Chapter 7 - W7

"I'm not surprised yeh can see em," Hagrid said. "But I'm kind of sorry that you can. I feel like it's my fault."

"You think it was the troll?" I asked, surprised.

We were in his hut, having finished the long, sweaty job of cleaning the thestral stalls. I had no idea whether what they would have left behind would be invisible or not; I could see them just fine, so it stood to reason that I could see their manure just as easily.

"Wasn't it, though?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Death eaters killed my parents and tortured me," I said. "I thought all the staff knew."

He stared at me.

"Sometimes they don't share things with me... they think I can't hide a secret."

I'd cleaned my hands and arms, but I still felt grimy and uncomfortable. Still, Hagrid had been the one to introduce me to the Unicorns, and he was my best bet at getting to see them again, so I needed to stay on his good side.

He shook his head. "That thing with the troll... it shouldn'ta happened. I just didn't think it would..."

"It wasn't," I said. "I know how to handle myself."

"Kids yer age always think they do," he said. "But its not yer job to take care of yerself....not yet."

"Who else, then?" I asked. "I don't have anybody left, and school is well and good, but the professors won't always be here. I've got to learn to defend myself, just like every witch and wizard."

"Yeh think it's bad here," he shook his head. "It's worse out there. There's a lot the papers don't talk about; the Ministry doesn't want people to panic. It's not just muggleborns disappearin."

"Oh?" I asked casually.

"I shouldn't be tellin ye this, but aurors have gone missin too... and not just muggleborns."

I nodded.

"And they just vanished, without any sign of where they went," I said. "What do you think the odds are that it was just a series of unfortunate accidents."

"That's what some people are sayin... that bein an auror is dangerous, and there's gonna be more losses some years than others. The Headmaster doesn't believe it, though."

"He shouldn't," I said. "Muggle wars tend to be about attrition. Whoever has more men and weapons to keep throwing at a problem tends to win. I think it's probably the same with Wizards... except that it's harder to replace a skilled Wizard than it is to build another gun. I'll bet he's getting rid of the most dedicated aurors too, leaving the ones who are more likely to fall into line for alter."

Hagrid frowned.

"That means they have to have people inside the aurors organization who know everybody well enough to know who the hardliners are, and who will likely follow the new administration."

"New administration?"

"Voldemort's planning to take over the Ministry, isn't he?" I asked. "Or replace it entirely, but it's probably easier to take it over first."

Hagrid winced at my use of the name, then shook his head. "He always wanted to tear it down. That's why he kept attackin the muggles last time; the Ministry spent so much time trying to keep the secret that it came close to collapsing."

"Well, either way, I bet a skilled auror takes a long time to replace," I said.

It was why crossbows replaced longbows, and muskets replaced crossbows. They weren't really superior weapons, at least at first, but they were easier to use. A skilled longbowman took years to train, but musketmen could be replaced quickly.

Wizards were closer to skilled bowmen. They took years to become competent with magic, and once they were gone, they were hard to simply slot someone else in. Aurors had an even more specialized skill set.

"Have they been training aurors up over the last few years?" I asked. "Or are there fewer than there used to be."

"The Ministry's been cuttin back on them," Hagrid said. "No war, and things were quiet., so they didn't see the need."

"Presumably his people pushed for that over the years," I said. "They spent years weakening the Ministry from within, like termites eating away at a house. You can't see the rot on the outside, not until it's too late."

I was starting to respect Tom Riddle a lot more.

He'd been killed, and yet his servants had been so convinced that he was going to return that they had continued to carry out his plan. Or maybe they hadn't believed he was coming back but a weakened Ministry had fit with their own goals. Either way, it had left him in a batter position once he'd returned.

"You seem to know a lot about wars for a little girl," Hagrid said.

"You obviously haven't been a little girl," I said, grinning. "It's a kind of war just getting through every day."

I carefully set my hot chocolate down. I'd thought the trick with the rock cakes was to soak them in liquids until they were soft enough to be eaten by someone who wasn't at least partially inhuman. I'd been soaking mine for almost half an hour, and they still weren't edible.

"Have you ever seen a pensieve?" I asked.

"Headmaster's got one, I guess."

"It sounds like a handy thing to have," I said. "Being able to look over memories. You might be able to catch things you missed."

"They don't work that good for me," Hagrid said. "I'm tough against magic."

"Well, that sounds handy too," I said. "Which means that you should probably watch out."

"What? Why?"

"The last war, a lot of people pretended like they were under mind control spells. My bet is that this time, there really will be... unless the Ministry has an easy way to detect those.

Hagrid shook his head. "If it was easy, people wouldn't have been able to plead out."

"I'm guessing the people who have gone missing are some of the people who'd be able to resist the spell?"

He nodded slowly.

"So you'd be tough to control?" I asked.

He frowned. "I've had stunners bounce offa me. Nobody ever tried to use the Imperius on me."

That he remembered. The problem with Masters was that if they could make you forget that you'd been mastered, you'd never really be able to tell if your thoughts were your own. The Master-Stranger Protocols had been the best that the Protectorate could come up with.

I'd had the resistance training, but that was no guarantee that I'd be able to resist magical mind control. These people didn't have anything, as far as I could tell.

It had been bad enough in my world; one in eight thousand people had been parahumans in the more crowded towns, and of those, only a small proportion had been Masters. That meant that there were probably only a few Masters in any given town, and many of them were people like me who could control things that weren't humans.

But in this world, any adult wizard who chose to learn the right spells was potentially a Master. It was illegal, but that had rarely stopped anyone who was determined.

Someone who had a dedicated group of followers who weren't worried about the law could accomplish a lot if they were careful. It was a dangerous strategy; they had to make sure that every single attack went through, and not a single enemy escaped.

They had to keep the aurors from realizing that they had been attacked until it was too late, and they were probably doing this by putting their own people in positions of power, or by controlling the minds of the people who were in power.

If they'd already done everything they needed, there would be no need for secrecy, but for the moment they were likely getting into position.

It was a long term strategy that showed better planning than I'd expected. Everything I'd heard from my listening in to the conversations between the Slytherins in Hogwarts suggested that the Ministry and the Newspapers were the two main sources of power in the Wizarding world.

They didn't have armies, because they didn't have to. Every Wizard had his own weapon, and in an emergency, the women could be called up as easily as the men.

But if rumor was correct, Voldemort had put a curse on the Defense position, which would have crippled the training of years of Wizards. According to the Weasley Twins, a lot of adults couldn't even master a basic Shield spell. That had to be due to years of incompetent teachers.

After all, adults had no trouble with other sorts of magic, the kind taught by Flitwick and McGonagall. It was only in Defense that they were weak.

If that had been part of his plan, I had to appreciate his cunning. He'd essentially neutered the younger members of Wizarding society for ten years or more. Most likely the Pureblood children who were the children of his followers would receive extra, competent instruction in the summers.

"If you're hard to control, then you might end up a target," I said. "Maybe not now, but eventually. They might try to use the Ministry to do it, too," I said.

Hagrid scowled. "That happened to me when I was a boy."

"So be careful," I said. "I'd like to see the Unicorns again at least once before I die."

"Get permission from the Headmaster or Mr. Snape, and I'd be happy to take you," he said.

I nodded. "It's getting late, I'd better get going."

It was dark as I left Hagrid's hut and started my way back up toward the castle. There was a cold breeze, and I shivered in the October wind. Brockton Bay was cold in the winter, but I didn't have the same kind of warm clothing here as I did there.

Additionally, I was smaller, with less body fat, and that meant that I felt the cold more intensely, especially in the dungeons. I kept meaning to learn the warming charm, but I'd been busy with half a dozen other projects, including learning defensive magic, keeping up with schoolwork and spying on my classmates.

I was making my way up the lawn when I heard a sound behind me. I froze; my bugs weren't seeing anything, but there was an unfamiliar smell.

Suddenly aware of how dark it was, I reached into my fanny pack and pulled out my Bowie knife. I'd heard that some Wizards could disillusion themselves, and it was possible that one was following me right now.

My ears strained to hear any other strange sounds, but the grass was soft, and it would have been very easy for someone to walk silently on it.

I hurried to get to the castle. I'd be safer there from an invisible opponent, if only because their shoes were likely to make noise on the hard floor. I'd also be closer to help if I kept to hallways that had portraits; while they couldn't do anything on their own, they could leave their portraits and get a professor, or the Headmaster.

Dealing with Strangers had always been unpleasant; Aisha had been annoying, but she was on my side.

Disillusionment wasn't taught at Hogwarts, which limited the people it could possibly be. It almost had to be an adult, or at least one of the older students who had picked the spell up somewhere else.

I began to gather a swarm of gnats; here in Scotland they were apparently called midges. It was hard for them to fly in this amount of wind, but I didn't need for them to attack someone. All I needed for was...

There.

One of my gnats impacted something that it couldn't see, and once it did, it vanished from the sight of the other midges around it. The invisible figure was behind me and to the right, and it was catching up to me rapidly.

I was tempted to attack him, but it was possible that it was only Snape or Dumbledore spying on me. I didn't think that was the case, and if it was an enemy wizard, I'd be in a lot of trouble.

I could use my bugs to create a distraction, but that was a last resort, as it would get rid of my greatest asset in staying alive.

There was one other choice, however.

Reaching into my fanny pack, I grabbed the Peruvian Darkness powder, and I threw it behind me, ducking as a spell flew over my head.

Not Dumbledore then.

I began to sprint for the castle doors even as the darkness spread out behind me. Fighting an adult wizard would be stupid; what I needed to do was to get to a place where there were a lot of people, and there weren't many places like that at this hour.

A spell flashed past me again, but it wasn't well aimed. They were still inside the darkness and were shooting blind. I had several gnats on him or her now, and as I reached the gate, I slipped inside.

He'd expect me to head straight for the doors, but at this hour there wouldn't be anyone in that part of the castle. Instead I sprinted to the left, heading for the greenhouses.

I managed to turn the corner as they moved through the gate.

They'd stopped when I'd dropped the Darkness Powder, probably because they'd assumed that I was going to go on the offense. In retrospect I probably should have, but if they were a decent wizard, I'd have ended up with an unforgivable to the face.

They were heading toward the doors now, slowly. Apparently they expected me to ambush them. That increased the chance that it was someone at the school who was doing it, or at least someone who was receiving letters and information from someone at the school.

My bugs saw a golden light surrounding the area I knew my invisible assailant to be in, and a moment later footprints began to appear on the grass; my footprints. How they knew they were my footprints as apposed to the hundreds of others that had passed through the area on a day to day basis I did not know.

Maybe they were able to demand that it only show the most recent set of footprints.

Cursing under my breath, I sprinted for the side door. It lead into a hallway filled with classrooms to my right. I reached the end of the hall and turned right, just as a spell flew over my head. I had midges on their wand now, so I could tell where they were aiming.

Halfway down the hallway, the entrance to the Headmaster's office presented itself.

"Chocolate cockroaches," I said, hoping that the password hadn't changed.

The gargoyle let me in, and I quickly made my way up the stairs toward the Headmaster's office.

"Miss Hebert," Dumbledore said. He was still in his daytime robes.

"I'm being chased by an invisible Wizard," I gasped.

Not doing more endurance running was proving to be a problem. I doubted that I'd have been able to run much further, and that was terrible considering that this was only a fraction of the distance I;d been able to run in my own body.

He frowned and stood up, leaving the office.

I stared at his flaming bird, who stared back at me, then snapped at one of my bugs. I felt the invisible wizard moving rapidly away, and moments later he was outside of my range.

It was five minutes later when Dumbledore returned. The time seemed to stretch out, and I simply stood and stared at a painting as I kept track of what he was doing with my bugs. The genial, grandfatherly demeanor he affected for the students was gone when he thought that people weren't watching.

Instead he was coldly efficient in his investigations, and I saw glimpses of why he was considered the most dangerous Wizard in all of Britain. Whatever his motives, from his expression I gathered that he took the safety of his students quite seriously, despite the contradiction involved in all the usual dangers in things like flying class and Quidditch.

Finally, he returned, grandfatherly mask back in place.

"I found a set of tracks following yours," he said. "Although the portraits didn't see anyone following you. They did see the discharge of a wand aimed at you."

"Did the tracks leave Hogwarts, or did they double back?" I asked.

"I could not ascertain," he said. "There are spells that can obscure tracks, and they used them."

"So it wasn't a student," I said.

If they were able to obscure themselves from Dumbledore, they weren't just a schoolboy. The fact they they'd known he was coming wasn't as indicative. Apparently almost every British Wizard had gone to Hogwarts; which meant that even the adults would know where the Headmaster's office was.

"I've been wanting to speak to you," he said. "Would you like a lemon drop?"

I shook my head. I'd heard of Veritaserum, and there were probably other things that could be put in candies that would make it easier for him to interrogate someone. While he didn't seem like the type to drug a student, I couldn't simply assume he was as good as he pretended to be.

"Perhaps you'd like to take a seat."

I frowned. I'd been wanting to ask him about the pensieve, but I had a feeling that he was intending to ask a lot of questions that I could not answer.

However, if adult Wizards had found me here at Hogwarts, I couldn't simply wait.

I sat down.

"My first question is how you knew there was an invisible person behind you in the first place," he said.1847ShayneTMay 10, 2019View discussionThreadmarks PensieveView contentShayneTMay 12, 2019#10,155"I know things sometimes," I said. "It's part of what kept me alive when I was on my own after my parents were killed."

That was true in multiple ways.

I stared at my hands. Looking him in the eyes would be a mistake; Dumbledore was supposed to be the most powerful Wizard in Britain, possibly the entire world. It was possible that he could do things with mind reading that weren't in any of the three books I'd read.

None of the books had even had that much detail; I suspected that someone had censored the Hogwarts library, although it was possible that the books were in the Restricted Section.

Dumbledore frowned, staring at me as though I was an interesting puzzle. I could see him perfectly well despite looking at my hands through my bugs.

"Sometimes a young witches' accidental magic does what it has to to keep them alive," he said. "It's rare for them to be able to use it consciously under the age of eleven, though."

"I don't think it happened until after the murder," I said. "If it had... I think things might have gone differently."

I likely wouldn't have been here at all, and instead another child would be standing here in my place. That wasn't something that I was willing to share; it was possible that Dumbledore would insist on exorcising me to save Millie Scribner, even if she was really already dead.

"You certainly seem rather... competent in the things you do," he said.

I laughed, and the sound seemed bitter even to my own ears.

"What other choice do I have? Lay down and die? Either I'm better than the people around me, or I'm dead. There's no ground in between."

"Not even unicorns?" he asked.

I froze, then shook my head.

"Unicorns are a happy dream, but I can't enjoy them unless I'm alive. You know what's out there even better than I do. We don't live in a world where a muggleborn can afford to relax."

"So let us get back to what happened. Your special sense alerted you that something was wrong," he said.

"And then I heard a noise," I said. "Maybe a rock, maybe the sound of a robe swishing. It was quiet at the moment that I heard it, and when there's a sound where there should not be a sound, you take action."

"I saw the cloud of darkness outside," he said. "Peruvian Darkness powder?"

I nodded.

"I threw it behind me. If I was wrong I was only out a little powder. I wasn't wrong."

"I followed your trail," he said. "You made for the greenhouses. Were you planning to come and see me?"

I shook my head. "I hoped to put him off, but I didn't know about that tracking spell. Once I saw him use it, I ran."

He was silent for a moment, frowning in thought as though I was an interesting problem to be solved. He obviously wanted to ask me more questions, but he knew that pressing me was likely to make me clam up entirely. What exactly did he want to know from me?

"Most students would not have done nearly so well," he said. "Nor many adults."

"I'm not most students," I said. "Do you have any idea who might have done this?"

"Other than Voldermort's followers, the family of Mr. Avery and the family of three Gryffindor students?" Dumbledore asked. He shook his head, even though I wasn't looking at him. "You've made a lot of enemies, Miss Hebert."

"So what are you going to do about it?" I asked.

"What I should have done from the beginning," he said. "I will place anti-intruder charms on the walls and the gates. It will not protect the grounds but it will keep intruders from coming within the walls."

"You didn't have those already?" I asked in disbelief. "I thought Hogwarts was supposed to be one of the safest places in Wizarding Britain?"

"Part of the reason for that is that most British Wizards consider it sacred ground, Miss Hebert," he said. "Even during the first war, Voldemort did not attack Hogwarts, and so far it has not been a target... now that it has, steps must be taken."

"I suppose that means my Hogsmeade weekend is off the table," I joked, smiling a little.

"It is perhaps fortunate that First years are not allowed to go. There would be a problem in any case as parents are required to sign a permission slip."

Right. My parents were supposed to be dead.

"Has there been any progress in finding a family to keep me for the summer?" I asked. "I'm planning to stay over the winter for obvious reasons, and I'd be perfectly happy staying here over the summer too."

"Unsupervised?" he asked. "No, that would not do. Most of the staff have lives outside of the school, and much of those lives are explored when school is not in session."

I scowled and looked over his shoulder. There were so many books and small objects to look at that it was easy to excuse not looking at him in the eye. I wasn't sure which one was the pensieve. Did he even keep one in his office.

"There are still several candidates to take you," Dumbledore said. "But I would prefer to keep the decision as to who until we are closer to the summer break. There have been unfortunate incidents involving information at this school."

"You don't think I'd tell anyone?" I asked. "I understand how important secrecy is."

"I'm sure you do," he said. "But you can understand the need for secrets."

"If I find that they are unsuitable, I'll likely end up in a culvert somewhere," I warned him. "Although with what I know about the Wizarding world now, I'd probably do a lot better than I did the first time."

"Magic performed around young wizards tend to be detected," Dumbledore said.

"So remove the Trace from me," I said, looking up at him. I stared at his beard. "It's the only way to be sure that I'm safe."

"The Trace is inviolable," Dumbledore said. "And not easily broken, even by me. Only time itself can break it."

I grimaced, not sure that I believed him.

"There are places that are protected by magic," Dumbledore said. "That can't be found. Perhaps you will be placed there."

"And then my guardian is confounded, or mind controlled, and suddenly we're having Death Eaters over for dinner," I said.

"Secrecy is the best guard against something like that," he said.

"There doesn't seem to be many other options," I admitted. "Maybe leaving the country for the summer might help... assuming I haven't angered anyone enough to have them send someone after me."

He thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Perhaps a grand tour," he said. "Europe is nice in the summer, and I know some people who are planning just such a trip."

"Are they people I'd get along with?" I asked suspiciously.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "I think you see yourself as a pragmatist, Miss Hebert, and for the sake of your survival you would put up with even very disagreeable people knowing it was only for a few months."

I nodded slowly.

"You don't seem as impulsive as other children your age," he continued. "In many ways, you seem older than you really are."

I frantically shoved my responses into the bugs in the walls. What did he know?

"But that often happens to children who have been through great trauma," he said. "They feel that they must be adults, and in your case, that's not entirely untrue."

I hid my relief just as I had my moment of panic.

"Still," he said. "I would like to do more about finding the people who have killed your parents."

"The pensieve?" I asked.

He stared at me, one eyebrow raised. "You have heard about them?"

"Professor McGonagall mentioned it," I said. "I'd be perfectly happy to show those memories to you, but I have some concerns."

"The pensieve requires the consent of the wizard," Dumbledore said. "Resisting would degrade the images to the point of being incomprehensible. The wizard also chooses the memories that are revealed; should we proceed I will require that you focus on everything you remember from that night."

"I don't remember being tortured," I admitted. "I don't remember anything prior to waking up next to my parents' dead bodies and hearing them talking."

"It's strange that they would have bothered to obliviate you," he said.

"Maybe they didn't," I said, "Maybe it was just the trauma of what happened that made me not want to remember."

For all I knew, I really was Millie Scribner, and my accidental magic had simply summoned the memories of Taylor Hebert to replace my own. That was an explanation just as horrifying as the idea that I had taken over the body of a screaming child.

"Perhaps," he said slowly. "Is this something you are ready to try?"

I nodded.

He pulled out his wand and came to stand next to my chair. "This will not hurt."

"That means it will hurt," I said. "When nurses say it won't hurt, it hurts, and when they say it will be a big stick, it doesn't hurt much at all."

"Then I should tell you it will hurt tremendously," he said. "And allow you to be disappointed. Instead you will feel a coldness at your temple, and the memory itself will fade somewhat, and become less intense."

"So you could use it to help people with trauma then?" I asked.

"What?"

"If you can make memories less intense.... people who have been through horrible things are sometimes tormented by the memories," I said. "If you can make them forget, even a little, wouldn't that help them get better?"

He looked startled, and then a moment later, thoughtful.

"Are you speaking about yourself, Miss Hebert?"

His expression didn't seem to be about me at all. Instead he seemed preoccupied and was making conversation just to make conversation.

I shook my head. "I don't remember any of it at all. That's probably why I'm so well adjusted."

Sometimes a joke could deflect people's attention away from things you didn't want them to talk about. I'd had two years of court mandated therapy, but the Protectorate had continued to place me in stressful situation after stressful situation. Or maybe it had been me who had done that. It had felt like I was damaging myself as fast as the therapists had been healing me.

A small smirk appeared on his lips. "I'm sure that is true. Shall we begin?"

I nodded, and looked down at my hands again.

"I want you to remember the day of your parents' murder.... anything you can remember," he said "Focus on that memory, as hard as you can."

I thought back, and focusing, I felt something cold at my temple. My eyes were closed, but my bugs saw a sine of something silvery being pulled from my temple. Dumbledore frowned, and then he put the stuff into a vial.

A moment later it was done. The memory in my head felt.... faded somehow. It was still there, but it was a shadow of its former self. It was like several years had passed in an instant, and the memory seemed less important.

Someone who knew what they were doing could change someone's personality like this; remove traumas, make other things seem more important. There were people back on Earth bet who would have killed to be able to do this, and it was in the hands of an old man who used it to what, remember where he'd put his bathrobe?

I opened my eyes, and Dumbledore held the vial up to the light.

He did something, and a moment later a hidden cabinet in the wall sprang open. A podium slid out; it's top was a metal bowl filled with water.

Stepping toward it, Dumbledore added the silvery strand to the bowl. I found myself steeping toward it without consciously meaning to.

An image of my own face was swimming around inside the bowl; fortunately it was my new face, and not my old one.

"What do we do now?" I asked. My voice was hushed. This felt strangely momentous.

"We put our faces in the bowl," Dumbledore said.

I stared at him, for a moment forgetting to avoid his eyes. Was he really expecting me to put my face in the same bowl that he had? Was the water cleaned, ever, or had it been used by the Headmaster and all of the Headmasters before him? Surely it would have evaporated at some point.

"It's the only way," he said gently.

I sighed, and I waited a moment, and then I lowered my face into the bowl. I kept an eye on him with my bugs, and I had one hand on my wand. I saw that he was lowering his face into the bowl as well, and after a moment I relaxed, as the magic overtook me.

There was blackness surrounding me, but somehow I was able to see Dumbledore surrounding me.

"I think you enjoyed that a little too much," I heard a voice say.

"A man who doesn't enjoy what he does isn't a man at all," the second voice said. This voice was much deeper, and it was raspy. There was a deep rumble to his voice.

I frowned. I didn't remember them saying that, not at all. I listened intensely. The first man had a tenor voice, with a slightly different accent than what I was used to.

Dumbledore held up his hand, and everything stopped. He frowned.

"The first voice had a West Midlands accent," he said. "The second has a Yorkshire accent."

I looked at him in confusion.

"I suppose as an American you cannot tell the difference, but imagine that you heard two men talking, and one was from your South, and the other from New York. You'd be able to tell the difference."

"Do you recognize either voice?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"I fear that I have seen hundreds of students in my time as headmaster, and even if I remembered all of their voices, adult voices change over time."

He lifted his hand, and everything started up again.

"It's almost too easy," I heard the first voice say again. "Killing muggleborns before they get their letters. Why didn't anybody else ever think of this?"

"Because Hogwarts keeps the Book locked up tighter than a Gringott's vault. Even our man inside only got a look at a few names, or we'd be making a clean sweep this year."

The second man sounded regretful. Now that I knew what the terms meant, I could understand what they were saying better.

I listened as they made their way through the rest of the conversation. The sound at the end I now recognized as the sound of apparation. I hadn't heard it very often, but it was distinctive.

Suddenly the world around us exploded into full color, and we were back in the alley.

The alley was dingy, and Millie's parents were lying on the ground five feet away from me. I looked small from this angle, smaller than I thought of myself as really. It looked like we'd been dressed out for a night on the town.

They hadn't taken anything from her purse. That would have been a clear sign to police that this wasn't a robbery gone wrong.

I rose slowly to my feet and I looked down at them dispassionately. I was staring down at my own arms, and muttering "What the hell?"

I looked down at the people who were supposed to be my parents, and there was no emotion at all on my face. Instead, I walked over to the woman and rummaged around in her purse. I found a pocket mirror, and I opened it, staring at myself.

Running my hands up and down my body, I watched myself do a quick check of my own body, obviously looking for injuries. When I didn't find any, I dug through the woman's bag, and rolled the man over and took his wallet.

It was chilling how blank and lacking emotion my face was.

"Not the reaction of most girls your age to the deaths of their parents," Dumbledore murmured from beside me.

"I was in shock," I said.

We watched as I rifled through their wallets, looking at the money and pulling the rings off the womans fingers and the earrings out of her ears.

"I know this looks bad," I said. "But I did what I had to in order to survive."

Taking the man's keys, I headed for the street. I tried several cars before I found the right one, and I slipped into the seat, which was on the wrong side.

I pulled the seat up as far as it would go, and my feet barely reaching the pedals, I started the car and I drove off, somewhat unsteadily.

The vision ended, and suddenly I was pulling my face from the pool. My face was wet, and Dumbledore dried it with a wave of his hand.

I hadn't meant to show as much of that memory as I had. Was this going to cause him to look at me differently?1739ShayneTMay 12, 2019View discussionThreadmarks AscendantView contentShayneTMay 14, 2019#10,390"I loved my parents," I said. It even had the benefit of being true. The fact that the people on the ground hadn't actually been my parents wasn't something that he needed to know. "I know what it looks like, but I was in shock."

Dumbledore was watching me with a look I couldn't interpret.

How much had he already guessed, and how much had he gotten wrong? He didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle, but people had made intuitive leaps before, and he'd had a long time to learn how to judge people, especially if he was basically able to read minds.

"You seemed rather...focused," Dumbledore said mildly.

"It's how I deal with problems," I said. "Focus on solutions, and worry about crying later. What should I have done? Sit there and cried?"

"It's what many would have done," he said.

"They said they had people in the police department," I said. "That meant that the moment the police reached me, they'd realize I wasn't dead. I'd be dead shortly afterwards. I knew I had to get away."

"I don't have a lot of experience with driving," he said. "But I have not seen many children your age behind the wheels of cars."

"It's more common in rural areas of America," I said. "Where a child might have to drive a parent to the Hospital if he was bitten by a rattlesnake or suffering from a meth overdose."

I didn't say that I'd been raised in such an area. If he chose to infer that, who was I to complain?

"And the fact that you didn't recognize the car?"

"It was a rental," I said. "And my memory was still a little scrambled. Whatever happened to me had left me a little confused, and it wasn't until later that my mind cleared up."

The best lies were those that had some truth to them. I was still confused about what had happened. Had some higher power placed me in a new body, or had it been Millie's accidental magic looking for someone to avenge her? The worst possibility was that I was in a coma somewhere, either during Golden Morning, or possibly just after the locker.

Maybe my whole career as a villain and hero had been a lie created by a mind that was desperate to have some kind of power, any kind of power over what happened to her.

Dumbledore was silent for a moment. He watched me intently, but I didn't raise my eyes. I watched him carefully through my bugs, though, looking for any sign in his body language about what he was thinking. I didn't get anything, which wasn't surprising. Not only was I not the best at reading body language, he'd had more than a century of learning to hide his.

"You haven't spoken much about your background, Miss Hebert," he said finally. "You've said that there is no close family in the United States. Not even a grandmother, or a second uncle?"

"I'm the only member of my family that's left in this world," I said. "There's no one else. You think I'd fight this hard if there was someone who would take care of me?"

I probably would, but he didn't need to know that.

"You have chosen not to share your family situation with your classmates," Dumbledore said. "And I and the staff have chosen to respect your wishes. Yet is it perhaps unhealthy to bottle up feelings that to all reports you have not yet expressed?"

"I'll cry when I'm dead," I said. I realized that this sounded a little harsh from the expression on his face, and so I rushed to explain."I learned a long time ago that crying doesn't do anything but make you look weak, and in this world, looking weak is a good way to get dead. It doesn't mean I don't care

He was silent, so I continued.

"I'd have been perfectly happy as a Hufflepuff, but the Hat wouldn't let me," I said. "Isn't it supposed to take student's wishes into account?"

I gave an irritated glare at the Hat, which was sitting on a shelf. It sat there like an inanimate piece of felt. I hadn't forgotten my anger at it; a lot of my problems were a direct result of the Hat's decision. Was it listening to us right now, or was it sleeping?

How much had it already told the Headmaster, and was he playing some kind of game with me? It might serve his interests to pursue the fiction that he didn't know what I was.

"I've never seen anyone who belonged in Slytherin more than you do," Dumbledore said after a long moment. "Which, contrary to what my opponents may think is not a slur to your character. Slytherins are shrewd and cunning. They are ambitious, and they have highly developed senses of self preservation. What they do not have to be is evil."

"I'm not evil," I said. "I care about other people. I'm just not as emotional about it as some."

"You've chosen to protect the innocent," Dumbledore said. "Despite the risk to yourself and to your standing. That's a rare quality these days."

"All that's needed for evil to win is for good men to stand by and do nothing."

He smiled at me sadly. "If only more people felt that way, I doubt we'd be in the situation we're in at the moment. I would like to show this memory to some colleagues of mine... perhaps they might recognize the voices where I do not."

"Don't show it to aurors," I said. "I've heard they have people in the Ministry, and if aurors find out that I'm not dead, they'll redouble the attempts on my life."

"Your existence is public record," Dumbledore said. "And you have already made enough of a splash that every parents of a Hogwarts student undoubtedly knows about you, as well as the friends and family of those parents. I'd say that you are probably the most famous child of your age who is not involved in Quidditch, or of course Harry Potter."

"I haven't put it out that my parents were murdered," I said. "Which means that if the Death Eaters find out, then the person who is revealing the name must be one of the people here who told them."

Dumbledore looked dubious. It seemed obvious to me.

"One would presume that they would know whom they had murdered," he said. "Else they would not be murdering."

"Would they really remember the names of those who they killed? Muggleborns aren't actually people to them." I said. "What's another mudblood to them?"

He winced at the epithet, but nodded his head.

"My face might be a different matter," I said. "Which is why I plan to stay out of the papers, or at least not to have my picture posted."

"Perhaps that would be wise," he murmured.

I was silent for a moment. "If they really have infiltrated the aurors, it would be easy for them to call me in for questioning, and then have an unfortunate "attack" on the way to the Ministry. I get killed, along with whatever Ministry stooge that is guarding me but not working for them, and they kill two birds with one stone."

"You have a rather pessimistic view of the world," Dumbledore said.

"I'd say I'm never disappointed," I said. "Although I am occasionally pleasantly surprised."

Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "I had hoped to be able to provide you with seven years of education that are to be some of the best years of your life. Hogwarts is meant to be a haven from the outside world."

"That's not realistic," I said. "The world outside moves on, and the things that affect students' families affect them as well. From what I understand the country is close to war again.... possibly an attempted coup, or possibly a civil war. Hogwarts isn't going to be able to stay neutral from that."

He stared at me for a moment. "You seem well educated in politics."

"My mother was a professor," I said. "It certainly wasn't because of my school."

She was an English professor, but she'd taught me how to read and think for myself. Also, the Wards had been forced to take classes in political science, because understanding the dynamics of how people worked together was helpful when dealing with the interplay between multiple gangs.

"And because you grew up in a place where the rule of law was weak, where children had to protect themselves and where authorities at school failed you, you believe that it is your responsibility to care for yourself."

Apparently he'd been paying more attention to the tidbits I'd let slip to my classmates than I'd expected, or maybe he was extrapolating. Hopefully he wasn't as good at it as Lisa.

"Isn't it?" I asked. "Old people look back at childhood as being this wonderful time, but that's because all they remember is the high points. It's just as terrible as the rest of people's lives, just in different ways."

"I'd say there was wonder in each stage of life," Dumbledore said. "And I've experienced almost all of them."

"I'd like to live to be as old as you," I said. "Maybe even as old as the Flamels, assuming I could keep my health and my vitality. But the only way for that to happen is for the people who are trying to kill me to stop doing that, and that's not going to happen unless they are dead or in Azkaban."

He looked as though he wanted to argue, but he didn't say anything.

"So if you would find out who is doing the murders, and who here is informing them, then maybe I could enjoy my childhood."

Dumbledore sighed, and then said, "I will escort you back to your rooms, and then I will begin the additional security preparations to protect the school. I expect that I will have a long night tonight."

"I stink," I said. "So I'll probably need a bath first, but I'll be going to bed as soon as I can afterwards. I actually like thestrals. They're a little strange looking, but they seem gentle."

Our trip through the hallways was quiet and he escorted me down to the dungeons.

"Back from detention, Miss Hebert?" Snape asked, stepping out of his office as we approached.

"Miss Hebert's detention was rather more exciting than any of us expected, through no fault of her own," Dumbledore said. "Perhaps once Miss Hebert is safe in her rooms, we can discuss some things."

"I got to see horses eat a dead cow," I said brightly, smiling widely.

"Enjoying life's little pleasures, Miss Hebert?" Snape drawled. He waited until I turned around to Dumbledore to shudder.

They escorted me to my rooms, and I waited for them to leave and then I gathered my toiletries and prepared for my bath. The Headmaster's office was within my range from the bathroom, if only barely, and I wanted to hear what the both of them had to say.

As I ran my bath, I listened in to Snape and Dumbledore as they walked through the hallways heading for the office.

"Miss Hebert was attacked on her way back from her detention, by a disillusioned attacker on the grounds."

"I presume the attacker is not dead?" Snape asked. "Given her usual methods I would have expected to see more blood."

"For once, Miss Hebert decided to do the prudent thing, and she used Peruvian Darkness powder to escape."

"Being ambushed by someone who is disillusioned isn't something most Witches would survive."

Dumbledore said, "She says she sometimes just knows things, and that this sense gave her enough warning to act."

"She does seem to have a preternatural ability to know things she shouldn't know," Snape said. "Although it does not fit with the usual pattern of Seer's ability."

"Perhaps given her unusual drive to survive, it is a form of accidental magic that she has chosen to develop into an unusual kind of skill."

Snape just looked thoughtful.

"The intruder's tracks headed off the grounds, but its possible that they circled back. I've taken the liberty of wakening all the portraits, and I've got them watching for any disturbances that might indicate a disillusioned intruder, especially at the entrances to the House Dormitories. I've got the House Elves doing a head count now."

When had he had a chance to do all that? He hadn't been outside of my range for very long. Maybe he'd done it while I was watching him.

I'd heard it was possible to do silent, wandless magic, but if it was true, then this was actually impressive. He'd sent messages without my being aware of it, which was concerning on a lot of levels.

"Miss Hebert also consented to give me pensieve memories of the night she woke after the attack on her and her parents. I have viewed that memory, and I'm inclined to think that I may have misjudged your opinion of her."

"Oh?" Snape asked neutrally.

"Take a look at it, and tell me if you recognize the voices of the perpetrators," Dumbledore said.

I luxuriated in my bath as I listened to them going through the motions of their investigations. Apparently all of the students were where they were supposed to be, except me. That was a relief; if meant that the perpetrator was someone outside the castle.

Snape and Dumbledore spent the better part of an hour casting spells on the walls and gates, and by that time I was in my bed and struggling not to fall asleep. I still struggled sometimes with my body's needs.

Figuring out a way to do endurance running was going to be a challenge. It would be years before I was able to transfigure a treadmill, and I doubted that the castle staff would let me put one in my room.

I needed a solution.

The stairs in Hogwarts might have kept my waistline relatively thin, but it hadn't done anything for my long distance running ability. Yet it sounded like the spells they were casting weren't able to cover the grounds, only the walls and the gates of the castle.

My other option would be to run up and down the stairs in the girl's quarters. It would be monotonous, but it might do the trick, at least until the girl's started complaining.

Finally I heard Snape and Dumbledore returning to the Headmaster's office.

I watched as they both placed their faces in the bowl, and I wondered what kind of defenses they had to protect themselves. If I'd wanted to assassinate them both, I could have done it easily, assuming I'd been a little closer. I actually wasn't sure how long it took to view a pensieve memory. Was it in real time. Or was it at the speed of thought?

It seemed to be in real time, which was dangerous as far as I was concerned. Maybe Dumbledore had some kind of protections set about for when he was vulnerable like this; I certainly would have, even in the sanctum of my own office.

After what seemed like a long time, but could have only been a couple of minutes, they both stood up, gasping.

"Avery and Selwyn," Snape said grimly. "They wouldn't have done this on their own, but as far as I know, the Dark Lord hasn't put out a general call to arms."

"Perhaps they have decided to show some initiative to win his favor," Dumbledore said. "And climb in the ranks."

"Maybe," Snape said. "Or perhaps the Dark Lord is being careful in how he is issuing orders. If he keeps most of the organization from knowing what the rest is doing, then he can more easily ascertain who any moles are."

"A troubling thought," Dumbledore said. "One that we must consider at length. On the other hand, what do you think of Miss Hebert's behavior."

"My opinion of her hasn't changed," Snape said. "Despite the appearance of being an innocent eleven year old child, she is a dangerous person. Given sufficient time and training in magic, I suspect that she could rival Bellatrix, or perhaps even the Dark Lord in how dangerous she is."

"Do you think she is lost?" Dumbledore asked, and for once there was no trace of grandfatherly kindness or anything in his voice. There was just cold calculation.

I had an uneasy feeling that Snape's response was very important. If the most powerful Wizard in Britain thought that I was going to be the next Voldemort, what would he do? It was like encountering Hitler as a toddler.

I'd read a story once about a man who'd let a German soldier go during World War One, a soldier who had been a young Hitler. The man had regretted it for his entire life.

Was that what Dumbledore was thinking about?

Snape was silent for a moment.

"I think her fears would not be what they are if she were," he said. "I suspect that she wishes to be a good and kind child, but it is not in her nature. That doesn't mean that she plans to become a Dark Lord... I rather suspect that she'd rather not bother, and that she'd only attempt it if she felt she had no other choice."

"And what would make her feel that way?"

"If she felt that the Dark Lord was becoming ascendant, or if she felt threatened. Otherwise, she would be content to remain where she is and bother no one as long as she is not attacked."

"Very much your House's namesake, Severus?"

"Ironic, isn't it,' Snape said dryly. "The muggleborn snake ascendant. That would make the old guard have an apoplectic fit."Last edited: May 14, 20191865ShayneTMay 14, 2019View discussionThreadmarks HalloweenView contentShayneTMay 16, 2019#10,557"For reasons that I am sure many of you understand, it has beome necessary to make some changes that are effective immediately," Dumbledore said at breakfast the next day.

"The outside doors and walls have been warded against intruders. Those who are Hogwarts students will still be able to get inside, but those who are not will require permission to enter. This includes parents, Ministry officials and aurors."

The crowd around me burst into low murmurs at that. Dumbledore waited a moment until the murmurs died down.

"Students are not to be on the grounds after dark," he called out. "First and second years are not to be out on the grounds at all without being accompanied by at least one older student."

I understood the reasoning behind what he was saying, although I heard an angry murmur from the younger students. It didn't seem to bother the older students as much, although many of them seemed confused.

"An intruder attempted to attack a Hogwarts student last night on the grounds," Dumbledore said. "He remains at large."

I saw several of the Slytherins looking at me. I carefully kept my face neutral. It was well known that I had detention last night, and I was sure that several of them were going to ask questions of me the moment the meal was over, if not before.

"The news is not all bad, however," Dumbledore continued. "Tonight is the night of the Halloween Feast, and I can confirm that the Dancing Skeletons will be in attendance."

An excited murmur sprang up from all around me. Considering that ghosts were an everyday occurrence here, I couldn't understand why dancing skeletons would be considered such a big deal. I still suspected that Dumbledore had hired them in an effort to defuse tensions around the school. From what I was hearing around me, it might not have been the worst idea he ever had.

"Secondly, the ghosts are having an after party. Those students who wish to attend must receive the permission from their head of house, although I think that in this case they may be lenient."

Dumbledore smiled genially at the crowd. "With any luck, this will be the best Halloween celebration since last year!"

He waved and sat down.

"Hebert," Draco demanded. "What happened last night?"

He was on the other side of Pansy. He'd made sure to always keep at least one student between me and him at all times for the past few weeks. Whether this was because he thought it would give him more time to go for his wand, or to preserve the illusion that we didn't have anything to do with each other, I didn't know.

I shrugged.

"I haven't heard about anybody dead," he said. "It was you that got attacked, right?"

"I didn't see anybody coming back from Detention last night," I said, which was technically true, even if not true in principal.

He deflated.

"It's not like it'll make much of a difference," I said. "It wasn't like you spent a lot of time by the lake anyway."

"I see enough of it from the bottom," he said dismissively. "Why would I want to sit outside?"

"So does anybody know what they are serving tonight?" I asked. "I've been smelling pumpkin all morning."

"You wouldn't believe how many things they can make with pumpkins," Millie said enthusiastically from her seat on the other side of me.

Draco made a face. Apparently he didn't like some of the offerings.

Pansy made an oinking sound, and I cast a stinging jinx at her. I had my wand in my lap.

She jerked upward, and turned to glare at me. "You shouldn't encourage her. She'll never find a husband if she keeps eating like that!"

"I'd ask what business it is of yours," I said cool, "But what if she wants something more than being the wife of some pureblood?"

"Well, it's not like it's an option for you," Pansy said. "Somebody would have to be crazy to get married to you. You'd end up with more husbands than Blaise's mom, dead because they forgot to pick up their socks."

I noticed that she didn't say I was unmarriagable due to being a mudblood. From Pansy that was actually a sign of progress. Or maybe it had finally sunk in that I didn't punish when criticisms had truth to them.

Not that I expected to have a lot of husbands. The thought of dating right now was... unappealing for a lot of reasons. I couldn't date any of these children, even if I'd had my original body because even those who were almost the age that I had been once were still children in terms of life experience.

Anyone adult who would date me underage wasn't someone I would contemplate either.

Even when I got older, there were things about the Wizarding mindset that didn't seem like they would make for a good partner. I'd need an equal before I became interested, and there weren't many people in this world I felt like that about.

Any, really.

"I might go into government," I said. "And take Millie with me."

"Muggleborn never get anywhere," Pansy said, authoritatively. "You've got to know the right people to get anywhere in the Ministry, and they.... don't."

"You think that would stop me?" I asked.

"You'd have to murder half the Ministry, and then they'd put you in Azkaban," she said. "The Headmaster wouldn't be able to protect you from that."

"We'll see," I said, more to get a rise out of Pansy than for any other reason.

I caught Draco giving concerned looks at me.

Ignoring him, I waited until the meal was over before rising and following Hermione, who was rushing out of the hall. She'd been doing that ever since the unveiling of my boggart, and she'd been making all kinds of excuses to keep from talking to me. She'd even started missing training sessions.

However, I knew exactly where she was going through my bugs, and I slipped after her in the crowd.

She was slipping out to the courtyard. I followed her, and managed to get ahead of her. I stepped out in front of her, and before she could say anything, I pulled her behind one of the pillars.

"You've been avoiding me," I said.

"I haven't," she said, but she was avoiding my eyes, as though she thought I was capable of legillimancy. Maybe she thought I could. She also looked as though she was ready to bolt any minute.

"You have," I said. "Neville and Mildred are still showing up for training, but we haven't seen you for a while."

"I've been busy with my studies," she said.

It was an obvious excuse, and I could see color rising to her cheeks. She knew that I knew she was lying, and she couldn't come up with any better excuses?

"I wouldn't hurt you," I said. "I know that seeing my Boggart was traumatic, but..."

It was what I'd been worried about. Seeing what I really was, had it frightened her to the point that she didn't want to be my friend any more?

She looked up hurriedly. "It's not that!"

Other than my Boggart, I couldn't see anything that I had done that would have driven her away. I hadn't heard of any hint of her being overtly bullied, even if she did tend to be ignored by her classmates. Would she have been bullied without her association with me? There was no way for me to know.

"Then why not come back?" I asked.

"Why would you want me to?" Hermione asked. She looked up. "After I was so disloyal?"

"You mean your Boggart?" I shook my head. "That didn't mean anything. We've all got weird little fears that we can't control."

"It was a stupid thing for me to worry about," she said. "And unexpected. I was expecting McGonagall telling me that I'd failed out of school or something, not that."

"Travers was a jerk to make us show out boggarts in public." I scowled. "What if someone had something really embarassing, or even damaging, like it turned out their father was a Death Eater or something?"

"I heard that all the other classes got to do their Boggarts behind a screen, with only him to see," Hermione said. She sniffed. "I was afraid that you were disappointed in me, and I didn't want to face that."

"If I didn't want you back, I wouldn't ask you," I said. "You know me well enough for that."

She nodded.

"So I'll see you at the ghost's party tonight?" I asked.

She hesitated, then nodded. "I find them really fascinating. Do you think that they are really just copies of the person they once were, or do you think there's something left of the original?"

"That's a question I ask myself every day," I said. I smiled wryly even though I wasn't actually joking.

After all, what was I other than the ghost of a once living person. I'd heard a discussion about continuity of consciousness once, and since I'd woken in my new body, it was one that had haunted me.

It was the Star Trek Transporter problem; if you were disassembled and then reassembled somewhere else, were you still you?

Or had the original you been killed and a copy been created elsewhere? The copy would think it was you, and to the rest of the world it would be you, but the original would still be just as dead.

Was I just an imprint?

I patted Hermione on the shoulder and said, "And come back to training. How else are we going to keep ahead of all the idiots?"

She nodded, then frowned.

"That thing last night, with the intruder... did that happen to you?"

I shrugged. "I've made some enemies."

"You were attacked by an adult wizard last night?" her voice rose, almost to a shriek, and I winced. Nobody had been listening in on our conversation according to the bugs, but I could see several heads snapping around now.

"They didn't manage to land a hand or a spell on me."

"You were serious about the Death Eaters trying to kill muggleborns," she said, looking at me with horrified eyes.

"Me more than most, but yeah," I said. "You're probably OK here, but summertime might be a good time for your family to take a trip abroad. Things are likely to get nasty. That's why I want you to keep up with the lessons."

"We can't use spells outside of school," she said.

"In self defense it's OK...and even if it's not, the possibility of Azkaban is better than the surety of being dead."

Staring at me for a moment, her lips tightened and she nodded.

"If someone comes for you, they're going to expect a first year... helpless and defenseless. You won't be able to beat an adult Wizard yet, but if you can get away, that will be good enough."

I was going to have to work with her and Neville and Mildred on tactics, on using improvised weapons, on being me, essentially. Because eventually the people around me were going to learn their lesson. They'd learn that I wasn't easy meat, and they'd save their attack for whenever they thought they had overwhelming firepower.

"Classes are starting soon," Hermione said.

I nodded.

We separated on better terms than we'd started, although I suspected that Hermione was still a little guarded around me.

The rest of the day was a normal school day, although I did hear that Ron Weasley had managed to make a girl in Hufflepuff cry. His brothers had vowed to make him regret it when I'd seen them at lunch.

The scent of pumpkin grew stronger throughout the day, and the sense of excitement grew as the end of the day got closer and closer.

Finally, it was time for the feast.

Jack-o-lanterns were everywhere, their surfaces carved into a variety of faces. I noticed that the faces at the Slytherin and Gryffindor tables tended to be a little more demonic, and the ones at the other two tables tended to be much friendlier.

These people made all kinds of assumptions based on house preference.

Clouds of bats flew overhead, swarming and making the lights glitter and sputter as they flew near to the pumpkins.

The bats were real; I could tell because they were eating my bugs, which made me a little uneasy. It limited my vision and was bringing me back to normal, at least within the hall. I'd have to be more on my guard that usual here.

I kept my face blank and showed no signs that I was on edge.

It really did look beautiful though. Everything was dark and made up in orange and black.

The food was as good as it always was, with an obvious pumpkin theme. There were pumpkin juice, pumpkin pasties, pumpkin pie and pumpkin scalloped potatoes. I hadn't tasted the last before, but I decided I liked them.

Millie seemed to love it, but Draco was making faces at everything. I suppose he wasn't a fan.

The good thing was that no one asked me about the intruder. They knew me well enough to know that I wasn't likely to say anything more about it.

Finally the plates were cleared away, and the Headmaster had us stand. He made the huge, heavy tables vanish with a flick of his wand, and he had us back away from the place where the Professors usually sat.

I heard a strange drumming in the distance. It was thunderous, and it seemed to resonate in my bones. It took me a moment to realize that the doors to the outside were opening, and skeletons were dancing their way inside.

Several of them had trumpets, and I had no idea how they were blowing them without lungs. Others were beating on their own rib cages with what looked like their own bones.

There were male and female skeletons; I'd seen enough bodies to know the difference. Some had flutes that were also made of bone and some had panpipes made of the same material. It should have made a godawful noise, but somehow they made it work in a harmonious whole.

The people around me were cheering and stomping their feet. I felt a little anxious in the crowd without my bugs to give me warning, so I forced my way to the front. Hermione was standing beside me, and she was grinning widely.

This was exactly the kind of thing she'd expected when she'd decided to come to a school of magic; I could see it on her face.

The skeletons were assembling something now; they were pulling bones from their fellows and making something that reminded me a little of a throne, except that the remaining skeletons began to bang their bones against it with a drumming rhythm, and whenever they hit it in different places it made different noises.

The crowd went wild around me, and I found myself grinning along with everyone else.

I'd never actually been to a concert before. I'd spent most of my waking hours over the past two years before my death training, tracking the Slaughterhouse Nine and preparing for the end of the world.

Excitement was contagious, and I found my foot tapping in spite of myself. The music was good, a strange combination of rock and something else that I hadn't heard before. I hadn't bothered to listen to a lot of music, though, not since Emma had betrayed me, and so this was a strange sensation for me.

I was the only one who wasn't dancing by now. Slytherins and Gryffindors were dancing side by side, and I could see Dumbledore beaming. This had been his plan all along; did these skeletons have some kind of magic that made their music so entrancing, or were they simply that good. Was it mass hysteria, or was everybody just having a good time.

Almost beyond my own volition, I found myself starting to dance along with everybody else. Dancing wasn't something I'd done since Emma either.

It was strange that I'd denied myself music and dance; I could have blamed Emma, but I'd been the one to abandon it.

There was a strange sensation in my chest; it was something that I'd almost forgotten, and it took me a little while to remember what it was.

Was I having fun?

When the universe was at stake fun had been the last thing on my mind. Before that, I'd been obsessed with Emma and Sophia and Madison.

The last time I'd really let loose and had fun was when I was the age my body was now, and I knew I wasn't really that good of a dancer. Hermione was doing better than I was, and she was terrible.

Neville actually wasn't doing too bad, and Draco looked like he'd been born to dance. I made sure to keep a distance from myself and others; without my swarm sense it would be easy to get stabbed in the crowd.

Despite that niggling worry, the rest of my mind was swept away, and for the first time in a long time, I let loose and actually enjoyed myself.

I'd been mourning for a long time without knowing it. I had mourned the loss of my innocence.

Maybe now was the time, even if only for a short while, to get a little of it back.1721ShayneTMay 16, 2019View discussionThreadmarks DeathdayView contentShayneTMay 18, 2019#10,667"I'm not sure about this," Myrtle muttered.

After two hours of the Dancing Skeletons, I was tired and I found myself wanting to head off to my room and rest. But I'd promised Myrtle, which meant that I had to at least make an appearance.

"You were the one who wanted to go," I said. "Do you want to back out?"

Myrtle sniffed. "You just want to go back and spend time with all your living friends."

"That's not true," Hermione said. She'd somehow managed to drag Neville and Mildred along for the ride. "I'm very interested in seeing what ghosts do for a party."

"I've heard," Neville said. "Which is why I brought this."

He held up a can of... something.

"What's that?" Mildred asked.

"Ghosts love to get the smelliest foods they possibly can for their parties... they think if it's strong enough they can almost smell it, and maybe taste it a little," Neville said. "This is Surstromming; it's supposed to be the smelliest food in the world."

"That's.... really thoughtful," I said. I hadn't bothered to bring anything. "Did we bring anything, Mildred?"

"Uh.... it's Millicent," Mildred said. "And no....I didn't think any of the ghosts could carry any presents."

We were heading for one of the roomier dungeons, and through my bugs I could see that they'd gone all out in decorating it. There were black candles everywhere that were giving off a bluish glow, and there was a raised dais on which ghostly musicians were playing ghostly instruments. It was an eerie, yet somehow beautiful music.

The Dancing Skeletons were there, and ghosts swarmed around them, talking excitedly to them in little clumps around each of the Skeletons. There was a table covered in rotting food; ordinarily my insects would have been thrilled by this, but the cold was making them sluggish. Ghosts were passing through the food, as though they'd be able to regain their lost senses of taste, even if just for a moment.

There was a chandelier above that practically glowed with a thousand candles shining blue. There were hundreds of ghosts, most of whom were dancing a waltz.

I pulled out my wand, and immediately Hermione and the others were on guard.

"It's going to be cold," I said. I cast a warming charm on myself and then on the others. Hermione had mastered the charm, but the others still weren't able to do it. It had already been handy on a couple of colder days in the Dungeons, although Snape didn't like it around certain potions; apparently the ambient temperature sometimes had an effect on the ingredients.

I was learning to exclude parts of my body from the warming charm as a result; it wasn't something that I'd figured out any other use for, but Hermione seemed to think that older students might even be willing to pay for the spell, although she recommended waiting until winter, when the price would be higher.

As we stepped into the Dungeon, I saw Nearly Headless Nick floating up to us. He was scowling at Myrtle.

"She's with me," I said. "My plus one."

He looked at me, and for a moment it looked as though he wanted to argue. Finally, he said, "As long as you keep her from causing trouble like she did last year."

Turning to her, he said, "Keep your moaning to yourself. Nobody likes a Deathday downer."

"It's someone's Deathday?" Neville asked. He seemed to know a great deal about the life and times of ghosts.

"Mine!" Nicholas said proudly. "We're just combining it with the Dancing Skeleton after-party. Such an honor."

There were actually a few living students mixed up with the ghosts. Most of them were Ravenclaws, probably lured here for the same reason Hermione had come. They were mostly ignoring the ghosts and focusing on the Skeletons.

"So does anyone know what's up with the Skeletons?" I asked as Nicholas turned to leave. "Are they like ghosts, or are they enchanted artifacts, or what? They're great musicians, and if magic can do that... I'm really impressed."

"I heard that it was due to a magical accident," Hermione said. "Killed an entire dance troupe, but not all the way. They decided to make the best of it, and they've been more successful since they died than they ever were when they were alive."

"Ghosts envy them," Myrtle said, staring at the closest skeleton. "They get to actually touch things, and some people even say they can still smell things, even though they don't have noses."

"That's an unsubstantiated rumor," a nearby ghost said. "And they aren't talking."

The Skeletons could talk, which made sense. If they could blow a trumpet, they could do most of the work involved in talking.

Neville held up his can. "Where do I put this?"

I pointed at the table. He walked over to the table, found an empty plate and he opened the can.

Those students closest to him started to gag and back away, although the ghosts began to gather round. Neville looked a little green at the gills.

My bugs were suddenly all wide awake and excited.

Considering that I could start to smell it from where I was at, I decided to stay on this side of the room for a while. I could hear Hermione gagging along with most of the others, and I purposefully kept my face neutral. Pushing my response into my bugs wasn't that hard.

"You should dance," I said to Myrtle.

"What?" she asked. "Nobody would...."

"There's more male ghosts here than female," I said. "Which means that your chances are pretty good."

Here I was acting like an expert on dances. I'd never actually been to one. Before Emma I'd been too young. After my bullying I'd become a recluse. Once I'd become Skitter...well, there hadn't been time to dance, and that was even more true once I'd become Weaver.

Letting go on the dance floor had been strangely cathartic, and I could understand how people might enjoy it.

Approaching the nearest skeleton that wasn't surrounded by people, I said, "You guys are great!"

His head turned toward me; there was a dim glow deep in the back of his eye sockets, but his body language didn't seem hostile, at least insomuch of a body as he had.

"Thank you," he said. His voice was strangely deep. "I am Billy Bones."

"Bones...isn't that a little on the nose?" I asked.

"It is a stage name," he said. "We have chosen to leave our old identities behind, and to reinvent ourselves. It is something you are familiar with, yes?"

I froze, a chill going down my spine.

"What do you mean?"

"You are the mystery American," he said. "The one no one knows anything about. Troll slayer and the Demon Witch of Hogwarts."

"People are calling me that?"

"Even we've heard of you," he said. "And we're famous."

I scowled.

While it made sense that the parents of the students would have gotten letters about me, it didn't make sense that I was that well known. Of course, Wizarding Britain was the equivalent of a small town, and people in small towns liked to gossip, but it was inconvenient nonetheless.

I already had at least one Death Eater after me. I suspected that it was Avery; the boy I'd dunked in the boil potion had been his nephew and there was likely some resentment there. For all I knew the younger Avery was already a Death Eater.

He leaned forward. "There's something in your eyes, though....I cannot tell what it is."

I'd seen ghosts staring at me often enough that it had made me a little paranoid. I quickly dropped my eyes. I doubted that a skeleton was a legilimens, but it wasn't impossible. After all, he'd once been a Wizard. He didn't seem to be carrying a wand, but wandless magic was possible.

"We are envied and pitied at once, creatures of two worlds," Billie Bones said. "Better than ghosts, but not really quite human. I'm sure you have felt the same, as a muggleborn in the house of the snakes."

"I'm not envied," I said. "Feared sometimes, but envied?"

"People envy power. They may not say that they do, but it is true. The Slytherins respect and envy power even more than the other houses do. I suspect that you have found them easier to deal with of late, yes?"

I nodded slowly.

"You were Slytherin?" I asked.

"Muggleborn, once," he said, but he nodded. "It wasn't always the house it is now. There was a time when a muggleborn could join, and while there was always some stress, you could make your way as long as you proved yourself. That's not how it is now, I hear... except for you."

"I was afraid I was going to have to make some new ghosts before they left me alone," I admitted. "Which would make my next six years at school a trifle awkward."

I didn't have anything in my arsenal to deal with ghosts, and from what I had seen, they tended to carry grudges for a very long time.

Was that a problem Voldemort had? Did the ghosts of his victims haunt him, or did Wizards have something like the ghost traps in Ghostbusters to get rid of annoying spirits from the astral plane?

"You won't have an easy time of it," he said. "Not with what's coming. War is on the horizon and everybody knows it. This is our last gig in Britain; we will be taking an extended world tour until this is all over."

"It's that bad?"

"You-know-who's people have even less liking for nonhumans than they do the muggleborn. They're perfectly willing to use those who seem useful, but the rest? If he wins, things are likely to become uncomfortable."

"Why doesn't anyone do anything then?" I asked. "Voldemort may be the second most powerful Wizard in Britain, but his people aren't."

"Who is better at fighting? A law abiding citizen, or a criminal? I'm sure you've seen that in the muggle world as well."

I nodded.

"The Death Eaters fight often and they fight well, and most Wizards simply wish to be allowed to live their lives in peace. They depend on the aurors to protect than, and there are not enough aurors to do what must be done."

I frowned.

It was the guerrilla warfare problem.

A society tended to be large and to have fixed locations, places where the enemy could attack with every confidence that their target would be there.

Guerrilla soldiers tended to vanish into the mist, to attack and then disappear. It was worse if they received support from the local population, which was almost always the case in muggle conflicts.

Voldemort's people didn't need that kind of support. If they were smart, Wizards could supply almost everything they needed themselves, and what they couldn't supply, such as food, they could get from the muggles.

In a way they were like Cape villains. They did their crimes while disguised and then they melted into the general population.

The best way to address guerrilla warfare was to keep the populace happy so that it never arose in the first place. That ship had already sailed.

The purebloods felt threatened by the muggleborns, in part because they were trying to change things. They threatened the power of the old order, and people always became anxious and tended to lash out when they thought that their position in society had become precarious.

I couldn't see a solution to it, other than to simply burn the whole thing down and start again, and I wasn't exactly in a position to do that.

"It was nice speaking to you," Billy Bones said, "But I have promised a young lady a dance."

An older Ravenclaw approached, looking at me uncertainly before Billy took her hands and they joined the dancers out on the dance floor.

They weren't the only ones; I saw Mildred....er Millicent dancing with one of the skeletons. They made a weird looking pair.

Myrtle was dancing with an older ghost wearing what looked like medieval armor. I hadn't seen an expression of happiness on her face before, and she actually looked almost pretty.

Hermione sidled up to me.

"There are ghosts here that are over a thousand years old!" Hermione said. "I've spoken to some of them! They've got some amazing stories to tell, although none of them want to talk about how they died."

"Would you?" I asked, looking at her. "It's probably best not to ask. It's like asking someone about being bullied, except even worse."

She stared at me for a moment, and then nodded.

"This is what I thought coming to Hogwarts was going to be like," she said, looking around. "Not..."

"Bullying and death threats?" I shook my head. "People are the same all over, whether they are Wizards, Witches or Muggles. They're petty and they fight among themselves. Give them a little power and its even worse."

She glanced at me. "You're really cynical to be eleven."

"Says the twelve year old," I said. "It must be nice to have all that extra, worldly experience."

Scowling, she shoved me a little. "Not everybody had to carry a knife to school."

I shrugged. "Must have been nice to go to a school where there wasn't a constant threat of being stabbed."

We were both quiet after that.

I didn't dance with anyone that evening; the ghosts were a little too spectral for my tastes, and the Skeletons were monopolized by the older students. I'd never really waltzed anyway.

Still, we stayed a couple of hours, and eventually the evening ended to everyone's satisfaction. I was exhausted by that point, a situation that seemed to happen more and more these days. Maybe it was the mental strain I was suffering from always having to be on my guard.

Mildred went straight to bed, but I felt sweaty and so I prepared for my bath. As I slipped into the warm water, I closed my eyes.

The Death Eaters were going to attack me over the summer; at the very least they'd be waiting at the Train Station. I was going to have to come up with a plan to deal with that. Most likely, I'd have to coordinate the plan with whoever Dumbledore chose to be my guardian.

What bothered me was that I could probably slip away before they caught me, but the train station would be the perfect place to stage an attack on the muggleborn. They would never have a better opportunity to get that many muggleborn in that small of a space at once.

The train station had aurors, but if they had people in the Ministry, they could use the Imperius spell on the aurors before they ever left for work.

If I was running Voldemort's organization, and I hated the muggleborn, that's what I would do. It would make the perfect starting place to set off the war, and it would make the Ministry's job of maintaining secrecy incredibly difficult.

The Ministry would probably arrange for it to be seen as a terrorist attack, but that would involve muggle investigators and would be harder to cover up.

Would the Ministry be able to continue maintaining secrecy in the future? Cell phones were already ubiquitous by my time, and they had kept getting better. How long was it before some muggle snapped a picture that the Ministry didn't catch before it hit the Internet.

Would they even be able to manage the Internet? That would require people with tech savvy, which was the opposite of the Wizarding community.

Were it me, I'd have arranged for muggleborn to have a conventional education on top of their magical one. I'd have them go to college, enter the military and tech sectors, and then I'd have people in every aspect of muggle life.

Ex-military muggleborn along with muggleborn in the police forces would be able to teach the aurors to be better at what they did, and that would make the Wizarding world safer, assuming that I was a benevolent Minister for magic.

I frowned.

My bugs weren't seeing anything or hearing anything, but there was a strange smell. They couldn't identify it, though.

I listened with my own ears and I heard nothing.

It didn't smell like poison being pumped through the vents, and none of my bugs were dying or even sedated. It was a chemical smell, though; it smelled almost like alcohol.

The door to the bathroom opened, and there wasn't anyone on the other side.

I lunged for my wand.

My bugs saw ripples in the water on the floor; it looked like footsteps even though I couldn't hear a thing.

Firing off a cutting spell, I saw red suddenly staining the floor. I lashed out again, but I suddenly felt hands around my throat, and I was struggling to breathe.

A massive force shoved me under the water, and the wand dropped out of my hand. I grabbed for the unseen, invisible hands, trying to bend the thumb and fingers back. It was useless; I didn't have the strength in my hands, and whoever it was was very strong.

Almost without my conscious volition, bugs began to swarm from the vents. They were coming from everywhere, and there were bugs that I didn't even realize that I'd had control of.

I kept struggling even as I felt the bugs stinging the person who was strangling me to death. They kept biting and stinging and for a moment I felt a measure of hope.

My lungs burned like hot lava and I clawed and punched. My feet scrabbled for purchase against the bottom of the tub, but they kept slipping.

Everything turned dark.