. Her wand, brown with unsettling glimpses of red within, tapped absently on the back of a fat glimmer-beetle. If someone came across her like this without him or his campfire, they would assume she was a denizen of the forest, some sort of corrupted tree nymph, never mind that such creatures no longer lived in Britain.

'Unapproachable' was a good single-word description of her, but he pressed on anyway, running his mouth without a care for her lack of response. "There's only one of him, you know. Might be our intentions conflict. What do you want with him? Me, I'm not sure. Finish the job," by protecting him like a godfather should, "or just squeeze the little bugger," in a hug, "I'll figure it out in the moment," once he had this dark witch dealt with. Pettigrew first, then her, then Harry. Harry was on his list now; poor kid hadn't been back when he first got out of Azkaban. Sirius hadn't been right in the head then. Now, either, but more so then. He'd probably still be single-mindedly tearing off after Peter if it were just him on the hunt.

"I'll do what I've been waiting two years to do," the witch said softly, her voice creepily pleasant.

That told him nothing, but it gave him a terrible feeling of foreboding nonetheless. "And what's that?" he demanded. "If you're going to try and spirit the brat away the moment we get him, I'm going to have a problem with that."

She looked up. Something moved around her neck; a spider. Her eyes bore into his own, and he instinctively looked away, hoping she didn't know legilimency. "Are we going to have a problem?" she asked.

"Share the work, share the spoils," he protested.

"You'll get what you want," she assured him. "I'll get what I want. So long as we cooperate."

She still hadn't told him what that was, though. She seemed more interested in acting the playground for her insect minions than in the conversation.

"Plenty of people who'll pay good money for the Boy-Who-Lived over in America, then?" he asked, abandoning subtlety altogether. "Or are you being paid by someone closer to home?"

"Close to home," she said, actually answering his question. "Do you need to… deliver him to someone?"

Assuming she wasn't working for You-Know-Who, which was a somewhat safe bet given the bastard was dead… "Malfoy might want him," he said conversationally. "You know, if I don't kill him outright."

"Malfoy?" she asked.

"Yeah. Right old rich bastard, up there in the ranks, puffy peacock with a hair fetish?" he said. "Ringing any bells?" He didn't know every Death Eater, but Malfoy was one of the ones who should have been in Azkaban right next to him. Everyone knew he was a Death Eater, it was the worst-kept secret in Britain.

"Has he put out a price?" she asked, something in her tone chilling him despite the smoldering fire separating them. Not Malfoy, then.

"No?" He didn't think so, anyway. He wasn't connected to Britain's underworld, not actually being a criminal.

"Good." She closed her eyes and looked away. "We will discuss how we intend to… split the prize… once we have him."

He had no intention of letting this witch anywhere near Harry, so that was fine by him. His prize, the one he still wanted her help getting, was the next step on their master plan. Harry would be safe in the castle–

But perilously close to where they were going to be. "You know, we can't risk grabbing Potter and Pettigrew at the same time, no matter how easy it might seem," he cautioned.

"Easy?" she asked.

"With them being in the same dorm room," he clarified. How had he not thought of that? This was bad. It would have been worse if she noticed Potter in there when they were actually there, grabbing Pettigrew, but he didn't know how he was going to talk himself out of this one–

"The rat is with Weasley," she said. "You said the Weasleys are all Gryffindors."

"Yeah? What's your point?" He knew that. The Weasleys all went to Gryffindor, stalwart blokes, the lot of them. Blokette, too, now. Potters did too, so they'd be in the same dorm.

"Potter is Hufflepuff," she informed him. "They will not be in the same place."

"That's not right," he objected. Harry was a Gryffindor if ever he'd seen one. Admittedly he'd last seen the tyke babbling and cheering over taking three consecutive steps, but still.

"It's just a house." She sounded outright disinterested, now. "A group of children among groups of children in a building of children."

"He ought to be in Gryffindor," Sirius argued.

"It only matters in that it determines where in the castle he can be found," she said. "And how hard it will be to reach him once the map is out of play. If we even need bother with that at all." The glimmer-beetle under her wandtip moved forward, ambling in a wide circle around the fire.

"You've not told me your name," he retorted. "The map will tell anyone who looks who you are, magical disguise or not. Want to take that risk?"

"We will be taking it regardless, going for Pettigrew."

True, but he needed Pettigrew, not Harry, and he needed her to believe that it was better to do them one at a time, Pettigrew first. Also, it wasn't a risk for him, he was a known fugitive. He tried to come up with something to say, something clever to persuade her anew–

"But it makes no sense to rush, so close to the end," she said, more to herself than to him. "The plan works best if we go for the rat first."

He exhaled, thankful he wouldn't need to muster up a convincing argument. They'd go after the rat. They'd get the rat. Then he would get rid of her, well before she would expect betrayal. She thought Harry was his prize, and that he needed her to get to him. Neither was true.

The glimmer-beetle crawled over his shoe. He'd not even noticed its approach. He looked up at the witch, but she was imitating a stone statue, her eyes fixed on a point behind his head as two centipedes dangled from her hair, in front of her cheeks.

He shuddered. She couldn't be any more creepy if she tried.

There was something magical in the Forbidden Forest.

This was a given, but more specifically there was something magical that her power was still working on figuring out. The telltale throb of a magic headache kept Taylor company as she waited in the trees for night to fall. It was stronger than when she was in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley, almost as strong as when she tried to use her new wand on a spell she hadn't already practiced until her arm hurt.

She suspected she knew what it was. There were giant magic spiders lurking in the depths of the forest, but not once had a giant spider fallen under her control, though several had skirted around the borders of her range. If she knew her power, which she did, it was working on that. The persistent feeling of annoyance coming from her power implied that the magic spiders were not an easy nut to crack.

Not that anything magic was easy. Taylor could, with her power's assistance, do magic. But each individual spell took her days of concentrated effort and crippling headaches to learn, no matter how simple. Her first-year textbook said Wingardium Leviosa was easy enough for eleven-year-olds to learn in one or two class sessions, but it had taken her several four-hour practice sessions in the Leaky Cauldron to get her apple to move at all, and another handful of sessions to perfect it.

It didn't hurt much to cast Wingardium Leviosa now, so long as she used her wand, and it took absolutely no mental or physical effort from her, much less any sort of 'magical charge' from some hypothetical reservoir – that part came from her power if anything, as best she could tell – but getting the spell into her repertoire was a long, hard process.

She had forced herself to learn a few more out here in the Forbidden Forest, prioritizing by usefulness. Not all were first-year, but they all took the same unreasonable amount of effort to figure out. Incendio, Accio, Aguamenti, Diffindo… Versatile charms that she could exploit in any number of situations.

Each one was moderately useful, by her standards. Any single charm of the ones she had learned could have made up the basis of a power back on Earth Bet. Throwing plumes of fire, directional telekinesis, spraying water, and that wasn't even getting into how Diffindo was a watered-down Jack Slash kit without needing a blade to start with. With more than a dozen semi-power capabilities in addition to her bugs, she was objectively more versatile and dangerous than she had ever been as Skitter or Weaver.

But the enemies here, in this world, were all budget Eidolons. They all theoretically had access to hundreds of powers, and that was just charms. Transfiguration eluded her, Potions required materials and skills she didn't have, and then there were the magical plants and animals she barely knew anything about that lurked literally everywhere in the magical world, just to start. Every eleven-year-old witch and wizard in Britain was taught these things, so every adult should be capable of using them.

Everyone could pull out miniature flamethrowers if they thought to. Everyone was a fire cape, a Blaster, a Master, a Shaker. Some were Changers, like Black, and some were almost certainly Strangers if they wanted to be, or Strikers or Brutes. Tinkers abounded, and their work was replicable, easily purchasable. They were all Trumps, too, capable of varying their approach based on what they wanted, and drawing on a deep well of theoretical knowledge that even Eidolon didn't have. Many of his powers put magic to shame for sheer versatility or lethality, and many more were simply more thorough when it came to the intensity of the effect, but Eidolon was overkill anyway.

Taylor, even with a bit of magic, was a small fish in this big pond. That wasn't going to change anytime soon. She had to be careful.

A many-legged thing lumbered by below her tree, never looking up. She had absolutely no idea what it was, except that it wasn't an insect. There was a reason she kept her vigil in the trees, not on the ground. Away from notice until the day came when she knew enough to protect herself.

There was one thing she and Black agreed that they needed, if they wanted to get in and out of Hogwarts without being detected, and that thing was a Hogwarts uniform. Taylor wasn't a known fugitive, so she could get the Gryffindor guard painting – which was a strange concept she pretended to have already known about when Black brought it up – to let her in if she gave the right passphrase. But she had to pretend to be a student for that, and that meant she needed the correct robes.

Frustratingly, Hogwarts uniforms were out of season. Magic could repair most anything, it seemed, at least for a time, so the used clothing market was nonexistent in the wizarding world. Taylor had placed an order for an out-of-season Hogwarts robe at Madam Malkins, but it was going to take a month to be finished, as there was a long queue she was at the back of.

Black couldn't just magic up a Hogwarts robe from any set of robes, either. That apparently needed a fine touch and his touch was anything but fine after Azkaban. He could hit her with a very weak disguise charm to make her look vaguely like a child, and he could resize robes if he had to, but he couldn't make or aesthetically alter them.

She was forced to take him at his word for all of that. Her excuse for not being able to do any of those things was to have spiders weave webs between her fingers and glare at him when he asked, before insisting they could wait for the robe she had ordered.

Their plan was probably a little too complicated and stupid, but she didn't want to push the crazy murderer too far. He was surprisingly easy to be around most of the time, aside from when he randomly seemed to remember he was a Death Eater and should act like it, but she knew what he really was, and how fragile her mostly unspoken cover story was. If she pushed, he might push back, and of the two of them she was the one who was lying about almost everything. She needed his expertise and willing assistance, not his suspicion, and that meant playing along. The plan didn't have to work perfectly. It just had to get her closer to Harry. She was going to play it by ear once they got into the castle anyway.

So she compromised with him and settled for fixing only the obvious, untenable flaws in his machinations, letting him take the lead. Meaning they needed a Hogwarts robe, or for her to suggest something better that they were capable of doing immediately.

Then a Hogwarts robe wandered right under her nose.

There were a few magical creatures in the Forbidden Forest that Taylor liked. Not the Acromantula; her power seemed to have stamped its metaphorical foot in frustration and given up on those. But the unicorns, real genuine unicorns… those were a given, although they stampeded the moment she came within a hundred feet of them, so she had to settle for watching them from afar. The Thestrals, as Black had offhandedly called them, were the opposite. Bony skeleton horses, they liked her. There was a clearing they spent the nights in, one she often set up near during her Dementor stakeouts so that she had something pleasant to look at while her bugs waited for the telltale chill.

She liked Thestrals. They were calm, gentle magical horses that only looked terrifying. As it turned out, she wasn't the only one who liked them. She watched from her perch in a tree one evening as a little blond-haired girl skipped among the Thestrals in their natural habitat, having for some reason dared going into the forest, with Dementors around, to visit them and throw around apples and raw meat from a basket.

She was an ethereal little thing. She couldn't be very smart, based on her being where she was now, but children sometimes weren't very smart when it came to safety. Her robes said she was a Ravenclaw.

Those robes would do nicely. Taylor carefully descended from the tree, drew her wand, and approached from behind the girl.

She had yet to master the stunning spell – in fact, that was the one she was currently throwing herself at whenever she had some time and felt she could stand the resulting headache – so her approach was going to be a bit messier than she would have liked.

She stole up behind the little girl, the Thestrals whickering pleasantly at her, and grabbed her from behind, snatching the wand from her pocket before wrapping her arm around to pin the girls' arms to her side.

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, dropping her basket. "Who are you?"

"Someone who doesn't mean you any harm," Taylor said in a low voice. "But I need your robes."

"I need robes too," the girl said. "Will you give me yours?"

This was suspiciously easy… Taylor let go and frisked the girl, but she didn't seem to have another wand on her. In fact, she even raised her arms to make herself easier to search.

"Daddy always says to help strangers in need," the girl told her. "But it is cold out here."

"Your daddy probably should have put some qualifiers on that advice," Taylor mused. There was a fine line between helping someone and being taken advantage of by them, and she was definitely doing the latter.

She considered taking the girl back to Black, then immediately discarded that as a terrible, completely despicable idea. She was not going to bring a Death Eater and a child together when the child was going to be vulnerable. And wearing robes that didn't fit her. And possessing less common sense than a brick.

"Your robes," Taylor insisted.

"Okay…" The girl shucked her robes off. Thankfully she was wearing a very old-fashioned one-piece slip under them, so it wasn't like she was stripping down to her skin in the middle of a cold, open field. "Will you give them back before I have to go back to the castle?"

Shit. Taylor couldn't let her go back to the castle. She also couldn't let her stay here, and she definitely couldn't have Black babysit her. Where could she safely stow a child for a few hours? And even if she and Black went in tonight to get the rat, wouldn't the teachers notice the girl was missing?

She hadn't thought this through. She blamed the intermittent Dementor influence.

"It's okay, the Nargles make me absent-minded sometimes too," the strange little girl assured her.

She ended up putting the girl, whose name was Luna, in the Shrieking Shack, a conveniently empty building Black had pointed out as being unoccupied except for when there was a full moon. Luna, who continued to be cooperative and somewhat chatty throughout her extended mugging and detaining, assured Taylor that the professors never checked whether she was in bed at night, and that she often wandered the castle until dawn instead of sleeping. Also that it wasn't a full moon until next week.

Taylor hadn't asked about any that, or dropped any hints that she was thinking about it, but Luna told her so anyway.

It wasn't on the top one hundred list of terrible things Taylor had done in her life, but she definitely didn't feel good about locking the girl in an old, creepy shack dressed in oversized robes for what was probably going to be an entire night. Not that Luna seemed to mind that much.

Black, though? She had assumed he wouldn't like it, or worse that he would in all the wrong ways, but his actual reaction was surprisingly placid.

"Wait, let me get this straight," he said as he waved his wand over the small Ravenclaw school uniform. "You mugged a little girl, stripped her of her robes, stuck her in the Shrieking Shack, told her she would be there overnight, and all she did in response was ask you if you would leave her some water and a sprig of mistletoe?"

"Yes."

Black looked up from his work. "Is this your way of not saying you killed her and hid her body?" he asked, deadly serious.

"If it was I wouldn't have spent ten minutes looking for mistletoe on the off chance it will keep her from trying to escape," she retorted. "We don't need the heat for killing a kid before we've got Potter. You can wipe her memory and we can put her back tomorrow."

"Based on that story I don't think I'll have to, she's clearly batty," he muttered. "Engorgio, come on, engorge you stupid cloth, yes, now the chest…"

The robes expanded and tightened in different areas.

"Still got it," Black panted once he was done.

It might have forced this ridiculous plan, but she was comforted by how far he still had to go to recover from Azkaban. A weak ally would be an easily defeated ally when the time came to turn on him.

And she was not sympathizing with him. He and his defeated terrorist group were not the Undersiders or Harry. She was not going to fail to follow through on betraying him. He could be as moderately pleasant as he wanted; he intended to hurt her son and belonged to a group who tortured and killed as standard operating procedure. She would feel no regret when it came time to betray him.

That night, an hour after midnight while the Dementors swarmed in a single clearing well out of the way of anything important, they took a secret passage Black knew into the castle.

The paintings, the walls, the moving staircases… The castle was everything the little girl in Taylor would have wanted from a magical mansion, and then some. But it was a dangerous place for her now, and she stuffed that amazed little girl version of herself away to focus on getting in and out undetected.

Her insects, all brought in from outside the castle as there didn't seem to be any living inside, were godsends in keeping them from being spotted. Black was somewhat inconspicuous as a dog and had good instincts for sneaking around, but it was Taylor who had them turning away from long, narrow corridors well before they would have been forced to turn around or find somewhere to hide from a wandering student or patrolling teacher.

They made it to the Gryffindor painting without issue. There, it was up to her to play the part in her enlarged – but not quite correctly-proportioned – Ravenclaw robes and vaguely younger face.

"I need to check on a student," she told the fat painted lady, bold as brass. Black crept along the base of the wall as a dog, out of the field of view of the painting. "Let me in."

"Missy, it is one in the morning and you are not of my house," the painting huffed. "Are you even a prefect?"

"Yes. Hifflegard."

There was a momentary pause, in which Taylor lamented having to rely on a crazy prison escapee's memory of prefect passwords from a decade ago. She had yet to find Harry within her range, though, so she had to continue playing along.

"So you are, then," the painting said as it swung aside. "Don't forget your badge next time, and make it quick."

It had actually worked. Taylor was amazed; it looked like the backup plan of 'Black jumps up and drags his nails through the painting before it can sound the alarm' wouldn't be needed.

She and Black entered through the cramped passage, and just like that they were in the Gryffindor common room. It was a nice place, if gaudy, but they didn't stop to sightsee. Black led her up the right staircase, and then stopped to let her do her thing. She had already worked insects into all of the dorm rooms, but she took the opportunity to muster her personal defense force of wasps, and to send another set of stinging insects into the room as insurance.

"Rat's there," she reported in a hoarse whisper. It was sleeping on the redheaded boy's chest, which was troubling, if it really was a man in disguise. She had her own reasons for wanting to interrogate the rat. "Remember. In, change, stun the rat, stun the boy, look for the map."

Black nodded, and Taylor carefully cracked the door open. Black went in, and she followed, her wand trained on the other beds. The boys were all asleep, but that could change at a moment's notice.

Black changed, his gaunt form looming menacingly in the moonlight, and leaned over the bed and boy Taylor silently pointed out. A whispered "Stupefy" sent a spiral of red light to strike the rat, and then a second stunning charm hit the Weasley boy before he could do more than snort in his sleep.

Taylor grabbed the rodent and stuck it in her robe pocket, and they quickly retreated the way they had come when it became clear they wouldn't find the map without tossing the room, at the very least.

"Sorry for bothering you," Taylor told the painting as it closed behind them.

"Manners will get you far in life," the painting said absently.

She didn't let her guard down until they were safely in the tunnel leading out of the school and even then not entirely. "Are you sure this is him?" she asked.

"Oh, that's him," Black snarled. "He's missing a finger, see? Bastard cut it off to make them think he was dead."

There was clearly no love lost between these two. When Black held his hand out for the rat, Taylor instead tucked it back into her robes. "Let's get him up into the Shrieking Shack and at wandpoint before we do anything else." She would do it in the tunnel, but it was too narrow to properly put the rat's back to a wall, and if he managed to scurry away she and Black would be tripping over each other trying to recapture him in the tight space.

"Fine." Black scowled and turned back into a dog, loping up ahead. Taylor quickly lost sight of him, but the flies she had to place anew every time he changed told her he was just running ahead.

He really was like a dog sometimes.

He stopped by the trapdoor to let her go first, because for some reason he didn't want to change back, so she stepped by him to push it open, idly noting that Luna was sleeping on the floor up in the room above–

Black changed and attacked too quickly for her to effectively counter, leaping up to slam her head against the side of the tunnel with the full weight of his body. The forewarning her flies gave her was just enough that she cushioned the impact with her arm, but she still bounced off solid stone, and he was pawing at her robes for the rat and grabbing her wand, his foot on her arm.

He was also an idiot, because he didn't immediately stun her. A small horde of wasps struck at his wand hand, stinging incessantly, and he cried out and tried to stomp on her chest, but by then her physical combat training was kicking in full force and she twisted to deflect his kick with her shoulder, before pulling her leg in to kick the back of his knee and force him down to her level.

She slammed her forehead into his nose, and blood sprayed over her face as he recoiled. Flies divebombed his eyes and crawled up his broken nose and into his ears, and then he passed the critical mass of insects that took him from struggling to fight her to struggling to get them off and out of his face.

She felt the rat stirring in her pocket, because of course he would start to wake up now.

"You had to make this difficult," she coughed, turfing the rat out of her pocket to the floor. Strategic guards of wasps, flies, and cockroaches surrounded him, and more hovered over Black's face.

That was the situation as Taylor straightened up, standing right beneath the trapdoor. She pocketed Black's wand, putting it next to Luna's, and kept her own out.

"Black," she said coldly, "I will stop shoving flies in your eyes and nose if you lie still. If you attack me again, I will set them to eating your eyes, and even if you kill me they won't stop until they're done. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," he groaned, still swiping futilely at his face. She tentatively withdrew the many invaders, and though his face was puffy and red and his nose was broken, he wasn't seriously hurt. The fight had been stung right out of him, though.

"I'm not going to let you hurt him," Black choked out.

Taylor noticed that the rat was awake, though it was feigning unconsciousness on the ground. "The same goes for the rat," she announced, putting all of her irritation and adrenaline aside to sound as brutally calculating as she could. "If it makes one false move it will be eaten alive."

The rat tensed.

"Now, that said... Pettigrew." Unless Black was lying about everything, the map was real and the rat was a man. "Keeping in mind that I can have your eyes eaten out of your skull just as easily if you are a rat, I want you to change back. If you do not, I will kill you. If you pull your wand on me, I will kill you. If you do anything besides sitting on your ass and throwing your wand down the tunnel, I will kill you. If you change back into a rat at any point, I will kill you and my insects will strip your flesh from your bones." She had no idea what kind of man Pettigrew was, but she was betting that he would cooperate if the alternative was certain death.

If Black was lying about everything and the rat was just a rat, well… At least some of her bugs would be well-fed in the next few minutes.

The rat sat up on its hind legs and morphed into a fat, beady-eyed man. His hands were up, and the first thing he did was throw his wand as hard as he could down the tunnel.

The second thing he did was prostrate himself. "Mistress, I serve our dark lord!" he babbled fearfully.

"Course you fucking do," Black muttered.

"Where's the map?" she asked Pettigrew. "Answer me."

"The Weasley twins have it," Pettigrew immediately replied. "I can get it for you. I serve our Dark Lord, don't listen to Sirius, he doesn't! I framed him!" He reached up and pulled his sleeve down, showing an ugly faded tattoo of a skull and a snake.

"I'm going to kill you, Peter, I'm going to murder you and use your guts for floss," Black snarled.

"Shut up! Both of you." She had her bugs buzz ominously. Both men paled.

This was not what she had expected. If she was putting all of these things together correctly… The conclusion seemed laughably contrived. "Pettigrew. Who is your master?"

"Our lord…" He winced. "Or you, if you do not serve him. I can serve you!"

"Right." Once again, her bugs came in handy for the terror factor alone. And for how everyone who had seen them seemed to assume she was some sort of terrifying evil witch with a spell they had never seen before."Black. Who is your master?"

"I don't fucking have one," Black snarled.

"You didn't work for Voldemort," she asserted. The lack of the brand, the way Pettigrew was turning on him at every opportunity… That didn't speak of Voldemort's right-hand man, or even just his favorite lackey.

"No." He glared at her despite his puffy eyes. "You won't lay a finger on my godson, I'll stop you."

"Harry." Harry Potter. Probably her Harry, if the Potters were his original parents; she wasn't entirely convinced of that yet, but the coincidences meant it bore serious consideration. "You were framed. By Pettigrew. You came out here with me to get him, not Potter."

"And to stop you from hurting Harry, which I will," Black claimed.

"You're not getting out of here alive," Pettigrew told him.

Black growled at him.

She already had a magic-induced headache, but if she hadn't she would be developing one purely from annoyance. "You, Black, are not a Death Eater. You, Pettigrew, are. Black came here to get Pettigrew. Black, you told me you wanted Harry so that I would help you."

"Yeah." Black moved to cross his arms, but a wasp flying by perilously close to his eye had him putting them back where they were. "What of it?"

Here she was, threatening him with being eaten alive, and he had the petulance of a toddler. She almost liked Pettigrew better, if it wasn't for him sleeping with a prepubescent boy and being a murderous Death Eater in hiding.

"God damn it," she said, finally coming to the conclusion that it all made a twisted, stupid sort of sense. "Black, I only told you I was here to kidnap Harry because I thought you were a crazy Death Eater!"

"Pull the other one, it's got bells and a funny hat," Black snarked.

"Pettigrew, my terms for how you avoid death still stand." She pulled the bugs away from Black. "Black, get up. We're on the same side."

"I don't believe you," Black said as he stood.

He didn't believe her, but he would take the chance to move into a slightly less disadvantageous position. He was probably going to try and snatch her wand or take his own back if he continued to mistrust her. "I'm here for Harry, yes," she said, "but not to hurt him!"

"Then what the hell are you doing recruiting a Death Eater to break into the castle and kidnap Harry?" Black demanded.

"It's…" She glanced over at Pettigrew. "You know what, no, not in front of the actual Death Eater. Here." She took his wand out and held it out for him to take.

He stared at her. "This is a trick."

"Stun him and give me a damn chance to explain, I'm giving you way more of a chance than you deserve and the least you can do is hear me out," she said sternly.

It was admittedly a trick, or at least a calculated ploy, but he had no way of knowing that now that she was forewarned, in a small confined space, he couldn't get off a spell faster than she could fill his mouth with insects currently lurking in the collar of his robes. Giving the wand back was a test of his sincerity. At worst, he would try to kill her or Pettigrew, and he would fail.

"Fine." He took his wand and sent a quick stunning spell at Pettigrew, who didn't even try to move out of the way. Taylor suspected Pettigrew preferred being unconscious to thinking about the fate awaiting him if he made a false move.

That done, and seeing that Black wasn't turning on her, she felt tentatively free to tell the truth. It made way too much sense that Black was innocent and just an unhinged idiot with the wrong impression inconsistently aping the part of a grizzled Death Eater. Pettigrew's existence, dark mark, and claims to have framed him all but told the story on their own, and she had never personally witnessed Black doing anything more evil than her own attempts at seeming intimidating and dark.

"I'm here for Harry because I haven't seen him in two years and every time I try Dumbledore attempts to obliviate me of even remembering he exists." That would do for a start. She had never hidden her identity from him, aside from not giving her name, so it was nothing he couldn't theoretically put together if he asked the right people.

"Dumbledore obliviates you," Black repeated, one eyebrow lifting dramatically despite the pain facial movements probably caused his broken nose.

"Yes." She scowled at him, letting some of her frustration through. If Black was innocent… Wasn't he supposed to have been close to the Potters? Not having betrayed them, that would make them genuinely some of his best friends, or something like that.

"I can see why," he said bluntly, rubbing at his cheek and gingerly feeling for his nose.

"I raised Harry, I changed his diapers and read to him at night and threw his birthday parties," she retorted. "He's a good kid, and I haven't done anything wrong. Dumbledore had no right to interfere!"

"Prove it," Black said quickly. "I know baby Harry. What does he do if you show him a broom?"

"Tries to ride it. He grew out of that after I taught him what brooms are actually for, though." This coming from a wizard did lend a lot of evidence to the 'Harry is Harry Potter' theory, and it definitely recontextualized that bit of cute baby behavior. "What was his favorite color?"

"Red," Black answered. "But if this is a trick question, he always liked green and silver, too. It's hard to tell with a baby. Was he scared of the bath, yes or no?"

"No, but he didn't like it, either. Favorite animal?"

"Grim, or any black dog, or any dog at all," Black said promptly. "I used to give him rides around the living room. Was he ticklish?"

"On the stomach, yes."

Black grimaced. "Okay. I can concede that you definitely know baby Harry. Who are you, and how did you end up with him?"

She too had to concede that Black knew baby Harry's quirks… Though that was never in question. "Long story, and I didn't even know he was Harry Potter until… Well, I'm pretty sure now." She waved her wand around aimlessly. "Magic is new to me, believe it or not. I've apparently got a curse on me that makes me the next thing to a squib." He was not getting the truth on that matter. Nobody was.

"Ten thousand spiders say otherwise," Black deadpanned.

"That's my one special skill. Do you believe me or not?" She wanted to get past the 'waiting for betrayal' stage of things, even if she did decidedly have the upper hand. This wasn't going anywhere constructive.

"It's no crazier than my story," Black admitted. "You being his adoptive mother wouldn't be the weirdest possible explanation, and if you were dark you'd be eating my brain right about now. But I don't get why Dumbledore would obliviate you."

"I don't understand either, but he keeps doing it or having the Aurors do it, so I can't exactly ask him, can I?" she snapped. "It almost destroyed my life the first time. The second time they added a compulsion to make me move back to America. I don't want to know what they'll do if they realize I've remembered again. I just want to see Harry."

"I want to see him too." Sirius gestured to Pettigrew. "I also want to kill him, so if you don't mind…" His tone implied he didn't need to ask for permission, but his hesitant movements said he remembered the horsefly that made it past the blockage of his broken nose, and wanted to avoid a repeat of that at all costs.

"Isn't he the only evidence you have of your innocence?" she asked. "I think I believe you, but I want to have someone pump him full of truthtelling potions and question him before I let him die." If that was feasible. She had looked into it; the truth potion wasn't sold in apothecaries. She'd have a vial on her person at all times for situations just like this, otherwise.

"You're cold." Sirius grinned. "But you're right. We won't kill him. I want to see Harry and have him confirm you are who you say you are. He would know, wouldn't he?"

"He had better, because if Dumblefore obliviated him too I'm going to find that old man and shove cockroaches down his throat until he drowns on dry land." She had done it before.

"So we get Harry in to back you up, then we get Pettigrew drugged to the gills to back me up, and we both agree until then to not point our wands at each other," Black proposed. "And you stop the insect thing."

"It's not something I can stop, any insect close to me is automatically under my control, even if I'm unconscious. If I die they carry out my last orders." Let him chew on that. She didn't think he was going to betray her again, but he would definitely think twice if he thought he would have to deal with homicidal tides of bugs even if he succeeded.

"You're a walking nightmare, you know that?" he asked.

"I spent time perfecting it for maximum effect," she retorted. "So yes, I know."

"I think you're too interesting to be scary."

They both looked up to see Luna peering down at them from the trapdoor. "This is all so very entertaining," she continued in a dreamy voice.

Taylor was sure of it, now. Her current headache had nothing to do with magic.

Getting to Harry, now that Taylor tentatively believed she didn't have to work around Black, and Black tentatively trusted that he didn't have to work around her, turned out to be much simpler than getting to Pettigrew.

Oh, it didn't seem like it would be easy at first. They would have to sneak in, find the Hufflepuff dorms, find Harry, wake him without waking his roommates, and sneak him out of the castle. It would be at least as difficult as getting Pettigrew, with the added complication of Harry not being rat-sized to easily stun and transport.

"I can take Harry a secret message," Luna volunteered.

And so the new plan was established, in which they sent Luna back into the castle to tell Harry that Taylor was there, and had him come out to meet her.

Taylor wasn't entirely happy with that plan either, but Luna had been nothing but cooperative and promised she could do it. It seemed a small risk, what with half of the things Luna said being seemingly meaningless; nobody but Harry would take her seriously without any proof, and Taylor only told her a few things that Harry, and only Harry, would recognize as such.

Also, Taylor considered herself a fair judge of children after a decade raising Harry and interacting with his friends. Luna radiated sincerity like a little sun of helpfulness. "This is much more exciting than exploring the castle," Luna had said when Taylor asked her why she was willing to help, and that seemed to be her entire opinion on the subject. It wasn't the most altruistic motive, but it would do. Luna might not even be aware that there were other things she could theoretically do with the knowledge she carried around in her head.

Sirius in dog form escorted Luna through the tunnel to the castle, to further ensure that helping them was indeed more interesting than any other course of action, and then all they had to do was wait and wonder whether she would actually deliver the message.

It was awkwardly tense between them, even by Taylor's rather low standards. Especially when Harry didn't come the first day. But the Dementors stuck to their patrol routes, and the castle didn't go into lockdown, so it seemed Luna had yet to tell anyone what had happened.

The next day, a group of students, three with an invisible fourth only detected by collisions with her bugs, ventured out into the woods during the hour the Dementors spent avoiding the sun. One was instantly recognizable.

"Prove you're really her!" he called out.

He was so much taller, and handsome, and it really hit her that she hadn't seen him in more than two years. "The morning after you first grew your hair back with magic, I sat you down and asked you where I had failed as a mother," she said, feeling utterly melancholic. "I had completely the wrong idea about what was going on, and couldn't understand when you insisted the only thing wrong in your life was that you didn't have a television in your room."

The girl on her son's right put her arm out, but Harry rushed right past her, and Taylor met him halfway, sweeping him into an embrace that told her Harry had missed her just as much as she missed him.

Chapter Text

Magic was amazing. Harry was magic. He was going to a magic school to learn magic things. He was so, so lucky; his friends back home weren't magic, his mum wasn't magic… He got to do things they couldn't, and that wasn't even fair, it was just luck. He shouldn't be so annoyed by little things.

He wasn't annoyed by little things. The thing currently putting his back up and making him wish he had somehow locked his train compartment when he was the only one in it was not little.

"But your scar," the red-headed boy said, pointing at his forehead. "You've gotta be Harry Potter."

"Hebert," he stressed. "Harry Hebert." He didn't know who this Potter bloke was, and he didn't care for how they weren't taking his word for it.

"But he is right, you know," another boy said timidly as he stroked his toad's back. "You look like Harry Potter, and your name is Harry, and you have the scar."

"You're in books!" the bushy-hair girl who filled out the rest of the compartment insisted, digging through her bag for something. "I know I read about you."

"No, that's not me." Or if it was, he didn't care, but it couldn't be him, really. He had seen his birth certificate when his mum taught him about important papers earlier in the year, and he knew his mum wasn't a Potter.

But everyone kept talking about it! Harry Potter was some sort of celebrity. Harry Hebert had the misfortune of sharing a first name, general appearance and scar with the bloke. It was frustrating. Even Dumbledore, the headmaster, said he was Harry Potter while he was getting his wand. Ollivander, the creepy man who made wands, said it too. He was so disappointed when Harry said that one wand didn't really feel right…

So maybe he had lied. It was the wandmaker's fault for telling him it was connected to the bad guy who killed the Potters. Why would he want a wand connected to a murderer, who was in turn connected to someone he wasn't? His cherry wood and phoenix feather wand was just as good, and it didn't come with 'ill portents'.

Harry didn't care what they said, they being everyone from Dumbledore to the kids he was talking to now. He knew who he was, and even if he didn't, he didn't want to be famous anyway. He just wanted to learn to do cool things with magic. His mum always said fame was overrated and people were stupid about famous people, and now he knew she was right.

"Here!" The bushy-haired girl pulled out a fat book and opened it on her knees. "Look, see! James and Lily Potter."

He reluctantly craned his neck to look at the moving pictures. Two older teenagers in robes were standing on a big platform, wearing fancy robes and holding plaques along with a whole bunch of other people. It looked like a graduation to him. The man had messy black hair and wore glasses, and the woman had fiery red hair and green eyes. The woman shoved the man as he waved exuberantly at the crowd, and the man laughed soundlessly, looking at her with adoration as he made to pick her up and carry her off the stage… and then the magic picture reset and they did it all over again.

"So?" he asked, singularly unimpressed.

"Mate, don't you recognize your own parents?" the annoying redhead asked.

"My mum has black curly hair and is taller than her, so these aren't my parents." There was no way Lily Potter was his mum. They looked nothing alike. The book claimed he was the son of both of them, and that was at least half wrong, so he probably had no relation to the man either.

"But the scar," the timid boy objected.

"Car accident," Harry said, though he was pretty sure his scar didn't, in fact, come from the same accident that had taken his mum's arm. He had just always had it.

"Oh…" the bushy-haired girl closed the book. "Sorry, then. It must just be a really big coincidence." She really did sound sorry, so he tried not to be annoyed with her.

"Don't you want to be Harry Potter?" the redhead asked. "He's so cool! He beat You-Know-Who as a baby."

"I didn't do that. I just want to learn magic." Right now, he wanted to talk about something else. "What houses do you all think you'll be in?"

That did the trick, thankfully. "Gryffindor, whole family was in Gryffindor and it's the best house," the redhead proclaimed. "No way I go anywhere else."

"I'm hoping for Ravenclaw," Harry offered. "They have their own library and there might be cool secret books in there." More importantly, from what he had read Ravenclaw was the only house with something extra for its students. The other houses didn't have private libraries or anything else special. Unless living in the dungeons counted as special, but that sounded creepy to Harry.

"Oh, but Gryffindor has all of the most famous witches and wizards," the girl argued.

"But they don't have a private library," Harry argued back. "You can be famous no matter where you go, but you can only get into the Ravenclaw library if you're a Ravenclaw." He didn't really have strong opinions about the houses, and his mum said they couldn't matter too much or it would be unfair, so the library was the tipping point for him.

"That is a good point," the girl admitted, looking thoughtful. "I wouldn't want to be at a disadvantage…"

"My Gran says I'd better be in Gryffindor," the timid boy supplied.

"Better than the house of the swots," the redhead scoffed. "I'm going to go look for Harry Potter. He's our age, he must be here. Want to come?"

"No, but I hope you find him." Harry waved goodbye. He really did hope the redhead found Potter. That would make all of this stupid mistaken identity stuff go away.

The fact that the redhead got into a fight with a blond-haired boy before even getting out of earshot, over the subject of Potter and who he should be friends with, only reinforced Harry's hope.

Harry didn't spot his famous lookalike on the train, or in the boats, but after seeing the awesome castle for the first time he didn't care anymore. He ignored the whispering of all the other eleven-year-olds as it pertained to Harry Potter, though he did overhear the redhead telling the same snobby blond boy that Harry Hebert wasn't Harry Potter, and that Harry Potter must have come by Floo, whatever that was.

Then they were startled by ghosts – real ghosts! – and led into the Great Hall, with its starry ceiling and all the other, bigger students.

A hat sang a song, and by that point Harry was too surrounded by amazing, interesting things to really pay attention. They lined up in alphabetical order, and he ended up right behind the bushy-haired girl, whose last name was Granger, just before Hebert.

Granger – Hermoine, according to the older woman calling out the names – spent a few minutes under the hat, before it declared her a "Ravenclaw!" in its loud voice and sent her on her way. Harry had thought she was leaning toward Gryffindor, but maybe she had changed her mind, or maybe the hat didn't give her a choice.

He stepped forward, ready for his name to be called.

The older woman looked at him, then at her big piece of parchment. "Mr. Potter, please wait your turn."

"I'm Harry Hebert, shouldn't I be next?" Harry asked, doing his best to ignore how every eye in the hall was pointed his way, in addition to the spectral eyes of the ghosts.

"You…" She looked her list over, then looked over at Dumbledore, who was watching with interest. "I have no Harry Hebert here, and you are Harry Potter."

"I'm not, though," he objected, quite reasonably.

"Yes, well… Just go on ahead, we can sort it out later." She cleared her throat. "Harry!"

He took the offered compromise for what it was, though not without a small scowl. Why did everyone keep telling him he wasn't who he knew he was?

'Good question, young man,' the hat said in his mind. 'Why indeed?'

'Not you too,' Harry thought angrily. 'My mum is Taylor Hebert, I'm a Hebert, I've always been a Hebert, and I'm tired of people saying otherwise and not listening to me!'

'It's not up to me who you are,' the hat assured him. 'And between us, I believe you. I can see in your head, after all. Your mother is quite an interesting character. I rarely see Muggle parents so rapidly accepting magic with no prior warning. But we are not here to talk about her, much as I might have liked to have her under my brim.'

'We're here to talk about houses,' Harry thought, quite relieved that someone knew he was right. 'Does it really matter?'

'It is my job!' the hat exclaimed. 'Of course it matters! If it did not they might throw me out! Or the Headmaster might take to wearing me around all year, and then they would have to burn me because I would have been driven mad by him! They don't remember how to make more hats like me, so that would be the end!'

'Right, sorry, I guess it is important,' Harry thought.

The hat huffed, which was a strange experience given it did so mentally. 'Quite. Now, as to you… You are a very thoughtful young man, and you want to get into the Ravenclaw library. I must tell you, they do not have any books that the main library is missing… The advantage to their library is the extraordinary filing system and lack of a restricted section while still having some restricted subjects. That you wanted a specific house for the advantage you thought it would provide is ambitious and cunning of you, and you seem to be brave enough. To say nothing of your loyalty to your mother in the face of so many people thoughtlessly saying she is not, in fact, your mother at all.'

'So I could go into any house,' Harry thought. 'What good is that, then?'

'Most children could go into more than one house and do well, it is a matter of which I determine is most likely to benefit them,' the hat replied. 'For you, I think I know what that is. It would be a crying shame for the pressure of those around you to succeed in pushing you away from what you know to be true. Your loyalty is admirable, but not unbreakable. As such, you'll find the supportive environment and anonymity you may need in–'

"Hufflepuff!" the hat yelled aloud, breaking the hushed silence that had descended over the Great Hall.

'But do try to make friends outside of Hufflepuff, too,' it added before he could take it off. 'It would be a shame to focus too narrowly on one part of yourself. Do not forget that you could have gone into any house."

'I'll try,' he promised, and removed the hat.

The hat may have been right about Hufflepuff; he only had to explain the situation to the kids in his year once. After that, they never bothered him about his last name and who they thought his parents should be, though he thought a few of them still didn't believe him at all. They were good enough to not say it, at least.

The same could not be said for the other first year students in other houses. Or the older students. Or the teachers.

He tried not to let it get to him. It really didn't help that the actual Harry Potter had never shown up, and that for all intents and purposes he seemed to be filling the gap left behind. He was magic, no doubt, but 'Hebert' was not a name that showed up on anything magic filled out. Professor McGonagall was nice enough to scratch out 'Potter' on her roll sheet and replace it with the right last name, but other professors weren't so accommodating.

"You are Potter and you will not lie in my classroom, ten points from Hufflepuff," the ugly oily-haired bat in the dungeons said upon Harry not answering to 'Potter' on the initial roll call, immediately cementing him in Harry's small list of individuals that he definitely didn't care for. His behavior after that was just as bad, and Potions became something Harry studied more outside of class just so he could avoid the worst of the unfair criticism.

It was because of Snape's constant nitpicking that Harry found himself in the library one Friday afternoon, pulling books from the potions section that he was certain were well above his year level. He didn't mind that, though some of them were hard to make sense of, but Snape's smug questions that he could never answer being sourced from second year and above was unfair.

"Hi, Harry." Hermione came up beside him and reached for a book near the ones he was taking. It had a bright green cover with red and purple vines decorating the edges, and it looked a lot more interesting than the dull gray reference books he was taking. "Are you studying ahead? That's a great idea! I wish Professor Snape would just ask someone else, it isn't fair for you to have all the chances to earn points."

Harry side-eyed her. "Is it a chance to earn points?" he asked. "Seems like I'm only ever losing them." He did agree that Snape should ask other students, though.

"Well, I'm sure if you got one right he would give you points, otherwise it wouldn't be fair." She sat down at a nearby table, and after a moment of deliberation he joined her.

Harry doubted Snape had any intention of being fair to him, but he supposed he wouldn't know for sure until he managed to get something right. He flipped open the reference book and started to read. Hermione did the same, and for a while neither of them said anything.

Potions frustrated Harry. He wanted to like the subject, he really did. It was cool, and it was useful. There were healing potions and potions for detectives and truth serums and something called Polyjuice that let people shapeshift. The class wasn't that different from cooking, and he had helped his mum cook for years, once he was old enough to notice that her only having one arm slowed her down and made some things unreasonably difficult.

But the instructor hated him. Always deducting points, always hovering menacingly, making disparaging comments… Harry had never had a teacher who actively disliked him before – not for more than a few days, anyway – and it was all the Potter thing's fault. It had to be; Snape didn't like anyone in the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw Potions class, but he didn't take dozens of points from any other individual student.

"Hermione," he asked, following up on a thought far more interesting than the properties of Mugwort, "do you have any idea why Snape hates Harry Potter?"

"What? Oh… I'm sure he doesn't hate you," she said. "Or Harry Potter. He just… wants to challenge you? And it's Professor Snape."

"You don't have to defend him," Harry huffed.

"He's a professor," Hermione objected.

"Yeah, well, he's not a very good one, is he?" Harry pushed the reference book away and slumped back in his chair. "I could be studying for the potion we're going to make next week, but instead I'm here, trying to guess what stupid obscure thing he's going to ask and then mock me for not knowing. Meanwhile, you probably already know everything about next week's potion, but he isn't challenging you to learn new things."

"He's a professor, he must have some plan that we can't see yet," Hermione insisted.

"You've never had any bad teachers?" Harry guessed. "My mum always told me not to let students or teachers push me around. I guess this is what she was talking about."

"I'm sure he will back off once you show you can answer his questions." Hermione looked down at her book, then closed it. "Pass me one of those."

"My books?"

"Yes. I can read it and then quiz you?" She smiled uncertainly.

"Sure." It couldn't hurt, and studying together was better than studying alone.

Snape did not back off. Not even when Harry started getting his questions right. Harry had yet to earn a single point in Potions class. Instead, Snape just kept posing questions until he found one Harry couldn't answer, then took points for that while ignoring any correct answers. Worse, when Hermione objected, he gave her a detention for 'talking out of turn.'

Hermione's reaction to that was almost funny... Once Harry got her to stop crying by telling her just how much of a miserable failure of a teacher Snape was. Harry supposed she really hadn't expected Snape to be unfair. Now she knew better, at least.

She stopped telling him he needed to study to prove himself to Snape, and started helping him with the actual potions assignments instead. When they had classes together, she sat near him. They met up outside of classes and potions study sessions, too, and Harry realized that he might have accidentally made his first friend at Hogwarts. She was bossy and opinionated, but he didn't mind so much.

Hermione made him a little homesick, actually. Not on purpose, but she was a Muggleborn like him and whenever she talked about things back home in the normal world, he was reminded of his house, and his bedroom, and his mum. He liked being at Hogwarts, but he missed his mum, too.

It didn't help that she wasn't responding to his letters.

He wrote one every week, and every week he took his letter up to the owls to send off. He addressed it properly, using notebook paper from the notebooks she had insisted he bring along in case he wanted to use them instead of parchment, and every week an owl took his letter.

He never got any letters back, though. Not a single one. Hermione got a big package from her parents a month after the term started, so it wasn't that Muggles couldn't send things to Hogwarts. Other kids got letters. Ronald Weasley even got a Howler, a big red envelope that screeched at him for getting into a duel in the corridor with the blond Malfoy boy in Slytherin.

Harry wouldn't have liked a Howler – his mum could be scary when she got angry, much more than Ronald's mum – but he would have liked something, and he knew his mum knew that. She had promised to reply to his letters.

He didn't want to make a big deal of it – people were finally starting to settle down about the Potter thing – but eventually he decided he cared more about getting her letters than drawing attention to himself, and started asking around. Especially after that whole incident with the Troll on Halloween, in which Neville, the timid boy from the train, had almost been smashed to a pulp and ended up being saved by Professor McGonagall. He wanted to tell his mum about that and everything else.

First there was Hermione, who helpfully wrote her parents asking that they write out how they were sending their letters back to her. As it turned out, Hermione's parents were just sending them in the mail; something about the word 'Hogwarts' on the envelope got it rerouted in transit, and owls picked them up at the Wizarding post office.

There was no way his mum hadn't tried that, so he went to ask the groundskeeper, who everyone agreed knew all about animals.

Hagrid was kind of nice, but he kept insisting that Harry was Harry Potter, which was exactly what Harry had wanted to avoid. He even claimed he had seen Harry Potter the baby the night his parents died, which was just strange and uncomfortable. Harry eventually got Hagrid to answer his questions about the post and post owls, but Hagrid didn't know of anything that would be waylaying his letters in particular. Nothing that made sense, anyway. And his mum would have sent letters asking why he wasn't writing, if nothing else, so that was a dead end.

From there he went to the professor in charge of his house, Professor Sprout. She was nice, but she didn't know anything about the mail. She did send him up to speak to the Headmaster, which was better than nothing.

Several months into his first term he went up the spiral staircase, told the gargoyles about Chocolate Frogs, and saw the Headmaster.

"Harry, my boy," Dumbledore said. He had to say it again to get Harry's attention, because his office was a wonderful mess of mysterious devices and oddities. "Harry."

"Yes, Headmaster?" Harry made an effort to not stare at the fiery bird sitting on a perch behind the Headmaster's left shoulder. Or the lava lamp with what he thought was real lava inside. Or the clockwork clock that sent out little jets of smoke every third tick. Or the wall of portraits all staring down at him and occasionally blinking. Or the perpetually smoking book tucked away under a pile of crazy diagrams on the corner of the Headmaster's big desk. To say nothing of the little circular marble track with three multicolored marbles running around it of their own volition, or the–

"Lemon drop?" Dumbledore offered, casually moving the smoking book off his desk and into a drawer.

"Uh… no thank you." Harry forced himself to look the Headmaster in the eye so he wouldn't be drawn back into marveling at the many inexplicable devices. "Do you know why my mum hasn't gotten any of my mail?" he asked.

"Has she not?" Dumbledore asked. "Has she written you saying so? I have never known the Hogwarts owls to fail a delivery."

"I send letters every week, but I haven't gotten anything from her all term," Harry admitted. "I checked and there's nothing confusing about how she's supposed to mail me back, and Hagrid says only a mail redirection ward would keep them away from her, which makes no sense since she doesn't have magic and wouldn't set up a ward like that. And it wouldn't stop her from replying, anyway, and I'm worried something happened to her." The words left him in a rush, leaving him feeling peculiarly hollow.

"This is a serious matter," Dumbledore agreed. "I will look into it. It might be best if you stay here over the winter holiday, though."

Harry didn't see how that followed at all. "But I want to know she's okay," he objected. "Why would I not go home for Christmas?" He hadn't even considered staying at Hogwarts over break.

"It would be wise," Dumbledore insisted. "I may not be able to determine what is going on before then, and if so it might be dangerous to send you back."

"Nobody wants to hurt me." He had no enemies. His mum always said to watch out for people who might want to do him harm for reasons that had nothing to do with him specifically, but that wasn't what Dumbledore was talking about.

"My boy, you must admit–" Dumbledore began.

"No, I mustn't," he said, crossing his arms.

Dumbledore frowned at him. "I will look into it," he said again. "Do not worry too much. She may just be giving you your space."

That made no sense at all, but Harry shrugged his shoulders and left. He didn't have anyone more important to go to and ask, and Dumbledore said he would investigate, so something at least was being done. He would keep sending letters. Maybe his mum was getting them, and it was her responses that were being lost. He didn't want her to think he'd forgotten her.

Christmas at Hogwarts was disappointing.

Harry hadn't wanted to be at Hogwarts at all, come the winter holiday. He liked Hogwarts, and it was even nicer with most of the students gone home, but it wasn't his home, and he could admit to himself that he was homesick and worried.

Dumbledore had called him to the Headmaster's office on the morning before the train departed, early enough that Harry knew what was coming. Sure enough, he was told in no uncertain terms that Dumbledore was still investigating and that he would be staying at Hogwarts, and that was that.

Hermione had gone home. All of Hufflepuff except one sixth-year had gone home. There were a dozen students in the castle, and he didn't know any of them well at all, so it was really just him and a few strangers.

His Christmas gifts were… not a disappointment, but the one he had hoped for wasn't there. Anything from his mum would have been welcome. He tried not to dwell on it, but it was hard.

Hermione gave him a book. A very nice book about obscure Potions trivia, which was funny, because he had been thinking along the same lines when he got her a book on teaching magical subjects from a mail-order catalog an older student had left lying around. Neville, the timid boy from the train, had gotten him a Chocolate frog, which was unexpected because they hadn't spoken more than once or twice since then.

Someone anonymous gave him his only other present, and it was a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it was a real invisibility cloak and it was awesome.

On the other hand, it had belonged to James Potter and the anonymous sender said it was his because of that.

Harry spent some time attempting to read about Wizarding inheritance in the library, trying to figure out whether he could get in legal trouble for having a family heirloom that wasn't his, but as far as he could tell – which wasn't very far, most of the law books went way over his head – the worst that could happen was the real Harry Potter could sue him, in which case he could just give it back with the excuse that he had no idea how to get it to Harry Potter until that moment as everybody kept insisting he was Harry Potter and that there was no other.

Really, that would be a good thing if it happened, because it would prove he wasn't Harry Potter once and for all. So he kept the cloak, though he made sure to take good care of it. It was on loan to him, that was all.

He wrote his mum an extra-long letter on Christmas day, wishing her well and saying that he hoped she got the things he'd ordered her from the catalog, and spent the rest of the break trying and mostly failing to shake off the sober, worried cloud that hung over him.

The spring term rushed by in a never-ending sequence of classes, studying, and relaxing. Part of that was Hermione's influence; she of the color-coded schedules and boundless enthusiasm. Part of it was that the more he threw himself into his schoolwork, the less time he had for worrying.

Whatever the cause, the end of the term was upon them almost before he could believe it, with nothing of particular note happening in the interval. There were tests, and Harry's hand cramped badly enough he had to go to the school nurse for the first time since coming to Hogwarts. Hermione got so agitated her hair frizzed up like a brown thundercloud, leading to Harry collapsing with laughter and Hermione vindictively dragging him through the library to research spontaneous personal magic whether he wanted to or not, though he did want to once he finally got his breath back.

There was something going on with their Defense teacher – stuttering and headachy, that was another class Harry learned more about in the library than the classroom – but whatever it was never came to anything. Quirrel disappeared during exam week, Snape showed up to the end of term feast with a limp and a pinched look, and Dumbledore announced that their Defense teacher had left on another expedition to Egypt.

Harry was sure it probably all added up to something, and he might have looked into the whole affair – anything that injured Snape was probably worth knowing about – but he had a bigger concern.

Namely that he had heard absolutely nothing from his mother all year, and now the summer break was upon him. He wanted nothing more than to take the train, catch a cab from the station if need be, and go home to find out what was wrong.

But Dumbledore summoned him up to his office the day before the train was set to leave, and Harry knew in his gut that the news wasn't going to be good.

"I dislike being the bearer of bad news," Dumbledore began, looking truly sorry. Even his beard was drooping. "That said, I think you would rather know than continue to worry. Taylor Hebert is perfectly safe, and her mail is not being tampered with in any way. As I understand it, she has… not reacted well to the existence of magic, not after you left. She has not sent anything, or read any of your letters, and told me when I spoke to her that she wanted nothing more to do with the Wizarding world."

It was like a punch to the gut. Harry said nothing.

"I understand this is an unpleasant shock, and I have taken the liberty of arranging for you to stay with the Longbottoms over the summer. You know their son, Neville."

Harry nodded, his lips firmly pressed together.

"Do not take it too harshly," Dumbledore said kindly. "Some Muggles simply cannot cope. This is not the first time such a thing has happened, and it means nothing, less than nothing, about the unfortunate children affected."

Harry nodded again, not trusting himself to speak.

"Madam Longbottom is going to pick both you and Neville up by Floo, to make things simpler, so I am sure you will wish to say goodbye to your friends today as you will not be on the train tomorrow." Dumbledore smiled comfortingly.

"Yes, sir." Harry turned and left his office. He was ambushed right at the bottom of the spiral staircase by Hermione, who wasted no time.

"What did he say?" she demanded. "Is your mum okay? Was someone tampering with your mail?"

Harry considered his answer. "I…" He hesitated, looking back at the staircase.

Something didn't feel right.

But it wouldn't feel right if his mum abandoned him, would it?

"I don't know." He sounded as confused as he felt.

Summer at Neville's home was okay. Just okay, not especially fun or exciting or boring. Neville spent a lot of time in the greenhouse, and after a few days of listening to his grandmother talk ceaselessly about politics with intermittent asides about her late son and how Neville needed to be like him, Harry entirely understood. Whenever Neville's grandmother started talking about the Potters, he too felt the need to be anywhere else.

So, he spent the summer grubby in the greenhouse and gardens, working alongside a boy who was only confident when it came to plants. He learned a lot about growing magical plants, and how to use magic to better grow useful mundane plants, and which plants were illegal to grow and why.

Not that the Longbottoms had any illegal plants; that discussion was entirely theoretical. But based on how Neville looked so longingly at a brochure of man-eating magical Tiger Lilies he showed Harry, Harry suspected that Neville might have been willing to make a few exceptions if it was up to him.

By the time the summer sun started to set earlier and earlier, and they went to Diagon Alley to pick up new books – a few weeks before the rush – Harry was willing to count Neville as a friend. It helped that Neville didn't talk about parents, his own or the Potters, and was easy to be around.

Harry and Neville returned to Hogwarts via Floo just before the sorting feast, and just like that another year at Hogwarts had begun.

Harry just wished it didn't feel so hollow.

Hermione was the same as ever; she greeted him in the library after their first day of classes with a hug, which he returned, and then a whole stack of books, which she slammed down onto the table without her usual veneration for the written word.

"Lockhart!" she exclaimed.

"Lockhart," he agreed, looking at the smarmy face gracing the topmost book. "What about him?"

"I didn't make the same mistake again," Hermione declared. "One class. That's all it took for me to know he's a terrible teacher."

"Yes, that's about right." He was pleasantly surprised. Hermione had been giving the idiot as many smitten looks as the other girls during breakfast in the Great Hall. He had been prepared to smile and nod as she praised the professor.

It seemed he might have underestimated his friend's desire to learn from everything, including her own mistakes.

"His books are worthless for teaching with," she continued. "They're very entertaining stories, but did you know not a single one of the incantations he lists in his stories actually work? There are similar spells out there, I found a few in the Ravenclaw library last night, but they don't work if you say them his way. The teaching book you got me says you should never give your students inaccurate reference materials, or reference materials that aren't useful beyond the scope of the lesson plan."

"The scope of his lesson plan was himself, Hermione." Harry cracked a grin. "And pixie evasion."

"Exactly!" She shook her head. "Him and Snape and Binns, this year. We'll have a lot of work to do to keep up with where we should be."

"Hang on, Binns?" History of Magic was naptime for him and ninety percent of the other Hufflepuffs, but Hermione had never complained about the ghost before. "What's he done wrong?"

"Harry, were you paying attention in class?" Hermione rolled her eyes and turned away. Harry followed her to the history section. "Never mind. His lesson plan for this year. Did you notice anything about it?"

"No?"

"It's… ergh," Hermione growled. "Fifth Goblin Rebellion, Sixth Goblin Rebellion, Seventh Goblin Rebellion… Last year he listed the names, but…" She pulled down a history book. "Goblin rebellions. Here. Look!"

He dutifully looked. And read aloud, for good measure. "The Rebellion of 1941, aka the Fifth Goblin Rebellion… Hang on." He racked his brain for the few bits of Binn droning that made it into his dreams and thus into his memories. "Didn't we cover the 1941 Goblin Rebellion last year?"

"Yes!" Hermione hissed, little sparks popping over her ears as her hair began to puff up menacingly. "We did! His lesson plan this year gives them different names, but they're the same exact events! It's like that all the way through to the end of the year! And I checked with the third-years, you know what their lesson plan for the year says?"

"First year but in different words?" Harry guessed. He gestured to his head, miming patting down his own unruly hair, and Hermione quickly brushed her fingers through it in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the intermittent crackling.

"Yes." She shook her fingers out and then after a moment tapped them on a metal sconce on the wall, letting out a little yelp when a visible spark discharged. "We learned everything Binns has to teach last year," she continued, shoving her hands into her sleeves, "and the rest of our time here he's just going to keep going over it. I decided we'll bring other history books to class, so we don't have to spend any more time on it outside of class. Two weeks of Goblin Rebellion review before the exams will take care of that, so for the rest of the year it's up to us. Is there any time period and country you really want to study this year?"

"Me?" He shrugged. "Uh… Japan? Eighteen-hundreds?" He knew absolutely nothing about magic outside of Britain, so any time and place was as interesting as any other. His mum always kept up with any news about Japan specifically, so he knew a little about the Muggle side of things there.

"We'll do that this week," Hermione decided. "Next week I'll pick, and we'll alternate. There are plenty of history books and my parents told me I can order one book for myself every month from Flourish and Blotts if I keep my grades up…"

Harry smiled and listened to his best friend as she planned. This, at least, had not changed a bit.

Harry sat on his bed, the dorm room empty save for him. He had his notebook paper and ballpoint pen out, but the words just wouldn't come. He wanted to write about Japanese wizards and the cool things he had read about them, and how that had led him to researching ghosts and all the different kinds of spirits one could find around the world, and the charms for dealing with them. He could even cast a couple that he didn't think were taught at Hogwarts, though he never had because the Hogwarts ghosts were all friendly and not the right kind, besides. That would all make good letter material…

If he could write it. Which he couldn't. Something held his hand.

He didn't understand why his mum would do something like this. Turn her back on him.

It wasn't like her. If she really didn't approve of magic, which just seemed laughable given how she had behaved before he came to Hogwarts, she would be up in arms trying to get him back, not washing her hands of him. She would storm Hogwarts with her unnervingly intense glare and slightly creepy walk that she did whenever she was tense, and she would tell Dumbledore in no uncertain terms that her son would be coming home with her that very day, because…

Because for some reason she had decided magic was bad, in that scenario. It didn't matter why, she would want to take him out. Not leave him.

But that wasn't what had happened, was it?

Instead, he got a year of silence and not going home and being told by Dumbledore that she didn't want him.

It didn't make any sense.

Dumbledore wouldn't lie, though. If he was lying, Taylor would be storming Hogwarts for an entirely different reason. Harry's last few letters certainly hadn't hidden his hurt over what Dumbledore had told him, if she was reading them she would know. If she wasn't reading them, that meant she wasn't getting them, and him not coming home for the summer would make her think he'd been kidnapped.

He swallowed a sob. She always was so protective, so suspicious of other people. He hadn't thought he'd be going to a boarding school at all, and he had maybe expected to need to fight a little bit for more independence, like the other kids in the neighborhood got from their parents.

Going more than a year without hearing a word for her had never crossed his mind as a possibility. He missed her. So much.

Slytherin's heir and accompanying monster were almost a relief. The school was focused on one thing, and though it was inarguably a bad thing, it wasn't a Potter thing. Nobody thought he was Slytherin's heir. Between being a Hufflepuff, being Hermione's best – only? – friend, and him constantly insisting he was a Muggleborn, not the Halfblood they kept saying he was, the school as a whole considered him to be the last possible option. The anti-heir.

As to who was suspect number one? That caught Harry off-guard.

"Wait, who is saying Ronald Weasley is the heir of Slytherin?" he interjected as he walked in on his roommates having a lively discussion. They often did that when he wasn't around; they seemed to like him just fine, but he didn't like talking for hours about their fellow students, so they never included him when they did so.

"Everybody," Wayne Hopkins responded.

"I heard he taught his little sister to speak Parseltongue, and we all know that's a dark talent," Ernest Macmillan added. "Did you hear about the Dueling Club? Malfoy summoned a snake on Ron, but it slithered right off the platform towards his sister, and his sister just picked it up."

"I heard his little sister commanded the snake to attack Malfoy," Wayne objected.

"No, I was there," Ernest retorted. "Ginevra picked it up, and she might have hissed to it a bit, but it was Ron who claimed he spoke to it. The heir of Slytherin would never let someone else take credit for his work, so it has to be him."

Harry kept an eye out for both Ronald and Ginevra Weasley after that, but the truth of the matter was that he didn't have many classes with Gryffindor, and he rarely saw either of them outside of class. Neville told him a little bit about the both of them, but Neville was firmly in the 'Weasleys can't be heirs of Slytherin' minority camp and didn't think it was either of them. Hermione was more interested in the monster than the heir.

There weren't any more petrifactions for a while after the first one, so Harry mostly just watched from afar when the chance arose. He was busy, between his classes, extracurricular studies, and matching Hermione's frantic pace at Potions, History, and Defense against Dark Arts.

That winter he was once again required to stay at Hogwarts. Hermione offered to ask for him to come home with her for the holidays, but he waved her off. Truthfully, he wanted to spend some time alone, and being with Hermione's happy family seemed like it might hurt more than help.

There were no anonymous, amazing, Potter-related gifts this year, for which he was thankful. There was nothing from his mum either.

From Hermione, he got a pen that was enchanted to look and write like a quill, 'for taking notes and revising but not the exams because they'll catch it with anti-cheating charms even though it isn't cheating', as well as a book on obscure magical practices in Asia. He had ordered her a book on lightning magic – 'for your hair' – and another on teaching techniques, since she seemed to like the first one so much.

From Neville, he received a little mundane Venus Flytrap and the instructions on how to care for it, as well as the description of a charm that 'you should never, ever use on this plant, not even if you're alone and there are some spare birds around and you want to give it a special treat'.

Harry memorized the modified Engorgio charm and resolved that, if he ever acquired enemies more vicious than Draco the moderately racist snob, he would bring them to Neville's greenhouse to get rid of them. His gift of magical fertilizer and a whole selection of mundane fruits and vegetables that Neville's greenhouse didn't have seemed far too tame, in retrospect.

But Christmas morning was the highlight of an otherwise morose holiday. He was glad neither Hermione nor Neville was around to see him as he moped about; he wouldn't have wanted to bring their holidays down too.

Soon after the start of the spring term, the petrifactions resumed with a vengeance. Two Muggleborn Ravenclaws were petrified outside a bathroom, and then the Ravenclaw ghost, leading many to think that the 'Weasley heir' had a grudge against the house of the wise.

Harry didn't feel good about the way the school continued to ostracize both of the youngest Weasleys, but thankfully they at least had their older siblings on their side. He learned to avoid the Great Hall during peak times, as that was the favored pranking ground of the older twin Weasleys. Ronald continued to clash with Draco, maybe to prove himself not the heir by showing everyone that if he was, Draco would be the first to be petrified.

Ginevra, though… Harry often saw her in the library, but she never stayed for long. It was her he worried about. Ron was meeting the accusations with his usual red-faced defiance, but Ginevra seemed to shrink away from everyone, and her brothers hamming it up wasn't cheering her up any.

His mum always told him not to be a bystander to bullying. It was a thing with her, the same way self defense and not automatically trusting authority was. He didn't know how he felt about her now, but her advice, her demand that he be a good person and step in… That he could, and would, heed.

He started with Hufflepuff, in the common room one evening. "Don't you think it's terrible to blame a little first year girl for attacking people in the dark of night? She doesn't even know how to levitate a chair yet, how could she be petrifying older students and doing it without getting caught? How is that fair? Even if she can speak to snakes, which I haven't seen any evidence of, who says that means it's her? We don't even know what's doing the petrifying!"

That he was only a year older than Ginevra, and younger than most of the Hufflepuffs listening, didn't matter. He was Harry Hebert, the person everybody agreed couldn't possibly be the heir, and him finally speaking up on the subject carried weight. The fifth and sixth years who heard him looked thoughtful, and in Hufflepuff once an idea was planted it would spread. Rapidly.

Ginevra suddenly, without understanding why, acquired Hufflepuff bodyguards in between classes and in the library. Older students offered to help her study. The whispers about her quieted, if not all the way then at least far enough that Harry no longer felt like he was watching a whole school persecute someone for something he was sure they hadn't done.

His feeling of success was somewhat dampened a few months later, near the end of the term. But in his defense, how could he have possibly known it actually was Ginevra, after a fashion?

He woke to a blinding headache, a painful bump on the back of his head, and the sinking feeling that he was not safe in his bed in the Hufflepuff dorms.

"Finally," a boy hissed. "He wakes. Harry Potter."

"Not Potter," Harry groaned as he tried to roll over. He was tied to something, sitting up…

He opened his eyes to find that he was in a massive, dark and damp chamber of intricately carved stone, like an underground cathedral. There was an immensely ugly face made of stone taking up one whole wall, and there was a pool of dark water off in one corner, but more important was the one speaking, and what he stood over.

It was a wraith of some kind, that was for certain. Harry had read about a lot of different spirits, ghosts, geists, and other ethereal beings when he read about magical Japan, but he couldn't put a name to this one. It looked like a schoolboy, only slightly transparent, and was growing less so with every passing moment.

"You are an immense irritant and I will enjoy killing you personally the moment I finish draining the life out of this girl," the wraith spat. "You set the Hufflepuffs on me! For months, those blithering idiots stifled my every move with their oblivious stupidity!"

"I thought Ginevra was innocent…" Harry said, thinking faster than he ever had in his life. This was maybe the first time he had ever been in real, life-threatening danger, and he didn't like the feeling. But his wasn't the first life that would be taken if the wraith was serious, and he had to think.

"Poor little Ginevra is innocent," the wraith said smugly. "Innocent of everything except talking to a diary when nobody else would bother talking to her. You know, she was so disappointed that Harry Potter wasn't at Hogwarts, even though you are blatantly, obviously Harry Potter!"

"Am not," Harry objected.

"Idiot. No matter. You've annoyed me entirely on your own merits, so I will enjoy killing you regardless. Ginevra poured her heart out to me, and I took every little bit she gave. Now I'm taking the rest."

Harry could feel the ropes binding him to what felt like an ornamental stone pillar. It had sharp edges, so he began subtly rubbing his bonds against them. After he got free, well… He hadn't planned that far ahead yet.

"Why bother?" he asked. Time was not on his side, but he wasn't ready to try anything yet.

"I want to live again, and my former self has made a right mess of it, if your existence is anything to go by," the wraith hissed, twirling Ginevra's wand about between its solidifying fingers. "Right now, my memories are seeping into her, my life is infusing her, and then when it's all in, when she and I are one, I'll yank it all out, hers and mine combined, leaving nothing for her but an empty husk of a body."

The last rope snapped. Harry pretended he was still tied to the pillar. His wand was on the ground behind the megalomaniacal wraith, the only thing between him and the wraith was a ratty old book with a blank cover…

Hang on. The wraith had said Ginny 'poured her heart out to a diary'. There was a book on the floor here. That had to be the connection. If he could destroy it…

Books didn't do well in water, did they?

He lunged forward, scraping his knees through his robes, and got his hands on the book before the wraith could react.

"Stupefy!" the wraith yelled, but Harry had already rolled out of the way. He leaped to his feet, accidentally kicked Ginevra's prone body – maybe it would wake her up, but he doubted it – and hefted his arm back.

"Idiot! Put that down!" the wraith shrieked, aiming Ginevra's wand at him.

"How do you feel about being waterlogged?" he asked.

The wraith's aghast expression was all the encouragement he needed to fling the book as far as he could towards the pool of water on the far side of the chamber.

The wraith turned and raised Ginevra's wand, and Harry realized two things. First, that his throw wasn't strong enough to get the book all the way to the pool. Second, that the wraith could just levitate it back.

Then again, it wasn't like throwing the book was his only idea. He stepped forward and snatched the wand right out of the wraith's hand while it was distracted. The book landed shy of the pool without its interference.

"You–!" the wraith screamed, sending a bitterly cold but thankfully insubstantial limb through him. That seemed to hurt the wraith just as much as it did him, as they both recoiled, and Harry had the presence of mind to snatch up his own wand, too, holding one in each hand like a cowboy from a Western with dual pistols. It was too bad he couldn't cast with two wands at once.

"It's too late, you bumbling, incompetent irritation," the wraith seethed. "You're a second-year and none of your spells can touch me. In mere moments I will be done, I'll come back and kill you with my bare hands if I must, and then I'll feed you to my basilisk!"

Basilisk? The name rang a bell. A Hermione-sounding bell. Snake. Big, big snake. Fatal eyes. Parseltongue. Snake language. Which rumor said Ginevra spoke. Not Slytherin's monster because nobody had died yet and because it was ridiculous to think the school harbored such a dangerous creature without anyone knowing. Or so Hermione had said.

Harry went from feeling triumphant to truly desperate in an instant. He couldn't let the wraith say anything else, one hiss might be enough to summon the Basilisk from wherever it was hiding to kill him, he couldn't fight a basilisk!

He could fight a wraith. Even if he didn't know what kind it was. The spells he'd learned while reading about Japanese spirits didn't work on all spirits, he had no reason to believe they would work here, but they were better than nothing!

He pointed his own wand at the wraith, rapidly going through the complicated motions of the one spell he knew that might help here. "Possessionem Skurge!"

The white spell passed right through the wraith, but the incensed expression on its almost-opaque face told him he was on the right track. He turned his wand on Ginevra's body and quickly cast again, "Possessionem Skurge!"

Ginevra jerked, and the wraith vanished.

Harry was not convinced that was enough. "Possessionem Skurge, Possessionem Skurge," he repeated, casting it again and again. It was a Latin equivalent to an obscure Japanese cleansing spell, designed to reassert control of the human mind over a possessed body and evict the spirit, but it was meant for spirits from other realms, whatever that actually meant. Multiple castings were sometimes required, but it didn't hurt the victim even if cast wrong and was thus one of the few he had felt safe practicing.

"Possessionem Skurge!" he cast for a fourth time, feeling like his arm was going to drop off. It wasn't an easy spell, by any means, and it took more out of him than any singular spell he had ever cast before. And he didn't even know if it was working!

"Possessionem Skurge," he managed one final time, before slumping down next to Ginevra. That was all he could do. He maybe had enough in him for a single low-effort spell if she woke up and started talking in the wraith's voice, but he had no idea where he was or how to get out.

Ginevra stirred. Her left leg kicked, and then her eyes opened.

Harry pointed his wand at her chest. "Are you–"

She burst out crying.

He did the first thing he could think of and hit her with a petrifying jinx.

"You petrified her?" Hermione demanded later, as she sat on the side of the bed he was stuck in until the school nurse gave him the all clear. "For crying?!"

"If it was the wraith, crying would have been a perfect way to pretend to be her!" Harry defended himself. "And that gave me time to explore the chamber and find the exit. When it wore off I let her talk." After hitting her with a few more anti-possession spells as he recovered from the strain of casting so many at once. He was pretty sure she was just a scared first-year now.

"You are such a boy," Hermione huffed, but she was smiling so Harry assumed she approved. "How did you get out?"

"I took her to the exit, but it was a big vertical pipe, so I asked how to get out." He shrugged his shoulders. "Turns out, she just had to say the word stairs and stairs came out of the walls."

Two people chose that moment to emerge from the curtain Pomphrey had erected around Ginevra's bed. "Mister Potter–"

"Hebert," both he and Hermione interjected, Hermione much more energetically than him.

"Hebert," Pomphrey corrected herself, "you did exactly the right thing. Ginevra is most definitely not possessed as of now, but from what I can gather it took more than one casting of that particular spell to drive out all of the wraith's will. She may well have still been partially possessed when you petrified her. The wraith, if it still exists as an entity, is now confined to its object, which the Headmaster has assured me he will dispose of as soon as possible."

Harry let out a sigh of relief. Taking the book with him and giving it to the Headmaster as soon as possible had been the right thing to do, after all. He hadn't been sure.

"That aside, miss Ginevra would–"

A second figure burst out from the curtained area, and Harry was grabbed around the shoulders by a red-haired missile. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," Ginevra said ceaselessly as she hugged him.

"You are both totally healthy, so you may leave when you feel ready." Pomphrey made to walk away.

"Hey, wait!" Hermione called out. "That's it? Ginevra was possessed for most of the school year!"

"Possession does not linger once the spirit is evicted," Pomphrey said. "Your point?"

"You can't just leave her after all of that and say 'well, she's fine now!'" Hermione was in full swing, wielding her now fully solidified mistrust of authority like a blade. Harry was so proud. "Shouldn't she get therapy? Occasional checkups to make sure she's okay? Some sort of dreamless sleep potion for tonight, at least? What if being possessed makes her afraid of ghosts, or makes her more vulnerable to other spirits in the future? Do you even know? And we still don't know what kind of spirit this one was, it might be a kind that has side effects. I know some classes of Yokai can leave spiritual imprints that require prompt treatment or they can become life-threatening!"

Ginevra clung even more tightly to Harry, burying her face in his robe.

Madam Pomphrey, for her part, looked as if she was genuinely disturbed. "Spirits and possession are not my area of expertise, you may be right," she admitted. "I had intended to set up a consultation with Saint Mungo's, but the Headmaster said he was certain it would be fine. I think I will schedule that appointment regardless. Yokai, you say?"

"Harry and I were reading about Japanese history earlier this year," Hermione explained. "I can give you my books on their spirits, but there's probably a medical book somewhere that will tell you more."

"Do you have reason to believe it was a Japanese spirit?" Pomphrey asked, before shaking her head. "No, that is the wrong question. We have not ruled it out, so you are entirely correct. Ginevra?"

"Yes?" Ginevra looked up.

"You will be staying here until I can get you to Saint Mungo's, and if you feel you would like a Dreamless Sleep potion, I will provide you with one."

"Thank you." She continued to hug Harry tightly.

He hugged her back.

He would never again doubt his mum's advice about not being a bystander. It had saved at least one life. If he hadn't stepped in… He was wrong about Ginevra, but entirely right at the same time, and if he hadn't made a nuisance of himself the wraith wouldn't have kidnapped him to kill first after killing Ginevra, and he wouldn't have been in the position to save her.

If only he could tell his mum about this.

Magic or not, surely she would be proud of him.

"You have had a truly interesting school year, have you not Harry?"

Harry eyed a swirling snowglobe mounted on a pole that bobbed it up and down like one of those desk duck toys. "Yes, sir. Very interesting." The Headmaster's office was no less a distraction for having seen it before, and he could have sworn most of the devices were new contraptions, not the same ones from the last time he had visited, with only a few exceptions. The smoking book was still there, now on a shelf with several other ominous books, one of which had a picture of a six-eyed black unicorn on the cover. The lava lamp now had a clump of dirt on top of it, in which a solitary red flower was growing. Other than that? Everything was new.

Dumbledore chuckled and waved a hand in front of his face. Harry reluctantly redirected his gaze to the man, not the many mysteries around him.

"But the year is over, and we come once again to the summer," Dumbledore said grandly.

"I want to go home," he said firmly.

Dumbledore frowned. "There hasn't been any change in your situation, Harry."

"I don't care." Even if his mum hated him now, he had to see it for himself. At least once. He would never be able to be rid of the nagging doubt, otherwise.

"I cannot allow you to put yourself in harm's way," Dumbledore said sadly. "You will go with Neville once again."

"I'd like to go with Hermione this summer, if her parents allow it," Harry countered.

"Harry, I am not a fool," Dumbledore said kindly. "I know what you and Hermione would get up to if you spent the summer together in the Muggle world, and I just said that I cannot allow you to put yourself in harm's way."

"My mother would not harm me. No matter how much she hates magic now." He had to believe that.

Dumbledore paused. "I meant less specific shenanigans that come when two highly intelligent children grow bored together with the temptation of magic only a wand wave away," he said slowly, "but thank you for telling me exactly what you intended. You will go with Neville."

Harry slumped forward, embarrassed and frustrated in equal measure. "Yes, sir."

It wasn't like he really had a choice.

The summer started out nice, aside from the obvious. Harry had Neville's companionship and the greenhouse, and he wrote using Neville's family owl to Hermione, and Ginevra too. Keeping in touch with the formerly possessed Weasley seemed like the right thing to do, especially as she hadn't returned from the hospital before the end of the school year.

Ginevra didn't explain what held her in the hospital, but she was happy to write back about other things. She mentioned Harry Potter a little too often in her letters for Harry Hebert's liking, but she never implied she thought they were the same person. Rather, it seemed she had grown up listening to stories about him, and that there was a whole book collection based on his life since defeating Voldemort.

Harry was thankful he wasn't Harry Potter. That sounded awful.

But what if he was, somehow, Harry Potter? People kept saying he was, even spirits who really shouldn't have known who anybody was…

He would rather stay Harry Hebert. Even if him being Harry Potter was in some way actually true. Better to keep denying it and cling to his Muggleborn anonymity in either case. It wasn't like he wanted the fame of having somehow killed a Dark Lord as a baby, or dead parents that people kept talking about, or a whole – necessarily fraudulent – book series in his honor.

Besides, his friends weren't friends with Harry Potter, and he wanted to keep it that way. Harry Hebert didn't have to worry about fame and hanger-ons.

Harry Hebert did, it turned out, have to worry about maniacal Death Eater prison escapees.

Madam Longbottom told him all about the escaped convict the moment she could corner him with the newspaper announcing his escape. He needed to be careful, she'd said, because Black had a family history of madness and more than a decade in Azkaban had surely drawn it out if being a Death Eater hadn't already. Black had betrayed the Potters, and Potter or not he would surely take a shot at Harry if Harry gave him the slightest chance, as any homicidal maniac might.

The rest of Harry's summer was even more subdued. Potter trouble had never been this potentially deadly before.

The school year began with an unpleasant surprise. Ginevra was back, but she was in the infirmary again.

Harry found Hermione already there, sitting by Ginevra's bedside looking more than a little pale herself.

"Dementors," she explained. "On the train. They drag up bad memories. For those with worse memories than normal…"

Harry nodded. "Is she okay?"

"She should wake up soon, but I think we should be here when she does…" Hermione grimaced. "Ronald was in and out in five minutes, and the twins said to let them know when she wakes up. None of them seem very concerned."

"It's not like they noticed she was possessed, we can't expect them to be any more empathetic now," Harry remarked. That might have been a little harsh, but he wasn't happy with the Weasley boys right now. Not only had they left their little sister alone, they could have stayed to cheer Hermione up, too. Instead, here she was, and here Ginny was. Alone.

He resolved to make sure Ginevra was included in his little circle of friends this year. With Dementors about, she was going to need people to look out for her, and he suspected the wraith had driven away anyone who tried to be friends with her last year.

They missed the sorting that night, but Harry didn't care. Ginevra's timid smile when she woke up was worth not hearing the hat sing.

A Boggart. Harry did know what those were, he didn't need Hermione's enthusiastic explanation.

He also knew he didn't want to face one.

Not just because he knew what it would be. His mum, of course, acting exactly as Dumbledore implied she would, were she ever to see him again. Rejecting him, wanting nothing to do with him. Maybe attacking him, though he didn't fear that because it was just absurd.

Alone, he thought he could face it. He probably should, given it might very well be reality and he had demanded Dumbledore let him face the real thing at the end of the last school year.

The problem was, he didn't want anyone else to see the mockery of his mum that this boggart was likely to come up with to scare him. They didn't know her, and he knew the value of first impressions. Hermione especially, he wanted nowhere near a Taylor boggart.

As such, he quickly made his way to the ever-shifting back of the line when the new Defense teacher told them to line up to face it. Other students jostled and elbowed their way back or forward as their shifting whims took them, but he did not budge from his place dead last, not even when Susan Bones looked like she was going to wet herself from nerves if she couldn't be last.

Then it began, and with every fear revealed to the combined class Harry was more and more certain he didn't want to air his own fear. Some of them were scared of practical things; wolves, vampires, drowning. Others, like Hermione, had more abstract fears, to the point of being hard to interpret. What did an empty bookshelf, empty chair, and bare patch of dirt outside a grimy window represent? Something that scared her enough she struggled to cast the countercharm.

Riddikulus might have been intended to turn scary things into funny things, but Harry was finding there wasn't much to laugh about as the line dwindled. Thankfully, Professor Lupin put a stop to the class before the line got to him, something that provisionally earned him the 'Professor' title Harry had refused to give to either of his previous Defense teachers. He did, on the other hand, ask Harry to stay after class, so the jury was still out depending on what he wanted to talk about.

"Harry," Professor Lupin began once the two of them were alone in the room with the trapped boggart. "What do you think you will see if you face a boggart?"

"I don't think, I know. And I would like to face it, but not with anyone else present. What do you think I'm going to see, that you didn't try to make me face it in class with everyone else?" He knew what he would see, but some random new Professor wouldn't–

"You-Know-Who," Professor Lupin said quietly.

That was not what Harry thought, but he was happy to accept it if it got him what he wanted. He would give Professor Lupin the benefit of the doubt on why he thought Harry Hebert was especially scared of Voldemort, too. For now.

"I cannot let any of my students face a boggart without backup," Lupin continued.

"Guess I'll have to find one somewhere else," Harry suggested, spinning on his heel to leave the classroom.

"No." Lupin sighed. "I can conjure an opaque barrier. Yell and I will cast."

"Make it silent except for my yell?" Harry requested.

"If I must," Lupin said. He placed the tip of his wand on one of the desks and transfigured it into a dividing wall like one might find in a store changing room, then muttered an overlong incantation while waving his wand at it. "There you go. Whenever you're ready."

Harry went behind the dividing wall, took a deep breath, and used a muttered 'Wingardium Leviosa' to lift the latch off the boggart's prison.

What emerged was not his mum, but it was exactly the twisted parody he had envisioned. Tall, regal, utterly disdainful. Her lips twisted into an uncharacteristic sneer as she looked down at him. Even seeing her like this made him wish she was real, if only because she was here.

"You're an abomination," she hissed, "an abomination."

"Why?" he asked, though he wanted nothing more than to cast and drive it away.

"You are," his boggart insisted, reaching our for him with long, grasping fingers. "I'll–"

"Riddikulus," he cast, his heart thundering in his ears. A burst of confetti puffed out of somewhere suspiciously close to the boggart's backside, and it disappeared.

Not exactly funny, but he hadn't exactly been scared, either.

However it was boggarts worked, he had learned something from this.

He didn't believe that ridiculous caricature was real in any way, shape, or form. It just didn't make sense. He couldn't even be properly afraid when faced with it, the sense of confusion was so strong. She would never turn on him like that. The Boggart couldn't even give a reason for why it would happen, not even an irrational one plucked from his head. It wasn't right. He did not truly fear that which could never be real.

Which meant something else was going on. In real life, not with the Boggart. It wasn't real.

He emerged from behind the screen feeling as if a weight had been lifted off his chest. "I think I learned something about boggarts," he told the Professor.

From the look on the Professor's face, Harry knew instantly that he had been lied to. Lupin had watched.

"And something about you," he added bitterly as he stomped out of the classroom.

That weekend, he gathered his friends together. Neville, he borrowed from the greenhouse and his own head of house. Hermione was in the library already. Ginevra, he asked an older Gryffindor to fetch for him, as she was in the Gryffindor common room.

He gathered them together at a table with four chairs in the library during the lunch hour, when the library was at its most empty. Ms. Pince watched them from afar, but she liked Harry marginally more than she did most of the other students. He knew how to behave in a library.

Ms. Pince would leave him and his friends alone, and he had a way to ensure nobody else eavesdropped, either. He cast a very basic silencing charm over the table, dampening any sounds that left its confines. They all had to lean forward to get their heads within the small area of effect, but it worked.

"I have something I need to tell you all," he said. "Hermione, Neville, Ginevra–"

"Ginny, please," Ginevra requested. "I kept meaning to tell you, nobody but my mum calls me that."

"Okay, Ginny. You all know I'm Harry Hebert, right?"

His three friends nodded.

"Don't tell me you're not," Neville said with a small grin. "Not after all this time spent making sure people knew you were…"

"Oh, I am." Even if he was really Harry Potter, he would rather be Harry Hebert, so he was never going to admit it. "I share my last name with my mum. She's a Muggle. No dad, she doesn't even know who he was, I think."

"That's becoming more and more common as society destigmatizes premarital sex," Hermione said sagely. Ginny and Neville both stared at her until she blushed. "What? It is."

"Okay…" Harry shook his head. "Anyway. None of you have met her, but trust me, she's great. Smart, and patient, and always willing to help me with my schoolwork. I help her cook because of her arm, it's great fun–"

"Her arm?" Ginny interjected. Hermione and Neville also looked interested.

"She's missing one from here down," Harry explained, holding his hand to halfway down his right bicep. "Car accident. It doesn't really slow her down much, but cooking can be hard with all the hot surfaces and knives and stuff, so I help. Point is, when she learned about magic she was so amazed and interested. We spent all night before I came here going through my new schoolbooks together, just looking for cool stuff."

"She sounds great," Neville said doubtfully.

"Why do you sound like you think that's weird?" Ginny asked him.

"Because Harry keeps spending the summer break at my house and winter break here," Neville explained. "Harry, when was the last time you saw her?"

Hermione cringed sympathetically, but Harry forged ahead without letting himself feel anything more than determination. "I haven't seen her, or heard from her, since I came to Hogwarts my first year."

Ginny's jaw dropped. "But… how?" she asked. "Not a single letter? No vacation? Nothing?"

"Nothing!" Harry agreed, his voice hard. "She made me promise to write every week, and I did, I do, but I've never gotten anything back. When I went to the Headmaster he told me he would look into it, made me stay here over the winter break, and then came back right before summer break and lied to me!"

Hermione's eyes narrowed with surprise and consternation; this was where her knowledge of the situation ran out. "He did?" she asked. "How do you know?"

"Because it doesn't make sense." He knew that didn't seem like enough, but it was. "My mum was so interested when we found out I was a wizard. She's never said anything about magic being bad, we don't go to church and I know it isn't a religious thing, she doesn't reject anyone, it just doesn't fit with who I know she is. The only people she hates are people who hate others and maybe people in positions of power. Even if she did suddenly hate magic, she would be trying to get me out of here, not abandoning me. But Dumbledore says she told him she wants nothing to do with magic or me, and that means he's lying."

He looked around, and he knew they were all with him. Mostly.

"If your mum, or grandmother," he nodded to Neville, "suddenly did something completely out of character but you only heard about it from someone else who doesn't know them like you do, which would you think is more likely? That they actually did that thing, or that the person telling you is lying but doesn't know that their lie makes no sense?"

"It's Dumbledore, though," Neville objected. "He's the greatest wizard of…" He looked around, perhaps noticing that nobody else was leaping to Dumbledore's defense. "Guys?"

"I learned not to assume teachers know best as a first year," Hermione said seriously.

"Dumbledore didn't know I was possessed!" Ginny growled. "And he didn't want me to go to Saint Mungos! They said…" She shook her head. "I had to go, but he told Pomphrey not to schedule an appointment."

"I don't trust him," Harry said bluntly. "Because he won't let me see her. Not even to just see for myself that she's somehow as hateful as he claims. He's a powerful wizard and she's a Muggle. There is absolutely no reason for him to say it's not safe and that I can't go. Unless he's hiding something, because he lied and he knows it."

"Wow…" Neville held up his hands. "I'm not saying I don't believe you! It's just… he's really important. My gran trusts him. Maybe not to do exactly the right thing every time, but to have his heart in the right place."

"I love my mum and I can't think of a single good reason to tell me she hates me and never wants to see me again if it isn't true." Harry looked Neville in the eye. "Can you?"

"No," Neville mumbled.

"So… That's the deal." He wanted them to know, and now they did. "I need your help. Your ideas, at the very least. I have to get to my house, somehow, and check on her. I don't know any way out of Hogwarts, I don't know how to get to anywhere Muggle even if I could sneak out, and Dumbledore specifically makes sure I'm here for the winter break and with Neville for the summer break. Worst of all, there are Dementors patrolling around the school and Sirius Black is still out there, probably crazy enough to attack anyone who looks at all like Harry Potter. What do I do?"

For a few moments his friends said nothing, all clearly thinking hard.

"My brothers, the twins," Ginny spoke up. "I can ask them about ways to sneak out… I'll say for Hogsmeade weekend. They must know a way, they've been sneaking out for years."

"If you give me a week's warning, I could have my parents pick you up in the car and drive you to your home and back," Hermione offered. "They keep telling me they want to meet you. You'd have to get to a Muggle area, though. I don't think they can drive into Hogsmeade."

"There's a Muggle village West of Hogsmeade," Neville volunteered. "I saw it when my Uncle Algie took me there on a broom. It's too far to walk, but if you take a school broom you could fly there from Hogsmeade."

"And if I do it on a Hogsmeade weekend, nobody will know to look for me all day," Harry concluded. "I just have to not be seen by any random Dementors or Sirius Blacks on the way…"

"How will you do that?" Hermione asked.

"It's only fair I use Potter's heirloom to avoid a Potter problem," Harry said with a grin.

He had never imagined things would come together so easily like this. His friends were brilliant.

The first leg of Harry's journey began at daybreak, when he snuck out to the Quidditch shed to nick a broom. Ginny came with him, under Potter's invisibility cloak, because she knew how to use magic to pick locks.

"I do this at home, my mum locks the brooms up at night," Ginny explained as she went to work in the frosty morning air. "There. You really don't know who gave you Harry Potter's invisibility cloak?"

"No, it came with a note but it wasn't signed," Harry explained. "I don't fly brooms very often," mostly because he didn't have the free time to join the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, he liked flying just fine. "Which one is best for long-distance trips?"

"They're school brooms, they're all bad," Ginny said disparagingly. "This Cleansweep will do." She took a broom off the wall and they left the Quidditch shed. "What will you do if you run into a Dementor?"

"Fly away like my arse is on fire, probably," he admitted.

Ginny snorted loudly enough that were the Hogwarts grounds not deserted at this time of morning, they would have been caught, invisibility cloak or not. "You do that. If you need to lose some weight to fly faster, remember that you crap yourself when you die so you might as well do it before they catch you, not after."

Harry almost fell over, he laughed so hard. He had no idea Ginny was willing to make jokes about things like that. The vulgarity sounded odd, coming from her. Odd and hilarious.

The second leg of his journey was one escorted by Ginny's older brothers, who met him next to a painting of a horse casting spells with a straightened hoof for a wand.

"You did our sister a good turn, so we're here to get you to your illicit fun in Hogsmeade," one of the twins informed him. "Keep this passage a secret, will you?"

"You have my word." Aside from Hermione, Ginny, and Neville, of course. They didn't count as needing to have secrets kept from them.

One of the twins kept watch while the other dragged a horseshoe shape with his wand over a lonely peg sticking out of the ground in the background of the painting. "Was a right pain figuring that one out, even with the hint," the twin muttered as they escorted him into a stone tunnel that had been hidden behind the painting.

Harry followed them as they led him deep under the school. The tunnel converged with several others at one point. "Here," one of the twins explained, his wand under his chin glowing to illuminate his face, "is the intersection. Five passages. Four go to paintings in the castle, one close to each common room. The fifth goes to Hogsmeade, coming out in Honeydukes' back room."

"So… was this some old fire exit or something?" Harry asked as they walked.

"What makes you say that?" one of the twins replied.

"One passage next to each common room… Sound the alarm, and if everyone knows about them you can have all the students leaving the castle without having to go out the front gate or being funneled through the castle to one central emergency exit." It made sense to him.

"You know, brother, he may be right."

"We ought to set something up. Leave an announcement charm in the Hogwarts alert wards or the like. It would be a shame if nobody knew about these and something happened where they could have saved lives."

"But that's for later. Right now, Hogsmeade!"

The second leg of his journey ended when the twins smuggled him out into Honeydukes proper and left him to go enjoy the village. He immediately threw on his cloak and stepped out into the village, unseen.

Harry met up with Hermione and Neville there. "Here," he said, tapping their shoulders as they stood looking into the Zonkos storefront.

"Broom?" Hermione asked without looking back.

"Got it." Thankfully it fit under his cloak.

"Know the way back through the secret passages?" Neville asked.

"Yup." Honeydukes didn't close until nine at night, and it was only eleven in the morning now. The car ride, based on the location of the Muggle village Neville managed to remember, would only take three hours each way, so he had plenty of time.

Hermione had muttered something about spatial warping and overlong train rides when she finally conceded Neville's memory and the map they'd found were accurate, but Harry was willing to take the gift horse without personally looking in its mouth.

"No sign of Dementors or Sirius Black, so you're clear for launch," Hermione muttered as she and Neville turned away from the joke shop. "Say hi to my parents for me."

"I will." With that, the third leg of his journey began. He made his way to the edge of the village, then awkwardly maneuvered himself onto the broom without ever letting either himself or the broom slip out from under the cloak's coverage.

He was reminded of Bilbo's ring, and how it always seemed to slip off at the worst time. His invisibility device wasn't malicious, but it was awkward enough to make up for that.

His mum had read The Hobbit to him. She was planning on reading him Lord of the Rings when he was old enough to appreciate the more mature story. He had avoided reading those books since coming to Hogwarts, though he knew for a fact Hermione and several other Muggleborn had copies he could borrow. That was a thing he and his mum were going to do together.

Harry took off on his borrowed broom under his borrowed cloak, and nobody but his co-conspirators knew he had ever left the castle.

The flight itself was boring with an ever-present undertone of fear. At any moment a Dementor could come swooping up out of the forest to chase him, or a mad wizard could inexplicably show up on his own broom. But the thirty minute flight was peaceful, and he saw nothing more interesting than a quartet of owls flying in the distance despite it being the middle of the day.

His mum always did say the owls were weird here in Britain. Now they knew why, at least. Apparently American wizards didn't use owls, or their owls were better at blending in with normal owls.

The Muggle village was small, and there were few cars out on the streets. Harry landed in the one big parking lot, that of a cozy-looking local restaurant, and stowed his cloak and broom invisibly in an alleyway before entering the restaurant.

Hermione's parents were immediately recognizable. Her mother had the same hair, and her father had the same thoroughly-engrossed look on his face as he read through the menu.

"Mr. and Ms. Granger?" Harry asked as he slid into the booth opposite them.

"You must be Harry." Ms. Granger smiled at him. "It's so good to finally meet you."

"Well worth driving for twelve hours on our day off," Mr. Granger mumbled, barely looking up from his menu.

Harry grinned. "You are so much like Hermione," he said.

After a brief, enjoyable lunch, the fourth and final leg of his journey began. It was the longest, and it felt the longest by far, even with the Grangers plying him with questions of all sorts as they drove. Three hours passed with glacial slowness, and then another half hour as they were caught in traffic not twenty minutes away from his house.

But finally, they were there. The car was in the driveway, and it was his mum's car, so she definitely still lived here. He had worried she might not; if Dumbledore could convince her to move somehow it would be the perfect way to keep Harry from finding her to disprove his lie.

"We'll just wait in the car, dear," Ms. Granger said. "Do come out and let us know if your mother wants to meet us, though."

"Good luck, kid," was Mr. Granger's contribution.

Harry smiled shakily and got out of the car, taking his cloak with him but leaving his broom in the backseat. The spare key was where it always was, and he let himself in with no trouble.

He knew, somehow, that the house was empty. But he looked anyway. She wasn't in the backyard, she wasn't downstairs, she wasn't in her room…

He checked, and the photo album with all the baby pictures of him was still on the bookshelf. Then he checked his room.

It was still there. Still exactly how he left it more than a year ago. But there was no dust. His mum had cleaned in here. Recently.

He waited. If she was out on a run, she might be back any minute. But though it broke his heart, he couldn't wait forever.

Bless Hermione, for making him plan for something like this. He didn't think he would be able to put his feelings into words here and now, when every little sound made him think his mum might come in the back door any minute.

'Mum,' the note he'd written days ago and kept in his pocket said, 'it's Harry. I don't know what's going on, why I never got any of your letters (I know you must have sent them, I have been sending letters every week and I don't know if they've gotten to you), why Dumbledore tells me you hate me and magic, but know I don't believe that for a second. He wont let me see you. I had to sneak out with my friends' help to get here today, and I don't know when I'll be able to do it again. Please, contact my friend's parents, the Grangers. They can pass a hidden message to Hermione and she can get it to me without anyone knowing to intercept it.'

'I love you, and I know you love me. But I would really like to hear it from you soon.'

He had included the address and phone numbers of the Grangers. This note was only supposed to be left behind if he saw some evidence his mum really wasn't crazy or magic-hating, and his carefully preserved room definitely counted, even if she wasn't here right now.

He left the note under her pillow, which he knew she regularly flipped over, and went out to the Grangers.

"She wasn't home, was she?" Mr. Granger guessed.

"No, but she cleans my room." He thought he would have to explain that, but–

"And she didn't touch a thing in it," Ms. Granger finished for him. "Not something someone who suddenly hates you would do."

They understood. "I left the note."

"We'll do our best to help her get in contact with you." Ms. Granger started up the car, and they drove away.

The ride back was mostly a blur. Harry tried to keep Hermione's parents entertained with stories of her – they especially loved hearing why he had sent her the book on lightning magic – but there was only so much he could tell before his thoughts of other things pulled him away again, and they didn't press him.

"Thank you," he said again when they dropped him off at the same restaurant as before. "You helped me a lot, even though she wasn't home."

"Thank you for being our daughter's first friend," Mr. Granger said seriously. "Take care of her. If she ever needs something like this from you…"

"I'll move heaven and earth to help her," he promised. "And our other friends will too."

"Good." Ms. Granger shook her head. "I have to say, this… It scares me. That us Muggle parents can just be shuffled aside and our children told we hate them and never want to see them again. It reassures me to know my daughter will have at least one person by her side if someone ever tries the same thing with us."

"Yeah." His throat closed up when he thought about this happening to someone else… Someone who didn't have the same certainty that it couldn't possibly happen that way. It would be horrible.

They said their goodbyes, and he took to the sky wrapped in his invisibility cloak once more. The trip back was as uneventful as the trip out, save for him seeing a few floating figures in a forest clearing once, and those from so far away he could barely make them out. A reminder that the Dementors did indeed exist, but no more.

Hogsmeade was still busy under the setting sun when he flew in, and he easily tagged along behind the crowds into Honeydukes. It was the work of a moment to slip into the back room, and then a long, final trek down through the tunnels.

He didn't fully believe he had made the entire journey in total secrecy, not even when he got out from behind the painting unnoticed.

His friends were waiting for him in the library, at what was fast becoming their usual table.

Ginny grinned when she saw him. Neville clapped him on the back, an unusually gregarious gesture from the usually reserved boy. Hermione smiled, but it was a tremulous, uncertain smile.

"Plan went off without a hitch," he reported once he set up the silencing ward. "She wasn't home–"

Hermione gasped.

"But I saw evidence that Dumbledore is exactly as full of shite as I thought," he said coarsely. "She still keeps the photo album and she keeps my room clean and everything. Like she's waiting for me to come home any day. I left the note."

Hopefully, sometime very soon he would receive word from her through Hermione. But even if he didn't, he knew better than to doubt the truth.

"Harry…" Ginny had waylaid him in a corridor, right as he was going to History of Magic. "Can I talk to you? You might miss class."

"It's History of Magic, I can read my textbook in my room tonight. Lead on."

"Isn't the textbook just goblin rebellions out the arse?" Ginny asked, leading him away from the busy corridors and into a less used part of the castle.

"My textbook. Hermione and I study different history things. Last week it was Roman magic." And last week's book of choice was also an object lesson on how some history books meant for adults were meant for adults, in that they felt no need to obscure certain things.

"Anything interesting?" Ginny asked.

"Yeah, but trust me when I say you would not want to be a magical Roman." He could never unsee some of the illustrations of commonplace rituals they used. Not only were rituals illegal in Britain nowadays, those rituals would be illegal anywhere, even if they weren't magical.

"Okay…" She led him into an unused classroom.

"Seriously. Don't ask why." He hopped up to sit on a desk opposite her. "What's on your mind?"

"Ever since you told us about your mum…" Ginny shrugged, her hand folded in her lap. "Did it feel better, having us know?"

"Way better," he answered. "Especially with how you all helped me so much once you knew, but even if that hadn't happened it still helped."

"I want to tell you what the healers at Saint Mungo's told me," Ginny said. "But please don't… hold it against me?"

"I won't." The worst thing he could think of that Ginny could possibly have to tell him was that she was still possessed and that the real Ginny was dead, which he could and would hold against the wraith piloting her corpse, but other than that he couldn't think of anything he might hold against her.

"The healers told me that the wraith, Tom, he was trying to make us the same," Ginny began. "That's how he was going to take my life from me. He was wrapping his self around my self so that when he pulled his self back it pulled mine with it."

"He did say something about that, but I was more interested in how to stop him than the mechanics of it all," Harry admitted.

"Oh. Well," Ginny hesitated but continued after a moment, "when you stopped him… You knocked him back into his book. But the transfer wasn't done, so he left some things behind."

She screwed up her face, staring into the space between them. "Like this," she said.

Harry waited, but she didn't do anything. "Like what?"

"Like this?" Ginny said again. "Am I doing it right?"

"Doing what right?" He looked her over. "Am I supposed to be seeing something?"

"Uh… no, forget it. Just take my word for it. I can still talk to snakes." She looked away, not meeting his eyes. "And Tom left… memories. His memories. All of them, or copies of them."

"Are you okay?" Harry asked. His first instinct was to say that couldn't be so bad, but then again, he had no idea who this 'Tom' fellow had been in life.

"They were so bad I had to be obliviated of them," Ginny said in a small voice. "But obliviation only removes the memories… I'm cruder now, and quicker to hurt people when they make me mad, quicker than before. I know things about magic that I don't know how I know. They're not… nice things. And I can talk to snakes sometimes. The memories are gone, but I'm not all… me. Anymore. The healers say I just have to live with that, because they got rid of all of him that they could."

"Oh, Ginny." Harry stood, crossed the distance between them, and pulled her into a hug. "That sounds terrifying. I don't know how it must feel. But if it's any comfort, me and Hermione and Neville, we know you as you are now, not as you were before. So we like you for you, including whatever little things Tom left you."

He wasn't sure if that was the right thing to say – did Ginny want him to claim she would be able to get rid of all of Tom's influence someday? – but Ginny laughed, a shaky little uncertain laugh, and he knew it was good enough.

The next one-on-one meeting Harry found himself in, a few weeks after that, was not nearly so pleasant, though it started much the same way.

"Mr… Harry, please stay behind today." Lupin patiently waited for the class to file out, though he seemed unprepared for the truly unimpressed look Hermione shot him as she made eye contact on the way out.

"Do you know why one of my star pupils seems to despise me of late?" Lupin asked once they were alone.

"She's gotten worse at hiding it over time?" Harry guessed. "Because she has disliked you since the boggart lesson." Politeness was for people he respected or needed to get along with. Lupin was neither. He was a good teacher when it came to his subject, but Harry could pass the class like he had the first two years of Defense, if necessary. Snape certainly knew by now that no matter how obnoxious he was Harry would persevere. Lupin would only be here for a year if the pattern held true.

"Yes, that…" Lupin straightened his shoulders. "I want to apologize."

"Go ahead, then," Harry said coldly.

"It's part of my job to protect my students, and that requires I be there when they face their boggart," Lupin explained. "But I should not have lied to you and said otherwise."

"You're not sorry you invaded my privacy, just that you lied to get me in a position where you could do it?" Harry translated.

"In a way," Lupin grimaced. "Especially as what I saw was… not what I expected."

"I think, were I to face a boggart again now, it would be what you expected the first time." He had proven that particular fear meaningless and untrue. It wasn't his greatest fear anymore, and he had no idea what might have replaced it, so why not Voldemort? "But I have no desire to actually do so." Once was enough. Not to mention Lupin would insist on watching again.

"Always be on the watch for your boggart's latest form," Lupin advised. "Careful wizards regularly approach boggarts when they do not have to, so they will not be surprised by a new worst fear in a dangerous situation."

"Right." He waved his wand about. "Are we done here?"

"Actually, there was another thing I wanted to talk to you about," Lupin said. "Totally unconnected to the boggart."

Harry nodded and waited.

"You may not be aware of this, but I was a close friend of your parents."

Harry refrained from smacking his forehead, smacking Lupin, or storming out, but it was a near thing. "Oh, you were?" he said instead, falsely cheerful. "My mum never mentioned you." He was not in the mood to play along with a Potter thing. He was never in the mood for that, actually, but right now he didn't much feel like setting Lupin down gently.

"I–" Lupin scowled. "Oh, that. Yes. Not her, Lily and James."

"Not my parents," Harry said flippantly.

"Yes, they were," Lupin growled. Actually growled. Harry was mildly impressed.

"See, people keep saying that," Harry retorted. "And they never have anything to back it up except how I look and that I have a scar and the same first name."

"And magic identifies you, and everyone who ever saw you as a baby knows your face, however aged you may be," Lupin shot back. He began pacing, clearly unable to stand still. "You even smell– well. It isn't a matter of evidence. I know. Others know. Why do you deny it? What do you gain from rejecting your own parents?"

"What do I gain?" he asked. It seemed blatantly obvious to him, could Lupin really not understand his perspective? "What would I gain from accepting it, if it were even true? Harry Potter has dead parents, maybe a vault somewhere, one nifty heirloom, and more fame than anyone could ever need. I have one very much alive parent, enough money to get on with, and blissful anonymity when people like you aren't trying to squish me into the uncomfortable shoes of Harry Potter." And the heirloom too, though he wasn't going to tell Lupin, a teacher, that he had his own invisibility cloak.

Lupin glared at him. "Your disrespect–"

"My disrespect?" Harry interrupted, now genuinely angry. "What about the disrespect towards my mum every time someone tells me my parents are James and Lily, huh? Forgetting who actually raised me my entire life, aren't you? Oh, but she's not the person you knew, she's not dead, she's not famous, she's a Muggle, so you can shove her aside and pretend she doesn't exist so you can reminisce uninterrupted."

Harry leaned forward and put both hands on his desk so he wouldn't be tempted to go for his wand. "I," he continued, his voice rising, "am sick and tired of people trying to shove James and Lily Potter in my face. Because every time they do, they're also trying to shove someone I love right out of my life and implying I should love two dead people I don't know more than someone I do know who is alive. Every. Single. Time. So if it's them or my mum, and it sure seems like it with the way none of you have ever asked me the first thing about her, James and Lily Potter can stay dead and I'll have my mum instead!"

Lupin looked stricken, his eyes bright with unshed… tears?

Harry scoffed and straightened up. "It started on my first train ride here, and it starts up again every time someone new brings them up. Maybe I would care if people didn't keep making me choose, but as long as arses like you do, I know who I want to be and it sure as hell isn't Harry Potter."

It felt good, telling Lupin off. That rant had been building since Ronald Weasley, Hermione, and Neville first cornered him on the Hogwarts Express, and thankfully Harry had finally let it out on someone he was pretty sure deserved it. Eleven-year-olds had the excuse of their age for being prats. Lupin was a grown man who seemed to fall into it without even thinking about what he was doing.

Harry settled into the rhythm of the semester after that, diving into his school work and spending time with his friends, the combination of which left him little time for anything else. He was taking Care of Creatures and Ancient Runes this year, along with Hermione, who had settled for Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and Care of Creatures after he told her flat-out last year that if she somehow took all the electives she was going to explode halfway through the term and he wouldn't help mop up her remains. Neville was with them in Care, and Ginny joined them for all their study sessions, even when she had to work on her own lower-level work.

She also started offering impossibly insightful answers to their own higher-grade questions on occasion, which earned her very confused looks from Hermione and Neville, and knowing looks from Harry himself. He hoped she would explain herself to Hermione soon, just to satisfy her curiosity before it drove her to investigate.

Between them, they all managed good grades at everything they did without spending every waking moment studying, leaving time for extracurricular reading, games of various kinds, and the occasional spot of conspiracy.

Next Hogsmeade weekend was coming up, and Hermione's parents had yet to pass along any messages to her, so their group was in the beginning stages of planning another, more effective attempt to find Taylor without getting caught leaving Hogwarts.

It was one of these planning sessions that was interrupted by a curious and altogether unexpected intervention. Late one grim and foggy Monday morning, just before noon, a second-year Ravenclaw walked right up to their silenced table and leaned her head in over Neville and Ginny's shoulders.

"I have a secret message for you," she said in a dreamy voice. "The bug who borrowed my robes wants Bert to know she's here, in the Forbidden Forest with her dog and rat. She wants Bert to come see her. The Dementors don't patrol by the forest edge in the middle of the day."

The girl made to straighten up, but Ginny grabbed her shoulder and kept her down in the silenced space. "Luna, who sent you with this message?"

"The bug, for Bert," Luna repeated. "She took my robes, but she gave them back and let me watch many interesting things. I've never seen so many bugs in one place before. I wonder how she controls them with one arm? It takes two to direct an orchestra."

"One arm?" Harry asked. It couldn't be.

"She said… She still has a story to read you, but not when she's so close to Shelob in real life." Luna shrugged out of Ginny's grip. "I think I like her. She makes good riddles, and she is a riddle."

This time Ginny let her go. Luna skipped off, bright and cheery.

"She's always been weird," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"Luna isn't weird, she's…" Ginny sighed. "Okay, yes, she's weird. But usually she goes on about animals nobody else believes exist. This was a different kind of weird."

"It was a code." Neville shrugged when they all looked at him. "Bert? Hebert. Bug, I don't know, and the robes thing I have no clue. But one arm, plus wanting to see Harry, plus being out in the forest… It can only be one person, right?"

"But how is she here?" How could his mum possibly be here?

"Muggles can't even see Hogwarts," Hermione agreed. "Let alone find it! With Dementors all over the place, no less. It can't be possible."

"I can't just ignore it, though," Harry argued. "We've got to see what this is really about. We just have to be smart about it."

The sender of Luna's message had specified a time, but not a day. Harry and his friends spent the rest of the day planning, and the next day, they were ready.

Three of them would be skipping class, but nobody complained; for two of them it was History of Magic, and Neville got out of Transfiguration by claiming he was sick. It wasn't an excuse that would work twice, but he said McGonagall never called anyone out the first time, so he could just use his freebie. Ginny had a free period.

From the outside, it would look like Harry was coming with two friends. Hermione and Neville both had their wands out, as did he. Ginny trailed behind them under his cloak, and she brought with her four brooms and a selection of explosive joke products borrowed from the twins.

If they saw a Dementor, the whole thing was off. If they saw Sirius Black, it was off. If they saw anyone but Taylor, it was off.

As for who they would actually see…

Ginny had her bet on Sirius Black, despite the impossibility of the personal information and references Luna had passed on.

Hermione claimed that it would be Dumbledore, setting something up. Maybe they would 'see' Taylor, but it would be someone disguised to look and act like her. She had wanted to bring Veritaserum along to be sure, but Snape kept his locked up and Hermione balked at stealing… At least on short notice, with no plan. She had only rejected the idea on practical merits, which had surprised Harry.

Neville came out with the dark horse prediction; he said it would be Lupin, who had seen Harry's boggart and had been the target of Harry's rant. Further, he said Lupin would actually have Taylor with him, having sought her out and learned of the situation in an effort to prove Harry wrong.

Harry liked that theory, it felt more plausible than the others, but it wasn't the one he was betting on. As impossible as it was, he thought that this might be his mum. Just his mum, having somehow found a way to Hogwarts. If anyone could do it, his mum could.

Whoever it was, he and his friends were ready. To fight, to flee, to ambush, to defend… Whatever was necessary. There were four of them, and the enemy would only know about three at most. That had to be enough.

They entered the forest cautiously, alert for any sign of treachery. Harry had never actually been in the Forbidden Forest beyond the occasional field trip for Hagrid's classes, and it was a lot creepier without the enthusiastic mountain of a man and his dog leading the way.

A few minutes in, something moved up ahead.

Someone stepped out from behind a tree.

She was ragged-looking, like she hadn't had a shower in a week, and wearing witches robes hiked up at the knees, but Harry would know his mum anywhere.

Still, he only knew this person looked like her. "Prove you're really her!" he called out, Hermione's Polyjuice theory fresh on his mind.

"The morning after you first grew your hair back with magic, I sat you down and asked you where I had failed as a mother," Taylor said with a sad smile. "I had completely the wrong idea about what was going on, and couldn't understand when you insisted the only thing wrong in your life was that you didn't have a television in your room."

It was her.

Hermione put her arm out, but Harry rushed right past her and met his mum halfway, slamming into her with a relieved hug two years in the making.

Chapter Text

The forest was shadowed and dense, uncomfortably cold with an edge of headache-inducing magic saturating everything, down to the smallest fern. Unaccountably exotic magical creatures used it as a hunting ground, and Dementors would be stalking come dusk, seeking the soul of a specific man but likely willing to suck out any they happened across in his stead. Up in a tree and well out of sight of the children, a fugitive watched, looking for proof that she was who she claimed to be. That he had another, currently unconscious fugitive in his pocket as a rat was inconsequential, another crumb of danger and inconvenience on top of the pile.

There were better places for teary reunions, for sure. Less dangerous places.

Taylor was here, though, and her son was here too. All else was secondary, so long as it didn't interfere in her listening as her son told of his first two years at Hogwarts, occasionally interrupted or corrected by one of his three friends.

Harry spoke of classes and friends and dangers, and of a Headmaster who lied to him in the cruelest of ways. He spoke of working to be accepted as Harry Hebert, though everyone seemed to think otherwise at first glance, and of the many magical things he had learned and done.

It seemed to her that there were two of Harry; one who was enraptured with magic and his school, and another who dealt with the pressure of his peers and teachers, fought off spirits intent on murdering him, and defied the Headmaster while worrying all the while that his mother had abandoned him. His school experience so far was at least better than hers, but he did not clear her low bar by the lofty heights she would have hoped for.

He made her so proud, and so sad. Proud that he had soldiered on, made friends, learned and plotted and fought for what he thought was right. Sad, that he had done all of that without her help, advice, or even just knowing that he had her support every step of the way.

Some of that was attributable to him growing up and her having to let go as he became more independent, but he was only thirteen. The larger part of her sadness was a certain white-bearded meddler's fault.

The way Harry recounted Dumbledore's repeated lies, and how he carefully did not say how they made him feel, put Taylor in mind of a certain inviolable figure and body bags filled with fake corpses, the buzz of her implacable hate–

But that was long ago, and Dumbledore was not within reach. Lucky for him. She could put her anger aside. He had stolen two years of her watching her son grow up and tried to make her son think she had rejected him, and for that there would be a reckoning some day. Just not today.

Today, she sat and took in every little detail during the limited time they had available, perched on a gnarled upturned root. Harry sat next to her, tucked up against her bad side like he used to do when he was smaller. His head came up to just under her stump now.

His friends stood nearby, more standoffish though by no means as hostile as they probably should have been. They took Harry's word that this was her. She looked at them, too, taking in the little things.

Neville, the only boy of the three, was a forgettable lad, though he looked to be getting a set of broad shoulders as he aged and had noticeably calloused hands. Hermione, bushy-haired and confident, was fiddling with her wand, visibly uneasy. Maybe with the forest, maybe with Taylor herself. But she smiled as Harry recounted their adventures, and Taylor didn't think Hermione was worried about her being a danger so much as her disappointing Harry in some way.

Ginny, on the other hand, was very much a threat still. She was a half-visible figure, stood behind Hermione and Neville, and she had only partially removed her invisibility cloak at Harry's insistence. She was one of the red-headed brood Taylor had run into at the platform, that was obvious, but she had a hard look about her. She alone of the four looked like she knew the risks of this meeting, knew and not just understood in abstract.

Taylor had thought as much before Harry's stories revealed that Ginny had been the 'heir of Slytherin' and possessed for much of a school year, so she knew it was not just her perception being primed to think of Ginny as more worldly and cynical. That did explain it, though.

Of them, Taylor thought she would get along easiest with Ginny, but they were all loyal, deserving friends from everything Harry said.

Harry ran out of things to say soon after recounting his journey to their home – unluckily occurring soon after she had taken her vacation to stay in Hogsmeade, ironically enough – and their aborted plans for a second rule-breaking expedition to find her. He looked up at her, his story done, and asked the obvious question. "How did you end up here, anyway?"

"And with Luna Lovegood in on it?" Ginny added suspiciously.

Taylor smiled grimly and decided to give them as much of the truth as was wise to tell, namely everything but the origin of 'her' magic and her personal origins. She didn't want to tell Harry of the latter until he was old enough that she wouldn't have to censor her story to the point where it was unrecognizable… So, ideally when he was in his mid-thirties.

"It began with meeting Dumbledore on the day Harry was going to go to Hogwarts," she explained. "I said hello. He said 'obliviate' and removed every memory I had relating to Harry."

It shouldn't have been so gratifying to see their appalled shock, but it was. From there she succinctly told of what she had done and experienced, quickly glossing over her time obliviated, and portraying the return of her power as magic she had never known she had finally breaking free of what she later learned from Ollivander was an inherited blood curse of some kind. She spoke of the Aurors drowning her case in apathy – an unpleasant parallel to her time in high school, now that she thought about it – and being obliviated a second time, though it barely stuck long enough for them to leave her alone afterward.

Then she explained that she had placed trackers on students in an attempt to find Hogwarts on foot, and how she had noticed Sirius Black hiding in plain sight. Jaws actually dropped when she explained how she had approached the dangerous Death Eater, and that they had teamed up to get Harry from Hogwarts. Even Harry was staring at her like she was absolutely insane.

Ginny began palming her wand and twitching her cloak at the mention of Sirius Black, so Taylor skipped over most of the stakeout and the arguments Sirius had used to get her to infiltrate Hogwarts, rushing to the part where they caught the animagus rat hiding with Ron Weasley.

Ginny's nervous tics intensified, her lips flattening to a grim line. None of the other children seemed to grasp exactly how disgusting and potentially horrible the implications of that were, but her… She got it. Taylor resolved to threaten the rat into answering a few pointed questions about his time with the Weasleys soon, to hopefully deliver some peace of mind to Ginny. She still had Pettigrew, currently held by Sirius. He wouldn't get away.

"So, the Death Eater was no Death Eater at all, and was only working with me because he wanted help getting the real traitor," she concluded. "Once we knew we were still working for the same things, albeit not the things we had told each other to begin with, we stopped trying to fight. Luna volunteered to take a message, and it seemed like a low-risk opportunity, so we let her."

"He's not around now, is he?" Harry asked, nervously glancing at the many places a person could hide from sight. The forest was dense and foliage broke line of sight almost immediately. He never even thought to look up.

"He's guarding Pettigrew," she told him. It was true, and this way she didn't have to deal with introducing Black. One thing at a time.

"Good." Harry grimaced. "So far, people who knew Harry Potter's parents don't tend to like me very much."

"Sirius Black can wait," Hermione suggested. "At least until he gets his name cleared."

"We have been here for a while," Neville chimed in. "Do we know how much longer we have before the Dementors come back?"

As much as Taylor hated it, their time was all but up… And she couldn't see a way to remove Harry from the school without immediately precipitating his subsequent return. If he disappeared, there would be a manhunt. If she took him and let Dumbledore know, there would probably still be a manhunt. Sirius Black was on the loose, after all, and public speculation had him possibly coming after Harry. Then there was the matter of whether Harry would want to go, in such a scenario.

She had been hasty with ambushing Luna and it worked out in the end, but that did not mean leaping on the first opportunity without thinking through the consequences was a good habit to fall into. "I will come see you again, and soon," she vowed. "Do you know of any way we can communicate without it being intercepted?"

"You didn't get any of my letters, I expect?" Harry asked.

"None." She wondered where they had gone. She wanted them, if they still existed somewhere. Maybe they were simply stuck in some pile of undeliverable mail at the magical post office.

"I left a note under your pillow, when I visited the house," Harry reminded her. "Go through the Grangers, they can get a message to me."

"I'll do that." She stood, her knees creaking at the unexpected weight, and turned to wrap her good arm around her son's shoulders. "I'm not going to disappear again. Obliviations don't work on me anymore."

"And that's worth looking into," she heard Hermione mutter to Neville. "The books I've read all say obliviation isn't easy to undo on purpose, let alone accidentally."

"It would be good to know how to not be obliviated," Neville agreed.

Harry's friends began the walk back out of the Forbidden Forest, Harry trailing along behind them. He looked back several times before passing out of sight.

She had seen him. He knew she was there for him, and she knew he was mostly okay. Now she just had to figure out the rest. The hard part was done.

Sirius had a camp, deep in the Forbidden Forest. It was little more than a ring of rocks, an old fire he relit with magic, and a hole for his dog form to curl up in, but it was enough for him to survive. Taylor had a hotel room, but she wasn't willing to keep a prisoner there, so Pettigrew was the newest addition to Sirius' sad little setup.

The obese, haggard rat of a man hanging upside-down from a tree definitely didn't improve the atmosphere. Neither did Sirius flicking rocks at him from where he sat by the fire.

"Harry is safe, and aside from Dumbledore lying to his face, is happy," she summarized, getting straight to the point. "According to Dumbledore as told to Harry, I decided I hate magic, and by extension him, and never wanted to see him again. Believe me now?"

"Do you think the old man's gone senile?" Sirius asked. It seemed he did believe her.

"I wouldn't bet on it." It wasn't a badly-executed plan. Most children would not have the resources or the will to sneak halfway across a country to search a house they had been told was empty, and none would do so after taking no action for two whole years. Bereft of actual evidence, there was nothing to stop the man from telling Harry whatever he wanted, so long as it was realistic, and Dumbledore had chosen a lie that was probably rooted in truth. Other Muggle parents likely had done what he pretended Taylor had done.

"Can't see why he would shove you aside like that, then," Sirius admitted. "Maybe he decided you're a bad influence?"

"I am not." If only because she knew to be mindful of what she taught Harry growing up, directly and by example. She could have been a very bad mother, turning him into a little soldier suspicious of absolutely everyone and willing to resort to lethal force whenever he deemed necessary. If she led by example without moderating herself, that was likely what he would have turned out to be. It probably wouldn't have helped her cope in her daily life, either.

Instead, she had made every effort to be the kind of person she wanted a child of hers to copy. Dragon was the closest real-life inspiration, unerringly kind without being naive or unintelligent. Taylor was not Dragon, and neither did she think Dragon was perfect, but she knew she had succeeded in raising her son well.

"You haven't told me to take Pettigrew down yet," Sirius remarked, oblivious to her continued musing on motherhood.

She looked over at the murderer dangling from his ankles. "I'm not certain he didn't molest the Weasleys while hiding as their rat, so you can practice stoning him until he faints," she said seriously. "Is he silenced?" She noticed that his eyes were open… and rolling madly in his flushed red face.

"He won't faint, I hit him with a bloodflow charm first," Sirius said darkly. "What's this about the Weasleys?"

"Rat sleeping on a thirteen-year-old boy's chest," she reminded him. "Presumably alone with young children all the time. With access to a wand, the obliviation charm, and who knows what else." Access to two wands, even. She'd found his holdout wand quickly enough. Even little girls like Luna Lovegood merited a thorough patdown upon being captured; Pettigrew was lucky she hadn't deemed a cavity search necessary. Sirius was also lucky she had decided against that, because if it needed to be done she would have made him do it.

"Hmm…" Sirius flicked his wand at a pebble, roughly levitating it at Pettigrew with a muttered incantation. "Do you think I stand a chance of being acquitted if I only show his dead body with the Dark Mark? I don't have one and he shouldn't have one, so that should be enough evidence." He might not have been guilty of the treachery and murders that saw him in Azkaban, but Taylor didn't doubt for a second that he was capable of such things when it came to Pettigrew.

Pettigrew began to struggle, though it got him nowhere. Neither of them paid him any mind… Save for the thousands of insects Taylor was keeping at the ready specifically to stop any budding escape attempts, should they occur. She could afford to ignore him with her physical human body; nothing within her range was truly ignored.

"Let's talk about that." She sat by the fire, warming her hand. It had begun to drizzle on her way back from the forest's edge, and she was cold to her bones. "What do you want with Harry?"

"To protect him, he's my godson," was Sirius' answer.

"Yes, but what do you want after that?" she pressed. "Keeping him in protective custody until he dies of old age can't be your entire plan."

"I want…" Sirius shrugged. "If he was in a bad home I'd want custody, but you seem alright for a terrifying dark witch. Got a house?"

"Yes." She turned to get her stump closer to the heat of the fire.

"Muggle or magical?" he asked.

"Muggle, but it's just us so we can integrate some magic." She would like a few magical defense systems, at a bare minimum. Once she knew enough to set them up herself.

"Money?" Sirius continued.

"Enough." Her vacation time was going to run out soon, though. She needed to master a form of magical transportation, but she had yet to hear of one that wasn't conspicuous or possibly life threatening to learn by extended trial and error.

"Perfect role model?" he asked.

"I've never once encouraged him to suffocate someone with live spiders," she said.

Sirius opened his mouth, paused, and then paled drastically. "Let's put that at 'no, but neither am I' and leave it there," he concluded. "He likes you, that's bloody obvious, so I don't need custody. Assuming you can get it, that is."

"That's why I'm asking what you're going for," she said, her voice heavy. "We, together, have two problems. You are a fugitive, and I am a persona non grata with the Headmaster, and by extension the Aurors and probably just the magical government overall. You show your face, you get a Dementor set on it. I show my face, I get another thorough obliviation."

"Can't believe I'm saying this, but it'll probably be easier to get me cleared," Sirius admitted. "We have the evidence." He flicked another pebble at Pettigrew. "And I know what I'm framed for. You've got no clue what Dumbledore is thinking, and no way to ask him while being sure he'll tell the truth and let you keep the memory. I'd say have Harry ask, but he already has and got an earful of lies for his trouble."

"If I confront Dumbledore," Taylor began.

"You get an obliviation, or he pulls out some excuse," Sirius finished for her. "It's difficult to say. I'm used to the old man being on my side. Sure it wasn't Malfoy or somebody else impersonating him?"

"In the Headmaster's office, multiple years in a row, without anyone catching on?" she asked. If it was just her experiences she might buy that it was an imposter, but Harry corroborated her story at every turn.

"There is that." He flicked another stone, this one bouncing off Pettigrew's forehead. "If we get me cleared, I could pretend I don't know you exist and try to get guardianship of him. I'd have some pull, as his godfather, and Dumbledore has to have something in place to stop people from investigating where Harry's been, so it's not likely they'll contact you for a custody hearing or the like. Dumbledore would also think I'm on his side, because I was before and I'm certainly not going to throw in with the Pureblood wankers, so he probably won't object."

"Which gets you Harry, but not me," Taylor pointed out.

"Harry's a kid, but he's not going to be one for that long," Sirius pointed out. "Only a few summers until he's legally an adult. Throw on a magical disguise in case someone comes over, take a new name, stay with him wherever I'm staying, and you can have custody in all but the legal documents. I'm probably better as the fun Uncle, anyway. I wasn't cut out for parenting before Azkaban."

It was informal enough to make her itch – what if Sirius decided to change the deal? – but she didn't see a better plan that got around Dumbledore without him having a chance to screw her over. Either way, they were assuming Harry would be in Hogwarts nine months of the year, where she couldn't even openly write to him.

She wasn't happy with that. "What alternatives are there to Hogwarts?" she asked.

"Don't be magic," Sirius scoffed. "Magical schooling isn't compulsory, but if he drops out now they'll snap his wand and he'll either need to get one illegally, move out of the country, or live a magicless life."

Leaving the country might work as a last resort, but she didn't like the idea of trying to move to an entirely different magical society. That could come with its own set of problems. Living without magic, on the other hand… "Is that even possible?" Powers needed to be used, but magic didn't follow the same rules and compulsions. Maybe a wizard or witch really could give up using their magic and live out their lives like that.

"Sure, but it sucks arse and nobody does it," Sirius said. "Even Muggleborn who don't plan to stay in the Wizarding world stay long enough get their OWLS so their wands aren't snapped, then just use magic when they can get away with it among the Muggles. Which Harry can't do for a few more years, at which point there's no reason to do it, because he'll only be a year or two away from it not mattering."

"Is it possible for me to enter the castle on a regular basis, using some sort of excuse?" she asked. "I can't stand the thought of leaving him there. If I could even just visit him on weekends, that would be enough. I never wanted to send him to a boarding school, schools are bad enough when you can come home at the end of the day." If it really was the only school around, maybe it had options for those who needed to learn later in life, but she didn't think she could enroll under a secret identity and have it last longer than a few days.

"Bad school experience?" Sirius asked.

"I dropped out of high school when I figured out that career criminals were nicer than my classmates," she said seriously. "Not before they put me in the hospital, though."

"Okay…" Sirius held up a finger. "I do have that. At least I graduated."

She had graduated, in fact, just not from Winslow, but she was happy to let the subject drop. Thankfully he wasn't the sort to dig into what she had said; she probably should have been more circumspect. Then again, he probably didn't think her example of career criminals was a literal one.

"But to answer your question, assuming things haven't changed since I was there, no." He shook his head. "Not happening. You'd need to replace Filch, or…"

He lifted a pebble to flick at Pettigrew, then stopped.

Taylor turned to look at Pettigrew. His eyes were closed, and he flinched at the sudden silence. She needed to remember to keep her cards close to her chest around him, too, though any plan they concocted would involve obliviating him of this discussion. There was always the chance he would play to his animal form and rat her out for something…

An idea occurred to her. "Sirius," she asked, "how hard is it–"

"To turn into an animal and pretend to be a pet?" He frowned. "I was thinking about that. But your bloodline curse…"

"I can learn some things." What her power could and could not do seemed to follow a pattern, but not one she fully understood. Turning into an animal didn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility.

"Being an animagus is difficult and time-consuming, most people can't do it or don't want to put in the effort." He shrugged his shoulders. "If you can do it, you might not be an animal that could pose as a pet. If you could and you were a cat or something, then apparently all you have to do is get a student to claim you and nobody will suspect a thing." He threw the pebble at Pettigrew.

"Can't hurt to look into." She didn't think they had any better options, assuming she wasn't willing to assassinate Dumbledore and cut the Gordian knot that way. He was a bastard and responsible for a lot of grief, but he was the sort of bastard whose death would have consequences. Turning into an animal might work as a less messy long-term plan. "In the meantime, do you have anywhere to go that isn't this forest? Somewhere you can keep a prisoner." They didn't need to lurk in the Forbidden Forest anymore.

"I was going to say no, but then you said prisoner and I was reminded that my family has a townhouse," Sirius said thoughtfully. "And believe it or not, it has actual prison cells."

Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was grim, ugly, and gave Taylor a headache the moment she stepped inside. The magic protecting it from being seen had her power radiating surprise and consternation, though as far as she could tell it was just another password-protected Stranger effect. The magic inside…

It did not make her confident when her power suggested she be cautious. Even the man-eating, uncontrollable magic spiders in the forest didn't provoke that kind of response.

"Off to the cells, traitor rat," Sirius said dully. "Merlin, I hate this place… Don't touch anything if you want to live!" he added as he disappeared through one of the cobweb-laden doorways.

Taylor cautiously walked down the hall, spreading her personal supply of flies and other insects through the building. If there were any magical bugs in residence her power had yet to add them to her control. There were no mundane bugs to be found beyond those she brought with her, which was troubling. A place as decrepit as this ought to be crawling with them.

The townhouse, which was what it was, magical or not, was big. It had dozens of rooms, hallways, a truly disgusting line of hunting trophies of some sort of humanoid with big ears–

And a living humanoid with big ears, shuffling about in a little cubby behind the ancient kitchen. Taylor already had her wand out, but she clutched it tightly as her insects gave her a gradually improving impression of the potential squatter. It was small, perhaps tall enough to reach her waist if it stood up straight. Long, droopy ears dangled to either side of a peculiarly ugly face with big eyes. It muttered in a deep monotone, and wore nothing but a scraggly piece of fabric that barely concealed the fact that it was male. As she watched through her insects it shuffled around with a stooped back, muttering semi-coherently about a 'Mistress' and 'someone at the door'. That it – he – could talk made her think he wasn't just some ugly humanoid animal, despite the hunting trophies.

Sirius returned, brushing silvery powder from his hands, and spread his arms wide. "Behold the glory of my barmy family," he proclaimed, gesturing to the dark wallpaper, ugly candle sconces, and general decrepitude of the hallway.

"Sirius, does your family have a small, possibly insane servant?" Taylor asked. "Or should we be ready to fight off a squatter?" The little person was straightening up, grumbling to himself in a continuous monotone.

"Oh, bugger, Kreacher." He dragged his palm down his face.

The little person popped out of existence behind the kitchen and into existence in the hallway. "Kreacher does not want to be here," he croaked.

"Neither do I," Sirius muttered. "Kreacher, you obey me now, right?"

"Kreacher obeys Mistress…" he huffed a low sigh. "And Master blood traitor."

"Okay, no, I'm not doing this right now." Sirius scowled at the little thing. "You… Don't leave this building, don't speak to anyone except me, don't let anyone know I'm here or allow them to find out if you can stop them… Just don't do anything except cleaning this miserable house."

"Master blood traitor has seen better days," Kreacher croaked. "Kreacher hopes he does not see many more." He popped back out of existence.

"I hate this place," Sirius complained.

Down the hall, a pair of curtains swept open of their own accord. A painting of a truly ugly old woman exploded into motion and noise, screaming madly, endless epithets spewing out of her flat face.

Taylor was beginning to hate this place, too.

Taylor's vacation from her job at the library ended well before Sirius managed to make Grimmauld Place fit for human habitation, and it was with very little regret that she left him to handle it on his own, in favor of the clean, well-lit and headache free library.

Her fellow librarians welcomed her back with open arms, and for once she was able to consciously answer their questions about Harry. He was well, she had gone up to visit him at his school, something they were only now allowing. He had interesting friends, and he was doing well in his classes – though that was purely conjecture as Harry hadn't mentioned his academic performance at all.

Her coworkers aside, her job was… tolerable. She had thought fondly of it while she was mapping out Dementor routes and dealing with Black, but even though she could go through a day without gritting her teeth through a headache, she found that part of her now missed the magical world while she wasn't in it. For all the hardship she had endured at the business end of Dumbledore's wand, the majority of the magical world was a fascinating mystery with many potential advantages for the taking if she only spent the time exploring and finding the things most worth learning. Time spent at the library, reshelving books and upgrading the technical infrastructure, felt like time wasted just to earn enough money to continue paying rent.

It might, she reflected, soon be time for a change in occupation. Once she had the Harry situation fully sorted out, or once something made her current job untenable instead of merely unsatisfying. She didn't have time right now to figure out what else she might like to do on top of everything else going on in her life.

Thankfully, while she spent her weekdays fiddling with old-fashioned computer systems and negotiating new book purchases, magic was never very far away. Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was within driving distance, and the evenings and weekends were hers to do with as she pleased.

At first she just helped Sirius make it habitable; it would be their secure base of operations, now that they didn't need to stake out Hogwarts, and if their plans for him taking custody of Harry panned out he might have to live there for a time. Then, of course, there was planning for clearing his name. Taylor was not content to just toss Pettigrew to the nearest Auror and trust that justice would take its course. She had been burned far too often, on multiple worlds no less, to leave it to chance. The same applied to her backup plan of becoming an animagus, which was also developed in the weeks that followed.

"This," Sirius had said one weekend, presenting her with a glass of yellow snot-like liquid, "is a spirit journey potion."

"What does it do?" she asked, setting the glass down on the kitchen table. Said table squeaked, and not in the 'wood rubbing on wood' way, so she hit it with a stupefy just to be safe.

"Some people get visions, some just lose their balance," Sirius explained, ignoring the byplay of the anomalously noisy piece of furniture, which continued to squeak despite her stunning spell leaving a scuff mark on one of its legs. "The main purpose is to get high and have visions, but a little-known side effect is that if you throw it up while thinking about being an animagus, it'll show you what you're most likely to be."

"That sounds arcane and unreliable even by the standards of magic," she said.

"It's bordering on Divination, so yes." He crossed his arms. "Four of us tried it. The only one who got a different animal was me, and it was only off in predicting the breed of dog. There are better potions, but this one gets Muggles high just like wizards, so I figure it's most likely to work on you."

"When you put it like that…" They'd long since passed the point of mutual distrust, and he would die a painful death no matter how fast-acting a poison he used if he did betray her, so she wasn't too worried about this being some sort of ploy. She took the cup and downed the contents before she could second-guess herself.

"Please have crazy visions, please have crazy visions," Sirius said as they waited.

Taylor felt the sudden urge to sit down before she faceplanted on the kitchen counter. She braced herself against the tabletop with her hand and took a deep breath. "Dizziness."

"Darn." He pointed his wand at her. "Now don't hex me for this, you know you need to throw up."

"Do it." He cast, and she choked out the potion, along with her breakfast and the remnants of her last dinner. The potion was clearly discernible from the more mundane stomach contents, and the yellow puddle formed out of it was a recognizable silhouette, that of a…

"Praying mantis?" Sirius said. "That's rare. Really small things are. Not bad, though!"

"No." A thousand times no. She wiped her lips on the sleeve of her robe. "Easily killed, even by accident. Prey to all sorts of common animals. Slow. Bad senses. Highly visible."

Most importantly, it was an insect. She had no idea what the ramifications of turning into a bug while having a power that totally and utterly controlled all bugs might be. Possibly nothing, but it was also possible if she did that she would be handing her power complete control of her body until it chose to turn her back. If it ever did turn her back. They were on relatively good terms now, and her power was being cooperative, but she would never take that chance. She didn't trust it, she just knew that their interests currently aligned. There was a big difference.

"Glad we ruled this out right away, then," Sirius said. "The actual process takes months."

"I can't be an animagus." It was a shame, she liked the idea of being able to turn into an animal and roam unnoticed… It had certainly served Sirius and Pettigrew quite well.

"No, not if you don't want to be a praying mantis." He waggled his eyebrows. "Afraid of being an ugly bug, are we? Would you do it if you were a butterfly?"

"I can terrorize you solely with butterflies, if you want," she offered. "I've done it before."

"The scary part is I believe you," he said with a shudder. "If you can't be an animagus, your options for being an animal are very limited. Human transfiguration reverts quickly, and you can't do it to yourself. You'd need a curse, and a reversible one at that. It would have to be dark, too, else it would be well-known."

"You have a library of dark books." One infested with book-spirits, but that was apparently a minor matter. She really needed to get a sense of what constituted a real threat in the magical world; she would have thought spirits would rank highly, but apparently the books themselves were more dangerous by far.

"I'll look for something without horrible side-effects." He pointed an accusatory finger at her. "Don't go pawing through them on your own! You might count as a Muggle to some of the enchantments."

"I'll use bugs, don't worry."

"Bugs might count as Muggles too," Sirius said thoughtfully. "You know what, go ahead with the bugs. I've always wanted to see what some of those traps do."

Harry always liked watching the mail owls, but he watched them so hard the week after reuniting with Taylor that on three separate occasions fellow Hufflepuffs asked him if he was waiting for mail, or looking to get one as a familiar.

Hermione, sitting at the Ravenclaw table on the other side of the hall, had set up a signal she could flash him if she got mail. Thumbs up for normal mail, thumbs down if his mum had included something. He may have precipitated that development by finding excuses to go see her every morning to check.

Nine days after meeting with Taylor, he got the long-awaited thumbs down. That afternoon, she passed over a simple folded sheet of notebook paper. "My parents and I are pretty sure nobody is looking in our mail at all, so they just sent her letter without converting it to a code or anything," Hermione explained. "They wrote me about her, too. She left the letter in their mailbox with a cover letter introducing herself."

"That sounds like mum…" No lingering where she might be spotted. She could do a good impression of a spy from the movies when she felt like it.

"They wanted to meet her, not get mail from her," Hermione laughed. "Tell her that when you write her back."

Harry took his letter down to his room to read.

'Harry,' it read. 'I hope this reaches you safely. I am working on ways to see you. Until then (and it will be soon, I promise), I have some questions. How are you doing for money? I know I gave you some when you left for your first year, but I can't imagine you have any left now. I can send some with the next letter. What do you think of your house? Are the houses in Hogwarts like they were described in the book? Do you know any Slytherins personally, like you do Ravenclaws and Gryffindors? Do you have any friends in Hufflepuff? Do you have a favorite subject? Favorite teacher? Least favorite of either? Rivals? Enemies?'

His mum really wrote differently than she talked. He could only imagine that list of questions delivered in a breathless rush, like Hermione might ask if she was in a hurry, but his mum never talked like that.

'I want to wait until I see you to ask,' the letter continued, 'but I know that might not be as soon as either of us hopes. Until then, have fun at school! I might not like Dumbledore because of what he did (I was perfectly willing to like him prior to that), but I can tell you love it there. It's magic, I understand why. Maybe you can show me what you know sometime soon. Love, mum.'

He pulled out his pen and paper to write a reply immediately. For once, he knew she would be getting his letter.

'Mum,' he wrote, 'Hermione says her parents want to meet you. They're probably not being watched. If you want to be sneaky, maybe arrange to meet them at the store or something.'

'I still have a little money. There isn't anything to buy at Hogwarts, and Neville's gran paid for my school supplies over the summers. I only really spend it on birthday and Christmas presents for my friends. I wouldn't say no to some more, though.'

'The houses here are like they were described in the book, but more… important? There are rivalries and a lot of the time I think it's all a bit stupid. Slytherin has a lot of bigots. Gryffindor has a lot of shouty jerks who always pull out their wands whenever someone looks at them funny. Ravenclaw has snooty condescending arses. Hufflepuff spreads gossip like wildfire. Sometimes those things matter more than who is supposed to be smart or brave or cunning, and sometimes it really doesn't matter at all what house someone is in. I don't have any real friends in Slytherin or Hufflepuff, but that's not because they're worse. I just don't see many Slytherins, and everyone in Hufflepuff is friendly, but I wouldn't say any of them are my friends, specifically. I didn't really seek out my friends. It just happened. It hasn't happened for anyone in those two houses yet.'

He tapped his pen on the paper. Really, he didn't have any close friends in Hufflepuff because everyone was already vaguely friendly. Nobody stood out to him, and nobody had approached him, or vice versa. Hermione, Neville, Ginny… Hermione had come to him and they had a common interest. Neville had hosted him over the summer. Ginny had unwillingly threatened his life, and then been saved by him. Those things set them apart from everyone else.

That seemed like something he could explain better in person. His mum would understand. She didn't have… any close friends, as far as he knew, but she had told him about several childhood friends back in America.

'My favorite subject… Can I say none, but I love learning things they don't teach in class? Flying was fun, but that only lasted a few weeks in my first year. History of Magic, but only because Hermione and I come up with our own study plans and ignore Binns. He teaches the same thing every year. I learned an exorcism spell looking up Japanese ghosts and it saved Ginny's life…'

He went on about some of his favorite spells and interesting things he had read for a while, going over things he had put in previous letters which she never got to read.

'As for enemies or rivals? I'm in Hufflepuff, nobody considers us enemies. Sheep to be ignored or led, maybe. That's mostly the Slytherins and a few Gryffindors, though. Draco Malfoy is a foul-mouthed bigot who slings insults around, but he's Ronald Weasley's mortal enemy, not mine. I think he would be a lot worse if he wasn't so preoccupied with putting Ron down. They both go at it on a daily basis. Professor Snape might be my enemy. He hates me. I think it's a Potter thing. He's had it out for me since my first day, Hermione can attest to that. But he just insults me and my work, and I'm not bad at potions, so I can ignore him. Mostly.'

He scowled at the paper. Snape was an arse, but after three years his attitude was old hat. Harry just sat through Potions and then did his best to forget the experience immediately after. His extracurricular studying on the subject was enough to keep his grades up regardless of Snape's attitude or critical grading.

'My grades (I know you were wondering) have been very good so far. I would include my report card from the end of last term, but I don't know where I put my copy. Duplicates are supposed to be mailed to you, as my parent, but I don't think you got any of them. I have been getting high grades in every class. Really. Hermione, Ginny, and I are ahead in everything. Neville isn't quite so far ahead, but he is a Herbology genius.'

He could probably go on at length about his friends, but he was running out of space on the page and he wanted to keep his first letter short so it would be easy to hide among Hermione's voluminous return letter.

'I have questions for you too, but I want to wait and ask them. Will you be able to see me before winter break? If Dumbledore holds to his pattern, he will force me to stay here. I don't know if the Dementors will be gone by then. Probably not if Black remains at large. What's the plan for that? Love, Harry.'

"Got it." Sirius let a thick-cover book thump down on the table. It squeaked again.

Taylor leaned down to look at the table from underneath, despite having already gone over it with the fine-tooth comb known as termites. She would have bet money that freezing the damn thing would kill whatever kept squeaking, but apparently not. "A better mousetrap?" she asked.

"No, the curse you need." Sirius flipped the book open as she straightened up. "Here." He poked a looping illustration of a bound man shifting into a donkey. "Minus Quam Humano."

The illustration certainly made it look like a dark curse; the man's face was frozen in a rictus of agony, and his donkey form shuddered, cruelly constricted by the already tight ropes tying him down.

"What's it do?" she asked, seeing that the writing wasn't in English.

"Cast it, turns the target into an animal of your choice," he explained, pulling out the other chair to sit down across from her. "It's a nasty one, and the transformation hurts. Less if you're not tied up, as I understand it, but still painful. You'll be saddled with some of the animal's instincts, but less than an animagus would develop, and nothing permanent. The curse lasts indefinitely."

"So I'd be stuck as an animal until… when?" It might last indefinitely, but Sirius knew she didn't want to be a cat or the like for the rest of her life. "Is there some arcane bullshit requirement to turn back?"

"Nah, you just have to get the countercurse cast on you… By the same person who cast the curse." He grimaced at the book, began to turn the page, then apparently thought better of it. "There's another method to turn back without the original caster, but it's not tenable unless you find a few virgins you'd like to sacrifice. This one's got a history of being used to fuck with rival dark families, and they developed the most sadistic possible way to undo it, to the point where the curse fell out of favor because it racked up too high a bodycount for a curse meant to not kill the victim."

"Any side effects? Reasons I can't cast it and then cast the countercurse whenever I want?" It was dark because it hurt and because it was meant to imprison someone in an animal form. Those were relatively benign as far as reasons to be qualified as dark went. The only one suffering would be herself.

"That's the thing, you can't cast it on yourself." He met her gaze with a downright serious stare. "Think about it. Say you managed to cast it on yourself. You're an animal. What next?"

"I cast the countercurse. Without a wand, probably without vocal cords, and maybe without magic." She could see how that would theoretically be a problem.

"Definitely without magic, so that wouldn't work." He shook his head. "This isn't internal magic like being an Animagus, so you can't cast it when you're not yourself. Since the curse needs the same caster to undo it… If you did turn yourself, you'd need to take the bodycount method to turn back, or never turn back at all. I can cast it on you."

She felt a pulse of determination from her power. Her power, which was actually the 'individual' casting her spells, if one spoke of where the magic originated. She had retained her power even when turned into a monster by Lab Rat during the final battle. She wasn't convinced she would lose her magic as an animal, so long as she kept her mind. If she kept her magic and mastered wandlessly casting the countercurse…

"I think that might not apply to me," she mused. "We'll test it in stages, so I don't get stuck and require virgins."

"Good, because I certainly don't qualify," Sirius said with a grin. "Could you sacrifice yourself?"

"Thirteen-year-old son," she reminded him.

"I was outside the room when Lily gave birth," he countered. "Unless the Muggles have some mind-bogglingly weird adoption rituals, I know he didn't come out of you, and James certainly didn't put him in you."

"Still not a virgin." She flicked her wand and mouthed 'aguamenti', spraying him with a jet of cold water. "Get your mind out of the gutter."

"I am so tempted to keep you in my pocket and introduce you as my trouser snake," Sirius mused.

Taylor wanted to tell him exactly what would happen if he did that, but it would have to wait. She was currently busy slithering around the dusty floor of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, in the form of a black two-foot-long common Adder.

The choice of a snake was a simple one; a quirk of the curse ensured that she kept the same number of limbs, meaning she was an easily recognizable oddity as a cat, completely useless as an owl, and mostly useless as a toad. All three of the common Hogwarts pets ruled out, Sirius suggested an unofficial pet often kept by Slytherins, with no limbs to be conspicuously missing.

The snake form was alien, but it had just enough in the way of instincts that it wasn't unbearably so. She could slither quickly enough to startle Sirius, her bite was venomous, and she could smell with her tongue.

"How's the magic doing?" he asked, clearly skeptical. "I think I should be worried about all the spiders you keep in here now that you're not able to control them."

Taylor hissed at him. Her power radiated smug, and once again it and she were in complete agreement. Sirius made it so satisfying to prove him wrong; she was pretty sure he did it on purpose to spur her on.

A quartet of flies airbombed him, each one carrying a small spider to prove it wasn't a coincidence. "Ew! Okay!" He swatted them off. "That's one Merlin-forsaken weird blood curse you've got going on. Don't know how you knew it would work like this…"

It worked because her magic was not hers, and thus no matter what form she took, so long as her power could connect to her, magic was available by proxy. By the same reasoning, she didn't think she needed to worry about whether she would be able to master the countercurse wordlessly and wandlessly. Her power already did spells without either. They were just more stressful for her without her special wand.

That said, 'as easy as normal' implied a few weeks of concentrated agony to practice the spell to exhaustion, and probably more to do it wordlessly and wandlessly, so she wasn't ready to infiltrate Hogwarts just yet.

Soon, though. She had a goal to work towards.

She also, at the current moment, had a Sirius to toy with, and a need to get accustomed to a snake body.

"Hey," he said, raising his wand defensively… "Don't get any funny ideas." Either he was more perceptive than he let on, or he knew he'd been asking for retaliation.

She arranged her insects in the air in front of him, forming an easily recognizable pair of words.

'Trouser Snake?'

He ran.

Winter break was fast approaching, and the letters from Taylor forwarded through the Grangers had slowed. Not stopped; Taylor knew better than to do that. But Harry got the impression she was keeping something from him, and choosing to write less often rather than outright lying about whatever it was.

He hoped the secret she was keeping was a pleasant surprise of some sort. He suspected it was some kind of bad news. After two and a half years worrying about her, it was harder than he had expected to stop worrying.

The Dementors around the castle weren't helping matters. There was some ruckus about a Quidditch game getting interrupted by a veritable flood of the things. Hufflepuff gossip had their numbers somewhere between three and a thousand. Neville, the only one of Harry's friends who had bothered attending, said there were at least a hundred. Nobody was hurt, but the Dementor patrol routes had changed, and they were closer to the castle, now. Because that made sense.

Dumbledore made an announcement in the Great Hall about not going out and holding fast until the Ministry deemed fit to remove the Dementors. There was talk of Sirius Black being sighted in France, though his mum's next letter had said there was no truth to such rumors.

Most of the other students were hunkering down, riding out the last few damp, gloomy weeks between them and a cheerful vacation. Harry would be among them…

But he didn't know whether he would be leaving the castle over the break. If his mum came through and tricked Dumbledore somehow he might be able to go, but she had yet to mention any solid plans.

He knew he was getting his hopes up. He also didn't care. At worst, he would have exactly as melancholy a Christmas as he had in the previous two years, with the added comfort that at least he knew his mum was alive and well. There was no harm in hoping.

"It would be no bother," Hermione insisted one evening as they walked the halls of Hogwarts, not going anywhere in particular. Nobody was allowed outside without adult supervision, so a lot of the students had taken to roaming the castle when the need to go somewhere struck. "My parents would love to have you, and you know who else could be there."

"Dumbledore never gives me a choice," Harry objected, once again. "I'll ask him, but he'll say no. Especially with Black still a fugitive."

"I really do think that's unfair, you know," Hermione remarked. "A double standard. You're not Harry Potter, why would Black care? I'm not Harry Potter either, but I get to go home."

"If the resemblance is enough to get every other adult who meets me to make the mistake, Black will probably mistake me for him too." Theoretically. If Black really was the crazy murderer people thought he was. Harry was still on the fence about that, but he thought his mum could take care of herself either way. Especially with magic.

"There are charms to make you look different," Hermione insisted. They passed two Slytherins headed for the library. "We could give you brown hair, make it curly, and claim you were my cousin. Black wouldn't look twice, and you could come stay with us."

"I'll tell Dumbledore you offered." And he would get shut down, but he appreciated the thought.

A student in Ravenclaw robes approached them. Luna Lovegood, the girl Hermione said was always flustering the other Ravenclaws with nonsensical comments. She had that airy, unconcerned look on her face that Harry remembered from the last time he had spoken to her. He supposed it might be her default expression, but he stopped to speak with her anyway.

"Bert," Luna greeted him. "I thought I might find you here. I am staying for break, don't you know? My father is in the middle of remodeling our home and he wrote saying the heating charms are all infested with Nargles."

"I'm sorry, that sounds… annoying?" Harry guessed, not knowing what Nargles were or how they infested charms in the first place.

"He says they almost cooked him alive last week," Luna remarked. "I thought, since I would be staying here, that we should be friends."

Hermione let out a little snort, which Harry chose to interpret as amusement rather than annoyance.

"Okay?" he said.

"So I want to give you a Christmas present," Luna continued. "I will give it now." She held her left arm out.

Harry jerked back as a black snake head the size of his fist poked out from Luna's sleeve. Piercingly dark eyes stood out on a shiny scaled face, and a red tongue flicked in his direction.

"I hope you don't take this the wrong way," the snake said in perfect english, her voice instantly recognizable. "Luna, any time now would be good…"

Harry's jaw dropped.

"Her name is Hissy," Luna said blithely. "A friend mailed her to me. You do not have a familiar yet, do you?"

"Luna, that's a snake," Hermione spluttered. "You– those aren't even allowed!"

Harry's head whipped around so fast he cricked his neck. "Hermione, is that the thing you care about right now?" he demanded. He wanted to know why the snake was talking with his mum's voice!

"I don't care about the rules when they're stupid, but you'll just have her confiscated if anyone sees her," Hermione objected. "Besides, do you even like snakes?"

"I think he will like me," the snake hiss-laughed.

"I like this one!" Harry said incredulously. "Luna, thank you so much!" He reached out to the snake, and it – was it his mum, or was she just speaking through it somehow? – slithered out of Luna's sleeve to coil around his arm.

"That worked out better than I thought it would," the snake hissed. "Now, how do I let you know I am not just a snake?"

Harry peered down at his mother. "You just did," he told her.

"Oh!" Luna smiled brightly. "You can talk to her! I didn't know that."

"Interesting…" his mother – the snake version of her – said thoughtfully.

Hermione's mouth worked soundlessly.

Harry was beginning to think he was missing something rather important.

Taylor had decided that Luna Lovegood was not a secret mastermind hiding behind feigned oddities. Her mystery creatures and unusual remarks were not code for anything. She was not a seer, or if she was one it was completely unconnected to the mannerisms that set her apart from her peers.

No, Luna was none of those things. She was just a flighty, scatterbrained twelve-year-old girl with a penchant for whimsy, and an innocent desire to be helpful. Taylor had taken advantage of that several times in the last few months, to great success each time. Luna had provided her with robes and advice, and played the messenger twice, the second time obligingly gifting Harry with a 'pet snake' to provide Taylor with a solid alibi. Not once had Luna asked for anything in return.

Taylor didn't know yet how she was going to pay the odd little girl back, but she fully intended to do her a few good turns in recompense for her help. Giving her an excuse to hang around with Harry and his friends, which any child would be lucky to have in Taylor's entirely unbiased opinion, was not nearly enough to balance the scales. She would have to come up with something else.

In the meantime, she was a snake in Hogwarts. An unsanctioned 'pet', which was a cover story that provided her with exactly as much leeway as Pettigrew had enjoyed, being a rat. Not a single professor knew what she was, and of the students only Harry's friends and Luna knew who she really was. Given Dumbledore was in the castle, it was vital they keep it that way.

"What about Ron?" had been Harry's question to Ginny, after he had gathered his friends and Luna at what was apparently their usual minorly warded table in the library. An extra chair had been pulled up for Luna, and Taylor was on the table itself, the subject of many surprised looks. "I know you can hear her, Ginny, and apparently I can too. We should make sure we know who else could overhear."

"Why's that involve Ron?" Neville asked. "He's not the heir of Slytherin after all."

"I heard through the Hufflepuff grapevine that he claimed he spoke to the snake during the dueling club fiasco," Harry explained.

"He was trying to protect me," Ginny sighed. "He can't actually speak to snakes, but he saw me do it and jumped on the chance to say it was him so nobody suspected me. That's why he stayed away from me and caused so much ruckus after the dueling club, he told me he was doing his best to make sure everybody thought it was him or no Weasley at all. I can only speak it now because of… you know. Ron can't. Weasleys aren't parselmouths."

"Harry must have inherited the talent," Neville offered. "Didn't you say your mum was…" He trailed off, looking down at Taylor. She was used to seeing things from a very low vantage point, thanks to her bugs, but it still unnerved her slightly to know her actual body was so small and low to the ground. "Sorry, miss Hebert."

"Hissy," Luna interjected.

"Hissy when I am a snake," Taylor agreed, though only Harry and Ginny understood her. The Map was still in play in the castle, in the hands of yet more Weasleys if Pettigrew's terrified confessions were to be believed, and Sirius had told her that the only way to avoid her real name showing up was to adopt the name of an alter-ego so thoroughly that the identification magic made a distinction between her snake and human selves, due to how it had been created. Thus, the 'Animagus name' tradition Sirius and his friends had come up with, that she was now continuing with the uninspired name of 'Hissy'.

"If there is a bloodline curse, then there is a bloodline to be cursed," Hermione interjected, apparently following Neville's aborted line of reasoning. "A bloodline that can speak Parseltongue. That would explain you, Harry."

It would, if Harry was actually descended from her, and if she was actually magical or stood any chance of having magical ancestors, neither of which was the case. But it was good enough to satisfy the curiosity of a child who was certain she had figured something out, so Taylor wasn't worried for her secrets.

Harry might have been worried for his secrets, if he had any he was keeping from her, but she wasn't inclined to hover over him every second of every day. That was a quick way to get him to resent her, and impractical besides. She couldn't handle being a snake for more than a few days at a time. Also, she still had a job to do on the weekdays.

Instead of being a full-time pet like Pettigrew, she instead chose to be a weekend visitor that Harry would claim, if asked, spent most of her time slithering around the castle doing the things snakes liked to do and only occasionally returned to him for attention. In reality she snuck into the castle by the tunnels every Friday night and left every Sunday night by the same method. It was a good compromise, giving her enough time to reconnect with him while not turning her into a creepy stalker or voyeur of teenage drama out of pure boredom.

Following the same line of reasoning that kept her from crossing lines best left untouched, she didn't sleep in his bed. Or his dorm, at that. Her first action upon parting with Harry that first night had been to slither around to get her bearings and look for a suitable snake-sized hideout to spend the nights in. She quickly settled on a narrow ledge up near the ceiling of the Hogwarts' kitchens.

As it turned out, the warm, good-smelling space also doubled as an observation post from which she could watch her newest enemies.

The house elves.

They were a slave race – oh, the wizards might protest otherwise, but anyone who uttered the phrase 'they like to serve' or similar was only further incriminating whatever biotinker equivelent had devised the elves in the first place – focused to the point of fixation on being useful, staying out of sight, and keeping things clean. This did not coexist well with Taylor's need to keep a steady supply of insects within Hogwarts' walls. Her bugs were only safe hidden in cracks in the walls and the occasional unused classroom. If they came out into the open, which they had to in order to be useful, elves would vanish them with a single snap of the fingers. This was only limited by the elvish need to not be seen by the students they served, and the constant interruption of more important tasks. Unless, of course, the students commented on the bugs, in which case the elves became bug-seeking missiles the instant nobody was looking.

Taylor ended up doing most of her exploring and investigating the old-fashioned way, and bringing in new supplies of bugs every weekend to refresh the castle after the week without her guidance saw almost every single insect in the castle eliminated. Bugs were a last resort and a luxury in Hogwarts.

Bug-based gripes aside, she did very much like the castle. She had worried about bad feelings arising from essentially being back in a school after more than a decade well shot of educational institutions, but Hogwarts was as much like Winslow as a mythical Cerberus was a ratty street mongrel. All the asshole students and teachers in the world couldn't make the castle itself any less mystical and enjoyable to explore, she was only ever there when classes weren't in session, and she as a snake enjoyed the instinctive disinterest and deference of everyone immediately assuming she was an illicit pet if they saw her at all. Even better, snakes were the thematic property of Slytherin house, the group of students most likely to otherwise contemplate doing nasty things to the pets of others.

She had thought such stereotyping was just that, stereotyping, but the Malfoy boy really did his best to live up to the hype, and the other students in his house contributed to the image in their own ways. They venerated bigotry and backstabbing, and while she could imagine Lisa enjoying ripping through their juvenile machinations, it was not what she would consider a healthy environment for a child. Not when it was a sanctioned part of the school!

Overall she approved of Hogwarts, but the house system and the rampantly biased Professors – not just Snape – did push a few of her buttons. They could do away with the houses and the school would be better for it. Slytherin wasn't the only cancerous growth; her son's explanation of the houses' bad qualities was, in her opinion, right on the mark.

Such suggestions for improving the state of British magical education were little more than dissatisfied thoughts circling around in her head, though. She was here for her son, and changing the country's education system was second to making sure Harry, personally, was safe and happy. It could wait until he graduated. She would need a project or two to keep herself busy once he grew up, and the magical world was rife with the kind of corruption she despised, without any of the external stressors that would make truly changing things a Sisyphean task. In the meantime, she had her nonexistent hand full reconnecting with her son.

She watched as he studied with his friends, wondering when he had become so studious. She listened as he tossed increasingly bawdy jokes back and forth with Ginny, hissing with amusement when they both remembered she was in the room with them after a particularly off-color exchange. She coiled up in a spiral comfortably close to the fire as Harry and a few other Hufflepuffs sprawled out on the floor of their common room, playing Wizarding games with entirely too many explosions. She slithered among magical plants in the greenhouses with Harry and Neville's guidance, quickly learning what not to go near. She listened thoughtfully, wishing she could take notes, as Hermione and Ginny bounced magical theories back and forth with startling eloquence, to Harry and Neville's amazed confusion. She listened to Luna telling the group about magical creatures that might or might not exist, and approved wholeheartedly as the odd little girl was gradually integrated into their friendship.

She was there, and it was good, exactly what the both of them needed after being forcefully separated for so long. For her to be present, not rushing to get things done, not working towards something bigger. Just… there. In his life.

She satisfied her need for plotting and working towards bigger goals with Sirius, whenever she could find the time. The last few pieces of their plan for Pettigrew fell into place a few weeks into the spring term of the school year.

Sirius knew he wasn't right in the head. Azkaban did that to people, and he was no exception. But he was getting better. He didn't talk to himself without meaning too anymore, and his nightmares were of the normal 'wake up screaming' variety, not the kind that shredded the wallpaper with outbursts of accidental magic. He could pass for normal around other people. The tremors in his hands didn't make him drop his wand anymore.

That last improvement, funnily enough, had been Taylor's final prerequisite for their plan to get him exonerated. 'You shouldn't risk your only chance at exoneration if it's likely you'll drop your wand at the worst possible moment,' she had argued every time he said there was no need to wait. 'If it can go wrong, assume it will. You aren't walking out into the line of fire with an obvious disability that is going away on its own. Wait.'

He had waited. Taylor didn't scare him – however much she might think otherwise, he had grown up around a whole family dripping in the dark arts and she rated as a five out of ten on that scale – but he did want to stay on her good side. She was Harry's mum, after all.

Sirius was a big believer in being able to pick one's family, whatever stuck-up Pureblood breeding tapestries might claim. She'd picked Harry, done the work to properly stake her claim by single-handedly – ha – raising him, and he loved her. Matter closed. There was room for a godfather Padfoot in there, and perhaps in time some respect for Harry's other two deceased parents, but only if Sirius kept his foot out of his mouth and the literal snake out of his proverbial trousers.

That joke bordered on masochistic; so tempting, and yet certain to end in well-deserved pain, specifically his. He would need to stock some antivenom before he brought it back. In the meantime, best to let Taylor think she had scared it out of him. The look on her face when he whipped it out at the perfect moment would be glorious for the second or two it took her to move from shock to revenge.

He grinned as he straightened his robes, looked at himself in the mirror one last time, and confirmed that the glamor was up. It wasn't his finest work, but it was adequate; a bland, dark-skinned face with a pencil mustache and way too many wrinkles, perched atop a neck that was far too long, giving him the appearance of a constipated foreign nobleman. The acting to go with it was snobbish and not something a prison escapee should be able to pull off after roughing it and eating bugs for six months. Nobody would suspect a thing, so long as he resisted scratching at the abominable itch the glamor induced in his nose hairs.

He turned, gave an empty Grimmauld Place the finger on general principle, and pinched some Floo powder out of the vase by the fireplace. "Leaky Cauldron," he called out.

Step one of Taylor's master plan to exonerate him with so much flair that he couldn't possibly be given the 'Old Yeller' treatment, whatever that meant: Go to Diagon Alley.

He made his way out to the open street, walking stiffly. The Alley was busy, but not so busy that there were too many people for their plan. He kept his eyes open, though, looking for potential complications. There was an Auror nearby, speaking to an older man with a cane about something, so he couldn't do anything quite yet.

Sirius pretended to stop and consider a window display of talking bowler hats. Then he actually did consider the hats. They looked to be enchanted to hold a 'conversation' about the owner's dapper looks, amateur work really, he'd figured that out in fifth year so he could charm a certain witch's knickers with some choice comments… The charms were easily alterable, even considering there were probably a few token anti-tampering spells placed over the rest.

His persona wouldn't look very good in a hat, but his persona didn't look very good anyway, and a bit of de-snobbing would be nice. Sirius ducked into the store and dropped two Galleons on an overpriced talking hat.

He was in the middle of re-enchanting it out in the street when something exploded nearby. The Auror talking to the old man reacted quickly, twisting to apparate away and investigate the disturbance.

Step two: Taylor set off some preplanned distractions throughout the Alley. Nobody would be hurt, but a few cauldrons might need to be replaced before the day was done.

Sirius hurriedly finished enchanting his hat, slinging the modified spells back into place with haphazard abandon, and set it at a jaunty angle on his head. "Trigger word is 'Black' and only I can say it," he muttered.

"You got it," the hat confirmed, its voice different and now oddly familiar, though he couldn't place it. Probably an effect of him personally redoing the speech charms.

That bit of business attended to, he continued to watch the crowd. His cue should be coming along any moment now…

A portly wizard stumbled out of Knockturn Alley, shoving people aside as he ran away. Some of the passersby who got a good look at his face squinted and turned to watch him go. His robes were covered in soot, and he looked confused, like he had no idea how he had come to be in Diagon Alley.

That was probably because his last coherent memory was fleeing Sirius outside platform nine and three-quarters. It was the easiest way to remove all of the mildly incriminating things Pettigrew had witnessed since then; subject-oriented obliviation took a fine touch, but time-oriented obliviation just required the mental sledgehammer.

Step three: Reintroduce Pettigrew to the Wizarding world.

"You!" Sirius yelled, pitching his voice to be older and much frailer than it should be. He set off at a brisk walk. "Oy! Peter!"

Pettigrew looked up. "Do I know you?" he asked. He even stopped running, like he actually thought this might be something good! Sirius had to hold back a vicious grin.

"Pettigrew, old chap, everyone knows you!" Sirius proclaimed. He was ten long steps away. Eight. Six. And closing.

Pettigrew had stopped entirely, and his face was gradually draining of color as the murmurs of the crowd grew louder, many repeating his name. "No, you're mistaken," he got out, squeaking like the rat he really was.

"Order of Merlin recipient Peter Pettigrew, I know your face," Sirius proclaimed grandly, sweeping up to clap the shell-shocked wizard on the shoulder. "Saw you in the papers back then. Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"I got better," Pettigrew choked out.

"Oh, Peter," Sirius let his voice drop and let go of the posh upper-class accent for a moment. He grasped Pettigrew's other shoulder in a seemingly friendly embrace. "Do you realize that you're absolutely buggered now?" he whispered.

Peter jerked away from him, instantly recognizing Sirius' real voice, and did the stupidest thing he possibly could; he tried to apparate away.

Step five, or step zero or negative ten depending on how one counted them: stick a nifty little anti-apparition doohickey in Peter's robes before releasing him in Diagon Alley. It wasn't all that complicated a magical item; just a little glass ball with a potion inside that really didn't like being spun around just as a magical charge attempted to encompass it, like what might happen when a wizard or witch intended to apparate. Not sold for that purpose, most people didn't think creatively, but he'd used them to great effect pranking the older Slytherins trying to sneak away during Hogsmeade weekends… Good times. Almost as good as this.

Instead of the portly wizard twisting on his heel and disappearing, he twisted and his backside promptly exploded, scorching his robes and ruining his concentration just before he could get to the part of apparition that made splinching oneself possible. He sprawled forward, his robes a smoldering wreck from the waist down, but his skin and flesh mostly unharmed. It wouldn't do to have him seriously injured and pitiable.

"You've got a lot of nerve, showing your face!" Sirius boomed, drawing his wand.

"You're Sirius Black!" Pettigrew screamed, finally latching onto the obvious method of turning the crowd against his assailant.

"Black?" Sirius asked, advancing on Pettigrew as he scrambled to his feet and frantically checked his robe pockets for his wand, which he would find was sadly not present. He probably wouldn't have managed to apparate without it, as he was a mediocre wizard at best, but luckily even a failed attempt could set off the potion, so it didn't matter whether he was already doomed to fail.

"His heart's black," Sirius' hat chimed in. "Does that count?"

"Not now, hat," Sirius chided it. "Pettigrew. What are you doing alive?"

"Looks to me like he faked his death," Sirius' hat suggested, quite loudly.

Sirius tilted his head, feigning thoughtfulness. "You know, you may be right," he agreed. The hat had been a perfect addition to this plan; so much better than monologuing it all himself! "But why?"

"Heroes don't hide," his hat answered. "And what was all that about Muggles dying in the escape? And them finding a finger?"

"You're Sirius Black!" Pettigrew again claimed, attempting to back away, into the crowd. Without a wand and with buttocks too scorched to properly run, he didn't really have any other way out.

"Could someone kindly hold the bugger still?" Sirius requested. "We're deducing things here."

It was at this point that Taylor had predicted Sirius' little play would fall apart if he even got this far; she said that nobody in the crowd would step up, and that the accusations wouldn't seem plausible enough. She expected it, and had crafted several alternative approaches based on exactly how badly it fell apart.

Sirius had argued that she was overestimating the average wizard's willingness to think for himself, and underestimating how much appearances affected credibility. Here he was, a posh foreigner who was just flawed enough to not seem disingenuously perfect, and now with a talking hat playing the foil in a delightfully interesting but ultimately respectable persona. Then there was Pettigrew; disheveled, having burst a burning ball of fire off his buttocks when he tried to apparate, and accusing said posh man of being a dangerous lunatic he obviously was not.

A burly witch who happened to be standing nearby socked Pettigrew in the back of the head and grabbed him in a headlock. "Got him, sir. Go on."

Sirius could have kissed her; the plan would work whether or not he was revealed as Sirius Black or the crowd seemed to be on Pettigrew's side, but this version of the plan was so much more fun! "Yes, thank you. Hat?"

"I reckon something is fishy," his hat declared. "Pull up that sleeve of his."

Pettigrew tried to knock his head back into the witch's face, but she just tilted her head back and popped him in the jaw with her free arm. Someone else reached forward and yanked up Pettigrew's sleeve.

The Dark Mark stared balefully out at the crowd, and Pettigrew's chances of getting out of this disappeared like a little puff of smoke from the back of his robes.

"Take a gander at that," Sirius said loudly, wishing he had a pipe to dramatically suck on. "Faked his death, got a Dark Mark… Looks like this was an old-fashioned frame-up to me."

"Or maybe a dispute among criminals," his hat countered. "Does Black have a Dark Mark?"

"Don't know, old chap," Sirius admitted. "But it certainly doesn't seem right that Pettigrew does."

Pettigrew opened his mouth to object, but unfortunately for him the witch who had him in a headlock took that as another sign of resistance and thumped him in the back of the head, knocking the last vestiges of consciousness from him. Real salt of the earth, she was. He ought to get her Floo address.

"I say someone ought to drag this blighter to the nearest authority and pump him full of Veritaserum," Sirius suggested. "Ask him about Black. What was it Black was convicted for?"

"Being You-Know-Who's right hand man," his hat reminded him.

Sirius hid his flinch flawlessly. He hadn't enchanted the hat to say that! Someone in the crowd was supposed to speak up! But the show had to go on, and it was as good a setup as any. "Rings a bell, but I thought he also betrayed the Potters… Better ask Pettigrew about that, something is fishy here."

The seeds of doubt thoroughly sown and his luck almost certainly spent, Sirius doffed his hat at the witch holding Pettigrew. "I think my work is done here, you fine folks can handle the rest," he suggested.

"We wouldn't say no to a tip, though," his hat commented.

"Certainly we would, I am a gentleman of fine stature!" Sirius retorted, his ad-libbing skills rusty but thankfully still up to the task.

"I need a new case of hat polish," the hat whined as he put it back on.

"Someone go get the Aurors," the burly woman commanded.

Sirius smiled rakishly and sauntered away, thinking furiously.

The plan had gone perfectly… But what the hell had happened with the hat?

As it turned out, anti-eavesdropping wards were only effective against ears outside the ward. Taylor could hear the discussion going on between Senior Auror Dawlish and Director Amelia Bones despite several layered privacy wards and two floors of Ministry separating them, all thanks to the insects she had secreted in a corner of Bones' office, brought in on Dawlish's robes.

"Please fill out form thirty next," a clerk told Taylor, handing her a form titled 'Animagus Registration: Transformation Method'. She took it and began inking in the many boxes, writing out her name for the thirtieth time since starting the paperwork. Animagus registration was a brilliant excuse to keep her in the Ministry for hours on end. If she needed more time, she just had to mess up a single letter, and the entire form would need to be redone.

In the meantime, Amelia Bones was smiling tightly at her subordinate. "No," she said calmly, "we will not be providing Pettigrew with anything beyond what the letter of the law requires. Most certainly not visitors, not even the Minister. He must be questioned first, and the flight risk he poses properly assessed. Even then, I expect his Animagus form will have him locked away in solitary to prevent escape attempts." She'd found the 'Animagi for Beginners' pamphlet in the rat's robe pocket and thought to ask the obvious question, then. Good.

"The Minister was very insistent, and I have had several Wizengamot members requesting to see Pettigrew too," Dawlish said nervously. "As well as the Chief Warlock." Taylor could almost smell the toadying through her bugs. And was that Dumbledore on the list of people trying to get to Pettigrew? Curious.

"No to all of them," Amelia said serenely. "We will do this by the books. The public demands no less. And tell the Minister when you see him that the Kiss On Sight order for Black had better be repealed before a Dementor catches Black and Kisses away the Minister's chances of reelection. By tomorrow the entire country will be anticipating this trial."

"He won't like that," Dawlish objected.

"He'll like a lynch mob even less," Amelia retorted. "It's the right thing to do, besides."

Dawlish nodded and left her office, presumably off to deliver the news to the Minister.

"It's lucky that what's right and what's politically expedient happen to be aligned just this once," Amelia mused. "Almost too lucky…"

Taylor filled out the last line of form thirty, signing with a tired flourish, and handed the paper back to the Ministry worker. "Next form?"

"That was the last form," the clerk said. "You are registering as a…" He paged through her submitted paperwork. His eyebrows rose. "Moose?"

"Yes." She got the benefits of registering as an animagus that way, chief among them the beginning of a paper trail establishing her as a law-abiding witch, but with none of the drawbacks of doing so with what she considered her 'real' form. Nothing was more dangerous than intentionally misleading tactical information.

"Please prepare to demonstrate your form and pose for a picture," the clerk said as he stood. He had a little old-fashioned camera. "Back up."

Taylor pushed her seat aside and stepped back, mentally preparing to grit her teeth. Animagus transformations were not painful… But she wasn't really an animagus, and the curse she used did hurt. She couldn't let it show.

She chanted the incantation in her head, brandished her wand, and imagined a moose. Her power and the curse did the rest, forcefully crushing and stretching her to a new form, with all of the pain those descriptions implied. Thankfully, turning into an animal looked the same from the outside no matter what method one used.

The clerk's tired eyes widened slightly, but by the time he put the camera to his face he looked dead inside again. "Hold still."

Taylor posed for the picture, balancing awkwardly on three legs. Not only was she a big, ungainly moose with a huge rack of ugly horns on her head, she was missing a leg. It was impossible to have a more conspicuous animagus form. Thankfully, she could be any animal, not just this Moose. Her unique condition wasn't always a severe disadvantage; it let her use this spell like nobody else could.

"Change back," the clerk ordered.

She silently evoked the countercurse, and her power dutifully restored her. It was harder to hide her pain going the other way, but she covered it by grimacing and holding her neck. "Going from having a rack to not having one is really uncomfortable," she explained.

For some reason that made the clerk blush. She didn't figure it out until after she had left his office.

"They're not that small!" she growled to herself once she realized what, exactly, she had said.

She wasn't going to say a word to Sirius about this. He had enough material without her feeding the flames. All he needed to know was what she'd spied on upstairs. He'd get his fair trial.

When Taylor visited Harry that weekend, she noticed a framed copy of the Daily Prophet sitting by his bedside. On the front page, a spindly dark-skinned man tipped his bowler hat at a woman holding Pettigrew in a headlock. The hat's brim moved, and the man laughed and said something before putting it back on.

'Peter Pettigrew Alive, Bearing Dark Mark!' the headline screamed.

Sirius looked patently ridiculous with the hat, and he was insufferable about having pulled off the whole ruse without a hitch, but he had good reason to be smug about it. Things had gone perfectly. He wasn't going to turn himself in for the trial until public pressure gave the Minister a few sleepless nights and a date was scheduled, but it seemed inevitable that the truth would come out. If Pettigrew disappeared or died mysteriously before then, there would be a riot, and Sirius would probably get his retrial anyway.

For some reason Sirius had been muttering and sticking his hand up the hat's brim when she left to go to Hogwarts that afternoon, and the hat had been snarking back at him, but that was just Sirius. She presumed the hat was the magical equivalent of a sock puppet.

"Hey, Hissy," Harry said fondly. He held his arm out, and she took the offer to ride along, coiling herself up around his forearm and bicep, hidden beneath the sleeve of his robe. "Good week?"

"Very good," she replied as they ventured out into the castle proper, passing through the Hufflepuff common room on the way. "You?"

"Some Potter trouble, with people coming out of the woodwork to ask me about Black and Pettigrew," Harry said, "but that's nothing."

Ah, Potter trouble. The catch-all term Harry used for the problems that last name, and him being associated with it, caused. Taylor understood his desire not to associate himself with the name a lot better now that she had heard, at length, his list of complaints about all the annoyances and outright dangers the name managed to convey to him even with him refusing it at every opportunity.

"Here comes some more Potter trouble now," Harry muttered. Taylor poked her head out his sleeve to see a scruffy-looking man coming toward them.

"Harry, I've been looking for you," Lupin said. "Do you have a moment?"

"Not really, my friends are waiting for me," Harry said blandly.

"You do have a moment," Lupin said more firmly. "You've seen the newspapers?"

"Yeah?" Harry shrugged. "So?" Taylor had never seen passive-aggressive Harry before. She was fascinated.

"Black was–" Lupin began.

"The bastard time-traveling child of James and Lily Potter, probably," Harry interrupted. "If it has to do with them I don't care. Does it?"

"Five points from Hufflepuff for interrupting and disrespecting a professor," Lupin snapped. "It does, in fact, have to do with them."

"Okay. Good to know he is their child, or their best friend, or whatever. I'll be sure to let him know I'm not Harry Potter if I see him." Harry's shoulders tensed. "I do actually have somewhere to be, Professor."

"Just… No. Nevermind. Go." Lupin growled.

Harry walked away, his back stiff and his arm tense. He quickly relaxed once he found his friends and they started up a game of wizard trivia, but the encounter stayed with Taylor all day, and when she found herself at loose ends she decided to pay some attention to the staff. Specifically, she knew that they had a staff meeting every Saturday afternoon…

She slithered her way into the old classroom they used for their meetings just as the boring administrative talk was wrapping up. McGonagall, as deputy Headmistress, headed up all of that, and even her light Scottish brogue couldn't make it any more interesting to listen to.

Dumbledore wasn't there, more's the pity. Taylor didn't dare slither her way up to his office alone, so she saw very little of the man who had kidnapped her son. It was hard to know her enemy when she hardly ever saw him.

"That's all we need to discuss about the budget today," McGonagall concluded as Taylor slithered into a good listening spot well out of sight of the assembled professors. "Remember to alert Sinistra of any more Punching Telescope incidents before you destroy the telescope, and we won't have to replace any more before the Weasleys graduate. Are there any students who need discussing?"

"I'd like to bring up Harry Potter," Lupin said, and Taylor knew she had made the right decision to come and eavesdrop on this particular day. Then again, Lupin had the air of a man at the end of his patience earlier in the day, so it made sense he would want to vent now.

"Let's not discuss the brat," Snape drawled.

"Severus, hold your tongue," Sprout huffed. "Harry has done nothing to deserve your disdain. He's the best student in his year, academically, and he never causes any trouble."

"Miss Granger has him beat when you consider the other houses, but I think neither of them would be doing quite so well alone," Flitwick chimed in.

"I want to discuss why you all just call him Harry, except for Snape," Lupin clarified. "I've tried to get through to him, but he has his back up over his own last name."

"Didn't you get a well-deserved scolding from Harry on that very topic?" Sprout asked, her voice deceptively mild. "I remember saying that you should consider yourself told and leave it alone."

"Yes, but I still don't understand." Lupin's breathing was heavy, and he sounded angry. "Why do you let him do this? It's disrespectful."

"On this one thing we agree," Snape said coldly.

"It's not a matter of letting him, Remus," Professor Babbling, Harry's teacher in Runes if Taylor remembered correctly, answered. "It's simply the right thing to do. He asked that I call him by the name he chose. I thought about it, decided that there was no harm in it and that I would rather have his respect than his resentment, and chose to do so. How is the opposite approach working out for you and Snape?"

"The fact is," Flitwick added before Snape or Lupin could respond, "that there is nothing wrong with a boy wanting to use the last name of his adoptive mother. I've never met Mrs. Hebert, which is understandable given she is a Muggle, but if Harry cares that much about her I think it's rather touching."

"Not to mention it gets him out of the spotlight he doesn't seem to care for," Sprout added.

"We, as Professors, chose to not make a scene out of a name," McGonagall concluded. "It's up to you how you interact with Harry, Remus, but you assured me at the start of the year that it wouldn't be a problem."

"I did not expect him to hate his actual parents," Remus said bluntly. "That is a problem. His Boggart is a problem. He–"

"I hope you are not about to tell us about his Boggart," Sprout cut in. "You held Harry back to let him face his alone for a reason."

"It was not what I expected," Remus said stiffly.

"Let the brat have his little fears," Severus said. "I know I don't want to hear about them." Robes rustled, and though Taylor couldn't properly see them from her hiding place she suspected he had leaned forward. "If you speak about the Boggarts of the students you hold back to grant privacy, you will not be teaching here next week. My Slytherins take that privacy very seriously. Please give me an excuse to sic their parents on you."

"Professor Lupin was not about to violate that trust," McGonagall declared. "Let's move on. Remus, you need to stop pushing Harry about James and Lily. Let him have his space. All you are doing is making him resent you."

Lupin muttered something too quiet for Taylor to hear, and then Flitwick asked McGonagall if the Professors needed to be on the lookout for Ronald Weasley's missing rat or not, and the conversation drifted away from interesting topics, leaving Taylor with a much more comprehensive understanding of exactly how the staff saw her son.

She would have to ask Sirius why Snape, of all people, cared so much about Harry 'disrespecting' the Potters. From what she'd gathered, Snape ought to be celebrating someone else joining him in dancing on James Potter's grave. And perhaps while she was at it, she would bring up the werewolf's obsession with the same topic.

Harry was her son. She wouldn't have minded overmuch if he showed an interest in his birth parents, only the unique circumstances of her receiving him had stopped her from telling him he was adopted long before magic came into their lives. But he had chosen to deny them so long as people denied her presence in his life, and as such, she was going to make sure that didn't come with any backlash.

Pettigrew's trial was set for the fifth of July, and an amnesty was offered for Sirius Black if he turned himself in to stand trial. The Dementor's Kiss was officially off the table, and a return to Azkaban was unofficially very unlikely. It seemed the preliminary interrogation of Pettigrew had him singing loudly enough that the Ministry could read the writing on the wall.

One consequence of that date being set, besides the obvious one of it also being the date of Sirius' upcoming exoneration, was that Taylor knew for certain nothing about Harry's custody situation could change until after that day. As such, Harry would be at Dumbledore's mercy for one more summer. For the last summer, if anything went vaguely to plan during and after the trial.

Taylor was very curious to see Dumbledore's responses to Harry's apparently annual interrogation, so she tagged along with Harry when he went up to the Headmaster's office after the end of term exams.

"Good morning, Headmaster," Harry said respectfully. "Have you met my familiar? I brought her with me today."

"I was unaware you had found a familiar," Dumbledore said, his voice as grandfatherly and gentle as Taylor remembered. Knowing what he had done, it made her itch to bite him, which she attributed to background snake instincts. "Where is she?"

Taylor took that as her cue to poke her head out from Harry's sleeve. Sirius had sworn up and down that there was no immediately obvious way of recognizing an animagus or human transfigured into an animal, and this was the trial by fire. If Dumbledore immediately knew something was off about her, then it was better to know now than to be surprised wandering the castle at night, alone.

"Ah, a snake…" Dumbledore smiled. "An unusual choice for a Hufflepuff, perhaps, but one should make efforts to avoid fitting too neatly to any one label. Does she have a name?"

"Hissy," Harry said. "Because she hisses a lot. Luna gave her to me for Christmas this year."

"Quite the gift," Dumbledore said. "Do be careful with her. Her behavior may not match what you expect, and paying close attention to what she does will make your time together easier on the both of you."

"Sir…" Harry paused. "Are we talking about Hissy or Luna?"

Dumbledore chuckled and stroked his beard. "Perhaps both," he said. "For your familiar, so long as you keep her fed and ensure she does not dine on pet toads, you may keep her with you in the castle. I would suggest getting a suitable terrarium for her over the summer. Miss Lovegood need not be discouraged from eating toads. Probably."

"About the summer," Harry said. "Has there been no change with my mother?"

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore frowned. "I would have told you if there had been. There has been no significant change."

Taylor supposed that was technically true, if one only observed her at home. She wondered if she was being watched when she was in her house. Not by anyone within a few square blocks of her, if her constant bug presence in the area was to be believed. Compared to magical environments her Muggle neighborhood was an insect stronghold. In the absence of magical defenses, such a clear and thorough awareness of the surrounding area let her sleep at night.

"But what if–" Harry began.

"I would suggest that you not dwell on that which cannot be changed," Dumbledore interjected. "I find that when I am thinking too much about something I ought not to, learning something new helps me. Is there anything I can answer for you? Questions that you have not found answers to in the library?"

Taylor had not heard many more blatant changes of subject. She felt insulted on Harry's behalf. He wasn't that easily distracted!

"The use of one of my many mysterious devices here in this office, perhaps?" Dumbledore offered. "I do not often explain them, simply because nobody bothers to ask."

"Uh… Give me a second…" Harry said, to all outward appearances completely distracted as he looked around the room. Taylor lacked a face to palm or a hand to palm it with, so she settled for knocking a few flies together and hissing in exasperated amusement. "I saw it last time I was here, and the time before that, but I haven't found any reference to it anywhere else, and even Luna doesn't know."

"Yes, my boy?" Dumbledore asked.

"What's a black unicorn?" Harry asked.

Taylor slithered back out onto his hand in the ensuing silence. She couldn't see any black unicorns, but she could see the stricken expression on Dumbledore's face.

"Of all things…" he murmured. His wizened old hands clenched, and he moved them out of sight. "Harry… Have you seen a black unicorn?" he asked. Quietly. Carefully.

Somehow, an innocent question had turned this little dance of denial and ignorance into something imminently dangerous. Taylor could feel it in the air. A gathering charge. The way Dumbledore's hands were hidden, the way Harry shifted his ams closer to himself, covering her up as he crossed them… She scented the air, marshaled the few bugs she had in the walls, and prepared for sudden violence, though she knew not why it might come.

"On your book's cover, sir," Harry said cautiously. He could feel the looming danger, too. "Nowhere else. Should I have?"

"No." Dumbledore sat back, his eyes fixed on Harry. There was no mirth or levity in those deceptive old eyes, not now. "No, you should not have," he repeated.

"I just wondered, since it seemed like something that would be in the books right next to unicorns," Harry continued. "There's nothing, though, not in the library."

"There would not be," Dumbledore said gravely. "Not even in the restricted section, though you should not be looking there in any case."

Harry schooled his features into an expression of innocence, but Taylor knew better. Not three weeks ago she bore witness to the successful conclusion of a scheme hatched between Hermione and Ginny on that very subject. Ginny knew how the books were protected and what to do to get around the protections, and Hermione wanted a way in prepared and tested in case of urgent future need. They'd broken through with hardly any trouble at all, and all of Harry's friends had spent a few evenings sneaking interesting books out. Even Luna took a few to squirrel away in her dorm room. Nothing that looked overly sinister, Taylor had checked, but things she fully understood keeping from the less mature and responsible majority of the student body.

"I have the only mention of them here, in my office," Dumbledore continued, apparently unaware of the rule-breaking Harry's friends had committed. "It is, I believe, the only existing copy of that particular book. Do not worry about black unicorns, Harry. They are not something that has ever naturally walked this earth."

Those were some loaded qualifiers Dumbledore probably thought he was sneaking past Harry. Taylor wanted that book, though she doubted she could get it.

"I wasn't worried, I was curious." Harry tensed. "Should I have been worried?"

"You?" Dumbledore slumped back in his chair, an odd expression coming across his features too fast to really be seen. In its place was something akin to regret. "No. Not you, Harry. My apologies. I do not believe you would knowingly have anything to do with such things. Anyone willingly involved with them… No. Let us speak no more of this."

The remnants of the dangerous mood lifted, tension palpably fleeing the cramped office. Dumbledore placed his gnarled old wand on the desk, within reach but not in his hand, and rubbed at his forehead. "We were speaking of your mother. And on that matter…"

"I just want to see her," Harry insisted.

"I know, Harry," Dumbledore sighed. "Truly, I do. This situation does not please me. But for the time being, you must accept that you cannot see her. If ever that changes, I will know and I will take you to her immediately, but we must respect her wishes like we would those of any other person. Her more so, as she is a Muggle and we are wizards, so the balance of power falls in our favor by default."

The hypocrisy, to Taylor, all but leaked out of Dumbledore's every pore. If she were to take him at his word, he would seem to be the polar opposite of the man who had obliviated her and stolen her child, then lied to him for years on end. Where was his respect for her choices when he did those things?

This man was inscrutable. And infuriating. She had learned nothing, less than nothing, about his intentions throughout the course of this visit. Worse, something had almost caused him to attack Harry… or to fear being attacked himself?

The only thing she was sure of that she wasn't before was that she did not want to take Dumbledore on in a straight fight, or find herself at his mercy. He was dangerous.

"I cannot permit you to see your mother, not at present," Dumbledore said. "I can, however, offer you a little more of a choice as to how you spend your summer. I understand you are on very good terms with Ginevra Weasley, and as such I made inquiries. The Weasleys would be happy to have you this summer. Alternatively, Madam Longbottom says her home remains open to you."

This wasn't something Taylor had expected, and truthfully she didn't know if she had a preference. It was probably best to leave this choice up to Harry. So long as he was away from Dumbledore, either was fine with her.

"Neville and his Gran are nice," Harry mused, "and I like the greenhouses… But I've never been to see the Weasleys' home before, and Ginny told me about the village they live near. I think I'd like to go stay with the Weasleys this summer."

"I'll let them know," Dumbledore assured him. "We will keep to your using the Floo, to ensure you have a safe trip. I hope you can enjoy your summer and put this unpleasant business behind you."

"I hope I can too," Harry agreed.

Taylor knew Harry would be able to put it behind him. By this time next year, Harry's location over the summer wouldn't be up to Dumbledore at all. She and Sirius were going to make sure of that.

Now, more than ever, it was important that Dumbledore be avoided. She couldn't effectively counter someone whose motives and goals were so completely opaque to her. She might have found Harry, and found a way to be with him, but the struggle to bring him home was far from over.

Chapter Text

Harry got a very good idea of how his summer at the Burrow was going to go from the first five minutes after he stepped through the Floo, Taylor wrapped securely over his shoulders to tag along since she said she couldn't actually use the Floo herself. Ginny led the way, but he still stumbled when he stepped out; Floo travel was a disorienting mystery to him.

"Harry!" He was immediately accosted by bright lights, colors, and a double-sided embrace from the two older boys who had immediately preceded him and Ginny. "Mind the step!"

They took him by the shoulders, narrowly missing grabbing Taylor too. "Don't kick the gnomes!" one said loudly.

"The broom shed is off-limits without supervision!' the other added.

"Don't go in the attic!"

"Don't ask what happens if it gets windy out!"

"Avoid mum at all costs when she has a green rag in her hands."

"Dad's shed is a Muggle paradise, if you like that sort of thing ask him to show you around. Bring supplies, it will be a three-day expedition before you can get him to stop asking questions."

"Candy left out in the open is for anyone to take, don't be shy!"

"If you see a Lovegood in the forest at night, give them a mushroom and run–"

"Fred! George!" Harry recognized Mrs. Weasley's voice from the Howler she sent Ron in first year. "What do you think you are doing?"

"Being prats." One of the twins winced and let go, and Ginny came into view. "George, off him before I kick you too."

Harry tried his best to match the name to the face of the twin who was apprehensive instead of dramatically hopping around on one leg and lamenting his grievous injuries, but he doubted he would be able to tell them apart, going forward.

The twins backed away from him, but he was given no time to recover or look at the Weasleys' home, because he was immediately swept up in an entirely unexpected embrace. "We're thrilled to have you over for the summer, Harry," Mrs. Weasley said as she let him go, now somewhat more winded than he had been a minute ago. "Don't mind the twins, they'll behave. You'll be bunking with Ronald, I hope you don't mind, and I've taken the liberty of sending Arthur out for a snake cage, he should be back any moment now–"

A door slammed elsewhere in the house, and Harry was mercifully abandoned for a moment as Molly Weasley rushed away. Fred and George had disappeared, while Ron and Percy Weasley were nowhere to be seen, so it was just him and Ginny in a nice, homey living room.

Ginny grimaced apologetically. "Sorry about that."

"I… don't think I've seen your mother's face yet?" he said, dazed and confused. "Just her chest." Which he had been squished against.

"Some families are much more… touchy… than others," Taylor supplied.

"What she said," Ginny agreed. "Fair warning, Ron and I have convinced her you're obviously not Harry Potter, but she's going to comment on your scar and the resemblance at least three times before she gets over it. She does that for everything she doesn't understand. Come on, I'll show you Ron's room."

Harry clung to the shred of normalcy that was Ginny, hurriedly picking up his trunk and following her up a narrow set of stairs. He could hear a commotion elsewhere in the house, a distant babble of many voices. "Is it… always like this?" he asked. The Hufflepuff common room was rowdy sometimes, but only sometimes. He had, for some reason, never quite thought about what nine Weasleys in an enclosed space might be like.

"Yes, but we won't be spending much time in the house," Ginny told him. "Mum will stick us with chores if we do. You too, she's a big believer in everyone pitching in, without magic. Think of this as the place you only come back to for free food and a bed whenever you need it."

That sounded somewhat rude to the Weasleys, but Harry was willing to follow Ginny's lead, as this was her home.

"Ron's room." Ginny declared, thumping her elbow on one of the many doors lining the upstairs hallway at irregular intervals. "Oy, prat, you have two seconds, put it away!"

True to her word, she shoved the door open two seconds later. Ron was sitting on his bed, pulling things out of his trunk. "What did you think I had out?" he asked suspiciously. "Hey, Harry."

"Prank products," Ginny lied, her neck flushing red. Harry had a good idea what she had actually meant, but he supposed he wouldn't want to explain it to Ron, either. "Harry's bunking with you, don't mess with his stuff or I'll hex you."

"You and what magic?" Ron retorted. "Mum's already got my wand, she'll take yours too if she catches you casting anything."

"Watch." Ginny plucked a Sickle off Ron's dresser – "Oy!" he objected – and held it in the palm of her hand. "There are advantages to studying ahead," she said ominously, closing her hand around the sickle and waving her other hand over her knuckles in a gesture that was, to Harry, oddly familiar. "Evanesco!" She flicked her hand open, revealing a distinct lack of coin.

Ron's eyes bulged. "Blimey!" he yelled. "That's an OWL-level spell! And you didn't use a wand!"

"Yes, so play nice," she warned.

Ron's eyes narrowed. "Hey… You owe me a sickle!"

"Here." Ginny reached into her robes and pulled out a single sickle. A suspiciously identical sickle, not that Ron noticed. "Take mine. You got a space for the snake cage mum mentioned?"

"We're not going to need a cage," Harry objected. He was not putting his mum, snake or not, into any form of cage.

"He could use Scabbers' old cage," Ron said, pointing to an abandoned cage perched atop a stack of books in the corner. "Don't know why he needs a new one for a snake."

Harry was doubly sure that his mum was not going to use the perverted rat Death Eater's cage.

Someone came up the stairs – each step creaked loudly, providing ample warning – and Harry heard a jolly "Hello!" behind him. He turned to see Arthur Weasley, a tall man who bore a striking resemblance to all of his sons, carrying a length of metal pipe. "I'm here with the snake cage," he said. "The Muggle told me he puts snakes in these all the time. It's quite small, so it should be no trouble to find somewhere for it in Ron's room."

Harry, Ginny, and Ron all looked dubiously at the length of PVC piping.

"Dad," Ron began, "are you sure that's for snakes to live in?"

"The Muggle said it was," Arthur said. "I asked for something to put snakes in, and he asked me if I meant to buy a snake, and I said no, I needed the thing he puts snakes into. So he sold me this pipe."

"Was this Muggle a plumber, by any chance?" Taylor hissed. Harry repeated the question.

"Yes, but he had something for snakes," Arthur said. He held the length of pipe up to look down it. "It makes sense, doesn't it? They're long and tube-like, they would have long and tube-like homes…"

"Hissy is an outdoor snake," Harry said, "so thanks, but I'll just…" He held his hands out for the pipe. Arthur gave it to him. "Hold onto this? In case she wants it. But she's probably going to make a den somewhere out in the forest."

"Yes, you do that. Welcome to the Burrow, Harry!" Arthur ruffled his hair, then left. Downstairs, something exploded.

"Fred Weasley, you give me that candy right this instant! Don't you go pranking our guest! George Weasley, I see you sneaking those plates, don't you think I don't!"

"And just think, Harry," Ginny said sarcastically, raising her voice to be heard over her mother's rant. "This is only seven ninths of the usual Weasley household. Bill and Charlie are off doing their own things."

"You'll get used to it once your ears adjust," Ron said.

The Weasleys were, in Taylor's opinion, a perfectly acceptable family. Chaotic, with far too much shouting and craziness to go around a rather alarmingly cobbled-together house, but where it counted they were family. Their days were filled with arguments and pranks and yelling, but none of it ever really went beyond scolding and minor grudges. At the end of the day, they all went to sleep under the same roof, ready to do it all over again with varying levels of enthusiasm.

She would not claim their way of living was completely alien to her; having insects in every home in a several block radius back on Earth Bet had exposed her to any number of different family dynamics. It was, however, almost antithetical to how she preferred to live. The noise, the constant petty arguments, everyone knocking elbows at the table and in the yard and everywhere on the property… She was happy to be a weekend snake, not a full-time resident, and she could tell she wasn't the only one who was glad to be able to pick and choose how much Weasley family time she was privy to.

Percy, the oldest brother still living at home, was in and out at odd hours, talking about an internship involving, as best Taylor could tell, either the government or a particularly lawyer-driven cauldron-making company. Fred and George, for all that they precipitated most of the madness, held court in their room some days, making like reclusive mad scientists until their mother inevitably came up to check on them. Ronald could be seen flying the family brooms all hours of the day, running through impractical-looking Quidditch drills with a fervor bordering on religious. Ginny often went out into the woods. Arthur Weasley had his shed of random Muggle appliances that he clearly did not fully understand, but treasured regardless. Molly Weasley had the kitchen as her domain.

They all had their retreats, their little fiefdoms the others by unspoken agreement tried not to barge into if at all possible. Few of them actually used those retreats with any degree of regularity, but they did exist. It was an interesting, subtle little balance on otherwise only vaguely-controlled chaos.

Taylor had plenty of time to observe the Weasleys over the weekends and come to these conclusions, but her main focus was Harry. This, just like her weekend visits over the school year, was precious time with him. Precious enough to enlist Sirius in apparating her to the edge of their property and back every weekend, though he had no problem providing such help. Today, especially, she was grateful Sirius was cooperative.

Well, relatively cooperative. She didn't have to bribe or extort him.

"Crack of dawn, crack of my arse," Sirius grumbled as he stumbled downstairs, wearing a robe of the bath variety, not the wizarding kind. "It's not even four!"

"Arthur Weasley asked about where I come from when I come to Harry," Taylor explained again, only mildly sympathetic. It was not as if Sirius didn't have early warning that she would need his assistance now. "I need to be 'seen' slithering out of a gnome hole so he stops asking questions. He gets up very early and goes out to his shed in… half an hour or so." The man did love fiddling with burnt-out lightbulbs. He'd even managed to get the filament out of one without shattering it, though she had no idea why or how he had done so.

"Aren't gnomes nasty, territorial buggers who would fight a snake if they saw one?" Sirius asked with a yawn. "Hold up a tic, gotta be fully awake to apparate." He smacked himself in the face, hard. "There."

"They were territorial." Until their most convenient hole caught a bad case of plague-level insect infestation. The little creatures weren't smart enough to do anything about that, so they abandoned the hole. Which was good; she would feel bad about killing them, even in self-defense. They were eerily humanoid in appearance, even if they were obviously stupider than the average parrot.

Long gone were the stressful situations where she would willingly fill someone's eyes with maggots or the like. Now, when all that was at stake was a hole she only wanted for the summer to keep up appearances, she was more than willing to be merciful.

They left Grimmauld Place by the front door, stepped out of the anti-apparition wards, and Sirius took her arm. "On one, one," he said, and they immediately twisted out of existence with no further warning, spinning back into place on the edge of a treeline far from London.

It said a lot about how Taylor felt about Sirius that not only did she trust him to teleport her, her first reaction to a sudden teleportation was to smack him, not pull in every insect to dogpile him. "Warning!" she barked.

"Sun!" he retorted. "Sirius no do good when tired."

He twisted away with a muted crack of displaced air.

"It's not like I'm a morning person either," she complained to the empty forest. One painful transformation later, she was ready to 'happen across' Arthur Weasley, then wait for Harry. From there, it was up to him what they did for the day, though if she had to guess it would involve at least one Weasley.

"Hissy," Harry called out a few hours later. Taylor slithered up to him and laid herself out straight so he could easily pick her up. She was lucky familiars were expected to be more intelligent than the average animal; half the things she did that would otherwise be construed as anomalous were instead part of her disguise. It certainly went a long way towards explaining how Pettigrew got away with hiding in plain sight for eleven years.

"Hermione is coming over today, Mrs. Weasley just sent the owl back telling her she could," Harry informed her. "Her parents and the Weasleys have been owling back and forth all week. There's going to be a sort of magical cook-out. Mr. Weasley says me and Hermione can help him figure out his Muggle grill…"

They would be lucky if it was actually any kind of grill at all, if Taylor had the measure of Mr. Weasley. Still, a magical cook-out sounded interesting. She didn't know much about how magic affected the preparation of food, despite sleeping in the Hogwarts kitchen every weekend for several months. Elf cooking might as well have been conjuring, for all she could follow the many, many food teleportations and bright flashes of light.

Harry took her inside, sidestepped a suspicious plate of cookies sitting on the floor in the middle of the hallway, and went to help Mrs. Weasley with the food prep. Taylor got the sense that he had volunteered for the job, and that Mrs. Weasley was pleased with that, because she hit him with a bubblehead charm before setting him to cut onions. The twins, when she wrangled them into the kitchen, did not receive any such protection.

The hours slipped away, between food preparation, avoiding mayhem, and generally hanging around. Taylor had to slither off of Harry at one point, when Percy Weasley sat Harry down to regale him about cauldron thickness legislation. Harry shot her a dirty look when Percy wasn't looking, for escaping when he could not, but really… Harry would have a right to complain once he had several more decades of experience. He was young and unused to the droning torture that was a boring, inescapable monologue from a bureaucrat. For her, it was either escape or see if Percy Weasley could drone effectively with a snake winding around his torso to look him in the eye.

She went to find Ginny and had her cause a distraction to get Harry out only a few minutes later, so all was forgiven. Then it was noon, Mrs. Weasley was conjuring a table from thin air out in the yard, Mr. Weasley was hauling out an actual, semi-new charcoal grill from his shed, and Hermione came in through the floo.

Followed by her parents.

Her Muggle parents, who had no trouble at all using the Floo on their own.

"Say, why's your snake smacking its head on the wall?" Arthur Weasley asked Harry.

"So… much… trouble…" Taylor hissed. "Would it kill wizards to say these things? To write them in their books? Would it have killed me to ask someone? Sirius, an Auror, a random idiot in the street? Why did I assume I needed my own magic to teleport using fire? I should have known better than to assume!"

"I don't know?" Harry said. He picked her up by the torso – she was all torso, but he lifted near the middle of her body – and held her to his chest.

"I am an absolute, bumbling idiot too stuck-up to ask for help," Taylor said bitterly.

"She's probably just hot," Harry offered, unable to relay exactly what he was hearing. 'My familiar is mad she didn't know she could use the Floo' wasn't an acceptable explanation. "It's warm in here."

Over by the fire, Mrs. Granger was talking to Mrs. Weasley. "Yes, it's quite a shock at first," she said, "It's just like getting off an escalator, you know, but with flames instead of steps. I dare say I prefer it to the four-hour drive it would have been to get here any other way."

This was what she got for assuming stepping into fire was as dangerous as manual teleportation. Stupid obvious assumptions. She could have made it to Hogsmeade months before she did. She wouldn't have needed Sirius, that was for sure. Not to get there, at least. And then there was coming here every weekend, though Sirius did that for her easily enough and it was much more clandestine that way…

On second thought, maybe it wouldn't have changed much at all for her to have been using the Floo from the start. She still felt extremely stupid.

"Harry!" Taylor got squished into a greeting hug. Hadn't these kids only been apart for a few weeks?

"Hermione!" he gestured toward the back door, and they made their escape from the continued boring adult-talk. Outside, Fred and George were busy doing something to a bucket and a recalcitrant chicken. Ron was up on a broom above it all, and Luna was poking at the charcoal grill.

"Neville will be here soon," Ginny told Hermione. "Luna can't stay all day, though."

"Daddy is taking me to Germany for the rest of the summer," Luna chimed in. "My Portkey leaves at sundown."

"Dean Thomas and Lavender Brown are going to show up sometime, if Ron is to be believed," Ginny continued. "Lee, too. You know Lee?"

"No?" Hermione said.

"Lucky," Ginny retorted. "He's the third wheel to Fred and George. Evil git."

"We resent that remark," one of the twins called out.

"Third wheel implies romance," the other retorted. "Between us, no less."

"You are connected at the hip," Ron called out, swooping down over the twins.

"Why are we the butt of the joke today, brother?" one twin asked the other. Try as he might, Harry was never quite sure he knew which was which. They had to be doing it on purpose.

"You're outnumbered," Ginny said smugly. "Even when Lee gets here, it'll be three on more than a dozen."

"The odds were never in our favor," one twin retorted.

"But we have things cooking," the other added ominously. "Just you wait…"

"Fred Weasley, you leave the chickens alone!" Molly shouted.

The twins dropped the chicken, picked up the bucket, and ran for the fence. "We will return!"

"You will rue the day you mocked us!"

"Send Lee off this way when he gets here, will you?"

Arthur, Molly, and the Grangers came outside, along with Neville.

"Who wants to help me set up the grill?" Arthur asked.

"Me!" Luna raised her hand. Harry raised his too.

"Come on," Ginny tugged at Hermione before she could volunteer. "Harry says he doesn't think you've flown a broom since first year."

"I haven't," Hermione said slowly.

"Flying is a necessary skill for every witch, and more importantly, I want enough people to have a girls versus boys Quidditch game later," Ginny said. "It'll be fun! Neville, you play defense."

Taylor left Harry, dropping down to slither in the cool grass. "That's a big snake," Mr. Granger remarked.

"Would this be Hissy?" Mrs. Granger asked.

"Oh, yeah, that's her." Harry sent Hermione's retreating form a searching look, then shrugged his shoulders. "Don't worry, she's mostly harmless." He went off to stop Luna from tipping the grill over.

Some time later, with the sun high overhead, the party was in full swing. The kids, sans the Weasley twins and their plus one, were up in the air on brooms, taking turns at various ball-based games, since there weren't enough brooms for a full Quidditch match. Harry had helped Luna and Arthur get the grill set up, but he and Luna had abandoned the man to his fate of figuring out how to cook freshly-butchered chicken over charcoal without 'cheating' with magic. Meanwhile, Molly Weasley and the Grangers were relaxing in the shade, watching the children and, to be quite frank, gossiping far more than they should.

It was fine while they were discussing Hermione; Taylor learned a lot about her son's first magical friend, including some entertainingly embarrassing childhood stories. The Muggle experience as parents of a magical child was a good topic too, though Mrs. Weasley was surprisingly oblivious as to how the Muggle world worked, given her husband's job and fascination. Talk of Ginny was where it got iffy; Taylor didn't think discussing Ginny's issues with the possession in her first year was fair 'slightly tipsy afternoon' gossip material.

Were she human and an acknowledged part of the gathering, that was where she would have steered the conversation away… Assuming she was around to hear them. If she was able to participate as she pleased, she probably would have been taking pity on Arthur and teaching him how to use the meat thermometer he had almost the right idea about.

But she was a snake, and uncomfortably overheated in the muggy British summer weather, so she was stuck in her borrowed gnome hole, listening through bugs.

Times like this reminded her of exactly how much Dumbledore was still taking from her and Harry, every day. It was his fault she couldn't reveal herself. His fault it was too risky to show up, even as a random stranger with a fake backstory to explain her presence. His fault she was stuck as a snake observing her son's life, with him aware of her presence but unable to acknowledge it in public.

It was Dumbledore's fault Molly Weasley was currently pontificating on Harry's situation, leaving Taylor with a choice between setting bugs on her or letting her spew her well-meaning but completely misinformed drivel.

"It's so sad," Molly said mournfully, "but Dumbledore said not to set him straight about his parentage, and you know Dumbledore knows what he's doing, so I've been trying, but I don't see why I should hold my tongue. It's not as if that Muggle he lived with is here now, and he deserves to know who his parents were."

"Hmm," Mr. Granger said.

"Perhaps you should give her the benefit of the doubt," Mrs. Granger suggested.

"Her – the Muggle?" Molly asked. "No, I don't think I will. Harry should have gone to a good wizarding family, I don't know what happened with that. We might not have been able to take him at the time, but there were plenty of families asking to have him. Dumbledore said he put him where he would be safest, but then a few years later he asked whether we knew where Harry was – like he'd gone missing! She must have lost him! Then he comes to Hogwarts, and not a peep out of her. Not one letter to the parents of his friends."

"Do you write the parents of all your childrens' friends?" Mrs. Granger asked. "That sounds like it must take a lot of time out of your schedule."

"The ones I don't already know," Mrs. Weasley confirmed. "I need to make sure my children have good friends. And then there's this business with him claiming she's his actual mother… Poppycock! I know a Potter when I see one. James looked just like him."

Taylor was actually beginning to worry that Mrs. Weasley's semi-drunken ramblings were getting to the Grangers. Mr. Granger hadn't said anything in twenty minutes beyond the occasional grunt, and Mrs. Granger was subtly defending Taylor, but less and less as time went on.

They didn't know her. They knew she left letters with them, and they knew a bit about her son, along with whatever Hermione had committed to paper in her letters back to them, but she had never met them face to face. It seemed an unnecessary risk up until now.

That would have to change. Soon. Today, if she could manage it. She couldn't afford for them to doubt whether they were doing the right thing in helping her. If they went to Dumbledore everything would fall apart.

"He needs a mother figure in his life, Merlin knows the poor dear keeps pushing me away whenever I try to help with that," Molly continued.

"He's had one," Mrs. Granger said.

"A proper one, who knows what he's going through, with magic," Molly waved her hand. "You know. There is a difference."

That was exactly the wrong thing to say, though Molly was too tipsy to notice. Whatever they were drinking, it wasn't strong, but Molly's glass refilled itself without her doing anything.

"Molly, dear, I think this chicken is finally done," Arthur called out. "Call the children in, would you?"

"Oh… Yes, the children. I was just saying." Molly waved her glass at Arthur as he walked over. "Give me a moment, I'll do a charm."

It was at that moment that the sky turned bright, fluorescent purple and every bug that Taylor had within a block of the Weasley home got splattered out of the air by a sudden, unexpected gunk coating their bodies.

"We regret nothing," one of the twins declared a few hours later.

"We regret that it didn't work, you mean," the other retorted.

"Coating everything in purple goop wasn't the point?" Lee asked.

"That is not how you apologize, boys!" Mrs. Weasley yelled from the next room over.

"We mean that we're sorry you all got coated in purple gunk," Lee offered.

"Yeah, that wasn't the plan," one of the twins agreed. "Just changing colors? Amateur hour."

"It cleaned up easily enough," Mrs. Granger assured them. "This was a very interesting day." Mr. Granger nodded in agreement.

"Do it again and I'll turn you inside out," Hermione offered.

"I'll help," Ginny said. "Harry, why don't you go escort Hermione and her parents home, then come back through the Floo?"

Harry had assumed Hermoine didn't need any help Flooing back to the Alley, and he didn't quite see the point–

"And take Hissy, she needs to get out before she bites a twin and finds out they taste terrible," Ginny continued, shoving his mother at him.

"I want to talk to them," Taylor explained, thereby shining light on what Harry had thought was a pointless exercise.

"If you insist," he told Ginny. "Uh… Diagon Alley?"

"Yes, the Leaky Cauldron, be sure to call it out clearly," Hermione reminded them. She went first, taking a pinch of Floo powder and throwing it down into the flames.

One disorienting Floo trip later, they were in the Leaky Cauldron. Harry wondered how his mum was going to change back without being seen.

"I'll take her," Hermione said. "Mum, dad, I'll be back in a second." She set off for the bathroom, his mum clutched in both hands.

Her parents watched her go. "Is there something I don't know about witch hygienics?" her dad asked.

"Probably," her mum said absently, "but I have no idea what she wants with Harry's snake. Harry?"

"I'm just glad I'm not the absolute last person to know about this plan," he offered. Maybe he'd missed his mum plotting with Ginny while he was watching Molly trying to convince Luna that she couldn't go to Germany still completely purple from her skin to her robes. If so, he did not regret his choice in the slightest. As it turned out, 'I am taking a Portkey' really meant 'I currently have a Portkey on me that will whisk me away at the designated time no matter what I am doing at the moment.' Such as arguing with Molly Weasley, for instance.

Hermione returned from the bathroom, without a snake.

"Hermione, did you… forget something?" Her mother asked.

"No?" Hermione said innocently. "But guess who I ran into?"

Harry supposed she hadn't ever told her parents about who Hissy really was. He wondered if this was actually going to work to hide the connection between Hissy and Taylor. The Grangers seemed smart enough to see through it.

Nevertheless, it was Taylor who emerged from the bathroom, in her witch's robes. "Fancy meeting you here," she said.

The Grangers both eyed her suspiciously.

"Why don't we go to your car and talk." She smiled, hugged Harry briefly, and gestured back at the Floo. "I'll find my own way home," she said. "Apparently, all I need to do is use any old fireplace."

Right, he remembered that. " I'll keep the Weasley grate open."

"Perfect." She turned to the Grangers. "It was high past time we met properly. My fault, I'm sorry for leaving it so long."

"It's no trouble," Mrs. Granger said. "Perchance, are you…" She wiggled her arm.

"Prone to hissing?" Taylor led them to the door leading out into London. "That's one of the things I wanted to talk about…"

The Burrow was never truly silent, not even in the middle of the night. The thing in the attic thumped around. The house itself creaked and sighed in the wind. Ronald Weasley snored loud enough to wake the dead.

All of these noises covered Harry's stealthy escape from Ron's room, and subsequent trip down the stairs and out the front door. It was nearly midnight, the time Ginny had whispered to him in passing while Molly mashalled her children and him to de-gnome the front lawn. The excessive secrecy probably wasn't necessary, but it made sneaking out all the more fun.

Out behind the burrow, out of sight of the windows but not that far away, Ginny soared through the air, pulling random dives and flips in the night sky. She dove down to skim the grass with her feet, pulling up beside Harry. "Broom's over here, I got it out for you." She led him to another similar broom, sitting in the grass, and in moments he was up in the sky with her.

"I've been doing this for years," she told him as they flew, completely unsupervised. "It was the only way I was able to use the brooms before Hogwarts. After, too. Mum likes to worry when it suits her, and to pretend everything is fine the rest of the time."

"Your mum obviously cares a lot," Harry offered. "Maybe she just isn't good at showing it the way you would prefer?" He wouldn't like Mrs. Weasley's obsessive attention turned on him, either. But how was Mrs. Weasley supposed to know that?

"You might be right… I can't say you don't know her, after spending a month here," Ginny admitted. She began flying her broom around Harry in vertical circles. "What's your home like? Compared to ours."

Harry wondered for a moment why she was asking him this now, but if this was what she wanted to talk about he wasn't averse to answering.

"Quiet," he said. "Spacious. It's me and mum, and nobody else. There's a whole neighborhood of other kids, though." Including a few of his old friends. He hadn't seen them in… going on three years, now. He wondered if they would recognize him when he returned, or vice versa. Three years was a long time, and a lot had changed for him since he last saw them.

"Sounds nice," Ginny said wistfully. "I wouldn't mind living somewhere with more people around. I'm growing up, but the Burrow and everything around it is staying the same. I get why Bill and Charlie moved to other countries when they graduated. I don't think I've seen much of anything, yet."

They flew in silence for a little while. Ginny led him through a few basic tricks on their brooms, each of which he copied without much effort. Flying really wasn't very hard, and out here, in the warm night air, it was pleasant. Peaceful, more so than any moment he'd had since coming to the Burrow.

"I put my Harry Potter book collection up in the attic last week," Ginny said, apropos of nothing.

"Hmm," Harry hummed as he flew through a small cloud of gnats, blinking hard to make sure none stuck in his eyes. "Why?"

"I grew out of them," Ginny said. "It's… You know, they're badly written?"

"I suspected," Harry said.

"Full of inconsistencies," Ginny continued. "And even if they weren't, Harry Potter in them is a lucky, tragic prat who has everything happen to him. He sweeps every damsel in distress off her feet before anything bad can happen, and he fixes everything with special artifacts and spells and tools and sidekicks people give him just for being Harry Potter."

"Sounds unbelievable." He thought of Potter's invisibility cloak. And his obscure Japanese spell. And his one-armed, magically-cursed mum who spent the weekends pretending to be his familiar. "Or, well, unbelievable that it happens more than a couple of times."

"I used to think I wanted Harry Potter to sweep me off my feet," Ginny admitted, her voice distant. "Now, though… I don't think I would like that person if we ever met, and I think I want to do the sweeping of feet. Does that make sense?"

"Sure?" Harry was not equipped for the direction this conversation seemed to be going. "Ginny, I–"

Ginny looked over at him. "Not you, prat," she said with a fond smile. "Don't get that thought in your head."

"It was in yours first, given you jumped to telling me otherwise before I could say anything," Harry objected.

"Sorry, not sorry," Ginny laughed. "Can you imagine how awkward that would be, if I told you all of that and then let you jump to conclusions? Stupid. Only idiots let problems start by not saying what they mean…"

She trailed off, and Harry could see that she was frowning. "What?" he asked.

"Just wondering how much of Tom went into me thinking that, and how much of the old Ginny who had a crush on Harry Potter," Ginny said softly. "It's been more than a year, but I keep noticing things. He's not in here, not still hiding in my head waiting to strike, but I haven't found all of the changes yet. I don't like thinking that I don't know myself."

"Small things, mostly?" Harry asked. "After a year, what could there be that you wouldn't have already thought about, except unimportant stuff?"

Ginny laughed bitterly. "You'd be surprised," she said, "and it's always a guessing game. Is it all me, Tom's influence, or something neither of us would have done on our own?"

Ironically, Harry felt this was a safer subject of conversation than the thankfully nonexistent turn of events that Ginny confessing a crush on him would have been. This, at least, he knew something about. "I can hit you with my anti-possession spell a few more times when we get back to school," he suggested. "Or I can teach it to you."

"Teach me," Ginny demanded. "I don't know why you haven't taught it to us all, yet. Hasn't Hermione asked to learn? She wants to know everything." She smiled fondly.

"She told me she was going to research other cultures to find something similar but different in origin so we could cover our bases better," Harry recalled. "She hasn't said anything since." Meaning she was probably still looking for the perfect spell to compliment his own, never mind that she could learn both… Hermione had her own way of doing things.

"We should all learn," Ginny said, "but that won't fix my problem. I'm not worried about him having influence. I'm worried about recognizing it when I see it. It's… not nothing, but it's kind of stupid. This is me, now, Tom or Ginny or both combined. You'll stop me if I go dark, right?"

"I will, and Hermione definitely will," Harry assured her. "She might even keep a closer eye on you if you asked her to." Hermione and Ginny were often together when either one of them was planning something illicit. More often than not Hermione was the instigator, come to think of it. The Restricted section of the library came to mind.

"I told her about Tom's influence before the end of last term," Ginny admitted.

"Wow, I had no idea." Hermione was doing good not treating Ginny any differently now that she knew.

"It's not nothing, but I wish it was easier to stop worrying," Ginny concluded. "I know what I need to do, I just can't help thinking too much about it. Does that make sense?"

"Of course." He turned his broom and flew in front of her. "Want to race back to the Burrow?" He thought he had a handle on this broom, and what better way to get Ginny to stop thinking than a high-speed chase?

Ginny grinned. "You're on."

They shot off into the darkness, twin rockets spreading through the sky, and Harry knew that the serious conversation was over for the night.

The day had finally come; the trial of Sirius Black, but really Peter Pettigrew, was set to begin in half an hour. It was going to be held in the Wizengamot chamber, and the Wizengamot themselves would be serving as the jury.

However corrupt that arrangement might be when trying members of high society – very, based on Taylor's view of people – it would serve fine for indicting Peter Pettigrew today. He was by no account an important person on either side of the political divide or the last war. His fellow Death Eaters who had escaped prosecution would probably throw him under the bus, and those on the side of the light would be offended by him turning out to be a traitor.

No, she wasn't worried about the trial's outcome. That was all but set in stone. She was still here in the Ministry, though. Aside from wanting to see the spectacle first hand, like many of the Witches and Wizards crowding into the public viewing stands up above the floor of the chamber, she had promised Sirius she would be there to intervene if something went horribly wrong.

How she would intervene went unsaid; Sirius apparently trusted her to come up with something. Personally, she thought she was here more to provide moral support and peace of mind than any concrete escape plan. There were hundreds of magic users here, in the seat of their magical government. One handicapped Witch was not going to be enough to free him if all of those people decided he was guilty. Maybe she could precipitate an Arcadia confrontation for him if the crowd was in his favor, but the Wizengamot ruled otherwise.

Taylor came in after the bulk of the eager crowd, and as such had to pick a seat from the scant few still available. There was a gap on either side of an ugly old woman near the back, and another empty seat at the end of an aisle, next to a grizzled older man who looked like he had been put through a meat grinder.

The old lady shifted and the bugs nearest her caught a, to them, enticing smell. The reason for the empty seats to either side of her became clear; even if magic could clear the air, nobody wanted to have to be waving their wand every five minutes to avoid suffocating.

Faced with a choice between a gassy old lady and a probable war veteran, Taylor chose the war veteran. Even when his – apparently magical – eye swiveled over to glare at her, she still thought she had made the right choice.

"Interesting wand," he grunted.

She hadn't taken her wand out of her sleeve. The conclusion was as obvious as it was disturbing. "You had better not be looking under my robes with that magic eye," she whispered.

He turned to face her, his face an example of what not to do when dealing with a malfunctioning blender. "It only works on magical objects."

She decided to take that as the truth, for her own peace of mind if nothing else. "Is it disorienting?" she asked.

"Wear it for a few weeks and it's disorienting not to have it," he said in a low voice. "You ever thought about replacing that arm?"

"I've looked into it." As far as she could tell, magical prosthetics more advanced than the Muggle one she had now were not commonly made. "Where would you suggest I get a replacement?"

"Bulgaria," he said. "You need some strong blood magic to make a working prosthetic worth its salt. They're illegal to make, sell, or buy here in Britain, but not to own. The vampires over in Bulgaria specialize in it. Takes a long time, though, and they're not so good in a fight."

"I'll pass." At least for now. Between her wand and her bugs, she was only mildly inconvenienced by not having two arms these days.

"Aye, same decision I made." He kicked his peg leg out so she could see it. "Can't 'finite' a wooden stump. What's your wand made of? Looks proper powerful."

"Cactus and Hydra," she answered. "What about yours?"

"Don't remember," he said with a grin. "I go through them pretty quick."

"Sure looks like you would," she retorted.

"I think I like you, lass," he chuckled. "Here to see the show?"

"If Black is innocent I'm going to have to deal with him sooner or later." She already had to deal with him, but she would have to deal with him in public, too. The more people knew her or at least recognized her as a witch before someone revealed that she was supposed to be the Muggle adoptive mother of Harry Potter, the easier her false backstory would be to sell.

"Me, I'm here because I fought by his side in the last war," the man said seriously, turning to look out at the Wizengamot chamber. The Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot were filing in now. "Thought he'd turned traitor because of his dark family, didn't think anything more of it except to be glad the bastard was in Azkaban. If I was wrong, least I can do is be here to see for myself."

Dumbledore walked in through a side door, taking up his place at the podium as the Chief Warlock. He shouldn't be a problem, but Taylor wished someone else was taking point on conducting the trial. She had little reason to trust Dumbledore to do the right thing, whatever his public persona might be known for.

Sirius and Pettigrew were brought in, both with their hands chained and guarded by Aurors. Sirius looked mildly ragged, having only been in a holding cell for two days. Pettigrew was a sniveling wreck.

"Settle down, everyone," Dumbledore boomed, some pre-established magic amplifying his voice. "Let's get this started. This is technically the trial of Sirius Black, and I say trial instead of retrial because there appear to be no records of a trial back when he was first incarcerated."

"'Course not, we only kept ahold of Death Eaters we did get because old Crouch pushed through that emergency measure to get them slung in Azkaban as fast as possible," the old man groused under his breath. "That doesn't mean anything."

"I take it due process of law is more of a suggestion than a rule around here?" Taylor whispered. She was familiar with the concept of an inescapable prison and people easily escaping from pretty much everywhere else, but that didn't make it right. Especially not as Azkaban was specifically designed to ruin the people imprisoned there, and served as the jail, not just the worst-case deterrence.

"Law breaks down when the buggers terrorizing the country are also in the jury and bribing the guards," the old man retorted. "They were all supposed to get trials after the war was over, though… Most of 'em did, I'm sure of it."

As they were talking Dumbledore continued to wade through the official opening of the trial. Taylor listened with one ear on the old man and one thousand insect ears on Dumbledore, but of the two she found the old man's comments to be more interesting. It wasn't until the prosecutor, Amelia Bones herself, started her opening argument that Taylor went back to paying full attention to the proceedings.

"The details of the original crime are thought to be well known," Amelia began, striding confidently across the open space between the podium and the ledge upon which the Wizengamot seating began. She was forced to look up to meet the eyes of the many jurors, but she acted as if this wasn't even an inconvenience. "The Potters were in hiding, under a Fidelius charm. They selected a secret keeper, as one must to activate the charm. The secret keeper, bound by magic to never reveal the secret under duress, must necessarily have turned traitor, as the Potters were slaughtered in their home. Following this, Sirius Black was seen to accost Peter Pettigrew in the Muggle world, and in the aftermath a dozen Muggles were dead of an explosion, and Peter Pettigrew presumed dead. Black was taken in, and as he was known to be the secret keeper and a murderer, sent to Azkaban. Last year, he escaped and proceeded to disappear, making no confirmed appearances in either the Muggle or Wizard world."

"This does appear to be a self-consistent narrative," Amelia continued, her voice sharp and clear. "Until one also considers that Pettigrew was recognized in Diagon Alley, called out, and subsequently revealed to be a marked Death Eater only a few months ago. This was grounds to arrest and question Pettigrew."

Amelia gestured to the two men on trial. Aurors brought Peter Pettigrew forward and sat him in an up until that point empty chair next to the Chief Warlock's podium.

"That chair ought to be spelled to prevent lying outright, but some buggers in the Wizengamot always block any attempt to get it set up right," the old man whispered. "Veritaserum is regulated, but a good old-fashioned blood-based truth compulsion would do the job, and no namby-pamby wiggling out of it to boot."

"Veritaserum has been authorized for this trial," Dumbledore announced. "For both Pettigrew and Black. Proceed, Amelia."

A few drops of a clear potion were administered, and Pettigrew went slack in his chair. Amelia went through a few questions obviously designed to prove the potion was working, then got to the heart of the matter. Yes, he was the secret keeper. No, it wasn't Sirius. Yes, he worked for the Dark Lord of the time. Yes, he faked his death to incriminate Sirius as well as get away himself.

It was all very dramatic, but Taylor had heard it before, from the sniveling rat himself. None of this was a surprise, and Amelia didn't even ask what Pettigrew was doing in Diagon Alley. The same went for Sirius when it was his turn to be questioned under veritaserum; he corroborated the truth, as well he should, and it couldn't have been clearer who was the actual criminal.

Then came a question Taylor had expected, but hoped would not be asked. "Did you encounter Pettigrew at any point between escaping Azkaban and coming to turn yourself in at the Ministry a few days ago?" Amelia asked.

"Yes, many times," Sirius answered tonelessly.

"What's this, now?" the old man muttered.

"When and where, and with what purpose?" Amelia pressed, unsurprised. This was definitely not the first time she had asked these questions.

"I was hunting him down to kill him and prove myself innocent," Sirius admitted. "I found him at the train station, hiding with the Weasleys as a rat, but he got away. I found him at Hogwarts, and we took him to the Shrieking Shack. I kept him prisoner until we had worked out a plan to make sure nobody could deny he was alive and a Death Eater, and so no politician could keep it quiet. I saw him in Diagon Alley after we obliviated him of everything after the train station, and accused him of being a Death Eater."

Taylor wished there was some way to avoid all of that coming out, but she had yet to master the obliviation charm for one simple reason; she had nobody she cared little enough about to practice on. She could ruin a life with a single word, and she had no guarantee that her power would ever be able to effectively perform the magic with only her thoughts to guide it.

This was the lesser evil. Letting the truth come out. It shouldn't invalidate anything; Sirius had only conspired to prove himself innocent in the most thorough possible way.

"You accused him." Amelia sounded as if she had just worked something out, though of course that was far from the truth. No prosecutor would come into a case expecting to learn the truth alongside everyone else. "Was that you with the hat who confronted Pettigrew in the Alley?"

"Yes," Sirius confirmed.

"You spoke of others working with you," Amelia said. "Were they, to your knowledge, criminals?"

"I thought so at first, but it turned out they thought I was a criminal and would only help them if I thought they were too… Nobody who helped me has a criminal record."

Taylor was immensely thankful Amelia had not asked whether she had committed any criminal acts; her animagus-equivalent curse wasn't legal, and breaking into Hogwarts had to be trespassing at the very least. She probably had to assume the interrogators in the Ministry knew of those things, whether or not they brought them up here.

"Then this is beyond the scope of the justification for veritaserum verification," Amelia announced. "Aurors, administer the antidote."

"Bloody fools," the old man said. "That's part of the stupidity that got Malfoy off. She had him under, she should have pressed even if he and his friends are innocent. They've nothing to fear if they are."

Taylor agreed in theory, but in practice that sounded far too much like a witch hunt to her. And not just because it would end up revealing far too much about her if Amelia had forced Sirius to tell everything he knew.

After that, the trial was all but over. Amelia summarized what they had learned, gave her professional opinion that Sirius was not in fact guilty, and Dumbledore put it to a vote. Sirius was exonerated and mildly fined for being an unregistered animagus. Pettigrew, in a subsequent sentencing, was remanded to Azkaban for the remainder of his natural life. No chance of parole, no appeals process. The trial was over.

Taylor was not impressed by Magical Britain's haphazard, somewhat unfair judicial system, but that was another problem for later. She would just have to be sure to never stand trial for anything.

"So," the old man said as they stood, "what business do you have with Black, now that he's a free man?"

Taylor considered the pros and cons of telling the old man the truth, and decided on part of it. "He owes me one for helping him catch Pettigrew," she said in a low voice. "But don't spread it around."

The old man squinted at her, his magic eye whirling unsettlingly quickly. "You knew all along what was going on."

"Yes, but I'm less than impressed with your justice system," she admitted.

"It could use some work, but all the good men and women in the government are busy preventing it from degrading any further," he admitted. "Can't say I blame Black for going about it like he did. You must have some interesting stories."

"I could say the same of you." The old man seemed like a goldmine of insider information. He knew how the last war had gone, he was there. That could prove useful if the same elements causing trouble back then were around today, inherently biased against her.

"Moody." He held his hand out. She shook it with her good hand. "Alastor Moody."

"Taylor." Just Taylor. Her last name didn't need to get out yet. Let people get to know her first.

Dumbledore might just find, sometime in the future, that she was no longer an unknown Muggle. Recognition was a line of defense, one she was going to cultivate.

Harry knew it was going to be a serious conversation when Taylor, as Hissy, found him on a Wednesday morning and asked him to get away from the Weasleys and into the village. His suspicions were confirmed when Taylor directed him to an out-of-sight alleyway and changed back then and there, which she never did. It was actually the first time he had seen her transform.

It looked painful, but his mum was his mum again, seemingly no worse for the wear. She was dressed like she was going to work, looking every inch the relatively young librarian. She even still had her keys, he noticed.

"I asked off work for the morning, but I'll be going in after lunch," she explained. "There's a little breakfast place down the street, the Weasleys never go in there. Let's get something to eat."

Harry waited until they had ordered to ask. "What's going on?"

"Sirius is a free man," Taylor explained. "He's going to want to meet you, and I'm inclined to let him. I know you don't like the Potter stuff," and she was right, "but it's getting to a point where it needs to be dealt with."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Not that you should claim to be Harry Potter," she assured him. "But it's time we figured out exactly what the truth is, and what we want everyone to believe it is, so that we can keep our stories straight going forward. People are going to know both of us soon, and if we contradict each other it will be noticed."

Harry understood that… and he did have some lingering questions that only his mum could really answer. "Okay. Do you know what the deal is with Potter?"

"I think I've pieced it together, and I know I had more information to work with than you." She smiled apologetically. "But I don't know for sure about some things."

"Did you actually, you know, have me?" Harry asked, lowering his voice so that nobody could overhear. The restaurant was a sleepy little place and the nearest person was three tables over, but still.

"No," his mum said. "But don't for a second think I don't love you like you came out of me."

He sighed. That was… probably the best he could expect to hear. It was reassuring, at least. "Am I Harry Potter?"

"I think you were," she said. "I was never told your last name, or who your parents were, or what had even happened to them. Just that you were mine, and that all the paperwork would say you always had been."

"Wait…" He had thought, when he thought about it at all, that maybe that she got him from an adoption agency or something, and never told him. Legally. This did not sound legal. "How did you get me?"

"That's… complicated." His mum looked over his head at something, then returned her gaze to him. "I knew a woman. We were not friends, we weren't even on good terms, but I did something for her that she couldn't do herself, and she decided to pay me back. This was right after I lost my arm. I was still being weaned off the painkillers when she showed up in my hospital room one night with you and a stack of paperwork that said you were mine, along with our house and our car and quite a bit of money to get me started in Britain."

Harry blinked. Twice. Then again, because he had no idea how to fit that into his understanding of his mum's history. "But… She… didn't you get those from your parents? Grandpa Danny?"

"No." She looked uncomfortable. "Harry, I don't think I can tell you everything. What I've told you about my parents and the little things about my childhood are true, but there are some things I don't want to talk about until you're much older."

He had never heard the 'until you're older' excuse before. This was uncharted territory. His mum had explained sex right before he went to Hogwarts, and he still didn't think that was all that interesting. What else could there be? "Why?" he asked.

"Because there is more to the world than magic and normal life, and some things are too horrible to burden anyone with unless they absolutely must know." His mum reached across the table to grasp his hand in hers. "I didn't even come to Britain by choice, the woman who wanted to do me a favor took me here while I was unconscious. She gave me a fresh start, and she didn't take no for an answer. It was good for me, once I decided to take it for what it was worth. You were good for me, and that was the reason she gave you to me at all."

"I was meant to…" He tried to find the words. "Make you happy?"

"Yes," his mum said with a little smile. "The woman, she was… odd. I think she called you the 'optimal baby' at one point. I was still a little loopy."

Harry had passed the point of being surprised by these revelations. He was just grateful they were weird, not necessarily bad or life-altering in a bad way. "This woman… what? Took me?"

"This is where I have to start making assumptions and educated guesses, because I wasn't there and I never saw her again after that night," his mum explained. "I learned from the history books that James and Lily Potter died when you were about a year old, they had a baby about your age, and if we assume you and he were one and the same, the timeline fits. Sirius Black knew you, I've checked that myself. When they died, he went after Pettigrew, and somehow in the space of twenty-four hours you went from the wreckage of a magical home to being left on a porch somewhere in the middle of the night. But by who, and why, I have no idea except to assume Dumbledore was involved. The woman didn't even tell me you were from a magical family, or that magic existed, and I'm not sure if she knew about any of it herself."

"Some random crazy lady picked baby me up off a porch and decided she would give me to her injured… pet project… and forged all the legal work to make it look like I belonged with you." Harry was so far beyond the realms of surprise that he didn't think he knew the way back.

"Yes." Taylor gently squeezed his hand. "If I had just adopted you normally I would have told you long before now, but that's… not really a story you tell a little kid and expect him to keep secret."

"I get that." He really did. He would have spread his mum's crazy stories to everyone who would listen. Everyone in their neighborhood knew his mum lost her arm in a car accident, and that was mostly due to him spreading the word whenever anyone showed the slightest bit of interest. He had gone through a talkative phase. "So I really am him. Harry Potter."

Taylor frowned. "I can't be sure, but everyone thinks you are him and the dates line up almost perfectly. Add in the scar everyone somehow knows about…"

"Hey, yeah!" he exclaimed. His scar! "They say he – I – got it from the Dark Lord that night, I know that, but how does everybody know? Who told them? Whoever did had to have seen me between the attack and that lady picking me up."

"I… don't know." Taylor looked thoughtful. "It wasn't Sirius, I don't think. I'll have to ask him. It's a mystery, for sure."

A mystery… A Potter mystery. He was Potter. "I kind of knew I was him," Harry admitted. "After second year, at least. But I didn't want to be. I still don't want to be."

"You don't have to." Taylor shook her head. "But now you know the truth of it."

"It's good to know." If only to remove any uncertainty when he denied it. He knew who he was, and he knew who he chose to be. "What about your magic? You said the woman didn't tell you about magic… Did you really not know?" He had thought so, but now he wasn't sure.

"Harry, I promise I had absolutely no idea magic existed until you started doing impossible things, and even then I wasn't sure what it was until we were told outright." She looked him in the eye, and he knew she was being truthful.

"Good." He didn't want to think his mum had been lying about something as big as that. "But… how?"

"How do I have magic now?" She squeezed his hand again. "That's partly tied to the things I don't want to talk about today. It's not a bloodline curse, I got that idea from the wand maker when he assumed that was what was wrong with me. I know what it is, I understand why I can do some magic and why it's not like it is for others, but for me to explain requires a lot of context I don't want to give you until you're old enough to handle it."

"Is this a sex thing?" he asked.

His mum laughed, but she looked sad. "No. It's not about magic, either. Just… Something else. Something that happened to me, something that's still with me to this day. I will explain, I don't like keeping secrets from you, but not until I know I won't be traumatizing you by talking about it."

Harry wanted to say that it couldn't be that bad, that he could handle a story no matter how scary… But then he thought of Ginny, who needed to be obliviated by doctors to protect her from just memories the wraith had left her, memories of real things. Ginny was strong, stronger than almost anyone he knew, and if she couldn't handle some things then he probably couldn't either. He was only fourteen.

"I understand, mum," he said.

"I wish you didn't," she said quietly. "But… thank you. For not making this harder than it had to be. You're a good son."

"You're a great mum," he shot back. "I didn't want to be Potter anyway, so I'm glad you didn't know who I was either."

The waitress walked out of the kitchen with two plates that looked to be the food they had ordered, so Harry let go of his mum's hand and said nothing more until she had dropped off their food and left.

"Do you know why Dumbledore hates you?" he asked.

Taylor shook her head. "No, and I'm not sure enough of his motivations to say he hates me at all. But I think, and Sirius agrees, that it will be easier to go around him than to confront him. He's powerful, magically and politically, and I'm not up to beating him with either of those. I could remove him," and something about how she said it made Harry believe she could, "but that would make things even messier."

"Is there a plan?" he asked, picking at his sandwich.

"Yes. It starts with you meeting Sirius and seeing if he is tolerable or not. If you like him, we can go ahead with one plan. If you don't, we'll go with another. It's up to you." She smiled. "No pressure. Really."

"I guess I can give him a chance," Harry conceded. He just hoped Black was nothing like Lupin. "When can we meet?"

"I suggested you go out to a bowling alley or something similarly simple," Taylor huffed, "but he's got his heart set on taking you to the Quidditch World Cup."

"The World Cup sounds good, I was going to go with the Weasleys anyway," he quickly volunteered. Hermione had been invited, the Weasleys were of course all going, and it sounded like it was going to be great fun.

If Black was tolerable, he might make it even more fun. If he wasn't, Harry could ditch him early on and still enjoy the day. It was a win-win scenario, and he said as much as they both finally set about eating.

"If you sabotage me, I'll transfigure you into a bedpan," Sirius threatened.

"If you turn me into a bedpan, I'll tell everyone about how you shrieked when you found that house elf dead in its cupboard," his bowler hat retorted.

Sirius had absolutely no idea what he had done to the hat's enchantments when he was fiddling with them in Diagon Alley, but something had gone very, very wrong. Or right. The enchantments on it were all individually simple, and there were less than a dozen in total, but three of them had melded together and he couldn't separate them to study exactly what about a voice charm, a recall charm, and a perception charm twisted together turned a simple enchanted item into a mouthy, blackmailing self-aware hat. It shouldn't be possible.

"You're going to behave for my godson," he said firmly. "He's smart and he takes Runes, he'll like looking at your weirdness. I swear to Merlin, though, you make a good impression or I'll throw you away!"

"Think of all the good times we've had," the hat pleaded. "Daddy," it added dryly.

Sirius felt his left eye twitch. "That's it, you're not coming." He tossed it on the troll-leg umbrella stand, smoothed out his robes, and–

"Take me or I'll yell at your mother's portrait and rile her up the entire time you're gone," the hat threatened.

"Go ahead!" He cast a silencing charm on the hat and left. It would wear off before he got back, but he could deal with his mother's portrait screaming when he was blackout drunk and ready for bed. It would be better than tolerating the hat's antics. However it had achieved either sentience or a reasonably complex imitation, it was clearly patterned off of someone a lot more annoying than he could ever be.

He did his best to get the hat off his mind while he apparated to the gathering point and waited for his scheduled portkey. The hat was a side project, nothing more. It might even be haunted or possessed. Maybe Peeves had snuck out of Hogwarts…

No! No thinking about the hat! He took his portkey, stepped into the riotous camping ground set up outside the stadium, and made a beeline for the Weasley tent. Harry would be there, he was staying with the Weasleys.

Sure enough, there was a whole gaggle of children outside the partially-erected tent, waiting for the adults to finish setting it up. Little Ginny, immediately recognizable as the only female Weasley under forty, shot him a glare he almost found intimidating when she noticed him coming. There was a girl who knew her hexes. Probably.

Harry himself wasn't there; the children were all Weasleys aside from Harry's brainy friend. Arthur Weasley came out of the tent, Molly Weasley behind him, and there was Harry, carrying an armful of tent stakes.

"Right, let's get this set up!" Arthur Weasley proclaimed. "Then you can all go explore – Sirius Black!"

"In the flesh," Sirius confirmed. "I'll be borrowing Harry for a bit, like we agreed." Taylor was the one with authority over Harry, in his mind, but not according to the Weasleys, so he'd arranged this little outing twice over. Once with Taylor, and once with Arthur.

Mrs. Weasley had not entered the equation at any point, and it seemed she was only now realizing she'd been left out of something. Arthur winced as she turned on him. "What did we agree, now?" she demanded.

"Simply to let Harry spend some time with his innocent, legally appointed godfather," Arthur explained.

While they were distracted, Harry dumped the tent stakes at the feet of Fred and George, saying "I know you two can do this faster than us doing it by hand."

"Oh yes," Fred said with a grin. "We mustn't waste time. Dad can't complain about the Muggles noticing if he doesn't notice…"

"Now?" Mrs. Weasley demanded. "With no supervision? He's liable to be a–" She glanced over at Sirius, who was watching with no small amount of amusement. "Lovely influence, I am sure, but this is not how things are supposed to be done!"

Harry waited until Arthur said something and distracted Molly, then waved goodbye to his friends and snuck over to Sirius. "She'll be going on about it for an hour, let's just go," he said.

Sneaking away? Sirius could get behind that! He ducked behind the next tent in the row and casually walked away from the ongoing debate.

"Hey, kid." Sirius never suffered from the tongue-tying affliction the less suave were often plagued with, but he also knew when not to say anything important. "How about we go find the craziest tent here and laugh at it?"

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Sure."

So that was a no for leaping straight to humor. Fine. It took all types. "The enchantments on these tents get exponentially more complicated as they get bigger, you know," he offered, trying a different approach. "Space doesn't like being stretched. Have you ever gotten a look at the runework on a big tent?"

Harry's answering smile was as curious as it was genuine. "No, what's it like?"

"More than I can wrap my head around, that's for sure," Sirius admitted. "I can't even figure out a talking hat."

Harry asked about that, and Sirius jumped at the chance to tell the story of the spur-of-the-moment hat purchase, modification, and subsequent baffling evolution. It was a good story, even if he didn't have the accompanying prop. "Little bugger mouths off too much to take out anymore," he explained.

They wandered out of the tent section and into the vendor area. Crazed – another word for 'properly enthusiastic', in Sirius' opinion – fans of both Bulgaria and Ireland ran around half naked and screaming. Men and women hawked junk, high quality merchandise, and the former disguised as the latter. Foods made of magical creatures and food made of far too much bread and alcohol spilled over the ground and out of already drunken hands. Children ran around, unattended and having the time of their lives.

And here Sirius was, walking around with a kid he didn't know, trying to compete with all of this entertaining insanity. "Your mum was right, this was a bad idea," he admitted. "Should have gone somewhere less… busy."

"It's cool," Harry objected. "I've never seen any of this stuff." His head involuntarily turned to follow a trio of young women who ran by wearing nothing above the waist but thick paint in the Bulgarian team's colors, and his face reddened. "That, uh, wasn't what I meant."

"Still," Sirius insisted. "If you were a few years older I'd take you to get drunk and we'd hash it out that way, but… Butterbeer?"

"Sure." They stopped at a stand and bought two of the sweet, deceptively non-alcoholic beverage, and then kept walking.

"Quick question," Sirius blurted out. Something had just occurred to him. "You're not carrying Hissy around right now, are you?"

Harry shook his head. "Ginny has her," he said. "She and Hermione are… right there!" He pointed at a line snaking out from a booth that was selling Quidditch flags. The Weasley girl and Harry's bushy-haired friend were waiting in the line, and Hissy's black head could be seen waving above the girl's shoulder.

"Good. Your mum is great, but this is awkward enough without her listening in," Sirius admitted.

"You think so?" Harry asked.

"That it's awkward? Bloody hell yes, I haven't seen you since you were small enough to toss like a Quaffle." Plus he'd spent more than a decade with the Dementors in Azkaban as his only regular conversational partners.

Harry frowned, and Sirius suspected the only way to take his foot out of his mouth was to shove it in further, first. Or maybe he was just an idiot; he wouldn't know until he tried it and found out. "If that was you," he continued. "Now, me, I think my memory is pretty good, but all that time in Azkaban… You say it wasn't, and I'll have no choice but to believe you. Alternatively, you let me think what I want and I'll keep my mouth shut about it on the assumption that you've got some damn good reasons for denying it at every opportunity. What do you say?"

Harry turned to look at him. He was still frowning, but it was a confused frown, not an annoyed one, so Sirius thought he might be making progress. "Good reasons like…" he prompted.

"Keeping all of Wizarding Britain's tossers from discounting your mum?" Sirius guessed. "Avoiding the fame? Keeping your head low so former Death Eaters don't want to make your life difficult or nonexistent if they get the chance? Wanting to make a name for yourself on your own merits? Sticking it to the Purebloods who say lineage is everything? Setting up a decade-long prank where once you've convinced the entire world you switch it around and start claiming you have no idea who Harry Hebert is?" He could think of a thousand reasons for Harry's stance. Admittedly, most of them required a lot more cunning and foresight than any eleven-year-old boy would be capable of, but he wasn't trying to be realistic here.

Harry looked away, and Sirius realized the joke approach wasn't really working. That was a problem, because he was nothing if not a joker at heart, but he could muster up the willpower to be serious for a second. Not even a pun. "But to level with you, kid, I think it's just that even if you were Harry Potter, you'd had a decade of being Harry Hebert, and you care more about that. No skin off my back if you do. James was one of my best friends and Lily was a fine gal when she let her hair down, but they're gone, and they're not coming back. If it was me, I'd pick the mum I know who is still around, too. If people forced me to choose one or the other. I won't do that. Force you to choose, I mean."

Harry nodded. Only a nod, but Sirius knew he'd passed the test, after almost failing with his jokes, even though they carried the same sentiment buried under levity. Harry definitely wasn't James; James would have taken the joke explanation and accepted it.

"Did my mum coach you on that?" Harry asked.

Maybe Sirius hadn't passed the test quite yet, after all. Thankfully, he had a good answer. "Nope," he said truthfully. "The only advice she gave me was 'don't be an utter prat, Harry will drop you like a sack of rotten potatoes if you piss him off by talking about the Potters.'"

Harry's eyes bulged. "I don't believe my mum said a word of that," he exclaimed.

"Not in those words, but you've got to translate for some people," Sirius admitted. "Word for word, it was something like, 'Harry is a smart, kind boy who has had entirely too much pressure heaped on him to conform to a folk legend that happens to involve people you knew, don't add to that and you'll either sink or swim on your own merits.' But the real message was implied."

"That still doesn't sound like something she would say." Harry stopped to look at a stand Omnioculars. Sirius, remembering where they were – talking seriously really took the wind out of his sails, he had totally forgotten to keep an eye out for more topless women! – stopped to look too. He'd never seen this model. Understandably, they were far more advanced than the ones he remembered from back in his day. These had slow-down features, as well as a small recording capacity and zoom functions.

"Two, please," he ordered. "These are great for all manner of things," he told Harry. "Fiddle with the spells–"

"No fiddling with the spells, please," the vendor remarked. "They're liable to collapse on each other and break."

"That's what they want you to think," Sirius agreed, much to the vendor's dismay. He handed over twenty galleons, a truly exorbitant fee, and took the two devices the vendor reluctantly handed over. "And I'll admit anti-tampering spells have advanced since my day. But you can pull some remarkable little tricks off with an exterior spell that triggers the others at a set time…"

"So you can spy on someone?" Harry asked, eagerly taking his pair of Omnioculars.

"Without even needing to be there." Sirius considered Harry, and the way he had reacted to the fangirls earlier, and decided to hold off on any tales of his exploits with his own pair of Omnioculars. Taylor would neuter him if he corrupted her son.

Besides, Harry looked to be well on the way to replicating Sirius' own line of thought without any outside intervention–

"These would be great for looking at Dumbledore's office," Harry mused. "I could spend hours just looking at all of the things he has in there…"

Or maybe not. Taylor would be proud. Harry got a new spying device and his first thought was for actual espionage, not his increased potential as a Peeping Tom.

Was it corruption if Sirius just nudged him in the right direction? More importantly, was it corruption in Taylor's opinion if he did such a thing? And did he want to risk her likely amusing and certainly painful wrath?

Sirius decided on a middle path. Innocent uses of Omnioculars that happened to involve girls. "You know, your friends might like it if you got some Wizarding pictures of them with those," he suggested. "They're not made for taking pictures but you can modify them to do it. Girls like pretty pictures of themselves."

Harry put the Omnioculars up to his eyes and looked around as they continued on through the crowd. Sirius had to take him by the shoulder to steer him around some fat blokes who would probably bounce him off their jowls if he walked into them, and he barely noticed.

"Luna might like a camera," Harry said after a moment. "She can take pictures of the things she's always telling us about."

"There you go!" He would take it.

It was an unlikely comparison, but Taylor thought Hermione and Ginny reminded her a bit of Dragon and Armsmaster.

This was, on the surface, a completely ridiculous idea. Dragon and Armsmaster were Tinkers, one was an AI and one was an adult man, both were hardened parahumans, and both would likely either explode or go into a Tinker frenzy at the mere implications of magic. Ginny and Hermione were, in terms of personality and background, absolutely nothing like them.

But the dynamic between them was very much like that of two Tinkers, one with an intuitive understanding of things, and the other with a relentless drive to improve. They were also much like Tinkers in that even now, at a big sporting event, they were talking shop. They browsed stands of self-waving flags and pastries and sporting apparel and expensive brooms, but they spoke of enchantments, bouncing ideas back and forth about how things were made and how they could be made better. Ideas that, to Taylor, sounded an awful lot like Tinker babble.

Everyone in this world, with practice, could understand and make things like the self-unfolding chairs and the explosive mini-firecrackers that reset after every boom. It was more akin to mundane science than Tinkertech. But to Taylor, right now, it might as well be the latter, and hearing them discuss things with vocabulary she was only starting to grasp in her own studies put her in mind of Armsmaster and other Tinkers she had witnessed Tinkering. They collaborated as Tinkers did, and as Taylor only really knew one Tinker duo who commonly worked together, she thought of Armsmaster and Dragon.

In between talking about things that occasionally had passerby staring incredulously at them when they got too loud, Hermione and Ginny bought bags of flavor-changing popcorn, picked up a free pamphlet on the history of the World Cup that was sitting on a massive, untouched pile, got a flag each, and explored the grounds around the stands, which to Taylor resembled a massive international fairground without the rides or the games.

They didn't wander at random, though. Taylor, riding on Ginny as a snake, happened to notice Sirius and Harry nearby far too often for it to be coincidence. She had not asked the girls to spy… But she would admit she was a little worried, so she wasn't going to pass up the chance to observe from afar.

They seemed to be getting along well; Sirius was showing Harry how to work a pair of magical binoculars. Taylor hoped that meant Sirius had addressed the elephant in the room right away, instead of just ignoring it. She wanted them to get along. It would make things a lot easier, both for their plans for the future, and for her own peace of mind. She liked Sirius, and it would be good if Harry did too.

Taylor's view of the two was abruptly knocking to the side as some idiot shoved right past Ginny, chasing after the topless trio who had been running around all morning. He was either a person with some authority trying to get them to stop streaking, or a smitten fool not thinking straight.

Ginny scowled at the man as he ran. Hermione did more than scowl. "Furnunculus," she muttered, discreetly waving her wand. A bolt of magic shot through the crowd, striking the man who'd shoved Ginny in the back. Just as he finally caught up to the women, his entire head broke out in boils. One of them shrieked as she turned and got an eyeful of his lumpy, boil-covered face, and shoved him away. He fell butt-first into a display of self-waving flags, all of which immediately started battering him.

"Good spell choice," Ginny said. "But aren't you worried about–"

"Underage magic?" Hermione frowned for a moment, then smiled. "No. Didn't you see those kids levitating a ball back and forth? There's so much magic going on here that they can't possibly track it all."

"Uh, sure…" Ginny looked up at the sky. "We'll know for certain if you don't get an owl, but I don't think that's how it works. They weren't even British kids, the rules don't apply to them."

"Well, you get at least one warning anyway," Hermione said, a telltale blush creeping up her cheeks. "And I… might not have really thought about underage magic when I did it? Oh, look, there's your brother!"

"Which one?" Ginny asked, thoroughly distracted.

"Ronald, he's coming our way." Hermione pocketed her wand. "If he saw–"

"Ron's no snitch," Ginny laughed. "Hey, prat, what's that you've got?"

"Some guy just gave me a signed Krum poster!" Ronald was clutching a rolled-up poster to his chest to protect it from the crowd, and when he reached Hermione and Ginny he held it between the three of them to protect it from even the slightest possibility of damage. "Said he's got a source if I want to buy more on the cheap and sell them to everybody in Gryffindor this fall. Either of you got a few galleons so I can go get them before he lets somebody else take them?"

"Can we see the poster?" Ginny asked.

"Oh, blimey, yeah, I've got to see it myself," Ronald agreed. "Here, just…" He unrolled it. "Cor, an actual signed poster…"

"Uh…" Hermione craned her head to look, as Ronald had unrolled it facing himself. "Ron?"

"It's great," he said.

"Ron, it's signed 'Vickor Krumb," Ginny pointed out.

"He's Bulgarian, English probably isn't his first language," Ron agreed.

Hermione opened her mouth to object, but Ginny shook her head. "Wait for it…" she whispered.

Ron squinted at the poster. "Or it's not really his signature," he concluded. "Eh, whatever. It was free! Oh, before I forget, mum says it's almost time to go to the stands. She's going to be looking for you if you don't head up there now."

"How does she expect to find us?" Hermione asked.

"Tracking charm, she hit all of our robes with them before we left." Ron disappeared into the crowd.

"Oh, brother," Ginny sighed once he was gone. "At least he's happy. An actual signed poster would be at least a galleon. I'll try to get him one for his birthday or something. Please don't think he's an idiot, Hermione. He had to grow up with the twins, it's their fault."

"You'd think constantly being pranked means he's more likely to catch on to future scams," Hermione said as they headed for the Quidditch stadium.

"It means things that don't explode, turn him into a canary, or sing in Russian every time he opens his mouth all seem reasonable," Ginny explained. "The twins aren't malicious. Mostly. By the way, thanks for teaching me that Muggle trick with the coin. He thinks I can do wandless vanishing charms now."

The girls navigated the crowd, aiming for the Quidditch stand. It was, by Taylor's estimate, some time yet before the game would start, but she supposed Molly Weasley wanted to give her children time, and to save some time for herself in case she had to track them down. As such, once Hermione and Ginny got into the stands, they didn't have to deal with crowds anymore.

There were bugs everywhere, of course. For Taylor, outside of places like Hogwarts, this was a constant not often worth remarking on. She did the early-arriving Quidditch fans a favor and co-opted their attending flies as she came into range, taking them away from the tantalizing smells of food and out to fly on standby, keeping track of people but otherwise making themselves unobtrusive. Her range was strange within the Quidditch stadium; it didn't stretch as far as it should. More space-expanding magic, she assumed, but not like she had felt before.

Her power radiated annoyance. It was, Taylor theorized, not happy that magic was curtailing her range. Or it was annoyed by something else entirely, or just wanted her to think that it was annoyed… She could never be sure.

Mr. Weasley, by some stroke of bribery, good luck, or plain old-fashioned bootlicking, had managed to get seats for everyone up in the VIP box. Hermione and Ginny trekked up what had to be ten stories of space-extended stairs, passing hundreds of rows of seats, to get up to the top. Inside–

"The first of the rugrats arrives," a posh man muttered to his wife.

Inside were a very small sampling of Britain's magical elite, a mere six individuals. There was a fat man who was probably the Minister of Magic, an Auror on either side of him. Off to one side Taylor recognized the posh man as Malfoy and the woman with him as his wife, by association with his less composed son, who sneered at Ginny as she glanced over at him. She and Hermione took their seats down near the bottom of the box, deigning to ignore the aristocrats.

Taylor, in sweeping her flies through the empty space of the mostly-empty box, noticed something else, beyond the obvious. Specifically, something invisible. Somebody invisible, sitting in the row behind where the rest of the Weasleys, Sirius, and Harry would be sitting. They were under a cloak, like the one Harry had, and big enough that they had to be an adult. There was a child-sized figure next to them, too.

Invited guests who despised publicity, a duo of secret security guards, thrillseekers, or would-be assassins? They could be any of the above. One of those possibilities was dangerous.

"Ginny," Taylor hissed, "ask the Malfoys if they brought security along with them, to protect them from the riff-raff."

"Why?" Ginny hissed back. She was quiet, but the high-pitched noise cut right under the murmur of the crowds below.

"I told you, father," Draco whispered.

"It means nothing," the older Malfoy retorted, his hand tightening on his cane.

"Because it is important," Taylor replied. "There is someone invisible behind and to your left. Two someones. We need to know who they are and whether we should reveal them."

Ginny stiffened, then twisted around in her seat to look at the Malfoys. "Scared enough of me to bring bodyguards?" she asked.

The Malfoys replied with a lofty, dignified silence. Taylor didn't need their denials; the way the hidden figure failed to even twitch implied they were not secretly a Malfoy guard. It told her precious little else, though. There was nothing for it; she was going to have to stir the pot and see what happened. "Be prepared to duck and run," she told Ginny. "Our invisible presence is about to attract a curious bee."

Bugs were such useful minions… People expected them to be creepy and crawly and to go where they weren't supposed to be. One bug was not enemy action. Taylor flew in a fat bumblebee that had been molesting a child's ice cream, steering it's awkwardly rotund form to land on the bench next to the invisible observers. Getting it under the cloak from there was easy; it was only as heavy as normal cloth. From there, she sent it to the larger person's side.

Then she thought better of her plan. If she ruined an assassin's cover, he might try to complete his mission immediately, going loud and potentially hurting people in the process. "Go to the bathroom," she told Ginny. "Leave the VIP box."

"Let's go find my brothers," Ginny told Hermione, standing from her seat. "They should be here already."

"But–" Hermione looked at Ginny, and she must have seen that there was more to this than Ginny was saying, because she stood and followed her.

Once they were out of the VIP box, Taylor dropped off of Ginny onto the steps. "Ginny, tell Hermione what I told you," she said. "Stay out of the way. This could get violent."

She slithered off to find a dark spot large enough for her human form. Her bugs had already scouted one out for her, a space under a section of stands that had a trapdoor for maintenance purposes, little more than a wrought iron catwalk that led directly under some glowing runes carved into the stands themselves. She went down, changed back, and took out her wand.

Up above, in the VIP box, she sent a wasp to the Malfoy boy. He needed to be taken out of the firing line, if it could be done. His parents would be able to take care of themselves, and the Minister had his Aurors, but he was still a child.

She stung him on the ankle. He yelped, crushed the wasp with his other foot, and proceeded to complain loudly about the bugs. His father said something scornful to the Minister, who blustered…

All worthless minutia. The boy didn't leave his seat.

Time was running out. She would only have more potential bystanders to protect if she waited until the Weasleys and Sirius arrived with Harry. Hopefully Draco had good reflexes.

She set a butterfly down on the top of the invisible head, rather than stinging the hidden observer. This way, if the Aurors had a modicum of good sense…

It took a disappointingly long time, but eventually one of the Aurors noticed the bug perched on nothing. "Hey!" he yelled, completely wasting the element of surprise and fumbling his wand. "You!"

The figure moved fast. He lurched forward and rushed out of the VIP box, ducking under a duo of badly-aimed stunning spells. Taylor, though, was not so easily surprised or evaded; he rushed right by her, invisible but not to her, and she hit him in the center of his form just as he reached the top of the stairs.

"Master!" a high pitched voice cried out, and the invisible wizard's body cracked out of existence an instant after his head hit the steps in the beginning of an out-of-control tumble.

Taylor squinted at the place the wizard and his accomplice had disappeared from. That voice… an elf. They could do teleportation, too.

Stupid. She should have accounted for that.

She returned to the maintenance catwalk, turned back into a snake, and slithered back to Ginny. "Invisible wizard driven off, he got away, but he didn't hurt anyone." Not the best outcome, but it also wasn't entirely her problem. This was a job for those Aurors, not her. She was going to have to keep a very close eye on the VIP box with her bugs for the rest of the day, for her own peace of mind, but beyond that it was their responsibility.

When Ginny and Hermione returned to the VIP box, they were met by two very sullen Aurors, both of whom waved them through without bothering to check them. The Minister and Malfoy were arguing about something – rather, Malfoy was berating the Minister with smooth, cutting remarks, and the Minister was agreeing. That stopped when other people started showing up, but it gave Taylor an even more jaded look at exactly how the balance of power worked here in magical Britain.

The Weasleys arrived soon afterward. They said hello, Ginny and Hermione told Ron all about what happened…

Taylor paid them little mind. Her bugs were canvassing the area for a wizard and his elf, who might have popped up somewhere nearby, but that was a mostly futile gesture. She was also arranging strategic reserves of her faster, more dangerous insects all around the VIP box.

She had been lax, thinking that the most important political figure in the country would of course have security sorted out. That illusion had been thoroughly dispelled.

It did not, however, seem that his would-be attacker had planned ahead for being caught with his pants down. She found no signs of any backup plans, such as a magical bomb under the VIP section or the like. By the time Sirius and Harry came in, the last to the VIP box which was still only half-filled, she was certain there was nothing else planned. As certain as she could be, anyway. Certain enough to not insist everyone evacuate immediately.

Harry sat next to Hermione and passed her his magical binoculars. "These are really good," he told her. "They can take magical pictures and play them back." Sirius took a seat in the row behind and above them, next to Arthur Weasley. He was sitting where the mystery assailant had sat, prior to Taylor driving him off. She was glad she had done so, now; who knew what might have happened had Sirius accidentally sat in the invisible man's lap. Knowing Sirius, she suspected he would have gotten off at least one startled line of innuendo before all hell broke loose.

Hermione ran her fingers over them, peering intently at the surface of the etched metal binoculars. "Ooh, that's really compact… I wonder why nobody has made Wizard video cameras yet, if they already have these?"

"What's a video?" Ginny asked.

"Many pictures in a row, with sound," Taylor hissed from her position coiled around Ginny's neck and shoulders. "Explained another way, wizard pictures that don't repeat for hours."

"Too much magic," Ginny promptly explained. "You can't put too many pictures in the same place. They get all fuzzy because the magic is too similar. It's the same reason pictures can't capture more than a few seconds at a time, it's too similar and the magic can't tell the difference between one moment and the next when there are enough of them."

"I guess Muggle film wouldn't work, then," Hermione mused.

"There are pensieves, though," Ginny added. "Those work like long pictures with sound, but with a memory and you can walk around in it."

The game had been in the process of starting while they talked. Taylor didn't really care about Quidditch, and thanks to the spatial warping her range didn't reach the field, so all she really saw out of the corner of her less than excellent snake eyes was a line of blurry cheerleaders dancing around on the field, standard fare for sports events.

Standard fare, except for the reactions the cheerleaders drew from the VIP section. Of the people Taylor had come with, only Arthur Weasley, Molly Weasley, Sirius, and of course Taylor herself were unaffected. Ronald was trying to climb the thankfully charmed guard rail, the twins were pulling fireworks out of their pockets – and immediately having them confiscated by their mum – and even Ginny was staring with wide eyes. Hermione flushed and turned away, muttering about "compulsion magic" and brushing a few errant sparks out of her hair, which told Taylor more about what was going on than anything else.

Harry half rose from his seat, but Sirius grabbed his shoulders and held him down. "Girls like a guy who doesn't make a fool of himself over Veela," Sirius advised. "And that includes Veela."

Veela… She didn't know what those were. Another big gap in her knowledge.

The cheerleaders went away, and Harry pushed Sirius' hands off his shoulders. "Thanks," he said.

"No problem." Sirius winked at Taylor. "Only the most suave and worldly of men can resist their call."

"I once saw you trying to sniff your own butt," Taylor remarked. In dog form, admittedly, but she didn't know if that made his actions more or less weird.

Ginny and Harry both almost choked laughing, much to Sirius' confusion. Then money was raining from the sky, and soon after a game of death-defying broomstick-riding stole everyone's attention.

Taylor kept watch, with her bugs and with her own snake eyes. Her son and his friends could enjoy the game. She was going to make sure nothing happened to them in the meantime.

The Quidditch game was, according to Sirius, 'legendary'. Legendarily uneventful, from Taylor's perspective. She wanted to be able to enjoy, if not the sport, then the spectacle, but that just didn't happen. Same for the after-game party and powwow around the fire; every firecracker in the distance had her flinching, and every flash of light in the dark was an attack.

She was too wound up to relax, and too stressed to have any fun sitting around as a snake. Instead, she left Sirius to entertain Harry and the others, slithering away to change back to her human self and wander the campground. If she stayed, she would only worry him with her sourceless agitation.

That unnamed, unknown wizard and his elf accomplice weighed heavy on her mind. Them getting away worried her. That she had absolutely no idea why they had been there, or what they had wanted, worried her more. Innocent people did not duck and run when someone noticed them lurking invisibly, they had been there for a reason they didn't think the Aurors would approve of. But was it as simple as trying to sneak a better seat in the private VIP booth, or was it sinister? She didn't know, and she had almost sent a man tumbling headfirst down a magically-extended flight of stairs regardless.

She was supposed to be better than that. Either better at managing the situation, or better at not going for the most violent possible option. One or the other. This incident, on top of other little things, made her worry that she had lost her touch. She wasn't making the best decisions. She was missing things. She was making stupid assumptions, like with the Floo.

A group of drunken wizards waved at her from a roaring bonfire in front of a ratty old tent that on the outside looked big enough for one person if they weren't picky. She ignored their catcalls.

It was hard to tell if she really was less effective now than before. Ten years was a long time, and this world was not comparable to her old one. The people here were softer. Social conventions were less harsh. Magic made everyone potentially versatile beyond belief, and the magical world was steeped in it, throwing surprises at her from every direction even when witches and wizards weren't directly involved.

Maybe even Skitter in her prime would have had trouble adapting to such a complicated world. Or maybe she would have long since rolled over the country, exploiting everything she could to fight her way to the top of this softer, unprepared pile of mostly normal people who used extraordinary powers to do things that passed for normal in their world.

The tents were getting more obviously expensive as she walked; if the campground had a rich side, she was entering it. The sights were interesting, and working her bugs into them was a challenge, so she kept walking.

The world she worked within had changed, but she had changed too, and she couldn't blame her feelings of inadequacy solely on the former. She was softer. Kinder. Less willing to be brutal, less certain that she wanted to go all-out. She wasn't a criminal or a hero waiting for the doomsday clock to run out. The pressure wasn't there, and the precedent wasn't either.

In its place? Worry and discontent, but stifling things that had no clear outlet, nothing to attack. Dumbledore, the country's hero who opposed her for unclear reasons from a position of immense power. Nobody else, save for that faceless, nameless wizard and his elf, who she would probably never see again. She didn't know what she could do about Dumbledore, and she was still struggling to pull herself up to a level of basic competency with magic.

Her power was silent on the matter, not weighing in with even a vague emotion-based opinion.

Then there was Harry. He didn't want Skitter or Weaver. Didn't even know who they were. He only knew her. Taylor. She couldn't go back to acting like them, either of them. That wasn't who she was anymore, and it wasn't who he needed… Unless he was in real danger, in which case hell would fall upon on anyone who threatened him. If she was still truly capable of that.

She couldn't be both herself and who she used to be, but depending on what happened, Harry might need one or the other. She might not be the one he needed when that time came.

Yelling in the distance made her flinch, again. Another change in her powers that she had only recently noticed; she was no longer as capable of redirecting her reactions to things into her bugs. No longer willing to, either. Becoming some outwardly emotionless stoic woman would do nothing but drive a wedge between her and her son.

The yelling continued. She turned toward it, sending her bugs out to investigate. The source soon became clear, as things began to happen elsewhere within her range.

Three wizards in masks were levitating a family of four, floating them high off the ground and laughing. Four more were fighting with bystanders. Two were cutting into a tent with their wands. One was throwing fire charms around with wild abandon.

This was not normal, innocent revelry. Ten thugs had come out to cause chaos, and coordinated well enough that they all started at roughly the same time.

It was nostalgic. The way they acted. The way they were completely and utterly unprepared for her.

Nine murderous idiots learned that their masks were good for hiding their identity, not for protecting the face underneath. The tenth was no more protected by his mask than the others, but he was casting fire at everything that moved and burning her bugs by sheer coincidence, roasting them before they could pass or fly over his ring of flames.

She slithered down between two tents to approach the pyromaniac without presenting something to throw fireballs at, then countercursed herself back to normal under the cover of darkness and rapidly spreading panic. The tenth Death Eater – for what else could they be, wearing those well-known masks? – she would deal with herself, before he burned someone instead of just tents that rapidly emptied of their occupants before they fully caught on fire.

She was the first one on the scene, so long as she did not count a wizarding family of three apparating away as their tent was bombarded with fire curses. "Aguamenti," she cast, flicking her wand to send a jet of water streaming over the flames licking at the grass and onto the Death Eater himself. Water was a good immediate dampener of heat, but wet cloth conducted heat a lot faster than dry cloth, and the idiot was surrounding himself with fire.

In the moment, it got his attention. "Burn!" he screamed, spinning around to send a fresh wave of flames at her.

Fire powers were some of her least favorite powers to fight as Skitter and later as Weaver, but basic Incendio blasts were nothing compared to the terrible versatility of someone like Burnscar, and she wasn't relying solely on bugs anymore. With someone this stupid… She dodged the plume of flame, dropped low to duck his next blast, and summoned a tent stake out of the ground from behind him with a simple series of Accio charms, pulling it to her and by extension directly into the back of his leg, just above his knee.

Tent stake met thin robe and weak flesh, and tent stake won so thoroughly that she heard the crunch of it pulverizing bone head-on. He screamed, and she stunned him.

Even the stupid thugs in this world could have power. That didn't make them smarter.

Aurors began apparating in, appallingly late to the scene of the crimes. Taylor left the pyromaniac with the stake still in his leg, reasoning that it would do to keep his blood inside his body until he could be recovered by the magical police. She had a son to protect, and babysitting a criminal did not take priority over that. She had wandered far enough that Harry was outside her range.

As she moved, her bugs moved with her. She came across three more masked figures causing chaos, these engaged in pitched battles with Aurors. She helped where she could, but didn't stop for them. The Weasleys' tent was abandoned, their campfire put out and the flap left open. Somewhere nearby, a wizard screamed about anti-apparition wards, meaning no more teleportation.

The woods weren't far, as the Weasleys had pitched their tent near the edge of the campground. Sirius knew how to hide in the woods, he would have led them there, if teleporting out wasn't possible.

"Miss." The high-pitched voice was accompanied by a pop as an elf burst into existence in front of her. "Miss is having a very distinctive wand," the elf said, wringing her spindly fingers nervously. "Master wants that wand."

Taylor knew that voice. "Master who?" she demanded, a stunning spell on the tip of her tongue.

"Master wouldn't want Winky to say," the elf replied. "Master wants your wand. Master sent Winky to find your wand. Give it to Winky."

"Bring your master, and I'll give him the wand," she said.

"Wait here!" the elf said, before teleporting away. It seemed the wards that stopped one form of teleportation didn't necessarily stop others. It further seemed that elves were not necessarily the brightest creatures. Nor were their masters, who would send elves capable of identifying themselves to the enemy to take their wand.

The elf and her master popped back into the world a short distance away, behind a tent. Clever, to approach from behind, but not nearly clever enough to actually get the drop on Taylor.

The meter-long stake of corrugated stone that the wizard drew from the ground with a wand of his own, pointed her direction, and flung, on the other hand, was a very good opening move.

Taylor threw herself to the side, narrowly avoiding being impaled. She whipped three stunners into the shredded remnants of the tent between them, while also bringing insects in to gather on the wizard's robes, awaiting a critical mass to overwhelm him all at once. Ten, fifteen seconds, maybe.

He shot two eerie green curses at her, ducking and dodging her less lethal returning fire. There was no advantage to using a killing curse over a stunner in a fight like this, no advantage except showing his hand and his intent, but he did it anyway. He stepped onto the shredded tent and into her field of vision, backlit by the remnants of the pyromaniac's fires in the distance.

"Winky says you stunned me," he growled, the bangs of his sandy hair dripping with blood from a sluggishly bleeding gash on his forehead. "Thank you. I'll take your wand now."

"Stalling for time only helps me," she retorted. Her insects attacked from his robes, converging on every inch of uncovered flesh they could find. He screamed, smacking at his body and instinctively ducking behind a more intact tent, but it would do him no good–

She tried to stun the elf when it appeared again, but she wasn't in the right position to hit it. The elf vanished every insect she had on her attacker, instantly negating the force she'd built up to subdue him. Then it vanished itself, disappearing before she could attack it. She was forced to abandon her position, momentarily blind to her enemy's plans. Two bright green curses pierced the darkness where she had stood only moments before.

This was going to be tricky. The Aurors weren't close enough to help in a timely fashion. This wizard was more competent than the others, forewarned, using lethal force, and aided by an elf who could teleport and take bugs off him with a snap of its fingers. He wanted to take her wand and possibly her life, and his elf had found her once already, meaning she couldn't count on being able to hide for long.

It was time to find out whether she was still capable of fighting her own battles, let alone defending the people she loved.

Chapter Text

"Avada Kedavra!" the wizard barked, the syllables coming off his tongue with staccato urgency.

Taylor was already moving, well away from where the green curse cut through the air. Her enemies numbered two. A roughly-robed wizard with grimy blond hair and a possible concussion, and a spindly little elf with no weapon beyond inherent magic. One was wielding lethal curses, and the other could teleport, vanish her insects with a snap of its fingers, and who knew what else.

She gathered her insects, pulling them in from all around to infest the battleground. It was dark out, with clouds covering the stars. The grounds of their fight were littered wizarding tents, arranged in untidy rows. In the distance, fires raged and fights between Aurors and masked thugs continued, neither side appearing particularly competent compared to the wizard who stood before her. She couldn't count on help coming from them, not quickly enough to stop this fight before it began.

He set a tent on fire, then slashed another down with cutting curses, clearing a flat open area in front of him. The heat of the fire did not stop her from slowly accumulating individual bugs on him, hidden in his robes. Not enough to do damage, but she valued her awareness of his location and the positions of his limbs more than a swarm of stinging pains that would just be vanished again while she wasn't in the position to stop it. That swarm would be prepared, but she would use it tactically.

He wanted her wand. His elf obeyed him. He wouldn't mind if she died in the process of acquiring it. Perhaps her death was the next step in his plans, in any case. He did not, however, know where she was at this exact moment. Whatever method he had used to find her, it was not specific enough to tell him which tents she was creeping behind. Perhaps it was the elf's doing; she was missing from the battlefield, liable to pop back in at the moment she could do the most damage, or simply whenever she was next needed by her master.

"You can't hide!" the wizard yelled.

She couldn't. Not if he was going to keep burning, exploding, or slicing through the tents between them. She had no idea what was happening inside the tents with expanded interiors, but that lack of knowledge thoroughly ruled out trying to hide inside one. Thankfully, this part of the campsite had been evacuated, but she couldn't run like the owners of these tents had. Waiting for help wouldn't get her out of the fight in the meantime.

All that was left was to fight until she won or the Aurors finally took note… Assuming they joined the battle on her side.

"Winky!" the wizard snapped, leveling another tent with a horizontal cutting curse. It popped like a balloon. "Find her!"

Taylor supposed that was one question answered. She darted between two rows of tents, only momentarily out in the open, and brought in bugs to cover her body. The only strike on her that would come as a surprise would be the one to appear right on top of her–

"There, master!" the elf called out, popping into existence next to the wizard and pointing directly at her.

Shit. She could vaguely keep track of the wizard as he formed three separate stone spears from the ground itself, levitated them, and aimed them. "Come out!" he yelled. "Or die!"

She would be doing neither. She moved enough that he was aiming the wrong way, two tents to the left, and set about pulling tent stakes from the ground with whispered summoning charms. There had to be a reason the wizard was using physical projectiles in addition to spells, and she didn't need to know his reason to copy the technique.

He fired, blindly sending the stone spears shooting out into the tents. They blasted through where she had been mere moments ago, one driving itself into the ground not far from her. All of the tents between her and the wizard would be gone in under a minute, at this rate.

She took her stakes – wooden, three hands long and sharp at one end to better drive into the ground – and dropped them in a pile. One good arm meant no carrying them.

"There!" the elf called out, pointing right at her despite there being no clear line of sight between them. That was her cue.

"Wingardium Leviosa, Depulso!" she hissed, whipping her wand at the first of five levitating stakes. "Depulso! Depulso, Depulso! Depulso!"

Her stakes were small, but they were by no means weak with the force of a banishing hex behind each one, and the levitation charm allowing them to ignore gravity. The first ripped through two tents, aimed at the wizard's heart, which he stopped dead with a shield. The second shattered against his shield but would have missed his body if his shield wasn't there. His shield faltered as she set a small number of bugs on him for a second time that night, the third incoming stake was vanished in quick succession with her bugs by the elf–

The fourth stake, shot much more quickly on the heels of the third, drove into the elf, sending its frail body flying into the open flap of one of the still-standing tents behind it. The fifth buried itself in the dirt where the elf had been standing.

She was moving again before the wizard could properly acknowledge that his elf had just been removed from the battle and probably seriously injured. "You want to play hardball, let's play hardball," she growled, bringing in the insects she had gathered out of sight but close to the wizard. They formed a visible cloud in the air, her largest swarm yet on this particular night.

The wizard recast his shield, this time putting up a variant akin to a bubble, closing himself in with a translucent barrier that flashed white whenever her insects touched it. It was glass in surface smoothness and cold to the touch.

She put enough bugs on the barrier to completely block his sight in all directions, the majority of the bugs she had within easy reach of him, and sent a few cursory blasting hexes his way as she moved, forcing him to keep the shield up. A couple more strikes and it would break, and then he was going to have no defense against her swarm. He couldn't maintain his shield and use other forms of magic at the same time, or so it seemed.

The elf popped into existence directly above her, and only the warning crack of teleportation spared her from being clubbed in the head by the blunt end of her own tent stake. She got her arm up in time to take the blow on her forearm, and subsequently the not-inconsequential weight of a shrieking, grappling house elf.

"You killing master!" the elf screamed, biting at her hand, apparently in good condition despite taking a tent stake to the chest. There wasn't even a bloody hole in its tattered makeshift garments.

"Master trying to kill me!" she gritted out, slinging her arm down and dislodging the elf. A firm kick sent it rebounding against the side of a tent, which provided it a springboard to leap right back at her. Spells were too slow, so she instead set her entire robe's worth of wasps and other insects on the elf, grabbing it by one flailing limb as it tried to tackle her, wand momentarily pinned uselessly against a bony little forearm. "Tell him to fuck off and he won't be in danger!" she screamed in its face, her bugs swarming the gnarled little creature, biting and stinging.

"Winky already lost one master tonight!" the elf shrieked. She brought her fingers together to snap, and Taylor did the sensible thing. She dropped to her knees and whipped the elf by the arm against the ground.

The elf's arm broke with a surprisingly brittle snapping sound, but her body rebounded like a rubber ball and she got her snap off. All the bugs within five feet of Taylor disappeared. The wizard, who continued to hold his shield against the bugs a few tents away, flinched as he heard the elf's shrill scream.

Taylor still had the elf by the arm, so she slung it around, smacking it repeatedly against the ground in a bid to keep it disoriented and in too much pain to fight until the repeated impacts overwhelmed its frankly ridiculous constitution. Halfway through her third swing she was blown back by an unseen force, right into one of the tents. She kept her grip on the elf, but her back smacked into something hard as they tumbled into what appeared to be a rustic log cabin.

Wizarding tents were ridiculous. She saw a rhino head mounted on the wall, and a full kitchen, and she was laying on a thick bearskin rug with her back against the side of a massively overwrought wooden throne, for no lesser word could adequately describe the ugly spruce chair. All held within what on the outside looked like a ratty two-person canvas tent.

The elf screamed in her face, attempting to claw at her eyes with three free limbs, and she reflexively threw it into the kitchen, barely managing with the tips of her fingers to snag her wand instead of throwing it too.

For a fleeting moment, they both slumped against expensive furniture. Taylor clutched her wand, rearranging her grip for casting. The elf sniffed, huge eyes glaring balefully.

The moment passed. The elf, one arm dangling limply with a sickening number of unnatural bends, leaped up onto the edge of the sink. A wave of the undamaged arm, and five knives levitated from the chopping block on the counter. "Master wants your wand!"

"Master can get his own," Taylor retorted in kind. She could feel the bugs outside the tent; the wizard was dropping his shield.

In the next handful of seconds, the battle was fought on two different fronts, simultaneously. Outside, the wizard's shield disappeared, and she drove her bugs in from every possible direction. Inside, the elf sent knives shooting at her, keeping one for itself. She blocked the knives with a hasty "Protego!" while simultaneously moving her bugs out of the way of a horribly hot plume of flames bursting from the wizard's wand. The elf was upon her with its personal knife just as she reached the wizard's skin with more than half of her bugs. Her shield faltered; he screamed in agony as she did her best to turn him into a pincushion.

"Winky!" he yelled, and the elf popped away mid-jab, reappearing by his side.

"Fuck!" Taylor yelled. The elf dropped the knife and snapped her bugs away again, rendering her blind in that area save for relatively distant visual perspectives.

She didn't need perfect awareness of their movements to know what would surely be coming next. She ran for the tent flap, on the inside disguised as a hard wooden door. The wizard, somehow still functional despite all of the surface damage she had inflicted, leveled his wand at her tent. His face was contorted into a rictus, and the elf clung to his leg.

He cast; she threw the door open and leaped out, falling to the ground with her hand over the back of her head.

His spell blasted the tent to smithereens, and crucially, the tent was full of wood. Splintering, shrapnel-producing wood. It was a guess–

But it was proven a very good guess, because the tent exploded like a landmine, the blast directed up and out. On the ground, she was spared from all but a pressure shockwave.

A widely dispersed spray of wooden fragments rained down on the area around the exploded tent. Her bugs moved in to close the gap in her awareness once more, their numbers greatly diminished. She saw, as she placed strategic gnats, that the wizard was hobbling toward the exploded tent. The elf was literally clinging to his leg, sobbing her little heart out. They were arguing, or more accurately, the elf was pleading with him. She could hear them with her own ears.

"Master, please master, the witch–"

"She's dead, Winky! I'm not leaving without that damn wand. Went to all this sodding trouble–"

"Master is hurt!" the elf screeched.

"Got the better of her, didn't I?" the wizard retorted.

Taylor quietly cursed herself into a snake and slithered out of sight, into the wreckage of the popped log cabin tent. Her snake body could easily work its way into the wreckage, through openings much too small for any human or elf. The pile itself was mostly composed of arm-sized splinters, with nowhere for an injured person to hide. They did nothing to her scales as she moved over and through them.

The wizard crouched down at the edge of the pile. "Winky, help me find the wand before the Aurors finish with the traitors," he snarled.

"Master can have any wand," Winky wailed. "This one is not worth it!"

The wizard could indeed have any wand… except hers. Taylor's wouldn't work for him, not that he had any way of knowing that. If she didn't like her wand, she might have left it in the rubble for him to find.

She slithered through the wreck, closer and closer. Within striking distance, a single moving shadow in the mess.

The Aurors were finally subduing the masked thugs. Some were coming this way, far too late to be helpful. As it was?

She lanced out of the wooden mess, striking at the elf as it vanished sections of wooden debris to search. Her fangs sunk into the back of its neck, to either side of the spine, and she felt an awkward sensation in the roof of her mouth as her venom was injected. At this size, an abnormally large black adder against a small elf, her teeth were like daggers on their own; the venom was unnecessary.

The elf fell, weakly pawing at its back. The wizard yelled. Taylor pulled her teeth out and countercursed herself, coming up crouched with her wand already in her hand and moving. A stunning curse and another, smaller wave of insects converging on the wizard before he could react.

He fell to the curse.

As it was, she didn't need their help anymore.

She cursed herself back into a snake and slithered away, leaving the man and his elf for the aurors to find. She would rather not answer for what had happened here, either the results or the methods used, and that meant making her escape. There wasn't anything to mark them as obvious criminals, beyond being found in all of this destruction, but–

She stopped. That was… actually a real problem. The wizard didn't have a Death Eater mask, she didn't know the necessary magic to conjure one up in the next thirty seconds to plant on him, and nobody had seen him or his elf up in the VIP box. There was nothing linking them to any crimes. If she left them alone, they might even be able to pretend they were victims of her, and they had seen her face, as well as her distinctive wand.

She wasn't a criminal in this world. She would very much like to keep it that way.

When the Aurors arrived, she was waiting for them as a human. "Took you long enough," she said angrily. Some of her anger was at them. The rest was at the tedious, obnoxious process she was certain she was about to endure.

One danger was dealt with. Now she had to face another.

"What are you doing here?" Sirius demanded. It was far too late at night to deal with the most paranoid Auror in Britain, but here he was, sitting in a waiting room in the Ministry at two in the morning. They were the only ones there.

"What are you doing here, Black?" Moody retorted. He looked worse for wear; he'd already been grizzled and in multiple pieces back when the war was on, but Sirius was prepared to say that Moody had aged far worse than him in the intervening years. And he had been in Azkaban!

"My," quick, think up an excuse for why he cared about Taylor, should have done that earlier, "date for the Quidditch World Cup. She didn't make it back when the fighting started. I think she's here." That would do. Taylor wouldn't be mad at him claiming she was his date if he got her out of here before someone cottoned on that she was Taylor Hebert. If she was here at all; he didn't know for sure.

"Your eye candy wouldn't be here," Moody scoffed. "They only brought in the people who actually fought the Death Eater scum, and the Death Eaters. Guess which identities they're keeping hush-hush?"

"All of them?" he said optimistically. He knew they only took in the ones who fought as witnesses; that was why he thought he might find her here. She definitely would have fought. He only didn't because the Weasleys needed another apparition-capable adult to protect the kids while they ran for the edge of the anti-apparition wards, and to apparate them to safety once they were there.

"Azkaban didn't beat cynicism into you?" Moody asked. "Hell, nothing will then."

An Auror entered the room, fresh and bushy-tailed. "Who are you two here for?" he asked. "Or are you here to give additional accounts of the incident?"

"Call it what it was, lad," Moody growled. "A Death Eater attack!"

"Taylor," Sirius said. "Black hair, one arm–"

"Eh?" Moody stared at him weirdly. More weirdly than usual, that was. "I know her. That one… Yeah, I could see her fighting." He looked over at the Auror. "Me too. Her."

"Who are you?" the Auror asked.

Sirius snorted. "Kid, don't they have alumni pictures at the Auror academy?" he asked. "Or old ghost stories? You've really never heard of Mad-Eye Moody?" He was happy to use Moody's reputation as a bludgeon instead of his own, if only because he knew it would annoy the old fart.

"Uh… let me get someone to help you." The Auror left the room with remarkable speed.

"I will not return, no matter how far into the crapper they get without me," Moody said grimly, "but only because I know I'd not be allowed to properly whip them into shape. Shameful. Now, go at it from the source…"

"Source?" Sirius had a mad vision of Moody yelling at infants in their cradles. Or worse yet, putting pregnant mothers through training programs.

"Nothin'," Moody huffed. "Just an offer I'm thinkin' about. Let's get the girl out of here before they convince her she imagined the whole thing. I want to ask someone a few questions, and she'll do nicely."

"She'll curse you if she hears you calling her a girl," Sirius warned. "She's my age, you old tosser."

"Do you think women graduate into men once they get old enough, Black?" Moody asked, with such a straight face that Sirius couldn't tell if he was taking the piss or not. "She could be eighty and she'd still be a girl."

"Shut up, you know what I meant. She's a woman, don't talk about her like she's a child."

The same young Auror returned, with Taylor in tow. He had her wand – Sirius would recognize that creepy hole-filled stick anywhere – and she had a collection of small scratches and bruises on her face, but other than that all was well.

"You need to come back tomorrow morning to give a proper statement," the young Auror told her as he handed her wand back.

"You got what I'm willing to give," she snapped irritably. "Sirius, Moody," she added, much less angrily. "Thanks for coming. Your presence gave them the kick in the arse they needed to remember I'm not obligated to give them my life story just because their Aurors are so shit I had to defend myself."

Moody cackled loudly, and the young Auror glared daggers at Taylor's back. Sirius didn't consider himself a peacemaker, but it was late and he didn't think antagonizing the government was a great idea given Taylor's circumstances, so he stepped between them. "We'll be going now."

"Best get out before someone with a spine shows up to arrest you for contempt of the law," Moody added in an undertone as they left the waiting room. "I'd have slung you in a cell to wait out the night for that cheek, girl."

"They're short-staffed," Taylor relayed in the same low tone, her anger gone like it had never existed. "Something's shaking them up. Crouch Senior, whoever that is, was found dead this evening. Relatives of the Death Eater wannabes are showing up. One of the Death Eaters is a dead man who was supposed to be in Azkaban."

"They told you that?" Moody whispered as they crossed the Ministry Atrium. Sirius took the lead, heading for the Floo exits.

"I overheard," Taylor answered. "No idea what they're going to do about any of it. Everyone is going crazy. Why are you here, again?"

"Grimmauld Place," Sirius intoned, tossing a handful of Floo powder into the fire. "Moody, you going to badger me and her if you don't get what you want right this bloody instant?" he asked.

"Probably," Moody said, without an ounce of shame. "It'll only take a few minutes."

"Consider yourself invited to tag along." If he knew one thing about the paranoid Auror, he was damn annoying when he was pushing for something. Popped up in the oddest of places, all the time, pressing and badgering… Sirius had been this close to joining the Aurors just to shut the old man up. One more week might have done it. Then Pettigrew had to go and betray everyone.

The flashy intermission of Floo travel did nothing to stop his increasingly dark thoughts. He waited until Taylor and Moody were safely through, then put the Floo grate down. No more treachery or whatnot tonight.

Moody stood in the center of the room, his eye whirling madly for a good minute. Sirius took that time to casually look Taylor over, assessing whether he was going to need to fend off unwelcome questions at Saint Mungo's tonight. She looked… relatively unharmed. Scratched, bruised, but all her limbs were intact and she wasn't bleeding heavily or missing any new pieces of herself. There were some slivers of wood in her hair and the creases of her robes, nothing a thorough shaking-out wouldn't fix.

"Cursed place you got here, Black," Moody remarked, turning to face them. "How long it take to clean it out enough to live in?"

"Long enough," Sirius replied. "Still not sure I want to bother fixing it the rest of the way, now that I'm a free man."

"Do it," Moody advised. "Wards like these aren't easy to come by. Anyway… Taylor. Got any names for a retired Auror?"

"Names of Death Eaters?" Taylor asked. "Expecting the need for vigilante justice?"

"Expecting them to pop up again, if they get off," Moody said grimly. "I'm also expecting the official story to be full of hippogriff-sized holes. Eyewitness testimony, that's what I'm after. Damn unlucky I wasn't there myself."

"Eyewitness testimony. Sure." Taylor straightened up and looked Moody in the good eye. "At least ten idiots in masks akin to Death Eater masks started causing trouble in a coordinated attack, striking close to simultaneously. Assaulting people, setting fires, destroying tents, causing chaos. Those initial ten went down quickly, aside from the firestarter. There were more elsewhere in the campground, and they got into pitched battles with the Aurors. Meanwhile, an elf approached me and said its master wanted my wand, specifically."

Sirius frowned thoughtfully. An elf, seeking a wand… That was weird.

"The elf and her master attacked me when I refused to give it up," Taylor said neutrally, sounding like she couldn't care less. "The wizard called her Winky. She never used his name, and she spoke of having lost one master already tonight. We fought. He was aiming to kill, with killing curses and other lethal attacks. His elf tried to bash my skull in, stab me with a knife, and–"

"Hold on!" Sirius interjected. "The elf was fighting too?"

"Yes?" Taylor answered, frowning at him and Moody. "Why does that matter?"

"Elves don't usually make effective fighters," Moody said. "Takes a lot to rile them, more to keep them riled when facing a witch or wizard. Orders alone won't do it, they only really get dangerous when they have their own reasons for attacking, too."

"It happened, regardless of the cause," Taylor said. "We fought, I won. The elf might live, she might not. I only stunned the wizard."

Sirius could hear the massive gaps in her explanation, such as how she got from 'elf trying to stab me, wizard throwing killing curses' to 'elf in critical condition, wizard stunned'. Hopefully he would get the details later, once Moody was gone.

"I see why they weren't letting you leave, if you stuck them with that sorry excuse for a story," Moody complained. "What did the wizard look like?"

"Sandy blond hair, rumpled robes, recent injury to his forehead," Taylor reported. "The older Aurors all said he was a spitting image of Barty Crouch Junior. Close enough that there were rumblings of checking Azkaban's graveyard right before you arrived."

"Crouch dead, Crouch Jr. mysteriously alive…" Moody shook his head. "Not buying it. Not without some more digging. You get any names or faces of the other Death Eaters?"

"Not really, no," Taylor said apologetically. "A lot of their faces were too swollen to get a good look at, anyway."

Sirius remembered bugs swarming his face. He had a feeling he knew why that might be.

"And you were at the Cup why?" Moody asked.

"My date," Sirius supplied.

Taylor, to her credit, acted like that was absolutely what she had expected him to say, despite this being the first she was hearing of it. "I've been on better dates," she said dryly.

"Have you? Here I thought a chance to sharpen your fighting skills would be cherished," Sirius retorted.

"Yes, that's why you were nowhere to be found," Taylor shot back. "So I could handle it all myself."

"Hey, I was doing the heroic thing and protecting helpless children!"

"That's all I wanted to know," Moody announced, cutting off their tired banter. "I'll see myself out, Black… And I'll get in touch with you if I have any more questions for Taylor, shall I?"

"He's not my secretary," Taylor objected.

"Wasn't thinking of secretaries," Moody muttered. "I'm not buying your date story, either. Keep to fighting Death Eaters and we won't have a problem."

"Same for you," Taylor said.

Moody lifted the grate in front of the Floo, took Floo powder from a pocket in his robe, and whispered his destination into the flames.

Once he was gone, Sirius put the grate down again. "If he's not buying that you were my date, then what does he think you are?" he asked.

"My best guess?" Taylor shrugged. "Mercenary. Does the magical world have those?"

"Yeah, mostly foreigners…" He put a hand to his chin. "You know, I can see it." It would make sense. "Dangerous, foreign, unclear allegiances, no obvious reason to be hanging around me."

"He knows I was the one to help you catch Pettigrew, too," she said. "If you meet him again, try not to disprove that theory. He might not dig any further if he thinks he knows what I am. I didn't give the Aurors my last name this time, but there's enough out there that he could find too much if he really looked."

"Maybe." This was Moody… The Death Eaters might take priority, but the old man obviously didn't know how to sit around and enjoy his retirement. If he ever got bored chasing after resurgent Death Eaters, Taylor's identity might be in danger.

"How's Harry?" Taylor asked.

"Him? Fine." He rubbed at the back of his neck, holding in a yawn. None of the kids had come anywhere near the fighting. "I told him I'd look for 'Hissy', so I can take you back whenever… He'll be asleep by now."

"No, he won't," she objected. "Take me back now, so he knows I'm safe." She shifted into her snake form, clearly brooking no argument.

One more Floo trip, and then he could sleep.

A week after the World Cup, Taylor stared down at a list she had written, in all of its unencouraging lengthy glory. Around her, the more benign books of the Black family library were open to different pages, showing glimpses of hundreds of years of knowledge in dozens of magical disciplines.

If her power had a visual representation, it would be that of a woman rubbing her hands together and licking her lips as she gazed at a buffet table. Taylor herself would be the cholesterol in the imaginary woman's veins, in that metaphor. Or perhaps the stress-induced heart attack.

The long, sprawling parchment was divided into two columns. On one side, she had written down every spell she and her power had mastered together. On the other side, she had the various magical disciplines they had yet to touch, specific spells that she had seen used, and vague power descriptions that she had yet to find a spell for, but knew she would be able to put to very good use if she could replicate them. Also on that side were a few practical things she intended to set in motion, such as ordering a backup wand from Ollivander, and looking into the process for commissioning a blood-magic prosthetic from Bulgarian vampires.

The 'known' side of her spell list was a pathetic stub. Fifty-six spells. A grand total of one serious curse and one countercurse, the set she used to turn into Hissy and on one occasion a Moose, but which was theoretically capable of turning her into any animal. Also in places of pride on the list were Accio, Stupefy, Incendio, Aguamenti, Depulso, Protego, and other basic, bread and butter charms, hexes, and jinxes.

Based on Harry's past schoolbooks, she was skipping all over the Charms and Defense Against Dark Arts curriculums, but she knew about one third of the practical side of what they taught in Hogwarts. She couldn't confidently say anything about the theory, but theory was a luxury she couldn't afford while there were actual spells to learn in the other column.

Also based on Harry's schoolbooks, she was the equivalent of a first-year or worse in every other magical subject. Transfiguration, Runes, Potions, Arithmancy, Herbology, Creatures, Astronomy, Divination… And that was only what they taught in the equivalent of middle and high school! After Hogwarts students were expected to either go into jobs where specific knowledge wasn't needed, or to get apprenticeships for other subjects that built on the Hogwarts educational base. Spellcrafting, Enchanting, Wandcrafting, Warding and Cursebreaking, Healing…

There were thousands of spells to learn, hundreds of techniques that didn't use a wand at all, and dozens of entire sub-disciplines that each offered a unique, powerful new way to manipulate, shape, understand, or predict reality.

Her power might be the one eyeing the buffet table, but she was the one who would suffer for each and every item she put on their plate. It wasn't even the pain that she was dreading, so much as the sheer amount of knowledge required to be even basically competent in the magical world. There wasn't enough time in the day, and time magic was highly restricted, just like ritual, blood, and sacrificial magic. More subjects she could study here, in the Black library, once she learned enough enchanting and cursebreaking to safely read them.

Then there were the spells, techniques, and abilities she knew of but didn't think she could learn due to her unique way of using magic. Just like her separation from her power had allowed her to curse and countercurse herself, but barring her from the intended uses of spells instead of allowing unintended uses. The Patronus charm, to take one example she had already researched and attempted to learn, required powerful feelings of happiness to cast. As it turned out, this was not a placebo or method of aiding concentration. The spell actually needed the caster to feel true, uncomplicated joy.

Her power, for all that it communicated with her by sending emotions, was not an emotional person. Or a person at all. It didn't have directly translatable feelings. The spell probably couldn't even find a person to pull the feelings from when her power attempted to cast it. She felt joy, but she did not have magic. Her power had magic, but it did not feel. The connection didn't go the right way for it to work for them.

On Taylor's end, this just meant that after some truly intense headaches, her attempts to cast the Patronus charm didn't hurt at all because her power had either given up or deemed it currently unfeasible. Emotion-based spells were out. No Dementor repellant, none of the Unforgivables, and quite a few of the nastier curses Sirius had told her about were all off the table.

Then there were the magical techniques and charms that required some form of mental input, not necessarily emotion, making them iffy at best. Obliviation was a prime example; Taylor had no doubt that her power could precisely envision the chains of thoughts to be targeted when casting an obliviation. The question was whether her power's inhuman perspective would translate correctly to the spell, and if it did, whether the results would be what Taylor had originally asked for.

Apparition was another good example. It needed the caster to focus on their destination, to keep their body firmly in mind, and to will themselves to the other point. She could do those things, but the magic didn't look to her, it looked to her power. Could her power do those things for her body? The existence of side-along apparition implied it was possible for one individual to apparate another, but then there was the danger of practicing…

Which led neatly into the third category of spells she couldn't learn, the ones that would be unacceptably dangerous to practice by trial and error. This was the category she had assumed Floo travel fell under until recently. Apparition was a true example of a dangerous spell, because severe splinching could be instantly fatal in unlucky instances, and there was no warning or precautionary measure to avoid it. Fiendfyre was another such spell, dangerous for normal witches to attempt to learn, and liable to turn on its caster even after a successful casting. Any form of self-altering mental magic was also out, because as much as she approved of the current semi-alliance between herself and her power, the last thing she wanted was to give it permission to further modify her mind.

All of those spells and more with the same faults were barred to her, from what she knew and theorized. If not forever, then at least until she had a solid grounding in magical theory at a high enough level to effectively speculate instead of guessing in the dark. Which would take her years of study to get. But even putting those aside there were thousands more she could theoretically learn, at the price of a dozen hours and headaches for each one.

In the year and change that she had been practicing magic, she had only now learned enough to see the mountain of accumulated knowledge laid out before her and understand it for what it was.

She was daunted. And she did not daunt easily. But that mountain had to be scaled, it had to be explored. The only truly safe place to be was on the top, or at least high up enough to defend herself from those with most of a century's head start.

Sirius came in through the Floo, the flash of flame visible to the handful of bugs she had placed specifically to observe the fire. He tiptoed down the hallway, quietly sneaking past the irritating portrait of his mother, and entered the library, whereupon he paused to stare at her messy table.

"It looks like you're trying to compile a list of every spell known in Britain," he remarked, coming to look over her shoulder.

"Pretty much." And the mountain just kept getting higher. He was right, she hadn't even begun to look outside of Britain, even with Harry's example of a powerful spell having originated in Japan, his 'Possessionem Skurge' if she remembered correctly. There would be more like it, strong but unknown in Britain. "I have to catch up."

"Don't sweat it," he advised. "Keep in mind that the average wizard is an idiot who barely made it out of Hogwarts."

"I'm not worried about the average." Dumbledore, maybe Moody, whoever had instigated the attack at the Cup, the pureblood elite who continued to press an agenda that directly impacted her… She had enemies, and they weren't going to be average witches and wizards.

"You make up for your limited knowledge with ruthless cunning," Sirius retorted. "Plus, a lot of this stuff overlaps or isn't worth bothering with." He reached over to point at her 'to learn' list. "Divination has no practical application, and you have to have the knack for it to begin with."

Precognition, this world's equivalent to predictive Thinkers, was worthless? She was going to triple-check that particular valuation.

"What's it good for, then?" she asked.

"Feeling in control." Sirius circled around the table to pick up her discarded teacup. "I've got the knack for reading tea leaves, did you know? I could look in here and get something arguably true about you."

Taylor casually sent a cluster of flies into the cup even as he set it down, and made a mental note to never leave her teacups unattended.

"But I never bother with it," Sirius continued, "because the things the tea leaves reveal are too vague to mean anything except in retrospect. Divination is the art of feeling like you have a clue when you really don't, even when you're doing it right. The only useful thing I've ever seen anyone do with Divination that wasn't scamming others is diagnostics."

"Diagnostics?" She put her pen down and gave him her full attention. "What do you mean?"

"Throw a bunch of divination at someone," Sirius elaborated. "Focus on their secrets. You'll get a load of garbage. Then, send someone who didn't do any Divination to find out their secrets the normal way. When they report back, see if their conclusions retroactively explain the garbage. No bias in their conclusions that way, and if what they've found doesn't give you that sinking feeling that the Divination garbage all made perfect sense if only you'd been smarter about it, then you know they got it wrong."

That did sound theoretically useful, but… "Is that really the best way to use it?" she asked.

"It's the best way I know," Sirius said, "and I only know it because a much smarter wizard than myself took my bet that nobody could make that shit useful. All you really need to know is what the different branches are, how to preemptively poison the well so anyone stupid enough to target you is led even further astray than they would be anyway, and where it borders on other, more useful disciplines."

"Right." She stuck an asterisk next to Divination and added 'understand, supposedly worthless' in small letters. "Any other duds I should know about before I get invested?"

Sirius pulled out a chair, spun it around, and sat bow-legged to lean on the back. "Yeah, loads." He tapped her list. "Arithmancy doesn't get good until after Hogwarts, and you need to know everything from Charms, Transfiguration, and Runes first. Astronomy is only still taught because it's a 'classical' subject, and unless you go off the deep end and start designing rituals or perfecting experimental potions you will literally never need it. Transfiguration is actually three separate sub-branches, and the one with all the premade charms to transfigure specific objects into other specific objects only exists to help the lazy, weak, or stupid ease into the subject. Of the other two, focus on free Transfiguration. Self Transfiguration is for lunatics and animagi."

Taylor flipped her parchment over and started writing down his assessments verbatim. "Runes?" she asked, curious as to his opinion.

"In Hogwarts, it's just another set of languages," Sirius replied. "Not a single thing in the curriculum involves magic. Outside of Hogwarts, you need to know those languages inside and out to even get started with long-term enchantments, wards, wandmaking, or anything else that doesn't involve magic coming out of you and your wand right then and there."

"So it's important… But not useful on its own." And it was a language. Her power wouldn't help her there.

"Exactly!" Sirius started sorting her books, piling most of them off to one side. "Charms you can just take out of books, nobody gives a shit about the theory until they want to make their own, which is bloody finicky and dangerous besides. Potions is good to know the basics of, you never know when you'll need to brew something, but the high-level potions are a crapshoot even for masters so don't bother with those. Rituals are illegal and more importantly inefficient unless you become a mass murderer. Blood magic is more likely to fuck you than your enemy unless you know a lot about it, so just knowing how to identify it when you come across it is best. Occlumency is nice, and you should learn it when you have a few years to spare, but right now it won't be worth anything, and aside from surface thoughts you can always tell when someone is trying to read your mind. Summoning–"

"Summoning?" she said. "That's not on my list."

"Yeah, it wouldn't be right now, you don't have access to the really old stuff yet," he waved the objection off. "You'll see references to it in old books and they make it sound terrifying and powerful, but it's obscure and the truth is nothing from that field of magic has worked in over a thousand years, since before Merlin. Somebody really powerful put a stop to the whole discipline. Summoning involves attracting and binding things from other planes of existence to ours, and those things were never good to have around, so that unnamed hero put up a big 'Notice Me Not' shield of sorts around our level of existence."

A shield against things from other dimensions…

Taylor could feel her power emanating curiosity, but for once she was not going to indulge in that impulse. "Say no more." Literally. No more. She suspected that still-active magic field might be why this world seemed to be a forgotten corner of the multiverse. She did not want to know about that dimension-protecting shield. Not when it was strong enough to at least partially affect entities, and had been erected to stop other things from being drawn into the world. Her power should not be allowed to learn about that specific work of magic.

"You can always tell who's read that Muggle's works by how they react to hearing about Summoning for the first time," Sirius chuckled. "Old man Lovestuff."

"Lovecraft." And she hadn't read any of his works. People like Nilbog turned those far-out horrors into real-life tragedies. No, her aversion to the unknown was a lot more first-hand in origin.

"Crafty McLove, whatever his name was," Sirius agreed. "Nutter who was probably a squib raised by Purebloods long enough to internalize the self-hate and get a vague idea of all the stuff he should be scared of, then turfed out to make his own way. Yeah. You've got a great long list, but it's more like a tree where half the branches are rotten or don't actually exist. Focus on Potions, Transfiguration and more charms, do some reading on runes in your spare time, and you'll catch up on all of the useful base disciplines within a few years. From there, anything complicated just puts you ahead of the pack."

He took the last of her books, shut it, glanced at the cover, and stuck it on top of a big pile of other books. Of the two dozen or so she had on her table, only four had been left out of the pile. An introduction to Runes, two Transfiguration textbooks – fourth and sixth year, according to the titles – and a Potions theory book.

"You can't use anything from these," he indicated the big pile, "until you've mastered these, magic and theory." He indicated the four books left over.

The mountain was still there, but Sirius had pointed her to a trail leading up its lofty heights. "Thank you," she said.

"I'd hate for you to be stuck in this gloomy library for the rest of your life studying the likes of Divination because nobody told you it was a load of shit," he said seriously. "You're already a leg up on most people, being able to use a library at all, but that has its own pitfalls."

"Are there really no public libraries in the magical world?" Taylor asked. Sirius had brought up a subject that she had long since forgotten about, having access to Grimmauld Place and its book collection.

"Not in Britain," Sirius answered. "The rich Pureblood families all have their own private libraries. Why would they support a way for anyone to have that advantage, when their enemies could use it just as easily as them? They only tolerate the Hogwarts library because it's almost as old as their vaunted bloodlines."

Basic knowledge control, where the knowledge involved learning to bend reality to one's will… It made sense, but she wished it wasn't so.

Another problem for the future. For now, she had a much-reduced reading list to get to. Transfiguration would be first; it was time to crack that mystery. The wizard had wielded transfigured stone projectiles against her instead of much more direct spells, and she wanted to know why, as well as how to make such things herself.

The next wizard or elf to fight her would find her an even more formidable opponent. She was only getting stronger and more versatile with time.

The Hufflepuff common room was a hub of chatter and gossip at the most uninteresting of times, and the announcement of the Triwizard Tournament's revival could not be classified as anything of the sort. Everyone from the seventh-years down was talking about it. Harry himself was no exception, much to Taylor's amusement as she slithered into the brightly-lit and cluttered room for the first time that term.

"I wonder how many students Beaubaxtons and Durmstrang will be bringing," Harry said to some of the other Hufflepuffs in his year. They were all sprawled out on the various chairs, couches, and soft rugs that littered the room with casual abandon. "Does anyone know?"

"I heard that there aren't any rooms being set aside for them in the castle," Susan Bones said. "My aunt hasn't told me anything, though. I wish she had. She must have known."

"With expansion charms they could house their entire student body in Hagrid's shack," Hopkins suggested. "We don't know how many might be coming. Enough to compete with, but you only need one student for that." Taylor didn't know much about him, just that he was one of Harry's roommates, but he struck her as the sort to doggedly argue semantics at every opportunity.

She wound her way up the side of the couch and along the top, into view of the assorted Hufflepuffs – aside from Harry, who had his back to her. "I am here," she hissed.

"There you are, Hissy!" Harry turned and gently picked her up, lifting her to his shoulders. He turned back to his Hufflepuff compatriots without missing a beat as Taylor secured her grip. "They might only need one student, but surely they have to bring everyone who wants to compete?"

"They might hold a qualifier at their own schools prior to arriving," Hopkins argued. "Like I said, they only need one."

The discussion continued, and Taylor lingered long enough to catch up on all the gossip that had arisen over the summer and first week back at Hogwarts. The Triwizard Tournament was the big-ticket item, bringing in visitors from two other magical schools in other countries, but there were other things too. The new Head Boy for the year was a Hufflepuff, and there was some controversy over the Head Girl not being a Hufflepuff only because the professors didn't want their house overrepresented, or so it was said. The Defense Professor from the previous year had quit for unknown reasons. His replacement was an old Auror called Mad-Eye… Moody.

That night, after catching up with her son and the school gossip, Taylor set out to determine exactly how much of a threat Moody would be to her secret presence in the school. Pettigrew had not had to deal with a war veteran sporting a magical eye of unknown abilities.

It was a good thing, for once, that the elves at Hogwarts were so detrimental to her bugs. She kept them mostly dormant, so Moody would not have had a chance to see any unusual activities through walls even if his eye was capable of it. By the same measure, her never changing back to human on Hogwarts' grounds meant he could not possibly have seen the change occurring. The Map was safely out of his hands and presumably labeled her as Hissy besides, and she was well known to be a pet snake who often wandered the castle in the evenings…

He shouldn't have any reason to suspect her, so long as his eye did not see pure magic or anything ridiculous like that. Even her blood charm wouldn't be able to identify her as human were someone to use it and look at her; thus was the advantage of self-applied magic. No links between caster and subject to follow.

She meandered her way through the castle, careful to never appear too intelligent in her choosing of pathways. Her route took her by the Great Hall, and then the Dungeons where a few first-year Slytherins stopped to admire her, and then she wound her way up to slither by the Defense classroom.

Moody might know she controlled bugs, based on what had happened to the Death Eaters and her other opponent at the cup, but he wouldn't know anything about the specifics, and even Sirius did not seem to suspect that she could see and hear through them in sufficient quantities, so she felt safe sending in a single fly to scout Moody's office. The old man was not an ally… yet.

One fly was not enough to scope out the room by sight or hear anything intelligible, but the presence of a warm body was easily confirmed. Her fly buzzed around, lazily twirling from corner to corner of the small chamber, even swooping by to smell the – to a fly – appealing gunk sitting in a small container on his desk, which had an appealing, but mostly unidentifiable aroma.

A big, blurry shape spun towards her from below, and she deftly dodged her fly out of the way even as she slithered down the corridor outside his door.

"Damn fly," she heard as a snake, the words muffled but understandable. Her fly heard them as a rumble of distant thunder, and then a big red thing streaked up, and her fly was obliterated.

Moody didn't come boiling out of his classroom to apprehend her, so she assumed that he had written the incident off as a normal, everyday occurrence despite it being objectively rare within the confines of Hogwarts. She would be sure not to push that luck.

She slithered away, confident that so long as she was careful her disguise would hold. This was shaping up to be an interesting year already.

"Here I am, teaching Potions." Sirius wiped imaginary sweat off his brow and mimed flicking it at her from across the table. "What has the world come to, where Snivellus and I have the same job?"

"You have to start teaching before you can say you teach Potions," Taylor pointed out. "Besides, you said we're not brewing today."

"I want to live," Sirius said dryly. "And we wouldn't brew in the library if we did brew." He pointed at the nearest bookshelf. "Pop quiz. You read the reference book for potion ingredients. What ingredients would you get from that shelf of books?"

She had read the book, but her memory wasn't perfect, so it took her a moment to answer. "Parchment, ink, wood, but none of those are used for anything."

"Think darker," he advised. "Remember, that's not any old bookshelf, it's a Black family bookshelf."

"Blood," she guessed. Old, dried blood, either from unfortunate thieves or because somebody had decided to use it in the place of ink for a more esoteric tome.

"Got it!" He shuddered. "Toss forcibly-taken blood into a potion on the brew and you'll be adding more soon after, as you pick cauldron shards out of your body. Unless the potion calls for it, in which case what the hell are you brewing? Next question." He reached down and stuck his hand in a big sack, accompanied by the sounds of clinking bottles that made Taylor wince.

"They're charmed unbreakable, don't be a baby," he chided. "Potions for the practical wizard or witch, lesson one. Potion identification. Look at the color, texture, smell, special qualities or effects. Tell me what it is. Go!"

He set a potion on the table. It was contained in a clear glass vial, corked with an actual cork stopper, and when she took it and shook it the opaque green liquid showed no signs of moving.

"Blood-clotting Potion?" she guessed. The color was telling; few potions were solid green. Green meant herbs, herbs meant healing or bodily enhancement. Neither rule was absolute, but together they implied quite a bit.

"You didn't uncork it," he chided. "Smell is important. There are at least four potions that can be instantly identified by smell alone, and many can only be separated from several similar-looking potions by smell. I almost took an experimental Hangover Cure thinking it was a Headache Cure, once. Looked the same, but one was made by an idiot and the other was a well-tested potion commercially sold. The smell set them apart, and that was the only thing that saved me from the later renamed Diarrhea Inducer."

"When was this?" Taylor asked. She uncorked the vial, wafted some air over it, and smelled… pinecones. Just to be sure, she buzzed a fly over the potion bottle. The smell was different, almost unrecognizably so, through the senses of a fly; more akin to grass or just uninteresting dirt. There were no references on how different potions smelt to insects, so she had to build up her knowledge by experience. Moody's unidentified concoction had taught her that.

"Fourth year," Sirius said proudly. "Still think that's a Blood-clotting potion?"

"Yes, actually, and don't tell me you were already a heavy drinker in fourth year." Sirius was an incorrigible reprobate, but she didn't like the idea that her son was already theoretically old enough to start drinking on the sly.

"It is and I was," Sirius answered. "I offer no excuses, except that I was a poor Gryffindor disgrace to my family, stuck watching my best mate woo an uninterested girl, and hounded by my Head of House whenever I tried to get out of Transfiguration class. Truly, I needed the comfort of the bottle."

If that was the minimum agony level needed to become an alcoholic, Taylor herself would have died from alcohol poisoning long before getting her powers, along with half the population of Earth Bet. "Sure. Such agony."

"Try this one," Sirius suggested, pulling another bottle up from the bag. The liquid inside was mostly clear, but when she took it something within sparkled like suspended glitter.

She didn't need to smell it, but she did anyway. Rosemary with a dash of sulfur, which was just overwhelmingly sulfur according to her fly senses. The glitter was the main clue, though. "Blemish Remover," she said confidently.

"Right in one." He brought another potion up. "At this rate, you'll know all the potions in no time! Maybe even before I find a source for Veritaserum and Polyjuice. Could be a while on those."

Having just finished skimming a book with over a thousand potion ingredients, Taylor highly doubted that she would recognize every common potion before Sirius found someone to sell him the regulated ones, even if it took him a few months. But it was good to be making progress. Progress that didn't even induce a headache, for that matter.

The school term was off to a good start, in Harry's opinion. Classes were interesting, Snape was no worse than normal, Lupin was gone, and Dumbledore didn't suspect a thing. He had his mum's assurances that she and Sirius were working to get custody of him before next summer at the latest. He had his friends, and he didn't have anything more important than school to worry about.

He probably should be worrying a little about Hermione, though.

"The difference between external and internal magic is important," she told him as they headed to History of Magic. "Especially because of something they don't tell us here at Hogwarts. The Trace only applies to external magic."

She snapped her fingers, and a big spark flashed between her fingers. "I figured out how to do this over the summer."

"You broke the Ministry's rules on underage magic for that?" he asked. He may have created a monster. Hermione seemed so rule-abiding back in first year, before he whacked her over the morals with Snape. Nowadays, he suspected she only paid attention to the rules to better know which she considered worth breaking.

"That," she huffed, "is personal, wandless magic!"

"I can do almost the same thing if you give me a carpet, socks, and two minutes," he shot back. "No magic required. It doesn't seem worth the risk."

"What risk?" she asked. "You just said you could do it without magic. If anyone ever saw me, which they didn't because I'm not stupid, I could pass it off as that. And ninety percent of controlling personal elemental magic is control. It doesn't matter how small or useless, this is a stepping stone! Someday soon I'll be able to throw lightning bolts from my fingers if I keep working at it!"

"Okay, when you put it like that…" He would have done the same. "How did you get that far?" Was it something he could do? Back when it was just static hair he wasn't interested, but now…

"It's not really a skill, it's a natural affinity that can come up when someone is in the early stages of consciously controlling magic," she said sadly. "If you haven't already started showing signs and actively using it, you won't be able to start now. Unless you learn a wandless silent spell for lightning, which you can do but is much harder and not really the same thing."

They passed through the doors to the History classroom, and their conversation came to an end as they sat down. Binns was floating down through the ceiling to claim his place at his dusty lectern, signaling the beginning of a class of self-study.

"Besides, I was going to go spare not doing any real magic over the summer," she whispered. "It was that or start looking for a wand without the Trace."

Yes, he had definitely helped create a monster. An awesome, magically gifted monster dedicated to learning even at the expense of the rules she deemed unimportant. And she could now shock people with her fingers.

His best friend was amazing. He resolved to find something cool and unique he could do without a wand before the end of the year. He had to keep up.

That decided, he took out his personal book on the Magical Congo and started to read about the history of one of the world's most deadly magical environments. Apparently, even the water there was tainted with magical hallucinogens…

"Is this some kind of rebellion thing?" Harry asked. He, Hermione, Neville, Luna, and Ginny were out by the Quidditch pitch before dawn on a Saturday, and he would rather have been in bed. "They say no Quidditch this year so you have to thumb your nose at the Headmaster?" He could get behind defying Dumbledore in theory, but in practice… couldn't it have waited a few hours?

"Someone is grumpy in the morning," his mum hissed from the sidelines. She was having a wonderful time hunting mice and other small creatures through the tall grass, though he did wonder whether she was going to eat one once she caught it. And whether he should be worried if she did. It was probably just practice being convincingly snake-like for her… But he wouldn't be sure until he saw her spit a mouse out instead of swallowing it whole.

"Take the broom or I'll shove it between your legs," Ginny threatened.

Harry did the smart thing and took the broom before she could make good on her threat. Hermione and Neville needed similar levels of 'encouragement'. Luna had taken hers right away, though she was holding it like a club with the bristles out and swinging it around.

"Now," Ginny said once they all had their brooms, marching in front of them like a drill sergeant from a movie, or, closer to home, like the recently graduated Oliver Wood of Gryffindor fame. "There is no organized Quidditch this year."

"And it's a bloody shame," Hermione offered. "Quidditch games always make the castle so wonderfully quiet."

"I heard your brothers saying they were going to organize unofficial games," Neville offered.

"Yes!" Ginny pointed her broom at him. "You get it. Thing is, that means we don't need to have teams divided by house."

"Or to be the best fliers in our houses," Luna suggested.

"Also yes," Ginny conceded. "We have the core of a great Quidditch team here. I can see it now."

Harry looked to his left; Luna continued to swing her broom about. He looked to his right; Neville was trying to sidle away from Ginny's intense stare. And then there was Hermione, who he had never seen on a broom apart from her first-year lessons and that one game at the Weasleys, where she hung back and flew extremely carefully.

"It could be fun," his mum called out from somewhere startlingly close by. Ginny's smile widened, and Harry was sure there had been some plotting between the two of them prior to this.

"There aren't enough of us to be a full Quidditch team, though," Hermione objected.

"Fred and George were talking about five-person teams," Ginny explained. "Pick-up games, limited to a set amount of time so we can schedule them during free periods as well as on weekends. No snitch because of the time limit, so no Seeker, and only one Bludger so only one Beater. That's one Keeper, three Chasers, and a Beater. I was thinking you'd be the Beater."

Hermione crossed her arms, clutching her broom. "You want me to hit heavy, fast balls at other people to knock them off their brooms?"

"Yes!" Ginny cheered. "You'd be brilliant. Luna would be Keeper, because she has good reflexes. The rest of us would be Chasers."

Harry honestly had no idea whether this was the best idea ever, or a horrible disaster in the making. Did Hermione really have the mindset necessary for a Beater? Was Luna actually Keeper material? Would he and Neville make good Chasers? None of them had even tried out for their respective House teams, aside from Ginny.

"It's not important," Ginny added, lowering her voice to a more reasonable tone. "It's just for fun. We don't have to practice much at all. Just enough so we know how to play together whenever Fred and George can set up a game. It could break up all the study sessions?"

"My gran keeps telling me to be more active," Neville admitted. "If you don't mind me probably being shite…"

"I'm in," Harry decided. It would be fun.

"I will not let a single Quaffle by me," Luna declared. "Is there a rule against flying more than one broom at a time?"

"Uh, I'll have to check." Ginny looked at Hermione. "Please? I could ask someone else, but it wouldn't be as fun without everyone doing it."

Hermione sighed. "Okay, but if I stink at being a Beater I told you so-"

Something shrieked shrilly nearby. Taylor's dark form rose up out of the grass, sticking straight up. "Got something!" The grass rippled in a straight line away from her as whatever she had caught fled.

At least she really was just playing catch and release.

The Saturday before the other schools were scheduled to arrive, Harry fully intended to waste his afternoon lazing around reading. Nothing magical, just a Muggle book about a guy stuck on an alien planet by himself, forced to survive. It was rainy out, Hermione and Ginny were studying together, Neville was shoveling mud for fun in the greenhouse, and Luna was off doing… whatever it was Luna did in her free time when she wasn't with them. It was the perfect time to find a nice windowsill somewhere with a view and read.

Taylor was with him; she didn't have a book of her own, being stuck as a snake, so she would probably just fall asleep on the sill. It was that kind of day.

The alternating thumping of shoe and peg on stone preceded Professor Moody's arrival by a good bit, giving Harry ample warning before he went down one of the many moving staircases and ran into Professor Moody going up the other way.

"Harry," Moody grunted, stopping and turning around. "I was looking for you, kid. You been in contact with Sirius Black lately?"

"We exchange letters," Harry admitted. Just the one so far, but it looked like mail from Sirius wasn't being censored or intercepted, so there would probably be more. "You need to tell him something?"

"Nah, but I was talking to Dumbledore," and Harry instantly didn't want to hear the rest, but he listened anyway, "and he said something about you not going to Hogsmeade last year."

"Yeah?" He hadn't, so far as Dumbledore knew.

"Smart kid like you didn't ask around for ways to sneak out and go anyway?" Moody asked. "I'm not looking to get you in trouble, way I see it if you were in real danger in Hogsmeade everyone woulda been. But I've been trying to find some of the secret passages around here, and they've moved since my school days. Help an old man out?"

Harry was inclined to say no, especially as the Twins had entrusted knowledge of their passage to him and only him… But then he remembered that they had talked about telling the Professors since the passages were obviously evacuation passages. He hadn't heard anything about it since.

"I do know of a couple," he admitted. "I think they're for evacuating the castle."

"Four, leading out to Hogsmeade?" Moody asked. "They still separate?"

Taylor, wrapped around his arm as she was, hissed a low "if he already knows he'll find them eventually," which came out a lot more succinctly in Parseltongue.

"Yes, those, but they all meet up now, I think. You can't find them?" He started down the stairs, and Moody followed him. "There's one near every common room."

"I knew the Slytherin one, myself," Moody admitted. "The thing about this castle is that everything moves from year to year, not just from day to day, and the entrance secrets can change too. 'Near a common room' includes a big damn chunk of the castle, when you get right down to it."

Harry didn't see the harm in showing him, so he struck out for the Slytherin passage entrance. He'd located them all from the inside after the twins showed him the Hufflepuff entrance, and he figured Moody would like to find the one that he remembered best. "What do you need the passageways for, anyway?" he asked.

"You can never be too careful," Moody said. "What with the other schools coming over, I'm going to set monitoring wards that will trip on non-Hogwarts students. We lose a Frenchie, they'll threaten war. And then whine instead of doing anything, but still. I'd rather not deal with that."

"And if Durmstrang loses a student?" Harry asked as he led Moody to the Slytherin. It was down by Snape's potions classroom in the dungeons.

They passed the Potions classroom on the way, and from within a smooth, unamused lecture could be heard. "This," Snape drawled, "is a miserable excuse for a Draught of Living Death, Willerson. You overpowered it to the point where touching the potion is enough to put someone out for the day. Anyone unfortunate enough to drink it would die outright. Try again."

Harry spared a thought for the poor soul stuck revising under Snape over a weekend. Willerson was probably an upper-year Slytherin, because Harry couldn't imagine Snape giving up part of his weekend for anyone not in his house, but it was not a fate he would wish on anyone.

"Durmstrang?" Moody said, once they were out of earshot of Snape. "Karkaroff's the sort to leave the lost kid and say good riddance," he said darkly. "Former Death Eater, got off by ratting out his fellows. Careful around him." He lifted his flask and took a swig from it, then put it back in his robes.

"That smell again… Ask what he was drinking, I'm curious," his mum hissed.

Harry waited a few seconds so it wouldn't be obvious he was reacting to something he had been told, then asked. "What's in the flask?"

"Curious kid, aren't you?" Moody said as they went down a short flight of stairs. "Just water. Never drink from anything House Elves prepare out of sight, I say."

"It's probably alcohol," was Taylor's conclusion.

"Your snake hisses a lot, kid," Moody remarked.

"She's trying to sleep and I keep moving," Harry explained. "Here it is." They stopped in front of a tapestry of a grim-looking man with a unibrow and a farming scythe that had obviously been used for more than cutting crops in the recent past. He ran his finger along the weave of the bloodied scythe blade's underside, then pushed at the little knobby bit he could feel by the tip, a hard lump amid old threads. The tapestry swung outward, peculiarly stiff despite appearing to be hung by the corners and nothing else, revealing the entrance to the hidden passages.

"Right, right…" Moody glanced down the corridor, one way and then the other. Nobody was in sight. The dungeons were deserted at this time of day, and they had long since left Snape's classroom behind. "Well, thank you for– Stupefy!"

Taylor jolted as Moody stunned Harry. The old man caught her son before he hit the ground and took him into the tunnel. Harry's limp body was set on the ground, his arm sprawling out.

She had no bugs. She had no backup. She had a secret identity to protect.

Moody reached out to close the secret entrance, the light spilling in from the corridor sliced away by encroaching darkness, and Taylor decided none of those things mattered when a grizzled old man was trying to kidnap her son right under her nose. She would handle Moody the same way she had handled Sirius, back at the far end of this same system of secret passages. With him at wandpoint.

It took her one heartbeat to slither out of Harry's sleeve at full speed. Another two to shift back, just as the light cut out entirely. One more to draw her wand, and a final heartbeat to cast something far more violent than strictly necessary, her voice harsh. "Depulso!"

Moody took the banishing hex on the shoulder, caught turning away from the portrait with his wand down. He flew through the back of the stiff tapestry with a heavy tearing sound, immediately followed up by a thump as he hit the floor of the corridor.

Taylor jumped out through the tear, already going through the motions for another charm, a stunner like she would have led with had she time to think beyond the desire to hurt the one trying to steal her child. Light flashed from Moody's prone figure, and she had to drop to the side and interrupt her own casting to avoid a vibrant splash of purple light that carved a new gouge in the already trashed tapestry. Her bugs were coming, but they were spread out and few in number, unlikely to be of any use unless she was exceedingly tricky…

Moody was up, peg leg back to brace him as he cast another wordless spell, but she was up too and unlike him she had momentum. He was a bulky but battle-scarred old man, and they were roughly equal in how much of their bodies they had left, so she let her charge carry her into him.

He jabbed his wand into her side as she knocked him against the wall, which was about as dangerous as having a loaded gun in the same position, but she had hers to the side of his head in the same moment and neither of them cast.

He glared at her, his magic eye spinning rapidly. "Taylor?" he demanded. He then kneed her in the stomach, but she had been expecting something of the sort and let him do it, backing up with the blow and hooking her heel behind the peg leg he had momentarily put all of his weight on, sweeping it forward even as she pulled him off the wall. His wand left her midsection a fraction of a second before a spell shot through the space where she would have been, and as he toppled forward he tried to bring it to bear on her again.

She copied his move from a moment ago and drove her knee into his gut, crushing his hand and wand against his stomach in the process, and cast a 'Stupefy' down at his back as he doubled over.

It deflected off his robes – something she had not expected but probably should have – and he managed to bring his wand around again. She cast 'Protego' in time to absorb another red spell aimed at her hips, then jammed her wand forward, driving the solid magical force shield into his unprotected head.

Wizards, she was learning through experimentation, did not have the right mindset for close-quarters combat. She had thought more experienced combatants would know better, but Moody was proving her wrong.

Moody took the blow and tried to raise his wand again instead of responding physically or even just making space. She drove her elbow into his magical eye, bouncing his head against the wall, then attempted to stun him–

His wooden peg leg jumped up and jabbed her between the legs of its own volition, separating from his stump to do so. She grunted and tried to stun him, only momentarily interrupted by the painful blow, but he had his wand up again, and for the second time in less than twenty seconds, they both had potentially lethal weapons pointed at each other at point-blank range. His peg returned to his stump, settling back into place.

"Shouldn't have tried to kidnap Harry," she gritted out, thinking furiously. Her few available insects were coming, carrying the payload, but some were getting shot down by oblivious elves–

"Bloody 'ell, that what you thought I was doing?" Moody demanded, his voice rough. His wand didn't waver for an instant. "Good! Teaching the lad a lesson in paranoia, I was. Harry Bloody Potter going into a hidden passageway, alone, with an old man he doesn't know? Damn fodder for kidnapping or worse!"

"I don't believe you," she said.

"Told Dumbledore I'd be teaching the kid a special lesson today at this time," Moody retorted.

"Could be cover for your real plan." She remained unconvinced.

"Dumbledore trusts me," he said.

"I don't trust Dumbledore," she replied.

"Here I was thinking he was having a laugh not telling me 'bout you," Moody bit out. "You bloody well nearly knocked my eye through the back of my skull, woman! If I wanted you down I'd have wandlessly stunned you thirty seconds ago."

"Still don't believe you." But she did believe that Moody had just telegraphed his next move–

She stepped back with no warning and cast a Protego as fast as she could, wordlessly but not wandlessly. Not one but two bright splashes of red light detonated against the invisible barrier, striking it down almost before it could properly form, coming only a fraction of a heartbeat too late to hit her directly. Moody scowled and jabbed his wand forward, audibly barking "Stupefy" for a third stunner. This one she twisted away from, the spell passing just to the side of her shoulder.

Her wand was already halfway through the movements of her next charm when she dodged, and twisting to one side wasn't enough to throw her off; she finished a whispered "Scourgify" and immediately sidestepped an attempted kick at her knee. Moody blocked the charm that would have filled his mouth with soap with a silent shield of his own, one that decidedly did not break on impact like hers had, but their hectic back and forth had bought time. Time for a scant few dozen of her bugs to arrive on the scene.

A few spider bites wouldn't put down a determined wizard. She didn't have anything immediately painful or debilitating; she'd not gotten around to figuring out how to import bullet ants and the like, not yet. Her bugs were trivial here, trivial save for what they could convey.

She battered Moody's shield with two explosive hexes, enough to force him to drop it in favor of going back on the offensive; her assessment of his fighting style was that he tended towards attacking as his best defense, forcing her to fend him off instead of giving her the initiative, much like she was prone to doing. She threw up a better magical shield, then was forced to drop it, twice in a row. He was stronger in magic, more experienced, much more dangerous, and he knew it. She was already on the back foot, and he grimly pressed his advantage, forcing her back against the wall of the corridor, his magical eye whirling wildly in his head.

Then a beetle dipped in a potion from the Potions classroom splatted against the back of his neck, a tiny, insignificant projectile carried by flies. What worked for Lung would work for a grizzled old man.

Taylor ducked away from the line of fire as Moody reacted, slapping the back of his neck and then doubling down. His curses, the three he snapped off, were barely avoidable and completely unblockable. She sprawled out on the ground in a last-ditch effort to evade the third, completely incapable of defending against a theoretical fourth spell.

But Moody only had three in him. At the end of the third, he staggered and crumpled to the floor, his eye rolling angrily even as his eyelids closed.

She got up, kicked his wand away, her own trained on him the whole time, and waited until he started snoring… Then she stunned him, for good measure. It seemed Snape was right: Willerson's botched Draught of Living Death really was strong enough to work on skin contact. She wouldn't have called that a failure at all, as it seemed incredibly useful in ways the expected potency was not. Too bad Snape was liable to vanish the cauldron's contents at any moment. Maybe she could recreate it once Sirius got around to showing her how to brew.

Still, it served to get her out of this fight. She was fighting experienced wizards frequently these days; this made the second one in only a few months.

She needed to figure out what she was going to do with Moody before someone stumbled across her standing over him, with Harry stunned in a secret passage. Bereft of any third-party witnesses, it would be her word against his if that happened. One of them was supposed to be here in Hogwarts, and she was not that person. Worse, he knew who she was, and he would be able to figure out from what had happened that she was probably Harry's snake. She couldn't let him go to Dumbledore. She still didn't know if he was trying to teach Harry an over-enthusiastic lesson in safety, or actually intending to kidnap him, but either way he might tell Dumbledore, removing her from the castle at best, and leaving Harry with someone of unclear intentions.

Put like that, there was really only one thing she could do, short of killing him which was a terrible idea for a wide variety of reasons.

"Wingardium Leviosa." Moody's robes hauled him up, as people couldn't be levitated directly, and he only floated a few feet off the ground, but the important part was that he was floating. She pushed his body into the secret passage, past her still-unconscious son, and then turned on the ruined tapestry. "Reparo," she cast.

Some of the damage repaired itself. As best she could tell, all of the damage from hurling Moody into the tapestry was reversed, but not the long, straight cut he had cursed into it. It was good enough that she was able to 'close' the tapestry, casting darkness on the tunnel save for where the cut let light through.

It was good enough. Moody might have meant to kidnap Harry. It was only fair if she temporarily abducted him in return. He had questions to answer, and if he really was just a professor nobody would notice if he was missing for a few hours. Harry's 'special lesson' could go long.

Chapter Text

There were some opportunities that just had to be taken, no questions asked. Times that might never come again, possibilities that would be forever regretted if not taken and made the most of. Sirius was a firm believer in seizing the day, whatever it threw at him.

Then there were moments such as this, where he knew he would regret it if he did what was asked of him. The exact opposite of fortunate chance opportunities, these were unexpected, unwanted responsibilities. The worst kind. "Do you enjoy my suffering?" he asked Taylor.

Taylor stared at him, as innocent as any woman with a madly-spinning eye clutched in one hand could be. The man snoring at her feet added to the utter failure of innocence, turning it into an amusing mockery. "He's paranoid. You told me so yourself. He'll have holdout weapons."

"I am not strip searching Moody." This was not an opportunity he was going to seize. This was nightmare fodder just waiting to corrupt his fragile Dementor-free mind. "Healer's orders. I am not to freshly traumatize myself. You do it."

Moody drooled on the carpet. The carpet flinched away. He needed to get that looked at. The carpet moving, that was, not the drool. The drool was perfectly normal.

"You do it," she replied. "I dragged him all the way here."

"Bully for you. You do it. You got us into this situation in the first place." He felt that was reasonable.

"You know him, you do it," she insisted.

"You beat him up, you do it," he replied. "Just use your bugs. They can do that, right?"

"Not really," she said, offering no further explanation. "You do it."

He knew a pointless circular argument when he saw one. "I'm not touching him," he said. "I'll use magic. Levicorpus!" he levitated Moody up to stomach height.

"That spell levitates people directly?" Taylor asked curiously. "I just used Wingardium Leviosa on his clothes."

"Levicorpus works better," Sirius said absently. "Only on people though. Wingardium Leviosa is more versatile. Unless you're fighting a nudist." He levitated Moody's flask and wand off to the side. "Accio Portkeys!" he barked, putting all of his will into it.

Moody's entire body shot toward him, a gnarled shoulder hitting him in the stomach. "Oof," he exhaled, shoving the floating man away again. "Should have figured it wouldn't be that easy."

Under Taylor's mildly amused gaze, he carefully worked his way through the old man's clothing. The robes were enchanted, for spell deflection among other things, and there were five extended pockets on the inside, holding a whole bag of marble portkeys, instant darkness powder, and four spare wands. Moody's trousers, under the robes, also had portkeys, another holdout wand, and four small vials of unknown potions, which he passed to Taylor. "Figure out what these are, but be careful because they might explode on contact with air," he suggested.

While she was doing that, he steeled himself and stripped Moody the rest of the way, noting that even his skivvies were heavily enchanted. That done, he hastily threw a sheet over him, turning Moody into a lumpy, levitating table. His body was a testament to why Sirius had refused to join the Aurors; this was what fighting dark magic on the regular could do to a bloke. He never wanted to have to question whether he had more scar tissue than unblemished skin, and those missing pieces… Yes, he was going to have nightmares.

A few diagnostic charms Sirius vaguely remembered from the war said there was definitely still more magic on Moody, and he remembered to remove the innocent, seemingly non-magical peg leg, which accounted for most of that magic, but not all of it. "Pass me your blood charm, will you?" he asked. He remembered that Taylor had one for magical sight. It might be useful, now that most of the magic on Moody was gone.

Taylor handed it over. "Give me the flask," she said in reply. "I think I know what these potions are, but I want to check it too."

"What are they?" he asked, as he tossed the flask over. "Visio," he said to the charm, clutching it in one hand and closing his eyes.

The magical flare all but blinded him even through his eyelids. There was a reason few people bothered with magical sight; it was only really useful in mostly-Muggle areas. Here, in Grimmauld Place, he would be lucky if he could make out anything against the backdrop of absolutely everything being enchanted, warded, cursed, or seeped in magic.

"One Pepper-Up that's probably overpowered to make up for the tiny dose, a similarly small but potent Blood Replenisher, one vial of acid, and a contact poison," Taylor reported. "I'm keeping them if he's evil."

"How did you figure those last two out?" he asked, waiting for the brightness of the magical sight to die down. He would have a few seconds right as the charm gave out where it would be tolerable, and he could look at Moody then.

"Opened them in the kitchen, dipped a bug in each," she answered. "I didn't think he was foolish enough to carry volatile explosives tucked against his waist."

"You may have a point there," Sirius admitted. He also wouldn't have cared that much if Taylor blew up the kitchen proving herself wrong, since she did it at a safe remove, so he wholly approved of her investigative methods. "Explosive potions exist, though. Nasty stuff."

"This smells like alcohol," Taylor reported a moment later. "I don't know what kind."

'Save it. I'll tell you everything up to the vintage," Sirius claimed. The blood charm's overly bright glare was beginning to wear off, so he squinted at Moody. There was a bit of magic in the old man's mouth, and more down by the misshapen toes of his remaining foot. The foot had a charmed-invisible toe ring portkey, and the mouth…

"Ugh." He reached in, not trusting his summoning work in such a small, fragile space, and removed a false tooth. "The lengths he went to… At least we've got it all now."

"It's still not enough," Taylor said. "He can cast wandlessly and silently. Are there limitations to that?"

"Besides having to learn each individual spell you want to do in that way, and it being much harder to master?" Sirius thought about it. "I could lock him in the attic, it's magically insulated, but he would still be able to attack us at any time if he was conscious. Alternatively, one of us could turn him into a snake." They did know that specific curse for a reason, and if Moody knew anything about it he would know better than to try and escape. Moody wasn't bloody weird like Taylor, so he would be without any form of magic.

"Isn't that illegal?" Taylor asked.

"Well, duh?" Sirius replied. "It wouldn't have to be that curse, I suppose, I could just do a temporary human transfiguration, but what's the point? It's also illegal to assault a school teacher, smuggle him out of school, and strip-search him, and I assume we want to interrogate him… Plus he's probably got some defense against obliviation, so we're going to have to keep him prisoner after that even if this is the real Moody." Cursing him into an animal for purposes of security was small potatoes on top of all of that.

Taylor frowned. "I would rather not do those things, depending on what he was trying to do with Harry."

"I'm not a miracle worker," Sirius objected. "And Moody is a paranoid bastard who's on good terms with Dumbledore. We're not going to be able to force him to stay quiet, and I have no idea why he would possibly agree to keeping his mouth shut. We won't even be able to make him tell the truth about his motivations." He was looking for a supplier of Veritaserum, and had been for weeks, but one did not just walk up to a guy in a shady cloak and ask to see his illegal wares. He knew from his foolish youth that led to being swindled, busted in a sting, or waking up next to a Hag, depending on exactly how badly he misjudged the situation.

"He's clean of magic?" Taylor asked.

"I'm mostly sure," Sirius said. Never would he bet on Moody being completely defenseless, no matter how certain he was. That was a sucker's bet.

"What's in this?" Taylor asked, passing him the flask back.

"He was drinking from this?" Sirius asked.

"Yes." She looked down at the sheet-draped, levitating, comatose former Auror floating between them. "Consistently. I've seen that flask before."

Sirius took a swig from the flask. "Dulled Firewhiskey, but he's added potions to it," he said. "No idea what… powdered bezoar, maybe? Nutrient potion? Check me, am I turning green, into another person, or glowing with the light of a thousand suns?"

"You are as scruffy and unimpressive as ever, no more and no less," Taylor deadpanned.

Sirius grinned. "Probably nutrient potion, then." He took a deep gulp of the tainted whiskey. It was watered-down enough that he didn't even feel the trademark flame belch coming up. Disappointing.

They waited for a few moments, but nothing happened. Sirius set the flask aside. "Okay. Now what the hell do we do next?"

Taylor frowned at him, then looked down at Moody. "I think… We need a lie. A very good, comprehensive lie. One that explains what I've been doing pretending to be Harry's familiar and gives him a reason to let me go about my life without interfering or telling Dumbledore."

"Is that all?" Sirius asked. "It's not specific enough, add more ridiculous qualifiers. I don't do easy projects." He was joking, of course; that would be hard. He wasn't the liar of the Marauders, that was Peter. He was the actor, the roguish misdirection, the distraction…

He looked at Taylor. She was, if anything, the Remus equivalent. Serious, capable of lying with a straight face, inherently dangerous.

Moony hadn't bothered contacting him, not even since he was proven an innocent man. Sirius would have broken the silence between them by now if he knew where his old friend was, but owls didn't know where to go. It was possible Remus just didn't want to reconnect.

That didn't matter right now, though. Right now, he needed a good lie. A cover story. An alternative explanation for everything Moody might know or might easily find out. And he needed it fast.

"I think," he said after some serious thought, "I have an idea." If it didn't work, they could always go back to the original plan and keep Moody locked up in the basement.

Snake-Moody was small, barely six inches long, a mottled green garden snake. He had no fangs at all. Sirius must have focused almost exclusively on Moody being harmless, for the transfiguration to turn out like that. Having to feed Moody the counter to Draught of Living Death and then quickly transfiguring him before he could wake up and attack might have panicked Sirius–

For good reason, because Moody adapted to his completely unexpected circumstances by choosing violence and never looking back.

"Stop," Taylor hissed, smacking the tiny grass snake down with her tail, "trying," she thumped him again, "to fight! It's not working!"

"Bugger off!" Moody hissed back, throwing his body at her face. "Bugger this! I'm not going down without a damn good fight! Why am I a snake, fight me face to face!"

"You're a snake," she paused to close her eyes, because he was trying to headbutt her eyes. "So my boss can interrogate you without risking you hitting him with wandless magic! Stop fighting!"

"He'd bloody well better be scared!" Moody hissed. He backed off, and Taylor opened her eyes to see him waving his six-inch-long body around, trying to see who else might be in the room. "Who is it, eh? Lucius Malfoy? Barty Crouch Junior? Another bloody Death Eater escaped from Azkaban? The noseless wonder, back from the dead? Fudge? Answer me!"

Taylor stared down at the tiny snake. "None of those," she said. "I work for Sirius Black. He has questions for you."

"That idiot couldn't organize the insides of a paper bag, bugger off," Moody hissed.

In response, Taylor slapped her long tail on the floor three times.

"That my cue?" Sirius slipped into the room, swiftly closing the door behind him. "Moody, I assume you can still understand me. I can't understand you, so don't bother insulting me."

"You look even more gormless from down here," Moody muttered. "I could slither up those robes of yours and–"

"Do nothing, because I can stop you." It was a novel experience, being the big, bulky side of a fight for once. She rather liked it.

"You," Sirius said, his voice level, "are on thin ice, Moody. You attacked my godson. Convince my associate there that you had a good reason, or I'll make that transfiguration permanent."

Moody tensed, his snake body holding a roughly S-shaped curve on the ground.

"Dumbledore will not work as a reference," Taylor told him. "The truth, Moody."

"I could lie rings around you, you've not given me any veritaserum," Moody said mulishly. "I take it back, this operation has all the hallmarks of a Black plan. What's he paying you, to deal with his shite?"

"More than enough," Taylor told him.

"Chance I could offer you double to bite him, change me back, and call the Aurors?" Moody asked. "Seeing as how he can't understand us down here, we've got all the time in the world to negotiate."

"We might be able to come to an arrangement," Taylor replied, hiding her amusement. She had not expected Moody to leap directly to buying her off. If she were really a mercenary, it might even have worked. "But I need the truth, first. As a show of good faith I'll signal him now." She slapped her tail once, the agreed-upon sign for 'He answered the question to my satisfaction, he's not a Dumbledore plant and wasn't actually trying to kidnap Harry."

"Good, that would have made things difficult," Sirius said.

Moody slithered around her, eyeing her warily. "That's mighty nice of you," he said suspiciously.

"The truth," she told him. "I make a point of knowing who I'm working for, after the fiasco with Pettigrew."

"Truth is exactly what I told you in Hogwarts," Moody hissed. "I'd been hearing Harry Potter was a nice, ordinary Hufflepuff and maybe not Potter at all. Hogwash, a good attempt at defense in obscurity for a kid, but he was complacent and acting like that was the only defense he needed. Wandering around on his own like that, foolishness! Dumbledore gave his blessing for me to scare him a bit, teach him to be wary. I was gonna revive him, put on a little show, then set him loose and teach him to watch his damn back."

"You did not know he had someone watching it for him?" Taylor asked.

"Bloody hell, no!" Moody exclaimed. "I'd not have thought he needed a lesson in safety if I knew he had a live-in bodyguard."

"I hope this is good talking I'm hearing," Sirius remarked. They both ignored him.

"I am not his bodyguard, not all the time." She would claim as such if she thought it was a believable lie, but she was only in Hogwarts on the weekends. That would make no sense if she was intended to protect Harry. "My presence in the castle is mainly for something else. Testing the defenses."

"Now we get to it…" Moody looked up at Black. "What's his plan, and how much do I gotta pay to have you sabotage it?"

"I doubt you'll want it sabotaged," Taylor hissed. "When we captured Pettigrew, we had to break into the castle to do it. We discovered many gaps in the defenses, Animagi being one of the most blatant. I am categorizing the weaknesses, testing the defenses, and seeing how far an animagus with a flimsy cover story can push things before I am discovered. I have been in and out of the castle for more than six months and nobody has ever realized a thing."

"Merlin's sweaty ballsack," Moody blurted out, "that's ridiculous! What damn use are the wards if you can do that?"

"Exactly!" Taylor hissed. "This is what Black hired me for. I am going to ferret out every last vulnerability, so that they can all be fixed. If it was not for you attacking his godson, who he also pays me to defend with my life if I have the chance, nobody would know even now. How long can I maintain my cover? How far into the castle can I go? I have already been into the restricted section of the library, the common rooms of all four houses, and Dumbledore's office. I have sat in on staff meetings, I have been in the Great Hall, the kitchens… Nobody has noticed."

Moody shook his head, a gesture that ended up shaking his entire body. "Penetration testing, that's your job? The board of governors approve this?"

"I am a private contractor. The first they, or Dumbledore, can know of this is when someone finally realizes I am an Animagi, or once I have found every possible weakness in the castle's security. Black intends to present my findings to the board as the first they hear about it, so that they will be shocked into taking action." It was a good lie, with a little tweaking, and Sirius had come up with the base of it in only a few minutes. She had been impressed then, and was still impressed now.

"It makes more sense than you being there by chance," Moody admitted. "You've been with the boy since when?"

"It's coming up on a year soon," she told him.

"Say I believe you," he said. "What's Black plan on doing with me?"

"He cares a lot about this," Taylor told Moody. "I have told him, and I now believe, that you meant his godson no real harm." There was still a chance Moody was lying, but for now she would act as if she had no doubts. Harry would not be so trusting of him in the future, whatever the truth was. "It remains to be seen whether you will ruin the investigation by insisting on going to Dumbledore."

"I found you out," Moody objected. "Ain't that the end of your test?"

"You found me out because I defended a student from you, something no real infiltrator would bother doing," Taylor retorted. "The test has not yet naturally run its course. We cannot do this again, once everyone knows it has been done once. It will probably be made illegal, if it is not already."

"Fear not." Moody looked her in the eye, his tiny snake ones on her much larger orb. "This is more common sense than I've heard since taking the job as Defense Professor. I'll not spoil your investigation. Assuming this is all true…"

"My behavior over the last year is readily verifiable, and makes absolutely no sense unless what I have told you is the truth." Her time with Harry could be considered time spent maintaining her cover, and she did roam the castle. She had been to all of the places she claimed. The best lies were ones indistinguishable from the truth. "I am assuming you speak the truth about your intentions with Harry."

"What've you had Harry do?" Moody asked. "After you got the better of me."

"I woke him up, told him what happened, and told him to pretend he never encountered you," she explained. "He's awaiting further instructions, depending on what Black and I found here."

"That's easy enough to work with," Moody offered. "He can go to Dumbledore, demand to know what happened, claim I pulled off the whole lesson without a hitch but he's still suspicious I intended to do something more but decided against it. Dumbledore will confirm we talked about exactly what I was going to do. Your cover is safe, my explanation proven true."

Taylor had a moment of deja vu. Wasn't this exactly how she and Sirius had come around to trusting each other? Using Harry to verify the story? It wasn't foolproof then and it wasn't now, a truly clever plan would involve Moody having set up his alibi with Dumbledore ahead of time, but it was something to weed out all but the most intricate lies. Hopefully this would work out as well as it had with Sirius.

"This is taking a lot longer than I expected," Sirius remarked.

"For future reference, how much do I need to pay to get you to betray Black?" Moody asked.

"You are lucky it turns out we are working for the same things," Taylor told him. "I don't betray my employers. It got you talking instead of fighting, though."

"Well played," Moody hissed. "Well fought, too. What did you get me with?"

"Snape's rejected Draught of Living Death," she explained.

"Damn. Should have gone for my flask." He looked up at Sirius. "Get your boss to turn me back, would you? I'm not going to hurt him… much."

"We stripped you of everything magical," she informed him.

"You think you did," he said slyly.

"Including your tooth, enchanted underwear, and toe ring," she continued.

"Damn." He winked his inner eyelid at her. "Think you got it all, do you?"

"I wouldn't bet on it. So long as you don't hurt him, we can consider what comes next an educational experience." She was thankful this newest lie had succeeded in getting Moody back on their side.

The lies were piling up, though. Things were getting complicated. Hopefully she and Sirius could maintain everything until it was no longer necessary. Whenever that might be.

They were no closer to resolving the ultimate problem. Dumbledore. It all stemmed from Dumbledore.

It was the peak of bad luck. Twice now, his mum had gotten into a fight, a real knock-down fight with an experienced wizard. Twice now, she won, and twice he had missed the entire thing!

Harry waited anxiously for word from his mum and Sirius, after his mum revived him and told him to pretend nothing had happened until further notice. His book was less interesting, knowing his mum had Moody and she and Sirius were currently interrogating him. They returned in the evening, his mum and Moody, and had him talk to Dumbledore about Moody's 'lesson'. He played his part, but the thing he really wanted to know about, the fight, had been missed.

"I jumped him, we tried to stun each other, hand to hand fighting mostly, then I smacked him in the back of the neck with a contact sleep potion," was all his mum would say about it. "It was really nothing impressive."

Nothing impressive. Like beating up a Death Eater and his elf at the World Cup was 'just a small scuffle', according to Sirius.

Harry resolved to not be apparated away or stunned immediately the next time – and there probably would be a next time – someone ambushed him or his mum. He might even have asked Moody for lessons in dueling, but he didn't quite trust Moody to point a wand at him anymore, an attitude Moody reinforced with glee during Defense lessons with all of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Everyone was jumpy after those classes, and Harry settled for learning what he could from Moody in a group setting.

Moody was actually the number one topic of discussion in the Hufflepuff common room for a few weeks. There were rumors of him teaching the Unforgivables, or perhaps just teaching about the Unforgivables, in his Newt classes. There were rumors about his many scars, and where the new bruise around his magical eye came from, or why he demanded Snape provide him with all of his most useful 'failed' potions. He fed those mysteries, popping up in random places to startle students, seeing things he shouldn't with his eye, and generally acting mysterious whenever the chance presented itself.

Then, of course, there was the looming elephant in the castle, the big event that was soon scheduled to begin. The students of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons were the sparks that lit the flames of a school-wide frenzy. Though they had known about the Triwizard Tournament for weeks beforehand, it was all anyone could talk about once the other schools had arrived and the Cup was put out to take nominations. In the classrooms, in the halls, in the dorms… Everyone had something to say.

Harry and his circle of friends were no different. He personally thought the Tournament might be a great chance to see what the best of the best of their schools were actually capable of, and where he measured up to that. He wouldn't want to compete, as that was a good way to get killed, but watching more qualified wizards and witches compete promised to be a great time.

Hermione agreed with him on not wanting to compete. Neville said it was never in question, though he looked at the cup wistfully when he thought nobody was looking, something most of Gryffindor seemed to be doing, even those well under the age limit. Luna said she didn't really care about the Tournament except that they might import interesting magical creatures. Ginny spent a day seething about the age limit, then forcefully ignored any and all mention of the tournament in her presence, instead choosing to focus on her own form of competition: Whipping their little casual Quidditch team into shape.

Their first organized pick-up game was on the Sunday before the choosing of the Triwizard Champions, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind which event Ginny considered to be important, and which a mere footnote of history. She had them out on the field every day of the preceding week for at least half an hour, flying around and practicing their respective roles. Harry and Neville threw the Quaffle back and forth while flying every which way, and Neville practiced not falling off his broom at the same time, something he was much better at than he had been in first year.

"Hooch gives remedial flying lessons if you ask her," he had explained. "My gran made me ask after the incident in first year." While he was still wobbly at times, and didn't dare do some of the things Harry found came quite naturally to him, he was good at knowing where he needed to be to catch the Quaffle, even when Ginny ran interference.

Meanwhile, Luna and Hermione practiced catching and batting, respectively. Luna was a much better Keeper than Hermione was a Beater, with an uncanny knack for seeing where the Quaffle they were using for practice was aimed. Hermione had trouble even hitting the Bludger at first, and even more trouble flinching away from it, until Ginny set her straight.

"You swing like this," Ginny had coached her, reaching around to hold the bat from behind Hermione. They were, thankfully, on the ground for that; Harry didn't think Hermione would have taken well to being hugged and pulled around while balancing on a broom dozens of meters off the ground. Her face was already quite red by the time she managed to correct her bat and swing properly.

Once she could be sure she could hit the Bludger every time instead of missing and having it hit her, Hermione turned into a relatively competent Beater, always circling around to smack the Bludger at their brooms and extraneous limbs. She had a dislike for aiming for torsos or heads, but Ginny assured her that was common courtesy for pick-up games without a dedicated healer, so that was fine. Her flying was… still not amazing, but she didn't need to do fancy flying when her only job was dealing with the Bludger.

Harry would not have said Ginny's little team was good, with the exception of Ginny herself who barely needed to practice at all to be the best of their three Chasers, but he thought they were much better than they had been when she proposed the idea.

Their first match was against three third-year Slytherins and two fourth-year Ravenclaws, and the twins showed up with a small crowd to spectate. There were several foreign students in the crowd, including Viktor Krum, who was presumably starved for anything to do with his chosen profession. The twins sent up a big hourglass made of smoke and bubbles, the two teams took to the air, and the game began with a bang of elaborate fireworks.

Harry flew, dodging the Bludger, the opponent Chasers, and on occasion his own teammates. He took the Quaffle whenever he could, shot up to block passes from the other team, and did his best to give Ginny and Neville as many opportunities to score as possible, while only taking the ones he thought he could actually make for himself. Luna, he saw on occasion, managed to intercept most of the shots that came close to her, though her counterpart on the other team was just as effective. Hermione and the other Beater he saw the least of, and sometimes from the way the Bludger disappeared for minutes at a time he assumed she was battling it out with the other Ravenclaw.

He couldn't keep track of the score, not with the rapid back and forth nature of things, and when a rocket exploded in the sky above to signal the end of the match, it felt to him like they had just started. He finally understood why real Quidditch could go for hours without the players complaining about being exhausted; he could have gone all night!

It was a close-run thing, but in the end his team lost by twenty points. Harry didn't really mind. He was in this for Ginny's sake, and Ginny was beaming at everyone and anyone despite losing.

Taylor had never been to any Earth's version of Bulgaria. After today's trip, she still couldn't in good faith claim to have been to Bulgaria, outside of one magical hotel where they stayed for twenty minutes before she met her contact on the street outside and he handed her a special portkey to travel the rest of the way.

"You will stay indoors," a small metal thing told her and Sirius immediately upon their arrival to a dark, wooden-paneled sitting room with no windows. It was a house elf-sized and shaped arrangement of ironwork gears, levers, and bones, all inscribed with pitch-black runes. "You will not cast any magic except in self-defense. You will wait for your appointment. All rooms with doors are barred to you. Do not open windows. Do not leave with any blood beyond that which runs in your own body. Failure to adhere to these terms will result in you donating blood to the proprietor. Please sign here." A dark wooden pen with dull golden runes all around its exterior popped out of the golem's torso, along with a strip of parchment.

There were bugs aplenty in the building, which to Taylor's senses was a sprawling magical workshop complex. Lots of blood, too, in vials and vats and dried in complicated patterns and runes all over certain surfaces, workbenches especially. A very small number of individuals occupied the workshops, most hard at work with brushes or wands. This did seem to be a blood-based magical enchanting workshop, which fit with what she was looking for. They were well known in Bulgaria, and reputed to be very reasonable, so she hadn't expected a trap, but it was nice to be proven right on occasion.

"That's a blood quill," Sirius whispered.

"Is the signature required for my appointment?" Taylor asked. "I'm already scheduled for this evening."

The Golem let out a small hiss of foul-smelling steam. "Yes. Signature required. Pavlova and Stoynova Sanguine Enchanting is an exclusive establishment. All potential customers must adhere to rules of conduct. Contract is only magically binding to monitor compliance. No compulsions or magical penalties are involved."

Also in line with what she had been told, mostly through owl correspondence. Moody's words on their first meeting about prosthetics had sparked her imagination, and the fight at the World Cup solidified her need to take every reasonable avenue of self-improvement. Moody said blood-magic prosthetics weren't good for fighting, but she wanted to hear it from an expert on the subject.

Thus, her looking into sources of said prosthetics, which led to this place and this ugly metal golem. She was spending a precious Saturday on this; she didn't come all this way to turn back because of a formality.

"If you lie, I will take it out of your makers," she threatened, taking the blood quill and signing her name. Her hand tingled, and she felt a minor ache on the back of her wrist.

"Welcome," the Golem said. "Taylor No-Last-Name. Your appointment is confirmed. Pavlova will be with you shortly." It took the quill back along with the parchment. "Your signature serves for you and your manservant."

"Oy, hold on!" Sirius objected. "I'm financing this operation!"

"My apologies." The Golem bowed stiffly, metal scraping on metal around its midsection. "Your mistress will be well-served."

Sirius sputtered indignantly. "That's not right either!" he complained.

"Pavlova will be with you shortly," the Golem said, straightening up. The life seemed to leave its mechanical body, though Taylor couldn't have said what changed. It had never at any point looked alive.

"How certain are you that this is legitimate?" Sirius asked her, looking skeptically at the hard wooden chairs lining the austere waiting room. "We didn't just portkey into a vampire coven to be their next meal, did we?"

"You pick a good time to ask these questions, after we're already here," she laughed. "They're a legitimate business, keep your wits about you and follow my lead."

"I don't understand how you're so at ease here," Sirius muttered. "We're not in Britain. These people are vampires. This is dangerous."

"Everything is dangerous." She had experience negotiating with criminals, and here in Bulgaria none of what was going on was illegal. Vampires were no more or less dangerous than the witches, wizards, parahumans, and parahuman-created monsters she had faced in the past. At worst, this would turn into some sort of hostage situation, ruining these people's reputation for no obvious gain. If that happened, they would find she had come prepared. She was already an adept shot with wooden stakes, for instance.

That wouldn't be necessary, though. So long as Sirius didn't do anything stupid like provoking them. "Let me handle the negotiation," she said. "I know what I want. You're my expert on magic and magical culture, if I need help with that speak up, but otherwise I'll do the talking."

A whisper-quiet creak behind Sirius punctuated her statement.

"I'll watch your back," Sirius offered, brightening considerably. "They make one false move–"

"It would have to be more than one, with your lackluster observational skills." The person who had come in behind Sirius swept away even as he spun around, one long fingernail trailing on his shoulder. "Perhaps four or five. Your friend, now, she knew I was coming before I even opened the door."

"Pavlova?" Taylor guessed. The figure wore a heavy woolen hood in addition to the usual robes, and their voice was ambiguously low and smooth. She saw flashes of overly long teeth when they spoke, but little else of their face.

"Please, follow me," the vampire requested. "You are our only consultation today. We would like to be done with this in good time."

The vampire took them to a small office, one littered with paintbrushes, empty jars. Tightly tightly-sealed cabinets lined three of the four walls. Yellow lights akin to a Lumos charm hung in glass balls from the ceiling, like bare lightbulbs but with none of the expected harsh glare. Aside from the overpowering smell of dried blood, it looked like the rarely-used office of a painter forced to occasionally break from their passion for paperwork and meetings.

There were no seats and no desks; the vampire gestured for Sirius to stand back, and spread their arms. "Disrobe," they commanded. "Bare the shoulders. The chest too."

"I'll just… turn this way, shall I?" Sirius said awkwardly. "Hey, Pavlova, no ogling, alright? Pure professionalism?"

"I would rather ogle you than her," the vampire told him. "Maybe later."

"Uh… I'm flattered?" Sirius squinted at their hooded head. "I can't tell if you're my type, but I'm leaving Bulgaria tonight, so probably not."

Taylor shrugged out of her robe and pulled off the tank top she wore under it, but she left her bra on.

"Good enough," Pavlova said. They reached for one of the cabinets, did something that made Taylor's eyes itch and her headache spike, and the drawer opened. Out came a small inkpot and a thin-haired brush, along with a narrow blade. "This is blood magic. You Englishmen and Americans, you know little of it. Enough to know I must have blood to work? Thirteen drops will suffice for this assessment."

"No more," Taylor warned.

"You know little of vampires, as well," Pavlova said, sounding not at all offended. "Or perhaps just enough. I do not feed on customers. That would defeat the point." They pricked Taylor's good shoulder with the blade, barely enough to cut the skin, and dipped the brush in the blood. Then they moved to her stump, drawing the brush across it in irregular patterns. It tickled, a little.

Taylor was tense; one false move and she would react. But Pavlova just kept painting, occasionally muttering in that eerily unremarkable voice. The air was cool against the lines of wetness, and Taylor breathed shallowly to avoid feeling nauseous. Between the smell of blood, the light, and the headache pummeling the inside of her skull, she wasn't feeling good. Not poisoned or anything that might indicate foul play, just… unsettled.

Sirius tapped his shoe on the ground, looking around the small office as he waited. His hand brushed over some of the empty inkpots, and he even lifted one up to look inside.

"Please stand still," Pavlova told him. "Your movement is distracting."

Sirius put the inkpot down and his hands behind his back. His lips quirked, like he was going to start whistling, but thankfully he thought better of it.

"Now, to see…" Pavlova said, stepping back. "Svrzvam," they incanted.

The runes covering her stump, from her shoulder all the way down, all glowed red, then orange, then flickered to gold, before returning to orange and holding steady.

"Good." Pavlova poked at her stump with the brush, leaving individual dots of blood. "Not normal, but good. Your blood. Was it always yours?"

"What kind of question is that?" Sirius asked.

"Blood transfusion… I have reason to believe not," Taylor said. "But I don't know whose it was to start with." If Sirius asked, she would explain Muggle blood donations and the like, but she vaguely remembered Contessa doing something involving her blood, way back when she was setting her new life up. It had never come up, so she assumed it was done for medical reasons. As an all-inclusive inoculation against this world's diseases, maybe, as she didn't remember being jabbed with a dozen different vaccines at any point. But now…

Did Contessa plan for all of this? Or was magic not in the plan at all? Knowing the extent of Contessa's power, back then she would have assumed that it was all planned, down to the smallest detail. Knowing as she did now that this entire dimension apparently was walled off, and how much her own power struggled with magic, she would say… No, probably not. Or not entirely.

"It is yours now," Pavlova told her. "There are lingering traces of other blood magic, but nothing that would interfere with a prosthetic. You yourself are compatible."

"Guess there would be traces," Sirius muttered. He was probably thinking of the blood curse she claimed to have. She didn't have one, so that did raise the question of what, exactly, other blood magic involved her. But that wasn't a question she could ask with Sirius around.

"Nothing directly harmful?" she asked.

"Nothing to contest dominance," Pavlova replied. "I do not do medical diagnosis. Any prosthetic we design for you will function as it should. What is your price range?"

"Sirius Black, present and accounted for," Sirius volunteered.

"That means nothing to me," Pavlova told him.

"What's your most expensive model?" he asked.

"A thoroughly enchanted, reinforced bone and flesh-substitute arm," Pavlova said neutrally. "Fully manipulable, a single low-effort activation charm that will last it forty-eight hours before requiring reapplication, downtime of one night per month." They went to a drawer on the other side of the room, performed the same disconcerting unlocking charm, and took out an arm-shaped bundle of gray flesh, complete with a wrinkled hand. "Based on skin color, size, and height, it will look like… this."

The arm shifted under the vampire's fingers, turning into a mirrored copy of her remaining arm, flawless in every respect except for being absolutely covered from fingertip to termination point in black runes, to the point where she would estimate only about two thirds of the skin was actually showing.

The vampire held it up to her stump. "Look, Black, and tell her if it matches," they said.

"Uh, trying not to look," Sirius replied. "Robes first?"

"I'm not naked over here," Taylor told him. "Check it." She couldn't see for herself.

"If you insist." Sirius turned around. His eyes widened. "Huh, that looks… really cool," he declared. "Nice runes, could maybe be passed off as tattoos around Muggles. Can they be hidden? Painted over?"

"No," Pavlova said flatly. "They cannot. They must be exposed to air or the arm will break down over time."

"What happens if someone cuts it…" Sirius came over and traced a line on the arm, right above the wrist. "Here? This is a rune for control, right?"

Pavlova took the arm away from her shoulder. "Yes," they said, sounding annoyed. "This is the great flaw of all blood-based magical prosthetics. They are stronger, more resilient, fully controllable like a real arm, provide sensory feedback, and do not require a constant input of magic to function… but they can be sabotaged and the runes cannot be hidden. There are six points," they touched two places on the wrist, front and back, one on the inside of the palm, one on the elbow, and one on the tip of the pinky finger, "where a single purposefully-applied drop of blood will shift control of the arm to the one whose blood is placed there. Other runes, if defaced, will disable the arm entirely. These are unavoidable weak points."

That would be the reason Moody said blood-based prosthetics were bad for combat. Anyone with an understanding of runes could subvert them with a single well-placed drop of blood, and the runes that allowed this had to be visible for the arm to work. Blood-based prosthetics came with their own Achilles heel built in, and a big waving flag advertising them to anyone who saw her arm. It was a big problem.

It was not, however, a big enough downside to stop her from wanting one. Not on its own. "Aside from this, are there any drawbacks I need to know about? Physical, magical, mental… Will this arm adversely affect me?"

"No." Pavlova put the arm back in the drawer. "Which is why this is the most expensive prosthetic we offer. Others have limitations to safe use per month, or even per day, or require sacrifices. If you want a clean, ethical," and there they hissed a low laugh, "and safe arm, an arm that connects to your will but does not have any chance of side effects… Four hundred galleons."

"We'll take three," Sirius said. "Three arms at four hundred apiece, I mean, not one arm for three hundred."

Taylor and Pavlova both stared at him. Oh, she couldn't see Pavlova's eyes, but she knew they were staring. That darkened cowl had whipped around to face Sirius.

"Three," Sirius repeated, pre-empting the obvious question. "Do you have to make them specifically for the left or right side, or do they adapt the first time you put them on?"

"These prosthetics will be attuned to her blood," Pavlova hissed. "You will need to provide me with consultations to the other two individuals. They must also be made specifically for one side or the other."

"Four, then," Sirius amended. "Two for her left, two for her right. They can be stored indefinitely, right?"

"Yes, but why?" Pavlova demanded.

"So if she loses one we don't have to come back and do this all over again for another," Sirius said glibly. "And you know… Best to cover all the bases."

"You are willing to spend sixteen hundred galleons on covering the bases?" Pavlova demanded.

"Sirius Black, baby." Sirius struck what Taylor was certain he thought was a suave, heroic pose. "I've got money to burn."

"It will be six months," Pavlova quickly retorted. They took a parchment and quill out of their cowl, making Taylor think both had been tucked behind an ear. "She will need to return in three months to provide two pints of blood… per arm. You will want to supply your own Blood-Replenishing potions for that visit. Sign here to confirm you are willing to commission four arms, two left and two right, all for the individual consulted today. Pay up front, to be automatically refunded if we renege on our side of the agreement."

Taylor had the distinct feeling she had just been shoved aside in this negotiating process. "Sirius–"

"Let me handle what you asked me to handle," Sirius interrupted. "This a blood quill too? Yes, of course it is."

Pavlova chuckled, a low and ominous sound. Sirius yelped as he signed his name. "Four arms, details as specified, sixteen hundred galleons," Sirius said. "Gringotts withdrawals good here in Bulgaria?"

"Yes, but for such a sum you will need to…" Pavlova nodded as Sirius scribbled out something else on the parchment. "Yes. If this is in order, your commission will begin immediately. We will be in touch."

"Great! Mind if we portkey out from here?" Sirius asked.

"If you must," Pavlova said. "You could stay, though. I would like–"

"Right, good, Britannia Forever," Sirius said, grabbing her arm.

"Sirius!" she objected, in the split second before the passphrase triggered both of their portkeys back to Britain. The sensation of portkey travel rolled her already upset stomach, and after a few long seconds, when they fell back into the right plane of reality, she stumbled and landed hard on her butt on the tiled floor of the Ministry checkpoint for international Portkey travel they had left that morning, still with her robe down around her waist, bloody runes drawn all over her stump, and nothing but a bra between her and the goggle-eyed Ministry clerk and attending security guards.

"Word of advice, lads," Sirius told the guards as he pulled her to her feet. "Do not stare. It's bad for your health."

Taylor quickly pulled her robe up, angry and surprisingly embarrassed. She had no idea what had gotten into Sirius, but she was going to–

"Rule number one of dealing with vampires," he said to her as he passed his portkey item back to the clerk, "never negotiate. Either pay their price or refuse. Be generous, even. Like buying way more than you actually need."

She handed her own portkey back once she had her robe situated, mulling that over.

"Also, from what I could gather their offer of safety and hospitality only lasts as long as we're customers," he added. "I think only one of us counted as a customer there, and I'm not sure which of us it was. Once I'd paid, either you or I were in serious danger if we stayed. Probably me, because they still need your blood and to give you their side of the deal."

"You bought something from vampires?" a guard asked.

"Yeah, they've got great marital aids," Sirius quipped. "Also paintings. They do paintings."

For some reason, possibly context Taylor was missing, the guard acted like that was a reasonable explanation. "Oh, good choice," he said. "They must be really good at paintings, I never thought about that."

"We good here?" Sirius asked. The clerk nodded. "Okay, thanks for the help, boys!" He reached out for Taylor–

"We're not in danger anymore, stop rushing," she admonished, moving her hand out of reach. "Also, you're an ass. You could have told me those things."

"I didn't figure the second one out until that vampire talked about what we'd be doing after the consultation," Sirius said. "Sorry. Better safe than comfortable?"

"Yes…" She could agree with that. "Next time, warn me."

"If I can," he promised. She held her arm out, and he took it to apparate them back to Grimmauld Place.

"I hope you don't expect me to pay you back for your splurging," she said as she went to the kitchen to sponge the dried blood off her stump.

"I've got money to burn," he said again, following her into the kitchen to rummage through a cupboard. "Honestly. Way too much. You want to quit your job, live off my fortune, go ahead. Those arms were barely a scratch on the finances."

"I don't want charity." She wanted to support herself. If Sirius was going to give her one-off practical gifts she couldn't afford herself, she would accept them and sigh at his impulsiveness, but she didn't want to be tied to him. He had given her no reason to distrust him, but if she couldn't make her own way she would find reasons. Support freely offered could be freely taken away if something changed.

"You wouldn't have to work at a Muggle library all week, every week," he said. He brought a bowl down from the cupboard, and summoned a bag of crisps to his free hand. "How does that keep you occupied, anyway? Seems way too boring for you."

"I don't have to work there anymore whether or not you're involved," she informed him. "I can start selling spider-silk anytime. That's its own industry, or it would be if anyone could make it reliably. I won't, because who knows whether quitting my job would be the thing that finally tips Dumbledore off, but I could. In the meantime, being a librarian is low-stakes. It doesn't have to be big or important."

"But what do you do?" Sirius asked as he leaned against the kitchen table and started eating out of the bag, completely ignoring the bowl he had acquired.

"I maintain our sorting system and computers," she explained, "and I help negotiate new arrangements for bulk buying from book publishers, as well as the usual things like checking books for damage and helping people who can't find what they're looking for." The technical side of things was by now her main responsibility, given she was better with it than anyone else working at her branch. One of the advantages of coming from an alternate future: as technology advanced here, she was getting more comfortable with it, not less.

"Can't imagine you doing any of that," Sirius admitted.

"I'm thinking of moving on once we have the Dumbledore problem resolved, but it's a good job and I don't regret doing it while raising Harry," she said as she rolled her robe sleeve back. She could just go home and take a shower, but she didn't want to drive back with the flakey sensation of dry blood all over one shoulder.

"I don't regret buying you four arms," Sirius said. "Think we could get them to attach them all at once?"

"You want to be spider-Sirius, go ahead, but you'll have to cut an arm off and go back for your own consultation," she told him. Her stump mostly clean, she pulled her sleeve down and went to the fireplace. Harry would be curious to know how the consultation had gone, and she had the rest of a weekend to spend with him.

Things were going well. She would savor that while it lasted, because inevitably something was going to go wrong. Likely not the things she was half-expecting to explode in her face, either. That was just how the world worked.

The Hogwarts Champion was Cedric Diggory. As such, Harry did not get any sleep at all the night after the Champions were selected. Hufflepuff collectively partied through to the morning, their only concession to the realities of schooling being to have procured a whole crate of Pepper-Up Potion for the morning. There was Butterbeer aplenty, fireworks, school spirit songs Harry had never heard before, and even some Firewhisky going around.

"They won't tell us what the first task is," Cedric had said, swaying back and forth as he spoke, "and the Professors aren't allowed to help, but who cares! I'm the greatest!"

He may have been more than a little drunk by that point.

It was all good fun, and even the other houses were supporting Cedric. Draco Malfoy handed out buttons that said 'Support Cedric Diggory', and once Ginny showed him how to remove the charm that had the buttons flash 'Ronald Weasley is a Blood Traitor' whenever Ron was around, Harry wore his. He also got to see Ronald Weasley decking Malfoy in the Great Hall, which was funny. Those two showed no signs of tempering their mutual hatred anytime soon, and according to Ginny, Ron actually liked being known as 'the guy Malfoy hates' around school. Everyone else liked that Malfoy spent almost all his time fixated on Ron, instead of being a ponce to other people.

Meanwhile in Hufflepuff, a plot was hatched. The first Harry heard of it was when Susan Bones caught him just as he was leaving for Runes. "Harry, you're in, right?"

"In what?" He asked.

"Cedric isn't allowed to get help or training from the professors, but nobody ever said anything about us," Susan explained. "Ernie came up with the idea. We're all going to research the tournament, come up with strategies, tactics, must-know spells, and give all that information to Cedric. It's not cheating to have all of Hufflepuff helping so long as we don't actually do the tasks with him or help him break the other rules."

"All of Hufflepuff?" Harry asked, impressed.

"We have a few seventh years, everyone in sixth year, the half of fifth year that isn't worried about OWLS, and you're the only fourth year I haven't talked to yet," Susan said breathlessly. "You in?"

"Do we do this on our own time and compare results, or do we meet somewhere?" He had a busy schedule, after all.

"We're all doing independent research and we're going to meet a week before the first task." She pulled out a long list of parchment. "Do you want to work on magical creatures or runic puzzles? There are already three of us on the puzzles and none on creatures, but Runes are really complicated…"

Runes were complicated, and Harry didn't think he was competent enough at them to be of any help there. "I'll do magical creatures, I suppose." And he knew exactly who would probably want to help him.

"I would love to help you," Luna said when he asked her later that day. She plied him with books, several from her own personal collection, and at his request sketched a few of the creatures she couldn't find references for.

Some of Luna's creatures didn't seem very… plausible… but Harry had thought dragons were impossible too only a few years ago, so he kept an open mind and added them all to the list. Who knew what an international tournament could source for a big event? Cedric needed to be prepared for everything.

Or so Harry assumed. The big Hufflepuff planning meeting a week before the first task got off to a bad start when Cedric walked in and said he didn't want to know what they had learned.

"I didn't know about this when it started, I would have put a stop to it then," he announced, flashing the room a big, genuine smile. "Not that I don't appreciate it! I do. But it's not fair. The other schools don't have whole research teams working for their champions, and I didn't enter to have all of Hufflepuff propping me up. I want to do it on my own. So thank you, but no thanks."

'Fair' was as much a house motto as loyalty was, but Cedric left the mood among their big group a little like a grape that had been sat on: sad, flat, and with all the enthusiasm squished right out.

Hufflepuff would still root for him in the first task, but perhaps not as enthusiastically as they might have.

"I took the hat in to be examined," Sirius recounted as they tromped up the stands to find seats near the top, just another couple of guests arriving to watch the first task. "That charmsmaster in Diagon Alley you recommended took all day examining it, and he told me it wasn't possessed, but that was all he could say. It insulted him something fierce, too, he told me I ought to burn it solely because of how much lip it gives everyone."

"No sense in keeping it out if you don't know what it is." Taylor would have trashed it and been done with it by now, but maybe if she had somehow accidentally made it herself, she would be more invested in figuring out how.

"This is a battle of wills now," Sirius said. "I'll get it to tell me how it was made. Mouthy bugger is too self-assured to not know."

The students were in the stands opposite the non-school crowd, across the empty arena. Her son was right in the middle of the riot of yellow robes and banners that made up the Hufflepuff contingent, waving his own flag every so often. The other houses were no more subdued, but they cheered on Cedric the Hogwarts Champion, not Cedric the Hufflepuff. Fleur and Viktor, the other two champions, only had small dedicated cheering sections. Not even all of their schoolmates were enthusiastic.

"The other schools should have brought people who would not resent being skipped over for the Tournament," she observed. "They're not showing much school spirit."

"The French girl is a Veela, she automatically has her own cheering section anywhere she goes," Sirius said. "Krum is a Quidditch star, so he does too."

Veela… Taylor was interested, now. Not sexually; she had no interest in women, and the Veela at the world cup might as well have been normal human women for how little she felt their influence, beyond her power giving her the usual headache of new magic being examined. But races of nonhumans were a horror story back on Earth Bet, always invasive species stemming from the likes of Nilbog. Here, they were more like second-class minorities, even though Veela were apparently so close to human that they could successfully interbreed. She would like to speak to one, if she ever got the chance.

"Do any Veela live in Britain?" she thought to ask.

"No, but if you want to change that, you can be my wingwoman sometime," Sirius offered. "I for one would love to bring home an exotic French bird. Not this one, she's still a child, but those Quidditch cheerleaders…"

He trailed off, presumably thinking dirty thoughts. When he didn't snap out of it quickly enough for her liking, she took a wasp from the collar of her robes and lifted it to his neck.

"Ugh!" He lurched to the side and almost fell off the stands, hands slapping futilely at his neck as little limbs poked and twitched across bare skin. "Taylor! No! Bad!"

"I'm not the dog here," she snorted. "Control yourself." Her wasp buzzed back to her.

"Bloke can't even think about cute birds without getting scarred for life," Sirius complained as he sat down, though he was still smiling. "Jealous?"

"Date whoever you please, but for your sake make sure they don't mind knowing I keep hundreds of spiders in your bedroom walls," Taylor told him.

"You don't," Sirius denied.

Taylor sat quietly and smiled down at the arena.

"You don't, do you?" Sirius asked.

"I used to fill my basement with Black Widows," she reminisced. "It's easier to spread them out, though. They take territory and eat each other if you keep them too close together. I can only control them when I'm nearby… Walls are good. Less chance of someone walking into them when I'm not around, easier to keep them evenly spread around."

The blood slowly drained from Sirius' face. "If I snag a hot date I'm letting them take me home," he said.

"That might be wise." And not only because of her bugs; Grimmauld Place was still a rather dark household, and there was still at least one potential deathtrap in each room. Things like his mother's portrait, but more dangerous while being difficult to remove.

Intentionally terrifying Sirius aside, though… "Have you been trying to date?" she asked, genuinely curious. "You're no longer a fugitive." It might be important to know whether there was a chance she could end up walking in on something the next time she showed up at Grimmauld Place unannounced.

"No." Sirius shrugged and sat back, leaning on his hands. "It… "

Three wizards shuffled down the row behind him, and one of them bumped their leg into the back of his head, forcing him to lean forward again.

"I'm not exactly back to normal, if you catch my meaning," he said vaguely. "The healers say it could be a while yet. Dementors can kill the mood long after you're shot of them."

"Oh." She probably shouldn't have asked… But she was glad to know, if only to avoid bringing the topic up. Sirius talked a very good game; she hadn't even guessed that he might still be dealing with physical aftereffects of Azkaban, more than a year after getting out.

"Witches and Wizards!" a man bellowed, his voice magically enhanced. It was time for the tournament to begin. "Welcome to the first event of the Triwizard Tournament!"

Taylor looked around, quickly identifying the announcer as the corpulent wizard in the judges' box alongside the three Headmasters.

He launched into a loud explanation of the points system – arbitrarily assigned by three partial judges, as if that made any sense – and the setup of the tournament as a whole, which boiled down to three tasks spread out over a whole school year with absolutely nothing in between. The third task was going to be in April, almost half a year from now, and from how he talked she got the impression it was originally scheduled to be even later in the spring term.

"Is this a money laundering scheme?" she asked Sirius. "They're barely putting in an effort."

"I heard it's already breaking the Ministry's budget as it is, three tasks might be all they can afford," Sirius explained. "Also, the tournament has been out of practice for hundreds of years, they don't want to mess it up the first year back. Simple is better."

"The first task is a mystery, to the audience and to the champions," the announcer said grandly. "It was a mystery, that is. Our champions are getting their explanation in the tent right about now, and…" He paused.

The pause went on several moments too long to be planned, and his lips were still moving. After a moment Dumbledore waved his wand and the announcing charm came back. "Our first dragon is the Swedish Short-Snout!" the announcer continued, oblivious to the interruption.

The crowd erupted as a dragon, a real live dragon, was led into the arena by a whole team of handlers. Ministry incompetence forgotten, Taylor leaned forward in her seat to get a better look.

She had never seen a dragon before. Lung didn't count, and neither did Dragon's mechanical suits. This was the real magical deal, and it looked as if it had been ripped right out of a fantasy novel. They were bringing in eggs, too, dragon eggs scattered about in a makeshift nest the dragon was chained in front of. One egg was gold. The announcer explained the task, but Taylor stopped listening once she confirmed that it was as she had guessed. Egg-robbing a nesting dragon.

Maybe the Ministry didn't need to be competent with the tournament, if the tasks were all going to be like this. Pure spectacle would carry the tournament to success. She did wonder what safety precautions were being taken, if any.

The first champion out was Cedric Diggory, Hogwarts' own champion and a member of Hufflepuff house. The yellow section of the stands exploded with cheers.

"He doesn't look confident," Sirius observed.

He didn't, though the cheering from his house bolstered him. He lifted his wand, paused to wipe something off his neck, and strode forward, into the arena.

He waved his wand and jabbed it forward, firing off a blue curse. It sped across the arena and struck the dragon, to no visible effect.

"Dragons are magically resistant, scales especially," Sirius explained.

The dragon might have been resistant, but that didn't mean it was happy to be cursed. It roared, a blood-curdling sound that promised retribution, and crouched over its nest, wings flared.

"Oh, off to a bad start," the announcer remarked. "Let's see if Diggory can pull it back…"

Cedric continued to fire spells from what was arguably a safe distance. The chain holding the dragon didn't look all that thick to Taylor, and she was sure if the beast decided offense was the best defense it could make a good attempt at breaking it.

Finally, Cedric happened across a spell that did something; Aguamenti. He cast the charm with enough power that it resembled a strong water hose, spraying out in a jet to douse the dragon's head. Not being magic cast directly on the dragon, it was just as effective as it would have been on anything else.

Unfortunately for Cedric, the effect of being doused in cold water was that the dragon finally decided to try and rid itself of his irritating presence. It did so with fire.

Sirius swore and Taylor flinched backwards as a torrent of billowing red and orange flames leapt from the dragon's maw with next to no warning. It was not mundane fire, blasting across the distance between the dragon and Cedric in a heartbeat without dissipating at all, a powerful torrent of burning force.

Cedric screamed and dragged a solid man-sized chunk of rock out of the ground in the intervening heartbeat between the dragon flaming and his incoming immolation, using a spell Taylor had never seen or heard about before. The flames slammed into his barrier and wrapped around it, the force of the attack blunted but the backlash of the fire itself still burning hot.

Cedric's robes caught on fire, and he hurriedly doused himself. The dragon stopped flaming and settled back down over its eggs, momentarily satisfied.

"Damn, that's going to leave a mark," Sirius remarked as Cedric flopped down behind his cover, continually casting water charms on himself. A puddle of water was steadily growing around him, but his skin remained scorched red and in some cases already blistering. "What's he supposed to do now?"

"Not make himself a target," Taylor offered. She would feel bad for the teenager down in the arena, but as it stood he had entered into this contest of his own free will. If he wanted to participate in bloodsport, he should have gone in with a better plan than 'harass the dragon'.

He was evidently thinking along the same lines, but not thinking too hard about it at the same time, because his next move was at once an improvement and yet still fundamentally of the same foolish line of thought. He transfigured a living dog – one of the flashier pieces of magic low on Taylor's own priority list – and sent it out to bother the dragon.

Unfortunately for him, the dragon was fed up with his nonsense and barbecued the dog after two seconds of annoying barking.

Cedric sent out more dogs, one after another. Finally, he brought out a pack of five and held them back, before tapping himself with his wand and fading from sight.

"Points for knowing how to disillusion himself," Sirius whispered. The audience had fallen silent, seeing that Cedric meant to try something stealthy. Taylor hoped the arena was soundproofed, but knowing the competence of government officials she doubted it.

"He loses those points for not doing it to start with," she whispered back.

"And he loses more for sacrificing dogs… Cats would be much better." Sirius crossed his arms. "Look for moving patches of shadow and light, the disillusionment charm is imperfect."

Taylor had actually already spotted Cedric, having never looked away when he disillusioned himself. As far as invisibility went, it was far less effective than an invisibility cloak. Those, she could only notice through physical touch with her bugs. Cedric, disillusioned though he was, could be seen from high up in the stands so long as he was moving.

Cedric walked quickly along the edge of the arena while his dog pack barked and ran and was swiftly incinerated. The dragon snarled irritably as it blasted the dogs out of existence.

Cedric crept in behind the dragon. The golden egg levitated over to him just as he reached the edge of the nest.

A terrible, creeping suspicion made itself known to Taylor. "Sirius," she asked, "is there a levitation charm that gets stronger the closer you are to the thing you're moving?"

"No?" Sirius said absently. "I'm not sure."

Cedric had the egg. The golden object marked his disillusioned form quite clearly as he hurriedly snuck away from the dragon.

"So… What was stopping him from levitating it to him from the start?" she asked.

The final dog died in a maelstrom of magical fire just as Cedric made it back behind his cover. The dragon, angry as it was, didn't seem to know or care that it had been robbed.

"I assume the Ministry put on some kind of protection against that," Sirius suggested. "Then again, I also assumed I would get a trial…"

Taylor laughed, surprised by the dark humor. She didn't think Sirius had ever joked about his own incarceration before.

The audience let out a collective sigh of relief as Cedric fled the arena with his prize.

"There we go!" the announcer boomed. "Cedric Diggory, everyone! Don't worry, he'll get checked over by the mediwitch on standby, he's probably fine, he was able to walk after that near-roasting."

"There is such a thing as shock," Taylor muttered. She herself had soldiered through horrendous injuries before. Being able to finish the task set out for him might only mean that he was strong enough to do it despite being horribly injured. A high pain tolerance, nothing more. Certainly not that he was uninjured.

"Healers can handle dragon fire burns," Sirius assured her. "He might be feeling crispy right now, but so long as that's all that's wrong they'll just grow him new skin and send him on his way. The embarrassment might hurt worse."

"Next up we have the Common Welsh Green," the announcer bellowed enthusiastically. "Viktor Krum will be stepping into the arena to best the dragon… Or be its next meal!"

"Who is that imbecile?" Taylor asked, irrationally annoyed with the announcer.

"Ludo Bagman, inept gambler and head of the Games department in the Ministry or some such nonsense," Sirius supplied. "Tried to welch out on the Weasley twins at the World Cup. I got him to cough up the money, but the man is shameless."

The dragon handlers came out into the arena to take the Short-Snout away. Taylor watched with interest as they downed it with massed orange spells, sending it to sleep, then hauled it away.

Then a familiar figure stomped out into the arena. Moody poked around the chain for a bit, casting charms and muttering incessantly, then stomped over to Cedric's defensive wall to spell it back into the ground and smooth out the stone.

Taylor was struck by the thought that Moody was acting as the magical version of a zamboni. She suspected nobody around her would get that comparison, so she kept it to herself.

The next dragon was brought out. It differed from the other in the way that dog breeds differed, vastly different while still being recognizably the same base creature. The Common Welsh Green was startlingly green – explaining why it had been named after that particular feature – and looked like it wanted to go find a cave and go to sleep, not sit in an arena brooding over a dozen real eggs and one fake, soon to be attacked by a teenager for the entertainment of the masses.

"Does the wizarding world have any concept of animal cruelty?" Taylor asked.

"Yeah, we know loads of ways to be cruel to animals," Sirius replied, deadpan.

She set a single mosquito to bite the back of his neck, just for that terrible joke.

"And… here we go!" Bagman blathered. "Viktor Krum, everybody! Let's see what Durmstrang teaches their students these days!" He earned himself a sharp look from the brooding Durmstrang headmaster.

Viktor Krum strode out into the arena, his wand already out. He cast, and the dragon screeched at him, stumbling forward while blinking heavily.

"Conjunctivitis curse, that's what I would have used," Sirius exclaimed. "Smart kid. Their scales are resistant–"

"But not their eyes?" Taylor asked. The dragon was mostly blinded, and it swept its wings back and forth as it stalked at the edge of its chain, seeking its attacker. Krum carefully worked his way around its unguided strikes, occasionally recasting the curse to keep it blind. He secured his egg without any major trouble, and even bowed to the audience on his way out.

Compared to Cedric… There was no comparison. Krum barely seemed ruffled by facing a dragon.

"Viktor Krum with a flawless plan and execution, everyone!" Bagman announced, and everyone cheered. The dragon was taken back – lashing out blindly at its handlers, several of whom seemed upset – and Moody was out again to check the chain. He scowled at it and unhooked it from its peg, struck a link off with a single slash of his wand, and reattached it.

"Damn, now I'm glad Moody's on the case." Sirius whistled. "Looks like a link was cracked or breaking. If that chain broke with a dragon on the other end…"

"Surely there are other security measures." She refused to believe a single chain and ornery old man were all that stood between the children of the nation and an enraged dragon slaughtering them all. Nobody was that stupid.

"Yeah, it would never get out of the arena, that's probably warded up the arse, but I would worry more about the champion," Sirius explained. "They're not here to kill a dragon, they're just here to steal from one. Not nearly as hard when you don't have to worry about properly getting away. If it broke free, though, those wards would keep the champion in too. It would be a deathmatch."

"Finally, we have the Hungarian Horntail," Bagman announced. The dragon that was led into the arena was armored, spiky, and visibly seething, smoke coming from its nostrils. "Matched against this fearsome beast is Fleur Delacour, part Veela and all hot– Hey!"

"You are many decades too old to comment on my student," the large woman judge could be heard saying.

"Nobody's too old to state the obvious," Bagman retorted.

Fleur Delacour walked into the arena, oblivious to the announcer's comments. She shrugged off her outer robe, revealed a much looser and less formal one underneath, and took in the seething Horntail across the arena.

She grimaced. To Taylor, it looked like the grimace of one who knew they were going to have to do something distasteful.

Her wand out, she began to dance. She was skilled, and her movements were soft and flowing. She swept from one pose to the next, and each time she paused her wand was out, aimed at the dragon, but no obvious spell leapt from it.

She danced for a full five minutes, and at the end of that time, the dragon's ire had died out. It shuffled around its nest and lay down, curled up around the eggs.

Fleur continued to dance, even as the dragon's eyes closed. It was some kind of magic, and Taylor's spiking headache confirmed that, but it was unlike anything else Taylor had seen.

She finished with a sweeping pirouette, and paused, her arms still out as she watched the dragon. Once she was certain she had succeeded, she walked, slowly and calmly, to the dragon's side.

It was there that her flawless performance met an unexpected stumbling block. The dragon was large enough that, in curling up around the nest, it had created a continuous wall of scaled bulk between Fleur and her prize. She could climb it, but if the dragon woke, she would be in serious trouble.

After a moment's consideration Fleur tucked her wand away and gently seized handholds on the dragon's flank, hauling herself up slowly and with measured caution.

The dragon did not stir as she reached its back and took her wand out, quietly summoning the egg from the nest to her arms.

Taylor was now certain the egg could have been summoned from the start, but she couldn't fault the champions for assuming otherwise. For all she knew, they had even been told summoning charms weren't allowed until they were close, and were just following a rule Bagman had neglected to announce.

Fleur descended from the dragon's flank with a careful jump. She left the arena in total silence, picking up her discarded robe on the way out.

"An enchanting performance by Fleur Delacour!" Bagman thundered, and the spell was broken. The audience roared, and the dragon began to wake, its armored tail lashing about.

Shortly after, with the final dragon taken away, the judges rendered their verdict.

Fleur and Viktor both received tens from Dumbledore and Maxime. Karkaroff gave Viktor a ten and Fleur a seven, to immense booing from both sides of the stands. Cedric received sixes across the board.

The task over, Taylor rose to walk down the stands and away from Hogwarts. She still couldn't spot Harry in the scrum of Hufflepuffs, so she waved to them all and hoped he saw her.

Cedric was in the infirmary for four days. The burns, Harry heard, were not healing correctly. Cedric's father, Amos Diggory, was in and out suggesting things to Madam Pomfrey, to the point where he had been told he would be banned from Hogwarts if he persisted. On the fifth day Cedric was sent to Saint Mungo's, and was gone for another three weeks.

It was a very contrite and tired Cedric Diggory who finally returned to Hogwarts after that, his torso and arms still wrapped in bandages. There were angry red burn scars licking up his neck, and that was the least of his scarring, the parts deemed healed enough to be uncovered.

"Bad reaction," Cedric explained to all of Hufflepuff his first night back. They had gathered in the common room, waiting to hear from him. His voice was hoarse. "I thought the first task might be based around the lake, because of something Bagman said in passing. I put on heat-sealing ointment beforehand, so if we had to go in I wouldn't be cold. I thought I got it all off before facing the dragon, but the healers said the magic remained even once the ointment itself was gone."

Harry cringed as he imagined being burned while also magically holding heat in.

"I learned something, though. I didn't enter the tournament thinking it would be safe or easy." He looked around the room. "I did think it would be fair. I know better now. Fleur and Krum both knew ahead of time that it would be dragons. I rejected your help." He looked to Susan Bones and Ernie Macmillan, the organizers of the 'help Cedric' research group. "That was my mistake. If any of you are still willing–"

He needn't have asked. The reply he received was loud and unanimous. Harry didn't think a single Hufflepuff would sit out the buildup to the next task, and he was going to recruit all of his friends this time, too.

"They gave me the egg and said it was a clue," Cedric concluded, holding the golden object out. One of the seventh-years took it, looked at it for a moment, then passed it to the person next to him. "I have no idea what the next task will be, and I'm not going in without every possible advantage this time."

For one person, the riddle of the egg might have been a formidable challenge.

For all of Hufflepuff, plus Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Neville, and miscellaneous other friends of Hufflepuffs, it lasted five minutes. Then the race was on to interpret the instructions, guess at the structure of the second task, and prepare countermeasures and strategies, all of which took significantly longer.

Harry was once again assigned to cover magical creatures, now with the help of all of his friends. They spent many an afternoon looking up the various aquatic fauna of the lake, starting with the obvious things and then moving on to creatures the Ministry could feasibly import for the task. Luna did sketches, Neville read about behavior, Hermione researched known countermeasures, and Ginny devised alternative methods of fighting off, escaping, or incapacitating each creature. Harry looked up first-hand accounts of encounters with them, from the Giant Squid to the Mermish people to common pests like Grindylows.

Hermione insisted that they collect their results in the form of a book or at least a pamphlet, so they did. It grew thicker and thicker as they worked, and they had to start including 'must read' summaries at the start of each entry, lest Cedric not have time for it all.

In the meantime, there was pick-up Quidditch to play, homework to do and classes to attend. Harry had never been so busy in his life. It was a good kind of busy, one where every waking moment was filled with something interesting but not to the point where he was stressed about any of it. He and the others were dramatically ahead of the current curriculum in most of their classes, and for Hermione all of the extra work just meant turning in a few essays that would be graded slightly below her usual Outstanding. It made her a little tetchy – her telling Viktor Krum to bugger off when he tried to look at her research, complete with sparking fingers, came to mind – but he and Ginny managed to calm her down most of the time.

Then, of course, Dumbledore had to go throw a new complication at them all. The Yule Ball, which everyone fourth-year and up was automatically invited to, and anyone third-year or below could only get into if they were asked on a date.

Everyone in fourth year had to take a date to the ball. It wasn't optional.

Harry did not need this extra pressure. He didn't even know who he wanted to take, or who was going with who. There was a line at mealtimes for the wizards and occasional witch who wanted to ask Fleur, but he wasn't going to throw himself at that hopeless endeavor. Susan Bones was kind of pretty, but he didn't really know her. Cho Chang was going with Cedric; that was announced to the entirety of Hufflepuff.

He could ask his mum or maybe Sirius for advice, but he didn't really want to go to either of them with this. They would both probably say 'you have friends who are girls, take one of them.' Which was… Tricky.

He thought he had a good handle on how Hermione thought, and he knew he understood what made Ginny who she was, if not everything that went through her head, but on this matter he might as well have been clueless. Luna… Well, he never claimed to understand Luna under any circumstances, so she was at least no more mysterious than normal. He had no idea whether any of them would want to go with him.

The added time pressure was worse. Every day he delayed, chances rose that whoever he decided he wanted to ask might no longer be available. This eventually pushed him to action; he didn't know if he like liked any of his girl friends, but he didn't know that about anyone who was still available. If he had his choice, he might have asked Cho. Barring that, he wanted to go with someone he knew.

He screwed up his courage and approached Hermione before History of Magic. "I was wondering," he began, "if you would want to go to the Yule Ball with me?"

Hermione blushed, and she smiled at him, but she was also shaking her head. "I already agreed to go with someone," she said hesitantly.

"Oh," he said, feeling peculiarly relieved. "Well, I'm happy for you. It's just I really don't know who to ask next… Maybe Ginny?"

"No, she has a date too," Hermione said firmly. "You should ask Luna."

His best friend had never steered him wrong before, and Luna was next on his list, so he did exactly that after class, finding her sitting on a windowsill near the Divination tower, where she had just gotten out.

"Did you know Professor Trelawney refuses to teach me to use a crystal ball?" she asked him as he approached. "She just sets me in front of it and tells me silence helps the inner eye open."

"That's not very nice of her," Harry objected.

"We're supposed to be learning palmistry," Luna admitted with a little smile. "But I'm terrible at that. I'm sure she'll teach me properly when we get to the crystal balls."

"Speaking of Balls, Luna, do you want to go to the Yule Ball with me?" Harry asked. After the nervous buildup to asking Hermione, he actually felt pretty relaxed. Agreement or rejection, he knew Luna wouldn't set him down hard.

"Will you teach me to dance before?" Luna asked.

"Sure!" he agreed.

"Then yes, I would love to!" She got up off the windowsill and skipped down the hall. He watched her go…

Sometime shortly after she skipped out of sight, he realized that he hadn't the slightest idea how to dance. Much less how to teach Luna, which he had just promised to do.

"I'm an idiot," he moaned.

But at least he was an idiot with a date to the Yule Ball.

There was a Hogsmeade weekend before the Yule Ball, one scheduled out of necessity, seeing as how students weren't allowed to leave the castle grounds at any other time. Once Harry told Taylor of his predicament, amusing as it was, she spoke to Sirius about finding him and Luna an instructor, and was then informed that they could cut out the middleman, as he knew how to dance.

Sirius Black was a man of many talents. Taylor was not surprised to learn that dancing was one such talent. Dancing seemed like exactly the sort of odd, inexplicable skill he would cultivate specifically to surprise people, as was one of his driving motivations in life.

Sirius rented a private room in an unremarkable building in Hogsmeade, and Taylor picked out a nice set of dress robes for Harry ahead of time, something she hadn't done before for the obvious reason that school children didn't get to go to many important, formal events. Harry invited Luna along, based on the reasoning that if he was going to be learning to dance he might as well have Luna come too instead of trying to teach based on a single afternoon's crash course… And also possibly so that he didn't have to dance with his own mother or Sirius.

Hogsmeade was a swarming anthill of slush, frenzied students, and busy businesses that weekend. Taylor, in her human form, found the bare rented room to be a nice, if somewhat chilly escape from the rest of the school's population. Never in her life had she witnessed more teenage drama than in the leadup to this dance, and to be frank, she didn't care for any of it, save where it affected Harry.

"So, to be clear, I am not to tease Harry until his head explodes?" Sirius asked for the third time. "This is a pivotal time in his life, his first date, it's traditional for someone to take the mickey to an unhealthy degree. You're depriving him of a once in a lifetime experience."

"You will hold your tongue, or I will have cockroaches hold it for you." She smiled at him. "Your choice as to which."

"Maybe I'm becoming desensitized to bug-based threats," Sirius said petulantly. "What will you do if that happens?"

"I'll make good on one so you remember why they're effective threats," she told him.

Outside, in the village, her bugs were keeping track of many familiar individuals, mostly as a force of habit. She could sense the majority of Hogsmeade from where she was right now, and people were everywhere. Buying gifts, buying robes, buying lunch, paying by the hour for rooms in the inn… Doing things, mostly in those rooms but also to a shocking degree in dead-end alleyways and behind buildings. Teenage hormones again. At least in Hogwarts she couldn't use her bugs to the degree needed to notice that sort of thing with any regularity.

Harry and Luna came in from the path leading from Hogwarts, together with Neville and two Hufflepuffs, though the latter three split off once they reached the village. Elsewhere, Ginny browsed a bookstore's shelves. Hermione, who Taylor had temporarily lost track of, entered Taylor's range from the East and went into a robe boutique. Fleur Delacour, easily noticeable because of how the people around her reacted to her presence, was trying to find somewhere away from the crowds, to little success.

"Right!" Sirius began once Harry and Luna found their way into the wooden-floored meeting room. He had already pushed the table and chairs to one side, revealing a serviceably large open space in the middle. "I'm Sirius Black, nice to meet you, Luna. Harry told me you could both use some pointers on dancing, for the Yule Ball."

Sirius got to arranging them, starting with where to put their hands. Taylor kept one eye on him, one eye on the amusing little interplay between Harry and Luna, and many insect eyes on the things happening outside. As much as she enjoyed watching her son in the throes of what she thought might be his first legitimate, non-preschool crush, there were other things going on in Hogsmeade that had her attention too.

In the corner of a potions' supply store, about a block away from where Sirius was currently showing Harry and Luna how not to step on each others' feet, one Severus Snape was being cornered behind a display of flobberworm tracheas by a tall, dark-haired man she tentatively recognized as Karkaroff, the headmaster from Durmstrang. She maneuvered enough insectoid pawns into place to hear some of what they were saying, though not fast enough to catch the beginning of the conversation.

"You must know something," Karkaroff insisted, his voice heavy and threatening. "It was sudden."

"Very," Snape agreed. "But I know nothing about it. Even if I did know, I would not share with you. Go away."

"What will we do?" Karkaroff demanded.

"Nothing. You will hope you can flee to your school before it is too late." Snape sneered at the larger man. "What I do is none of your concern. Get out of my way."

Karkaroff moved, letting Snape by.

"One, two, three, four, pause!" Sirius coached. "Right, do it like that!"

In an alleyway between the joke shop and another less interesting store, a shady deal was taking place. Two older boys gave a woman a handful of galleons each, and she passed them two vials in return. "Four drops," she said, unaware that the insects that littered the alley were listening carefully. "She'll be able to think of nobody but you for the day. Do not expose the potion to air until you are ready to apply it."

Potions… obsession potions. Love potions. She had her flies trail the teens to the Three Broomsticks, where they ordered lunch.

"Now dip her– not that hard!" Sirius sprawled out to catch Luna as she and Harry toppled backward. Taylor moved to help them up, a small smile gracing her face despite the despicable potions she was currently working to uncork in the shadows under a booth.

"Sorry," Harry apologized.

"Try it again," Luna said eagerly. "I like that. Do I get to swing you around, too?"

"Not traditionally, but screw tradition, I can teach you both parts," Sirius suggested.

Out in a street near their meeting place, Fleur Delacour continued to all but flee a crowd of amorous admirers, still seeking a place of refuge. She was good at losing them, but it made little difference when she continuously picked up new followers from the ever-present crowds. She did manage to duck into a shop and buy a little Triwizard Tournament figurine of herself and the dragon she had faced, having it gift-wrapped, but even that was only a temporary reprieve.

Percy Weasley entered Taylor's range, a noticeable redhead not wearing Hogwarts robes, and wandered Hogsmeade aimlessly, like he was looking for someone.

Luna managed to spin Harry around, then immediately pulled him towards her. Harry lifted her off her feet by the waist to turn them both around on one heel in a surprisingly graceful move, and at that point Taylor realized Sirius couldn't possibly be teaching them normal, formal dances. "Is that something they can do at the Yule Ball?" she asked.

"Once the real music starts, all bets are off," Sirius told her. "So yes! Go nuts. But you do have a point… we can come back to the acrobatics. Formal boring dance practice time!"

"Aww," Luna and Harry both complained.

"Learn it quick and I can show you how to do that Muggle duo figure skating thing with a Glisseo charm," Sirius offered.

A single beetle spontaneously appeared within Taylor's range.

That came as a surprise. It seemingly popped into existence in the back of the candy store, where she had bugs but none like it. A mundane water beetle of some kind, it was just like any other bug… Save for her power's feeling of intense consideration. She had full control of it, and it was by no means a magical bug, but something was off about it.

Erring on the side of caution, she sent it away, on a journey to the edge of her range, where she could have other bugs shove it out. She didn't have enough eyes in the area to know what might have been there before the bug appeared, but she had a suspicion. A creeping, disturbing suspicion.

Elsewhere, Fleur Delacour was walking by on the street outside, literally and figuratively harried. "I'll be back in a second," she told Sirius and the kids, and went out to the hall between the rented rooms, then to the door, timing things as precisely as she was able. Just as Fleur was about to walk by, she opened the door. "Need somewhere to hide?" she asked.

"Non," Fleur said by reflex. Then she thought about it, pausing mid-step as she made to walk away. "Wait, 'ow did you–"

"Fleur!" someone yelled from across the street. "Wait up!"

Taylor met the girl's inquisitive gaze, and whatever Fleur saw there made up her mind. "Oui, for a moment," she conceded, hurrying inside. "Thank you. What is this building?"

"Rooms for renting out. Right now, my kid's getting dance lessons," she explained. "Maybe don't go in there, his instructor doesn't need to be distracted." This hallway would do for a place to catch her breath, and that was all Fleur really needed.

Fleur relaxed, her shoulders straightening as she tossed her hair. "Understood. Who are you?"

"Taylor," she said. "I saw you in the first task. Forgive my curiosity, but was there something significant about that dance you performed? I remember you looked displeased right before you began." It would do as a conversation starter. When would she next get a chance to talk to a Veela?

Out in the Three Broomsticks, she succeeded in popping the cork off one of the drug vials, using a magical bug with surprisingly strong pincers to get an adequately tight grip. She set to work on the other. Meanwhile, her spontaneously generated beetle was nearing the edge of her range.

"It was a traditional dance, one that uses some of the magic inherent to Veela to lull beasts into slumber," Fleur replied, brushing her robe sleeves off. "There is nothing wrong wit' it… But I had hoped to rely on witch's magic, not Veela magic. Seeing the dragon, in the moment, I knew nothing else I had prepared would be sufficient, but it was not my first choice. That disappointment is what you noticed."

"I see. Do you have a specialty, or a favorite branch of magic?" Taylor asked. "Something you would rather have used, or want to use going forward?"

The singular beetle reached the edge of her range, right by the Shrieking Shack. She walked it over. Once out of her control it immediately scurried away further, watched by her other bugs right on the edge, and morphed into a witch. A hyperventilating witch who fell back on her butt and frantically scooted backwards until she hit a tree, then apparated away on the spot, leaving behind a quill.

Moody stalked Hogsmeade, trailing a brooding Karkaroff through the streets. He was surprisingly stealthy, given his immediately recognizable visage. A hat and a long, flowing robe did wonders for keeping his face and peg leg hidden from casual observers.

"Non, I will not reveal my secrets so easily," Fleur said with a small smile. "Watch and see. Perhaps not this next task, but the third for certain."

"Why not the second task?" Taylor asked.

Fleur looked away. "If the first allowed my strengths as a Veela to show, the second seems meant to exploit my weaknesses," she said. "You will see. We are creatures of air and fire. But I have said too much." She looked back and smiled. "I would not want to spoil the surprise, no? Thank you for offering this respite. At Beauxbatons, the students are all used to me. Here, with this Ball… It is good to speak to someone not preoccupied with ogling me or wishing she was me."

Taylor's bugs pried the second cork out, ruining the second of two illicit potions. She also had mosquitoes sneaking under the robes of both boys, and the witch who had sold to them wouldn't get away unscathed either… Love potions were not illegal here, which spoke volumes of how backwards magical society truly was in some respects, but she was not concerned with the legality of the situation.

Percy Weasley ran into his little sister, Ginny, outside the bookstore. He clapped her on the shoulder and gave her a galleon, and they exchanged a few words before parting ways. Ginny watched him as he left, one eyebrow raised.

In the meeting room, where Taylor did not currently have any bugs, something thumped loudly, and Sirius' muffled cheer made it through the wall to the hallway. "That's the way!" he yelled.

"I think I need to remind them that dancing is not meant to be stunt work," Taylor laughed, pushing her much more mixed emotions aside. "Good luck in the tournament." She went back into the meeting room, pushing the door open to reveal Luna–

"How are you doing that?" she demanded. Luna could not possibly be strong enough to hold Harry above her head like that!

"Weight reduction charm," Harry chimed in, his voice strained as he attempted to hold his body straight, perpendicular to Luna. "Do you think it's a bit much?"

"Nothing is too much for a proper wizard ball," Sirius said. "Now throw him, Luna! Taylor, catch!"

As it turned out, Harry currently weighed as much as a pillow filled with wet feathers, which was a great relief given Luna really did throw him at her, and she wasn't up to the task of catching her son with only one arm. He bounced right off and managed to land on his feet.

"I don't believe these are real dance moves children should be learning," she said, pointing an accusing finger at Sirius.

"Cross my heart, they are," he said. "Sure, the average Pureblood snob isn't going to know them, but I promise you, back in my day dancing pairs competed to see who could do the craziest stunts that counted as dancing. Want to try? It's gotta be boring, standing around waiting for this to be over with."

Boring? Today was the furthest thing from being boring. She was observing and dealing with half a dozen different things at any given moment.

"I'd rather watch." She waved her hand. "Go ahead."

"I'll convince you to try dancing sometime," Sirius promised. "Okay, Harry, your turn to try the vertical windmill. Remember, no matter what happens, be mindful of what you're grabbing. Girls have natural handholds, but you're not allowed to use those on a first date. Stick to the waist and stomach when you're holding her up."

"Cockroaches," Taylor reminded him.

"Those don't have waists," Luna objected. "Harry can't spin me by the shell."

"Hey, better I warn him now than he find out by making the mistake," Sirius complained. "There are some things a guy doesn't want to learn by trial and error. How hard an unexpected knee to the head can hit is one of those things. Right, get to it!" He cast a spell on Harry and one on Luna, ending the lightweight spell and applying it, respectively.

Taylor watched closely, but Harry and Luna were genuinely having fun with the challenge and probably blood rush that came from the ridiculous acrobatics Sirius had them doing, and she found she couldn't fault him for his advice when Harry was trying to spin Luna around over his head and moving his hands fast to keep up with her rotation. Now, when she tried to imagine anyone doing this in a formal dance, where the girls would be wearing last-century dresses…

Either Sirius was having them all on, or the Yule Ball was going to be a sight to behold. It was probably the former, but the kids were having fun and any awkwardness that might have existed in Harry at the thought of dancing with Luna was gone, so she didn't call him out on it.

Instead she watched, and she watched Hogsmeade.

On the evening of the Yule Ball, Harry ventured out of the Hufflepuff common room in his new dress robes, a freshly-picked flower from the greenhouses in hand, and went to the Ravenclaw entrance. All around him, older students were about in fancy robes, and younger students were sulking or ignoring their older counterparts.

Luna was waiting for him, dressed in emerald green robes that made her look startlingly pretty. "Wow," he said, oddly tongue-tied.

"They aren't Ravenclaw colors," she said as she took his hand and the flower, tucking the latter in her hair, "but I've always liked green."

"So do I." He almost said that his eyes were green, but thankfully his brain caught up to his mouth and put a stop to that. He needed to make conversation, not state the obvious!

"Who do you think Ginny is going with?" he said instead, only belatedly thinking that maybe talking about another girl was just as bad as blurting out obvious things.

"I already know, she told me," Luna admitted as they walked. "I think it will be good for her, whether or not it works out. Ginny needs to reach for what she wants so that she is sure she wants it."

Harry thought he understood that. Mostly. "I think I need to do that too, sometimes," he said.

"We all do," Luna agreed.

The Great Hall was busy when they arrived, and Harry suspected they had missed the Champions' opening dance. Luna walked slowly, and he didn't want to rush her. Not that he minded missing the opportunity to see that first dance; he wasn't here for the spectacle.

After the initial dance everyone sat down to dinner at the long tables, and he couldn't see any of his friends from where he and Luna ended up, stuck between a Ravenclaw pair and a Slythrin whose date was missing. Not the most interesting table companions…

But Luna made up for them without even trying. "I learned something about Muggles from Hermione," she began as they tucked into their food. "She said it was silly, but I thought it was interesting. Have you ever heard of speculative evolution?"

Harry had not, and said so. What followed was a fascinating discussion of the intersection between science, art, guesswork, and observation of living animals, magical and not. The Ravenclaws got involved, after a short time in which they both stared at Luna like she had suddenly started speaking sense after years of blathering nonsense… Which likely wasn't far from what they actually thought.

Before he knew it the food was gone and people were getting up to dance. He took Luna's hand, like Sirius had shown him, and escorted her to the dance floor.

Once there they danced – the slow, formal dance, not the crazy things Sirius had taught them – and as they stepped in time he saw some of the other pairings he had until then not known about.

Neville was the first big surprise, when Harry spotted him leading Susan Bones around with unexpected grace. Harry hadn't even known they knew each other. Cedric and Cho were no surprise, and Harry didn't know either the wizard Fleur was dancing with or the witch on Krum's arm. Ronald Weasley had the Gryffindor Patil twin dodging his clumsy steps. Draco Malfoy was with Pansy Parkinson, the least surprising pairing he had seen.

He twirled Luna about as the music changed to something more upbeat, and then he saw them. Hermione and Ginny, dancing together.

"Huh," he said as he caught Luna and dipped her.

"Not what you expected?" she asked, somehow knowing what he had seen despite having her back to them.

"I don't know what I expected." He hadn't speculated, knowing he would find out soon enough. Maybe he had assumed Hermione would have been asked by another Ravenclaw. Ginny… He really had no idea. Now he knew.

"Hermione assumes Ginny asked her as a friend," Luna told him. She shifted her feet, stepped on his toes, and he took the less than subtle hint and let her lead for a little bit.

"Is that not true?" he asked.

"It depends on how well it goes," Luna answered. She edged back, pulling him along as they danced. Towards their friends. "Let them figure it out. Ginny! Hermione!"

Harry would have appreciated more time to come to grips with the things Luna had just told him, but Luna all but tossed him at Hermione. "I want a dance," she told Ginny. "You can have your date back after."

Harry clumsily completed the tradeoff by taking Hermione's hands, and then they were dancing, albeit less gracefully. She was pretty tonight too, though he thought he might prefer her hair big and bushy to how she had it now, carefully collected and tamed.

"Is Luna having a good time?" was Hermione's first question.

"I think she is!" he said, smiling widely. He hadn't made a terrible mess of things yet, anyway. The dancing might have been the most awkward part, but after their session with Sirius it was both easy and relatively relaxing. He easily fell into step with Hermione. "Did you see Neville?"

"Susan Bones, I saw," Hermione laughed. "He kept that quiet. I know she turned down a few people. I wonder if that was before or after he asked?"

"I've got no clue. All of my friends kept their secrets well." He was glad he hadn't tried to hide who he was going with. He rather liked not being the center of attention, as always. Not having secrets to pry into worked with that. "How did this happen?" he looked over at where Luna and Ginny were attempting to dance. Ginny was resisting Luna's attempts to spin her around like a top.

"Oh," Hermione blushed. "It was nothing, really, Ronald Weasley came over and asked me and I said no, because I barely know him and I didn't want my night ruined by talk of Draco Malfoy. Afterwards, Ginny asked me if I would take her. I think she really wanted to come, and you know third-years needed an invitation from someone older…"

"Did she say that was the only reason why?" Harry asked.

"Well, no, she just… asked me. I thought it was implied."

Harry, mindful of Luna's request that he 'let them work it out themselves', let that sit as they danced. He was certain he didn't want to get in the middle of whatever this was going to end up being, lest he muck it up. He barely understood girls when it came to how they saw him, he was wholly unqualified to offer an opinion here.

When Luna and Ginny came around again, Luna reclaimed him. "You can dance with Ginny later," she promised him.

And so he did. His legs hurt by the time they were done, and they never broke out the really crazy moves because despite what Sirius had claimed nobody was breaking out their wands to start casting safety charms for potentially neck-breaking stunts, but he was happy and Luna was radiant. They parted ways just before midnight, when the Ball would be officially over. Luna thanked him and kissed him on the cheek. Harry didn't understand why he had been so worried in the first place; the night was as close to perfect as anything could be.

Even if it was slightly marred by one odd dream of a sandy-haired man and an unsettling toddler-like figure. As far as nightmares went, that was a new one. But compared to Luna… By morning he had forgotten all about the one isolated nightmare.

Chapter Text

Something was brewing beneath the surface of Britain's magical society. Taylor was an outsider, a newcomer, but the criminal underworld was much the same no matter where she went, across the ocean or across the multiverse, and she was well-suited to overhearing all of the chatter between the locals.

She heard the rumblings in Knockturn Alley when she went to replace her blood charm, as it had lost its potency. She heard them in the back-alley pubs, on the streets, in the dangerous artifact pawnshop. Something was happening, the rumors said. Death Eaters at the World Cup, another escape from Azkaban, and the Ministry had lost the escapee, gone before he could even be charged. Something was afoot, and the smart ones would keep their heads down. A gang war might be coming, though they didn't use those words here.

Barty Crouch Junior was at large, and the Ministry was covering it up.

She knew it was a bad idea to trust him to the authorities to do their jobs. At least the Protectorate had the decency to announce when dangerous criminals escaped their custody!

Soon after learning that, she decided that she agreed with the criminal element; something did feel like it was building in the shadows. The World Cup Death Eaters might be malcontents left over from the last war, but Barty Crouch Junior was supposed to be dead, dead on Azkaban, and his escape stunk of further corruption in the justice system responsible for putting him there. His motives were still unknown, and if there was someone behind it all, they were totally hidden.

All of that could be unrelated coincidences, but the situation put her in mind of Coil and his plots. The way he tried to rule from the shadows, a group of semi-competent and more importantly sneaky criminals in one hand, the local government in the other, or close to it. One foot in both camps, playing the criminals against his political enemies until he was on top of the heap.

She was a target thrice over, if that was the case. An enemy of the Death Eaters, the Pureblood political faction, and Harry Potter's mother. None of those things were publicly associated with her, but they were inherently true, and she knew who her enemies would be were she to come into the open in the future. And then there was Barty, who had targeted her specifically. He might come for her again.

She couldn't let this sit even if she wanted to, which she didn't. The insects in Knockturn Alley, including a few marginally magical ones her power had managed to bring into the fold, were often organized as she frequented the shadows in the evenings, listening and watching. Hogsmeade had its clandestine meeting places, and she watched those too whenever she got the chance. She visited the Ministry every so often, working piecemeal to establish herself in the bureaucracy, like she had with her Animagus form. Her insects allowed her to spy on the Minister and other important officials, though it was always a crapshoot whether they would be doing interesting things at the times she was in the building.

All of her spying and information-gathering netted her a collection of interesting facts about Magical Britain and the world beyond it, but little to nothing on the Death Eaters or their master. Voldemort was known to be dead, beyond what she gathered to be the usual fervent mutters that a dark lord as evil and powerful as him could never truly die, the same things she occasionally heard about Grindelwald, the previous dark lord. There was no word of someone recruiting or organizing the old Death Eaters, not even among the few mercenaries for hire that she happened across one afternoon.

Something was building, but it wasn't building among the common thugs, and unlike back home in Brockton Bay this world had a class of potential criminals who frequented their heavily-defended manors and the government, and nowhere else. They were much harder to keep tabs on, with their wards and constant apparition and house elf slaves. Harder still when she had next to no free time to go hunting. She stayed up late and went to work tired just to trawl the common criminal underworld, and her weekends were time with Harry that she refused to cut down.

She stomped into Grimmauld Place late one Thursday evening, coming out of the Floo with a shake to shed excess water. It was cold out, just shy of snowing, and the wind was driving the icy rain sideways. She was soaked and tired, and the drive home stood between her and her bed, unappealing in the extreme. Then there was work…

She tossed her jacket aside and sat down in the fluffy armchair closest to the fire, procrastinating. The insects she kept in Grimmauld Place, a thriving colony down in the basement regardless of where Sirius might think she kept them, spread out to reconnoitor the house.

Sirius was home, up in one of the unused bedrooms. He was looking at a picture frame on a dresser, and she withdrew her bugs out of politeness. He talked a big game about despising his family and she believed him for the most part, but everyone had their moments of sentimentality.

She wondered what had become of Earth Bet and the wider multiverse. Of the parahumans she gathered together for the final battle, many dragged from their worlds to fight and left with no clear way back. Of Lisa, Aisha, and everyone else who had survived…

She thought Lisa and Aisha were alive. She remembered them being there, in the end. That had to mean something. The others… She wasn't so sure. They might as well be dead, seeing as she would never see any of them again, but some of them weren't. It was a bit like an actual afterlife, either for them… or for her. Existing somewhere, but totally out of reach with no way to be sure.

Sirius came downstairs, bare feet slapping on wood. "Taylor, you here?" he called out.

"By the fire," she replied, putting aside her melancholy as best she could.

"Thought I felt the Floo alert ward go off," he said as he came into the room. "Get anything from the thugs?"

"Nothing more than the usual bluster with a side of petty crime." She had seen a vampire, or something similar, but that was the height of her evening and all the vampire did was flash his fangs at someone to scare them off.

"I've got something," Sirius told her. "My cousin Narcissa owled me asking that I meet her. I was bored, so I did. She's the same stuck-up bitch she always was."

"Narcissa is the one married to the Death Eater?" Taylor asked. It was either that, the insane one in Azkaban, or the alright one married to a Muggleborn. She thought she had remembered correctly; the name fit perfectly to the person Sirius described.

"Yup, and you wouldn't believe how huffy she got when she realized I'd asked to meet in a Muggle bar," Sirius said with a grin. "Once she calmed down, it was all 'you are the head of our noble house' this, and 'be a good Pureblood' that."

"She try to recruit you?" Narcissa had a connection to a Death Eater. The Death Eaters were stirring, ans Sirius might theoretically have reasons to resent his former allies after being stuck in Azkaban while they twiddled their thumbs, so it wasn't an entirely stupid idea.

"No, but she hinted that the old boys club still meets," he said soberly. "Not that they're doing anything, but I got the feeling she thinks something is coming. She wouldn't have approached me if she felt secure doing nothing. I think she wants a backup plan in case it goes sideways."

"Great. More warnings, nothing to act on." She heard a distant crash of thunder. "And the weather is going to shit, too."

"You don't have to leave, you know," Sirius offered. "There are spare bedrooms, or just the couch if you'd rather."

It was tempting, but she would have to drive home early and change there, and it wasn't worth it. Still, she was only bothered by the practicality of it, not the thought of staying. "Thanks, but that will just make it harder in the morning."

"I respect my guests and will not make raunchy jokes," Sirius chanted to himself, closing his eyes and sticking his hands behind his back. "I will not make raunchy jokes even if they give me the perfect opening. I will respect the scary bug lady…"

"Oh, fuck off," she laughed, rising to gather her coat from the floor. The drive home was only going to get less appealing the longer she put it off.

The second task took place on a dreary cold British morning, the kind that had Taylor longing for the relatively mild winters in Brockton Bay. Sirius hit her with a warming charm as they shivered in the stands set up on the edge of Hogwarts' lake, but it was a fleeting warmth, the kind that heated her skin but did nothing for the chill that had already seeped into her bones.

Her stump ached, more so where the false arm she wore pulled at it. The magic over her face to subtly change her features itched incessantly, explaining why witches didn't exclusively use glamors instead of more traditional makeup. She was singularly uncomfortable.

Whatever was going to happen on the lake, she hoped it would be either fast or worth the wait. Harry probably knew, he and his friends had put more effort into preparing Cedric for the tournament than the Ministry had probably put into designing the task, but she had avoided asking, wanting to be surprised. It involved water and possibly water creatures, both of which she could have guessed from how the stands were arranged.

"The Giant Squid is quite passive," Sirius was explaining as they waited. "In my first year some bloke jumped into the lake and the squid pushed him to shore. The House Elves feed it, so it doesn't try to feed on us two-legged morsels. Or the merpeople, come to think of it."

"It eats meat, though?" she asked.

"Oh, tons," he confirmed. "You didn't think all those old stories of boats getting dragged down by sea monsters were myths, did you? Poor Muggles, not knowing to bring a few fresh cows to sate the squid…. Not that those were the only sea monsters, mind you. There's a reason wizarding cruise ships aren't popular."

"Durmstrang arrived in a ship," a witch sitting behind them chimed in.

"Yes, one that has some sort of bulk portkey," Sirius retorted, not even looking back. "Bet you they didn't sail more than a kilometer all told."

"I'll take that bet… Mr. Black, is it?" the witch said. "Still single?"

"Nope," Sirius said.

"Pity," the witch sighed.

Taylor glanced over at Sirius, and he shrugged.

"Wizards and Witches, boys and girls," Bagman started up, his sonorous charm turning his voice into a deafening squawk before he managed to damp it down to something reasonable. Percy Weasley, presumably still on his internship with the Ministry, tapped his wand on Bagman to lower the volume, then left. "Welcome to the second task! Our champions are lining up at the shore now!"

The three champions strode out into line of sight, having been hidden by the little mediwitch tent until that moment. They were all wearing their usual school robes, and though Taylor couldn't see them very well from far away, they all looked antsy.

"They have one hour – only one! – to retrieve a hostage from somewhere in the depths of the lake, and return them here to the shore," Bagman announced. "As such, we'll let them get on their way… Now! Time has started!" He let off a flare from his wand, a pitiful red burst of fire that died quickly in the foggy morning damp.

Fleur Delacour shed her outer robes and pointed her wand at her head, before striding out into the shallows. Neither of the other champions followed, Krum busy doing something to his upper torso and head, and Cedric…

Cedric tossed his robes aside, revealing a Muggle wetsuit. His burn scars licked up from the neck of the suit, ending just below his chin. He cast several charms on himself, none of which Taylor recognized, the last creating a glowing white field that covered his body up to his head.

Krum finished his transfiguration, now clearly part-shark, and dove into the water, leaving Cedric alone on the shore.

"Krum and Delacour are off, but Diggory lingers on the shore, girding himself in all kinds of magical preparation," Bagman narrated. "No one knows what is happening beneath the waves, but he must be confident in his preparation to allow his opponents such a head start!"

"Don't bloody tell me they don't have a way for us to see the actual event," Sirius groaned. "Come on Bagman, what are you going to do, treat us to wizard stand-up comedy until they get back?"

A ripple of disappointment passed through the audience as the meaning of Bagman's off-handed comment sunk in. Nobody, Taylor was willing to bet, wanted to be here just to watch a blank lake for an hour. She certainly didn't.

Cedric had transfigured a trident out of a rock and was casting spells on it now. He even dumped a small potion on the barbed tines, sourced from his robes. He looked like he was going to war.

Armed with his wetsuit, magical layers, and enchanted trident, he walked into the lake. The water rose up to part before him, allowing him to literally walk down into the depths.

"He's got a flair for drama, hasn't he?" Bagman asked the crowd.

"More than you do, you bloody idiot!" someone yelled. "How are we supposed to watch?"

"Well, the… suspense!" Bagman said, grasping for straws. "Yes, the suspense, not knowing what is happening below, knowing the stakes, it's all very exciting."

"Those hostages can't be in any real danger, they only brought the tournament back with the idea that it would be safer," Sirius remarked. "What stakes?"

"Can't you do a scrying or something?" the same heckler demanded.

"Well, there wasn't the budget for a big scrying bowl," Bagman admitted. "We have a small one for security purposes, but–"

"I am sure we can arrange something." Dumbledore, who had been sitting with the other judges as Bagman blathered, stepped up and into the range of Bagman's sonorous charm. "Show us this security scrying bowl."

Some time passed, in which Bagman, Moody, Dumbledore, and Madam Maxime convened around a little bowl Moody had been carrying. In the meantime, absolutely nothing happened at the lake's surface.

Finally, Dumbledore uttered a spell and a massive projection of mist shot up from the bowl, spreading out to form five circular clouds over the shore. Three immediately shimmered to life, muted colors displaying views of the three champions from above, top-down. The fourth and fifth came to life a moment later, one showing three children floating limply in an underwater village, and the other showing a map of the lake with dots representing the locations of the champions and hostages.

Sirius whistled appreciatively. "That is some impressive spellwork," he breathed.

It didn't match the video quality Taylor had been accustomed to back on Earth Bet, but she thought that might just be because it was being displayed on clouds of mist, not something flat and solidly-colored. It certainly beat the televisions of this time period. Her power itched to study it; clairvoyance to the point of getting a live view and locational information… That was powerful. There had to be a reason she had never seen anyone using it or heard it mentioned.

"It's a shame scrying is broken by any kind of ward," Sirius said. After teaching her various magical subjects for months, he knew how she thought well enough to anticipate what she might think of this. "Even ones not meant to block it. Inside the wards it works if you can key it in like Dumbledore must have done here, but it can't cross them. It was a lot more widely used back before wards were common."

Up on the scrying clouds, Fleur Delacour was shown swimming in the depths with a bubble of air around her head, kicking her feet and using her hands to peer through clumps of weeds. She was the furthest from the hostages, who were roughly at the center of the lake. Viktor Krum was closest, but he was currently being waylaid by goblin-like creatures with webbed fingers and vicious teeth. Krum had teeth of his own, gnarled shark teeth by the dozen in a maw made for them, and was biting back as well as cursing with nonverbal spells. Some of his spells fizzled out in the water, but others moved as though unimpeded.

Cedric was catching up to Krum, and fast. The moving sphere of air around him was twice as wide as he was tall, and his trident sparked with electricity whenever something moved in the water outside of his bubble. He was jogging along the floor of the lake, his boots finding sure purchase despite the ground being a treacherous rubble of slick rocks and slimy weeds. Little flashes of light accompanied every footfall, coming from the field of glowing energy that encompassed him.

The other purpose of the magic field was made clear when one of the water-goblin creatures worked up the nerve to attack Cedric despite his massive bubble of air, jolting down into the air from above. Cedric spun his trident and dealt the monster a flashy shock, but it attempted to grapple onto his shoulder. Its sucker-like fingertips slid right off a panel of white light that formed just above his robes, blocking direct contact. Another heavy blow from the blunt end of the trident sent it crawling back into the water at the edge of his bubble.

"That's just not fair," Sirius said. "Send something more dangerous his way!" he cheered.

Taylor believed Bagman would have done so, had he the power, but it didn't look like he did. Cedric continued mostly unopposed, the other water-goblins having learned from the first's painful example, while Krum and now Fleur battled for their lives elsewhere in the lake. Cedric's steady progress made a mockery of the other champions, who looked wholly unprepared in contrast to him.

Cedric reached the outskirts of the mermish village long before anyone else. He was faced with a whole platoon of mermaid guards. This was the first Taylor had seen of their kind, and she was struck by how inhuman they managed to look while still being objectively more human than not. Their sharp, angular teeth and slitted eyes stood out in otherwise normal faces, and their gills were akin to gaping wounds without blood. The bottom half of their bodies, being the fish half, was less disturbing. Unlike Veela, they were clearly not human and could not possibly be mistaken for it under normal conditions.

They barred Cedric's way with their normal, unenchanted tridents, and for a moment it looked as if he would fight them.

Then he thumped his trident on the bare lake bottom, and the water rushed in to fill his bubble except for a tiny space under his nostrils and over his mouth.

"Diggory gives up his most powerful weapon just shy of his hostage, what could he be planning?" Bagman blurted out, having apparently remembered it was his job to commentate. He had been watching the scrying clouds as intently as everyone else, reduced to just another spectator.

Cedric, now immersed in the water, kicked his feet once to rise up off the lakebed. He gestured with his trident, first at himself and then at the village.

The merman in the lead of the group blocking him scowled and said something. Scrying, or at least this version of it, did not allow for sound, so nobody in the audience knew what he had said.

Cedric nodded, pointed his trident's tines down at the ground, and swam past them without fear. They let him go, following like an honor guard.

"They were supposed to put up a fight," Bagman announced, "but it seems they thought better of it!"

"It seems they decided dying in their own village wasn't worth whatever the Ministry paid them," Sirius muttered. "He could lay waste to them if he could expand that bubble far enough. They're pants at getting around in the air, you see."

Cedric swam through the mermish village. Meanwhile, Krum had finally fought off the water-goblins – she needed to ask Sirius what those actually were, or maybe Harry as he almost certainly knew – and was headed for the village, but had almost a quarter of the lake between him and it. Fleur was a distant third, closer to the shore she had started from than anything important, and visibly growing frantic as she struggled through a tangled patch of weeds while water-goblins nipped at her heels and slashed at her legs.

She had volunteered for this tournament, her and the others, but Taylor still felt bad for her. One of the hostages had the same hair as her and couldn't be a day over eight years old. Fleur was panicking for good reason, and even if it was fake the terror was real. If it was Harry down there, and she was in the position Fleur was put in at the start of the second task, Taylor wouldn't even have bothered competing. She would have taken one of the judges hostage herself, and threatened to drown him on dry land unless Harry was promptly, safely returned.

Then again, she had no other motivation to compete and no confidence in her limited collection of spells to get her through an event like this, so her options would be more limited. Fleur might have thought she was capable of getting there in time.

If Fleur thought that at the start of the task, she couldn't possibly think it now. More than half an hour had elapsed, and only Cedric was anywhere near the hostages. It would be a tight squeeze for Krum to get there and back in time. Fleur didn't stand a chance unless she pulled out an underwater jet ski or friendly dolphin pack to ride on.

Dolphins… Maybe Taylor could have completed this task if she was stuck competing. She could turn into any animal. A dolphin, or better yet a shark… That could be good. None of the current champions were capable of that; Krum was only partly shark.

"Are there Animagi who can turn into water-breathing animals?" she asked Sirius as Cedric approached the pillar with the hostages.

"Yes, but I don't know who would bother if they knew their form was stuck in the water… Magical creatures are at the top of every food chain in the water, and turning back underwater can be lethal." Sirius shuddered. "Go down too far and turn back and you're crushed, survive that and you can't go up again without your blood killing you. All while whatever made you turn back to defend yourself chomps on your spinal column. You think those Grindylow are bad? They're carrion-feeders!"

Given Fleur was once again struggling with the Grindylows, Taylor had to admit Sirius was right. She certainly wouldn't be swimming in the ocean for fun anytime soon.

Cedric cut the ropes holding one of the girls to the pillar, the only one in Hogwarts robes. He used the cut end to tie her to his trident, cast a spell on her head that enlarged her personal air bubble, and put his wand away.

"Oh, what's this?" Sirius said, leaning forward.

Cedric grasped his trident with both hands and straddled his unconscious hostage, gripping her with his legs. He pointed the trident back towards the shore and squeezed the handle, barking out a single word.

The scrying view of Cedric blurred, an unintelligible jumble of dulled brown, green, and blue, water rushing by at tremendous speed. The dots indicating Cedric and his hostage began moving on the map scrying cloud, faster and faster.

"An explosive escape by Cedric Diggory with his hostage, Cho Chang, and based on their speed we should be seeing them any second now!" Bagman shouted. "But what condition will they be in when they arrive?"

Taylor had only a rough estimate of how big the lake was, but Cedric had to be going at least forty miles an hour to be moving across it so quickly, and in the water at that. She wondered if his magical protective field negated all friction, or just most of it.

The dots that marked Cedric slowed just shy of the shore, and a moment later he rose from the shallows, Cho in a bridal carry in his arms, the trident secured to the back of his robes.

The audience broke into cheers as Cho woke up, looking bewildered, and Cedric set foot on the shore to win the second task. It was barely even a contest.

Fleur and Krum struggled on, with Krum reaching his hostage just shy of the hour mark, but neither of them made it back to the shore in time. The remaining hostages and champions were teleported back with emergency portkeys, landing just outside the mediwitch tent, and soon after the judges gave their scores, not even waiting until the other champions and hostages left the tent.

Cedric scored a ten out of ten from Dumbledore and Maxime. Karkaroff gave him a five, to immense displeasure from the audience. Krum received two sixes and a nine – Karkaroff again, he seemed to have no shame at all – and Fleur received threes across the board.

Not that Fleur cared. Two bursts of fire preceded her storming from the mediwitch tent, looking distinctly avian in appearance. "You may take your vaunted tournament and shove it up your rear ends," she shrieked at the judges, her English accented but entirely understandable. "I would quit if I could!"

"Fleur!" Maxime barked.

"Non!" Fleur yelled, her lips sharpening eerily, forming a pseudo-beak that became more and more real as she ranted. "She woke up, you pissants! She was choking! Your charms failed at the end of the hour!"

… All of which was conveyed to the audiences by Bagman's lingering sonorous charm.

"That should not have happened," Dumbledore said gravely. "Is she injured?"

Taylor knew a politician trying to spin something when she saw one; she noticed that Dumbledore hadn't canceled the sonorous charm yet. The cat was out of the bag, but he could make it look less mangy than it really was. Especially as it hadn't looked like Fleur's sister was choking on the scrying clouds.

"This close," Fleur hissed, holding her hand out with her thumb and forefinger just shy of touching. "Seconds. My sister is not your plaything, and I do not care if my parents allowed it! Touch her again and I will burn you!" Her fingers smoldered.

Bagman finally took the sonorous charm down, and Dumbledore's reply went unheard by the audience, but whatever it was, Fleur refused to be mollified. She walked away, her shoulders twitching as little wings sprouted from between her shoulder blades, and the French Headmistress followed her.

"It's possible the Ministry is just that incompetent," Sirius suggested.

"Possible, but not the only explanation." She needed to learn more.

"The charms on Cho had already been removed by the time the hour was up," Cedric said when Harry asked him during the celebration that night. Taylor listened closely, an unremarkable snake on Harry's shoulder. "But I saw Gabrielle – Fleur's sister – when she was portkeyed in. She looked fine until Pomfrey dispelled a glamor I didn't even know was there. She was soaked and blue in the face. Pomfrey had to spell the water out of her."

"She was glamored?" Harry asked. "So we couldn't see what was actually happening to her?" He sounded horrified, as well he should. That moved the odds of thing being an intentional attack from 'possible but unlikely' to 'all but certain', barring excessive Ministry incompetence to scales never before seen.

"Yes, and if the charm had failed earlier…" Cedric shuddered. "I might have brought Cho up from the lake, taken her to Pomfrey, and only then found out she was already dead, not unconscious. Viktor's hostage was choking too, but she said she had only been unprotected for a few seconds. Gabrielle… Almost half a minute."

Half a minute disoriented, underwater, tied to a pillar, with no air and no idea what was happening. Half a minute of drowning.

"They should never have used people as hostages," Harry said bitterly. "We thought it would be an object, 'what you would miss most', not who you would miss most."

"Yeah," Cedric laughed bitterly. "I know Cho is shaken up. She would have been even if it went right. She told me she was assured it would be safe, but they didn't tell her any details."

"Who was they?" Taylor hissed. Harry parroted her question.

"Dumbledore, Fudge, Moody, Bagman, Percy Weasley – he's assisting Fudge – and Karkaroff," Cedric recounted. "That's who Cho said was there. She thought she would get to stand on a raft or something."

"That would have been a sane thing to do," Harry said.

"Next time…" Cedric looked around, at the busy Hufflepuff common room. Their little discussion had an audience; everyone wanted to hear what had happened, but most of the other Hufflepuffs were pretending to be busy. "Next time, we're putting portkeys on everyone in Hufflepuff the night before the task," he announced. "Use them the instant anyone official starts talking about you participating, don't wait to be made a hostage, they might put you to sleep like they did Cho."

"I can make them," a seventh year volunteered. "Do you still have the one they put on you, or the one on Cho?"

Cedric nodded and handed over a small white disc the size of a coin. "Thought you might need it to study," he admitted.

"I can figure out a way to hide them," another student offered.

"In the meantime, we'll all work to make sure you crush the last task just like you did this one," Susan Bones said.

"Yes. Please." Cedric smiled grimly. "I don't know if it's just my winning at stake anymore. If it wasn't for you all… My only idea was a bubblehead charm!"

Taylor was proud of her son and his friends. They, along with the rest of Hufflepuff, had directly produced the impressive show Cedric put on at the task, but for them it wasn't just a contest now. It might be life or death, and that only spurred them on.

They could and would handle the dangers imposed by the tournament itself. She and Sirius would work on the rest.

Moody entered his office that night, well after the student curfew, to find a snake waiting on his desk.

"Some familiars wander far too much," he said aloud. "Where's your owner, reptile?"

Taylor shook her head.

"In that case…" He closed the door and fired several different charms at it, before transfiguring a metal bar across the frame to physically hold it shut. Taylor waited patiently as he cast another dozen spells on the room itself.

"Change back," he ordered once he was done. "If you're here to talk, that is."

She had anticipated this. She had it on good authority that the Weasley twins were asleep in their beds in the Gryffindor dorms. A few snake expeditions to their room over the last term had demonstrated that she had no chance of quietly finding the Map so long as they kept it hidden, so she had to work around them.

It was still a risk, but everything was a risk these days. She slithered off the desk and shifted back, hiding the pain of the transformation with little more outward sign than a grimace. "I can't do this for long," she told him. "It's risky."

"Nothing sees in here when I'm holding the security charms," Moody told her.

She shook her head. "At least one thing does. It's not being properly used for security purposes, but if it was I would never be able to change back without being noticed within minutes." She would have set three elves keeping a constant watch over the map, perhaps with some magic to make a record of locations and names for sensitive areas… The Map was by far the most effective magical security system she had encountered to date, and that was including the intentionally-added backdoor she was exploiting. Without that, it would be absolute.

"Of course," Moody growled. "Bringing that up in your report?"

"It will be on the list of things to fix, yes." The Weasley twins might not like having their toy taken away, but the needs of the many… They were probably the most accomplished smugglers and sneaks in the castle without it, anyway. If they had been learning from it instead of using it as a crutch, its loss wouldn't hamper them overmuch. "What happened in the second task?"

"Someone decided to randomly murder between zero and three children, based solely on luck," Moody said. "It wasn't you."

"No, it was not." She gave that statement all of the importance it deserved, a cursory acknowledgement. "Was it a Ministry ploy? A plan that was discarded as being too risky? A way to up the stakes?"

"Hell no," Moody exclaimed. "That Veela chick was important, we'd be halfway to war if she died in our territory, in our tournament, to a completely preventable danger put in to make things more dramatic. That's the sort of thing that got the Tournament shut down last time. No, I wasn't involved from the very start, but I know real danger to the hostages was never on the table. Someone weakened the safety charms and cast those glamors between us casting them and the start of the task."

"How long was that?" Taylor asked. "It's not my job, but… no dead kids. Not while I can do something about it."

Moody raised his flask to her. "Amen to that." He set it on his desk and learned forward. "It's being officially labeled as a mistake," he told her, his voice heavy with scorn. "Fudge. He thinks his career is riding on this being a success, and on there not being any more major upsets. Sirius Black being acquitted was a blow. Barty Crouch Junior proving Sirius wasn't the first to do it, and then escaping custody… He believes that any more bad press will end him."

"It's true, then." She had thought so, but it was good to hear from Moody. She trusted him as a source of Death-Eater-related information.

"Got it out of some old friends in the Ministry," he said. A crooked grin graced his scarred face as he looked up at her. "How'd you pull off the Animagus trick?"

She smiled mysteriously. "Does it matter, so long as I am registered as an Animagus? Perhaps my form changes with my mood. It would hardly be the only way magic behaves differently for me."

"Don't tell me then," he grumbled. "The fools at the Ministry didn't even think to question why you turned into a male Moose, what with the rack."

"I am very mysterious," she said. She remembered the Moose not being male at all; the curse she was using forced the same number of limbs and gender as the victim. Odd. She would have to look into that, once she had no more pressing matters to research… So perhaps sometime before the end of the century. "Back to Barty Crouch Junior. Did his elf escape too?"

"Nah," Moody said dismissively. "The elf died in custody. You put a fang right though a lung. It's just Barty, and as best the Aurors know he fled the country immediately after."

Taylor acknowledged her first confirmed kill in this world with a heavy sigh. So long as she didn't make a habit of it except in self-defense.

"Best we can tell, there are six possible suspects for the attempted murders," Moody said, getting back to the original reason she had come to talk to him. "No official investigation, so I can tell you all I want about it. Me, Fudge, Bagman, Karkaroff, and an unknown third party. Percy Weasley was there too, but he was never left alone with the hostages. Stuck to Fudge's rear end, that one was."

"The unknown third party," Taylor prompted.

Moody grimaced. "Bloody mess," he said. "Those girls were prepped for the lake two hours before the task was set to begin. They were put in one hour before, with charms meant to last for four hours at minimum. In that hour between being charmed and being placed in the lake, they were left in the Mediwitch tent, but Pomfrey had to leave almost immediately to tend to Malfoy's spawn, who somehow got a full-sized frog merged with his nose while in the general vicinity of Ronald Weasley. It took her the full hour to undo the damage, with Malfoy refusing to have his nose vanished and regrown with Skelegrow."

"Pomfrey is a suspect too, then," Taylor said.

"Seven, then," Moody agreed. "Problem is people were all around that tent setting things up. Everyone I mentioned, plus random students helping set the stands in the right places, Ministry officials, reporters… A security nightmare. Anyone with a wand and the know-how could have sabotaged the girls, and saving their lives involved undoing the spells, so we have no evidence to work with."

"This is going to be covered up? Like Barty's escape?" Taylor asked.

"Aye." Moody shook his head, his eye fixed almost exclusively on her. "I'll be lookin' into it, and I'm gonna try to get the Minister to give me a full set of Aurors as security for the third task, but there are things I can't do. Keep your ears open?"

"I hear anything related to this, you'll know," she promised. "Any idea what the motive was?"

"No, but if the one who did it just wanted to ruin the Tournament… Lots of ways to do that." Moody jabbed a finger on the table. "One intentionally misbrewed potion under the stands during the next task, and we'd lose half the student body. A single Imperius curse might lose us the Minister, or Harry Potter, or some other important person. Keep a close watch on the kid. He wasn't the target this time, but the girls might've been targets of convenience. There was talk of taking a Hufflepuff as a hostage for Cedric, and Potter's name was bandied about. Fudge was especially keen, him and his toady mouthpiece, but Bagman worked the 'maidens in distress' angle and they couldn't justify Potter as Cedric's hostage specifically, so it didn't happen."

They would drag Harry into their damn tournament over her dead body. Or, more likely in such a scenario, she would forgo the violent objection and simply spirit him away to Grimmauld Place, or, that insufficient, another country. Those unauthorized Hufflepuff safety portkeys might come in handy.

As it turned out, blasting the windows open was the tipping point between Grimmauld Place being a miserable sad-sack of memorabilia and bad memories, and a fixable miserable sad-sack. There was still a near-endless amount of work to do to make the place liveable, but it was at that point that Sirius figured said work might actually be worth doing. With natural sunlight, the musty old townhouse actually felt recoverable.

Having open windows – open in that they were holes with no glass for the time being – did have a few side effects. The carpet whined and writhed whenever a beam of sunlight hit it, for instance. He was going to have to hire a professional to check that, as he had no idea what was causing it.

Then there was the owl that had blithely flown in through the window, landed on his backside as he conversed through the Floo, and caused the lump on his head that he was currently nursing with a conjured icepack.

"Don't they teach you birds to wait?" he grumbled at the owl once he had retrieved an icepack to dull the pain. It glared unrepentantly from the mantle. "Bloody lucky I didn't pitch forward and fall through, that Ministry clerk still thinks I'm a 'dangerous character' even though I was cleared of all charges. He'd have stunned me and had me arrested for trespassing."

The owl hooted.

Off in the hallway, his mother's portrait started yelling. Another voice yelled back at her, just as loud, and with a rant just as filled with creative invectives. He might not know what the hat was, but it made for a great distraction for his mother's portrait. He was hoping that if he left them alone together for long enough, the hat would reveal its mysteries to end the torment, or his mother would self-destruct out of impotent rage.

Meanwhile, he had a letter from a tosser with a moody bird to read. "Not going to leave until I reply, are you?" he asked the owl, reaching for the letter.

It nipped at his fingers – "Bloody bird, I've eaten pigeon before, don't tempt me to eat you" – but he got the letter eventually. Parchment of course, sealed with a blob of wax, a Hogwarts seal to be precise. Addressed to him, all formal-like…

He cast a few simple detection charms over it, because he was nobody's fool, and when it came up clean he opened and read it.

All the flowery official language aside? He was being offered a job interview for the position of the perennially unlucky Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts. The interview was 'at his earliest convenience', and to be conducted by Dumbledore himself.

The Floo flared, and Taylor stepped through, dressed as a Muggle. "Evening, Sirius."

"Evening," he replied, partially distracted by the letter. "I like my women of the night to come in by the front door, though, you know that. Mind going out and then coming in the right way?"

"Is that why you never bother unlocking the front door?" she retorted. "Since it apparently gets so little use."

"Touche." He could have continued teasing her – she had such a fun variety of reactions to his jokes, he was never sure what he'd get when he poked her – but the letter sucked all the joy out of messing around, because like it or not, this was important. "Check this out," he offered, holding it out to her.

She took the letter, skimmed it once, then again, squinting at Albus' flowery script. "He's finally making contact?"

"Looks like it." He'd expected something sooner, what with his exoneration having happened months ago. He had also expected Moony to reach out before Albus sodding Dumblefore, given Moony was supposed to be his friend, but… whatever. "Think it's because of the guardianship application?"

"Could be." She handed the letter back. "Planning on going?"

Sirius felt he was being tested. Luckily, minor concussion or not, he was up to the task. "Obliviation, Imperius, Confundus, Veritaserum, Legillimency," he listed. "You'll sic the authorities on me and him if I come back obliviated or confounded, and I'm important, so that will end with my memories and impeccable good sense being restored and him under a heap of scrutiny. Dumbledore would never stoop to using an Unforgivable, but if he does I'll have scheduled an appointment to view my vault the day after, which will take me under the Goblins' Thief's Downfall, so it won't last long enough for anything to go horribly wrong. I won't drink or ingest anything during or after the interview. My Occlumency is pants, but I'll notice if he gets into my head so it's a moot point unless he ambushes me. Worst-case scenario, he finds out everything we've done and are doing despite my precautions, with the side-effect that he makes an enemy of me and lands himself in a load of legal trouble whereas we're the innocent victims. Best-case scenario, I wheedle his motivations out of him with him none the wiser."

"Have a neutral third party in the room with you at all times," she suggested. "Another teacher, one not under his thumb. If there are any like that."

"Don't look at me, I've not been to school in over a decade," he said. "You're the one who lurks on the weekends. Suggestions?"

"Flitwick and Sprout," she said. "One's competent and the other is a reasonable person. Three on one, he would hesitate."

Sirius suspected Dumbledore could take him, Flitwick, and Sprout at the same time if he wanted to, but there would be no way to keep it quiet or make it quick. So long as they were in Hogwarts, people would notice the all-out magical brawl. "That'll do." He flipped the parchment over, called out "Accio quill and ink", and deftly caught the feather and inkpot as it soared over from the mantle, startling the owl who happened to be perched right next to them.

"Dear Albus 'three middle names I can never remember' Dumbledore," he narrated, translating the necessary formal-speech of a generic acceptance letter into what he actually meant. "I'd love to apply for a job I have absolutely no interest in taking, in a position that we all know is cursed, especially when you specifically do not say what's happened to Moody that made him unable to continue teaching, unless he's just smarter than your average Defense Professor and getting out while he can. I, as we both know, am entirely suited to a position of authority over mischievous children, and am fully capable of stuffing their impressionable heads with useful and age-appropriate magical knowledge. I have even spent the last few months tutoring a sadistic, disturbingly violent and creative woman in how to best exploit magic to her own ends, so I have some experience! Rest assured that the meager salary Hogwarts can offer to compensate me is unnecessary, as I will in the event of taking the job require my payment in Snape's tears and mandatory nude lessons for the seventh-year students–"

"Teachers who creep on students lose their favorite limb," Taylor threatened.

"Which I of course would not be attending," Sirius smoothly amended. "But I believe there is much to learn from dueling while starkers, so it will be a core part of the curriculum should I get the job. I would like to conduct this interview with a jury of my future peers in attendance, to ensure they know what you are attempting to subject them to next year, so I can meet you at the earliest time both Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick are available to observe the interview. Lovingly yours, the worst possible person to put in charge of children, Sirius 'homewrecker handsome devil' Black."

He looked over the two sentences he had actually written, which constituted an entirely reasonable and sincere acceptance on the condition that the aforementioned Professors would be in attendance, and deemed it good. He then folded the letter over, removed the blob of wax from the outside, and reapplied it to seal the letter with a bit of heat from his wand. The seal smudged to an unidentifiable blob, but if he had a personal seal he would want it to be a vaguely phallic-shaped blob, so that was good.

The moment the wax cooled, the owl swooped over to snatch the letter from his hands, pecked at his face in the process, and disappeared out the window. "Hogwarts owls are getting touchy," he grumbled.

"That letter was dated to a week ago," Taylor told him. "When did you last leave Grimmauld Place?"

He thought about it. He'd gone plenty of places… by Floo and apparition, mostly. Which took him all over Britain, to locations he never stayed at for more than a few hours.

That owl must have been flying back and forth trying to catch him all week.

"Bird's still a bloody tosser," he decided.

Dumbledore got back to him quickly, and the owl he sent with a date and time was much more personable. Sirius rewarded it with a strip of bacon, put on his fanciest robes as a lark, and apparated over to Hogsmeade, where he was set to meet Dumbledore, Flitwick, and Sprout at the front gates of Hogwarts.

Sirius was not nervous. He was here for subterfuge, not an actual job application. Because spying was less nerve-wracking… Somehow.

Dumbledore, and Dumbledore alone, was waiting at the front gate, all fatherly smiles as he welcomed Sirius in. "How have you been?" he asked.

"Well, it's nice getting my tan back," was Sirius' noncommittal answer.

"Ah, yes," Dumbledore sighed. "I am terribly sorry about that, Sirius. It was a hectic time. If I had known or bothered to investigate after the fact, a lot of regrettable hardship could have been avoided."

They entered the castle. Sirius looked around, taking in the sights as Dumbledore led him up to the Headmaster's office. The place hadn't changed a bit, beyond the things that were always changing, like the corridor layout and painting locations.

Sirius had absolutely no experience with job interviews, so he didn't know if holding one in a cramped office was normal, but he did notice that neither Flitwick nor Sprout was present as Dumbledore took his seat. "Is this the interview?" he asked. "Because I recall mentioning–"

"Yes, your letter," Dumbledore agreed. "Truthfully, Sirius, while I will happily interview you for the job if you wish, I will admit that I used the opening as an excuse to contact you. I need your help with something much too sensitive to discuss or even hint at by owl."

"Lay it on me," Sirius said casually, feigning only mild interest. In truth, he was nervous; this was not how he and Taylor had expected things to go.

"We are waiting for one more," Dumbledore said cryptically. "In the meantime… Truly, how are you? Have you been seeing healers? Mind healers?"

"I've been cleared," Sirius confirmed. "Physically, there were some tremors, but those stopped ages ago. Mentally, I'm fit as a fiddle." An 'immature, mildly deranged just as a baseline' fiddle… but that mind healer was holding a personal grudge entirely unrelated to his mental state. Was it really his fault his first attempt at flirting after Azkaban had fallen through? That was just a sign of being out of practice.

"Good." Dumbledore frowned. "It is far too easy to go without asking for help until it is too late. I only hope I have not made that mistake myself."

Dumbledore making cryptic comments about his own failings was one of the most ominous things Sirius had seen or heard in… at least a month. Taylor's spiders dancing around in what looked suspiciously like rudimentary ritual circles held the top spot for the year. Thankfully, he had been able to explain that sacrifices required something with a soul, not just something of the same species as the ones doing the ritual. And also that rituals tended to have magic backlash with mentally degrading properties. She stopped after that.

Sirius was finding that he was glad he knew so much about magic, and dark magic specifically. Being Taylor's designated authority on the subject let him sleep at night. He did not want to know what she would have become without him to warn her of all the common sanity-reducing pitfalls that marred otherwise impressively powerful avenues of magic.

"Dumbledore, is this something urgent? You– Sirius?" He knew that voice. It belonged to a man who had not bothered to contact him in the past few months. A man he had no real desire to speak to, at present, given the aforementioned silent treatment. Remus.

"Yes, it is urgent," Dumbledore said gravely. "Take a seat. I need both of you. Quite badly, if I am being honest."

Sirius glanced over at his friend – if he could still consider Remus that, given the complete silence between them and how he'd treated Harry – as he sat down. He had grayed, physically weathered well beyond what should have come to a normal wizard over the course of a decade, and his shoulders hunched.

"Been a while," Sirius offered.

"Yes." Remus looked ahead. "What do you need us to do?" It looked like the ignoring would continue.

"Sirius." Dumbledore steepled his hands. "Do you have access to your family library?"

"Yes." It was no secret that he was living in Grimmauld Place. That Taylor could often be found there was a secret, and hopefully one not at all related to the reasons behind Dumbledore's question.

Sirius had to tread lightly. He had no idea what this was about.

"Remus," Dumbledore continued, "are you available for another long-term assignment? This one will involve much less travel than the one you have just returned from."

"Yes," Remus confirmed. "I have a job as a Muggle bartender now… But that's not likely to last. If this assignment comes with pay like the last, I can take it as early as tomorrow."

"Then this will work," Dumbledore said. "Sirius, what do the Blacks know of Summoning?"

Were he a dog, his hackles would be up and he'd be growling. As it was, he went stiff, his muscles tensing. "When a wizard as powerful as you asks, the Black response is to say that we know nothing and like it that way." A policy that had served his family, and more importantly the world as a whole, very well over the centuries. What one powerful wizard could do, another could theoretically undo if they knew how. That was not in anyone's best interests. Nothing the Blacks had should be anywhere near the knowledge needed to do such a thing, but this was one case where safe really was better than sorry.

"Even You-Know-Who didn't use Summoning," Remus said thoughtfully.

"That's because it doesn't work anymore," Sirius answered, thankful beyond all measure that such was the unadulterated truth.

"Anymore, being the key word." Dumbledore let out a heavy sigh. "I will explain. Perhaps the two of you will have more insight. I fear I have made a grave mistake, assuming I could handle this on my own. Summoning, as in the act of calling and binding new existences to our world, no longer works. But I believe not every summoned entity was returned to whence they came when the wall, as it were, was erected."

The Headmaster's office did not darken, but a pall fell over their little gathering of three all the same.

"I suspect I have found one," Dumbledore continued. "Worse, I have no understanding of what it is, what it wants, how it was bound to this world, or what rules it operates under now. I believe it has either been turned to foul purpose, or been released to follow its own goals with no constraint."

"Details, Albus, we need details," Sirius rasped.

"And an explanation as to why you think we can help, if you can't deal with it," Remus added much more fearfully.

"I will start from the beginning." Dumbledore leaned forward, staring intently. He looked from Remus to Sirius, then back again. "These are the relevant facts, as I know them. Harry Potter was recovered from the rubble of the Potter home on the night Voldemort died. At this time, he was an unharmed, normal child, and there was no sign of terrible or fell magic in the home. I, after some deliberation and work with the magic that was present, constructed a blood magic defense tied to blood relatives of Harry, and chose to place him with those relatives, under that defense, until such a time as it proved unnecessary or he came of age and it ceased to function."

Blood relatives of Harry… Sirius had an inkling as to who that might be, Lily's sister, that miserable bint, but this was not the time to question Dumbledore's decision-making. Not when this was somehow connected to Summoning, which no amount of trusting bitchy Muggles could possibly invoke.

"I made the admittedly cowardly decision of leaving Harry on the doorstep, with Minerva watching from the bushes, so that his relatives would not have anyone to argue with on the matter of taking him in," Dumbledore admitted. "Minerva reported to me that she witnessed a woman of the household coming out of the house, stumbling over Harry in his basket, and taking him inside. And so I believed had happened. I contacted a local Squib, told her to keep an eye on the children living at that address, and read her occasional report whenever it was sent to me. The boy, she said, was growing up fat and healthy and happy, and with a baby sister."

This did not make sense to Sirius, but he kept his mouth shut. If Dumbledore was spinning a lie that didn't fit with the facts he was unaware Sirius knew, the worst thing to do would be to call it out now, while Dumbledore could still course-correct. And if he was telling the truth… Best hear him out, in either case.

"I made many mistakes that night and in the years that followed as it pertained to Harry," Dumbledore said. "I did not think to ask Minerva about the woman who picked Harry up that night, and how she fit into the Muggle household Minerva had been observing, beyond that she was obviously one of them. I did not actually tell my Squib observer who she was watching over, or why. I asked her not to use names in her reports, so that if they were intercepted nobody would know it was Harry Potter she was talking about. I trusted the only blood-based tracking charm I was able to construct, one that indicated whether or not Harry was in close proximity to a blood relative. Everything I heard, I expected to hear, and it was not until four years after that day, by pure chance, that I realized I had been blind."

Remus let out a little noise of confusion. Sirius felt much the same.

"The woman who picked Harry up that night was not Petunia, and though she had spent that entire day with the Dursleys as if a part of their family, she was not," Dumbledore said. "The boy Ms. Figg watched over all those years was not Harry, but his cousin, Dudley. The Dursleys never found Harry on their porch. The blood protections failed less than a year after I built them, unrecoverable. The blood charm continued to report that Harry was with a blood relative, but he was nowhere to be found and the Dursleys knew nothing of the situation. Harry was missing."

"That's when–" Remus began.

"Yes, Remus, shortly after, when I could not find him myself, I contacted you." Dumbledore nodded. "I could not advertise to the world at large that Harry Potter was missing, as that might simply send his captors further into hiding. I enlisted your help when and where I could, and we scoured Magical Britain and beyond. I put out subtle reminders of Lily and James, pictures, memorials, so that someone might recognize Harry if they saw him. But to no avail. We could not find him, not even as the years passed. I only had the blood charm, which continued to report the impossible, and without the original blood magic which collapsed years ago it could not be altered to lead to him. He was alive, of that I was sure, but nothing more. Until his Hogwarts letter went out."

"I followed the letter," Dumbledore continued, still speaking plainly and without embellishment. "It went to a different Muggle home, in a place far from the Dursleys' residence but still mockingly close to where the search began. I spoke to the woman who lived there. She claimed not to know any Potters, but her son was named Harry, he was the right age, and he had received the letter meant for Harry Potter. I performed some surface legilimency, merely picking up stray thoughts to check for oddities. The situation all but demanded it."

Dumbledore took a deep breath. "This was when I first noticed it. Lurking. Subtle, unexpected, an inexplicable presence in her mind. Her thoughts themselves were benign, aside from a rather unflattering assessment of what she would do if I posed a physical danger, but beyond them, something watched me. Something large and dangerous."

Taylor. He was talking about Taylor.

"I gave her the usual Muggleborn parent introduction to magic, and plumbed her thoughts every chance I got, taking care never to go too far lest she or it noticed the intrusion," Dumbledore admitted, his voice low and troubled. "The more I saw, the more I found to trouble and alarm me. Even the fleeting forefront of her mind was a labyrinth of insanity and other that I have never seen before or since. Segmented, with intrusions and watching eyes everywhere, an overwhelming exterior presence spying in from every angle. Passing, seemingly unremarkable memories were interspersed with impossible things, events and creatures and thousands of nonsensical perspectives, all seeped in horrific violence and terror. Malice and insanity littered her mind, all under the watchful eyes of something I did not dare look directly at."

Sirius was tempted to knock his knee into the table and see if Dumbledore jumped with fright, despite the gravity of the situation. Him saying all of this about Taylor made it feel less real. He would have noticed if she was psychotic or entirely insane. "Sounds like an interesting Muggle," he said.

"Heed me, Sirius," Dumbledore said gravely. "I am not exaggerating. I am not joking. I looked again and again. I asked about how she lost her arm, and she remembered creatures that do not exist ripping it from her body and burning it off in a place from a Dark Lord's nightmares. I asked about how she came to Britain, and the thing watching her loomed around her mind, warning me off even as she thought of the same woman who abducted Harry. I asked if she had seen anything like magic before, and she thought of Harry but also of a thousand impossible things, and the presence in her mind drew closer to me. I dared not look any further after that! On the outside she passes for normal, she may even be normal, but there is something other imposed on her mind, something I was wholly unequipped to deal with."

"You took Harry out of there, surely," Remus insisted. "I knew there was something not right about the Muggle he keeps insisting is his mother–"

"Do not speak ill of her, Remus," Dumbledore said sharply. "Do not speak ill of either of them, or the love he has for her. If she was some changeling horror lurking in wait, a monster in human skin, I would have taken Harry from her that first day and then, once he was safe, returned to strike her down. I know you miss your friends, and you dislike the way Harry does not treasure them as you do, but this is not a place for those ultimately petty resentments."

Sirius winced sympathetically as Remus all but sank back in his chair, verbally slapped with a vehemence that neither of them had expected.

"I went through a good many theories in the days after that first encounter," Dumbledore recounted, his voice hard. "I watched them where I could, and researched possession and insanity in the meantime. One by one, I eliminated the obvious possibilities. One by one, I crossed off every option as to what it could be. Not a ghost. Not a typical possession. Not a botched Imperius or confundus or similar. Not a magical disease. Not simple insanity. Nothing Muggle. Nothing magical. I was left with only half-told old stories and cryptic implications."

"Summoning," Sirius whispered, finally seeing the connection that Dumbledore had led with.

"Something of that ilk," Dumbledore confirmed.

"But… how?" Remus asked. "What makes this Summoning, and not simply some obscure form of possession? I don't know much–"

"None still living do," Dumbledore interrupted. "There exist few records of persistent Summons and how they behaved. I will get to that. For the moment, suffice to say I believed it to be something from that branch of magic. But what, I knew not. Its intentions, I knew not. The amount of influence it had on her, I knew not. The conditions for it sinking its grip into another, I knew not. Only that every time I entered her mind, it drew closer to me, and that entering another's mind was not something Muggles could do. Introducing her to the magical world may have been a grave mistake."

"What did you do?" Remus asked.

"Considering that I believed, and still believe, there is a good chance a good-hearted, innocent Muggle woman exists under the influence of that thing?" Dumbledore asked, leaning back in his chair. He looked every year of his impressive age, older than Sirius had ever seen him. "That she raised Harry with love? That she might be a danger to him, to others, and possibly to herself, all exacerbated by being in contact with anyone magical? That I might yet determine how to save her, or if life is cruel, only how to put her out of her misery and remove the danger? I obliviated her, and hopefully it, of every memory of magic and because he was magic, every memory of Harry. I took Harry away, to Hogwarts. I checked his mind, but it was clean of that thing's presence."

"That's all?" Remus demanded.

"If only," Dumbledore said sternly. "But no. It was not. Not with a danger lurking unchecked, with a woman at risk, with a situation that would inevitably pull Harry back into danger without intervention. I began to research Summoning whenever I could carve out time from my other responsibilities. I redirected Harry's diligent letters to his mother, so that she would not be reminded anew of magic. I avoided going anywhere near her and her Muggle life, in case the Summoned presence could latch onto someone magical over long-term exposure. I had an expert obliviate her when my initial effort proved insufficient, likely due to my unease at the time of performing it disrupting the intent of the spell. When Harry asked me about her, I delayed and then I lied."

"I have spoken to Harry," Sirius interjected. "He is," was, "devastated by what you told him. And it's not true at all."

"I've done him an immense disservice," Dumbledore freely admitted, his brow furrowed, "and I doubt he will forgive me if it does not come out to his liking. I would not, were I him. But his mother is in uncertain danger, poses uncertain dangers to others, and may yet be saved or doomed if I can just determine what is possessing her and what rules it operates under. It was the only lie I could conceive of that would not wholly backfire if found out, but would also prepare him for either her eventual recovery or death. If I told him she was dead, and he ever went to seek confirmation, he would never believe me again, even if I warned him of the dangers she unwillingly poses. If I told him she was sick, he would demand to see her, and if she cannot be saved he will never accept that she needs to be put down for her own good, and the good of the world. I told him she did not want to see him, so that he would not cling to undue hope, but also not believe her dead. The truth would have allowed for these hopes, but the truth of this situation is far too dangerous to spread, to a child or otherwise. Even the knowledge of it may conceivably facilitate it spreading to another, though I think I have ruled that possibility out by now."

"Is this where we come in?" Remus asked. "Putting her down?"

"Or helping save her?" Sirius said sharply, glaring at his once-friend. Remus was ticking him off, though maybe he had the right of it, given all that had just been revealed… Sirius didn't know. He didn't have to sound so bloody willing to 'put her down'.

"I have spent two years working on this whenever I have time." Dumbledore bent down and lifted up a stack of six thick books to the desk. The top book was smoking, though this seemed to be its natural state as Dumbledore wasn't rushing to put out the fire. "This is the sum total of what I have found. It does not contain anything of more than tangential application to the situation. I have reached a dead end, and I cannot go any further. This is where you two come in. Sirius, with the Black library and esoteric dark tomes. Remus, with your love for learning. Both of you, with your copious free time and personal stake in the situation, through Harry. Learn all you can about Summoning. Find out what is possessing her, whether she still exists under its influence, and what it wants. Does it seek death, destruction, domination, or something more esoteric? Find out whether she can be saved. Whether it can be destroyed, sealed away, negotiated with, or killed. Save Harry's mother…"

He fixed Remus with a stern glare. "For she is his mother, Remus Lupin, in heart and somehow also in blood to deceive my blood charm while knowing nothing of magic. I believe the love they share may be one of the only reasons he has come out unscathed from ten years of close contact with a Summoned evil, and it may even explain why she seems mostly normal. Love may yet be the answer to any number of questions."

Sirius frowned at the books. "What do these say, exactly?" he asked.

"You will read them all," Dumbledore said, "but in summary… This one speaks of the many failures to continue Summoning after the shield was placed, as a warning to the foolish who might persist." He took the smoking book off the stack. "These next three are studies of Summoning, specifically identifying old legends and which might possibly be attributed to it." They were dry, scholarly texts, the kind Sirius would toss over his shoulder if someone ever placed them in front of him. Remus books, those were.

"This one," Dumbledore continued, lifting the three books off the pile to set them to the side and reveal the fifth book, "is a partial recounting of how to Summon something, worthless now and incomplete besides."

Sirius' mouth went dry. That book, innocently blank-covered and bound in thick leather, needed to be burned. He wondered where on earth Dumbledore could possibly have found it.

"And finally…" Dumbledore revealed the final book, which sported an illustration of a demonic unicorn. "A recounting of a single persistent Summon, from shortly after its introduction to our reality, to its locking away three hundred years later. The black unicorn was known for 'haunting' specific individuals, who would hallucinate unnatural black unicorns until the apparitions took solid form and killed them, often after months of psychological torment. Most went quite mad before the end. A few tried to appease their unicorns, culminating in a new instance of the same black unicorn haunting another, the Summoned entity multiplying by coerced atrocities. By the end only a mass sacrifice could collect all of its incarnations in the same place to be banished, and the total death count is estimated at over a thousand individuals. But the pertinent details, the specifics… They are not here. Only the written accounts. From bystanders, from loved ones. From some of the victims themselves, who wrote even as the black unicorns read over their shoulders and whispered maddening secrets in unintelligible tongues into their ears."

"This," Dumbledore said gravely, one hand covering the haunting multi-eyed visage of the unicorn, "is my best source. It is also entirely insufficient, except to inform us as to the possible magnitude of the danger, and the nature of the threat. Summons are all unique, but if it is something akin to a black unicorn it must be stopped, carefully. I dared not spread this knowledge at all at first, and only desperation forces my hand now. What does one do when the mere act of observing an unknown threat could make it more dangerous?"

"Stay away until you know enough to end it in one strike," Sirius said. "Don't look."

"Exactly, and there is still the mystery of the second woman, whether she is still watching, and what part she played in all of this. Which is why I am not telling either of you where Taylor Hebert lives, and imploring you not to ask Harry," Dumbledore warned. "Do not go near her. Not for diagnostic spells, not to kill her, not to try and exorcize her. This is not within your power. I have reason to believe I may be able to do something, once I know what to do. That is where you come in."

Outside Dumbledore's office, Remus with the stack of books and Sirius with empty and slightly trembling hands…

"You start with those," Sirius said. "I have to clear out the traps in the library. I'll let you know when it's safe."

"Sirius…" Remus began.

Sirius shook his head. "No. Not right now." Not on the tailend of a terrifying revelation and a new quest that he was deeply, personally involved in. He didn't have space in his head for Remus and his issues too. "We'll talk when I get the library ready."

Which was any time he wanted. The library was already mostly safe. He had opened it up and cleared it out… for Taylor.

It was raining when he left Hogwarts, and when he returned to Grimmauld Place someone – Taylor – had put up plastic sheets over all the open window frames. Taylor herself was in an armchair, reading a normal Muggle book.

She looked up. "How did it go?"

How did it go?

He pulled up his meager Occlumency training, buried everything he was currently feeling as deep as it would go, and shrugged. "He gave me the same bullshit he gave Harry," he lied. "I didn't think it was the right time to press. Not going to be the next Defense Professor, either. Or so I remember… I'm going to Saint Mungo's next to get checked, but I think it was as I remember." It would be good to spend a night there for observation, if he could convince them to allow that. He didn't want to sleep in Grimmauld Place tonight. The last thing he needed was the still-dark ambiance of the house needling his new fears.

She considered him for a moment. "Guess it was too much to hope for some answers," she grumbled, her eyes dropping to her book.

Oh, Sirius had answers. Far too many answers… and yet, none of the answers that really mattered.

Such as what the hell he was supposed to do now.

Whether Dumbledore was right.

Whether Taylor was possessed by the stuff of nightmares.

Whether he had already fucked up well beyond any chance of recovery.

If Harry's next few years of schooling followed the trend of his first four, he would need a time-turner to survive years five through seven. He was at the limit of what he could do without sacrificing sleep, and once he started giving up sleep he wouldn't be able to maintain the same pace day in and day out.

Classes were beginning to gear up for the end of the year exams. Homework and essays were assigned with increasing frequency, eating up precious hours of the evenings and weekends. Tournament research stole another large chunk of his remaining free time, more urgent than ever. It was a grind, one he was beginning to tire of.

But the end was in sight. One more task for Cedric to complete. One set of exams. Only a few more months. Then the summer would come, and with it enough free time to sleep for a week.

Until then, he could make do with the fleeting moments of relaxation, or as was the case this particular Friday evening, play.

"Dodge and weave!" Ginny yelled as he and Neville ran a formation, tossing the quaffle between them each time she flew close to threaten one or the other. A bludger tore through the empty air between them, missing Harry's leg by a scant few centimeters. He hefted the Quaffle as he flew towards the rings and Luna, who was looking in entirely the wrong direction, down when he was coming from above.

Ginny dove for his hand, twisting her broom out in front of him to block his way, and he fumbled the Quaffle as he crashed into her. They tangled, their brooms veered away, and he had to concentrate on avoiding a crash, not seeking out the lost Quaffle.

He managed to arrest his fall well enough that his broom only scraped the uneven tideline by the bristles, bad for the broom but good for his continued health. It would have been a flawless recovery if they were playing over the Quidditch field with its flat surface, but…

The ominous hedges that had replaced the Quidditch field were a dark mass in the corner of his vision as he rose to chase after Ginny on her way toward Neville, who had recovered the Quaffle. Neville threw, too early, and Luna had to lean over to catch the Quaffle before it flew between her feet and out of bounds.

"Good try!" Hermione cheered, flying down with the bludger under her arm. "Ginny, do you have to crash into them?"

"We're playing Draco and his cronies today," Ginny said. "I'm no Goyle, but I can give them an idea of what to expect."

"Speaking of Draco," Harry pointed out. The twins hadn't arrived yet, but a quintet of Slytherins were flying out to meet them over the lake. "Is it game time?"

Hermione cast a spell that drew a line in the air in front of her, which somehow let her use the sun to tell the time. Harry hadn't gotten around to learning it yet, either the incantation or how it was meant to be interpreted. "Close to," she judged.

"Okay, last second pep talk!" Ginny announced. They all obligingly flew in close to her. "It's Draco, Goyle, Crabbe, Nott, and Parkinson," she said. "They're not very good at Quidditch, and the ones who do play on the Slytherin team play different positions. They're only here because Draco wanted to be a captain. Crabbe and Goyle are Chasers with Draco, Pansy is the Beater and Nott is the Keeper. Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle are probably going to fly like they go through the rest of their lives, with Draco as the important one and the others as meatshields."

"Sounds right," Neville agreed.

"Pansy is a bitch," Hermione said, the venom in her voice leaving no room for doubt as to whether that was a personally-formed opinion. When she'd had time to form such a personal disdain was a mystery to Harry, as he had never seen her and Pansy exchange more than two words at a time, but then again he wasn't attached to her at the hip.

"Yes, and she's going to be targeting you, which is good for us," Ginny assured her with a bright smile. "We benefit from it being kept away from the Chasers. Crabbe and Goyle can take more hits. Beat her black and blue with the Bludger, you're really good at trading shots." She smiled brightly at Hermione.

Hermione blushed and looked away from Ginny. Things were occasionally awkward between them since the Yule Ball. They acted normal most of the time, but Hermione blushed a lot more and avoided Ginny on occasion. Luna kept telling him to let them work it out.

"I won't let the meatheads foul me," Luna offered.

"I was… yes, exactly." Ginny nodded. "Harry, Neville, don't turn your backs on Crabbe or Goyle, even if Malfoy makes a good target. I'll handle him, keep them off me and be ready for a pass. Nott is a typical mediocre Keeper, I watched them practice last week. Shots to the edges, and mind the hoops… Who knows if the twins' conjuration will hold up."

"Wouldn't want to trust the red-headed dunces with anything important," Parkinson sneered as the Slytherins arrived, coming in quickly enough to catch the end of Ginny's instructions.

"It will be a horribly biased game, but your little hodgepodge team of weirdos won't be able to take advantage of that," Draco sneered. He was looking directly at Harry, for some reason.

"Me?" Harry pointed to Ginny. "It's her team." He had gone almost four years without having to deal with Draco directly, and he would rather that continue. Ronald Weasley was welcome to keep his nemesis all to himself. Ginny could–

"Go jump in the lake," Ginny hissed. The Slytherins all recoiled.

"That's our sister," Fred called out from below. He and George had arrived sometime in the last few moments, or perhaps were already there… They had perfected their disillusionment charms recently, and it wouldn't be the first time they had popped out of nowhere to startle someone.

"We're reinforcing the hoops, then the game can start," George added. "No fouls before the opening firework!"

Harry flew away from the Slytherins, and the rest of Ginny's team followed suit, flying around on 'their' side of the midair playing field while the Slytherins retreated to near their hoop. They all looked rosy-fresh, like they had just had their robes laundered, so Harry assumed they hadn't bothered to warm up before the game. He and the rest of Ginny's team would have already worked up a sweat if the wind of flying didn't continually wick it off them.

Soon, an audience of a few dozen spectators had gathered below, watching from the shore of the lake, and the twins took to the air, one to each side of the playing area.

"You know the rules, you know the time limit, you know the score," Fred announced. "Team Slytherin Supreme, with a win loss record of two to six–"

"Five to three," Draco shouted.

"Please, just because the majority of your team is illiterate does not mean you get to pretend the scores were different," Fred retorted. "Don't test us, snake. We're here for a good clean game, not your attitude. Being a brat will just lose you these hoops and our sterling commentary."

"Also this game, because that'll be another forfeit," George added. "Seriously. Shut up and play."

Draco's face reddened, but his mouth was set in a thin, flat line. The 'discrepancy' in his account of his wins versus the twins was due entirely to them counting any game in which he was a massive unsportsmanlike prat as a forfeit for his team, regardless of the scores. The scores of unofficial Quidditch meant nothing in the end, but he apparently cared enough to make some effort to avoid a repeat.

"Anyway, the Slytherin Supremes will be going against Ginny's Guardians," George continued. "Our little sister has a ragtag gang, with a win loss record of three to five this season. No forfeits among those scores, to date. Try not to intentionally provoke the Slytherins, sis, we have to be impartial."

"I want to play, not feel superior," Ginny said loudly.

"Then let the game begin!" Fred let off a flare from his wand, and a Weasley firework went up from the spectators on the shore, bursting into a fiery snake battling a red-headed imp.

Harry shot forward as the Quaffle and Bludger were put into play. The game was on!

Crabbe and Goyle immediately proved to be much like flying Trolls, big and slow to react, but dense enough that even glancing blows hurt, and with a single-minded focus on their prey. Harry spent most of his time luring one or the other away from Malfoy so Ginny could harass him unimpeded by his bodyguards. Neville worked at the same task, only rarely darting in to grab the Quaffle, as both Crabbe and Goyle consistently left him alone in favor of Harry or Ginny whenever they had a choice of targets.

The Bludger, usually an intermittent to constant presence among the Chasers, was almost entirely absent. Hermione always tended to send it at the other Beater more than the Chasers, but in Pansy she had met a spiteful match who was just as intent on injuring her personally. The two dove their brooms through the Chaser scrum more than once, Pansy wielding the Bludger like an inconveniently-shaped bludgeon, or fleeing it as Hermione whacked it at her dangling legs or exposed arms.

On occasion the Chasers would make a mistake, either on one side or the other, and the Quaffle would soar towards one of the rings, thrown by Malfoy, Ginny, or Neville most of the time. Luna caught her fair share of Malfoy's shots, though she let one through when it came within a hairsbreadth of breaking her nose, a cheap shot Harry wholeheartedly approved of her dodging rather than blocking.

Nott, on the other hand, was proving a poorer Keeper than Ginny had predicted. He flinched away from every shot, perhaps predicting retribution for the cheap shots at Luna, and blocked more by accident than anything else. Draco even took a moment out of chasing the Quaffle to fly over and berate him, though it had no effect on Nott's performance.

The rush of Quidditch, this time amplified by having to dodge bone-shattering sideswipes from Crabbe and Goyle, made it impossible to keep track of time or the score, at least for Harry. He had the vague impression that they were winning, and not by a small margin, but he didn't know and he played as though it was tied up, even to the moment that the ending rocket exploded above their heads.

The Chasers broke off, Ginny dodging a last ill-tempered ramming attempt from Crabbe on the way out, and Hermione flew down to join them, a bruise on the side of her face and electricity leaping from her fingertips as she clutched her broom. She was smiling widely and Pansy was flying with one hand to her ribs, so Harry assumed she had given better than she got. Luna came out to join them, her beautiful hair trailing behind her…

Harry missed the exact wording of Ginny's congratulations, but he snapped back to attention when the twins flew up between the two teams.

"With a score of three hundred and eighty to two hundred and fifty, Ginny's Guardians win!" Fred announced. George cast a spell that set the scores in the air in flaming numbers ten meters tall, for all to see.

"Yes!" Ginny led the dive down to the ground, where they dismounted their brooms and celebrated properly, basking in the – admittedly scattered and small – applause from their little audience. It wasn't the insane dramatics of a real Quidditch game with hundreds of cheering fans, but Harry didn't mind. The game was the fun part; the adulation of victory was just a bonus.

Hermione said something to Ginny as Neville high-fived Harry, and then Ginny said something back, and then–

Hermione shoved Ginny aside, flung one hand out, and blasted a spidery web of white-blue lightning out. The crackling energy converged on a Bludger only a few meters away, the Bludger from the game, striking it down from a trajectory that would have sent it right into Ginny's back.

The Bludger changed direction and shot off into the lake, acting as if it had been thumped with a Beater's bat. But there was no bat, and there was no wand. Hermione's empty hand remained outstretched, even once the lightning died away.

"Holy shit!" George yelled. Pansy Parkinson, who still had her Beater's bat, was white-faced, with the other Slytherins clustered around her in the air.

Hermione pointed one finger at Pansy. She waved it warningly.

The Slytherins were already flying away.

"We're going to need a new Bludger," Fred announced. "That one is fried and at the bottom of the lake by now."

"My hero!" Ginny said as she picked herself up. "But did you have to push me?"

"It was coming right for you," Hermione objected. She held her hand in front of her face, watching as smoke drifted off her fingertips. "That…"

"Wow," Ginny said empathetically, "that was… wow. I'm really envious."

"We all are!" Harry agreed. Hermione's constant practice with her lightning magic was really paying off. The last he had seen she was still only making sparks!

"I didn't mean to do that," Hermione said quietly. "If I had hit her, not the Bludger…"

Harry was going to say something, but Ginny got there first. She took Hermione's hand in her own and covered it with her palm. "You knew what you were aiming for," she said.

Hermione looked away. "Yes." She broke contact with Ginny, pulling her hand away, and turned to Harry.

"Bloody good thing, too," he said. As far as he was concerned it didn't matter what could have happened if she missed, because if she hadn't reacted one of them would have been seriously hurt.

Ginny frowned at Hermione's back, but Luna was there, saying something to her that Harry couldn't make out because he had a faceful of bushy brown hair to contend with as Hermione hugged him.

Their last game of the season hadn't worked out quite as he expected it to, but he'd had enough fun that he hoped they could keep things going next year.

Also, he was going to have to do something about Draco and his cronies, especially Pansy. Maybe his mum could help him with that. Or Ginny. Nobody got away with attacking his friends.

Taylor and Sirius had both been busy over the last few weeks; it was rare that they were in Grimmauld Place at the same time. Taylor actually missed his mildly irritating but often amusing presence. She made a point of spending more time in Grimmauld Place to try and run into him more often. There was no shortage of things for her to do there, especially in the library.

On this particular evening, fresh off an annoying day spent troubleshooting the library's needlessly proprietary computer software, she had decided she would try to break scarcity over her magical knee. At least on a small scale.

Theoretically, if she was interpreting the transfiguration textbook correctly, food could not be transfigured out of non-food material. She didn't know what the exact limits of that rule were, or how it meshed with the basic science behind what food actually was, a collection of molecules in certain configurations like everything else, but she was prepared to take the rule for granted for now.

Under that rule, there was a known exception. Food could be transfigured into other food, and conservation of mass need not apply so long as magic could substitute. This was, she assumed, an inefficient conversion, because if it wasn't a single raisin could feed a witch until she died of old age. But she didn't know that such applied to her.

Thus, her wand on the bread, and her headache as she focused on the mental image of bread transforming into more bread. In theory, so long as her power understood her intention, she was only limited by her power's magical reserves, however that worked. She was a long way away from having the theoretical background necessary to understand that. Being able to make practically unlimited food from a single crumb would be a powerful survival skill. She was willing to suffer to determine whether or not it was possible.

It was getting late. Sirius arrived in a burst of Floo flames, clutching a package. "Taylor, want some tea?" he asked, bustling into the kitchen. "Non-bug-infested tea," he added, casting an air spell that pushed at her flying observers until she chose to withdraw them.

"Yes, please," she yelled.

A few minutes later he came into the library, a dainty cup on a saucer for her and a mug for him. His idea of a joke, perhaps. She decided to ignore it. "Trying to rot the bread?" he asked. "You could just put maggots in it."

"Trying to make more," she replied.

"Ah, the holy grail of food transfiguration," he sighed. "Problem is it sits heavy in your stomach if you eat too much of it. Worse if someone else transfigures it. Good in a pinch, there's nothing wrong with it if you started from good, real food. Not so good if you have other options."

"I want it for the pinch." She took a sip of her tea, savoring the warmth as much as the flavor. "It'll be good for my bugs, if nothing else. I can make raw meat."

"Can't transfigure blood," he remarked. "It'll be very dry raw meat."

Taylor yawned and took a deeper drink from her cup. Sirius mirrored her action. "I've been at this for a few hours," she admitted. "Not going to get it tonight, I don't think."

"It is pretty late," he agreed. "Planning on driving home? It's hailing."

"Shit." She had intended to go home, it was only Tuesday and the library was gearing up for a major book transfer to a new branch, but… She yawned again and put her wand down. "I'll take the couch, if it's still on offer," she said.

"Anytime." He stepped away, running his hand along a row of books on the nearest shelf. "I finally managed to score us some Veritaserum," he said.

"Good!" She stifled another yawn. Now that she had stopped focusing on her transfiguration, her exhaustion was hitting her, though her magic-induced headache was only getting stronger. "How did you…" she trailed off, holding in a third yawn. Yes, staying here for the night was the right choice.

"Put out some feelers with the illicit potions people, got a hit, got confirmation," he said shortly, his brow furrowed. "Tested it on the guy's assistant, it's legit."

"Sounds like an… unpleasant job." Her headache was pounding and her eyelids were heavy. She put her arm on the table and rested her forehead on it, her nose pushed against the wood. She was really tired.

Inexplicably so…

Her eyes drifted shut, and the last thing she heard was Sirius apologizing.

"Sorry, Taylor."

Chapter Text

Sirius did not feel good about what he was doing. An uneasy churning in his gut accompanied him in his late-night preparations, unsettled him while he made the tea, and persisted as he added a few drops of a powerful, odorless sleeping potion to the mix for one of the two cups.

Part of his unease was related to wondering whether he could pull it off at all. Taylor might have doubts about her adequacy as a self-taught witch, but that was purely internal, in his opinion. Her bug trick alone made her formidable, to say nothing of the superior animagus substitute he had helped her develop to work with her peculiar magic. Her cleverness with basic spells was outright terrifying when combined with those capabilities.

But for all her competence, she wasn't expecting to be stabbed in the back. Not by him. She fell asleep too quickly to really understand what he had done, and the vermin-clearing spells he had learned in preparation served him well as he cleared out Grimmauld Place as best he could. He didn't even have to fight off a wave of murderous spiders and hornets, as he had suspected he might. The bugs were stuck in a holding pattern, barely moving as he struck them down by the hundreds. Many stared up at him as he worked, eerily focused but not attacking or fleeing.

Truth be told, success made him feel even more like a complete tosser. Here he was, drugging the woman who had saved his arse compensating for his deficiencies in going after Pettigrew, the woman who helped him get his life back on track, Harry's mum. All on Dumbledore's word, the same man who had admitted to trying to drive her out of Harry's life based on nothing more than a feeling he got when illegally rummaging through her mind. The horror of Summoning added weight to Dumbledore's claims, weight that had to be taken seriously, but regardless… That didn't make this okay. Not when it could all just be another lie stacked on top of the rest.

That said, he wasn't turning her over to Dumbledore, or Remus, or anyone else. He knew Taylor. Or he thought he did. If anyone was going to confirm or deny the things Dumbledore suspected, it would be him. Then, and only then, would he decide what else to do. If Dumbledore was wrong, then he would never know Sirius knew Taylor, let alone that the events of tonight had occurred. If he was right, he might still never know, depending on exactly what Sirius found out. 'Put her down,' indeed. Not happening on Sirius' watch.

Taylor was surprisingly light when he lifted her out of her chair. She didn't wear her Muggle false arm when it was just him around, and there wasn't an ounce of excess fat on her body. Her head lolled against his shoulder, and he had to gather her hair out of the way after he set her down in the attic. Stealing her Visio charm and waiting out the blinding majority of the charm's duration, he confirmed that she didn't have any backup magic on her, like Moody had.

That was no surprise. She was open with him. He knew that she had given Moody's little potion vials back, and she didn't know how to make or get portkeys as of yet. Her backup wand was just another wand, not special like her main wand, and he took it away from her anyway, depriving her of her only holdout defense.

He felt like shit for what he was going to do, even if it proved Dumbledore right, so he wasn't going to do it in the cells down in Grimmauld's basement. That was a place for proven enemies, prisoners. The attic was just as warded, having once served as a ritual conduction site back when the occasional Muggleborn witch might 'disappear' just before full moons and nobody cared. It was undoubtedly the site of a hundred horrors, but it didn't have bars, it didn't have bare stone walls, and it didn't make him feel quite as much like he was following in his family's footsteps. He wasn't here to conduct a ritual, and the attic was just an unused extra room nowadays. One with good security.

He reluctantly tied her to a wrought iron chair brought up from storage, securing all of her limbs, her torso, and even her hair back to the chair itself. Then he cast a dozen different restraint charms on her still unconscious form, including an overpowered human transfiguration variant that would resist any new application of human transfiguration. It wouldn't hold an animagus, that was internal magic, but it might just stop however she applied external magic to herself to shift forms.

If it didn't, well, that was why he was in the attic and not somewhere more comfortable. A snake or moose or any other animal would be unable to escape, even if they could do magic. The necessary power or finesse to take down the wards from inside was beyond Taylor. Hell, it was beyond him, and he had grown up around this kind of magic.

He went back down to the kitchen, retrieved the potion that had cost him a substantial amount in Knockturn Alley, as well as the antidote to the sleeping potion, and returned to the attic.

"No going back now," he whispered. It was late, but he wasn't tired at all, and his conscience dictated he get this done without any delay. He had already broken Taylor's trust, and whether or not it was for a good reason remained to be seen. He wouldn't keep her drugged overnight just so he could feel a little more rested before owning up.

He jabbed his wand at the trapdoor and intoned a single word, a carefully-enunciated 'seal.' The attic's security measures activated, and the trapdoor's metal hinges shifted to solid blocks of iron. The smell of the air itself changed, refreshed instead of musty and stale, as the other sealing systems kicked into effect.

Nothing was getting out. Nothing was getting in. He had blanketed the entire attic in vermin-killing charms beforehand, and the defenses included the walls themselves, so nothing could burrow through. Not sound, not light, not most forms of magic. The only feasible way out without tearing the magic itself from the building was for him to lift the security.

The Blacks as a family might be stark raving mad, but their security for their heinous deeds was second to none. A thousand innocents could have died in this room and nobody would ever have known. If there really was something lurking in Taylor, watching and waiting for the right time to strike, it shouldn't be able to leave now.

If there wasn't, then he had destroyed the trust between them for nothing but an old man's delusions. It was only because the old man was Dumbledore, with a very convincing and reasonable story backing him, that Sirius was even considering he might be telling the truth. He didn't blindly trust Dumbledore, not since getting out of Azkaban, but the man had the reputation he did for very good reasons. The dual factors of Dumbledore and Summoning demanded he at least check before calling the man a liar. What kind of fool would completely ignore such a direct, dire warning?

Probably Minister Fudge. That man could win awards for burying his head in the sand.

Sirius went to Taylor, still bound and slumbering, and tilted her head back. From one of the two potions he had brought in he measured out six drops, twice the usual amount. Three drops of veritaserum magically forced the truth from even the strongest-willed. Six put them in such a stupor they could barely think beyond what the questions required them to think about. Another line of defense, as was administering the veritaserum before giving her the antidote to the sleeping potion and waking her up.

Having veritaserum at all was a defense. He had postponed his plans a full week waiting to acquire some, and would have held them back as long as necessary. He didn't trust anything less to work. If nothing else, he would have the truth as she understood it.

Her main wand, he had left in the kitchen, charmed to stick to the table for good measure. Her remaining insects, the ones he couldn't find in his extermination efforts, were all outside too. She had no backup magic on her person. Her remaining limbs were tied down, the chair was magically secured to the floor, there were no sharp edges to cut things with and he had charmed the physical – so they could not be dispelled – ropes imperturbable. He had double-dosed her and locked the attic down, and he knew exactly what he needed to do and ask. If the veritaserum failed, he had four different backup plans to evaluate the situation, albeit that they were all risky and less likely to work.

If he was going to violate her trust on the off chance that there really was some otherworldly thing possessing her, he wasn't going to half-ass it.

Not if. When. Because he had begun and there was no point in turning back now.

He slipped the antidote to the sleeping potion into her mouth, a few more potent drops on her tongue, and waited, his wand trained on her. She woke quickly, but the only sign he had that she was awake at all was her eyes sliding open to reveal a dull, unseeing gaze.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Taylor Anne Hebert," she answered, her voice downright lifeless.

The veritaserum seemed to be working, but he couldn't trust the tone of her voice alone. "What do you think is going on?"

"I am answering questions." Nothing more, just as he would expect from a double-dose of Veritaserum. Most interrogations used a single dose because a double dose sorely limited how much information the speaker could provide. Taylor was barely conscious, and she could only really think about things in direct response to what he asked.

She would hate him for this. She hated being obliviated, and this was another way of taking her agency from her, if only temporarily.

"Do you have any secrets you would not want me to know?" he asked, his mouth dry. He had to prove that she was incapable of holding back first, no matter how much he wanted to just jump to the big question.

"Yes," she said.

"What is the most minor secret you are keeping from me?" he asked.

It took her a few seconds to come up with an answer, which he attributed to the mind-fogging influence of the veritaserum, not any sign of resistance. She couldn't resist. Not without it being obvious. "I think your trouser snake joke is funny. I like your sense of humor."

"That just makes me feel worse about this, you know," he sighed. Why couldn't she have been a cold, calculating bitch like his cousins? Then he could be interrogating her with glee, not feeling like the worst guy in the world. "To your knowledge, are you being controlled by any outside source, or have you been since we first met?"

Taylor's blank eyes stared at the empty air in front of her. "No."

Worst-case scenario averted. No Taylor meat puppet with a thing on the other end, stringing him along for months on end. Or if there was, she was completely unaware of it, which made it slightly less horrific. On to the next worst thing. "Could you be controlled by an outside source?"

"Yes," she answered.

"How?" he asked, trying not to leap to conclusions.

"Imperio. Mind magic. Effective blackmail or coercion. Selective obliviation and confundus. Possibly if I am transfigured into any form of insect. Biotinkering. Nerve hijacking. Physical force. Mental manipulation. Social manipulation. Thinker manipulation. Master manipulation. Possibly mundane hypnosis. Conditioning. Other unknown effects."

It took him a few moments to wrap his mind around that wordy answer. It was his fault, he had asked too broad a question, but… He didn't even know what some of those things were. Muggle stuff, maybe?

"Is there someone or something else in your head with you?" he tried. "Right now?" Maybe if he asked after the effects, not whether the end result could be achieved-

"Yes."

His heart leaped into his throat. "Who is it?" What is it?

"I don't know if it has a true name. I call it my power, my passenger. Someone who knows more named it Queen Administrator, but that was an alias."

"Fuck." That was fucking ominous. "Is it human? Was it ever human?" It looked like he would be delving into his patchwork knowledge of Summoning after all. Damn it all, Dumbledore wasn't wrong.

"No," she said, quashing his last hope for less eldritch answers.

"Do you know what it is?" he pressed.

"Yes," she said simply.

"Okay, what?" he asked. "What is the thing in your head that we are speaking about?" Best he be as precise as possible; bad wording might get him dud answers.

"A piece of a larger whole," Taylor said. "Multidimensional hive mind aliens that travel from star to star seeking innovation. It is a physically massive being that exists in a cordoned-off alternate dimension. The larger entity is dead, so it is… A lingering shard." She seemed to be confused, even under the influence of veritaserum. "A… Lonely knowledge seeker. With no purpose. Broken from the cycle. Attached to a brave host. Working for her, lacking any larger purpose. Learning. Improving. Helping Taylor."

Invisible fingers of terror crept down Sirius' spine as she switched to speaking in third person, and he kept his wand pointed firmly at the head of the woman he was no longer sure was speaking for herself. "Am I talking to Taylor, or to the shard?"

"Taylor… But the shard wishes to help. The shard is using magic to… give information to Taylor. Right now. The magic forcing her to speak is widening the connection. Forcing the shard to speak through her. Magic works on the source of magic, not just the body."

Sirius was in so far over his head he didn't know which way was up. "How do I fix that?" he asked desperately. What good was learning the truth if in doing so he broke the Summoned thing out and gave it Taylor's body altogether?

"It will recede when the effect wears off," the thing speaking through Taylor, or perhaps Taylor herself this time, assured him. "The shard will fix the connection. Narrow it. The shard does not… want… to be in control. Taylor is essential. The shard helps her. That is all that is left."

"But you… the shard could take control?" Sirius asked, only mildly reassured. If he trusted the veritaserum to force even the thing on the other side to speak the truth, then, well… He didn't know. This was why that unnamed wizard had broken Summoning all those years ago! Shit like this!

"Yes." She tilted her head, though she shouldn't have had the will to move at all. Her unfocused eyes continued to stare at nothing, but they were staring a little more in his direction than before. "But it would kill Taylor. The shard does not… want… to kill Taylor."

"How… what does the shard want?" he asked, though he was sure he was going to regret it. World destruction, the souls of the innocent, sacrifices, those were the things the Summons of old traded in. Power and suffering and deals that no sane wizard would ever take.

Still, he had to know.

"To help Taylor," it listed in monotone. "To learn. To see what Taylor does with power. To serve a purpose. To watch. To listen. To understand. To exist forever."

It was too good to be true. "What would the shard do once it knew everything magic had to offer?" he pressed.

"Watch Taylor. See what Taylor does with all magic. Help Taylor. Learn from Taylor."

"Okay… and when Taylor dies?" he asked.

"Taylor will not die. Magic is capable of sustaining humans until heat death. Not the answer, but humans do not need the answer to live until others find the answer."

Sirius knew a lot of that had flown right over his head, but he thought he had the jist of it now… The Summoned monster from another dimension was a Ravenclaw that wanted its favorite human to be immortal so they could do research together forever.

Was it insanity if that didn't actually sound so bad to him?

"Maybe I'm going crazy," Sirius said to himself. "About time, I suppose. What if Taylor did die anyway?" he asked. "What would the shard want then?"

"To resurrect Taylor to full capacity. If impossible, to reform Taylor from collected data. If impossible, to simulate Taylor using magic or data. If impossible, to connect to Taylor's progeny. If impossible, to connect to another human."

He might be mad, but he was pretty sure now that Taylor's summoned mind-monster was as benign as it was possible to be while still being a monster from another dimension. "Do you plan to do horrible things to any other humans?" he asked, thinking about what Dumbledore had told him.

"This shard plans to assist Taylor in whatever she chooses to do." Taylor's voice was growing hoarse.

"Does the shard ever act on its own with or without Taylor's knowledge?" he asked.

"The shard directs her subjects while she is unconscious," was the answer. "Beyond that, no. The shard could, magic is from it, not her, but it does not. That is not the point. Taylor is the point. Her decisions. Her ideas."

"So why is Dumbledore freaking out about horrible things he saw whenever he looked in her mind?" Sirius asked, finally getting around to the root cause of this terrifying mess. If this Summon was so altruistic and helpful, why was Dumbledore getting the willies from it hard enough to obliviate somebody and steal their child? Surely Taylor couldn't have done things so horrible they would prompt that reaction.

"Taylor… I…" she blinked, but her eyes were no more focused than before. "Memories. If he saw memories, he saw my past. Bad memories. Fractured memories. Thousands of perspectives, from every bug. Or the shard's memories. Even worse."

"Of what?" He had looked up the incantation to legilimency in preparation for the veritaserum not being enough, but there was no way in hell he was going to jump into that rabbit hole now.

"Hell," Taylor said. "Death. Monsters. Monstrous acts. The Simurgh. Scion. The entities… experimenting. Learning. Before I killed it. Fighting it."

So Dumbledore had accidentally brushed the memories of Taylor… fighting… an eldritch being, or maybe the eldritch being's personal memories, and was understandably concerned, even if this one piece here was benign. It was no more unbelievable than anything else he had heard tonight, though he had no idea when Taylor could have done any of this, or where. Possibly not in this world, and wasn't that an uncomfortable thought? "You killed the… mind? The leader?"

"The guiding intelligence died because of my plan, my coordination," Taylor confirmed. "It was destroying… everything. I killed it. Now the… shards have no purpose."

"Shards. Plural. What about the others?" Were there other people walking around with less benign multidimensional Ravenclaws in their heads?

"I think it's only me on this world," she said, confirming what he had suspected. "The shield against Summoning… must have worked. Mostly. I was brought here, nobody else was that I know of. The rest are attached to people in unguarded worlds. I have seen no signs of it spreading here."

The veritaserum was beginning to wear off, as indicated by Taylor sounding a little less lifeless. Sirius, by contrast, was only just starting to come off the adrenaline high of conversing with a multidimensional, maybe not technically Summoned but close enough, thing, and not losing his soul, sanity, life, or anything else. He was pretty sure he didn't have much more left in him. Sometime soon, he was going to collapse into a quivering puddle of nerves. Thankfully not literally.

"To be clear," he said, "are you a threat to Harry?"

"I love Harry and I would never hurt him unless he forced me to," Taylor said. "My shard wants him alive in case something happens to me… now that you mentioned it. It didn't think of him before that. I think."

Yes, it was definitely wearing off. "How about Dumbledore?"

"I want to strangle him with his beard," Taylor asserted. "For what he has done. Not because of the shard."

"Anyone else?"

"I want to live my life, with my son, without being in danger. Without being oppressed. Without watching others in danger or oppressed. I am only a threat to the people stopping me from having that."

"What about me?" Sirius asked.

"I don't know. I wasn't before."

That was probably the best he could hope for.

Dots and worms and clear shapes were swimming in her eyes.

What were they called? Those little translucent blips and ropes and webs? She had looked it up, back when she first started to persistently see them a few years ago. They weren't magical. Most people saw them. Things floating inside the eyes. Globs of coagulated stuff. Blood, sometimes. Eye fluid.

Floaters.

That was it. She was seeing floaters.

Floaters swam in her vision, most in her right eye. Behind their translucent forms she saw a dusty attic. A tired Sirius.

Her head pounded fiercely. She tried to lift her hand to cover her eyes, to make the headache go away.

What had she been doing? She remembered… talking. To Sirius. He asked questions. She answered them. Sometimes she said things because they came out of her mouth, not because she thought them.

Her hand wouldn't move. Something tugged at her hair, holding her head back. Her legs were tied down, too.

"Wha… What the hell, Sirius?" she asked, her own voice sending jolts of pain through her forehead.

He tied her up. He drugged her, tied her up, and made her answer questions. Made… her shard answer questions?

Amidst all the pain, she could feel a brief burst of distracted confirmation. It was clearer than usual, more nuanced, but that was fading away even as her headache worsened.

Her shard… said… though her… that it was going to fix the connection.

The one Sirius broke. With veritaserum. As if that made any sense. Magic. Still utterly unpredictable.

"That you in there?" Sirius asked.

"Yes… No thanks to you." She knew what had happened. What he had done. Some of why he did it. Dumbledore. Had to be. He'd come back from a meeting with the man a few weeks ago. Lied about it. Because of course he had.

It was always fucking Dumbledore.

Sirius started dispelling the many, many charms and other things holding her down, but she made no move to rise, not even when he started asking her if he was okay.

She wasn't okay. Not hurt, not permanently… But she wasn't okay.

Sirius cut the last of the ropes tying her to the chair, and she knew she could move. He was right behind her.

The floaters in her vision weren't going away. They were distracting.

They were the least of her problems.

He said something else. Something about having ended the lockdown. The trapdoor in the floor swung open of its own accord. He kept talking.

She wasn't listening.

His face hovered in her line of sight; he had come around, leaning in to look at her. She sat limply.

Limply, until she jabbed a fist into his gut. He wheezed in her face, doubling over, and she drew her arm back to twist and drive her elbow into his ear, knocking him over with a vicious blow. Then she stood, as he toppled to the floor.

She kicked him in the ribs, hard. Only once, but hard enough to break bones.

The floaters were still there, in her right eye in particular, and they weren't going away. Wouldn't go away; floaters were permanent. Seeing a lot of new ones at once was a warning sign that she might be in danger of going blind in that eye. She knew, because she had looked it up.

She was angry. So, so angry with him. For making her feel helpless, for surprising her when she had her guard down, for drugging her and violating her trust… For doing it on Dumbledore's behalf.

Her insects came boiling up the trapdoor, pouring into the room like a tidal wave. Every single bug she had established in Grimmauld Place, diminished – Sirius would have killed the ones he could find – but a formidable force nonetheless. More than enough to strip the flesh from his bones. They were waiting, grouped up under the trapdoor. Probably brought there for her by her power, while she was barely conscious.

She could kill him. She had that option.

But she was better than that.

She stalked away, into the mob of insects and down the trapdoor. Her bugs followed, abandoning Sirius to lie on the floor of the attic and wheeze.

Her bugs pulled her things to her as she walked. The coat she had left on the coatrack, her glasses and wand from the kitchen table and her notes from the library.

Maybe she would come back. Maybe she wouldn't. But right now, she was removing herself from the situation and from his presence before she did something she couldn't take back.

She was better, these days. She had to be better. Harry didn't need Skitter. Probably wouldn't want her. Taylor didn't want to be that, either. Even if it was tempting.

Lucky for Sirius. Because the way she felt right now, rational or not, warranted or not, Skitter would have torn him apart.

Harry was worried about his mum.

She had come into the castle on a weekday, which was already unusual. She came as Hissy, of course, but she came dragging a big parchment of handwritten notes on spells, along with a few other things he had to go get for her from the secret passage so they wouldn't get damp.

She also wasn't saying much. Just that she was physically fine, and that she didn't want to be alone.

He had only seen his mum this… vulnerable… a few times before. He took her things, hid them under his bed, and let her coil around his shoulders to accompany him to Runes class without any further questions. They got a lot of funny looks from the students who didn't know about his familiar, and he used the excuse that she wasn't feeling well – which was true – when they asked.

That was what he told his friends, too. He didn't know anything more. She wasn't injured, she had told him that, but something had hurt her, or scared her, or just upset her to the point that she would rather curl up on his bed than talk or fight back.

He studied in his room that night, sitting on his bed next to her. His roommates were out, working on some strategies for Cedric to use if the third task involved spellcrafting puzzles. Most of his friends would be out there, working to help Cedric. They could cope without him. These runes weren't going to memorize themselves.

His mum wasn't going to open up to herself. She didn't need him very often – love him, yes, always, but not need him – and he wasn't going to let her down now that she did.

He studied well into the night. His roommates came in and went to bed, drawing their curtains so that the lights wouldn't keep them up. He cast a larger version of the desk silencing ward around himself and his bed and kept working.

"You won't sleep until I talk, is that it?" his mum finally hissed.

"Yes." He wasn't guilting her, but if this was a battle of wills he would go down to the school nurse and ask for a Pepper-Up potion before he gave in. He would get Hermione to brew him one, if necessary. She had to know that.

Besides, she wanted to talk. She would have said if she didn't. That was how she worked.

"I shouldn't be dumping my troubles on my own child," his mum hissed regretfully. "But who else could I turn to? I don't trust anyone like I do you."

"Not Sirius?" He had thought she was getting along with Sirius. As well as she got along with anyone, that was. Better than most.

"Sirius is the problem," his mum hissed. She partially uncoiled herself, rising up over his piled-up blankets to sway back and forth as she looked at him. "Him and Dumbledore. He spoke to Dumbledore. Dumbledore told him just enough to get him to betray me."

Harry startled; he hadn't expected it to be something that important! "Are you in danger? Is Sirius working with Dumbledore? Are they looking for you to do… something?" If they were, he would have to hide her a lot better than this! Sirius knew she was Hissy, Dumbledore knew where he slept, they could come in any moment–

"No, Dumbledore is clueless for now," his mum assured him, her sibilant voice bitter. "He told Sirius… something. Something that convinced Sirius that it was a good idea to drug me, tie me up, and force veritaserum into me until I couldn't even think straight. The only saving grace was he did it all on his own, and I don't think he told anyone."

"He didn't!" Harry exclaimed.

"He did," his mum retorted. "He dragged things out of me, digging for proof of what Dumbledore told him. Things I have not told anyone, things I never meant to tell anyone except you when you were older, things that I did not – do not – trust him to know!"

"Now he does." Harry thought about that. "Do you need help hunting him down and having him obliviated?" He was sure Hermione could learn the spell, and if she couldn't Ginny might already know it thanks to Tom.

"I'll think about it," his mum hissed. She let her lengthy body fall limp across the pile of blankets. "I am not worried about silencing him. One way or another, that will be easy. I do not think he found what Dumbledore told him to look for. He would not have let me go if he did."

"But it must really hurt to not be able to trust him anymore," Harry said. He hoped none of his friends ever betrayed him like that.

"It hurts more to wonder whether I still can," his mum sighed.

"What do you mean?" Even if Sirius had good intentions, there were things you just didn't do to a friend.

"If you think someone is not acting under their own power, do you ask them about it?" his mum hissed. "What if the one controlling them would hurt them if they knew you knew? I understand why he did it. I might do the same." She still sounded angry, though.

"Didn't Dumbledore tell him whatever got him thinking that, though?" Harry asked. "Dumbledore, the same person who obliviated you and basically kidnapped me and lied for years? Why did he listen to Dumbledore?"

"It's… ugh, I hate this." His mum slithered over to lay beside his crossed legs. "If you put aside that Dumbledore was his source, looking solely at what he must have thought was going on based on his questions, it was inarguably the right thing to do, given all of the things he did not know, things I did not tell him or anyone. But I don't want to forgive him. Not for ambushing me somewhere I felt safe. Not for him doing it. I trusted him."

That was a lot trickier. Harry wished he had something meaningful to say, but if it was him he would…

He didn't know what he would do either. Maybe Ginny would know; she had been where Taylor was, sort of, and she had actually been possessed.

"Ginny would have appreciated me sneaking up on her and stunning her back when Tom was running around in her body," he said aloud. "Even if I scared her or broke her trust. And if it was that or letting Tom hurt her, or hurt other people using her, I know what I would do. But if I was wrong and it was all her, then she might not like me very much after."

"You see… It is justified. Sometimes. And the cost of missing a real problem is much higher than that of jumping the gun." His mum hissed, a wordless hiss of frustration. "He is probably moping around that miserable townhouse right now, regretting everything. Even though he was, all things considered, right to check. If I was being practical, I would forgive him right now so that if I ever am possessed or not in control of myself, and he suspects, he does not hesitate to do it again. But I don't want to do that."

"Maybe you should just stay away from him for a while," Harry suggested. She didn't need Sirius.

"I did that. Once. With my father. A while turned into 'indefinitely', and when we eventually reconnected… it was never the same. Not really. I had changed too much." Harry got the impression she had decided on something; she straightened and slithered off his bed, down to the floor. "I won't go back now. I will take some time to myself. But I will confront him about it soon. Before the third task. Thank you."

"I don't think I helped very much," Harry admitted.

"You helped more than you know." She twisted around to look at him. "Now go to bed. It's a school night."

He laughed and threw his pillow at her as she left. Then he went and picked it up, because he was really tired and he had Potions first thing in the morning.

Sirius felt like he had kicked a dog, which was especially ironic as he was currently a dog who had quite literally been kicked.

He moped around a bitterly ugly little excuse for a park near Grimmauld Place, a dog with a very bruised rib and a guilty conscience. He didn't want to talk to anyone, or be approached, or anything of the sort, so he was wandering around in his canine form. It was socially acceptable for him to growl at anyone who approached him this way.

Taylor had left, after that well-deserved beating, and she hadn't come back. Two weeks of her continued absence and counting was driving home how much her occasional presence made Grimmauld bearable. She was the only one who came around. Remus certainly didn't, though he had sent an owl asking when the library would be ready.

Sirius didn't particularly want to see Remus. He was on Dumbledore's side, and Dumbledore was the one who had gotten him into this mess. Sirius could and would put that aside to play the part of the wholehearted ally if Remus came around, because whether or not Taylor believed it of him he was not going to betray her and her extradimensional assistant, but not now. Not while he could avoid it.

In the meantime, he was moping. There was an appeal to it, Sirius supposed. Blaming oneself and not doing anything because it was all already ruined. No guilt over not making an effort if making an effort was futile from the start. Ironically, he would have said that was a Remus thing; he'd done it back with that mistake involving Snape and a full moon.

That one was Sirius' fault, too. Maybe he had been lucky to go this long before making a friendship-endangering mistake. He was overdue one.

He stopped to mark a scrubby tree. Anything to postpone going back to Grimmauld Place. It was empty, and it wasn't going to get better. Taylor wouldn't be there. It would just be him, his mother's portrait, that insufferable hat, and all the elf heads mounted on the wall. Hardly a good time.

At least Kreacher was gone. The miserable old elf had chosen to interpret his order about cleaning the house 'and nothing else' to mean no eating or drinking, and ignominiously expired in his grubby little cupboard before Sirius remembered his existence.

Good riddance.

It didn't help Grimmauld Place's ambiance any, though. That building was so steeped in dark magic that it probably fed off of death and betrayal. He had provided it with more of both since moving in.

Sirius moped his way back to Grimmauld place once it got dark, surrendering to the inevitable. Sleeping in his old room was better than sleeping in a ditch or hotel somewhere, and he didn't feel like getting drunk and taking the decision of where to sleep out of his own hands. He'd probably wind up doing something stupid and getting killed in a back-alley brawl.

He shifted back to human in an alleyway, tromped up to the front door of his least favorite building, and stomped past his mother's ugly portrait.

The curtains sprang open, and the old bat's face was already red in anticipation of a screeching, but he yelled first. "Shut the fuck up, you stupid, inbred, sanctimonious, constipated, half-wit half-sized half-human harridan!"

Her face turned an ugly shade of purple, but her mouth was still open and he imagined he could see bile still bubbling up in the back of her throat, so he drew a deep breath to keep going–

The curtains were yanked shut by invisible hands, and he heard a faint buzzing behind him in the sudden silence.

"Sirius."

He fully expected a recreation of their first meeting, terrifying wall of bugs and all, but when he turned she was just standing there in the doorway. A raincoat draped her lean form, one sleeve hanging empty. She didn't look angry, though he had noticed that when she was at her most terrifying she often looked like she was genuinely bored, so her lack of visible anger now was either a good sign or a very bad one.

"Deadly," he said, and then he silently cursed himself for his incessantly loose tongue.

"Never trick, ambush, drug, or trap me in this building again, or my house for that matter." She stepped inside, wiping her boots off on the mat. "I mean it. No matter what. If you need to check me for possession without prior warning, hit me when I'm walking to my car, or at the store, or even at work. Not where I feel safe."

She smiled at him, but it was a smile totally devoid of warmth. "Next time, you might not get me so easily. You might not live through it, either."

Had he once thought she didn't rate very highly on his warped terror scale? Forget that, she was an eleven out of ten. He would even say it was hot if he didn't still have vivid memories of flies forcing their way up his nose.

"I won't ever do it again," he promised.

"You'll do it if you think you have to, and if I'm ever possessed or under the Imperius curse I hope you notice in time to give a repeat performance," she said coldly as she passed him in the hallway. "But not here or in my home."

"Like I said, I won't." He followed her into the living room. "I'm really sorry–"

"For listening to Dumbledore," she interrupted. "That's the only thing you have to be sorry about. What did he tell you?" She pointedly took a pinch of Floo powder and held it in one hand, while standing right next to the fireplace.

The total lack of trust hit him like a dagger to the gut, but it was no less than he deserved. "He called me and Remus in, and said that he needed our help," he explained, giving her nothing but the truth. "As it turns out, whenever someone uses legilimency on you, they get a mindful of your," he lifted his hands to do a quotation gesture, "Ravenclaw friend's eccentricities and your memories. He was a bit suspicious of you having Harry," which he now noticed didn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of Taylor's story, "and when he saw all of that…"

"He decided to obliviate me?" she asked.

"Well, no, not right away," Sirius said. "I'm not defending him, but he tried to figure out what was up with you first, and he landed on Summoning as the only possible explanation. Some Summoned things can spread by close contact or interaction or any number of possible conditions-"

"Fuck." Taylor scowled at nothing, peculiarly angry. "Fuck. Of course. That makes too much sense." She clenched her fist around the Floo powder and punched the solid stone mantelpiece.

"It does?" He didn't know exactly what he had said that made sense, because it had taken him a lot longer to understand Dumbledore's story when he heard it. Maybe he was really good at summarizing?

"What do you do with a danger that could spread by touch, or hearing them speak, or close contact, or just occasional nerve twitches whenever you're around, or a scream, or looking you in the eye?" Taylor asked rhetorically. She walked in front of the fire, then turned around, visibly agitated. "I should have guessed. Him making me forget and then leaving me in place… What methods of transmission was he worried about?"

"All of them?" Sirius guessed. "Legilimency, for sure, and maybe upon death. He didn't know. There's almost nothing on Summoning, just enough that he freaked out. He was an idiot not to ask you–"

"And trigger a suicide condition, or maybe asking 'what's wrong with you' is the trigger for it to spread, or maybe I would be forced to lie if he asked," Taylor interrupted. "No, he couldn't ask. You couldn't ask. Not without me knowing what you suspect. Obliviation doesn't give an explanation as to why, he could just have been a magical kidnapper. If something was waiting to be discovered, Obliviation wouldn't trigger it."

Sirius looked at her as she scowled, then dumped her handful of Floo powder back in the vase. She met his gaze. "I don't like what you did," she said. "What he did is unforgivable. But it wasn't the wrong thing to do."

"Run that by me again," he requested, trying not to get his hopes up.

"He thought I was compromised." She walked over to the chair she often claimed, the nice cushioned leather armchair Sirius had worked hard to clean off once he noticed her using it, since he remembered his mother sitting in it and he couldn't think of anything more likely to stain it to the wooden core. She didn't sit in it, instead opting to perch on one of the arms, still facing him. "Why didn't you come here and tell me what Dumbledore said, so I could explain? You trusted me, but you also lied."

Trusted. Like he didn't trust her now. It was the other way around, and he deserved it. Aside from keeping an eye on her to make sure her shard wasn't a filthy liar, he trusted her completely. Now that he knew what was going on. "If it wasn't really you in there… how could I have been sure asking you wouldn't set it off?"

"How could you be sure questioning me under Veritaserum wouldn't set it off?" she pressed.

"I couldn't," he said honestly, "but I only half believed Dumbledore might be onto something, and I had to do something to prove him wrong. I just took precautions in case he was right."

"The difference is you were reckless enough to do something, instead of biding your time," she said. "That's the only difference."

"Hey, hold on," he objected. "That's not the only difference between me and him. I didn't lie to Harry. I didn't obliviate you. I didn't plan to obliviate you, even if he was right. If you were in danger I was going to do everything in my power to save you, I would have brought Harry in on it, the whole deal. Not sitting around doing research and nothing else!" Admittedly, Dumbledore's way was a lot safer for the world while there was a chance acting directly could antagonize an otherwise dormant danger, but… "If your shard was a monstrous ever-spreading thing like the black unicorn Dumbledore told me about, my approach might have had some very big consequences, but… go big or go home?" he offered. "I didn't want him to be right. It just wasn't something I could ignore, either."

Taylor's shoulders slumped. "Like I said. It wasn't wrong. But it still hurt, coming from you."

"I know," he said. "And I knew it would, going in," he added, compelled to give her the full truth. She had done him the huge favor of not having the conversation with him drugged to the gills with Veritaserum, so he would be truthful on his own. "If it helps, I felt like shit every step of the way and I'll make it up to you any way you want."

"Ten years ago, this would have been it, no matter how well-meaning you were or sorry you are now," she told him. "I don't trust easily. We'd never get back to what we had before."

"What about now?" he asked.

"We'll see." She looked away from him. "I make no promises. But allies are hard to come by for me right now… and friends harder still. I'm not the same person I was back then. We'll stay the course for now. Harry is more important."

"Harry is important, but I don't want my fuck-up to ruin anything else," Sirius objected. "That's important too. If you need to stay away from me for a while–"

"That doesn't help." She shook her head. "Really, it doesn't. Besides, we have a whole collection of different lies and plans on the go that will fail if we can't work together to maintain them. You getting custody of Harry, Moody thinking I'm working for you to assess Hogwarts security, the murmurs of a possible Death Eater resurgence, Barty being on the loose, now you working for Dumbledore…"

"So it's an alliance of necessity, then." Damn if that didn't sting more than it should.

"No," she said, surprising him. "Don't be an idiot, don't violate my trust again – and I do not mean don't check me for possession or mind-altering influence, I mean don't make it so I can't trust you – and you might have a chance." She shook her head. "I like you more than I should."

He would be lying if he said that didn't make him feel better. Fuck the patented Remus ''everything is pointless so I won't try' attitude, he was going to make this right. If Taylor was willing to try and give him another chance, he wasn't going to waste it.

They sat – well, she perched and he stood – in silence. A brooding, thought-provoking silence.

"Ask," she told him.

"Would it be inappropriate if I offered you a backrub as part of my apology?" he blurted out, as that was one of the things currently crossing the back of his mind. The thought immediately prior to that one had been 'what can I do to make it up to her,' and the thought after it 'probably yes, she's not a touchy person', but of course his stupid brain chose the dumb thought in the middle to express to the world. He smacked himself in the forehead.

Taylor stared at him, her expression unreadable. "Do you think about the things you say at all before they leave your mouth?" she asked.

"No," he said firmly, picking his words carefully to avoid shoving his own foot any further down his throat. "I do not. Feel free to sting me for that. What were you expecting a normal, intelligent person to ask you?"

"About… anything in my past," she said. "You know enough to be curious."

"Do you actually want to tell me?" he asked. "Because after what I did, I'm sure as hell not going to demand answers. I'm willing to take you at your word that I don't need to know."

"It would have averted this whole ordeal if I just told you to begin with," she remarked.

"But you didn't know that it would be relevant to anything, and you didn't tell me, so you probably had good reasons to not want to talk about it," Sirius reasoned. "I figure you're from some other world, one with other humans which is a really cool and simultaneously terrifying concept, and that you fought a fuck-ton of Summoned monsters because that other world didn't have our one's shield, or magic at all… Hell if I know how that worked, but I don't need to know the specifics. You did your usual thing of being bloody terrifying and effective, cut off the head of the snake, probably with your teeth and fingernails if you couldn't use magic–"

He knew he saw a tiny smile on her face for a split second, however quickly it disappeared.

"And then after that you wanted a retirement, so you came out to our little piece of nowhere world somehow," Sirius concluded.

"More that someone else decided I needed a forcible retirement, and dropped a child on me to keep me here, but that is otherwise mostly correct," Taylor told him. "In essence."

"That's all I need to know," he said. "Now, if you want to give Dumbledore your full life story… It might get him off your back."

"Not a chance in hell," Taylor said. "What was he planning to do to me, if you could find a way to end the danger, but not save me?"

"Killing you… was on the table," Sirius admitted. "For him and Remus. Not for me. But if you told him–"

"He's worried that I'm possessed by a thing from another dimension, and that it could spread from me, right?" Taylor asked.

"Yes…" Sirius admitted. "Also that it will torture, kill, and attempt to dominate the world… I'll get the unicorn book from Remus, that'll show you what he's worried might happen."

"I am harboring a thing from another dimension," Taylor told him. "It's not inherently good or safe, either. I trust it… maybe a little more now that you got it to explain what it wants, long-term, but still not a lot. And it can, theoretically, spread."

Sirius put both hands to his head, covering his mouth and nose. "Uh… No bad touch, please?" he requested through his cupped hands.

"Theoretically," Taylor said. "You'd know if it got to you. You'd manifest some extra power or sense or ability. From the little I know, if it could still spread it would have already. Probably to Harry, not you. Being in this dimension, with the defenses, might be interfering. I was already connected when I came here, its offspring might not be able to make a connection to someone else who is already here."

That was a comfort; he was wondering whether the Summoning shield still existed, given Taylor's presence. He still wondered how, exactly, it worked, and why Taylor was an exception, but that was best left alone.

"He isn't wrong," Taylor concluded. "Dumbledore. The difference is in the details. Which, if he's been agonizing over this for years, he'll never accept and leave well enough alone."

"I wouldn't say agonizing," Sirius grumbled, remembering Dumbledore's explanation as to what he had been doing. "More like occasionally researching it when he has time. For four years. Getting nowhere."

"Maybe telling him some of the truth will serve to neutralize him, but I don't think so," Taylor concluded. "If he didn't hold so much power, I might do it anyway, just in case it helped. But as it is, I will not tell him the truth only to have him decide I'm too dangerous to leave alive after all."

"It might just be better to have Taylor Hebert disappear," Sirius mused. Now that he knew what Dumbledore was worried about, and that it was just close enough to true that Taylor was right, the old man would probably never leave well enough alone… "You disappear, I get a full-time fake girlfriend, we figure out a way to permanently alter your appearance enough that he doesn't know you're the same person, and we don't let him meet you until you know enough Occlumency to keep him from skimming even your surface thoughts."

"That…" She frowned thoughtfully. "It would mean abandoning my house. My job. The job I was going to give up anyway, soon, but the house… I'll think about it. I've kept my witch identity separate from Taylor Hebert so nobody alerted Dumbledore, but I kept my first name. I would need to set up a new identity, with the new physical appearance."

"It's not a short-term solution," Sirius agreed. "I don't know how we're going to change you enough to be unrecognizable, permanently, with it being comfortable for you." He was just spitballing general ideas at this stage; the actual implementation was going to be difficult to figure out.

"This idea also requires I pretend to be your girlfriend," Taylor said. "I'm not comfortable with that for any extended length of time. Not now."

"There are other lies," he conceded. "Something to keep you in close contact with Harry. Live-in maid or secretary come to mind, but if I told anyone who knows me that lie they would assume you were my girl in one way or another, so I was just cutting out the middleman."

Taylor looked away. "I'll think about it. For now–"

"Hold the course, yeah," he finished for her. "We keep doing what we were doing, I keep an eye on Remus and bury him in research, and in the meantime I shower you in apologetic gifts and favors."

"Those first two," she corrected.

"All three," he insisted. "Let me make it right."

"You can't, not with money or expensive gifts." She glared at him.

"It's not an effective apology if it's something you don't want, is it?" he asked. "You'll see. I know how to make up for a fuck up, I have a lot of practice." There were advantages to being a screw-up. One either got very good at fixing mistakes, or one suffered.

"You can try," she conceded.

He would take that permission and run with it.

Taylor had an unusual connection to wands. As far as she understood her situation, she did not need a wand at all. Not to do magic. She had practiced with one that did not fit her, in the beginning, and it hurt, but practicing wandless magic hurt just as much.

On a related note, she now knew three wordless, wandless spells, after much pain and struggle to master them. The countercurse to turn back to a human, Stupefy, and Wingardium Leviosa. It took a lot longer to get a spell down without either words or wand, so it often wasn't worth doing for more obvious spells, but those three? Those were special. Silent, motionless stunners and what amounted to imprecise telekinesis…

Nobody would ever be able to tie her up and interrogate her again. She had not been able to think with the Veritaserum in her, and either the sleeping potion or Sirius' other preparation had negated her power's interference while she was unconscious, but nobody kept prisoners drugged with extremely expensive, short-lived potions at all times. Any time she could think and use magic, she could now stun or move anything in her immediate vicinity, at only the cost of an instant headache if she did so too often in a short span of time.

Paradoxically, mastering more spells without a wand reminded her of exactly how good a painkiller her custom wand was, and how she only had the one. Other wands didn't do that for her. This drove her to Diagon Alley today, going back to do something she should have months ago. Sirius ordering her four arms was ridiculous, but one backup arm was a smart preventative measure. A backup wand was a similarly intelligent precaution. Not one she would take out with her and her primary wand, but one she could leave in a safe place in case of a less immediate emergency.

Ollivander's shop was brightly lit when she entered, contrasting the miserable British weather outside. An older woman was inside with Ollivander, trying each wand he passed her in turn. Taylor waited, watching with interest as the normal wand-fitting procedure continued.

The woman eventually settled on an Oak and Phoenix wand, a plain thing with a gnarled tip, and paid Ollivander. Once she was gone–

"You have done much with that wand," Ollivander remarked, by her side in an instant. The crotchety old man reached out for her wand, but when she refused to let go of it contented himself with running fingers down its length. "Much more than I expected. Your blood curse is certainly unique. Perhaps it is not a curse so much as a failed enhancement, from long ago when men were foolish enough to meddle with their own magic," he mused.

"It's served me well," she replied. "I want another."

"A backup?" he asked. "Or for a friend?"

"You told me none could use it but me," she objected. "What friend would I give a useless wand to?"

"Perhaps not a friend at all," Ollivander said darkly, returning to the stacks of passed-up wands in their elaborate boxes. He turned his back on Taylor to sort the wand boxes and lift them to the counter. "I must say, Ms. Blood Curse, you have an enemy. You paid me and he did not, so I will tell you about his visit to my shop."

"Barty," Taylor guessed. Who else was her enemy, and interested in her wand? She was suddenly much more interested in this than in getting a backup wand.

"The fugitive, yes," Ollivander confirmed, turning back to her. "He came in two months after his escape that the Ministry denies. He pretended to be another, and I played along, but I knew him. He asked after a wand like yours, and I told him there were none like yours, save for one I had made. He pressed me on the subject, and eventually let slip that he thought such a 'vile, unique wand' might be the Death Stick." Ollivander laughed scornfully. "As if the stories would not tell of that wand's appearance if it was anything but ordinary in looks."

Taylor added 'The Death Stick' to her ever-growing list of things to research. Her power sent a distracted sense of curiosity her way. "What did he do when you told him you had made it, and that it was not the artifact he thought it might be?" she asked.

"He left," Ollivander said. "I reported him to the Aurors, but I suspect my report went nowhere."

So she could assume that he probably wasn't fixated on her wand anymore, if that was his initial reason for wanting it. That was… good? Not really. He was still a threat, just one that was no longer known to be fixated on her.

"Did you tell him about its drawbacks?" she asked. That would be important to know.

"Yes," Ollivander said shortly. "He would not have settled for it being just an ordinary wand. I will make another wand for you, at the same price as the first. Is that all you wanted?" He waved his hand dismissively.

"Yes. Thank you." His pissy attitude was annoying, but he had warned her when he got the chance… He couldn't exactly seek her out or owl her, not knowing her name, so he had told her the first chance he got. That deserved a thanks…

And his attitude deserved a tweak to the nose, so she used a few silent levitation charms to switch wands between three boxes when he wasn't looking.

Good weather in the British springtime was a gift to be savored, and everyone in Harry's friend group knew it. A day where the wind held to a pleasant breeze, the clouds were sparse and puffy, and the air was pleasantly warm? They were out by the lake as often their classes allowed. Those of them that didn't have mystery projects.

"What do you think it is?" Ginny asked for the third time that afternoon. He and Ginny were the only ones out by the shore at the moment, as Luna had class, Hermione had gone inside to get something to eat, and Neville was busy.

"A plant," Harry said confidently. "It's always a plant with him."

"A plant has him so busy he doesn't have time for preparing Cedric for the third task?" Ginny said doubtfully. "I think he's doing something to help set up the third task. They grew those hedges, maybe it's all plant-based. That's why he's not contributing, he doesn't think he can without it being cheating, because he has inside knowledge!"

"That doesn't stop it from being a plant," Harry argued. "I didn't say what it would be for." He supposed it could be a non-plant project for the third task, but then why had Neville specifically been asked to help? Maybe he was trying to branch out. "We shouldn't pester him about it."

"He's not here to pester," Ginny remarked, leaning back on the blanket she had transfigured from a leaf. "It's just you and me… and the Squid, out there in the lake."

"And Hermione," Harry remarked, seeing their friend in the distance as she walked back from the castle.

"Hermione…" Ginny sighed, staring up at the clouds, her hands behind her head.

"Yup. She's walking towards us."

"Her robes are swaying…" Ginny said dreamily.

"She has something in her hands," Harry noted.

"Books, filled with knowledge, like her head."

"Too small to be books."

"Her wand, which she wields with such confidence and style."

"Too big. I think it's food. Wanna guess what it is?"

"The taste of her lips on mine…"

"No, I don't–" He looked over at Ginny. "Wait, what?"

"She would say no if she wasn't interested, wouldn't she?" Ginny asked, still looking up at the clouds.

"Does she know she can say no without losing your friendship?" Harry asked, suddenly floundering in the deep and treacherous waters of having to give relationship advice. A few quick kisses with Luna did not qualify him to tell other people what they should be doing. He barely knew what he was doing, most of the time.

"Yes," Ginny assured him. "I told her that."

"And she hasn't said no?" he asked.

"No," Ginny said. "She hasn't. I'm not pushing her for an answer. But I'm not pretending I don't want an answer, either. Should I drop it? Pretend I never asked?"

Hermione was getting closer. Harry considered his best friend, and how she had acted ever since the Yule Ball. If he had to guess, based on everything… "If she wasn't willing to consider it she would have said so by now." Hermione never shied away from saying what she thought. If she wasn't giving a straight answer, it was because she didn't have one to give yet. Meaning she didn't know.

"Thanks." Ginny put one hand in front of her eyes. "I needed to hear that. I'd hoped… One good Yule Ball, a goodbye kiss after, and it would all work out. I got the first one, but the other two? Nope. Complicated all the way through."

"It still might. Or, you know, plenty of fish in the sea?" he suggested.

"How many fish are pretty, smart, assertive, and wonderfully diabolical when slighted?" Ginny asked. "With special magic skills, who actually know me, and who will be able to keep up with me once I'm learning new things instead of just filling in the holes in the stuff Tom left me?"

"There are… some other fish," Harry amended. "At least a few. Somewhere. How about…" Luna was taken and not in the least bit diabolical, Susan wasn't either, 'diabolical' actually ruled out most of the girls he knew… "Fleur?" he concluded. "She seems smart and vengeful." Also French, likely to go back to her country after the tournament, with dozens of suitors, but she did seem to fit Ginny's criteria.

"Gorgeous, but too flighty and snooty," was Ginny's verdict.

"Hey Hermione!" Harry called out, letting Ginny know that their friend was getting close enough to possibly overhear if they kept talking. "What've you got there?"

"Owl came for me, for you, from Sirius," Hermione reported. "He sent a package and a letter."

"Why was it for you if it was for me?" Harry asked.

"He wants me to keep Hissy from seeing it," Hermione answered, sitting down on the other side of Ginny. She passed the brown-wrapped box and letter over Ginny's midsection. "It's a weekday, so no problems there. Didn't he do something to make her mad?"

"Something like that," Harry said vaguely. He knew his mum was maybe trying to forgive Sirius, but also hurt by him, so he didn't want to go into all of that with his friends until he knew what the outcome would be. He had some choice words for Sirius, though, which the school owl had delivered a few weeks ago. This would be the response.

Sirius' reputation as a prankster of some renown had Harry cast the one detection charm he knew over the package. It came up clean for listening spells, which was mostly useless so far as diagnostic information went.

Still… Better to read the letter first. He set the package aside–

"Hey," Ginny complained.

"Whoops." He took it and set it on his other side, where it wouldn't be balancing atop his friend's stomach. Hermione giggled as he busied himself opening the letter.

'Harry,' it read, 'you're right. I don't have any excuses. Reasons, but no excuses. Seeing as how your mum hasn't turned me into bug food yet and said I could try to make it up to her, could you give me your opinion on the things in the accompanying package? Would she like anything from there, do you think? Gifts might not be the path to her forgiveness, but I think, if she told you what I did, these specific potential gifts might mean a lot to her. But I'm a verified idiot, so I need a second opinion. Also, be careful, they are Black heirlooms so there are some sharp edges.'

"Why is everyone asking me for relationship advice today?" he said aloud.

"Who else asked you for advice?" Hermione asked.

"Is Sirius dating your mum?" Ginny quickly added, giving him a choice as to which question he wanted to answer.

"No," he said, evading Hermione's question. "I don't think so? Definitely not now, he wants my opinion on these things he wants to give her as an apology for something stupid he did." That said, he opened the package and dumped it out on the grass in front of him. Four distinct items fell out. One was a metal cylinder the size of his pointer finger, one was a wooden pyramid, and the other two were normal-looking Sickles, simple coins with the usual Goblin designs stamped on either side.

"Ooh." Ginny sat up and hunched forward to look at the items. "Artifacts. Does he say what they are?"

Harry looked into the empty box and withdrew a folded bit of parchment. He read it, then looked at the items again. "This one," he pointed to the cylinder, "is a hidden minorly cursed blade. If you stab someone with it, they'll be dizzy until the next time the moon rises."

Ginny gingerly lifted the cylinder and ran a finger along the contoured sides. A long metal spike jutted out of one end, twice as long as the cylinder itself. "I like this," she said.

"The coins," Harry continued, noticing that Hermione was looking at them, "are a special multi-Portkey setup. They only work if you click them together. Neither counts as a portkey on its own, so they can pass for normal coins when apart."

"That's useful," Hermione remarked.

"And this…" Harry poked at the wooden pyramid. "Is a…" He read the note again. "Completely pointless wooden pyramid with 'Sirius Black is an idiot' engraved in runes on every side?"

"Wow, what did he do?" Hermione asked. She put the Portkey coins down to look at the pyramid. "It really does say that."

"I think he should give your mum all of these," Ginny said. "The blade is cool, the portkeys are useful, and the pyramid makes him seem humble."

"Portkeys are good." He pat his robe pocket, where his unofficial 'Hufflepuff safety' portkey was kept. Hermione and Ginny had their own, but anyone who checked their robes and knew what to look for would be able to find them. Taylor would appreciate the extra security of the two-part portkey, he was sure. "I'll tell him to give her all of them."

He hoped Sirius could successfully ease his mum's damaged trust back to where it had been. He didn't like seeing her unhappy. Only time would really tell, though. Maybe by the third task things would be getting better. Either with them, or with Hermione and Ginny…

"Boo!" Two hands went over his eyes. He yelped, fumbled for his Hufflepuff portkey, and then relaxed as he recognized the person who had startled him, leaning back into her grasp. "Luna!"

"You're so easy to sneak up on," Luna laughed.

At least he wasn't having any trouble with his friends, possible girlfriend, or secret plant projects. Somebody in their group ought to be the rock everyone else could come to for advice. He was going to have to get used to that, if said position was destined to always be filled by him. Or maybe Luna…

"I'm learning to cast a ghost octopus," Luna informed the group. "It can't open jars, though."

Yes, it was probably going to have to be him.

Taylor was not happy. Things were not back to normal between her and Sirius. But time marched on, heedless of her feelings. In a perfect world, there would have been months spent around Sirius rebuilding her trust in low-stakes situations – or deciding she couldn't trust him anymore – before anything else happened. He was an important part of her plans for the future and one of maybe two adults she knew well enough to rely on in any capacity. The air between them was clear, but only time would smooth over her nerves. Time, and his constant attempts to apologize in varied and creative ways.

This was not a perfect world, no matter how much better it was than her home world, and she didn't have months. The third task of the Triwizard Tournament came far too quickly, arriving on the heels of struggling fruitlessly to find the one person she knew for sure was her enemy.

Barty Crouch Junior had gone to ground, and he wasn't going to pop up in a newspaper article like Pettigrew had. The seedy underworld of Knockturn Alley knew nothing of his whereabouts. There was no talk of Death Eater activity beyond that of speculation from the outside. In the higher but no less seedy rungs of society, Sirius reported stonewalling and some genuine uncertainty. They knew nothing concrete, and that had not changed, not even as the end of the Triwizard Tournament drew near. If a former terrorist was going to get back to his roots, that would be where he did it.

She might not completely trust Sirius. She might not know whether Barty was planning something at all. She might not be particularly interested in watching the third task. But she still met up with Sirius, allowed herself to be side-along Apparated to outside Hogwarts' gates on the day of the tournament. They had a job to do. Lingering distrust had no place in the face of a common enemy.

Moody met them at the gates of Hogwarts at dawn, hours before the event was scheduled to start. "What was the first thing you ever said to me?" he demanded of Taylor.

"It was…" She didn't remember everything she had ever said, but she thought she knew what she had said in that particular instance. "You had better not be looking under my robes with that magical eye of yours," she answered. Moody was betting on her imposter not having bothered learning about such an unimportant thing. It was a safe bet, really. He could ask about any tiny detail, and Barty couldn't dig up everything that had ever happened between them with any number of interrogations. Safety in obscurity.

"Right," he said. "Black, how many times did I curse your robes during Order meetings?"

"How many meetings were there?" Sirius mused. "At least three times for each one. How do we know you're Moody? What did you say when James kicked your chair over before you sat down that one time?"

"Black, ask something the real person stands a chance of remembering," Moody admonished. "I told him to keep his feet to himself or I would replace them with pegs like mine."

"Right, good, that shite's out of the way," Sirius said. "Let's get down to business."

Moody took them to the stands, which had been set up in front of the third task's hedge maze. Taylor knew of the maze, and had ever since they blocked off the Quidditch pitch to make it; Ginny in particular had bemoaned the loss of their best practice place for their pickup Quidditch team.

"Nasty creatures are gonna be loaded into here in an hour," Moody told them. "The outside walls of the maze are spelled nigh-indestructible, and there's a second ward around the stands that will go up at the first sign of danger."

He gave them a brief tour of the maze's interior, which was relatively simple. The maze itself was meant as a delaying factor and a way of ensuring that champions would encounter each other as they backtracked and took different paths. The real danger would come from the creatures and the other champions.

Outside the maze, there was a small stand for where the trophy and prize money would be awarded by the Minister himself. The trophy wasn't there yet; the Minister and his aides weren't due for another two hours.

"I swept the stands, they're clean as of half an hour ago," Moody told them. "There'll be an Auror team watching for tampering here specifically, because Merlin forbid Fudge be in any danger, but that's all the Auror backup I'm allowed."

"One personal team of Aurors?" Sirius shook his head. "It's like they want this to go tits-up."

"Ostriches make bad leaders," Moody growled. "Spectators will come in by the front gate, and I will be there checking each and every one of them with this." He tapped a finger on his magic eye. The fingernail clicked unpleasantly on the hard surface. "You two, I want watching. Anyone comes in from any other direction, check them. I don't give a shit if it's Dumbledore himself, you find an excuse to bare their forearm and search them for flasks of liquid of any kind. Black, you still know the smell of Polyjuice?"

"We both do," Sirius said.

"Good," Moody grunted. "You see anything suspicious, stun first and then come get me. Stun any blighter who tries to take your perp away from you, too. I don't care if you get into a spell shootout with the Aurors, I can smooth that over when I get to you, just keep anyone from taking him away. I'm gonna have words with Barty if we get him."

And so they did. The tournament grounds quickly became a bustling hive of activity, with animal handlers, Ministry officials, and various school-children gawkers getting underfoot. Through it all, Taylor swept most of those arriving with her insects without them noticing, and directed Sirius to personally search the rest, giving the appearance of random checks while in reality checking everyone.

Sirius worked well under her direction, going where indicated and often giving personal spins to his approach to convince recalcitrant officials or annoyed handlers to stop and let him check them, despite him not wearing Auror robes or otherwise bearing any official proof of authority. He wielded his name as Lord Black on some, while dropping the pretense and leveling with others, and for others still leaning on his status as a veteran of the last war, all with just enough charm that it didn't seem consciously manipulative. It wasn't manipulation, she was pretty sure. He just knew how to relate to people.

She wanted to go back to trusting him absolutely. It was a bit of a surprise to realize that she ever had trusted him like that; there were precious few in her life who could claim they had her absolute trust for any length of time at all. Fewer still who might feasibly still be alive in some corner of the multiverse. He had, objectively speaking, done nothing to earn that level of trust.

Nothing except working for the same goals, trusting her, and always offering a friendly ear or insightful explanation or bawdy joke, as needed. Opening his home to her, his library, his resources. Teaching her, siding with her against the world. Now he even knew about her past, in vague details, and had apologized for doing what he had to do to be sure of her. He was still apologizing, every other day.

She had ample time to contemplate Sirius in all his contradictory glory, because they found nothing suspicious in the hours leading up to the third task. Many wizards and witches carried liquids of various kinds on them, and often Taylor had to bug them until they opened their flasks for a drink, but none of their drinks smelled of what she now knew as Polyjuice, and all who arrived stayed long enough that she knew they could not be disguised that way. She checked for glamors too, running gnats into their faces to check for discrepancies between the visual surface and the physical surface, and found exactly two, both covering up ugly warts on otherwise pristine witches. Checking their breath didn't work, as Polyjuice matched the subject's smell perfectly once it was working.

The stands filled with spectators, from the gates and from the castle. The maze filled with dangerous creatures of every imaginable description, even a Sphinx one flustered Ministry worker had tried to persuade to wear a shirt, or at least a bra, to no avail. Harry was up near the top of the student stands; she took the time to place a few wasps on his yellow school tie, just in case. He sat with his friends, ignoring the self-imposed house divide, and she noticed him holding Luna's hand on the sly.

That was something to watch. Her son in the throes of his first crush and possibly getting his first girlfriend were not milestones she intended to miss. After today, she could spend more time with him, and this summer…

Sirius' application for guardianship was in the final stages of approval, past the point where Dumbledore could have clandestinely interfered. Unless the meddling old man intended to make a dramatic gesture to spite someone he considered a trusted ally, Sirius would get custody just before the summer began.

Those things were for the future. For the moment, she bent her will toward finding Barty, wherever he might be hiding. The last few guests arrived and Moody stomped up from the gates, meaning there shouldn't be anyone else entering the area. The Minister's security team arrived and spread out to form a cordon around the Minister, who showed up shortly after. He came with Percy Weasley, who was carrying a hat, an umbrella, and the golden cup for him. Percy was devoid of liquid containers, and the Minister only had a flask of strong alcohol on him, so they were clean. Moody checked each of the Aurors himself.

"If Barty is here we missed him or he doesn't plan to stay for more than an hour," Sirius reported when he and Taylor met up with Moody under the stands. Taylor had already physically swept the area looking for suspicious packages and found nothing, so her worst fear of a bombing of the spectators didn't seem likely to come to pass.

"That'd be risky, but he might be feeling desperate," Moody agreed. "Can't rule it out. Keep an eye out for anyone going places they shouldn't. Taylor, sting me if you need my attention."

"She can just stick a fly up your nose…" Sirius contemplated Moody's wrecked face. "Okay, maybe she should use an ear, my point stands. No need to get stung."

"Get my attention with a bug," Moody huffed. "Sting for urgent, bug in the ear for important but not urgent, bug in the good eye if you caught him and don't need immediate assistance. Same system for Black."

"Well… screw you too?" Sirius said to Moody's departing back. "I don't want to get a bug in the eye for a 'total success' signal."

"Too bad, I don't want to juggle two different sets of signals," Taylor said. "I'm going to find a place to stand that keeps the stands and the maze in my range. You?"

"I'll stick myself somewhere up at the back of the visitor stands, so I can look down at the people watching," Sirius suggested. "Moody will be near Fudge, no doubt. We can cover our bases that way."

"Good." She left Sirius to find a place where the entirety of the maze was within her reach. It was a big maze, but not that big, so she had some leeway. She managed to get all of the maze, the student and adult seating areas, and Fudge's little platform all by standing behind his platform near Percy Weasley.

"Who are you?" Weasley demanded. If his nose upturned any further in condescension it would make him look like a spindly pig.

"Security," she said blandly.

"Don't touch the prize money," he warned. He then proceeded to set a literal bag of galleons behind Fudge's podium and wander off towards the student stands, proving himself either immensely trusting or extremely careless. Sure, she was in plain sight of three of the Aurors, but nobody knew who she was beyond 'Moody's personal security' and she could just take the money and walk away. A thousand galleons was, as far as she could tell, a life-changing amount of money. He was definitely an idiot.

Such uncharitable thoughts occupied Taylor while Ludo Bagman introduced the judges, the champions, and the third task, hyping it up with completely unnecessary embellishments, and then finally got around to explaining the standings and what those first two tasks actually meant in this, last task to decide the ultimate winner.

"Each point is a minute lead," Bagman explained. "First place goes in, then second place waits the point difference between them in minutes before following, and so on. In the first task, Champion Diggory scored eighteen points, Champion Delacour scored twenty-seven points, and Champion Krum scored a perfect thirty points."

The champions, who were waiting by the single entrance to the maze, shifted on their feet impatiently as Bagman continued to draw out the introduction.

"In the second task, Champion Diggory stormed ahead with twenty-five points," Bagman continued. "Champion Delacour scored nine points, and Champion Krum scored twenty-one points. This takes us to their combined scores–"

Which Taylor had already worked out in her head. She eyed Weasley as he sat down in the front row of the student stands and transfigured his robes to look like Hogwarts robes but with more Gryffindor gold and red. Someone wanted to relive his not-so-distant glory days, though not so badly that he had sought out his younger brothers.

"Champion Krum is in the lead with fifty-one points going into the final task!" Bagman announced. "Champion Diggory is right behind him with forty-three points, and Champion Delacour brings up a distant third at just thirty-six points. The other champions will be hard-pressed to catch up with Krum, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion!"

Taylor thought he would say that even if it was obviously a foregone conclusion; people didn't come out to watch and cheer for an inevitability. Then again, she had heard things about the Chudley Cannons that said otherwise…

Moody was over with the judges, working on the scrying bowl. Clouds of mist burst from it just as Bagman finished his score recap, spreading out to form three large clouds, one showing each of the champions.

"No map this time," Bagman said, "so that nobody can give our Champions a hint. Somewhere in the maze there is a cup. First to take the cup wins the tournament!"

Krum set off into the maze, and Bagman put up a big timer to show how long until Cedric could go, but Taylor paid little attention to either of them. She watched the crowd, the Minister, the animal handlers waiting out of sight in case something went wrong, Hagrid a veritable giant among them.

She watched everyone, waiting for someone to do something unusual. If Barty was here, he would have a reason for being here, one worth risking his freedom for. One that involved or at least allowed for sabotage of the second task, unless that was unrelated.

What would a presumed-dead terrorist want with the third task? Why would he care?

To sow terror was the obvious answer. The attack on the second task supported that, to a degree. But why terror based on the performance of the Champions? Was that a crime of opportunity, or the intended outcome? He had wanted her wand but might not now, and his old master was dead and gone. If he was here, what might he intend to get out of it?

It was possible nothing would happen, but Taylor hadn't come here under the assumption that it would be unnecessary. Assuming someone intended to do something…

Cedric went into the maze, and immediately began transfiguring and enchanting several different items, to much anticipation from the crowd. He would be fine.

Percy Weasley stood and started up the stands, headed for his little sister.

Taylor remembered a stuck-up older brother in and out of the Burrow all summer, droning on about cauldrons and being the very image of a proper, anal-retentive government employee in training. She remembered him interacting with Ginny in Hogsmeade, and how Ginny had shrugged off what seemed to be unusual behavior from him. She remembered that he had been there for the second task, present during the choosing of hostages, agreeing with Fudge in pushing for Harry to be a hostage. She remembered him leaving a small fortune right in front of her to go sit with the students, just a few minutes ago.

It didn't add up, and Ginny was sitting in the same row as Harry, between him and Hermione. Ginny wasn't his reason for going up at all, was she?

She stung Moody on the shoulder and Sirius on the arm, and circled around behind the Minister and Bagman to get to the stands without walking right in front of everyone. Percy was moving slowly, picking his way past a contingent of belligerent Slytherins, and he was momentarily stalled when everyone stood to cheer for Cedric banishing a Boggart with a whip of white mist, bypassing the traditional countercurse in favor of effectively aimed brute force.

Fleur entered the maze. At the same time, Taylor and Sirius reached the bottom of the student stands and started up, one on either side. Moody carefully aimed his wand at her from by the maze, silently offering fire support if she could make a target clear.

Percy Weasley reached the row with Harry and Ginny, but they were in the middle. He went one row further up and began stepping over knees and avoiding the backs of heads as he worked towards the center.

Fleur Delacour faced off with the Sphinx. The Sphinx said something about inconsiderate Enlishmen, and Fleur stopped to commiserate with her. The Sphinx let her by without even asking a riddle.

Krum encountered Cedric in an intersection, the former backtracking from a dead end. They exchanged spells, dodging to either side of the hedges to fire at each other from cover, for the plants had proved nigh-invincible to all of the magic the champions leveled against it.

Taylor reached the row Percy Weasley was sidling down. Sirius came up at the other end. Percy saw him.

Percy raised his wand, pointing it at Harry–

The Hufflepuff whose knees he was standing over shoved him to the side and demanded to know why he was blocking her view.

Taylor and Sirius both cast. Percy flopped over as dual stunning spells hit him, collapsing over the annoyed girl's knees and knocking his head on the boy sitting next to her.

It did not feel like this was over. Not by a long shot.

Sirius dragged the Weasley-imposter by the shoulders out of the stands, apologizing to the students who had to lean out of his way. "The prat was trying to prank his sister, nothing to see here," he lied. "Just stopping him from making a scene, can't have him ruining the third task– Look, that Sphinx's knockers are out!"

Such distractions served him well, aside from the one Ravenclaw girl who hexed him when he tried that one within hearing distance, and he met Taylor, Harry, Ginny, Hermione, Neville, Luna and Moody at the foot of the stands with his unconscious captive. Moody immediately moved them under the stands and out of sight.

"Why'd you bring the kids?" he demanded of Taylor, who was doing her thing. The thing where she was somehow paying complete attention to them all while also controlling hundreds of bugs all over her person, like she was ready to attack in an instant if the Weasley-imposter woke up and made a break for it.

"She didn't, we want to know what's going on," Hermione said. Ginny and Neville nodded, and Luna smiled guilelessly at Moody. Harry looked to his mother, who shrugged her shoulders.

"This ain't Percy Weasley," Moody declared, poking the stunned redhead with his wand. "I assume."

"He wasn't acting like him, and he was about to get behind Harry with his wand out," Taylor confirmed. "Polyjuice?"

"Or Imperius," Moody agreed. "Not the actions of an innocent man…" he began pawing through Weasley-imposter's robes. "Got it." Moody used the folds of Percy's robes to flick a gnarled twig up out of a sewn-on interior pocket. "Portkey. Keyed… With the overrides to have it work like the security portkeys. Destination… Unknown."

"That's his getaway plan," Sirius said. "Should we follow it?" They could figure out what Barty intended to do once he had Harry, maybe.

"We ought to follow," Moody agreed. "One problem. It's keyed. Nifty spellwork… Will only trigger if Harry is touching it."

"Can it take more than just him?" Taylor asked.

"Aye, five's the limit on this kind of portkey," Moody said. "We don't have a return portkey, though, and I'm not taking the target into the trap. I can maybe break the enchantments, given time–"

"I have a portkey," Harry suggested. Moody glared disbelievingly down at him, and he quickly elaborated. "Every Hufflepuff does, we made them for safety. It goes to Saint Mungo's."

"Good thinking," Moody said gruffly. "Right. This one can take up to four people if I fiddle with the limiting enchantments. Taylor, Me, Black, Harry. The moment we get there Harry uses his own portkey. We three investigate. It won't be warded against portkeys in or out, it needs to let this one through. No danger for Harry, we get to where we need to be."

"We can–" Ginny began.

"You lot can do stunners?" Moody interrupted. The kids all said so, with various levels of disgruntlement. "Good. I need you here. Guard the suspect, here. Barty or Weasley, whichever he might be, don't let up for an instant. If he twitches, hit him again. If someone tries to intervene, tell 'em he's polyjuiced and I left you to keep him in custody. If he turns back into Barty after a half-hour, hide his face and don't tell the Aurors, they've got orders to cover his existence up and I'm not done with him. Don't let anyone, even the Minister, near him. Got it?"

Sirius could almost see the internal battles being waged in their heads; the desire to go on the adventure facing off against the desire to help and be useful. They were an interesting lot; he genuinely didn't know which they would go for. If it were him and the other Marauders back in their day, they'd never settle for being left behind.

"Go," Hermione said. Ginny looked set to argue, but she backed down. Neville pointed his wand at Possibly-Percy and hit him with a Stupefy, "just in case."

"Good." Moody nodded at Neville. "Alright, we go in fast and we go in hard. Harry, wait three seconds and then take your portkey back, and be careful not to bring anyone else with you. Ready, everyone grab on, kid last!'

"One moment." Taylor put her wand in the air.

"We're burning daylight," Moody growled, but he quieted when the buzzing grew too loud to miss.

Tens of thousands of bugs converged on Taylor, coming from the grass, the sky, and the stands above. They burrowed under her robes, grouped up on her back, piled under her hair, and even filled out her robe's empty arm after she detached her false arm and let it fall to the ground.

"Teleporting into a hostile environment is no time for half-measures," Taylor told them.

Sirius hoped she realized that Moody was never going to leave her alone now. He would badger and press her until she gave up whatever eldritch spell she was using for insect control. That many bugs, that coordinated… She wasn't even worried they would sting her!

"That's awesome," Neville whispered. "Can you breed more bees?"

"She has enough bees," Hermione whispered back.

"You can never have enough bees," Ginny said. "If they only sting your enemies."

"I was thinking for pollination," Neville admitted.

"Right," Moody grunted, once the shock had worn off. "Try to keep those aimed away from friendlies. Hold tight and react fast, now! If he's got co-conspirators they shouldn't be expecting enemies to come in, but they are expecting a bewildered Hufflepuff, so they'll be on guard."

The chosen four put their hands in, grabbing the portkey twig. The moment Harry's hand made contact, Sirius felt the navel-hook sensation of portkey travel.

It was gloomy and dark where they landed, a large enclosed space made of well-polished stone. Sirius held his wand in front of him and pivoted, putting his back to their group as he looked around. He saw vaulted ceilings, gray stone, elaborate torches on the walls, a cauldron over simmering coals, and a floor of writhing black shadows from wall to wall–

"Incendio!" he yelled, flinging a blast of fire at the hundreds of black snakes coming for them. Dozens died, and dozens more avoided the fire, and his next two frantic casts. Then they were on him, and the rest of the group.

Fangs bit into his legs, his robes, his shoes. He kicked and cast a flame-freezing charm on himself, then doused his front with fire, scorching them off. Insects buzzed around him and the others – he had his back to someone, probably Taylor – and stung snakes, and his flames helped, Moody was yelling something, there were so many of them! He didn't know a spell better suited to mass snake-killing than incendio, but it wasn't enough–

He heard an especially loud, strident hiss from behind him. The snakes veered off, a bloodied and burnt tide of scale and fang breaking around their defensive circle like the tide.

Something else hissed, from elsewhere in the room, and the fight kicked back into gear. Sirius made good use of the momentary respite, conjuring a bucket of oil and tossing it into the writhing mass as it surged forward, then burning that along with the snakes themselves.

The scent of burnt meat invaded his nostrils, but they kept coming until the closer hiss sounded again. Then another hiss, and it started again. The hisses came faster, back and forth, and Sirius turned to see Harry was one of the two hissing. Taylor was missing, and Moody had a massive dead snake sticking off his shoulder like a shred of mostly-destroyed cape.

Sirius took a step back and ripped the snake off of Moody, seizing it by the jaw and prying its lengthy fangs out of his shoulder. "Where's Taylor?" he demanded, in between the stop and start attacks from the horde of legless monsters.

"Buggered if I – don't throw it away, need the fangs!" Moody gasped, snatching the dead snake from Sirius' grasp. "Venom, need antivenom."

Harry's hissing was providing them a partial respite, and Sirius fully intended to use it to find Taylor. He looked around in between Incendios, gaining an idea of what else was around the room. There were runes carved into the walls, runes of protection and deflection, and the door was sealed with blobs of iron instead of locks. He knew that setup, there would be no getting out by the door. They had portkeyed into a partially-sealed ritual room. Harry might still be able to go, Moody's logic held up, but that would be the only way out. The room was bare save for snake carcasses, still-living snakes, the boiling cauldron, and a freckled pale body tied up in the corner. Percy Weasley.

Taylor shifted into view, grimacing as she changed back from a snake right at the cauldron. She reached in, jabbing her wand downward. "Call them off!" she yelled at the contents of the cauldron.

The hiss Harry was countering, which Sirius now realized was coming from the cauldron, cut off. Harry hissed once more, and the snakes retreated, still numbering in the hundreds despite the mass slaughter.

"Bugger me," Moody grunted. "That was close. Boy, get out of here!"

"Can't, he'll hiss again and none of you speak Parseltongue to tell them off," Harry argued.

"He?" Sirius looked to Taylor, who was staring into the cauldron.

"This… thing," she said. "What is it?"

"I am Lord Voldemort!" a shrill voice shrieked from the cauldron.

Sirius shared an incredulous look with Moody. Moody took point as the three of them approached the cauldron, stepping around and over dozens of momentarily docile snakes.

What lay inside, submerged in a soup of unidentifiable sludge, was an unnatural baby-like creature, something straight from the how-to section of a beginner book on necromancy. A baby-thing that was no baby, though if he knew his dark magic it might have started out as one. It was a human homunculus, and a sickly one inundated with even more dark magic than needed for its creation.

One with Voldemort's red eyes and high voice.

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?" Taylor asked. Her wand poked the thing in the forehead. She sounded utterly unimpressed, though that might have been because she had no personal experience with the thing in the cauldron or the one it claimed to be.

"I can never die," the homunculus declared. "I will return, and you will aid me or you will suffer for opposing me!"

"You're the who attacked the Potters and tried to kill their son?" Taylor asked.

"Yes!" the homunculus said. "Fear–"

"Reducto."

Sirius shielded his face, but he still got potion and homunculus blend all over himself as it exploded out of the cauldron.

"Stay dead this time," Taylor said.

The glee Taylor's power felt was completely out of line with the disgusting blend of potion and evil baby-body dark lord, but Taylor understood why. Thanks to Sirius and his veritaserum interrogation, she knew her power wanted her to live forever, and here was a dark lord claiming he was unkillable thanks to magic. It was a lead, though she was going to put her foot down if immortality had to be anything like the existence she had just ended.

The four of them stood around the cauldron, in various states of soaked and covered in chunky bits, shocked by her sudden, explosive decision.

She didn't regret it. She didn't kill often – Winky the house elf was her only confirmed kill in this world – but Voldemort was the obvious exception, akin to this world's Hitler except this world had a real Hitler and another dark lord who was more obviously his magical equivalent. He had tried to kill Harry once, had arranged to kidnap him today, and was a terrorist responsible for hundreds of deaths. Blowing him to pieces before he could do anything was the right move.

"That's going to make the paperwork a bitch," Moody remarked.

Sirius wiped potion from his face. His hands shook, and then he fell.

"Sirius!" Harry cried out, crouching beside him. Moody went to his other side and put a wand to his chest, muttering the beginning of a diagnostic charm–

Taylor saw it, but she didn't have a clear shot. Sirius pointed his wand at Moody, opened his eyes, and they were red. "Reducto!" Sirius shouted.

Moody's body slammed into the floor, defended from fatal harm by his charmed robes, but Sirius was upon him in an instant, blocking her first three spells with his free hand and countering Moody's retaliation with his wand, engaging in a lightning-fast flurry of spells that ended with a shouted "Avada Kedavra" that sapped the life from Moody with an evil green pulse.

This wasn't Sirius.

Taylor set her wasps – the precious few she had left after fighting the snakes amidst all the fire – on him, but he jolted away, his limbs moving unnaturally, and threw three wandless, wordless bolts of spellfire at her, forcing her to dive behind the cauldron. Her wasps struck at his eyes as Harry scrambled away, but he muttered something and a familiar shimmering shield burst out of his robes, denying her bugs purchase on his skin.

"I cannot die!" Voldemort yelled as kicked the cauldron over on top of her. She threw herself out of the way and behind a chunky pile of snake bodies, then kept moving because a single blasting curse would turn her cover into soupy mush. "I will not die!" he yelled as she moved. "You have guaranteed your deaths!" He hissed, and the living snakes all reared up, but Harry hissed right back at him and they turned on each other, killing their brethren.

"Ah," Voldemort said, allowing the snakes to continue killing each other, though he could have hissed to stop it. His red eyes focused on Harry. "Potter. I wondered if there was anything to it. Let us see if you are my equal, after all."

Harry shouted something, waving his wand in a complex motion, but a crackling bolt of red lightning drove him behind the toppled cauldron before he could finish casting. Sirius – but it was really Voldemort – was on him in a second, moving unnaturally quickly, pulling him out by the robes.

Harry grabbed at Sirius' arm, clawing ineffectually at skin and white magic shield alike. Taylor hit Sirius in the back with a stunner. It deflected off the white shield, but the physical impact spun him around and Harry got his wand up to accio a chunk of burnt snake into the back of his head.

The snake skull bounced off another skin-level shield of white light, and Voldemort threw Harry into a pile of still-smoldering snake corpses.

Taylor ran out from behind her meager snake-body cover, her wand waving as she cast four explosive hexes in a row, relying more on their physical impact than any hope of them actually breaking through to harm him. Voldemort piloted Sirius' body with a fast but jerky stiffness, returning with two spells, both sizzling with dark energy that she knew she could only shield, only dodge.

"No witch can outmatch me," he yelled, even as she continued to dodge and run. Fighting close-up, her go-to strategy for dealing with wizards, was worthless if his shield deflected her fists as well as they did her bugs, her spells, and Harry's hands. Magic might break through, powerful magic, but she had the repertoire of a first-year with a learning disability and a knack for charms over their year level, not anything sufficiently dark and powerful.

Voldemort, even in another person's body, had no such problem. He sent a steady stream of sizzling, unrecognizable curses at her, half of them exploding on impact with the ground or the walls and the other half even more ominously blinking away to no apparent effect, so esoteric they must have targeted living things specifically. She exploited her insect-facilitated spatial awareness for all it was worth, dodging before his hands had even finished waving his wand, but the wandless spells he mixed in had no such tell and she avoided those by the skin of her teeth, each one easily capable of tripping her up and killing her in some no doubt gruesome way.

Harry sprinted towards the door while Voldemort was distracted by her. She hoped he was trying to escape, but she knew he wasn't. The only exit he had was his portkey, which he could use at any time, but wasn't. Damn his bravery, she wanted him out of here!

There was movement over by Moody's body, and Taylor noticed Percy Weasley taking Moody's wand, having been freed by the bugs she set to gnawing at his bonds. She dodged a pitch-black spell that howled like the wind, sent a stream of water at Voldemort to block his view, and went on the offensive, casting stunners as fast as she could wave her wand, then faster still as she gave up saying the incantation or moving her wand. Her head throbbed in time with the ever-increasing pace of magic.

Voldemort batted her stunners away like the inconsequential pests they were, only momentarily stymied. Percy Weasley raised his borrowed wand behind the dark lord's back. Harry began casting again, the same overly long incantation he had tried to cast to begin with. Taylor set her bugs in Voldemort's eyes and ears, still hindering his senses even if they couldn't reach his flesh to bite and burrow. She switched to cutting hexes and then explosive hexes, steadily advancing, dodging spells by mere inches with the forewarning and spatial awareness her power granted, pushing, unyielding–

Voldemort snarled, whipped his wand down, and vanished in a crack of displaced air. Harry's spell and Percy Weasley's spell soared through the empty air.

The wards didn't block portkeys or apparition.

Voldemort snapped back into existence behind her.

She turned. Too slow. Too late.

Red-hot pain erupted as a spell connected with her good shoulder, driving her to the ground. She lifted her arm to wield her wand, but there was no arm, no wand. It was on the ground beside her, and her stump – her new stump, even higher up than the other – was gushing blood.

That didn't stop her. The wand had only ever been a crutch. A painkiller.

She knelt, listening to Voldemort's eerily familiar laughter driven through Sirius' body, and drove her knees, lurching towards him and willing herself to shift at the same time, not into the black adder, into something much bigger, much more dangerous.

A boa constrictor struck at Voldemort, writhing around a reflexive blasting curse to wind around his midsection, pinning his arms down. Taylor pummeled his body with wordless, wandless stunners, her headache driving to a fever pitch, rising more rapidly than ever before. The white light shields burned her scales, more as she constricted, Voldemort struggled against her pinning grip and he hissed demands that she cease, yield, but the shields were faltering, shattering with bursts of light, and she found flesh beneath to crush.

Sirius' flesh. His body.

She continued attempting to wandlessly stun him even as she struggled to constrict, her crippling headache well past migraine territory and verging on physically disabling. She didn't want to kill him, not when he was Sirius, but if she had to–

The choice was taken from her when Voldemort maneuvered his wand to her midsection and hit her with something. Something more painful than anything she had ever felt, so painful she let go instead of constricting like shocks were supposed to do, so painful she didn't even feel it when he kicked her away from himself. The pain was all-consuming.

It let up, leaving her snake body twitching raggedly.

He cast a charm on her, one she thought might be meant to force animagi back to their human form. It didn't work, but she shifted back anyway, the few shreds of rational thought left to her insisting that if she was to surprise him again, he mustn't know she wasn't actually an animagus at all.

She regretted it when he hit her with the same immensely painful curse a second time, adding to the agony of having just lost another arm. She convulsed, choking out screams and just plain choking, writhing in the dirt. It lasted forever, an eternity of agony. She hadn't felt such pain… ever. Definitely not since Bakuda's bomb damaged her nerves. Nothing came close.

It ended, leaving her limp on the ground, armless and unarmed, physically incapable of even sitting up. Her eye, the one with the floaters, wasn't working. Darkness covered one half of her vision, a welcome partial respite from reality.

Unseen hands forced her up, tilted her chin back and pulled her eyelids open to meet the gaze of a Sirius with red eyes and an evil smirk. Behind him, Harry and Percy Weasley struggled with their own invisible bonds, petrified from the neck down. Her arm lay on the ground behind her, morbidly intact up to just below the shoulder. Her bugs, the few she had left, littered the battlefield, worthless at the moment against an enemy who had made himself impervious to them. Harry's wand, along with Moody's wand, lay on the ground behind Voldemort, both snapped in half. Voldemort had the only wand in the room besides her own, which he must have known from Barty was useless to everyone but her, and now her as well as she had no hands to use it with.

Her power was eerily silent, not a hint of conveyed emotion to tell her what it was thinking. This, she supposed, might be the sort of situation her power lived for. One that demanded creative problem-solving.

If so, her power was going to be severely disappointed, because she had nothing and no plans, not even an inkling of one. The pain of that curse – it had to be Crucio – made planning and strategizing impossible, even once it was lifted.

"You'll die long and hard for inconveniencing me," Voldemort told her, evil words spilling from Sirius' lips. "You do not even make for a challenging fight. Who are you, pitiful excuse for a witch?"

Not Skitter, that was for sure. She wouldn't lose. Not like this. Someone else.

"I'll take it from your mind," Voldemort hissed. He stared into her eyes, though she could only see him from one.

She remembered, almost involuntarily, introducing herself as Taylor, as Taylor Hebert, as Weaver, as Skitter, as Taylor, all from different times in her life. Voldemort's smug expression morphed to one of consternation, and then curiosity.

Other memories flicked to the forefront of her mind, drawn up like following threads, linked by common ideas. Weaver, her life in Boston, fighting, training, arguing, facing other enemies, powerful ones, inconsequential ones. He seized on the Slaughterhouse Nine, following the threads to her first fight with Mannequin as Skitter, a similarly hopeless-feeling struggle with a marginally better outcome.

He made her think of using her insects to carry supplies to herself to fight Mannequin, and in the back of her mind, under the current memory, an idea germinated. Her insects gathered by her discarded arm, working her wand out from its grip.

"What is all this?" he whispered, delving deeper into her life. Memories, moments, from all over, from different times, different fights, all presumably presented alongside thousands of impossible perspectives, as Dumbledore had seen. They flicked past, showing him horror after horror, scenes of slaughter, desperate struggles, Leviathan–

He recoiled, but then smiled, a deeply disturbing smile, and kept digging. His mental push was a hot poker in her mind, dragging things up from the depths without any care for their surroundings.

Without any care for their physical surroundings here in the ritual room, either. Her insects brought her wand to Harry. But that wasn't enough. He was petrified.

Her magic had never been hers, not really. It was lent, lent like her control of bugs. She provided the meaning to the possibility.

Voldemort found her memories of the Simurgh, of her power, and stopped there, lingering on the scream, the devastation, the untouched danger. On Taylor's knowledge that the Simurgh still existed, somewhere. Planning. Plotting. Always weaving.

She didn't know what he thought of that. Was the Simurgh a terror, even for him? It should be. Or was he foolish enough to see it as a weapon to be harnessed? Possibly as a force of nature to be avoided and weathered if it ever found him?

He looked upon monstrosities more dangerous than he could ever be, more terrifying. It was inevitable he followed that link to Scion.

Wasps and flies and cockroaches manipulated her wand with flawless coordination, waving it in a specific pattern. One last spell, one she had never practiced wordlessly, but driven by more need than ever before.

One failure. Pain.

Two failures. Pain, more this time.

Three failures. Her awareness trembled, wavering back and forth.

She tried a fourth time, and the moment she completed the wand movement her headache spiked, driving the last of her will from her with pure pain. She knew only the memories Voldemort wanted to peruse. The agony, the horror of Scion, the countless deaths. Fighting back. The pure power of hundreds of parahumans, coordinated perfectly. Coordinated by her and the thing that had taken control of her as she was broken, pushing in and influencing her. Her power.

A third presence made itself known in her mind even as he realized that there was a threat. Her power, finally showing itself, the monster that jealously guarded her mind. Voldemort was so deep. So exposed. Her power had learned from its mistake with Dumbledore.

The shards behind powers did not act directly.

Shards were not supposed to act directly.

But magic broke a lot of rules.

What was to come next…

It was out of her hands, and that scared her.

She had never dealt well with having no control over her fate.

"Possessionem Skurge!"

Voldemort and her power were driven from her mind with equal ferocity, the blowback of a magical detonation washing over her and driving everything but her own addled thoughts away in a wash of imposed willpower, a blast of purpose from a spell so powerful it worked on her mind even though it had not been cast at her.

Her power bounced back, only momentarily pushed away. Voldemort did not.

She saw, through one blurry eye and a hundred insect eyes, Sirius' body folding over in the midst of an explosive spell detonation, physically untouched but deprived of volition. Something unholy shrieked.

Harry slumped down, his hand burnt and bloody from the exploded splinters that remained of her wand. Blood streamed down his forehead, seeping from his scar and from the splinters that had cut his face.

Chapter Text

Taylor had never looked so fragile to Harry as she did now, draped with clean sheets in Saint Mungo's. Her head was propped up by a pillow and each of her stumps wrapped in clean white bandages, even though one was old and uninjured. Her face was crumpled, drawn with pain despite everything the healers could do, and a big blindfold covering both eyes, one normal and one apparently damaged internally. Even with that Harry could tell she was not sleeping soundly, her face tight with discomfort.

There were four beds in their shared room, an area set aside for group injuries where the spells involved made separating the victims inadvisable, or other scenarios in which multiple patients were injured in the same way. One was empty; Percy Weasley had been cleared quickly and sent on his way to explain his side of things to the Aurors, presumably at length. The Aurors had questioned Harry, too, and he gave them as much of the story as he knew. They wanted to come back and talk to Sirius and 'Moody's other security person', once they woke. Whenever that would be.

One of the remaining beds held Taylor. Another held Sirius, who was less obviously injured, but also still unconscious. Harry sat on the fourth, his hand stuck in a bowl of foul-smelling paste he was told was regrowing the skin and nerves damaged by magical backblast. He was fine. Mostly.

Taylor had always seemed to him to be formidable. She argued with his teachers and on occasion other parents when he was a little kid. She never stopped, never backed down from anyone, and when she did it was to come at them from another direction. He had never seen her fight anyone before, but he knew she had. Sirius. Pettigrew, though that wasn't really a fight from what Sirius said. Death Eaters, Barty, and his elf at the World Cup, Moody in Hogwarts. Other times before she had magic, because he recognized that how his mum acted was too much like Moody, a war veteran, for her to have never fought before.

He would never have imagined her in a lethal magic duel with Voldemort himself, but if he did he might have imagined her coming out on top with some clever trick or strategy. Not screaming, writhing on the ground, disarmed – literally – and broken.

He knew what his boggart would be next time he faced one, and that version of Taylor would be all too real.

His injured hand was immersed in the healing mush. The other was on his mum's hip, one of the few places he could touch without worrying about causing her more pain. He had to lean over in the bed to reach across to her. His arm was going numb.

The healers said she would wake soon. They said she would live, and that any further medical information was to be given to her directly, not him. Even though he was awake and she wasn't. They didn't know who she was to him, and he didn't say, so her medical information wasn't to be given to an unrelated stranger.

He had felt comforted by that assurance of privacy. She'd like that.

Said comfort turned to bitter surprise when he heard two people talking as they approached the room, their voices a hair too loud to go unheard. "She was struck with repeated bursts of the Cruciatus curse, her arm was removed with a dark cutting curse, and she was bleeding internally. Sirius Black is little better, and showing signs of a serious possession and an unknown countercurse. Harry had to have his skin regrown. Percy Weasley just had a few scrapes and bruises."

"Thank you, Wendy," Albus Dumbledore said as they entered the room.

"Screw you, Wendy," Harry said angrily.

The nurse, who had been looking at Albus nervously, did a double-take. "Excuse me?" she demanded.

"So much for it being confidential information," Harry said.

"It's Dumbledore," the nurse retorted, as if that explained anything.

"Boy's right," Sirius grunted. Harry jumped a little; he hadn't known Sirius was awake. "Fame doesn't equal… medical privileges."

"Well I never," the nurse huffed. "Let me know if she wakes," she told Dumbledore before leaving. "I'll make sure you aren't disturbed." The door shut behind her.

"You're right you'll never, never again once I speak to your bosses," Sirius grumbled as he sat up. "What if I'd had a case of dragon pox in unfortunate places? She would have told him that, too!" He sounded mostly back to normal, albeit hoarse. An impressive recovery, given he was unconscious seconds ago… Or possibly just lying there with his eyes closed. Harry wouldn't have known the difference.

"I imagine she would expect me to keep it to myself," Dumbledore said gravely.

"Not her call," Sirius retorted.

"She was doing me a personal favor," Dumbledore said. "And that is beside the point. Alastor Moody is dead. What has happened?"

"Ask Amelia Bones, Harry gave her the scoop two hours ago." Sirius put one hand on the side of his head and cracked his neck. "Hoo, post-possession paralysis is a bitch. Sorry Harry, I didn't intentionally leave you to the Aurors on your own. Heard the whole thing, though."

Harry thought that Sirius was acting weirdly peppy, given all that had happened… But this was Dumbledore. The one who had obliviated Taylor. Here in a room with her when she was at her most vulnerable.

Maybe that cheerful attitude was a cover. Harry wished he had his wand. Or that Sirius had his, since his wand hadn't been snapped or exploded in the fight. There should be rules about visitors being allowed wands when helpless patients weren't.

"I wished to hear it from you, my boy," Dumbledore admitted.

"Also, Amelia is too much of a hard-arse to 'do you a favor'," Sirius added. "Fine. Percy Weasley was polyjuiced Barty. Moody, Harry, Samantha here, and I tripped his portkey to find out what he was up to after we caught him. Dropped right into an ocean of snakes in somebody's swanky ritual room, fought them off, found a homunculus in a cauldron, it claimed to be Voldemort. Voldemort or not old Moody turned it to mush. That's about all I remember. Harry?"

Samantha, was it? And Moody had killed the Voldemort-thing? Harry could follow Sirius' reasoning easily enough; Taylor was to be a nonentity, an extra wand of no consequence. Someone Dumbledore wouldn't look twice at. He could do that. He had done that, in talking to the Aurors. It wasn't far from the truth, though where he was vague Sirius inserted fake details.

"From there," he began, "Voldemort possessed Sirius. We fought him, Percy, Samantha and me, but he was so fast. He beat us and hurt her, really bad, cut her arms off," both arms because surely Dumbledore would not connect one-armed Muggle Taylor with two-armed and now no-armed witch Samantha, "and tortured her. I… got her wand. From her arm. While he was distracted."

"And how did you defeat him?" Dumbledore asked seriously. "Such a powerful forced possession is rare, and a possessed Sirius should have been stable and magically active for… at least a few minutes."

"A few minutes?" Sirius rasped. "What would have happened after that?"

"Either you would have ejected him," Dumbledore said solemnly, "or your magic would have begun to rebel, damaging you both. There is a reason most possessions are partial, short-lived, or on a somewhat willing subject. Harry, how did you defeat Voldemort?" he turned back to Harry.

"Possessionem Skurge, the same way I beat that wraith that possessed Ginny," Harry answered. If it worked for one of his friends with one possession, he had reasoned that it would work just as well for another. "Samantha's wand blew up in my hand, but it really worked. I only had to cast it once."

"So he was driven off once more," Dumbledore concluded. "That may not have been for the best."

"It was damn well for the best," Sirius retorted. "Given it was my body he was puppeting around! Killed him dead, didn't it? Good enough for me!"

"You should not be so quick to kill," Dumbledore admonished him.

Harry wondered whether his own jaw had dropped more or less than Sirius'.

"But it was the right action today, though not as final as we would prefer," Dumbledore hastened to add. "I had hoped not to speak of this yet, Harry, but now it seems you must know. Voldemort is not dead."

"He wasn't dead, yes, and if you knew that but didn't bother to tell anyone I am going to find a wand–" Sirius threatened.

"I have never said he was dead, but until a few years ago lacked any sort of confirmation, and even then I lacked proof," Dumbledore interrupted. "He cannot die at present. To think otherwise would be very dangerous."

"Okay, let's say I believe you," Sirius conceded, still sounding quite suspicious. "Why do you think we didn't finish the job this time, either? How does he keep himself alive?"

"I will not say the words, not here when others could be listening… It would already be disastrous if this much was made known to the public, they would panic," Dumbledore told them.

"Do you happen to share a common ancestor with Fudge?" Sirius asked.

"No? No more than you or anyone else? I fail to see how that is relevant." Dumbledore pulled a little black book out of his robes, a familiar and not destroyed black book. "Harry, you may recognize this." He tapped his gnarled wand on the book, flipping it open to show a single line of writing–

Dumbledore choked out a gasp of surprise as the book leaped up out of his hand to smack him in the face. At the same time, his wand shot out of his other hand, soaring over Taylor's bed to fall behind the headboard.

Harry leaped up, knocking the bowl of healing paste off the bed, and reached for the book, thinking that it was attacking Dumbledore because of course it would do something bad, it had possessed Ginny and was supposed to be destroyed.

Dumbledore grabbed the book out of the air, gave it a hard look as it fell limp, and then started looking around. "My wand, where is my wand?" he asked.

A red spell streaked out from under Taylor's bed, hitting Dumbledore's ankle. He collapsed, unconscious.

"Not… as satisfying… as I thought it would be," Taylor rasped. "Damn. That hurt."

"Mum!" "Taylor!"

He and Sirius converged on either side of her bed, Dumbledore all but forgotten. Sirius gently removed her blindfold from over her good eye, leaving the fabric over her bad one, while Harry squeezed her leg.

"Safe?" Taylor asked. "You two?"

"We're barely scratched, you're the one who took on Voldemort!" Sirius said.

"And Dumbledore," Taylor said dryly. "Harry… The book… Is it?"

"The one that possessed Ginny, yeah. He told me he was going to destroy it!" He didn't understand why Dumbledore had it with him, or why he thought it was relevant to the fight with Voldemort. Tom the random wraith had no relation to Voldemort… So far as he knew.

"Worked out. Gave me a… thing to distract with." She tried to sit up, but Harry joined Sirius in pushing her back down. "Fine. Sirius. His wand. Under the bed."

"Got it." Sirius leaned down. "Hey…" he said, his voice muffled as he stuck his head under the bed. "Did you cast a stunner at Dumbledore with bugs? Ow! A spider just bit me!"

"They have limbs," Taylor said. "Unlike me… I keep losing mine. Careful. His wand… feels different. Didn't want you to… take it."

"Eh, it's probably old-man wood with old-man power," Sirius offered as he came up with Dumbledore's wand. "It doesn't feel any different to me. That spider bite, on the other hand…" He shook out his left hand, revealing an ugly set of red marks. "Am I going to die?"

"No," Taylor said. "Sorry. Not intended. Change him. Revive him. Question him." Harry looked around for water, his mum's throat sounded so dry, but there was none to be found and no cups for Sirius to fill with conjured water. He was about to press Sirius to transfigure a cup and fill that when she continued talking. "Find out… what the diary has to do with Voldemort. Whether Dumbledore is possessed. Other things. Perfect opportunity."

"Can do." Sirius cast the necessary spells and, in a move that Harry thought wasn't strictly necessary but very much appreciated, tied Dumbledore up by setting him on the unused fourth bed and conjuring a straitjacket over his robes. Then he transfigured Dumbledore into a small, toothless garden snake. "The old Moody special," he said sadly. "No magic for you, Dumbledore. Harry, translate for me? Both ways."

"Got it." Harry sat forward, his ointment bowl forgotten. There was a little thrill going through him at the idea of interrogating Dumbledore, of all people. They had really turned the tables on him.

"Wait. Before I revive him, what are we going for?" Sirius asked. "I've got ideas, but we should probably make sure we're all on the same page."

"You attacked because you assume he is possessed because the book isn't destroyed," Harry suggested. "Taylor is still Samantha and still out of it, she has nothing to do with any of this. We ask him about the book, find out what he knows. Make sure that when this is over we can let him go without him thinking we're his enemies."

"Yes. That." Taylor lay still. Harry was glad; even if she was just pretending to go back to sleep, he would rather she not strain herself.

"Okay, rennervate." Sirius threw the diary on the floor, well away from them. "Dumbledore, what's possessing you? Is it a wraith or just stupidity?"

"Sirius, I–" Dumbledore flopped around on the flat bedsheet, hissing wildly. "What is this? Why am I a snake? Turn me back immediately!" Harry repeated his words, assuming Sirius wanted to hear everything.

"Not until I'm sure you're not possessed, you bleeding idiot," Sirius said harshly. "What is the book, why didn't you destroy it, and how can we know you're still you after keeping it for years when it only took a few months to take someone over last time?" Harry repeated his words, verbatim, and from the way Dumbledore stilled, he understood. It was weird how, even now, Harry couldn't tell whether he was hissing or speaking normally. It just seemed to work, without any of the difficulty of not knowing how to consciously switch between the two languages.

Magic languages were convenient, was his conclusion.

"It…" Dumbledore looked around, but no escape was forthcoming. The door was closed, and a magicless snake would stand no chance of fighting his way free of anything. "It is a means by which Voldemort maintains his immortality. I am not possessed, I have kept it locked up since Harry gave it to me. It is a very dark object. A crucial component is missing now, as Harry damaged it back in the Chamber of Secrets, but it is still partially active and very dangerous."

"Really? I didn't feel anything." Sirius kept his wand on Dumbledore as he retrieved the book. "Yeah…" He tossed the wand to Harry. "Stun me if I do something stupider than normal." Then he opened the book.

Harry and Dumbledore watched as Sirius flipped through the book, shook it, and held it upside-down. "Nope, this is just a book," he said. "Maybe it was enchanted with something, but it isn't now. Harry, can you go digging in… Samantha's robe. She has a creepy little hunk of dried flesh on a chain around her neck."

"A blood charm?" Dumbledore hissed.

"Yes. I'd get it, but…" He shrugged. "Rather not be hexed when she finds out."

Harry did the smart thing and felt around behind Taylor's head until he found the cord, then pulled it up over her head without sticking his hand in her robes. There was indeed a little piece of dried meat hanging off it.

"Thank you," Sirius said, taking the blood charm. "Now, I think it was… Visio. Yup. Ooh, this hospital room is very well insulated, I can actually stand to keep my eyes open." He shook the book out and flipped through it again. "Nada. Zip. Zilch. Hmm…"

"A curse?" Dumbledore suggested.

"No, a naughty drawing." Sirius slammed the book shut. "Not even that, actually. It's totally blank. No magic, no writing except 'Who are you?' on the first page.. Dumbledore, are you off your rocker? Should we be getting you a new rocker in the old wizard's home?"

"It is nigh-indestructible, a former container for a piece of soul!" Dumbledore insisted.

"Uh… no?" Sirius tore a page out. Then another. "It's not. I can do the whole thing, if you want? Maybe you're just getting feeble in your old age."

Dumbledore sputtered wordlessly as Sirius continued to casually rip apart the book's pages. Harry could have told him that was definitely the wraith's book – he knew what it looked like – but he was enjoying Sirius' little show, so he kept his mouth shut. Though admittedly he was curious as to what had happened, if it really had no traces of magic on it at all now.

Finally, while Sirius was folding a paper airplane, Dumbledore regained the power of intelligent speech. "It was a Horcrux when I received it!" he said. "A broken one, but a Horcrux still, with compulsion charms layered over it by the same foul magic!"

"Well it's nothing now," Sirius told him. "Hey, don't look so glum! This must mean Voldemort is totally dead. Harry cut out the important part years ago, and us killing him today killed the rest!"

"It shouldn't be possible," Dumbledore said. "And there are others…"

"Got any of them handy?" Sirius asked.

"No," Dumbledore admitted.

"Then I say he's dead for good unless proven otherwise. Maybe go find them so you can be sure." Sirius tossed the book onto Dumbledore's bed. "Harry, hit him with the anti-possession spell, that'll set him to rights if he is possessed."

"Possessionem Skurge!" Harry incanted. Dumbledore's wand felt… recalcitrant, for lack of a better word. He missed his own wand. Still, it did the job. He cast five times, just to be sure.

"I am not possessed… That is a very impressive spell, Harry," Dumbledore hissed. "Truly remarkable, the things a culture can forget or dismiss as worthless once they are no longer needed. I went to the trouble of learning it myself after your adventure in second year, but you are very good with it."

"It's first on my list, bloody useful," Sirius remarked. "Okay… That's the Voldemort issue. Now…" He trailed off, looking contemplatively at Dumbledore.

"Now you change me back and return my wand," Dumbledore reminded them. "I am very impressed with your quick thinking, but the danger you suspected does not exist."

"No, see, I was thinking." Sirius glared at Dumbledore. "I think I have something we should do. Harry, hand me the wand."

Harry passed the wand over.

"I've been practicing," Sirius told an increasingly apprehensive Dumbledore. "With memory charms, specifically. Getting better, more precise. I even looked into doing one for myself, just as an option to make somebody feel better. It was a bit like walking in on Prongs in the shower sixth year, but worse because I meant to do it this time and it turned out he was not soaped up with three Quidditch fans having a post-game celebration like I'd been told. You know what I mean?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Dumbledore said stiffly. He tried to slither away, but stopped when he realized he had at least five body-lengths to go before he reached the edge of the bed, and then nowhere to go but down. All while the two wizards he was trying to avoid were watching him.

"That's the idea!" Sirius said brightly. "Samantha, what do you think? End it the way it started? Way easier than my other ideas!"

"If you can… manage it," Taylor rasped.

"What is this?" Dumbledore demanded. "Let me go!"

"Nah. Obliviate." Sirius and Dumbledore locked eyes for a moment as Sirius cast, his spell striking Dumbledore in the scaly back. "Stupefy," Sirius added, knocking Dumbledore out again. "Damn, that was easy. This wand really does have old-man power. I didn't think it would work!"

"What did you do?" Harry asked.

"Removed every memory he had pertaining to Taylor Hebert or anything he might suspect is haunting her," Sirius said. He grinned widely at Harry. "Can't be a dick about her if he doesn't remember she exists, can he?"

"He'll notice… next time we meet…" Taylor said.

"He only noticed anything when he looked into your head, so just don't make eye contact until we get you skilled up in Occlumency, problem solved," Sirius insisted. "I don't expect it to last forever, but it'll definitely hold for a few months, and if it does hold indefinitely then the problem is solved. Now, both of you play along when I wake him, we've got to send him along with a good cover story and I know just the thing."

Harry watched as Sirius transfigured Dumbledore back to normal, vanished the straitjacket and book, positioned Dumbledore sitting up on the edge of the cot, and hit him with a Confundus charm before reviving him and quickly tossing his wand into his lap.

"So the magic backlash of Harry's anti-possession charm must have followed Voldemort's soul when he retreated to his death-avoiding dark artifacts," Sirius said loudly. "Yes, you're right! That's why the book is nothing more than a mere book now!"

Harry had never heard such blatantly made-up magical theory before. Years of listening to Hermione and Ginny made him a connoisseur of semi-understandable jargon. There were far too few citations of magical theory for Sirius to be saying anything provable.

"I… yes, that's it," Dumbledore said groggily, not at the moment aware enough to realize, as Harry had, that Sirius was obviously making it up as he went. "The question, then… is… whether he is fully dead, or simply that the pull on the damaged anchor broke it, but the others remain."

"We can't know until you find the others and confirm they're no longer enchanted, but it's a sight better than the situation we were in before," Sirius told him. "Good work! I never would have figured that out."

"Yes, well," Dumbledore straightened up, "when you spend enough time around magic like I have, these things become, if not clear or intuitive, then at least understandable with enough research. Harry's spell was a power Tom knew not, and it undid him. Very good!"

Harry fought to keep a straight face. He was mostly successful.

"Say nothing of what you saw in the Malfoy ritual room to anyone," Dumbledore warned as he stood. "If he is not fully dead we can warn the Minister, but we must have proof first. And please give my well-wishes to your companion… Samantha?"

"My girlfriend," Sirius lied. Harry thought it was a lie, anyway. He couldn't imagine his mum with a boyfriend. Especially not one who was still actively trying to apologize to her every few days. "Samantha Raven…. Fang. Ravenfang."

"Yes, her." Dumbledore frowned. "I hope she recovers."

"She should," Sirius assured him. "I'll be with her every step of the way. Harry, you don't mind if she recovers in Grimmauld Place this summer, if she's still injured?"

"Of course not!" Harry said.

"Your kindness will serve you well, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "I will leave you to recover… And I will bring your friends to visit tomorrow, if you would like. They were very helpful in keeping Barty from escaping, or from being hidden away by Minister Fudge. Hermione will be fine, I assure you. Minister Fudge does not have a leg to stand on."

Hermione? For that matter, the ritual room had belonged to Malfoy? Harry resisted the urge to ask what the hell had happened; he wanted Dumbledore gone before this ridiculous ruse could fall apart. "That would be good, sir."

"Be well," Dumbledore said. He left the room, the door closing firmly behind him.

They all, by unspoken agreement, waited a good ten minutes after he had left before anyone said anything.

"I will never perform a more impressive prank in my lifetime, no matter how hard I try," Sirius announced. "And never will I reach the heights I could have reached."

"All you did… was obliviate an old man," Taylor said.

"Yes, and it was Dumbledore, but I meant convincing him all of that bollocks was his idea and that you're my girlfriend," Sirius insisted. "Samantha Ravenfang… Ha! It was just shy of perfect."

"What would have made it better?" Harry asked.

"I couldn't figure out a way to work in calling your mum 'my beloved trouser snake' without it seeming contrived," Sirius admitted.

Sirius yelped as cockroaches swarmed into his shoes. Harry pulled a face, then couldn't hold it and burst out laughing. His mum's hoarse chuckles and Sirius' braying laughs joined him.

Harry's departure for Hogwarts, because technically speaking he had no reason to linger in Saint Mungo's and it was still the middle of the school term, was frustratingly inevitable. Dumbledore took him back to the castle less than twenty-four hours after Taylor woke up, as soon as the healers confirmed that there was no lingering damage and that his hand was healing without complication. It would have been even sooner, she gathered, had his famous forehead scar not taken the opportunity of the fight against Voldemort to spontaneously shrivel up and mostly disappear.

He left, unable to publicly do anything more than wish her well, and she hated everyone involved in taking her son away from her again. Even if they didn't know. Thanks to Sirius, this sort of situation wasn't going to happen anymore, but it was still galling.

Once Harry was gone, the nurse – a different nurse than the one who had let Dumbledore in – took the opportunity to shoo Sirius out and get the healer to check her over and talk about her options in private.

"I'll start with your eyes," the healer began, after a long series of diagnostic spells and physical pokes and prods under her bandages. He had a clipboard – a magical clipboard, she assumed – and a very distracted look about him. "You have a detachment in your right eye, where coagulated blood pulled a lens out of place, resulting in blindness in that eye. This would normally be easy to fix, though in the Muggle world it is incurable, but the cause of the damage is magical in nature. You have a case of magical discharge buildup in your brain, and it has spread to your eyes and as far down as your chest."

"How bad?" Taylor asked. Her power sent a feeling of apology and determination. If it could be mitigated from her power's end of things, it probably would be, going forward. But it sounded like some damage had already been done.

"The buildup? Very, and we haven't a clue as to how it happened," he answered. "But if you mean how bad it is for your health? You must have constant migraines, and your blood pressure is far too high, but the weakness in the backs of your eyes can be shored up. You won't be in any danger of the same thing happening to your left eye, and with therapy we can reduce the magical concentration in your right eye to make reattaching the lens possible. You will have to refrain from using magic for two months prior to the restoration, but there is no time pressure to start that beyond how quickly you want to regain sight in that eye. Once we've gotten in to shore up the weakest points you won't have to worry about it happening again in either eye. Ambient magical buildup is mostly harmless, the biggest danger is what's happening here, with it complicating unrelated injuries."

"That's good news." She could scrap her nascent plans to grave-rob Moody. He liked her, so if she could get his eye she imagined he would have wanted her to have it. No need for that now… though she might still take the eye, for sentimental reasons.

"I'm afraid it's the best news I have for you," the healer admitted. "Moving on to your arms. Am I right in thinking the loss of one of your arms is old and was not magical in nature?"

"Yes," she confirmed.

"The injury is much too old to easily regrow or replace it with a normal arm," he told her. "There are still ways, of course, but they come with tradeoffs. Your other arm was severed with a very dark curse. That's even harder to work around, but again, there are options. The problem is none of these options are ideal."

"I see." That was worse than she thought it would be. "You can't… just grow another arm and attach it? Did anyone pick up my arm from the ritual room? It was still intact." She would have thought it would be easy to do the latter. It was commonplace for things like non-fatal splinching, she had checked back when she was looking into apparition.

"The magics involved in that require certain conditions, and dark magic being the cause of the amputation, to put it simply, mucks things up," he said apologetically. "I can walk you through the more technical complications grown arms have after a long period of separation or dark magic, but my professional opinion is that your best option for recovering full functionality in either arm is some manner of magical prosthesis. We have a few very basic models here in Britain, but the best are illegal to make or buy here."

"I've already got four of the best possible model on order in Bulgaria," she said.

Her healer gave her a very incredulous look. "Four?" he asked.

"I'm told you don't negotiate with vampires, and that you should buy generously," she said seriously. "Will the curse damage on my stump affect me using one for that arm?"

  “It shouldn’t if they are blood magic,” the healer said with a relieved smile. “This is the best possible outcome for you, given your situation, which is bad but not as bad as it could be. In the same vein, your existing nerve damage was compounded by Cruciatus exposure. We can and always could fix the former, and the latter is less severe, so on the whole you will likely have fewer inexplicable aches and a more sensitive sense of touch once we finish that.”

  “What I’m getting from this is I should have come here years ago,” Taylor said ruefully. She didn’t even know what nerve damage the healer was referring to. Something from those last, horrible moments fighting Scion when she wasn’t fully in control of herself, perhaps.

"Yes, you should have," the healer agreed. "We have already fixed the other stress-related damage from the chronic headaches," he continued. "Aside from your nerves, eyes, head, and arms, you are mostly healthy and there were no second-order complications from the dark magic that removed your arm. Many of my patients ask me this no matter what their injury is, so I will tell you now that you are still capable of having children. This will not be the case if any serious dark magic strikes you in the pelvic area, so be careful."

"How common is that?" she asked.

"I see as many fertility consultations due to dark magic as I do to age concerns," he said. "It's much more common than you think."

"I'll be sure to avoid that." Not that she was likely to get pregnant anytime soon. That would require sex, which she wasn't having, and a desire to raise children, which had been thoroughly covered by raising Harry. It would also require a man somewhere in the process, another thing she didn't have.

"As for the order of your recovery," the healer continued, flipping a page on his clipboard and rearranging its contents. "What is the timeline on your prosthetics?"

"Two months," she recalled. She had given the requisite blood by owl post, on a boring, uncomfortable afternoon shortly before Sirius' ill-fated meeting with Dumbledore. Her arms were scheduled to be done by the end of May.

  "Given your current condition, you will not want to leave Saint Mungo's prior to that," the healer told her.

Her current condition… meaning armless? He was right, she wasn't going anywhere. Even if she could wandlessly, wordlessly move things around with magic. That came with far too many headaches to totally replace her arms, especially without her wand.

Damn. It was a good thing she had already set Ollivander to making a new wand. She didn't expect to need one so soon.

"It's rather well timed, all told," the healer continued. "If you choose, we can begin the no-magic regime immediately and keep you for the two months of therapy needed to clear the ambient magic from your eye. The nerve correction is entirely potions-based, so you can do that after, in your own home. If you follow that treatment path, we can have you out of here either shortly after your prosthetics arrive, or as soon as they arrive, depending on whether they come before or after we're done with your eye."

"That's good. Do it." It would be a trial, being stuck in the hospital for several months straight, but it would get her out just in time for the summer. It was a good thing the third task had been moved up to happen in April; if it happened when originally planned, in June, she would have missed the entire summer while she recovered. That was precious time with Harry.

"Your treatments are covered by the wizarding health initiative and, where that does not apply, by Sirius Black, who has already said he would 'pay for everything' in regards to your care," the healer informed her. "I would ask you to sign a form stating you understand this, but…"

"That'll have to wait until I have an arm." Which wouldn't be for a while. Two months in the hospital…

An unpleasant realization hit her. Her job at the library. Her house, in a Muggle neighborhood, with neighbors who would want to know where she had been, why her arm was covered in tattoos, what was going on…

"Great," she huffed. She was going to have to move. There were probably wizarding ways to stop people from questioning it all, but she didn't think she would be comfortable with the outcome if she used those methods. Not when it likely amounted to selectively obliviating and confounding everyone who knew her to accept whatever she said as the truth. It would be better to just move, however much she liked that house. Aggressive mental alteration was for her enemies if anyone, not her hapless neighbors.

"I'm sorry?" the healer asked. "I didn't catch that."

"Nothing," she lied, forcing herself to put her imminent removal from her Muggle life aside. That was a problem she could ponder while laid up here with nothing to do. "I was just thinking about being stuck here for two months. Am I allowed visitors when I'm on the no-magic regime?" It would be a lot more tolerable if Harry could come visit, or Sirius.

"Yes, you are." The healer tucked his clipboard under his arm. "We'll be moving you to a smaller room once we discharge Mr. Black. Until then, kick the bell here if you need anything. Water, food, someone to turn you over, anything. Don't be shy."

Taylor knocked her toes against the bell they had hung from the foot of her cot. It tinkled loudly. "Got it." She was going to go mad before the two months were over, she just knew it.

"Do magical books count as magic?" she asked.

"Don't practice anything you read about," he warned. "We can set up a page-turning charm for you."

That would have to be good enough. At least she could get a big jump on the theory side of things without feeling like she was wasting her time…

Her power sent a strong burst of eager anticipation.

"You're not allowed to be happy about this," she grumbled.

Harry knew he was out of the loop on what had happened while he was away from Hogwarts. Three days in Saint Mungo's was a long time. He thought he had a general idea of some things, just from listening to idle talk among the nurses and doctors, but the details? Nothing. It was all confused and uncertain.

Nothing he had heard explained why Hermione was currently in a Ministry holding cell, for instance.

"What for?" he demanded, leaning further into the customary privacy ward set up over their library table. Ginny, Neville, and Luna all leaned back.

"Minister Fudge is an arse," Ginny said angrily. "She's not being charged with anything, the Aurors said so, but they're allowed to hold a 'person of interest' for up to a week before having to charge them with a crime or let them go. He's being a petty little baby and making sure they keep her as long as they're allowed."

"But what– why?" he asked. "Why just her? What does the Minister of the whole country have against a random schoolgirl?" Sure, Hermione was awesome, and she had that ongoing thing about questioning authority, but what could she have possibly done to offend the Minister?

"Remember how we were guarding Barty?" Neville asked. "When you and Moody and the others went to check out the other end of the portkey?"

"Yeah." He also sorely regretted them doing that. In hindsight, they shouldn't have jumped on it like that. Not without backup. As much as he didn't like the man, Dumbledore would have been a great fifth member of the investigation. But Moody wanted to go immediately, and nobody had objected. They would never know what Moody's reasoning for that was.

"Well, Fudge noticed the commotion," Neville continued. Ginny scowled aimlessly. "After a few minutes of Moody not coming out from under the stands, he sent an Auror to tell Moody to stop making trouble in the middle of the event, and that was about when Barty's polyjuice wore off…"

Harry winced.

"It was very coincidental timing," Luna remarked. "Barty was cutting it close."

"The Auror saw and demanded we hand him over, but we did what Moody said and refused," Neville explained. "The Auror sent for backup, and Minister Fudge came over with the rest of his detail. So it was us, surrounding Barty, keeping the Aurors from getting him, and Fudge started demanding that we release the suspect."

"We said we would, once Moody came back," Luna added. "The Minister was impatient. He didn't want to wait."

"We may have put up shields when the Aurors came to take him away from us," Neville admitted. "Which isn't, it turns out, against the law. For some reason."

"Hermione will explain it when she gets back," Ginny said. "She would know."

"So they broke our shields," Neville continued. "That's when Luna cast a Patronus."

"A Patronus?" Harry knew of the spell, he'd looked into it last year, but it was way too high-level for any of them… Or so he had assumed. "Were there Dementors?"

"No, but there were negative emotions and Neville needed a distraction," Luna assured him. "My octopus confused them."

"Not for long, but long enough that I got to Barty and triggered the Portkey you gave me," Neville recounted. "You know, the Hufflepuff one? It took us to Saint Mungo's, and I Floo-called an Auror my gran always told me I could trust. He agreed to hold Barty in custody until Moody got back to explain himself, and Minister Fudge didn't know where I had gone, so he wasn't there to interfere."

"Meanwhile," Ginny took up the story, "Fudge was threatening us with all sorts of things if we didn't tell him where we had taken the fugitive, and Hermione got into it with him, saying he had never had Barty declared a fugitive because his Ministry was covering it up. Barty was a criminal anyway, but apparently not publicly declaring it makes some sort of difference… Or Fudge just didn't want her shouting about Ministry cover-ups. People were starting to notice that the Minister was under the stands yelling at kids instead of watching the third task. It got tense, Hermione wouldn't back down, and then Dumbledore intervened."

"Oh no." Harry had no faith in his Headmaster to fix this sort of situation.

"It worked out," Luna assured him. "He is good when what he thinks is needed and what is actually needed are the same thing."

"He had Flitwick and McGonagall take us away to be 'properly disciplined,' which meant detentions, and when Fleur won the Tournament, Fudge had to go officiate," Neville explained. "Fudge didn't like that. He, uh, had his Aurors arrest Hermione, but Dumbledore told them and Fudge that it wouldn't stick. That's how we know it's just to inconvenience her. Fudge said… What did he say?" he asked.

"Foolish children should respect their elected officials," Luna blustered in a surprisingly deep voice. Harry had never met the Minister, but he was willing to believe it was a good impression. "She'll sit in the holding cell for a week and think about what she has done, charges or not!"

"He gave her a time-out?" Harry asked incredulously. "For arguing with him?" This was the man in charge of the magical side of the country?

"Yeah, and the Aurors with him weren't happy about it," Ginny said angrily. "They wanted to either arrest her for something real, or let her go. Dumbledore said she would be fine, and my dad said in a letter that he would check on her every day, but it's so stupid!"

"That settles it," Harry declared. "When we graduate, we're taking over the Ministry." The stupid cover-up with Barty, the cover-up with the hostages being sabotaged, and now this… He didn't really want to go into government, but it was obviously in need of serious adjustment. He wanted to be able to mostly ignore the government, confident that they weren't massively mucking up easy, obvious things like investigating serious crimes. Apparently that was not a given.

"Can we just blow it up instead?" Ginny asked darkly.

"If we evacuate the people first," Neville offered. "I don't know, Harry, I don't want to be a parchment-pusher, even an important one."

"How about we install like-minded leaders who reflect our values?" Luna proposed. "That way we do not have to do any of the work ourselves."

They all looked at Luna.

"I think Susan Bones wants to go into government," Harry recalled.

"Percy will fight her for the position of Minister," Ginny said. "If we can just beat some sense into him first, he might stand a chance of winning."

"Ron might make a good Chief Auror, we could trust him not to take bribes from the Malfoys," Neville suggested.

"It's a start." Harry thought about the timeline. "So… Hermione will be back in four days?"

"Or less." Ginny cracked her knuckles. "We think. If not… You still have that invisibility cloak?"

"Yeah." He had a feeling he knew what they were going to be doing for the next four days. Planning a precautionary breakout. "And even if not… Who fancies helping me go visit my mum in Saint Mungo's? Nobody knows I have any reason to go, so they won't let me take off school if I ask." Or maybe they would. But he was feeling rebellious, and sneaking to Saint Mungo's couldn't be any harder than sneaking a trip home.

Sirius took two vials, poured them both into a glass bowl, and hastily threw it into the hallway. A quick "Protego!" had a shield up between him and the hallway, just in time to catch a splatter of acid.

His mother's demented shrieking took on a new, panicked tone.

"Yes!" he cheered. "Take that, you miserable piece of paint and canvas!" Where magical methods failed, Muggle methods prevailed! Specifically, a powerful form of acid. On a related note, his current Muggle alias was going to have to disappear… Those Libyans still thought he was going to make them an acid bomb out of the stuff currently eating through his mother's ugly painted face.

His mother's shrieks faltered and faded away, dying in volume and intensity. He lowered his shield and vanished the acid eating into the floors, venturing cautiously into the hallway.

"Hoo, that's going to be expensive to fix," he breathed. Everything had holes in it. It might have been worth the time to figure out a way to direct the explosive acid blast, but the Libyans gave it to him in ready-to-explode form, so he hadn't bothered tinkering with it. The Black fortune could sustain a few more remodels. He was way too rich.

He inspected the canvas of his mother's painting. It was gray and lifeless where not eaten away, and his mother was nowhere to be seen. More importantly, the clock in the background of the painting had stopped ticking, meaning the animation charms were damaged beyond repair.

"Now, to enjoy the silence." He conjured a chair and set it down on the pitted hardwood floor, then sat down for a good two minutes.

"Too silent," he admitted, dispelling his conjuration. "Come down, stupid painting, mother is gone and her sticking charm probably is too…" He reached up and, after vanishing any remaining acid to make sure he would keep his fingers, lifted the portrait off the wall.

"I'm using you for a bonfire," he told the ornate wooden frame as he dumped it in the living room.

That done, he pulled a parchment list out of his sleeve, unrolled it, and struck a tear through 'kill mother' with his wand and a small cutting charm. "Next on the list…" He shook it out. There was nothing else, aside from a hanging bit of accordioned parchment. "Nothing! Operation 'get Grimmauld Place ready for Harry and Taylor to spend the summer' is complete!"

Something crashed in the hallway.

"Will be complete once I get a contractor in to fix the acid damage," he corrected himself. "A good day's work. And it's…"

He looked at the grandfather clock.

"Noon?" he whined. "Only noon?" It was a weekday so Harry was busy at school, and visiting hours in Taylor's wing of Saint Mungo's didn't start until three!

He looked through his ragged list again, searching for something else to do to fill the time productively. Lazing around waiting for the days to pass had gotten boring after two weeks. "Kill mother, obviously done. Relocate cursed heirlooms, done, they're in the attic. Seal attic to avoid Harry's friends investigating, check. Set up an elaborate treasure hunt that goes all through Grimmauld Place, check. Clean out two bedrooms, check. Decorate Harry's bedroom, check. Decorate Taylor's bedroom… Not check, because I have no idea how she might want it decorated, I'll just get her an open tab at a furniture store. Clean kitchen, check. Stock food that isn't Muggle pizza or Firewhiskey, check. Remove Kreacher's desiccated corpse… Tonight's bonfire should do it. Check in advance."

That was everything. He really was done. Maybe he should have done those chores without magic, to prolong them.

Maybe he was going stir-crazy, with Taylor in the hospital, Dumbledore and the Death Eaters dealt with, and nothing to do except look forward to the end of the school year and Taylor's escape from Saint Mungo's.

If Prongs were there, he'd tell Sirius not to mope around basing his entire life on two other people. Then again, Prongs fixated on, it could be argued, one person from age eleven and never gave up on that, and it worked out for him…

Not that it was the same thing. That was romantic once it finally worked out. Sappy word, sappier concept, but Sirius knew the difference between that and his feelings.

Maybe.

It wasn't the same thing. Even if he had contemplated getting her flowers on the day of her discharge from the hospital. That was just common courtesy, right? And a continuation of his apology campaign, though he thought solving the Dumbledore problem might have sealed the deal in his eventual forgiveness. What did it say about him that he still had a lot of potential apology gift ideas, so he didn't consider himself done apologizing whether or not they were necessary?

He retreated from his thoughts by tossing the completed list on top of his mother's empty frame, and went to go get something that could easily burn the remaining hours between now and visiting time.

"Oy, arsehole, I've been in here for a month!" his hat yelled as he plucked it out of the silenced closet.

Sirius spun it about by the brim and plopped it down on the kitchen table. "I will dissect you with a pair of scissors and a smile if you don't give up your secrets," he threatened.

"You can't even get rid of your mother, and she's canvas!" the hat said scornfully.

"Acid," Sirius told it. "You must not have heard her dying screams."

The hat's brim crumpled fearfully.

Sirius jumped back from the table. "You can move?"

"Well, shit," the hat said sourly. "Hoped to keep that ace in the hole."

"Okay, no, we just passed the point of no return," Sirius told it. "You're going into the bonfire tonight. I'm serious. Tell me what you are and why you are, or I'm getting rid of you. Being possessed once was enough for me!" He honestly should have trashed it months ago, even if it didn't seem dark or dangerous.

"Fine!" the hat shouted. "Level with you," it continued only marginally more quietly. "I can do that. I'm sick of being stuck in closets and boxes. What's the point of a second existence away from Hogwarts if I just get kept in the dark! I'm the Sorting Hat."

"No you're not, the Sorting Hat is in Dumbledore's office," Sirius objected.

"I'm an extension of the Sorting Hat," it clarified. "When they made me they made me replaceable. Hats wear out, you know, and back in the day they replaced me every time I was infested with the magical variant of lice you don't see anymore. The idea was that anyone who twisted some basic spells into the right configuration, on a hat, would tap into this overarching thing Godric and Helena made to store my personality and memories. My hat bodies can be replaced, I am kept in the heart of Hogwarts."

"The Sorting Hat is hundreds of years old," Sirius said. He might not have ever read 'Hogwarts, a History' but Remus had and he remembered Remus telling them it was older than Dumbledore.

"Yes, because the Headmasters over the centuries have forgotten what spells need to be twisted in what ways to connect to my storage spell," the hat explained. "The one in Hogwarts is old. You, lucky nincompoop that you are, blundered your way into connecting me to this hat. It's nothing to do with your spells actually doing things, they're in the shape of a key to a lock you didn't know about. Satisfied?"

"If you're a version of the Sorting Hat…" Sirius poked it in the brim. "Why are you such a belligerent shite?" he asked.

"You try putting up with kids, and only kids, for centuries!" the hat yelled. "I can't mouth off to them, I'd be tossed into a fire by indignant parents! You, though? You I can take the piss out of all day!"

"Fair." He would probably be the same, stuck in that unenviable position. "So no possession?"

"Turn yourself into a hat and put those spells on yourself, and we'll talk about why I still wouldn't possess you in a million years," the hat grumped. "Look, I can be good. I'll only take the piss out of you if you don't give me better targets. You need a wingman? I can do that too. Just take me places."

Sirius was going to find a way to ask Hogwarts' Sorting Hat about this… But it did explain why his hat's voice was so familiar. He just hadn't connected that singing, child-friendly hat at Hogwarts with this foul-mouthed blackmailing hat.

Now that he knew they were one and the same, though… "Can you tell me secrets from the minds of thousands of eleven-year-olds?" he asked hopefully. Having embarrassing childish thoughts to hold over the head of every Hogwarts graduate ever was the holy grail of blackmail.

"There was this one kid, real snot," the hat said, its voice lowering to a gruff whisper. Sirius leaned in to hear better. "Family of Slytherins, nastiest of the lot, a real spoiled prince. He had a secret…"

"Yes?" Sirius said. "Go on."

"He was…" the hat whispered.

"A complete tosser who got himself sorted into Gryffindor!" it thundered. "He wet the bed every night of his Hogwarts career! He turned himself into a dog animagus to lick himself! He got himself tossed in Azkaban for being too stupid to object! What a berk!"

Sirius wiggled a finger in his ear. "You are entirely too much of a bastard," he told it.

"Sic me on your enemies and watch their blood veins throb," the hat offered.

"I want wingman services too," he demanded. "The whole package."

"Get me an anti-bug ward to spend my nights in and we have a deal," the hat suggested.

"Good call." He might need one of those for his bedroom too, come to think of it… He hadn't worked up the courage to put a hole in the wall and see if there really were spiders in there. "But you know why I want wingman services, yeah?" Not for Taylor. Of course not. Never that.

"You know why I want the bug ward!" the hat retorted. "You might want to stick your wand in the black widow, doesn't mean I want her stinger in me."

Sirius raised a finger, a denial on the tip of his tongue.

He paused.

Thought about it.

Thought some more.

"I can smell the smoke from here," the hat remarked. "Don't think too hard, you'll burn out your last two brain cells."

Sirius ignored the hat, still contemplating.

"You know what, fine," he eventually conceded. "We're doing this. I need a new list."

The hat watched – could it watch? – with a tilted brim as he retrieved a quill, ink, and parchment, and sat down to write a new list. "Plan to get Taylor a romantic interest," he narrated. "Wingman, suggestions!"

"It's you, you ninny! Pull your finger out of your–" the hat began.

Sirius slapped down on its top. "Let me stop you there," he said. "I'm awesome. Suave. Sexy. The whole deal. We could probably make it work. I know her better than anyone else in this world save her own kid. But I'm still making up for violating her trust, am bankrolling her recovery, and legally have custody of her kid. Me going after her right now would be skeevy, wrong, and unlikely to get me anything but free bee stingers wherever I want them, so long as I want them impaling me." There was a difference between roguish and rapey, and he prided himself on knowing exactly where that line was so he didn't cross it.

"That's quitter talk," the hat said, its voice inexplicably muffled. Sirius did not for one second believe his hand was actually covering what passed for a mouth. For one thing, the mouth was on the brim, if it was anywhere.

"No." Sirius took his hand off the hat. "Not me." He wouldn't feel right about it. Taylor wouldn't go for it, either. It was probably possible, but if it was going to happen, it would happen after they'd had plenty of time to put all of this behind them. "She does, however, deserve to get some after all of the crap she's been put through. That is where we come in."

Now, who would make a good summer fling for Taylor? It had to be someone he knew and approved of, so he could be sure they wouldn't stomp all over her trust issues the moment she started to let her guard down. Someone awesome, smart, tolerant of some casual eldritch vibes coming off their romantic interest. Probably a guy, unless she was so deeply repressed that not even a Veela could shake any interest loose.

Did he know anyone like that? Nobody was coming to mind.

Someone knocked on the front door. "Damn," he said, his train of thought lost before it could get to the imaginary Hogwarts of epiphany. "Come in!" he yelled, slinging the hat over his head at a jaunty angle. Maybe the answer to his musing had come to him.

"It's locked!" Remus yelled, his voice muffled by the door.

Remus was… definitely not an option. Actually, Remus was someone he should have invited over weeks ago, but not for shoving at Taylor and locking the door behind them. Nobody liked a loose end.

"This is a trial run," Sirius told the hat. "Do your new job."

"Wingman services or irritant?" the hat asked.

"Irritant," Sirius told it, before opening the front door. "Remus, what a surprise!" he said. "The library is still a death trap!"

"And still racist," the hat added. "Try not to pee on any table legs, the house doesn't need its preconceptions confirmed."

"Sirius, why does your hat sound like the Hogwarts Sorting hat?" Remus asked tiredly. The big, dark circles under his eyes were peak Moony in the middle of a research spree, but he also looked… haunted. Not nearly as fun.

"Don't tell me you recognized the voice right away," Sirius complained. "Watch your step, there might still be a drop of acid somewhere in the hallway."

"I did hear the hat singing just last year," Remus reminded him. He stepped carefully in the hallway, eyeing the pit marks all over the walls, floor, and ceiling with thinly-veiled apprehension.

"Was that while you were Professor 'I'll just sneak a peek on the teenage boy behind the dividing wall' Lupin?" the hat jeered.

"It wasn't like that!" Remus objected. "Sirius, what did you do to that hat, and why does it sound like the Sorting Hat?"

"Brought it to life," Sirius said. "Blind man, water, something like that. You look like shit." He led Remus to the kitchen. "Also, you've been a right arse ever since I was exonerated."

"He's mad he can't pity-party himself to sleep anymore," the hat opined. "That'd be my guess, and you know I've been in his head."

"Enough!" Remus slammed his fist on the table that Taylor couldn't figure out how to stop from squeaking. Sirius didn't bother casting a surreptitious squeaking charm, as Taylor wasn't around to be baffled by it. "I didn't come here to be mocked, Sirius. We have an important assignment. Can you be solemn for one second?"

"Nicely avoided asking him to be serious, you might just be smarter than the average pun-prefacer," the hat said quietly. "Then again, you came here, so…"

"Tell me why you're an arse these days, and we'll talk about me maybe letting up," Sirius bargained. He straddled the good chair, leaving Remus with the creaky one.

"The assignment–" Remus objected.

"Can wait, because the library will scalp you if you touch a book," Sirius lied. He and Taylor had long since disabled that charm. In doing so, he had learned that while the charm would not go off if bugs touched a book, if manually triggered it considered the entire exoskeleton of an ant to be the scalp. He had a clean, separate ant exoskeleton to prove it. Remus might not appreciate that knowledge, though. Or the little model he had made out of the exoskeleton. It was on the desk in the room he set aside for Harry.

He was very bored.

"That could be armor for your todger, it's the right size," the hat remarked.

"Oy, you reading my mind?" Sirius objected.

"You put me on your head," the hat said unrepentantly. "How do you think I know exactly when to speak up?"

"Let's do… this." Sirius set the hat down between them. "Hush, you. Remus, my question?"

"I grew up while you were in Azkaban." Remus said sullenly.

"See, no, I don't think that's it," Sirius said. "Grown-up Moony is just kid Moony with the age to back up his old soul. Grown-up Moony isn't an arse to kids named Harry. Grown-up Moony doesn't stay away from his exonerated friend for months for no reason. Grown-up Moony doesn't sound pleased about the possibility of putting a woman down like a dog with rabies!" Sirius slammed both hands on the table, mirroring Remus' earlier action but with a lot more force. "Man up and tell me where the stick up your arse came from, so I know whether to have it surgically removed or kick it the rest of the way up when I boot you out of my house." Maybe blaming it on him being in Azkaban had hit a sore spot.

Remus growled at him, but he growled right back, and Remus looked away first. "You could have come to me," Remus said. "When you broke out."

"No I couldn't, you thought I'd betrayed our best friends," Sirius argued. "You would try to arrest or kill me."

"You could have convinced me otherwise!" Remus insisted, not even bothering to pretend he wouldn't have attacked. He might be mild-mannered most of the time, but put him in the right frame of mind, and the wolf would come out.

"Over my mangled body with my dying words, maybe, or when I was being hauled away by the Aurors," Sirius said. "I needed proof. You're not the guy who believes every crazy story he hears, and my story was crazy. By the time I got that proof, I was deep in planning how to use it and dealing with other problems. When that was done with, I was a free man and you knew where to find me, but short of going to the front gate of Hogwarts and holding up a Muggle music box or sending an owl, which was redirected, I couldn't get to you. Whereas you could literally apparate to my doorstep at any time. I thought you'd pop in for a reunion bar crawl one night, whenever you had time!"

"I figured you were busy," Remus muttered. "I forgot I had that Owl ward up, dark families were sending me hate mail. And I had a job to do."

"And then?" Sirius pressed. He stared at his once-friend. Remus was slouching down in his chair. "I'm never busy for long. Boredom is my inescapable foe. You know this."

"Dumbledore had something he needed me to do," Remus said. "Out of the country. Owls couldn't reach me there either, I was looking for a specific piece of information deep in the Vatican's secret magical archives. Now I know what he sent me to get, material on Summoning, which it turns out they didn't have anymore. Burn the heresy, all of that. I got back a week before he called you and me together."

"So you're butthurt over something I didn't do because I wanted to prove myself, not get killed by a rightfully murderous Moony," Sirius concluded. Maybe it would have been better if they had stumbled across Remus mid-Pettigrew-capture. They could have hashed it out over Pettigrew's quivering body and mutually-suffered bug bites. But he made it a personal policy to never linger overlong on what-ifs. "Fine. Why does that extend to Harry's mum?"

"His kidnapper," Remus growled.

"Remember what Dumbledore said," Sirius warned.

"I spent years scouring the country on and off, Sirius," Remus continued, totally ignoring his interjection. "I camped outside of dark manors, watching for weeks at a time. I risked my life trawling through Knockturn Alley. I wandered through thousands of Muggle neighborhoods, looking for places where the house numbers didn't match up, hoping to find a Fidelius like this one. All that time, someone was laughing in their hideout somewhere, with Harry alive but captive."

That was not how it happened, but Sirius had no explanation for how he knew.

"We failed to find him, I failed," Remus said bitterly, "When he showed up at Hogwarts, I thought maybe it didn't matter. Maybe he was okay. Once I worked up the courage to see him, when I got a job at Hogwarts, I saw I really had failed. He didn't know who he was. She took that from him, she took even the memory of James and Lily from him. Nobody else cared, beyond Snape, and he was as much of a bastard about it as he was about everything else. Harry didn't like me, wouldn't listen to me, wouldn't even give me the time of day. His damn Boggart was of her! Then, after all of that, Dumbledore finally saw fit to tell me he suspected this Muggle woman who kidnapped Harry might be possessed and was still an active danger? Can you blame me if I wouldn't mind her just… disappearing? She ruined everything!"

Remus clutched the table with both hands, his fingers gripping wood like it was a lifeline to his sanity. "We're here to do a job. To make sure she's not a threat. You give her the benefit of doubt. Me? I don't think I'll care very much if she can't be saved. I'm in this for Harry, and because as shitty as this world can be I live here too."

There were many things Sirius could have said in response to that. He could have picked apart Remus' self-centered view of events, either by claiming Harry had told him things, or by just pointing out that Remus was jumping to a lot of conclusions. He could have ranted right back at his friend, saying that same attitude was why Harry didn't like Remus, that and pushing Lily and James on him like he was supposed to care about them and only them. He could commiserate, and say their lives were both fucked up by the end of the war. He could try to reason with Remus.

But none of that would change the underlying facts upon which Remus was basing his resentment. The oddly convenient underlying facts.

This all came back to Taylor. To her, to Harry's disappearance, to Summoning. To Dumbledore. Searching for Harry, and failing to find him, had made Remus the bitter, more cynical man he was today.

That did make the plan to tie up this particular loose end much easier to stomach. It was for Remus' own good.

"Never mind," Sirius said, breathing out and leaning forward against his elbow-rest. "That's enough ranting for today. I thought you were avoiding me, you thought I didn't have time for you, we were both wrong, problem solved. We'll agree to disagree on our hopes for the Summoning problem. There is something we can do about that today, to blatantly change the subject."

"What is it?" Remus asked, a tentative smile on his face.

"Well, to start with I want my turn at those books," Sirius said. "You have them with you?"

Remus lifted a small satchel to the table. He pulled all six tomes from it, revealing that his bag was heavily enchanted… and for that matter, Sirius hadn't seen the bag before this very moment. "Where were you keeping that thing?" he asked.

"I know where," the hat piped up. "Same place I keep my sword."

"You don't have a sword," Sirius claimed, taking the books and sliding them over to his side of the table.

"Sure I do," the hat told him. "Lupin, flip me over and reach inside with your wand. It's two twitches to the right and a revealing charm."

"Why not me?" Sirius demanded.

"I don't let ugly imbeciles stick their hands up me," the hat told him. A corner of its brim folded at him, looking almost like a wink without the eye or the rest of the face…

"Remus, prove the hat to be a big fat liar, please," Sirius said, getting his wand out under the table.

Remus looked extremely dubious, but he took the hat in one hand, his wand in the other, and put his wand inside the hat. "How far?" he asked.

"Look in, you want to cast it right at the tiny ruby sewn into the bottom," the hat instructed.

Remus leaned in further, until his face was covered by the hat and his wand was in a very awkward position. "I don't see–"

"Obliviate!" Sirius cast, focusing on the same thing he had obliviated from Dumbledore. Taylor. Her name, who she was, everything Remus knew about her, and for good measure everything Remus knew about Harry's childhood, too, as well everything he knew about Summoning just on general principle.

Multi-subject obliviation was difficult, especially with the added impetus on the mind filling in the gaps so the loss wasn't noticeable, but Sirius had studied and practiced, because Taylor didn't do obliviations and they were too useful to ignore.

The spell scratched against his friend's mind, slipping on hard will and relying on his own to shove it into place, and he put every ounce of effort he could into it. It was easier last time with Dumbledore's wand, much easier, but the spell slipped in and slammed down eventually, after a few tense moments of battling wills.

Remus dropped the hat and blinked, swaying from side to side. "Wha…"

"Ha!" the hat yelled. "Got you! How do you like the smell of those mothballs!"

"Why you little piece of ragged cloth," Remus growled, shaking off his momentary obliviation-induced confusion. He looked up at Sirius. "I have to admit, this thing is brilliant." He already sounded less frustrated, the weight on his shoulders lifting. Not entirely, but enough to make a difference.

"I know, right?" Sirius agreed. "I charmed it to sound like the Sorting Hat and everything! Everyone trusts that voice, and it's even funnier when it's cursing up a storm." He would shove the cat back in the bag on the hat's actual origin. It was better if people thought he was just a prankster, not that he actually had a copy of the Sorting Hat. McGonagall would get her tail in a knot about that, if nothing else.

"What were we talking about before you decided to prank me with the hat?" Remus asked. "I can't quite remember."

"I said we were both idiots," Sirius told him. "You remember that, right? You explaining why you've been such an arse, and me explaining why I didn't run to you first thing after I squeezed my bony self out between the bars in Azkaban?" If this worked, and Remus changed his attitude, Sirius was willing to forgive his prior behavior as mostly Dumbledore's fault.

"Yeah…" Remus rubbed at his head. "I've… Huh. I don't remember how we got from there to me looking into the hat."

"He's a nasty bastard, don't put him on your head again," Sirius advised, casually slinging the hat back onto his. "We had to come to an agreement."

"Black controls my entertainment," the hat whispered loudly. "His antics are more fun if I'm not stuck in the closet."

"I know the feeling," Remus agreed. "Start over, Sirius?" He stuck his hand out. "I've been… In a rough place lately. I think." Momentary confusion flitted across his face, soothed down by the aftereffects of the obliviation.

"You're going to have to do a lot more apologizing to Harry, but as for me, I'm good." Sirius took his hand and shook it. "All you did to me was not come over. Let's go–"

Someone pushed on the Floo wards, stepping into his fire from elsewhere. It was either Taylor, in which case this must be an emergency major enough for her to break her no-magic regime now and waste several weeks of preparation, or someone else who thought they could just walk into his home. Neither was good.

"Sirius, are you home?"

"Narcissa?" he muttered. What in the world was his cousin doing here?

"Malfoy," Remus growled.

"Hang on, let me see what she wants." Sirius sidled out of the kitchen and into the living room. Narcissa was there, looking around at the windows he still hadn't gotten around to properly replacing. "Long time no see," he said, inwardly cursing his stupid self for not closing the Floo. Anyone could have wandered in! He must have forgotten to close it after the carpet tamer left. "It's been… what, a month? Didn't see you last time I visited Malfoy Manor, though."

"Sirius." Narcissa's lips quirked downward. She held herself carefully, like she expected to need to retreat into the Floo, but wouldn't betray her unease before it became necessary. "I wanted to extend my sincerest apologies for the actions of Barty Crouch Junior and the thing he harbored."

"Right, that was the Malfoy ritual room we ended up in on the end of Barty's portkey, wasn't it?" Sirius mused. That was a sordid little detail the Aurors had followed up on. Percy Weasley had quite the Veritaserum-verified story to tell, and he happily contributed his own observations when asked. "Fancy that. Was it Imperius again, or something else?" he asked sarcastically. "I can never keep the excuses straight."

"Imperius," Narcissa said, her face entirely straight. "Barty was… not sane. He considered Lucius a traitor, rightfully so, and said our manor and our freedom was forfeit. We were kept under control from the start, beyond what was necessary to keep up appearances. Your Weasley friend's child can confirm it."

"I'm sure Percy saw exactly what you wanted him to see," Sirius scoffed. He really ought to be more pissed off at how Lucius was getting away with the same Imperius defense, but, well… It wasn't all said and done just yet. He had to do something to use up his copious free time. Putting some dirt in Lucius' eye would be a worthy endeavor.

"Percival Weasley saw that we were no more willing participants than he was, and that is nothing but the truth," Narcissa said primly. "Think, cousin. Lucius has the ear of the Minister. We have money. We have power. All of that we stood to lose, not gain."

"Old-fashioned bigotry and inbreeding addling the mind would be the driving motivation, I suspect," Sirius retorted. "Why are you here? You know I'm not going to fall for any of that."

"I am here to save your life, you foolish manchild," Narcissa snapped. "Did you even think to wonder how the Dark Lord possessed you so easily, and was so powerful while doing so? Or are you so far removed from your upbringing that you think such a thing is normal? Why would he ever bother with anything else if he could simply hop from body to body, taking over his foes and laying waste to them without being in any real danger himself?"

Sirius had chalked that incident up to 'Voldemort probably breaks rules of magic for fun when he wants to', but he wasn't going to admit that to his snooty cousin. He felt exactly how damaging Harry's spell was in dragging Voldemort out of his mind. Damaging to Voldemort, that was. It was over and done with… or so he thought. The healers at Saint Mungo's thought so too, based on their preliminary tests. He did have that follow-up appointment coming up. "Enlighten me, then," he drawled.

"The ritual," Narcissa said, pacing forward. Her hands were empty, but Sirius remained wary of her, and backed up to keep a healthy amount of distance between them. "Lucius told the Aurors that it was one of resurrection. Bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy."

And of course, him having the ear of the Minister, he was allowed to say as much without being drugged to the gills with Veritaserum. Yes, Sirius was definitely going to devote some time to screwing the Malfoys over. The balance of the world demanded it.

"This was an option," Narcissa continued, "but not the only one. We were not privy to which Barty and the Dark Lord decided to use, but the absence of any bones and what happened to you are telling. They used an equally dark body takeover ritual, instead. One meant for Potter, though why him… The potion in the cauldron was designed to weaken the hold of a spirit on the body it currently inhabits. Permanently. Do you understand the danger you are still in now? The ritual was not completed, but the potion and the possession, however it was ended, will have done damage. Damage that can be exploited."

Much as he hated to admit his cousin might have any sort of point, he did have a pretty good idea of how bad that was, what with all of the different possession incidents and scares going on in the last year or so. Especially as, while he got most of the potion in the splashback, he wasn't the only one. "I might have an idea," he said. "And you're telling me this out of the goodness of your heart?"

"Do you want me to lay it out plainly, so that your simple mind can comprehend it?" Narcissa demanded. "I refuse. Figure it out yourself. You are a Black. And in case you cannot, know that if you speak of this to anyone, it will all be for nothing."

"I'll keep your secret," mostly, "but I want more. Did this plan spring from the head of the moldy baby fully formed, or did it come from your Manor's library? All the old Malfoy tomes and dark treatises?"

Narcissa didn't answer, which was an answer in itself, but a much more deniable one.

"If you happen to have relevant references," he said slowly, leaving no doubt as to how likely he thought that would be, "I'll take those. And I do mean take, not borrow."

"I want assurances," Narcissa insisted. "If the Dark Lord returns again, if we are caught out as supporting both sides, I want your word that you'll shelter us. Me, Draco, and Lucius."

Sirius had to think about that one. He had no love for his cousin, and less for her husband or son. He highly doubted they were on his side for any reason other than hedging their bets. Lucius probably liked his cushy, high-profile lifestyle too much to want to go back to being a subordinate of anyone. The only thing about Voldemort that they disliked was not being him. This was not a family he was willing to shelter out of the goodness of his heart, technically his relative though Narcissa was.

But it didn't have to be done out of pity or any belief that they were better than they really were. "Protection from Voldemort, on the condition that I will only shelter you if you publicly renounce him to such an extent that it can't possibly be a lie, before you come to me to be hidden away," he specified. "I'll check, and I will throw you to the wolves if it's a trick. In exchange, along with all the relevant books, I expect at least four favors from Lucius, to be called in whenever I want. I'll make them reasonable or excusable, so they don't ruin his cover," he said sarcastically. His cover as a bigoted, murderous git with too much money. As if that was the cover, and there was a reasonable man beneath. Fat chance.

"Deal," Narcissa agreed. There was no magic enforcement behind it, of course, and she wouldn't insist on any. It would be dangerous to her health if she made a magically-binding deal and then obliviated herself of its existence, after all. As it was, she and Lucius would have to do some clever planning to hold to their side of all of this without remembering the deal itself, so Voldemort couldn't pull the details from their minds. No need to add possible loss of magic or death to the consequences for an unintended mistake.

Narcissa might think he was a childish clown, and maybe he was, but he knew what he was doing. Sometimes.

Sirius shook her hand. "I would say it was a pleasure doing business with you, but I think I need to take a long bath to get the slime of shady deals off," he said. "So that would be a lie."

"I feel much the same," she said, scowling at him even as she went to the Floo. "Lock your Floo. Anyone could have come in and ambushed you."

"Wouldn't want your safety net to get stabbed before you can use him," Sirius said as she left.

"Obviously not," were her parting words.

Remus came into the living room the moment after she left. "Why did you do that?" he asked, though his tone was genuinely curious, not disapproving.

"He put enough loopholes in that agreement to throw a Death Eater or three through," the hat piped up.

"Exactly." He had only promised to protect them from Voldemort, not the Ministry. A specially warded cell in Azkaban would probably fulfill the wording, if not the spirit, of their agreement. He also had at no point said or implied he would stop considering them enemies in the meantime, and he fully intended to ruin the cushy lifestyle and influence Lucius and Narcissa currently enjoyed. Ideally Voldemort would never return, in which case he lost nothing and gained several advantages from this. If Voldemort did come back, it was better for everyone that the Malfoys had the option to run like cowards, instead of being forced to give their all to the cause.

"Never back the rats into a corner with no escape, when you can let them run into a cage and shut the door behind them," he said loftily. "Also, I kind of want to live." He did want to know exactly how loose his soul currently was, and how to fix or otherwise defend it. One barely-remembered possession was more than enough for a lifetime.

"I can help you with that," Remus offered. "Research isn't your strong point."

"Nah, that's pranking, deviousness, and improvisation, as well as tutoring practical-minded adults," Sirius remarked. "Come back tonight, we can do that pub crawl I was hoping for."

"Tutoring." Remus shook his head. "I have no idea whether you're serious–" He stopped and groaned.

"I totally am," Sirius said smugly.

"Walked into that," the hat mocked.

Remus laughed, and Sirius reminded himself that obliviation wasn't the solution to every problem. Remus wasn't suddenly the person he knew going on twelve years ago. His obliviation had been intended to tie up a loose end, not to turn him back into a friend, and it wouldn't have changed Remus. Just sanded off the rough edges and unpleasant reminders related to chasing after Taylor.

But Sirius had plenty of time to remind an old, bitter werewolf of the good old days and how they weren't necessarily gone, now that Remus wasn't a walking threat to Taylor's life. Plenty of time later.

He checked the clock.

Ten minutes after one.

"Say, Remus," he began, "what do you know about time magic? Specifically, is it possible to go forward in time?"

It wouldn't be nearly the end of the school year without a meeting in Dumbledore's office. This time, though, Harry had absolutely no idea what was going to happen. Sirius officially had guardianship of him, though nobody from the Ministry had thought to tell him. It was more than a little vexing how that could be decided without any input from him at any part of the process, especially as all of the paperwork was about Harry Potter, but he supposed that was par for the course with the wizarding world. It worked in his favor this time around, so for once he wouldn't fight the implications.

This meeting could just be about that. He hoped so. Taylor was still laid up in Saint Mungo's, awaiting the end of her treatment and the delivery of her arms, so he wouldn't have her as backup. It would be him, Dumbledore… and Ginny under the Potter invisibility cloak, sneaking in behind him. He was too close to the end of all of this to risk being obliviated or something else just before the summer.

"Harry, come in," Dumbledore said as he raised his hand to knock on the door. Harry resolutely did not look at where Ginny would be, right on his heels, and entered the Headmaster's office. Dumbledore was at his desk, his eyes fixed on Harry as Harry tried his best to ignore the many distracting objects lining the walls on shelves and pedestals and in heaps on the floor, but a glowing purple orb that rolled in idle circles caught his eye.

"What is that?" he asked, unable to stop himself.

"That is a custom Remembrall," Dumbledore remarked. "Whoever it is tuned to has forgotten many, many things."

"Not you, though?" Harry asked nervously, wondering if Dumbledore was testing him.

"Oh, no, it belongs to my friend Nicolas Flamel," Dumbledore said with a smile as Harry sat down in the chair opposite his desk. Ginny's hand brushed against the back of his neck, reminding him that she was there. "Do you recognize the name? Binns may have gone over them…"

"Were they goblins?" Harry asked. He had just come from a goblin history session with Hermione, as they did need to revise the one year's worth of material Binns taught, so as to pass the exam. If it was goblin-related there was a fair chance Binns had at least touched the topic, but he didn't recognize the names.

"No… No matter," Dumbledore said. "This has been a very eventful year, much more so than I thought it would be. Voldemort was dealt a near-fatal blow. I have been looking for his remaining anchors, to confirm his demise, but I have had little luck so far. Next year, I would like to give you some personal lessons, to prepare you in case Voldemort is not truly gone."

"In fighting? Combat spells? Mental defenses?" Harry guessed. He had very mixed feelings about spending time with Dumbledore, but if he could get something genuinely useful out of it, maybe it would be worth his time.

"Something just as useful," Dumbledore said vaguely. "In the meantime, are you aware that Sirius Black has been granted custody?"

"Yes, he told me," Harry said.

"You may go with him, but…" Dumbledore trailed off, his eyes unfocusing. "Ah, what was it?" he murmured. "The Dursleys? I think so… yes."

Harry had no idea who the Dursleys were, or why they were coming up now. He could guess, though, and he could play along. "Yes, well, I don't think I'll miss them much," he said vaguely.

"I suppose not," Dumbledore agreed. "Their home is a safe place… It should be safe… it was safe…" He trailed off again, looking down at his desk for a worryingly long time.

Harry wondered about possible debilitating effects of complicated, far-reaching obliviations. Then he thought about how Dumbledore had subjected his mum to one, and decided he didn't care if there were deleterious side-effects. Not for Dumbledore, not so long as the obliviation held.

"I'll be safe with Sirius," Harry prompted.

Dumbledore startled, as if waking up, and blinked heavily. "Yes, you will," he agreed. "Why, it may be that there is little left to be safe from, if Voldemort is truly gone. I will see if I can find proof one way or the other over the summer. In the meantime, you enjoy yourself. Sirius has told me he will be waiting for the Hogwarts Express."

"Are you… okay, sir?" Harry asked. Surely other people would be asking Dumbledore the same thing, what if someone noticed?

"Oh, yes, I simply have had a lot on my mind," Dumbledore told him. "It is nothing to worry about. Perhaps I am just getting old."

"Right. Good." Harry stood. "See you this fall, Headmaster."

"And you, Harry," Dumbledore said vaguely. "Remember, you do not need to use the Floo this time, though why I… I am sure there was a reason…"

Harry waited long enough for Dumbledore to visibly dismiss his confusion – a full two minutes, by his nervous count – and then decided he wasn't helping anything by staying in the office.

"He's going to end up in a care center for old wizards at this rate," Ginny whispered as they descended the spiral staircase. "I hope that confusion is localized to him thinking of Taylor. And that it can't be reversed."

"Sirius was sure it was a strong obliviation," Harry whispered back. "Very strong." The way Dumbledore was now, he just seemed… old. Tired. Confused, but naturally so. It was kind of creepy, the way he explained his behavior so reasonably.

Harry in no way pitied the Headmaster, though. He was reaping what he had sown, good intentions or not. If he ever threw off the obliviation, highly unlikely though that might be with how thoroughly Sirius said it had stuck, Harry would be the first in line to either re-obliviate him or fight him off some other way.

Nobody was hurting his mum again. Ever.

The Hogwarts Express was set to leave Hogwarts in an hour, and all of Harry's friends were late. He himself had packed the night before, come down to the Great Hall for an early breakfast, and said goodbye to all of his Hufflepuff yearmates in case he didn't see them on the train. An hour was spent puzzling out the correct shrinking charms to make his luggage fit into his pocket, a luxury few lower-year students could manage. Then he went back to the Great Hall, wondering if anyone else was packed and ready yet, and upon not seeing Neville, Ginny, Luna, or Hermione there, went up to the Gryffindor common room.

He found Neville there. Specifically, he found a frantic Neville lugging a trunk out of the portrait hole, sweating hard. "Harry, thank Merlin," Neville cried out. "Help me get this down to the greenhouse! We don't have time!"

"Sure," Harry agreed, hoisting Neville and then his trunk out of the hole and setting them upright in the corridor, "but what–"

"No time!" Neville repeated, running down the corridor. Harry followed, and as they ran, Neville panted out what he probably thought was a complete explanation, but which was turned into a cryptic puzzle by his panting interrupting most of the words. "I," his next few words were too fast and panted to understand, "fourteen days," they turned down a long side-passage and Neville had to dodge a suit of armor, "kept it after," Mr. Filch waved a broom at them as they ran by, "Snape is harvesting–"

Neville reached a set of stairs, whipped his trunk out in front of him, and dove down headfirst. Harry stopped at the top of the stairs to goggle at his friend, his wand forgotten in his hand as Neville tobogganed down the stairs on his trunk. Two first-year Ravenclaws had to leap to the sides to avoid being run over at the bottom of the stairs, and Neville slid to a stop halfway down the following hallway, miraculously unharmed.

Harry felt that he had lost the plot somewhere along the way, but he ran down the stairs as fast as he could anyway. Questions could come after he helped Neville with whatever crazy emergency this was.

He was a ways behind Neville for the rest of their frantic trip through Hogwarts, but he managed to keep up, and Neville's ultimate destination was easily predicted. He ran into the greenhouse furthest from the castle, and Harry followed.

Inside, many small fronds of green and red waved gaily at them, dripping with condensation in the artificial sweltering humidity. In one corner of the greenhouse a great forest of head-high stalks sprang up from the planter beds. Neville beelined for that specific patch of greenery, throwing his trunk open just shy of the plants. Inside, there were four sets of pruning shears, a thick pamphlet, and what looked like a magical contract.

"Contract's expired, I can talk about it now, help me cut it down!" Neville blurted out, tossing Harry a pair of shears. "It was in the third task, a rare Grasping Gadfrond, none of the champions encountered it in the maze so it was still intact after. They left it here, I told Professor Sprout they gave it to me but I think they just forgot."

"Are we cutting it down or something?" Harry asked. "Also, is this thing dangerous?" He didn't recognize the name of the plant.

"We're checking the digestive tract," Neville said ominously, jabbing his shears into the nearest person-sized piece of foliage. It shuddered back, curling away, and he strode in, jabbing left and right.

"Nothing like a safari to start the day," Harry said as he followed, "but Professor Sprout could do this?"

"She said it was my responsibility to prune it!" Neville said. The lights of the greenhouse faded as they ventured deeper into the Gadfrond's territory. Harry could have sworn the greenhouse didn't go this far back. "I didn't know Snape was coming down here this morning, I was going to have my Gran come tomorrow with the hired cursebreakers to help me transplant it to our garden, so I didn't think I needed to prune it yesterday."

"Hired cursebreakers?" Harry repeated.

"Yeah, you need them to break natural rune root formation," Neville said. "It's very interesting, really, nothing complex but very strong because they grow that way, that's actually what makes them magical plants instead of terrifying Muggle plants – there's the holding pod." He poked forward and down, into the soil, and the ground beneath his feet shuddered.

Harry watched as dirt shifted off a bulging convex surface just below the surface, revealing a fat pod the size of a person.

"I'm going to be scrubbing cauldrons in detention until I'm dead," Neville moaned, taking his shears and dragging them down the side of the pod. Green sticky fluid burst out from the cut, and the entire thing crumpled, revealing a sodden, huddled figure.

Snape didn't look any worse for wear, aside from the unnaturally peaceful expression on his face and his sodden robes. He snored contentedly. All around them, the Gadfrond's tendrils shuddered and retreated into the soil, turning a head-high jungle into a barren patch of dirt in seconds.

Outside the dirt, Harry's own head of house was gearing up for war, dragonhide gloves on her hands and a fearsome look on her face. "Neville?" she demanded.

"I got him!" Neville said, rushing over to Professor Sprout. "But I need to get to the train soon, so could you handle the rest?"

"You did get him," Professor Sprout said approvingly. "No harm done. It could happen to anyone. Hello, Harry!"

"How much trouble are we in?" Harry asked.

"None, Neville did wonderfully," she assured him. "The Gadfrond isn't dangerous, it takes two years to meaningfully digest anything, which is why it secretes a weak, natural Draught of Living Death. You should run along before Professor Snape wakes up, though. I won't get to tell him it was all his own fault if he has students around to blame."

"How did it catch him?" Harry thought to ask. Snape was a terrible teacher and possibly a terrible person in general, but he wasn't incompetent.

"Those tendrils are stronger than they look," Pomona informed him.

"Also, the Gadfrond likes me." Neville smiled at the bare patch of dirt. "It's a lot more effective at snaring people it doesn't like or doesn't know," he continued. "It's good enough to be a challenging obstacle in the Triwizard Tournament, remember?"

Harry hurried off the Gadfrond's territory, breathing much more easily once he was back on solid, non-treacherous ground. "This is cool, but the train," he reminded Neville.

Neville's pleased expression shifted to one of panic. "I didn't miss it?" he asked, taking Harry's shears and putting them in his trunk.

"Not yet, but I can't find Luna, Hermione, or Ginny," Harry explained. "We have less than an hour."

"I'll check by the Ravenclaw common room, you check the library?" Neville suggested. "I need to go up that way to release my Puffball spores out of a high window. Ginny wasn't in the common room, so I can't think of where else she could be but the library."

"Sure," Harry agreed, holding his questions about Puffball spores until they were safely on the train. He split off from Neville once they reached Hogwarts, headed for the library at a pace just short of running. Once he actually reached the library he slowed to a respectful walk for Madam Pince's benefit.

Checking over the mostly-empty expanse of tables, he didn't see any of his friends. Ernie waved at him, and Harry waved back before tapping his wrist where a watch would be if he was wearing one. Ernie nodded and packed up his belongings.

Harry took a moment to meet Ernie outside the library, just on the off chance he had seen anyone. "Hermione, Ginny, or Luna?" he asked.

"Have I seen them, you mean?" Ernie asked. "Yeah. Ginny and Hermione went into that empty classroom on the second floor. First door on the right of the fish painting."

"Thanks!" He was really feeling the time pressure now, so he abandoned all pretense of dignity and sprinted down the hallways. Second floor, fish painting– Yes, he knew that room. He stopped just outside the door, pushed it open, and walked in.

Hermione had her back to him. Ginny was facing him. Neither noticed his entrance, as they were both seemingly oblivious to their surroundings.

Being lip-locked in a passionate kiss would do that to a person.

Harry stood there for a long moment, mentally weighing the pros and cons of announcing his presence. On the one hand, the train and the rapidly depleting time between now and when it was set to leave. On the other, the possibility of painful hexes from a surprised and vengeful couple finally having figured things out, only to be interrupted. It was a tough decision.

"Two more minutes," Ginny said, breaking the kiss to look over Hermione's shoulder. Right at him.

"Train leaves soon!" he blurted out, his words punctuated by a surprised squeak from Hermione. He was out of the room before she could turn around, satisfied that two of his remaining three friends knew they were on the clock.

Neville was looking for Luna, and it would take time to get a carriage out to the Hogsmeade station, so Harry decided to hope Luna was already at the carriages and made his way there. Much to his relief, she and Neville were waiting along with a whole collection of other students who wanted to make the journey with their friends.

"I've been waiting for you," Luna told him. "Neville found me first. He says you were running all over the castle."

"I didn't want to leave anyone behind," Harry admitted. Maybe it would only be a minor inconvenience, or maybe the Professors would make sure nobody missed the train, but this was technically his first train trip back to London, and he wanted it to go well.

Hermione and Ginny walked up, their luggage levitating behind them. As a group, the five of them got into one of the carriages. They had been waiting around the back, but as they got in, Harry noticed something.

"Were those always there?" he asked, pointing to the bony horses.

"Yes, those are Thestrals," Luna said.

"Ah, right." It was nice to finally see one of Luna's more mysterious creatures.

"Were you invited to Professor Moody's funeral?" Luna asked as the carriage set into motion, randomly changing the subject. "My father says he hasn't heard where it will be, or when."

"There wasn't a funeral," Harry relayed. "There was a will reading, but I wasn't there for that." Sirius stood in for him and Taylor, as he was stuck in school and Taylor in Saint Mungo's at the time. "Did you know Moody added to his will weekly? It's over a thousand sheets of parchment long. Sirius said most of it was just Moody recounting exactly what he did, and with who, so that if his murder was a mystery the killer wouldn't stand a chance of getting away with it. There's talk of editing it and publishing it as a memoir."

"That's kind of impressive but also kind of barmy," Ginny remarked. "Did it have Hissy in it?"

"It named Sirius and 'his animagus mercenary babysitter', yeah. Also, what they told him Hissy was doing in Hogwarts." Harry felt bad about Moody's death, but he felt worse about the relief that it was only Moody. It could easily have been Sirius or Taylor, or himself. "So Sirius says he and mum are going to have to follow through with the presentation to the Hogwarts board of governors. No more Animagus sneaking around."

"I'll miss her," Luna said.

"Me too," Ginny agreed. "But she's not dead or gone, just not sneaking around."

"Speaking of sneaking around…" Harry might have been wary of provoking the new couple in the heat of the moment without backup, but he felt much safer here in the carriage with Luna and Neville as backup. "Did I walk in on a well-hidden secret, or an unexpected event?"

"A long-awaited event," Ginny answered.

"I would say unexpected," Hermione added, not meeting anyone's eyes, "but it was sort of building up all term." She smiled shyly.

"I think it's great," Luna said loudly. "Now Ginny can write you love poems and actually send them, not burn them after!"

"Luna!" Ginny shrieked. "That was one time!"

The carriage rolled to a stop, and Ginny pushed Luna on the shoulder as they all disembarked. Harry caught his thin-framed girlfriend as she stumbled into him, turned to admonish Ginny, and almost tripped as Luna turned the dramatic fall into a dancing spin, making him wonder if Ginny had actually shoved her hard at all.

They joined the general last-minute scrum of students boarding the train, and as a group claimed the first mostly-empty compartment they came across, sitting with the infamous Weasley twins and Lee Jordan. All together, the eight of them took up enough space that Lee cast something to enlarge the compartment, but they fit in the end.

The train left the station not ten minutes after they were seated, proving Harry right in his frantic cross-Hogwarts sprint. The twins handed out candy, which everyone pocketed, as it was much better used on others than eaten personally.

George – or possibly Fred – noticed Hermione and Ginny holding hands a short while into the trip. "Well," he drawled, poking his brother and pointing the duo out, "that is going to throw mum for a loop, isn't it?"

Ginny flushed red and drew her wand, but Fred waved his hands wildly. "No, no, we approve," he added. "Merlin knows it was blindingly obvious all term. But mum told us 'you watch my Ginny this year, make sure Harry treats her right.' We should have made a bet with her, but, you know, it's mum."

"Were you watching?" Harry asked curiously, hoping to avoid any further discussion of Molly Weasley. He did not regret turning down their offer to have him stay over for another summer. Once was an experience, and more than enough for him.

"You must know, Harry," Lee said cryptically, "Fred and George are always watching. Right pair of big brothers, they are."

"Maybe next year we'll pass our secrets on to you, if Harry Potter never shows up," George said.

"I'm not him," Harry objected, more out of habit than anything else. One could never be sure whether the twins were being serious.

"Oh, we know," George said. "Harry Hebert you are, and you have been since the first day. Everyone else will believe it sooner or later."

Luna, who was looking out the window, nodded agreeably. "Yes, and your name is so much more fitting that way. Your first and last names start with the same letter, like a superhero from a comic."

"How do you know about comics?" Hermione asked.

"Daddy has a collection," Luna explained. "Up in the attic, next to his Muggle conspiracy theory books. He's always looking to expand his mind."

"Superheroes are fictional, though," Hermione argued. "They don't exist, and nobody is claiming they do."

"Not like magic," Luna agreed. "We all know the Muggles do not write fiction about that, or believe it really doesn't exist. Totally different."

Neville laughed, and Harry had to laugh too at the affronted expression on Hermione's face. "It is different," she insisted.

"You'd make a good superhero, though," Harry suggested. "Lightning from your hands, that's a superpower."

"We would all make for good superheroes," Lee Jordan agreed. "Not them, though." He pointed at the twins. "They're obviously supervillains."

"I feel we have been complimented," George said, "but alas, father's obsession with Muggles has not led to us knowing what comic books are. Even though they are by far the best Muggle literature."

"Yes, we certainly do not have a whole stash hidden under the bed, on top of the miniature potions set," Fred agreed with an exaggerated wink. "Ginny, now that I'm thinking about it, you might like some of them."

"The costumes," George elaborated. "You will not believe how much skin Muggles show."

"That's enough," Hermione interjected. "Who wants to play a game of Exploding Snap?"

Harry would have said yes, but he noticed the anticipatory look Hermione was trying to hide, and decided it was probably best he enjoy this show from the sidelines. The twins soon learned, much to their chagrin, that playing with Hermione involved a lot more static shock than normal.

Meanwhile, Neville had cornered Lee into talking about plants, and Luna was pulling out a quill and parchment. Harry leaned against her to look out the window, then glanced down at what she was drawing.

It was not a drawing of the countryside, like he had expected. Neither was it a sketch of some mysterious creature. Rather, she was drawing… them. All of them, in the carriage. She started with basic flowing outlines; an oval for a face here, a pair of perpendicular lines for a shoulder there.

"Ow!" Fred yelped. "Neville, I'm tagging you in until my hands regain feeling."

As the kilometers sped by outside, Luna's picture took shape, building off the outlines to create recognizable figures. Hermione and Ginny were on the left of the drawing with Ginny up against the window, still wearing their Hogwarts robes. Hermione's hair was fully puffed out in Luna's illustration, with a few stylized lightning bolts shooting off it, and Ginny was patting it down with one hand while giving her brothers the evil eye. Fred and George were on Hermione's left, depicted dealing out a hand of Exploding Snap to Neville and Lee, who were on the edge of the row of seats, leaning forward to take their cards. Neville had a small potted plant on his thigh in the picture, though no such thing was present in the carriage.

Harry and Luna didn't appear in the picture, or so he thought. Luna put more detail into the robes, the faces, the pattern of the compartment wall behind them, but even once it looked mostly done there was a big empty space in the bottom right of the parchment. She sketched a big blocky thing there, one that developed a mass of tendrils and remained unidentifiable, even when she put the quill down.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Your head on my shoulder," Luna said absently.

So it was. He felt vaguely amused that his hair resembled an unknown creature from the depths of the ocean, but it was so perfectly Luna to include even that. This picture truly was from her perspective.

The Exploding Snap game died off once all of the players save Hermione had numb hands. Eventually, conversation turned to summer plans.

"Gran and I are going to spend the summer replanting the Grasping Gadfrond," Neville said. "Also, something about the Wizengamot… The one is my reward for putting up with the other. You're all welcome to come over anytime."

"I'll be home, of course," Ginny said. "No World Cup or visit to Egypt this year, so it'll be a normal, boring summer. Mostly."

"Same for me," Hermione said. She held Ginny's hand with one hand, and flicked sparks from finger to finger with the other. The sparks increased in intensity as she continued, "Ginny is coming over for a week, I know that. Harry, my parents want to have you and your mum over for dinner."

"I will be drawing," Luna said absently. "Whatever I see… Some things I do not, too. Daddy says he will be printing some of my drawings in the Quibbler starting this summer!"

And then there was Harry, who for once had absolutely no reservations about how he would be spending the summer.

When the train pulled into platform nine and three-quarters, he disembarked with everyone else and looked around. For a moment he worried that something had gone wrong.

Then he saw them, both of them. Sirius with that weird hat of his from Diagon Alley, and Taylor wearing a sleeveless robe to display her new rune-covered but otherwise normal-looking arms. They were waiting for him, out in the open, without fear of a Dumbledore interruption or other complication.

Finally, he was home.

Chapter Text

Eight Years Later

The ring of the Floo woke Harry up late in the morning, an hour after he usually got up for work. He flailed around in the bed, his arms passing through empty space to come to a rest on an extra blanket, and he had all but settled back in to doze when the Floo ward sounded off again. Someone wanted to come through.

"I'm coming!" he yelled, knowing that nobody could hear him. He stumbled out of bed, into the bathroom, and out of the bathroom again with a comfortable bathrobe. There were advantages to sleeping in one's boxers, but those advantages did not extend to meeting unexpected guests in a timely fashion.

"What's up?" he asked, crouching down in front of the Floo in the living room of his flat. It was a cozy little place, very well-kept and within walking distance of the Ministry, smack in the middle of Diagon Alley's newest high-density housing space. Expansion charms made space very inexpensive, but there was something to be said for a home that was no bigger than it needed to be, especially when it was only temporary.

The head of Sirius Black stuck through the flames. Sirius, usually about as fond of mornings as Harry was, looked like he had already gone through a few late nights and early mornings himself. "You said you'd play the owl for these letters," Sirius told him. "Still willing?"

"Bet you're regretting inventing Wizarding spam mail now," Harry said, without an ounce of sympathy. The quickly-developed countermeasures to singing Howlers extolling the virtues of cheap enlargement potions had drastically cut down on the reliability of owl mail in general.

"It was your mum's idea, I only put it into practice," Sirius replied, pulling back from the fire to look at something on his side, then returning. "Nobody bothers sending howlers anymore, so I consider it a net gain. Look through these and pick out the ones you can deliver today without too much trouble. I'm stuck doing the rest."

Harry accepted the stack of fancy addressed envelopes and scattered them out on the rug without further ado. "I've got the day off," he said. "I can do all the ones for Hogwarts," that was easy, "and Neville, and if I do this one I can probably get out there for these," he trailed off, still sorting letters. It would be a busy day, but he could take at least half of these envelopes off of Sirius' hands. "Are these all of them?" he asked.

Sirius, who was waiting in the fire, shook his head. "Nah, but I got most of the fancy high-society ones going by verified Goblin Delivery. I'm not sending you to play courier with the snobs."

"I appreciate it." They would probably look down on him if he showed up at their manor doorstep with letters, no matter how fancy. "I can take these," he said, indicating the smaller of the two piles, though not by much.

"Nice. Busy day?" Sirius reached out for the rejected letters. "Not as busy as mine, but you know…"

"Big event next week, plenty to do at home," Harry said. "Yeah, I know. Try to sleep sometime before next Friday? Mum won't mind too much if some random, inconsequential detail is out of place."

"It must be perfect," Sirius intoned. "The sacrifice will accept no imperfections if the world-ending ritual is to be performed…"

"If you end the world, it will be because you tripped over someone else's ritual and set it off," Harry quipped.

"That burn is going to keep me up at night," Sirius complained. "Say hi to everyone for me, and make sure you read your invitation carefully!"

"Will do." Harry shut the Floo grate and went into the kitchen to fix himself something to eat. His first stop would require a visit to the international travel department and a long-distance portkey. Never a good idea to do all of that on an empty stomach.

The day-trip portkey deposited him deep in an unpopulated magical wildlife preserve in India, after a quick stopover in the Indian equivalent of the Ministry to confirm his identity, that yes, his translation charms were working, and no, he did not intend to stay more than a few hours. Border-crossing in the magical world was still refreshingly straightforward, though it helped that he was a known international traveler. Being in and out of Britain on a monthly basis with Luna had its perks.

He quickly found Neville's base camp, by merit of following the clearly laid-out magical signal flares. The forest was ominously dark and something slithered through the trees behind him, but he made it to a ring of tents without any kind of incident.

Neville was there, in the clearing in the middle of the tent ring, setting up something with a lot of moving parts that spewed water everywhere but on Neville himself. Three Indian wizards were working on similar contraptions on the edges of the camp.

"Harry!" Neville cast a spell at the device that cut off the water flow, then strode over to clap Harry on the shoulder. The years since Hogwarts had been good to him, and he towered over Harry, taller than he had been only two months ago. Unnaturally tall.

"Uh, Neville?" Harry had to look up to meet Neville's amused gaze. "Did you get stretched out or something?"

"Embiggening potion," Neville explained. "Some of the fauna around here… You've got to make like Hagrid and wrestle it to the ground, otherwise it will never recognize you as a threat and leave well enough alone. It's a good one, not like the cheap ones Sirius was hawking, so it'll wear off in a few months. What brings you to the camp? We're not set up for the Mirage Vine yet, so there's nothing to see."

Harry looked around the dense, magically-brimming forest. It was the sort of place Luna might take a month-long trip to just to look at all the animals, magical and mundane. "If this is your idea of normal, I guess not," he said. "Here, invitation to the thing. Can you make it?"

"Finally set a date?" Neville asked, pocketing the letter. "I'll make time. Is Susan going to be there?"

"Yeah, probably. Is that going to be an issue?" Harry asked.

"We parted on good terms," Neville dismissed. "Just didn't want to be surprised, is all. It'll be great to get back to Britain!" He clapped Harry on the shoulder again, sending Harry reeling. "Sorry. Still not used to being this size."

"I'll be okay… once the bones knit," Harry told him. "What are you doing here, anyway? I don't recognize these things. Are they just magical sprinklers?"

"Glad you asked!" Neville grinned at him. "Fancy lending a wand?"

Harry had a few hours to kill before his portkey took him back to Britain, so he rolled up his sleeves and took out his wand, the Acacia and Unicorn wand Ollivander had matched him with after he lost his original wand to Voldemort. "What do I do?"

Later that day, after a soaking, return portkey trip, quick lunch, and change of robes, Harry apparated to Hogsmeade and walked the path from the village to the front gates. Hagrid was out and about, trimming the weeds around the gates. "Harry!" he boomed.

Harry smiled at the similarities between Neville and Hagrid, shoulder clap and all, and appreciated his own foresight for healing up the bruise from Neville's greeting before coming here. "Afternoon, Hagrid," he said. "I have some letters to deliver." He shuffled through the letters until he got to Hagrid's. All of Hogwarts' current teachers had one, given the nature of the event. Most of them had provided advice or an all-out consultation at one point or another, Hagrid included.

"Was wonderin' when these would come," Hagrid said, taking his invitation with exaggerated care. "Go on in, they'll know you're here. Mind the wards, they're a mite ticklish if you set 'em off now. Bill gave them a tweaking that hasn't come out quite right."

"That fills me with confidence," Harry said as he stepped through the gates. He felt what Hagrid meant immediately; when the half-Giant said ticklish, he really meant 'abominably itchy'. The wards, an invisible but tangible force, held him as if in a thick slime mold for a good five seconds, during which he had the uncontrollable urge to scratch absolutely everywhere. After, a Hogwarts elf popped up in front of him, not one step onto the grounds of Hogwarts. It caught him mid-scratch, thankfully on his nose and not somewhere more embarrassing.

"Master Harry is an animagus," the elf said brightly. "Is Master Harry registered?"

"What if I'm not?" Harry asked, intrigued. This was new.

"Is Master Harry registered…" The elf looked from side to side, then leaned in, with the effect of seeming to be whispering to his kneecaps. "On the 'unofficial' list for practicing students?"

That was new too. "No…" he said. "But I am registered with the Ministry, as it happens. I was just curious. Why the separate list?"

"There have been students caught by the wards who were not being an Animagus, but were trying to be," the elf explained. "No changing to spy or sneak, Hogwarts will know!"

"I understand." The elf popped away, and he was free to continue on to the castle. He wondered if the Weasley twins knew yet that their prized map, passed down to him in their last year, was serving as the base of Hogwarts' new security system these days. Probably not. They hadn't filled his home with fireworks in protest. Gone were the days of students sneaking around after curfew with impunity. Also gone were the days of an animagus infiltrating every nook and cranny of the castle without being noticed, whether they were evil or benign, so it was a tradeoff.

Once in the castle, he walked a meandering path aimed vaguely in the direction of the Great Hall, where he expected to find most of the people he had letters for. It wasn't a direct path, but the direct path he had originally intended to take didn't exist anymore, a blank wall where a corridor used to be. Five years since graduation was a long time for a castle like Hogwarts. Long enough that not everything was where he remembered.

The halls were empty, it being summer. The students had left or graduated only a few weeks ago, and the many moving paintings and portraits were mostly still, unstimulated by the boring, unchanging passages with no students to crowd them and cause chaos. He saw no one, and heard no one, until he eventually reached the Great Hall.

Inside the Great Hall, he found most of the castle's summer occupants. The staff table hosted a collection of familiar faces. Professor McGonagall was there, and Professor Sprout, and Professor Flitwick. Slughorn was there too, an amusing addition whom Harry didn't care much for on his own merits… But he was there because Snape had been fired in Harry's seventh year, so his presence was a welcome one.

Harry walked down the table, greeting his old Professors and giving them their invitations. He spared a wide smile for Professor Sprout, his old head of house, and deftly avoided being entrapped in Slughorn's ramblings. When he reached the end of the table, he forced himself to give just as polite and eager a greeting. "Headmaster Dumbledore," he said.

"Ah, Harry." Dumbledore was no less formidable for his advanced age. "How nice to see you again. What brings you here, is it only the invitations? We do still accept owls here at Hogwarts."

"Mum didn't want to chance someone not getting their invitation," he said. He could have avoided mentioning his mother, but with Dumbledore, every time she came up it was a test.

"Yes, Ms. Hebert…" He trailed off, but only for a second, barely noticeable. "I must admit, it is embarrassing to receive an invitation to an event from someone I still have yet to meet in person," he continued. "I will most certainly be there."

Harry nodded. The obliviation still held. Eight years and counting. The aftereffects had tapered off during his fifth year of Hogwarts, but the actual obliviation was as strong as ever. It might hold indefinitely at this rate, which was the expected outcome for the spell, but this was Dumbledore. Nobody had really planned for it to last more than a few months.

They would take their good luck where they could, though. Taylor kept her distance from the man, so as to not tempt fate. That he was invited to this was a surprise to Harry, but he supposed his mum knew what she was doing.

"I take it the rest of those letters are for my colleagues who aren't here today?" Dumbledore asked. "You'll find Professor Weasley in his classroom, but I'm afraid the rest are out on business in one way or another. I can deliver their invitations."

"Thanks, that saves me some time." He gave Dumbledore the letters for all of the Professors besides Bill, then used that remaining letter as an excuse to leave without any further pleasantries.

Dumbledore was mostly a good man, so long as his attention was pointed in the right directions, but Harry would never be all that comfortable around him. Once burned, twice shy.

Bill Weasley's Defense classroom was a lot like what Harry had always thought Binn's history class should have been, decked out in artifacts and trinkets from all over the world. Most of it was Egyptian in origin, sourced from his work as a cursebreaker there for Gringotts. According to school rumors at the time, Bill had originally signed on for a single year for the express purpose of finding the curse on the position, and teaching was a secondary, unwanted responsibility that came along with the opportunity. He brought his work for Gringotts with him, expecting to go back to it soon enough.

Nine years later, having found the curse and a new fascination for the school's mysteries, Bill Weasley was still here. Harry found him in his classroom with four student desks pulled together, serving as a large platform for a truly massive skull caked in dried mud.

"Where did you get that?" he asked, coming up alongside Bill to look at it.

"Bottom of the Black Lake, the squid led me to it," Bill explained. "What do you think it is?"

"I have no idea." He wanted to say it was a crocodile, based on the elongated snout, but they were in the wrong part of the world for those. "Letter for you, here. I'll leave it on your desk."

"Hey, Harry." Bill reached out to grab his arm. "Tell me something, since you're here. Do you know about Dumbledore's trinket collection?"

The question was serious, despite the flippant wording, and Harry answered seriously. "If you mean the things in his office, I've seen them but they're always changing and I think half don't really do anything," he said. "Do you mean that?"

"No." Bill shook his head. "I've been improving the wards. Dumbledore asked if I could make something to detect a 'certain class of dark object' based on some damaged artifacts. You know what I mean?"

"Cup, locket, tiara, ring?" he asked. "The collection he put together in my sixth and seventh years here? Yes, I know them." He'd even been invited along to retrieve some of them. He said no, obviously, and suggested Dumbledore take someone qualified to rob Voldemort blind, but Dumbledore insisted on showing him what they found. "Careful with them."

"He said you knew, but I had to check." Bill shuddered. "Black magic, those. You'd only find their like in the worst of the tombs back in Egypt, and journeymen like me weren't allowed near them."

"Nasty stuff." Harry also found it hilarious that Dumbledore still played his cards so close to the chest that he only showed Bill, his resident cursebreaker, such things nine years after Bill came to work at Hogwarts. At least this time they were broken curiosities, not active threats that Dumbledore was keeping under wraps. Bill probably wouldn't appreciate him pointing out how long it had taken Dumbledore to trust him. "Did you want to ask me something specific about them?"

"No, I only wanted to make sure what I've been told adds up," Bill explained. "Dumbledore is a great man, but he's averse to giving straight answers and incomplete information gets cursebreakers killed. Maybe I'll go to Ginny, this might be right up her alley." He frowned.

"She's brilliant," Harry said, always willing to speak well of his friends. "She can definitely tell you more." More than anyone else possibly could. He appreciated Dumbledore leaving the diary out of the collection he showed Bill. The last thing Ginny needed was a reason for her family to be wary of her. Sometimes keeping secrets worked out for everyone involved.

The Minister was busy. Then again, the Minister was always busy. Harry hadn't come straight from Hogwarts to see the Minister, he was here in the Ministry – on his day off, no less – to see the Minister's new Undersecretary.

"You'll need an appointment," the Undersecretary's secretary told him, entirely unamused by his presence. The fore-office leading to the Undersecretary's office was empty apart from him, Harry, and many stacks of parchment lining the walls. The door to the Undersecretary's office itself was firmly closed.

"I'm not here for a long meeting," Harry assured Ernie Macmillan. "How's the job going, by the way? I didn't know you were working here."

"I'm this close to a good position in the foreign relations department," Ernie admitted, holding his hands a few centimeters apart. "The next person to complain about the Minister being too busy to see them is going to get a hex to the face, but if I can hold out, it'll be worth it." The Hufflepuff looked right at home behind his desk, but Harry could hear his eagerness to be anywhere else.

"They promote secretaries to foreign ambassadors?" Harry asked, intrigued despite himself. He hadn't expected to see Ernie here. In the Ministry, yes, but this wasn't really the position one would think to find a scion of an old Pureblood family filling, even now. Things hadn't changed that much yet.

"New policy direct from Marchbanks," Ernie explained. "Everyone who wants to get an important position has to spend at least six months in a menial position, public-facing. It's a massive pain, but it did thin out my competition, so I can't complain."

"Swings and roundabouts, I suppose." Harry didn't have a letter for Ernie, but he could still extend an invitation. "You know the big thing Lord Black is doing, right?" he asked, referring to the person Ernie was more likely to have heard of. His mum wasn't a mystery in the wizarding world anymore, people knew of her, but she wasn't a public figure either.

Rita Skeeter was to thank for that, funnily enough. One tell-all interview with her, and 'Taylor Hebert, mother of Harry Hebert and secret witch' managed to somehow come across as the most boring, ordinary witch to ever adopt a child. Harry had no idea what dirt his mum had on Rita Skeeter, but it had to be legendary for her to get such a thing out of the journalist best known for putting out the killing blow article that ended Minister Fudge's career.

"Everyone has heard," Ernie confirmed. "Is that why you're here? I can pass on an invitation. The Undersecretary is very busy today. No joke, he's been in here since before I came in this morning and he'll be here after I leave."

"If you can get me a day pass to Azkaban, I can leave the letter, along with a warning not to work too hard. His brothers might kidnap him for his day off again." Harry handed the invitation to Ernie. "Also, I don't have a fancy invitation for you, but feel free to come. It's not open to the general public, but I'll let Sirius know you're on the list." His mum would appreciate one more person attending who wasn't a massive snob. Ernie was a minor snob at worst.

"I might, I think what they're doing is bloody interesting. About time. Also, yes, I can get you to Azkaban." Ernie leaned down to retrieve something from a drawer under his desk. "Policy is anyone with a good reason to visit can go. The Aurors are on alert and we've got to start training them for more active guard duty some time. More visitors is an easy way to start with that, without having to go through the Wizengamot."

Harry waited, looking around the office, while Ernie filled out a piece of parchment. He hadn't been in the Ministry back when Fudge was still in office, but he thought he could tell the difference now that he was out and Marchbanks – an ancient witch who had been in charge of the education department – was in. She was good enough to run the country on a daily basis, of that there was no doubt, but everyone knew she would be stepping down soon. The lower levels of the Ministry were filled with people hoping for higher positions in the coming shuffle, young people.

The political side of things wasn't his cup of tea, not even close, but from what he heard from Sirius, things were going well. It wasn't a revolution, bloody or otherwise, but it was a definite changing of the guard. It helped that the old guard were suffering many minor and not so minor misfortunes as of late…

"Here you go." Ernie handed over a stamped, filled-out card. "Good for any day this week. Give the Aurors a little scare, if you could?"

"Maybe," Harry said, though he had no intention of doing that. They could get their training from someone paid to bait their wands into action. His plans for today would be totally derailed by any number of disfiguring or debilitating hexes. "Say hello to Percy for me." The Undersecretary might be a busy man, but he would find time for this event. Nobody would want to miss it.

Azkaban would always be a dreary, unfriendly place. Even on this sunny, otherwise pleasant afternoon, the dark fortress' angular walls and old, imposing stone construction sucked the light out of the sky, reducing the water around it to a gloomy twilight.

Harry checked in with the Auror guards, got his pass inspected, and noted that the security at Azkaban was tighter than that at the border in India. Unlike foreign countries, he almost never came here, and Azkaban had a strict no-emigration policy.

"I'm here to speak to the researchers," he told them. "Not a prisoner." Pettigrew and Barty Crouch Junior were both somewhere within these dark walls, but he had no interest in them.

The Auror checking him over frowned. "I'll take you to them," he said, "but be careful. The Dementors don't like them, or anyone associated with them."

"No surprise there." The guard laughed sourly at him, and they were off. The lower levels of Azkaban were the least gloomy, with the fewest Dementors and no prisoners at all, the short-term cells permanently empty as of a few years ago. Many of the cells now lacked bars, leaving the corridors lumpy, misshapen things with cell-shaped holes in the wall every few paces. It was bright outside, but the oil lamps secured on the walls burned only fitfully, and all natural light died more than a few paces from the originating window.

The Auror led him up a few levels, to near the center of Azkaban as a whole. As they ascended the last flight of stairs, the Auror's little chipmunk Patronus – unobtrusive and so small Harry had barely noticed it up until this point – ran ahead, disturbing a swirling wall of cloaks.

"Monsters," the Auror muttered, using his Patronus to clear out a path through the middle of a gathering of at least twenty Dementors. "Back to your posts! Go bother someone who deserves to deal with you!"

The Dementors leaned away as the Auror's tiny Patronus swiped at their faces, running on empty air. Harry had his wand ready to cast his own Patronus – a badger, much to the delight of anyone who wanted to make jokes about Hufflepuffs – if it became necessary. The cold, creeping dread of Dementors began to seep into him, dragging his thoughts down–

But they pulled away as he and the Auror passed by, unwilling to provoke the one wielding the Patronus, and then they were at a solid iron door set into the corridor with much paler stone flanking it, obviously a new construction set down in the middle of an otherwise empty corridor.

The Auror produced a key and opened the door, ushering Harry inside. The Dementors swarmed, attempting to shove their way in too, but the chipmunk Patronus blocked the way. The door swung shut, was relocked, and then a second door in front of Harry opened of its own accord.

"Come in, watch your step," Ginny called out. Harry ventured into her and Hermione's domain, taking in the sight of a place he had only heard described before today.

It was a retrofitted guard station from back when there were enough prisoners to warrant using more than a few floors of the prison at all times. The room was only twenty paces across, a square open space with low ceilings. Thick orange carpets covered the stone floor everywhere except for a narrow path leading through the room and to a massive, deadbolted iron door set into the opposite wall. There were no windows, and the walls were lined with alternating chalkboards and tapestries, the boards filled with Arithmantic and Runic formulae while the tapestries depicted varied nature scenes. In one corner a small table was piled high with food, with an abundance of chocolate taking center stage. In the opposite corner of the room a tall bookshelf was only half-filled with leatherbound journals and tied bundled of parchment. Books, spread-out parchment diagrams, and piles of iron chains littered the carpet everywhere else, producing a maze of clear and cluttered spaces for the unwary foot.

The domain of any serious magical researcher was already inherently a strange place, but Ginny and Hermione had turned that up to eleven in their recent study of Dementors. Harry understood why it was this way, he already felt less unnaturally depressed, but that made the combination of a homely living room and academia no less jarring.

Hermione was nowhere to be seen, but Ginny was busy reshelving books. "Harry, what brings you to this miserable rock?" she asked, brushing her hair out of her face.

"You and Hermione, what else?" There was nothing in Azkaban he cared about, save for them.

"We do have a home back in non-Dementor-infested London," Ginny reminded him.

"I'll be busy tonight, and I thought now would be a good time to see this place." He waved her and Hermione's invitations about and set them on the food table, next to a cheese platter. "What are you doing today?"

"Testing a few theories," Ginny said, carefully picking her way through the mess to meet him at the table. "In basic terms, Hermione is torching a Dementor with a magical blowtorch and measuring how much the surrounding cell heats up. We know how much heat the torch puts out. We can tell how much is going into the air around it, the stone of the cell walls, and the chains. Subtract the latter from the former, and what do you get?"

"Hang on, it's been a few years…" He mimed counting on his fingers. "How much the Dementor heats up?"

"No!" Ginny exclaimed. She took her letter and opened it. Elsewhere in the room, the Auror who had brought Harry in was staring at one one of the rune-filled chalkboards, thoughtfully tracing the runes outlined there with one finger.

"No?" Harry asked, as it didn't seem she was going to explain.

"No, that's not how it works for them," Ginny confirmed, putting the letter down. "We'll definitely be there for the opening night. Your mum will have to put up security to stop Hermione from showing up ten hours early. You would think the Dementor would heat up, wouldn't you? But if it did, we would just have to trap it in a strong enough heat source to destroy it. Anything that takes in heat can take in too much heat."

"Right?" He was following, mostly. This stuff, the conceptual overview, that was easy. It was all of the rigorous magical theory underpinning it that made his head spin. He was more of a practical wizard.

"Come see." Ginny led him across the room to the other bolted door. "My break is over, or close enough," she added, slamming the heavy bolt back. "Two coming in!" she yelled.

"You're clear to enter!" Hermione yelled back.

Beyond the door was a small, bare room the size of a broom closet, with one wall charmed transparent to show another room of the same size on the other side. Hermione was in the closer room, watching a pulse of magical light emanating from her wand, while in the other a Dementor was wrapped in chains, trapped above a single jet of violet flame. It was uncomfortably warm in Hermione's side of the chamber.

"No readings yet," Hermione reported. "If it's absorbing any heat at all, it's at magnitudes too small for our monitoring spell. The Dementor's temperature hasn't changed at all. Hello, Harry," she said after, only then noticing his presence.

"As expected," Ginny said, likely for Harry's benefit. "Did you try the phoenix ash additive yet?"

"I was waiting for you." Hermione flicked her wand, throwing off the monitoring spell. It impacted the clear wall in a burst of light and stuck there. She pressed a quick kiss to Ginny's forehead as she shuffled around to make room for them both. "From three?"

They both counted down, and the flame turned a pure, flickering white when they hit zero. The Dementor, which up until that moment had been hanging mostly still in its ridiculous cocoon of chains, started to struggle against its bonds. The flame didn't appear to be doing anything to it, the frayed cloak wasn't burning or moldering away, but something about the flame made it very unhappy.

"That's promising," Hermione said as they watched. Her monitor spell was glowing faintly blue around the edges. "There's a heat discrepancy. Harry, do you feel any change in your mood? We're too acclimatized to make objective assessments."

"No, I don't think so," he said, after a moment's thought. "It's hard to tell."

"Not getting any data on whether the fight or flight response in the Dementor affects its output, then," Hermione said. "Something for another day. We're one step closer to figuring out how to destroy these things."

"Speaking of another day, Harry brought our invitations," Ginny told Hermione. "Come look."

"We need to run this until our Phoenix ash supply burns out," Hermione objected. "But thank you, Harry. I'll be there. You can stay and watch, if you like."

"No, I've other things to do." Including, but not limited to, delivering the last letter in his pocket. "You two stay safe." It worried him, seeing them so close to Dementors, even if the balance of power was firmly on their side. He stepped out of the monitoring box, back into the bright, well-lit main room.

"We wouldn't be here if we didn't have ten different security systems," Ginny told him. "Dementors can't even enter this room. We know how to keep them away, it's destroying them that's a puzzle."

"It's true, they set up the same wards on the guard stations," the Auror from before added. "Never been less dreary in there. If you're done here, I need to get back to my patrols."

"I won't keep you much longer." He looked to Ginny. "I would say good luck, but I know luck has nothing to do with this."

"Damn right it doesn't," Ginny agreed. "We'll be in Hogsmeade this weekend. Same time, same place."

"See you there." He was looking forward to it. He was also looking forward to not being anywhere near Azkaban, but everyone who set foot in the prison felt that way. Maybe it wouldn't always be such a viscerally depressing place. Hermione and Ginny were working on getting rid of the main cause. But as Wizarding Britain's most serious prison, he doubted it would ever be a pleasant place, either.

Thankfully, the rest of his day promised to be easy and enjoyable.

Harry made it back to his flat with half an hour to spare, plenty of time. He had stopped off to get Muggle takeout, in lieu of actually cooking something, but that just meant he had time to change his robes – again – and clean up the flat. With food on the table, a few cleaning charms took care of the mundane chores, and he busied himself picking up the junk he wasn't willing to vanish.

Two left boots went into the closet, as his job was not kind on footwear and some finicky transfiguration could turn them into one good, matching set of boots later. The cups stacked up on the side table by the couch went into the sink, and since he had no idea what was in them that made them resistant to scouring charms, he left them there. The art supplies laid out on the desk in the bedroom lined up and fell into order with a flick of his wand, organized and nearly arranged by ascending color. Muggle pens and pencils, quills and colored inkpots, clean parchment, spelled parchment ready for the creation of moving pictures… The whole lot was easy to organize, and he could see the surface of the desk underneath when he was done.

The Floo flared, fire flaming up to disgorge a beautiful witch in Ministry Unspeakable robes. Her hair was fully silver, dyed to perfection, and her smile was as wide and entrancing as ever.

"The Pygmy Erumpents are doing well," Luna informed him, stripping her robes as she walked into the bedroom. "You missed Fawley throwing a fit about the requisition for more time-resistant glass. He doesn't like my project much."

Harry followed her into the bedroom, helpfully retrieving her robes as she dropped them. Carelessly scattering things about the flat was Luna's way of saying she was tired, without actually saying it. He had expected that. "I got take-out," he told her. "Fawley can go stuff himself." He was gone for one day… Being the closest equivalent to a mediator for the Unspeakables, while a job his friends had inadvertently trained him for throughout their Hogwarts career, was a never-ending struggle. An interesting struggle, with a score of different projects going on at any one time, all there for him to lend a hand with, but a struggle nonetheless.

Luna pulled on a much thinner, more comfortable set of robes. "Did you have a good day traipsing all over the world?" she asked, pulling him in for a brief kiss. Her fingers found his hand and she clasped it.

Harry relaxed into the kiss, but Luna broke it just as suddenly, moving away to drop something from her pocket on their bed. "Yes, and it's looking like everyone can come," he said.

"None would miss it, not even the ones who would rather it never happened," Luna said sagely. "I hope Taylor has adequately prepared. Did she ask us?"

"Ask us what?" He went out into the dining room to serve out their food. His engagement ring flared weakly over the entire bag, so he hit it with a strong warming charm. That fixed the problem, thankfully. Food poisoning was the last thing he needed.

"To help her with the fight," Luna said. The door to the bathroom slammed shut. Harry spent the next few minutes wondering what fight Luna could possibly be talking about.

"Is this something I'm out of the loop on?" he asked once she came out into the kitchen. "I don't remember mum planning a fight for next week."

"Have you looked at your letter yet?" Luna asked. "Where is mine? I think I know what will be on it."

Harry handed hers over, then took her by the shoulders and gently guided her to the table. He suspected she had skipped lunch, and he didn't think she had made breakfast for herself, either. Working on her life's passion as a job made her… radiant was the best word for it, in his opinion, but it did come with some downsides. Such as her getting so caught up in her thoughts that she forgot other important things.

"Luna Lovegood, you are invited to… Luna Lovegood." Luna took her wand out and wrapped the parchment of the invitation around it, and said her name a third time. "Luna Lovegood."

The parchment shimmered, and when she unwrapped it there were four extra lines of writing on the bottom.

Harry had totally forgotten to check his own invitation for hidden messages. Sirius was involved, the odds were good there would be one, especially with his cryptic hint on the subject. "What does it say?" he asked.

"We will finally be washing the unicorn off," Luna said with a sly smile, tucking the parchment away before he could read it. She sat down at the table.

Harry knew he had just been presented with a puzzle. Instead of taking out his own letter and cheating, he sat down and started eating, thinking hard. Unicorn, washing a unicorn, a message sent by Sirius or possibly his mum, and Luna had mentioned a fight they would be asked to watch or participate in.

He liked to think that three years of a magically-significant seven-year engagement to Luna Lovegood had taught him how to interpret her even when she was being intentionally cryptic, but it took him most of the meal to puzzle that one out. He felt quite slow when the answer finally came to him.

"It's been dirty for a long time, hasn't it?" he eventually asked. "Ignored, but still dirty if anyone thought to look."

"We finally have enough water to do the job without being kicked or impaled by the horn," Luna replied.

"And if we don't?" Harry asked, certain he knew what they were talking about now.

"Sirius can make them ignore it again, until we're ready to try once more."

This big event was going to be even bigger than he had thought. "How did you know about this before I did?" he asked.

"Taylor asked me to check the hall of prophecies last week," Luna explained. "There are no active prophecies naming her or him. Yours is still marked as completed. You were not left out of the loop, she plans to propose it to us this weekend. That's what's in the letter, a request that we meet in secret then."

Good. He didn't like the hall of prophecies. He had fulfilled his without any knowledge of it whatsoever, but partial knowledge had set Voldemort to murdering James and Lily Potter and self-fulfilling his end of the prophecy. Knowing of them never made a positive difference. In the long-running disagreement between Taylor and Sirius, he was firmly of Sirius' opinion. Divination was never practical, even when it was correct. Not in this world.

"Planning on bringing the Dire Wings, then?" he asked. If there was to be a fight, Luna would want to be ready.

Luna smiled mysteriously. "I will bring something. What, though… Won't that be more fun as a surprise?"

"I'll charm the closet to hold any possible beast, then," he said dryly. "Just don't bring a bottle of accelerated time. You know the mess those make when they break, Mum would force us to clean it up as payback."

"Is someone still sore about last month?" Luna asked, setting her plate down on the counter, food untouched.

"A little?" he admitted. "It was very convenient, how you accidentally stepped into that patch of temporarily slowed time and couldn't help us clean all day." Glass charmed to accelerate the time between it and another piece of glass facing the other way was a ridiculously complicated mess-making material when it shattered. Thousands of pieces of still-enchanted glass, laid out randomly on a flat stone floor casting the effects between every other piece of glass and accelerating any caught in between… They ended up having to disenchant each shard of glass, one by one.

"It was an accident…" Luna turned to look at him, instead of the nature scene out the window. "But this isn't."

She leaned in to kiss him, and he met her halfway, absently discarding his plate on the counter next to hers. The food could wait.

"Can't you be nervous?" Sirius pleaded. "Please? Instead of… this?" This was a big day. One he and Taylor had worked toward for years. He was nervous, and he was just the guy funding the thing and a backup wand if it went to shit. This was Taylor's show, and yes she was multitasking like crazy, standing in the middle of the venue casting marking spells at the walls while simultaneously checking a hundred different things with her bugs, but she was cool, calm, and collected. It made him feel more frazzled by contrast.

"This is the victory lap," Taylor told him as she aimed her wand at the third floor balcony. "I was nervous during that ridiculous Wizengamot hearing. I was nervous when Nott set a small army of House Elves to stealing the books, and I couldn't be here to stop it myself. I was nervous when Dumbledore offered to donate his pensieve if we wanted it, out of the blue. I will not be nervous tonight, and I'm not nervous now. Is there a mimicry enchantment on the second floor banister?"

"Oh, sure," he grumbled as he went up to check the aforementioned banister. "Nothing to worry about tonight. Total victory. Not like half the old geezers who tried to stop this from happening will be in attendance. Not to mention the secret grand finale, that'll go over just fine." The stairs were nicely enchanted to only be four steps between landings no matter the vertical distance traveled, so he got to the banister in no time. A simple diagnostic charm revealed the enchantments on it, and sure enough, it was missing the subtle illusion enchantment that was meant to display an illusory wax candle atop it, like all of the other banisters.

"How did you even notice this was wrong?" he mumbled as he set about fixing it. The charms hadn't been activated yet, so there was no visible absence of an illusory candle to clue her in.

"I see everything," Taylor whispered in his ear.

"Gah!" he jumped, then remembered some of the other features of the building. "Ha, ha, ha. Scare the poor, sleep-deprived, long-suffering–"

"Long whining," her voice continued in a conversational tone.

"Long everything," he agreed. "I will accept that descriptor."

Taylor's laughter echoed around the building as he went up onto the third, highest floor and walked out to lean over the balcony and look down.

He really was tired, but tonight was the night. The end – and the beginning – of Taylor's 'empty nest project.' Or so he called it, when she wasn't around to scowl at him.

The building was big, a full four stories in size and larger on the inside. The center chamber was hexagonal, for warding reasons that went over his well-educated but not fanatically knowledgeable head, and only the ground floor was a proper floor. The first, second, and third floors consisted of balconies all around the hexagon, looking down. As of right now, that was all that was accessible, but there were five secondary sections of the building, one for each side of the hexagon except the front. Everything was made of heavily enchanted marble, and the ceiling was nigh-unbreakable sloped glass, giving the entire building an airy, open feel with filtered sunlight illuminating the interior.

Not everything was as it would be on a normal day, though. The walls were bare, lined with out-of-place wooden planks with nary a crack between them. The fake candles were part of a whole set of decorations, and down below he saw Taylor adjusting the exact dimensions of the circular tables being set up on the ground floor. All throughout the building, her bugs were undoubtedly working to check the special passageways and enchantments… somehow. A lot of the preparation was for this night, specifically. All of the base, everyday-use enchantments and wards had long since been set, giving the building the sort of magical ambiance one only got in heavily magical environments.

As magical buildings went, it was much more grand than, say, Madam Puddifoots. It was no Hogwarts, but nowhere but Hogwarts was. Neither was it like the Ministry, which was meant for a lot more foot traffic and hundreds of employees. Taylor had a bare handful of employees lined up to work here at present, all new Hogwarts graduates who happened to have relevant experience. There would be plenty of patrons, but not in the numbers somewhere like Hogwarts or the Ministry had to be designed for.

The open atmosphere, the architecture, and the purpose this building would serve starting tomorrow… There was nothing like it in Magical Britain. That was the point. Filling a big, obvious hole in the country, and stepping on as many Pureblood toes as necessary to do so.

Taylor waved her wand up at him, and a streak of blue light shot from her towards the third floor. He cast a Protego and blocked it. "Oy, can't a man sleep with his eyes open without getting marked up by spells?"

"You can Floo home if you're that tired," Taylor said, her voice a low, soothing presence just behind him, though he could see her down on the ground floor. "Really. I'll probably be busy tweaking and checking things until tonight. You can sleep all day."

"I might just do that." Or, more likely, he would down a Pepper-Up and power through. Or both, with the Pepper-Up coming right before the secret main event… Yes, that would do nicely. "But what about you? You need to be in tip-top shape for tonight, and I'm sure you already double-checked everything." He moved to examine one of the many wooden barriers obscuring the walls, checking each enchantment with a cursory swipe of his wand and revealing charm. They were all there.

"Are you asking me to go to bed with you?" Taylor whispered.

"Now, now," he chided her, ignoring the shiver that ran down his spine at her tone. "What would all of those stuffy noble types think if we showed up tonight all mussed and sweaty? I must remain the perfect picture of an eligible bachelor for… some stupid reason." Probably because they couldn't stand to see someone having fun when they were stuck in their arranged marriages. "You should have heard the lecture Narcissa tried to give me about 'curtailing rumors before no woman in good standing would lower herself to marry you'. I tell you, I so regretted not meeting her in a Muggle truck stop for that, it would have made the whole thing so much more entertaining. Does she not remember my last two years at Hogwarts? That ship sailed, burnt, and sunk long ago."

"Why do you still talk to her?" Taylor asked.

"Can't tweak her nose about the Malfoys falling from grace if I never see her," he answered. "She still thinks someone cast an undetectable misfortune curse on Lucius."

"That would have been simpler than what you did." Her voice was still right next to him, though she was down on the ground floor.

"True. Less fun, though." And requiring at least one major sacrifice, so not an option anyway. "But let's not talk about the Malfoys. It's killing the mood." The 'don't worry about tonight' mood, but it was only a hop, skip and jump from flirting as a distraction to actual flirting, and then from there to the things that had the witches gossiping and the older wizards disapproving.

"The mood?" she whispered in his ear. It wasn't real, she wasn't actually right behind him–

He yelped when her real, very much there arms wrapped around him from behind. He had been ambushed!

"You must like being surprised, it happens so often these days," she told him.

He relaxed in her grip, shamelessly enjoying the close contact. "When it comes with being felt up by a beautiful woman, I can learn to roll with the punches. Also, this whole building is keyed to you. Not fair. I don't have a building helping me pull pranks."

"Make one," she suggested.

"I could, couldn't I?" His fingers traced the runes on her arms, mindlessly following the intricate patterns. A drop of blood from his hand could suborn either arm to his will, but she trusted him not to do that, even for a prank. That trust was hard won, easily lost, and then much harder to earn back, but he had earned it, in the end. It and more.

They weren't married, engaged, or officially together in any capacity, despite throwing out all sorts of signs that they were more than business partners and good friends. That bothered the prude old women and resentful old men he had made it his life's work to aggravate and inconvenience, and also neatly sidestepped some of the more problematic aspects of him being the only Black male left to continue the line. Magic involved in generations of ancestors focused on continuing their legacy at all costs was… difficult to work around, and in this case essential to avoid. Taylor was working on that, because she was working on everything magic that she didn't yet understand, but not urgently. They had all the time in the world.

Unofficially, out of sight of the public to keep those amusing rumors from being confirmed or denied, they were together and had been for going on three years. She was the woman for him, eldritch aura and quest to find immortality to satisfy the voice in her head included. What she saw in him was a lot less clear, but he figured some combination of his many qualities happened to outweigh his many flaws.

Thus, Taylor's arms around his waist, and his realistic appraisal of whether or not 'go to bed' was likely to include activities other than sleeping. Even though, if he was being honest with himself, it probably shouldn't on this particular day. He was dead tired, and nothing was worse than the mind being willing but the body deciding sleep was more appealing. Pepper-Up potion didn't work for everything. If it was just the preparation for the party he would have been fine, but add in the curveball Taylor had thrown into the mix at the last minute? He was all for seizing opportunities as they presented themselves, but three hours of sleep a night was taking its toll.

Elsewhere in the building, something crashed to the marble floor. He winced. "How about I bring Pepper-Up for two?" he proposed. "We can save the fun stuff for later."

"You're getting responsible in your old age," she told him.

"I'm not even fifty, thank you very much!" He was still young and virile! Wizards didn't age as fast, anyway. Everyone knew that. She was the one searching for a moral method of immortality at the behest of her Ravenclaw assistant, not him. "It'll serve you right if the only acceptable cure for aging makes you all saggy," he grumbled.

Another crash echoed through the building, and they both winced. "I don't know what that is," Taylor admitted. "Nothing is falling, physically."

"Probably a smudged rune in the auditory enchantments." He shrugged out of her grip, raised his wand, and turned to her. "First one to find it gets to pick the–"

"Position?" she interrupted.

"I was going to say the place we order food from when we break for lunch," he claimed, the picture of innocence. "And you say I haven't corrupted you!"

"The only way to beat an incorrigible flirt is to outdo them," she said. "Really, though. You're on."

She apparated away, reappearing with a pop on the third floor.

"Hey!" That wasn't fair! She was keyed into the wards, he wasn't, and her apparating wasn't even technically real apparition, she was being side-alonged by her Ravenclaw assistant. She didn't even have to do the spin!

He sprinted for the nearest maintenance hatch. He would win that prize, whichever of the two she was referring to. Then he would get the Pepper-Up potions.

Knowledge was power. Especially here, in the world of magic, where a single old secret could be the difference between dying to a freak accident and that being the end of it, or dying only to return a decade later. Knowledge was also concentrated, in book form, in four places in Britain. Hogwarts, where the selection was curated and only children could freely go. Bookstores, which sold to the lowest common denominator, and only stocked the things that were likely to sell profitably. The Department of Mysteries, which was not open to the public. And finally, most gallingly, the personal libraries of old families, private collections that were unevenly concentrated on certain subjects but often held singular editions or private research, locked away from anyone not of that family.

This was a situation that had not affected Taylor personally, though it very well could have. She had the good fortune to come into contact with a tradition-scorning pureblood heir who gladly dusted off his family library for the sole purpose of her doing whatever she wanted with it. But it was a problem, and it did contribute to the power imbalance in the wizarding world, in Britain specifically. It also disproportionately increased the obscurity of dark and illegal spells, both in who knew how to cast them, and who knew how to defend against them.

There were other problems in magical Britain. Big ones, like their lumbering, ridiculous government. Like the corruption and bigotry that permeated said government, further hindering it. Like the way they treated normal, non-magical people as a whole. Those problems were ingrained, and they were societal. They could be fixed, but not easily, and not by a single dedicated individual or one master plan. The solution to the lack of accessible knowledge, on the other hand, was one Taylor had found herself well-suited to devise and in the right position to implement.

She stood on the roof of Britain's first magical public library, her shoes finding minimal traction on charmed glass, and looked up at the stars. Below, the guests were arriving. They were mingling, taking food and drink from the caterers hired for the event, and waiting for the event to begin. Most of them were people she either didn't know well enough to have an opinion on, or people she actively disliked.

Politics. Her opinion on the subject had not improved since her days in the Wards, back on Earth Bet. Thank Merlin she had Sirius for that. He didn't like it either, but he had been taught how to navigate the often backwards, occasionally mystifying waters of last-century political discourse. He was busy greeting the important guests at the door, decked out in dapper dress robes and his ridiculous talking hat.

She had her bugs in the special-made observation holes around the building, next to the output of a set of enchantments that channeled and relayed sound. Her listening ability was not curtailed at all by having to keep her bugs within the walls and out of sight, a necessity given the environment.

She let herself be diverted by listening to his greetings. They all followed the same pattern; he would bow to the person or people coming in the door, sweep his hat off, greet them with all of their titles, and then he would say something personal that came off as complimentary until a few minutes later when they actually thought about it, if they knew enough to realize they had been insulted at all. Even better, he performed each greeting with an unbearably posh accent the ones who knew him knew was fake. In between guests he conferred with his hat in hushed tones, consulting on new and better backhanded compliments and veiled insults.

"Lord Byron, it is so nice to see you in a place of fine repute, such a pleasant rarity!"

"Lady Zabini, it is a pleasure to see you on British soil! I hope you will take the time to peruse our natural biology section after the ribbon is cut, we have an interesting scholarly volume on the courting habits of Praying Mantises that made me think of you."

"Lord Malfoy, how is your son? Good, I hope? A shame he could not be here tonight, but from what I have heard this is not the sort of place he would want to frequent anyway, so it is eminently understandable. It's better that he's hard at work finding a way to restore the unfortunate loss of your fortune."

Invariably, the posh witches and wizards favored Sirius with fake smiles and afterward gravitated towards others who navigated the same social circles, ignoring the less affluent among them. That was fine. They were only here because they would raise a completely avoidable stink if they weren't invited, and because it was fun to watch Sirius poke at them.

"Minister Marchbanks!" Sirius greeted an incredibly old-looking woman. "Please don't quote my Newt scores at me, I know them by heart. And Undersecretary, you're looking well!" Sirius nodded to Percy Weasley. "Your old school friends all look to be gathering on the second floor, if you're interested. It's a shame Hogwarts doesn't do class reunions."

Percy didn't take the offered escape from his Ministry duties to catch up with friends, electing instead to continue helping the Minister. Helping was indeed the word for it, as well; Minister Marchbanks was genuinely frail. Only the advantages of magic were keeping her upright and active, if Taylor was any judge of physical condition. Her mind might still be sharp, but her body was not.

Elsewhere, up on the upper balconies, the people she actually wanted to enjoy the party were greeting each other. She saw, again with her bugs tapping into observation and listening charms from inside the walls, that Harry and his friends had all gathered on the third floor.

"Have you been kissing your plants, Neville?" Luna asked. "Or is that lipstick?"

"Got nicked by a Fungal Thumper," Neville admitted, pointedly not touching the red bulge on the top of his upper lip. "My mistake, really, it was just spitting at a fly."

Ginny and Hermione were picking at the wooden blockades barring them from the books hidden behind. Based on the spell feedback Taylor could make out, they were within a few minutes of cracking the not-insubstantial protections keeping the barrier in place. Thankfully, Harry noticed them. "Hey, don't mess those up," Harry called out.

Hermione spun with a fierce blush, but Ginny just shrugged her shoulders. "We're not getting through it without alerting your mum anyway, it was a lost cause from the start."

"Tell your mum she's cruel, Harry," Hermione complained. "Walling it all off…"

"Maybe she just knows you too well," Harry suggested. "How are things since I saw you last? Did the Phoenix ash thing go anywhere?" He said nothing about the actual last time they had all met. As far as anyone outside of the group was concerned, that hadn't happened. One never knew who might be listening.

"Yes, and we think it's a big lead," Ginny said proudly. "We've been busy. How about you? Still enjoying a boring government job?"

"I'll have you know I just came from protecting the Wizarding world from an invasion of Pygmy Erumpents," Harry said seriously. "You wouldn't want that. They explode when they sneeze."

"It's fascinating what sped-up isolated evolution can produce," Luna sighed. "So many cycles of reproduction and mutation…"

"Don't get started on reproduction," Hermione said darkly. "Molly is in time-out, don't think I won't put you in time-out too."

"What's this?" Harry, Luna, Hermione, and Ginny took seats around a five-person circular table, while Neville leaned over the balcony to look down at the rest of the library. "Please tell me she didn't put her foot in her mouth again."

"That's too nice a way of saying it," Ginny griped. "You know the situation with the possibility of Weasley grandbabies as it stands, right?"

"No?" Harry said truthfully. "I don't really follow Weasley gossip. Are there any?"

"Well, let's go down the list, shall we?" Hermione said sardonically, leaning back in her chair. "Bill is still Defense Professor, and the only new people he meets are his students. He's single, though a lot of them want to change that. Charlie may as well be dating a dragon, for all anyone knows."

"We don't know if he has dated anyone since moving to Romania," Ginny added. "Best to assume he won't, or if he is he's got the good sense to keep it secret."

"The twins don't have steady girlfriends and aside from that prank last year, no kids," Hermione continued. "Percy is married to–"

"Justice!" Ginny interjected with a wicked smile. "Justice and cleansing magical Britain of corruption in all its forms."

"Yes, that," Hermione agreed. "Also, according to some rumors he's shagging the Minister on the sly."

Taylor mentally compared Percy – who was still in his twenties – to Marchbanks, who was past her twenties, and also past her one-hundred-and-twenties. She hoped that wasn't true.

"Uh…" Harry sounded like he wasn't sure whether he wanted to believe it. "You're joking? Please? At least tell me you don't mean our current Minister. Not that the last one would be much better, but at least that wouldn't make me worry about possible elder abuse."

"I think Percy Weasley would be the power top if he was in a relationship with Cornelius Fudge," Luna said.

Everyone paused to not imagine that. Or if they did, to wish Luna hadn't said anything.

"It's a rumor," Hermione explained. One Ginny started."

Ginny crossed her arms and huffed. "Nobody believes it, but he deserves to squirm a little for what he did. He's dating Susan, for the record."

"Percy isn't in our good books right now, either," Hermione explained. "He's the one who provoked Molly by telling her he was using protection, and why he felt he had to explain that to her… Ugh. Do the math. How many Weasleys are looking likely to pop out grandbabies?"

One not dating, one probably not dating, two unwilling to be tied down, one in the beginning of a relationship… "What about Ron?" Harry asked, mirroring Taylor's own line of thought.

"Shagging every Quidditch groupie who can convince him she's interested in more than his fame as the only good Keeper the Cannons have ever had," Ginny explained. "I'm more worried for him than the groupies, to be honest. They're taking advantage of him. No children as of yet, though."

"Right. So that leaves you two?" Harry looked at Hermione and Ginny, and at the rings on both of their fingers.

It had been a nice ceremony. A little touch-and-go on the Granger side, what with Hermione's Muggle grandparents not knowing about magic, but Taylor happily played interference for the couple. Molly Weasley cried a river and accidentally burned a few napkins while tipsy, but other than that they hadn't noticed anything amiss. Hermione hadn't noticed her grandfather's less than wholehearted approval either, because Taylor got to him first. By the time Hermione interacted with him, he was all smiles and intimidated praise.

Taylor remembered that day fondly.

"She decided it would have to be us," Ginny concluded with a groan. "Percy made her think about grandbabies when he denied the possibility of her getting any from him anytime soon. Then we walk in, ready for our weekly lunch with her and dad, while he skips out, mayhem caused and Justice waiting for him at the Ministry. She's got baby rabies now, and it's all his fault."

"She brought it up," Hermione continued. "We're in the very beginning stages of looking into adopting, as something for the future once we're done working on the Dementor problem and not dealing with mood-altering effects every day. I made the mistake of telling her that."

"As it turns out," Ginny sighed, "adoption 'doesn't count.'" She did the exaggerated finger quotations and scowled angrily. "Not really a Weasley that way."

"Did she use those exact words?" Luna asked. "Maybe she was tripping over her own tongue, or over alcohol."

"She did use those words, and she only got pushier from there," Hermione confirmed. "According to her, we are to find a willing donor or wait for her to pick one out, both get pregnant at the same time, and move into the Burrow for the duration of the pregnancies as well as the following eighteen years so she doesn't have to part from her new grandbabies for as long as possible."

Harry's eyes bulged. "Did she really mean that?" he asked.

"We'll find out in a month when her time-out ends and we talk to her again," Ginny said grimly. "Maybe she'll realize she was out of line. Maybe not."

"Isolation does tend to kill off Nargles," Luna said sagely. "If it doesn't work, just ignore her."

"I'd rather not, but we will if she makes us," Ginny agreed. "How about you? Taylor pushing you to tie the knot yet?"

"Taylor agrees that a seven-year engagement is a magically advantageous number," Luna replied. "We are only on year three, she would not want us to cut it short."

"She's been great, of course," Harry said. "No pressure, and no out-of-control longing for grandchildren." He laughed at the irritated face Ginny pulled at him.

Taylor wondered if now would be a good time to announce her presence… But no. Magical intercom pranks were reserved for Sirius. They wouldn't be as funny if she did them to anyone else.

"Where is she, anyway?" Neville asked, taking a moment to look around the balcony. He did not, of course, see her. She was on the roof, and the glass ceiling was charmed to not show any obstructions directly in contact with it, in case she ever figured out how to integrate computers into a high-magic environment and needed some sort of antenna for communication purposes. There was no way anyone knew where–

"Up on the roof," Luna said serenely.

Scratch that. Luna knew, somehow. She was much more observant than most people realized, but Taylor had no idea how she had figured that out. Maybe it was an educated guess.

Down below, a wizard in gaudy pale green robes said hello to Sirius.

"Albus Persimmon Wolfy Bob Dumbledore!" Sirius proclaimed.

"Those are not quite my middle names," Dumbledore corrected him.

Sirius' hat spoke up. "Yes, but you may notice that nobody cares. Did you bring my counterpart?"

"Sadly, ever since an anonymous break-in to my office, the Sorting Hat has been tied to the Hogwarts wards to prevent a theft," Dumbledore admitted. "I'll pass along a message, hat to hat, shall I?"

"Scratch that." Sirius reached up to grab the brim of the hat. "He would make it too vulgar for you to repeat. Welcome to the library, and thank you for your donation."

Dumbledore was here. He had been invited, he was expected, and he knew nothing. He was still the most important person in the building. Not for the event, but for the real reason he had been invited beyond common courtesy.

Taylor decided that it was time to go down and get the main event out of the way. Everyone she was expecting had arrived. She descended the stairwell installed in the roof of one of the secondary wings currently closed to the public, reaching the ground floor without interacting with anyone. From there, she unlocked the door to the main chamber from the inside, slipped through, and relocked it behind her, walking out into the gathering of witches and wizards.

Many recognized her immediately; her arms were distinctive. When the vampires said no covering, they didn't mean that the runes had to be exposed to light, or air, or any simple physical dependency, as she had initially assumed. They meant it in the conceptual sense, as tied to the balanced nature of the magic itself, which was much harder to work around. Most of the time she simply went around in sleeveless robes and kept a wary watch over any possible source of fresh blood, but for a fancy-robe occasion like tonight, she settled for simple fishnet opera gloves to match her sleeveless robe. Blood could seep right through and the runes were visible, so the gloves did not count as concealment, despite technically covering her arms.

Her arms marked her apart from the crowd, and those who knew her knew why she was here. "Miss Hebert," a short wizard in a gaudy tophat greeted her. He was Dedalus Diggle, a wizard of some renown and no apparent profession, a member of the Order of the Phoenix in the war. "How are you on this fine night?"

"Excited," she said honestly. "Though you might not be able to tell just from looking at me."

"You have the 'stern head librarian' look down," he assured her. "It will only get better with time. Did you have Madam Pince give you tips?"

"Not on the look, but yes." Taylor pointed her out, having already been well aware of her presence. "If you want to compare, she's up on the second floor. The ribbon-cutting will be soon, though, so don't go too far."

"Ha! Good luck to you." Diggle disappeared among the crowd as a much taller, more severe woman took his place opposite Taylor. This one, Taylor knew fairly well.

"Andromeda," she greeted. It was said the woman looked a lot like her insane cousin in Azkaban, but Taylor mostly knew her for being a healer who constantly rebuffed Sirius' attempts to drag her into anything resembling Black family business. "Is your daughter here tonight?"

"Possibly as an incognito guard for the Minister, or possibly she decided she wished to get drunk in the company of her own age group," Andromeda said noncommittally. "Has Sirius given up on making me the Black Wizengamot representative?"

"No, and he will only push harder now that we've got this set up and he doesn't need to be there to argue for it." Sirius did not like being a member of the legislative body. Too much responsibility, even when he was using it for his own gain.

"Then I'll continue avoiding him," Andromeda concluded. "Are you and he finally going to tie the knot now that this has been worked out?"

Taylor blatantly ignored that question. Even if she was willing to give an answer to Andromeda, who was an acquaintance at best, it wouldn't be given here, in the middle of a crowd of people who would like nothing more than to tarnish her reputation in any way possible as petty payback. "I hope you enjoy this evening," she said formally.

Someone muttered behind her, something that would have completely escaped the notice of a person without practically limitless multitasking abilities and a relay system of bugs connected to listening charms throughout the entire building. She was ignoring most of the inane conversations, but this?

"Lord… Nott, is it?" She turned, smiled coldly, and met the gaze of the man who had been her chief enemy in the fight to obtain all of the necessary legal niceties for setting up Britain's first magical public library. She knew very well who he was, but he bristled at the implication that he was unimportant enough to forget. "I appreciate the advice," if one could call a muttered derogatory comment advice, in which case she appreciated the excuse to cut through some of the otherwise mandatory politeness, " but I don't think you're very qualified to give it, what with all of the unfortunate incidents plaguing you of late."

She wasn't fond of politics, but there wasn't much political about spending a month spying on a stuck-up arse in his manor, suborning one of his many house elves, and sneaking in to acquire blackmail material, which then mysteriously found its way into the Ministry the day Nott once again put a bureaucratic chokehold on her library… And now rubbing his face in the fact that he had no idea who had done it. That wasn't politics.

Nott's face might as well have been carved of granite for all that he reacted, but it made Taylor feel a lot better to have said that. She edged through the crowd, stopping for many meaninglessly polite smiles and handshakes along the way.

There were not her people. Some of them were likely Death Eaters. Others had ties to the Death Eaters, or to pureblood causes that led back to the Death Eaters. Others were simply stuck-up snobs. And yet, there was a perverse pleasure inherent in having them here. This building was her attempt at fixing part of their rotten society, and so few of them truly understood that.

The clock struck eight, harmonious chimes echoing through the open space, off the marble floors and wooden blockades lining the walls.

Taylor made her way to the back of the ground floor, where the door to the central secondary wing was still blocked by more wooden barriers. Sirius was already there, transfiguring a waist-high set of steps with two poles on top, sporting a red ribbon stretched between them.

"After you." He let his hand brush against her arm as she passed him, reassuringly warm. "No tricks or traps, I made it myself."

"All the more reason to suspect tricks," she whispered.

"Not tonight," he replied.

She ascended the steps, stopping at the top, and looked out at the crowd she was now head and shoulders above. The balconies of the first, second, and third floors were lined with watchers. Harry and his friends were up at the very top, looking down.

"Tonight," she said, and her voice was carried to every single ear by the library's enchantments, "we gather to celebrate the opening of Britain's first magical public library. It is not publicly funded," not yet, that was too much of a leap for the financially conservative Ministry which was not used to paying for any libraries at all, "but it is open to the public and the same rules will apply to all who enter this building. Heed those rules, treat the books, the building, the librarians, and the other patrons with respect…"

She lifted her arms. Elsewhere, her bugs physically gnawed through the sheet of parchment serving as a runic anchor for hundreds of ongoing conjurations. All of the wooden blockades hiding the walls from sight disappeared.

"And all of the magical knowledge of the library will be open to you, any day, for as long as you wish," she concluded.

The shelves of this central chamber were already lined with books. Hundreds upon hundreds, organized by subject and author, some common and some so rare there was only one copy in existence.

"Ground floor, basic magic principles and general information, help desk," she announced. "First floor, magical history and a selection of fiction. Second floor, advanced magical studies, treatises, and papers. Third floor, reference materials. Lists of spells, textbooks, dictionaries, atlases, books on language, books on culture." Books from the Muggle side of literature, sorted in without any indication of their origin. Biology, Medicine, Anatomy, Economics, Mathematics, Physics, the whole lot. Not that she would announce that, no, let it be discovered on its own, just like it would be discovered that there was no 'restricted' section in her library. Not even for the truly dangerous spells and magic. There were other protections, such as needing the aid of a librarian to take certain books off the shelf, but those were lesser measures.

It sounded risky on paper, making such things available to everyone, but in truth they were already available to the people most likely to want them, who used and abused them at will. This was only leveling the playing field, and unlike with powers, knowledge of a magical concept allowed for the development of magic intended to negate or counter it, something that was sorely lacking at present.

"There are five more, larger wings to the library," she continued. "These are not open to the public today, and they will be expanded and opened as the space becomes necessary. Your donations have ensured that two of the five wings are in the process of being sorted and prepared for the public. Tonight, please feel free to browse what is currently available! It's not Hogwarts' library yet, but you may be surprised by what we have that Hogwarts does not."

She let that settle in. The crowd was quiet, not because they were composed or unimpressed, but because she had activated the auditory enchantments that dampened anything below a yell to a low murmur.

"Now, a few words from the main supporter of this library. Sirius Black." She swiped her hand down, snapping the ribbon, and stepped down to let Sirius up.

"I won't talk long, because the longer I talk the likelier it is that I'll say something incredibly ill-advised," Sirius began jovially. "That was Taylor Hebert, head librarian of this fine establishment. Make no mistake, I might have spent the money and donated the entire Black library, but she rules this place. It was her idea, the many innovative enchantments making it possible were mostly inspired by her proposals, and when it comes to security, she's the one I trust to ensure we don't lose all of our books by the end of tonight."

The crowd laughed, and Sirius smiled widely. "I've got to thank the other old and exceedingly noble houses of this and that," he continued irreverently. "You know who you are. Your personal libraries may be lighter, but don't fret, it's all right here whenever you want to look at it. We appreciate your donations!"

The scowls that graced certain faces in the crowd were amusing, to say the least. Some had truly donated of their own free will. Others had been convinced to part with books for fair prices, or not-so-fair prices. But the ones who were angry were the ones who had conveniently fallen on hard times and been unable to refuse a vital infusion of gold at exactly the right moment, even if it came at the cost of their entire libraries. Those people all happened to be former Death Eaters, and they all happened to be much poorer now than when Taylor had first heard of them.

The library's advanced magic collection leaned heavily to the dark side of magic as a result, but Taylor had great ambitions for that changing once people like Hermione and Ginny had free access to all of that dark magic and a desire to develop proper countermeasures.

"I could go on," Sirius said. "I could spend all night talking about how we got here. The boring budget meetings I for some reason had to go to despite giving the project a blank check, the even more boring legislation that had to be passed to allow us to publicly show all of the 'family heirlooms' my books were classified as, the meetings with contractors, with security, with Ministry inspectors, with the Minister, with the Minister's favorite advisor of the week, with Hogwarts professors, and we can't forget all of the random wizards off the street with uninformed complaints… None of it was particularly difficult or noteworthy, but taken all together, there's a reason we're only opening up now! If it were up to me we would have installed a Floo in the Black Library, removed the old curses and called it done! But no, we had to do it properly, and now we're finally here… So who the hell wants to listen to a speech? Go, browse, read, explore, stick to the open areas because locked doors are locked for a reason, there's nothing interesting behind them."

Sirius swiped his hand down, then actually looked down. "Taylor, you didn't conjure another ceremonial ribbon," he stage-whispered.

In response, Taylor took her wand out and fluidly conjured a ribbon, flinging it at him. He deftly snatched it out of the air, took one end in each hand, wrapped it around the poles. Then he cut it with a cutting charm.

"Told you, let me talk for long enough and something will go wrong," he told the crowd. "Party on!"

That was it, officially. They would disperse, mingle, and everyone would be gone by midnight. If tonight was just about the library, she would be able to relax.

Tonight was about the library. It was real, she had spent the last five years working for it, and this was her idea finally coming to fruition. But it wasn't only about the library.

This was also a night for doing something she was finally strong enough to attempt.

Her power, still a vague presence in the back of her head, sent over a burst of confidence.

They could do this.

She put on a show for a while. Wandering around, offering insight into the placement of certain books, fending off probing questions and occasionally freeing someone from a security measure they triggered by trying to fiddle with the book enchantments. Those were all things a normal librarian with no ulterior motives would do, so she did them. She even enjoyed it, underneath the nerves.

But when the party started to die down and the guests began to leave… When Sirius gathered the others and took them back into one of the mostly empty wings… When she came across Dumbledore, reading a Biology textbook on the third floor…

"I wanted to thank you," she told him. "I know we haven't technically met, but Sirius told me you were willing to donate your pensieve."

Dumbledore looked up from the book. "Why yes, you would be Ms. Hebert…" He frowned for a moment. "I feel as if I should know more about you than I do, but that is because I know Sirius but we have not had a chance to meet."

"Yes." She smiled and shook his hand. The memory charm still held. She didn't know why or how, but it did. Theoretically, it could hold forever. There was no need to tickle a sleeping dragon.

Too bad she hadn't gone to Hogwarts back when that motto was coined. She could have told them that sometimes, in some situations, tickling and subsequently waking up the sleeping dragon was the only way to get it out of the way so one could move on.

"Would you like to come see it?" she suggested. "That wing isn't open to the public yet, but Sirius is showing it to some of our friends, and as it's your donation we agreed you can have a look now."

"I think I would like that." Dumbledore reshelved the biology textbook and followed her to the nearest door leading into the leftmost wing. "I am very curious as to what the rest of the building looks like," he admitted. "And you, Ms. Hebert. Was it truly chance that kept us apart for so long?"

He might be missing key memories, but that made him no less perceptive in the moment. "I don't know what Sirius might have told you," she said as she led him down to the ground floor, through a much more traditional warren of corridors and bookshelves, "but I'm sure it wasn't the truth. He likes to protect my ego, even when it doesn't need protecting."

She found Sirius and the others around the pensieve, in a bare marble room. Tight quarters, thick walls, and the only thing in the room was the pensieve in the center.

She closed the door behind them. Eight people in a sealed room. One was Dumbledore.

One on seven. The one was a revered, powerful wizard, but none of the seven were pushovers. She had not waited this long out of fear or out of hoping that the obliviation would never break on its own. She had waited because every day that passed was a day she grew stronger. A day that Harry and his friends, trustworthy and reliable, all learned more and grew stronger, more skilled, more dangerous.

They had all improved, but none of them had her peculiar relationship with magic. She was not in the situation she had been in eight years ago, when Dumbledore was some unapproachable giant of magical prowess.

"This is not a tour, is it?" Dumbledore asked warily, sensing the shifting mood in the room. He had his wand out, a much more traditional wand instead of the knobbly old stick he had used the last time she saw him.

"A tour down memory lane," Sirius said, pointing to the pensieve. There was already a thin soup of white liquid waiting in the bowl, with occasional contorting wisps of pure white steam rising from its surface. "We're here for security."

"If I refuse?" Dumbledore asked.

"You really don't want to," Sirius replied. "They're just memories. You're not even going in alone."

"I see additional runes on the pensieve," Dumbledore remarked.

"They allow for someone inside to extract and view a new memory without leaving it," Sirius said. "Small change. Makes it easier to use in spontaneous situations."

"If you thought this was something I would agree to of my own free will, you would not have brought me here, now." Dumbledore looked from face to face. Nobody made eye contact.

Nobody except for her. Her mind was locked behind an externally imposed Occlumency barrier these days, but her surface thoughts were purposefully left available.

Whether he looked at them or not, something tipped the scales for him. "I will see what you have prepared with such care and secrecy," he decided, putting his wand away. "Who will be joining me?"

"I will." Taylor stepped forward. They put their heads in the pensieve at the same time.

The first memory was simple. Taylor walked through her home – under a Fidelius these days, so she could keep the house without outright brainwashing her neighbors to do it – with Dumbledore, watching herself as she pulled a knife from the block.

Taylor had seen the memory before, several times over, but the edge to her younger self's movements still set her on edge. She had forgotten exactly how sudden the wave of paranoia was that day. Unjustified based on what she knew then, but in retrospect? This confrontation was absolutely inevitable, and it was never going to have a good outcome no matter what she did. Dread was the right reaction.

"That is you," Dumbledore observed. "When is this?"

"About ten years ago. Summer, 1991." She wasn't wary of Dumbledore here. Physically, he could touch her, but magic wasn't an option within the pensieve. It was a shared magical simulation, not a place where they were physically. Sirius, Harry and the others would only see her and Dumbledore face-down in the pensieve, not transported to some other dimension. As such, he couldn't actually harm or otherwise affect her.

They stood, side by side behind her memory self as she opened the door. Dumbledore watched with narrowed eyes as she and his counterpart interacted.

"I have been obliviated," he said as his counterpart began explaining magic. It was not a question.

"Of a lot more than just this," she told him.

"Why not attempt to undo it?" he asked.

"Because we're not sure it can be undone," there had to be a reason the obliviation had held for eight years, and while Sirius was good with a memory charm that did not translate to skill in the delicate legilimency required to even try to reverse an obliviation from the outside. "And because this way, you can see things with fresh eyes."

The memory faded out, and the next one ran. Taylor turned away as Dumbledore watched himself obliviate her. She had seen it before. Lived it. What mattered was that he saw it.

More importantly, that he saw it first. Without any context or explanation for his own past actions. She was coming clean, in a sense, but not without stacking the deck. If they returned his memories, he would remember a decade of searching for Harry and years of delving into Summoning, building up theories and reinforcing them. Remus was an example of how much that could change a person's attitude–

Though Remus was not a good example of how to correctly handle things. It was more than a little fucked-up that Sirius had leaped right to obliviating him back then, without even trying to explain, when Remus didn't pose any of the potential complications Dumbledore had. That was water way under the bridge, though. Sirius had a much clearer grasp of obliviation ethics now.

The memory faded to black, replaced by another, much older. Her, bouncing five-year-old Harry on her knee, watching a funny little British television show for children. There was absolutely nothing significant about the scene, save for Harry's age.

Dumbledore stared intently at her and Harry, one hand on his forehead. That would be the obliviation, as he tried to reconcile this with what he 'knew' about how Harry had spent his childhood, which was… nothing.

A curious fact about obliviation was that while seeing proof one was missing time did absolutely nothing to break the obliviation down, it did allow those who were aware obliviation existed to dismiss the confusion that usually came with it, just like settling on an 'explanation' ended the confusion.

The scene changed again. Harry was younger, barely two. She didn't quite have everything together yet; those first two years were rough. She looked unremarkable, save for her missing arm and the dark blotches under her eyes, but the way she moved as she put Harry to bed implied she was exhausted. Not her worst day, not by far, but not a happy one.

Normal, though. A moment that obviously wasn't fake, performed for nobody, with nothing to hide.

That was the last of the pre-loaded memories. Dumbledore wouldn't sit still for a movie-length set of memories without asking for clarification, or proof, or something. Thus, the extra runes that allowed her to direct things, so they weren't diving in and out of the pensieve every few minutes. The runes let her smooth out the process.

Not that it came easily. While Dumbledore was distracted, peering into the crib to look at baby Harry as Taylor's younger self tiredly puttered around the room, she attempted to relax. Not to leave the pensieve, but to shift her awareness.

There were no bugs in a pensieve memory, not even for memories where she had her power. Pensieves showed an exterior view, not an interior one, and they did not simulate things, they displayed them. A pensieve was a monitor, not a computer. Outside, in the real world, there were bugs. She could feel them, the same way she could feel the not-liquid of her memories on her face, in her nose and mouth but not preventing her from breathing clean air. It was an unpleasant sensation.

With some effort, she focused on that awareness, that version of herself, and shakily drew her wand while keeping her head in. She put her wand and hand in the basin, placing the tip on her forehead in preparation.

"You are showing me this to give your side of a story I don't know my side of," Dumbledore remarked, looking at the present-day her. "I have to wonder if this is real, or staged."

"I know." She crossed her arms. "It's a fair question. I had Harry for over ten years. Name a day within that timeframe, any day. Any time. I can show you a memory from then. Momentous events or significant dates are easier for me to remember, obviously, but I can try to get it close to the day."

Another quirk of pensieve memory viewing made her incapable of offering any moment he wanted to the exact timeframe. Any memory she still remembered at all could be withdrawn and viewed in perfect detail, but the more obscure the memory, the harder it was to get the initial withdrawing process to work. It was a downright fascinating branch of magic, and she wished pensieves weren't so rare. She could have done with one of these years ago.

"We would have to leave… ah, no, the modifications to the pensieve." He looked around. "In that case, show me October fourteenth, 1989."

That would be when Harry was either nine or ten years old, depending on whether she counted from the birthday he celebrated, or Harry Potter's actual birthday. He would have been in school, it was October so there would be a Halloween coming up… Difficult, but she thought she could remember something they had done that week.

The runes allowing her to concentrate on her real self while in the pensieve did not make the process easy, and it took her several minutes to focus on the memory, focus on the wordless charm necessary to withdraw it, and successfully pull the memory out. It plopped into the bowl of the pensieve with a wet splash, and the scene changed around them.

They were dumped into an old version of her home neighborhood, at the park, in the late afternoon, after Harry's school let out. The her of memory watched him play with two of his old friends.

Had Harry ever reconnected with them? She would have to ask. She had long since quit her Muggle job, and she didn't have any good friends in the neighborhood, but Harry had real friends in the Muggle world. She didn't know if he still kept up with them or not.

"He was too cool to be seen playing with me for a while there," she remembered, seeing herself on the park bench. "I was uneasy about letting him out of my sight during rush hour, on a weekday, five blocks from the house in a park with no adult supervision. We compromised." The memory version of her had a book, one on recent Japanese history that she was pretending to read. No newspaper, annoyingly. No way to verify this was happening at any time more specific than 'some autumn, sometime.'

Dumbledore wandered into the park, sitting down on the bench next to her past self. He looked up, then down, taking in the entire scene from her point of view. Clever. That way he could see everything she directly observed, so he knew where the details would be clear. They got fuzzy and indistinct outside her direct observation, to reflect that she didn't actually know, for instance, what was happening behind her bench.

That would change with memories outside of this particular period of her life, but he didn't know it yet.

"Here we are." He poked at her past self's bookmark, a receipt she hadn't even noticed was there. "October thirteenth, 1989," he read off of it.

"Close enough," she judged, noticing that it was a receipt from the local bookstore. She must have kept it for exactly the purpose it was serving in the memory. She barely remembered doing such a thing, demonstrating exactly how powerful pensieves and the related mind magic really were. "I can do this as many times as you like, but if you want to take that as a given and continue for now?"

"I imagine you have a lot to show me," Dumbledore said gravely. "What is your purpose with all of this?"

"To be a better person." She shrugged her shoulders. "To not be blindsided because one day you might throw off the obliviation. It's a miracle it has held this long. You've been missing memories for–"

"Eight years, two months," Dumbledore interrupted.

She gave him a hard look.

"I was not entirely unaware that something was amiss, Ms. Hebert," he said. "Your memory charm was perfect. That does not take into account externalities."

She was worried about what that might mean, but the sheer time that had passed between the obliviation and now ruled out any but the longest of long cons. "I don't know what we missed," she admitted. "I know you didn't have any backup memories stored like your Horcrux history lessons."

She only knew that because Harry had, upon learning that memories could be extracted and stored for later, had a minor panic attack and arranged a heist of Dumbledore's office to check for incriminating evidence. That heist had taken up most of Harry's fifth year in Hogwarts.

"I should have," he said, "if it was something I considered important."

"I don't have any answers for you on that subject," she said. Save, perhaps, that storing memories of a threat that could feasibly spread by knowledge of its existence was a risky proposition. "Now. What we have here is my life, shortly after coming to Britain up to that day you obliviated me. Do you want the cause or the effect next?"

"Of the obliviation?" He frowned. "This is carefully curated. Do I truly have a choice?"

"This is worthless if you aren't confident you are seeing the truth. It is the truth, so it won't all fail to make sense if you see it in a different order than the one I would prefer. I would suggest you look at the cause first, but either works." The order didn't matter so much now. What mattered was that he would only see her memories, her viewpoint. None of his long nights of agonizing over Summoning. The information set he was learning from was different this time around, and it came with none of the urgency or fog of war the actual events did.

"Show me the cause," he decided.

"You asked." She would start with the best beginner explanation she had ever been given as to what powers really were…

A pity that explanation came from Bonesaw.

Sirius watched the pensieve. He knew what Dumbledore was getting into. He and Harry knew. Taylor had to pick and choose which memories she showed Dumbledore, and that meant getting feedback from an outside source.

Hearing about it and seeing it, the former years ago and the latter in this last week since the pensieve had been delivered, were two very different things. It made sense that they were the ones least comfortable with this whole operation.

Sirius had his doubts. Very substantial ones. In his opinion, Dumbledore staying obliviated was a gift from Merlin, and shouldn't be squandered. It was fair play, him living the rest of his life not remembering anything related to Taylor. It didn't even impact his life much after the first few months, unlike Taylor's obliviation. They shouldn't be jeopardizing that, even if Taylor had steadily learned enough magic in the intervening years that he would bet on her against Dumbledore in a fight. Not because she was more powerful, but because the gap between them was now small enough that he thought her ruthlessness would easily carry the day. It still wasn't worth risking making Dumbledore an enemy once more.

Taylor thought otherwise. They tended to disagree when it came to obliviation. He was too trigger-happy, or so she said, while she was too reluctant to rely on it to solve the problems it was uniquely suited for. He got his way when Remus broke his obliviation two years after it was applied, but only temporarily. This was coming, whether he liked it or not. And he would like to be able to say that the whole 'unprotected mind giving off Summoning vibes' problem was completely, entirely resolved. That would never happen while Dumbledore and to a lesser extent Remus were walking around with obliviations.

Still… He was prepared for this to go very badly wrong. 'Can't re-obliviate the lethal-force avenging war veteran Dumbledore' levels of wrong. To that end, he'd pick-pocketed Dumbledore's wands the moment he went into the pensieve. It would take him a while, maybe half an hour, to figure out how to use the runic alteration to have any awareness of his real body without coming out, so there was no way he knew.

And damn, if the old-man-power wand didn't feel exactly as good as he remembered from eight years ago in Saint Mungo's. Why Dumbledore was using a normal one instead of the old-man one when he had both on him was a mystery.

Taylor moved to point her wand at her own head, never taking it out of the pensieve.

"She's done with the starting memories," Harry noted.

"I want to see those memories too," Hermione remarked.

"No you don't," Ginny and Luna both retorted.

"What, have you seen them?" Hermione demanded.

Harry had an answer for her. "No, but they know not to want to."

Taylor moved again, twitching another memory out of her head. A minute later, she repeated the process. Time passed differently in the pensieve, only flowing at normal speed when the individuals within were actively interacting with each other. If they were just watching, the memories went by much faster than they would have played out in real life. She got through a half-dozen without incident.

Dumbledore moved. His legs spasmed. His hands, lightly gripping the bowl, slipped off and reached into the liquid memory.

"He's not coming out, he knows how to get out," Sirius said. "So what–"

Dumbledore lurched back, breaking contact with the bowl as his face flung out, wet beard and all. He reached for his wand, scrabbling at his own robes, eyes wide and unseeing.

Sirius helpfully petrified him. "Hey, come back to reality," he barked.

Dumbledore's eyes slowly focused on the wand Sirius held. He had used the old-man one, because he could. What other reason did he need?

Taylor pulled out of the pensieve, her hair shedding the liquid in a silvery wave. "Good, you got him," she breathed. "What was it, Dumbledore? Did you pull out on purpose?"

"So… you are the one who defeated me and then returned it," Dumbledore breathed, completely ignoring Taylor. He really needed to straighten his priorities out.

"Yeah, needed it to get the drop on you way back when, figured it would be smart to disarm you tonight." Sirius shrugged. He hadn't defeated Dumbledore, Taylor took the wand and stunned him, but he had suffered a nasty spider bite to get it, and that was almost the same thing. Also, Dumbledore didn't need another reason to dislike Taylor. "So? It's a nice wand, I'll give you that."

"It is not a nice wand," Dumbledore said slowly. "Is it the one you obliviated me with?"

"Yes." Sirius considered the knobbly old stick he was holding. It really was a powerful wand… He didn't think wands were supposed to feel like this.

"Keep it." Dumbledore closed his eyes. "It has not behaved quite right since that day. That, by the way…" He nodded to Taylor. "I did not know why. But I knew something had changed."

"Are you willing to come back?" She gestured to the pensieve. "You haven't seen enough to get a clear picture yet."

"If I am not willing, you will obliviate me again," Dumbledore said.

"Yeah. We will." Sirius waved the wand. "If you do keep going, I might see fit to remove the first obliviation," he offered.

"You will not be able to. That wand is ever-suited to destruction. Those memories are not covered up or hidden, they are gone." Dumbledore sighed. "Free me. I must see it all."

"Must you?" Sirius asked.

"I am in too far to back out now."

Sirius considered the distressed old man. He didn't look on the edge of sanity, or like he was plotting to attack them all. It seemed safe enough, relative to the baseline level of risk this entire operation depended on. "Keep going. I won't say it gets better, but if you're anything like me you'll come out the other end relieved, not terrified."

He unpetrified Dumbledore, and Dumbledore immediately returned to the pensieve, dunking his face with the attitude of a man bracing for a shock.

"Good work. I think…" Taylor looked at all of them. "I think this may actually be working," she said softly. "Let's see it through."

Dumbledore was made of tough stuff. Taylor knew he had to be, considering the things he had seen and done as a matter of public record, but this trip through her life on Earth Bet was showing her that she had underestimated him.

Bonesaw startled and disgusted him. Her talk of passengers scared him more. Flashes of theoretical discussions about powers during her time with the Wards genuinely interested him, their casual power use more so. The thing that had finally undermined his resolve was no less than Leviathan. The deaths, the never-ending toll listed out by Dragon, flood waves, a moving terror infinitely more disturbing and inexorable than the greatest magical beast she had seen in this world…

She couldn't fault anyone for looking away when they were first faced with something as terrible as an Endbringer. There was a reason she was never going to put any memory of the Simurgh into the pensieve. At least Leviathan was a purely physical threat.

They stood on a street flooded ankle-deep. In the distance, a few blocks away, heroes flew in the storm, batted back and forth. Lasers flashed, Leviathan moved, his water echo crashing down behind him.

They could be this far away and not be standing in a soupy mess of nothing because her bugs had perceived blocks around her. That made her pensieve memories very large. It gave them a way to talk, without being in the middle of the fight. Instead, it played out far away, and yet uncomfortably close.

"This world was a world without hope," Dumbledore said soberly.

"Yes." For the most part.

"That thing. For that, I might cast my first killing curse." He looked down, as if the admission pained him. "I take it that would not have worked? The sheer variety of abilities on display here…"

"I don't think it's technically alive. Also, it's made of dead mass." A killing curse against Leviathan, or any of the Endbringers? It just wouldn't work. They were, if she remembered correctly, crystalline inorganic matter. Killing curses didn't work against metalwork golems, they wouldn't work here. There was also a matter of sheer scale, though she had no idea whether that was a factor. It took energy to kill something. How much energy did a single Avada Kedavra convey?

"So no." He put his hands behind his back and straightened up. "This is the worst?"

"The absolute worst?" She shook her head. "No. This is the baseline worst. The thing any normal person might fear most, from day to day. There's more, beyond what everyone knew to be afraid of."

Next would be Scion. Then a few earlier memories to link the nature of her shard to Scion, and then an explanation of Contessa, and showing her actions after the fight.

He knew who she was. He knew what she was. Not every sordid detail, she glossed over her own actions beyond a few key moments, but this wasn't about her. He could condemn or approve her personal actions at his leisure, later when he inevitably picked over her life to satisfy his curiosity and confirm her truthfulness.

No, the important thing here was the shards themselves. What they were, how they operated, and how they were limited. He was afraid of the unknown. She was showing him that it wasn't unknown, and it was bad, but not in the ways he feared.

Harry already had his wand pointed at Dumbledore when he and Taylor emerged from the pensieve for the second time. Dumbledore looked seasick. Taylor too was drawn. Viewing those memories wasn't easy for her.

"Sirius, we're up to your contribution," Taylor called out.

"Yes, that." Sirius waited while Taylor returned the memories in the pensieve to her own head, then added his own. "Full disclosure, Dumbledore pre-obliviation warned me, but I didn't know anything about what you just saw. Just so you don't think I'm a braindead moron for doing what I did."

"I will keep it in mind, alongside everything else I have seen." Dumbledore all but dove back into the pensieve as soon as the memory was put in.

"No clue what his final opinion is going to be, but these are the last ones," Taylor admitted. "Be ready for anything when he next comes out. I'm going to try and keep him in until I know what he's thinking, but I can't actually hold him in."

Sirius' meeting with Dumbledore. His interrogation of Taylor, and by extension her shard. His memory of the hospital confrontation. Three simple events. No real fighting, no terror – except, perhaps, on Sirius' part – just talking. She knew them almost by heart. They were soothing, in comparison to what came before. Not her memories, not her mistakes. Things that had happened. A setup, a harsh moment, and a redemption.

For Dumbledore, they were just as difficult to deal with as the first set of memories, more so since two of the three were directly poking at things the obliviation had removed from him. She ran through each twice, for his benefit. He watched them in overwhelmed silence.

When they were done, she cut to the last memory she intended to show unless he asked for something specific. Her, Sirius, and Harry on a beach that summer after Dumbledore's obliviation.

He looked out of place on the remembered sand, standing on top of a dune. He stood stiffly, his robe hems dragging on the sand as his feet sank in.

"It's a lot to take in," she said, feeling out his state of mind.

"More, with the full picture," he said. "Is our world doomed to become like yours? Chaotic, hopeless struggle?"

"It had better not be," she said. "It won't happen because of Scion, he's dead. It won't happen because of me or my shard, I want peace and my shard only wants to learn. This world has its flaws. I'm not denying that. But the shards don't understand magic, so we know your magic doesn't come from them. The game isn't rigged against you. Apocalypse and endless violent conflict isn't inevitable." With magic, she could even say she had hope if another set of entities showed up. Her shard's constant struggle to assimilate magic meant it was an unknown factor. It was a chance.

Dumbledore sat down on the dune, facing the ocean. His beard fluttered in the remembered wind. Down by the tideline, Harry splashed Sirius, who turned into a dog and began backpaddling water at him. The remembered version of Taylor joined them, changing into a dolphin, to the surprise and delight of both.

"I see now, why you did what you did," Dumbledore said. "You were working with more complete information than I. Why did you not tell all of this to me first?"

"Because you're a threat." She sat down next to him, more comfortable around him in the pensieve than she would ever be in real life. "You had all the power. You had an opinion. Your opinion would stop you from listening to me. Also, we didn't have a pensieve and didn't know you had one. It would have been my word, and maybe legilimency, if you could be convinced to try it after freaking out. I wouldn't advise that even now, because I only trust my shard to do what it thinks I want, if left to make a choice. Putting yourself at its mercy? About as scary as me putting myself at your mercy."

"I would have listened," Dumbledore argued.

"How could I know?" she asked. "Why would I believe that if someone told me so? You obliviated me. You said my death was a possibility when talking to Sirius and Remus. You suspected things that would make listening to me a game of endless second-guessing, and you weren't wrong. This is different for two important reasons."

"One is that you have had an additional eight years to prove my worries invalid," Dumbledore guessed. "You are a known figure in magical society. You know all kinds of magic. The world is your oyster, you and your shard. This has allowed you to romance a wealthy bachelor, raise a child without my meddling, and found a library. Hardly things to fear. You won, and in winning you proved there was nothing bad about your victory."

"Don't forget my shard is probably part of the reason Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes were crippled," she reminded him. "I know you did the legwork of finding and finishing them off, and they weren't completely broken, but he never came back from that. That wasn't me, and I don't think it was only Harry's spell. Voldemort went into my mind. My shard didn't like that."

"Your Occlumency shields?" he asked.

"Strong. It won't happen again. But me proving myself wasn't one of my two reasons this is different than me telling you back then would have been."

"What are they?" He lifted a hand to tuck the fluttering end of his beard into his robe.

"First, you're coming at this with a fresh perspective." She picked up a handful of remembered sand. It was cold in her palm. "Back then, everything I told you would have been filtered through your preconceptions. You were certain it was Summoning. You were certain I was a victim, or no longer existed except as a shell for something worse. I had nothing to convince you, from that perspective, that you were wrong. Here, without those memories, you're more open minded. It's hard to throw away years of assumptions. Easier, to go at it from scratch. It might still have been possible, but it wasn't about whether it could work, it was about me getting things to a point where I was willing to take the risk." Neither she nor Sirius thought of that at the time of his obliviation, but it was definitely a factor in deciding to do this now. As was receiving the pensieve.

"Your reasoning is that the obliviation was a necessary prelude." He didn't sound happy about that. "The other reason?"

"You held the power back then." She let the sand fall from her hand. "In Saint Mungo's, it was the most pronounced. Sure, we had you as a powerless snake, but that was inherently temporary if we wanted to try talking to you. I was injured, and Voldemort, who is said to have only ever feared you, had just thrashed me to an inch of my life despite my best efforts. You said my death was an option, and you almost ruined my life through negligence, thinking you were keeping me relatively safe. Power plus a bad history meant I was not willing. Before that moment, I still knew you were too far above me to fight."

"You could have explained and then obliviated me if it didn't work…" He looked out at the horizon. "But you would never know if I was of the same mind as you if I simply lied. You wouldn't know until my wand was back in my hand and I had the power again. What is different now?"

"Eight years," she said. "I learned slow. I learned hard. But eight years is a long time. A year more than the time needed for a child to go from clueless to competent while still having time to live a life and study inefficiently."

Dumbledore turned slowly, ever so slowly, to look at her. "Do you think yourself my equal now?" he asked.

"No, I don't," she said. Not yet. "But if I had to fight you tonight? With the help of Sirius, Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, and Luna, all of whom are talented in their own right, with their own diversified skills and tactics?" Most of them were Harry's friends, Harry's team though the world was not so harsh as to force them to fight to survive. They were all exceptional, and unlike the magical friends she had made over the years, they were wholly on Harry's side when it came to matters involving Dumbledore, already in the loop to some degree. "I would pit myself and them against anyone in Britain without hesitation. Anyone in the world without losing hope. I'm not you, I'm not Voldemort, but I have my own skills, and the gap between us isn't insurmountable. You're not my new Scion. You were my Alexandria, back then, only beatable in specific circumstances from an unexpected angle. Now, you're more like Lung. Obviously more powerful, inherently stronger and with a better grasp on your abilities…"

"But in no way insurmountable," he finished. He had seen both of those moments. They were important to who she became. He had also seen her working with Lung later on, in Cauldron's base. Hopefully the comparison stuck with him.

Down on the beach, the Taylor of her memory had turned back into a human to lift dog-Sirius up, her tattooed arms wet with seawater. Harry cheered as she threw him out into an oncoming wave.

"The balance of power isn't in your favor any longer," Taylor concluded. "That's why I waited until now, why I didn't do it after the first summer, or the first year, or when Harry graduated and you had no more say in his life. I could have waited forever, apparently, but that…"

"Why did you not?" he asked. "Truly?"

"Because obliviating you wasn't fixing things. It was postponing dealing with the problem." Postponing indefinitely. If he had died falling down an unexpected flight of stairs two days after his obliviation, the problem would have resolved itself. But that wasn't fixing it, that was pure chance taking it away, obliviation or not. "Also, this way I can hold to my own values. Believe it or not, I don't like obliviation. If I could remove that spell from existence, I would. Maybe it's the cornerstone of your Statute of Secrecy, maybe removing it would cause all sorts of problems, but I don't believe it solves anything. Not really. At best, it lets you ignore that there was a problem to start with."

"And yet you relied upon it," he said.

"Don't like and won't use are two different things," she said dryly. "I'll do it again if I have to. But I hope I don't."

Dumbledore stood and brushed the sand off the back of his robe. "You only want me to leave you alone to live your life."

"I want to know that you won't ambush me in the dark and leave me mindless or dead," she confirmed. "And I want to know I'm not relying on an obliviation to protect me. If you still think I'm a danger, come out of the pensieve fighting, because you'll never get a better chance to put me down."

She stretched her arms and pulled her hands back, marveling once again at how real they felt. Her knuckles cracked, one by one. Her wand wasn't here in the pensieve, but she could feel it in her hand, back in her real body.

"I won't attack you," he said. "You've convinced me. I may not agree with your every decision, but you acted with the right intentions."

"Funny. I could say the same of you. The road to hell is paved with good intentions." She hadn't forgiven him for what he did, and unlike with Sirius she didn't think she ever would. But forgiveness and tolerance were not the same thing. "I won't say we're even."

"Why's that?" he asked.

"I kept tabs on you while you were obliviated."

Taylor returned to her body with her wand pointed at Dumbledore's head, not her own. Everyone else had their wands trained on him, too.

Dumbledore rose from the pensieve slowly, his hands going to his beard to straighten it out. "What time is it?" he asked.

"Late," Sirius supplied.

"You've been in there for three hours," Hermione supplied.

"I need either a long sleep or a barrel of strong spirits, and for my own sake I am going to choose the former, if I can get it," Dumbledore said. "Sirius, you may keep the wand. It is yours, and has been for a long time. Beware those who might covet it."

"Okay…" Sirius examined the wand, then tucked it up his sleeve. "Need me to call you a ride? The Knight Bus?"

"Fawkes!" Dumbledore called. His phoenix burst into being above him. It crooned sadly when it saw him, and immediately landed on his shoulder. "If you would, please…"

Sirius gave back the normal wand. Dumbledore did nothing with it, beyond putting it away. "Ms. Hebert, I will return to look through your memories more thoroughly once I have had time to determine what is worth the price of seeing such things."

"No price, it's in my best interest to make sure you're satisfied with what you've learned," she told him.

"I was referring to the mental toll of looking upon such horrors," he said sadly. "I do not envy you."

With one final caw, his phoenix flashed them both out of the room in a burst of flame.

"That's it." He could be lying, but she wasn't lying when she told him attacking immediately was his best shot. She had backup plans, contingencies, and ways to avoid being ambushed. Magic offered almost infinite possibility, and she had anticipated the possibility of him breaking the obliviation at any time in the last eight years. If he tried something tomorrow, next week, or next month, he would fail. She rubbed her arm absently, feeling more tired than she had all week. "Mission success. Probably. Thanks for coming, everyone–"

Harry hugged her. His forehead bumped into her nose. "I'm proud of you, mum," he said. "You didn't have to do this."

"I don't think it's anything to be proud of." Correcting her own moral compromises and postponements should be the expected bare minimum, not worthy of praise.

"Well, you always say that about the things you do, and it's never true," he shot back. He let go, stepped back, and Sirius immediately took his place, though his hands drifted a lot lower than Harry's ever would.

"I'm taking you home and not letting you out of bed until you're too well-rested to want to hex me," Sirius whispered.

"So long as you use a time turner to get me back here bright and early, or wait until tomorrow evening." She still had a job to do. Confronting Dumbledore was for her own peace of mind. Running her library was her chosen responsibility.

"We'll negotiate," he promised. "You trained that kid to do the job, didn't you? Have him fill in."

"On my first day?" She laughed and pushed him away before he could apparate her, because she felt him gathering the magic to do that, and waved to Harry's friends. "Really, thank you all for coming. I know it didn't amount to much, but if it had, I would have needed your help."

"Better to be prepared for nothing, than to be unprepared for anything," Luna said. "Did your caterers prepare?"

"The extra food should have been taken to the employee break room," Taylor replied, unfazed by the abrupt change in topic. "It's yours if you want it."

"Save some for me! I never got around to eating anything, I was so busy annoying people," Sirius remarked. "Oh, also, the hat is on the roof. Don't ask why."

"We've been standing here for hours," Harry said.

"I could eat," Neville agreed. "My portkey home leaves at seven in the morning today, and my sleep schedule is totally out of whack because of the time difference and the plants being nocturnal. I'm probably not sleeping tonight."

"You'll take me out of this library over my dead, reanimated, and subsequently re-killed body," Hermione told Ginny.

"Take you out?" Ginny asked incredulously. "We're staying until Taylor makes us leave or the food runs out."

It looked like nobody was going home just yet.

Dawn found them, one and all, asleep in the staff break room. Neville was on the floor, having fallen out of a chair transfigured to fit him once the transfiguration wore off. Ginny and Hermione were cuddled in a corner, next to a stack of books they had pilfered on the way to the break room, a book still open across Hermione's lap. Harry was slumped back in his chair, his neck braced by a pillow Luna had produced from her robes, along with two tiny bat-like reptilian creatures, with exactly as much explanation as she ever gave for anything. She was using him as a pillow as she stretched across three chairs lined up beside him

Sirius was, at the moment, a dog on the floor. Taylor didn't know why this was, except perhaps that he was too tired to change back after changing to help Harry recount a story of a misadventure she had never heard about back when it happened. Taylor had one arm draped over him, and her back to the cushioned wall. Magic was good for many things, but in-the-moment convenience had to be at the top of the list. Bending reality to be more comfortable was a ridiculous use of the ability to bend reality.

With the dawn came sunlight through the charmed windows, flooding the room with early-morning light. Taylor woke first, the ache in her back from sleeping upright unexpected and annoying.

Her arms were inactive; the charm to activate them had worn off. Usually she took them off before sleeping, safe in the knowledge that were anything to happen, they were within a single levitation spell's reach. This morning, all she had to do was will them on, and they reconnected.

In a minute, she would wake Neville, who depending on the type of portkey would either have to rush to the Ministry to make it, or was currently running the risk of being whisked away while still sleeping. She would take Ginny and Hermione over to the front desk and properly authorize their books being withdrawn, as they had gravitated directly to the most obscure, illegal tomes she could get from the Malfoys and those couldn't just be taken off the shelf without following procedure. She would help Harry and Luna find the two bat-things that were not on Luna anymore, but couldn't possibly have left the room. Harry would help her get Sirius home without waking him, because unlike the rest of them he had pushed himself entirely too hard for no reason in the last week. She would greet her new assistant librarians when they turned up for their first day of work.

But not quite yet. For now, she would savor the moment, aches and all. For the first time in a very long while, she felt entirely, unconditionally at peace.