Chapter 9 - W9

"Miss Skeeter!" Flitwick said. "Miss Hebert has performed a service for the entire Wizarding community! Why would you start making spurious accusations?"

Rita wasn't sure herself.

She'd come expecting to do a puff piece. That was what her editor had expected, and that was what she'd promised Dumbledore. While she did not fear the man, exactly, his political power was enough that he could cause serious problems for her.

In the current environment, it wasn't a good idea to alienate either of the two major groups who were vying for control of Wizarding Britain. Officially, the Prophet was very much on the side of the Ministry, but unofficially her editor was wary of offending the Death Eaters and their followers.

That was a good way to end up disappearing, and her editor had a very strong sense of self-preservation. Rita despised his cowardice sometimes, though. It would be better to let people know what was really happening, instead of just being a Ministry mouthpiece.

Yet her adoring fans expected a certain level of...spice. Playing it safe was a sure route to the unemployment line, and Rita didn't know how to do anything else. Even if she had to make up some of the particulars to make things juicier, the bare bones of the truth would get through, and that was ultimately important. Her editor continued to stymie her at every turn, though.

If they continued the way they were, she was going to work in a shop like a plebian.

The Cruciatus cure was a once in a lifetime event, but it wasn't something that affected all that many people. Certainly, Rita's second cousin had been affected, and there was some evidence that she was getting better, but it wasn't exactly a complete cure, was it?

The people who were waking up were likely always going to be half-people, cripples. It would have been better for everyone had they died long ago, but Wizarding medicine was able to keep people alive long past their allotted time.

It was important, but not that important, and yet still, the plan had been to write a soft piece talking about how this young girl was a shining example of a young witch. It was what her editor and Dumbledore were expecting from her. It would be the easiest thing to write.

If the girl had been ordinary, that was the piece Rita would have written. However, the moment she'd stepped into the room, something about the girl had struck her as wrong. There was a strange sense of horror that had washed over her the moment she'd seen Taylor Hebert, and it wasn't going away.

She'd done her research on the girl, of course. Before printing lies, it was important to know the truth, especially because the truth was sometimes much more juicy than any lies she could possibly come up with.

What she'd found in her research hadn't been pretty. The girl had obviously been tortured with the Cruciatus curse, probably before she'd even realized that magic existed. She claimed to be an orphan, and anyone reading between the lines would realize that she was one of the muggleborn who had families murdered before the school term had even begun.

Yet there was no record of her, and the aurors didn't know anything about the murders.

There were questions, and there was nothing that Rita loved more than answering questions. She had a nose for news, and this was news.

Still, writing a puff piece now, and an expose later wouldn't have gotten her in trouble. Yet from the moment that she had walked into the room, something about the girl had made her profoundly uneasy.

It felt as though the girl's face was tight against a skull that was vaguely wrong. The way she moved was like someone who was wearing someone else's skin, as though there was something just waiting to explode out of her skin to devour her.

It didn't just bother her human self, either. The beetle was always within Rita, and that part of her was screaming predator.

On the surface, the girl looked like any other child her age. She was wearing the same uniform, her hair didn't look that much different. Maybe it was the way that she stared without blinking, her expression unlike that of any other child Rita had ever seen.

Maybe it was the obvious attempts to be dominant, made ridiculous by the fact that the girl was tiny and a first year student.

"People have questions," she said without looking at the diminutive professor. "And they deserve answers."

Hebert took a deep breath. For a moment she looked as though she was going to say something acerbic; the girl had become increasingly aggressive throughout the interview, but suddenly a strange sense of calm came over her face.

"We were vacationing," Hebert said quietly. "The jobs my parents had were no longer an issue, and it was the first time in a long time that we were going to get to be a family again. The attack came out of nowhere. I don't really remember what happened; they say the attack left me with some kinds of brain damage."

Brain damage might explain some of her behavioral issues, and maybe even her strange body language. Still, there was something off about what the girl was saying. Where had this sudden, sad sincerity come from? Was it an act, or was the girl so damaged that it was like multiple people were living in the same body?

"How hard would it be for wizards to make muggle visitors just...disaapear?" Hebert asked. "Making records vanish, officials forget. It's only surprising that they didn't make it happen to everyone."

She was talking about the muggle murders. Rita felt a sudden surge of excitement. She'd tried to report on them, but the Ministry had completely shut her down. Her editor had refused to even look at anything she wrote about it, to the point that she'd been tempted to write an anonymous article in the Quibbler just to get the ball rolling.

She leaned forward.

"And it left you all alone?" she asked.

Hebert nodded.

If Rita squinted really hard, she could almost see a tear in the corner of the girl's eye. She made sure the quill made a note of that. It could have been a trick of the light.

Maybe writing the piece she was expected to write wouldn't be a violation of her journalistic integrity. After all, what was more likely, that an eleven year old muggleborn girl would defeat the Book and the Quill and the Hat and all of the other pretections Hogwarts had, or that she really was thevictim she appeared to be?

Her magic had appeared late, presumably around the time that she was tortured. That accidental magic would explain how she survived when her parents had not.

A story about a plucky girl rising above tragedy to bring an amazing discovery would sell well. She could spin the behavioral problems as temporary side effects of the trauma of what had happened to her. She could probably write enough about what had happened to her that she could get some of the information about the murders out. She'd have to be careful and hint instead of state everything outright, but maybe this girl could be the lever she needed to split the story open outright.

"How does that make you feel?" she asked.

It was a hack question, but children were often rather stupid and weren't particularly good at expressing themselves. Sometimes you had to pull the information out of them, and being blunt was the best way to do that.

If it made them cry, all the better. After all, emotion sold papers more than bland facts. It was Rita's command of the emotion behind the story that made her the number one reporter for the newspaper.

Of course, there were only three reporters for the entire paper, and the other two were off on assignment. Dumbledore had requested either one of the others, which had miffed Rita, but she'd understood. He'd wanted a puff piece, and she wasn't exactly known for those.

He'd stared at her during the interview as though he could read her mind. Given his power, it was possible that he actually was a legilimens.

The girl grimaced at Rita's question.

"Write what you like," she said. "Whatever I say wouldn't be a tiny fraction of what I really feel. Sad? That doesn't even begin to describe what it feels like when you lose your entire world. I had friends that I won't ever see again, family that I've lost forever. Do I feel angry? Rage is more like it; when I'm old enough I plan to find the people who did this to the people I care about, and I'm going to make them pay."

Rita stared at her.

The girl was talking about going after Death Eaters as though it was a certainty. She didn't show any fear at the thought; instead there was a gleam of anticipation in her eyes.

The sense of being in the room with a predator grew even stronger, and to her surprise Rita felt herself starting to sweat.

"There are those who are whispering that you might become the next Dark Lady," Rita said finally.

"Do you think I should?" the girl asked. Her curiously blank eyes turned toward Rita, and she didn't sound as though the answer to the question mattered much to her. The girl forced herself to smile, and it looked ghastly, as though a skeleton had skin draped over it.

"I'm just kidding. I'm a regular student at this school."

That felt like the biggest lie Rita had heard since hearing that Cornelius Fudge was actually in favor of Muggleborns. He'd just used that as a campaign tactic to get in office; he was actually as prejudiced as any other pureblood.

Rita herself was a halfblood, and she hated being dismissed by purebloods because of her blood status. It had always given her a vindictive sense of pleasure to take arrogant purebloods down a peg or two. The question was, this girl was clearly not an ordinary student. At the very least she was traumatized and clearly not in her right mind.

At worst, she was like a muggle cuckoo bird. It would lay its eggs in the nest of another species, and then allow the other birds to raise its chicks. Those chicks would push the children of the other bird out of the nest, killing them.

Was this girl a savior, or a demon?

Usually Rita's gut would give her the answer, but here she couldn't be sure.

"An exceptional one," Flitwick said from behind her. "She's one of my two best students."

He'd said that before; was he saying it again for the girl's benefit? Girls at that age were emotionally vulnerable. Rita had been afraid that she'd have to hold this girl's hand throughout her interview.

How did they not see what a monster she was?

It should have been obvious to every teacher. They saw enough students on a day to day basis to have an unconscious ability to know what was normal, and this girl was not. It should have been obvious from the moment that she'd first come to class.

Still, if she tried to warn the world without some kind of proof, she'd be a laughingstock. The purebloods were convinced that the muggleborn weren't really Wizards. The way they comforted themselves was with the idea that muggleborn were barely better than squibs.

Telling them that a prominent muggleborn was a magical genius would make them question anything else she had to say, and she couldn't afford that at the moment. Sometimes truth had to be doled out in small installments in order for it to be accepted.

Worse, the families of the people the Cruciatus cure had given hope to wouldn't want to hear that the girl was a sociopath. They needed to believe that she was an angel of mercy, someone who was special.

No one would believe that an eleven year old was dangerous anyway. Most Wizards tended to be dismissive of anyone who wasn't able to do magic; first year Hogwarts students barely made the cut. The fact that the girl had killed a troll with a knife wouldn't be seen as realistic, even though Rita had heard it from multiple sources, including Dumbledore himself.

Uncertainty gnawed at her. She had every reason in the world to write a glowing piece about the girl, and writing against her would cause her all kinds of problems. Yet her readers expected more from her than just to rubber stamp what the Ministry wanted.

Her job was to warn the public.

The girl was staring at her, and after a moment, her harsh look softened.

"I'm not dangerous," she said. "Not to anyone who leaves me alone. People just tend to be afraid of anything they don't understand... especially the muggleborn. I'm afraid that a lot of the rumors about me are overblown to say the least."

The implication was that she was dangerous to those who decided to attack her. The girl could have delivered the statement in such a way as to threaten Rita herself; if she had, it would have made Rita's course clear. Nobody threatened the press, and she would have found a way to get the story to print, if she'd had to go to the Lovegoods.

But the statement was bland, and devoid of threat. It was a statement of fact.

"And how do you feel about purebloods?" Rita asked.

"Some of my best friends are purebloods," Hebert said. "I'm not unaware of some of the cultural implications, but I don't think that blood status really means that much. I believe that people should be judged by their character, and possibly by the power of their magic."

"By the power of their magic?" Rita asked. That surprised her.

"Nobody is born with magic that is stronger or weaker than anyone else," she said. "Magical power is achieved in the Wizarding world through hard work, intelligence and practice. Those are all commendable qualities in and of themselves."

"You don't think talent plays a role?" Rita asked.

"Some people have faster reflexes, which might make them better dualists, or think faster, but for day to day magic any wizard can do anything, assuming they are smart enough," Hebert said. "There's always someone who learns faster, but if you work hard you'll get there eventually."

"Would that all Wizards felt that way," Rita murmured.

Most Wizards were lazy.

It amazed Rita that so many wizards could not competently cast a shield spell. She would be dead three times over if she hadn't kept up her skills, and in the world they were living in, there was no reason not to know basic self protection. Yet most wizards and witches would prefer to listen to the Ministry and pretend that everything was fine.

Rita reached her decision.

She'd write both stories; the puff piece Dumbledore had asked for, and the piece about the dangerous muggleborn. She'd hold the damaging piece until the girl proved that she was what Rita's gut told her she was.

In the meantime, she would try to write the piece she was assigned now with references to what was happening to the muggleborn. If she was clever enough about how she wrote it, it might just slip by her editor.

He'd be angry, of course, but once the story was out, it was possible that she'd be able to write more of the stories she really wanted to write. Leaving the Wizarding population helpless wasn't her job.

She'd covered the first war with less censorship, and she sometimes wondered if there were ulterior motives behind the quashing of certain stories. Were there members of the Ministry in league with Voldemort? Did they somehow have some sort of hold over her editor?

Rita forced herself to smile.

"I think we got off on the wrong foot," she said. "Maybe we should start again. Tell me about your plans now that you have inspired a cure that has helped so many people?"

Her Quill was linked to her, so it detected her shift in mood and automatically adjusted the slant it was taking on the conversation.

The girl relaxed even though she wasn't looking at the paper. There had been rumors that the girl was a seert of some sort. It was hard to believe of a muggleborn, but maybe she really was.

Could the girl be a legilmens, or was she just somehow reading Rita's notes?

"I'd like to help everyone," the girl said. "Not just a few unfortunate victims. First, I'd like to enjoy my years at Hogwarts in peace. If that happens, I'll likely end up as a magical researcher."

Rita didn't ask what would happen in the event the girl wasn't left in peace. The part of her that was still screaming that the girl was dangerous didn't want to know.

Still, she'd be keeping her eye on the girl.1795ShayneTJun 7, 2019View discussionThreadmarks WinterView contentShayneTJun 10, 2019#12,358"Page sixteen?" I said. "Dumbledore made me go through all of that just for a little blurb on page sixteen?"

Page sixteen was the health column, but I'd expected...more, from the way he'd built the whole thing up. Was anyone still reading by page sixteen? How much of a difference would a tiny little article actually make?

"It made you look good," Hermione said. "It's not like she did a hatchet piece on you or anything."

She'd hinted that I'd been tortured. It would explain the strange looks I'd been getting from the other students all day, a combination of sympathy and horror.

Hermione had been careful not to ask about it, but I'd seen the question in her eyes too. It irritated me; was the nebulous potential rewards in the future worth the loss of regard I'd suffer in everyone's eyes? I wasn't a victim. I'd given that up on the stay I'd been pulled screaming out of a locker years ago.

I was never going to be a victim again.

That didn't mean that horrible things weren't going to happen to me; my luck had never been particularly good. But even having my arm cut off hadn't made me a victim. Being a victim was a mindset as much as anything. At the worst, I was a survivor, which was an entirely different state of mind.

"How can anybody believe anything they see in the paper?" I asked irritably. "I never had tears in my eyes or talked about how my parents would have been proud of me."

"Ummm....artistic license?" Hermione said. She looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Despite all of my training, she still sometimes tended to take things that she read as the gospel truth. Having the fact that sometimes lies were printed right in front of her had to be disconcerting.

"Don't believe anything the woman says," I said.

I'd be more angry at Dumbledore, but I'd listened in as Flitwick had gone to him to protest. Apparently, upon learning that Skeeter would be conducting the interview, he'd gotten in contact with her editor. He'd gotten him to agree to let Dumbledore look over the article before it was published, and had given him the right to kill the story if he didn't like it.

It was a corrupt system, but Dumbledore knew how to work it. Skeeter hadn't known about this back room deal, and likely would have been furious if she'd known. I'd known journalists before, and even the worst of them tended to believe that the press should be an independent entity.

Hermione nodded soberly. "I hadn't realized that it was this bad. Journalistic standards in the Wizarding world are rather poor, aren't they?"

I glanced at her and wondered whether she really thought muggle newspapers were all that much better. Maybe they were, here. Back at home, the Protectorate had wielded an unusual amount of influence over the news outlets. In an ideal world, that would have been unacceptable, but it had happened nevertheless.

The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, even if it had arguably worked out in my favor. Dumbledore had been pushing his muggleborn agenda, but it could have just as easily been Lucius Malfoy or one of the other Death Eaters pressuring the editor to push their own agenda.

How much of the war involved backroom deals like this?

Politics in general had always disgusted me. Politicians needed to compromise to get deals done, but the problem was that the more you compromised, the easier it became to continue doing so. You lost sight of the fact that there were occasionally points on which you should never compromise, and in the end you became something that you would not have recognized.

Political power was more corrupting than other types of power, because it required selling your soul.

"Well," Hermione said slowly. "It's not like it's going to amount to much. It's just a page sixteen article."

Right.

So why had Dumbledore insisted on it? Was he so desperate to change people's minds, even by a fraction of an inch that he'd take any opportunity? Were things that bad already?

I'd seen a lot of casual racism in the general population. It was there in the way that the students talked, in the implicit assumptions that they made, in the jokes they told when they thought no one was listening. Presumably they'd gotten that from their parents, but their parents were likely worse, because they weren't exposed to the muggleborn on a day to day basis.

Wizards were able to live in little insulated enclaves where they never had to expose themselves to the kinds of people they didn't like. They didn't even have to listen to ideas they didn't like. It was likely part of the reason that the Daily Prophet had so much influence on them; they weren't getting their news from any other source.

The Quibbler, unfortunately didn't count. It seemed to be a strange fringe paper full of conspiracy theories. More people read it to laugh at it than to seriously believe in what it said.

Worse, Wizards tended to live twice as long as muggles, which meant that old, racist ideas that would have simply died out in the muggle world were continued, spread to great grandchildren and propagated.

There were people who were progressive for their day, but by today's standards would be considered horribly racist. In the Wizarding world, a lot of them were still around.

Well, there was nothing I could do about it now. The article was out, and whatever plans Dumbledore had were already in motion. I'd been foolish to agree to it in the first place, but maybe Dumbledore was right. There were people who were going to be helped by the cure, and if that included people in power I might be able to leverage that to my advantage somehow.

It wasn't much consolation when people kept looking at me strangely. I wanted to snap at them, but given the fact that there were still a few boggarts left in the school, that was a good way to get wands pointed at me.

Those same looks lasted for the next several weeks, even as everything else settled back into a routine. There were no more attacks on me, although I did receive letters from several people thanking me for what I had done.

They were examined by Snape before I received them, of course. He'd done it because I refused to open my own mail for obvious reasons, and also because he probably worried that I was doing something nefarious through correspondence.

If I'd really been doing something like that, I'd have gone through the Weasley twins, Hermione, Neville, or Millie. Most likely I'd have gone through the twins since no one knew about our connection.

Neville had managed to drag me to both of the Quidditch matches, and while I'd been horrified about how dangerous the whole thing was to schoolchildren, it had been kind of fun. In retrospect, asking Vista to face Lung had been even less safe, and least this was entertaining.​

I watched and took note as the new caretaker stole several things around the castle. He didn't do it often, but I wrote all of it down. Having blackmail opportunities might come in handy later.

It wasn't something I planned to use casually. Fletcher was Dumbledore's man, and he'd wonder how I knew what I knew. If I wasn't lucky he'd go to Dumbledore, even if it meant revealing the things he'd done. He didn't strike me as the type to put the good of others over himself, but I'd been wrong before.

It was time for Winter Break almost before I knew it. Settling back into school had been easier than I would have thought, even if I was using the human detecting spell on a daily basis. I didn't just use it for fear of intruders; I also suspected that any of the professors could use the disillusionment spells.

On two occasions I'd found Mundungus Fletcher trying to follow me invisibly as I made my way to a practice session with the Weasley twins. I made sure that Hermione, Neville and Millicent knew the spell too, and that they used them religiously.

It was presumably good training for what I'd have to deal with once school was out in the summer.

There was snow piled up outside, and that meant that most of my bugs were dormant or dead. The interior of the castle was warm enough for them to survive, especially the magical ones, but I'd taken to filling my fanny back with as many emergency bugs as I could. It kept them warm and left them ready to attack with, but it reduced my ability to spy on the people around me drastically.

In the future, I planned to see if there was a way to extend warming charms to others. Most likely I wouldn't be able to extend them to every bug in my repertoire individually, but it might be something to look into nevertheless.

I had bugs nesting in inaccessible places around the pipes; the hot water was more than enough to keep them alive throughout the worst of the winter, but they were sluggish and difficult to use when they left to spy for me.

That had been making me a little paranoid.

Still, my reputation was apparently enough to stop further attacks, or maybe it was the idea that the staff and paintings were keeping a close eye on me. Rumors around school were that it was as much to protect them from me as vice versa.

"I would have been happy to have you come home with me for break," Hermione said. There were tears in her yes, which made me feel a little uncomfortable.

"I wouldn't endanger all of you like that," I said. "And I'm glad that you are taking your holiday in Europe this year."

"I talked about it with my parents," she said. "They wanted to withdraw me from school, but I convinced them that I was actually safer here than I would have been out there. They're safer when I'm here too."

I nodded. At least her parents had been willing to listen. I was willing to bet that a lot of muggleborn parents were likely to underestimate the extent of the danger they were in, especially as they didn't get the Wizarding paper.

Not that Skeeter or the others had done any real reporting about what was happening. There were hints of what was going on in the papers that I stole from Neville from time to time, but nothing substantive. They were doing a disservice to the general population as far as I was concerned.

"I'll be looking forward to seeing you when you get back," I said.

She nodded.

Her bags were packed, and she levitated a trunk behind her. It was funny that only a few months before she'd been amazed that I'd levitated an empty trunk, but now she was doing it casually, as though it wasn't anything.

The holiday was only two weeks long, and the vast majority of the students were going home. Within an hour of the castle being emptied, it felt as though the whole place echoed and was much larger than it was when it was full of students.

There was an eerie feeling to it. Normally it was a place that was filled with laughter, with the sounds of running feet. Now it felt abandoned.

In some ways I was safer than I had previously been. There were fewer people who wanted to shove me off the stairs, and watching my back was going to be easier when there was no background sound to mask the sound of approaching footsteps.

At the same time, there was no one around to hear me scream. Even part of the staff was leaving for the holidays, leaving them running on a skeleton staff (not literally, to the chagrin of some of the students.)

There would be no one to give me presents, and no one to give presents to; none of my friends had chosen to stay behind. Neville was spending the holidays with his grandmother, Millie with her family. The Weasleys were off doing whatever Weasleys did.

Even the younger Weasley left.

Still, it was an opportunity to redouble my studies. I found myself in the Dungeons beside the fire in the comfortable chair as often as not, surrounded by books of the darkest magic I could find that wasn't in the restricted section.

It was nice being able to doze by the fire; the heat there was enough that I could hide some of my bugs all around me to keep watch even as I dozed. I'd learned that my power worked even when I slept, and so I was actually able to relax.

The Great Hall was empty at meals, enough so that one day as I sat down for lunch, I felt an unfamiliar presence sitting down beside me.

The dark haired Gryffindor boy was staring at me.

"Potter, right?" I asked.

He nodded.

"You didn't have anybody to go home to?" he asked.

"I'm an orphan," I said. "You?"

"Might as well be," he said.

Ah...bad family. I'd seen a lot of that when I was in the Wards. Para human powers didn't go to well adjusted people who didn't have a lot of trauma. Most parahumans came from broken homes to say the least, unless their trauma was from some other source.

"Why are you sitting at the Slytherin table?" I asked.

"Ron isn't here, and I figure it'll piss Snape off," he said. He grinned. "Malfoy too. School's kind of fantastic, isn't it."

"It'd be better if I wasn't in Slytherin," I said.

He glanced around. "The hat tried to put me in Slytherin, but I begged it not to."

"It wouldn't listen to me," I admitted. "I tried to get it to put me in Hufflepuff."

He snorted.

When he saw that I wasn't joking, he laughed out loud. "You belong in Hufflepuff like you-know-who belongs there."

"You aren't comparing me to the Dark Lord are you?" I asked stiffly.

"Everybody else does," he said. "I don't see it myself...I haven't thought that since I saw you save Neville from falling. He speaks highly of you. Then when you saved his ma..."

"I didn't do anything there," I said. "I just had an idea. Pomfrey and the others did all the work. I'm glad it was able to help him though. She recognizes him now at least."

"They're taking her home," Potter said. "It'll be his first Christmas with his mother, and it's all thanks to you."

I shrugged uncomfortably.

"So did you really stab a troll in the bollocks?" he asked suddenly.

I stared at him for a moment, then sighed. While Potter seemed nice enough, he was still an eleven year old boy.

"Yes," I said. "Several times. It was the best place to kill him since that's where the skin was thinner."

"How did you know?" he asked, leaning forward.

"It was an educated guess," I said. "I could have easily been wrong, in which case I likely would have just run away."

He glanced down. "You weren't scared?"

"Everybody's scared," I said. "Some people more than others, but it happens to everyone at least some of the time. The only thing that matters is what you do when you are scared. Do you run, or do you stand and fight."

"It's easier to run sometimes," he said.

"But you can't run from yourself," I said. "And you'll always know that you were the one to run."

He stared off into the distance. "Sometimes there's things you just can't fight."

I frowned. Was he talking about the Death Eaters, or about his unhappy family life? The Wizarding World didn't have a lot in the way of social services. That was part of the reason that Dumbledore was having such a hard time placing me.

Mostly orphans were taken in by the friends of their parents, or by grandparents of other relatives. People were so interrelated in the Wizarding world that there was almost always someone willing to take them in. Only the muggleborn didn't have that option, and usually Ministry officials tried to place those with other muggleborn families.

In my case, doing that would doubtlessly result in the deaths of my and my foster family. I needed to be placed with a Wizarding family, and one with strong wards, or who had other strong defenses.

"I hear the Christmas Feast is going to be something special," Potter said. "Hagrid is bringing in Christmas trees and everything. It's kind of boring without Ron here."

"Big families tend to expect their family home for Christmas," I said.

"Well, it's kind of your fault too," Potter said with a rueful smile. "There's a Great Aunt that was a Cruciatus victim; she's better now, and Ron's mom insisted that they all come home for Christmas."

Hmmm... the twins hadn't said anything about that.

"You want to play chess sometimes?" he asked. "Ron was teaching me. I'm not very good, but I'm sure I could teach you."

"I can play chess," I said. "My mother taught me."

"So?"

"Maybe," I said reluctantly. It would cut into my studying time, but Potter was possibly the only person the Death Eaters hated more than me. It was possible that he might know something, even though the glimpses I'd seen of him through my bugs were those of a happy, well adjusted kid who was having the kind of first year that I'd only wished I had.

His grades weren't even that bad, other than potions, and that was at least partially because Snape seemed to hate him.

I felt Snape coming long before Potter. Potter seemed startled when the man loomed over both of us.

"I wasn't aware that you had changed houses, Potter," he said.

Potter looked up at him and grinned. "You think I should?"

Before Snape could assign points, Potter was already scrambling to his feet and heading back to his own table.

Snape stared at me for a moment inscrutably before heading back to the head table.Last edited: Jun 10, 20191778ShayneTJun 10, 2019View discussionThreadmarks ReflectionView contentShayneTJun 12, 2019#12,553On Christmas morning, I woke with a profound sense of loss.

The past few months had been fairly decent, despite the attacks and other problems that kept cropping up. After all, I was in a school and I was relatively safe. I was learning magic, and while that didn't give me the same sense of wonder that it gave Hermione, there was still a tiny part of me that was still excited every time I managed to do something new.

Keeping my mind off the things I'd lost had been my way of dealing with things for years. I'd tried not to think about Mom, about the Undersiders, about Dad...even about Emma, who had meant something to me once.

When I'd been trying to save the universe, it hadn't been that hard. I'd told myself that I'd worry about having a life once there was a life to have. Nothing mattered but saving humanity.

But now?

In all important respects I was retired. Nothing I would ever do would be as important as the fight against Scion, and I wouldn't want it to be. This fight against Voldemort was just a regional conflict, and even if he managed to take over the world, it was just one world among an effective infinity of worlds.

On a day like today, I couldn't help but think about my mother. Mom would have loved Hogwarts; she'd been a dreamer; she'd taught English literature in part because she'd loved fantasy.

While I'd been a child, she'd made sure that I'd been raised on fantasy. She'd read to me when I was little; Narnia had been my introduction to fantasy. Later she'd weaned me on Spenser's Fairie Queen, on Tolkien, on Peter Pan, Susan Cooper.

I'd stopped reading fantasy when she died. All of that wonder and magic had just blown away and left nothing but ashes and bitterness when she died.

Hogwarts.... she would have loved the ghosts, the house elves, the magical paintings. Doing real magic would have sent her over the moon. Even if she'd simply sent me here, it would have made her proud of me.

That was a thought that I never let myself entertain. Would she have been proud of me? Of the choices I'd had to make, of the choices I was still making?

I hurt people, and being overly bothered by it stopped being an issue a long time ago. There were reasons for that, of course, ones that I considered good ones, but not everyone would agree.

When I was in the Wards, life had been lonely, but at least I'd seen Dad for the holidays. It had made the pain a little easier to bear, knowing that I had someone.

This Christmas was different.

This was the first time I was completely alone. Before, even if I was on missions, I'd at least been able to call my father. Now I didn't even know if he was dead. I hadn't wanted to know, because this way I could at least assume he was alive out there.

Slowly I opened my eyes.

As I sat up, I felt a sudden chill go down my spine. At the base of my bed were a pile of boxes wrapped up in bright and cheerful paper.

How had someone gotten that close to me while I slept? Even with my bugs as sluggish as they had been lately, I shouldn't have been surprised like that. It could have been the house elves; they were stealthy enough that they were sometimes able to evade me even when I was awake unless I was paying attention.

How stupid did they think I was? This had to be a trap. There could be anything in those boxes; explosives, cursed items, anything at all.

The safest thing would be to burn them, but that wouldn't be smart in the dungeons. There were probably magical means of ventilation, but I couldn't take the risk. The last thing I needed was to get a reputation for having tried to burn down Hogwarts. I'd have to take them and put them in the fire somewhere higher up.

I slipped into my robes, keeping a cautious eye on the packages, and I pulled out my wand.

Levitating the entire mass wasn't a problem, and a moment later I made my way down the stairs, the packages in front of me.

Snape was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.

"I see that you haven't opened your gifts," he said. He didn't look surprised. Despite the early hour he was completely dressed and looked fresh as a daisy. Having an adult's need for sleep must be nice.

Why was he here, of all places on Christmas morning. Didn't he have somewhere else to be?

"Traps, you mean," I muttered. "Maybe you can burn these for me."

I let the gifts drop to the floor in front of him. He looked down at them for a moment, but he did not step back. I certainly would have.

"You aren't even interested in who might have deigned to send you gifts?" he asked.

I snorted. "Nobody would bother sending me anything. Not this year."

"You might be surprised," he said. "I have taken the liberty of checking every one of your gifts a minimum of three times using every spell I could find. Only one turned out to be cursed, and I have taken that to the aurors to be dealt with."

I glanced down at the presents and frowned.

"Who would have?"

I checked the packages with my bugs. Hermione, Millie, Tracey....Neville. Strangely enough, I had a package from a woman named Molly Weasley. Since I knew every Weasley in the castle, I had to assume that she was a relative of some sort. There was even small packages from Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.

There was a package from Alice Longbottom, and at the bottom of the pile was a package from Snape himself.

"This one is from you?" I asked. For some reason I felt like it was hard to swallow.

He nodded.

With a gesture of my wand, I summoned it to me, and I sat down on the armchair closest to the fire. I carefully opened the package.

"A mirror?" I asked. It was a large mirror, the kind meant to be hung on the wall. It was plain and utilitarian.

I frowned as I looked into it and saw only shadowy shapes. There was a brown haired man in his early thirties. He was staring at me as though he wanted to kill me. Behind him stood a man with a face that was the color of bleached bone. He didn't have a nose and his eyes were red.

"It is a magical mirror," he said. "It is called a Foe-Glass. It shows the enemies of the possessor. The closer they are to you, the more clear the image becomes."

I stared at him.

"This is... too much..."

"It was my hope that you would realize that not everyone is your enemy," he said. "Although if they are close enough that you can see the whites of their eyes, it is likely that they are right behind you."

Snape wasn't in the mirror, but there was a large crowd of indistinct shapes that indicated that I had more enemies than I had thought. I'd assumed that most Wizards wouldn't really care that much about me. Maybe I was wrong.

"How does every Wizard in the world not have one of these?" I asked. "Are they expensive?"

"This one cost me nothing," he said. "I managed to capture it in a raid during the last war. It is one of several.

I looked down at the mirror, which I'd leaned against the chair. It obviously hadn't helped its previous owner that much, and I had to wonder what side of the war its owner had been on.

Still, it wasn't the kind of gift I could possibly afford to turn down.

"Thank you," I said, and for once I meant it.

"It is not infallible," he warned. "There are ways to fool it, and even if it tells you who your enemies are, it will not tell you from which direction they are coming."

"I understand," I said. "But.... there isn't anything you could have gotten me that would have been better than this. I.... I didn't get you anything."

He shrugged.

"The best gift you can give me is to avoid creating so much mayhem over the next year. If this helps, then I will consider it money well spent."

But he didn't spend any money....

He turned. "Finish up with your gifts. Breakfast will be an hour late this morning."

It had been a long time since I'd been excited about a gift, but this was something I could actually use.

As soon as Snape left, I tore into my other gifts.

Hermione had gotten me a book, of course. She'd gotten me "Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed." Flipping through the book, I found myself interested in spite of myself. There was a spell for scalping people, for turning their tongues into horns, for giving them fiery hot breath.

There might be things here I could use.

Millie had gotten me socks.

That made me snicker a little. I'd been struggling with a loack of socks all semester; scourgify apparently would get blood out, but tended to wear holes in socks and reparo only went so far.

These were warm socks too, of a nice quality. Maybe she was just tired of seeing my toes peeking out.

Tracey had gotten me underwear. None of them had Armsmaster, or any kind of designs on them, but these too were quality work and there were enough of them to get me through two weeks. They even had my name on them.

Molly Weasley had knitted me a sweater.. It was a beautiful color of emerald green, with the letter T embroidered on the front in silver. Those were Slytherin colors, and after a moment I slipped it on. It was marvelously warm and comfortable.

There was a letter accompanying it.

"Miss Hebert.... you have returned my aunt to me, and my family will always be grateful to you. Consider yourself one of us, and should you ever need anything, ask one of my boys."

That was it.

Harry Potter had sent me some chocolate frogs.

Draco had sent me a wizarding chess set. Was this a gift from him, or actually from his father, and was he trying to tell me something by it?

Checking my Foe-glass I didn't see Malfoy on there, although that might have been because it was a small mirror, and from the look of it I had a lot of foes. It was possible that he was somewhere in the back.

Maybe it was a message if some kind. Was it a warning or an invitation? It was possible that I could go over and over the possibilities and never come up with an answer.

I set it aside for the moment, vowing to reflect on it more in the future.

That left only the packages from the Longbottoms. First was Neville.

Opening his package, I frowned.

"Another mirror?" I asked.

This one was much more ornate than the one that Snape had given me. That one had been a rather no-nonsense kind of mirror, bare bones as was appropriate for someone like Snape. This one was something else. It was gilded and looked like it was worth a fair bit. It was much smaller too; this one was the size of my palm.

I opened the mirror, and I blinked.

Hermione was staring back at me.

"It took you long enough to wake up!" I heard her voice say.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Neville got you a two way mirror!" she said. "He lent me the other one so you could see how it worked!"

A two way mirror... there were possibilities here.

The image on the mirror shifted suddenly. I was suddenly staring at a beautiful room with one wall that was made of glass. Outside there was a beautiful azure sea. It was a beautiful scene.

"We're not having a traditional white Christmas this year," Hermione said. "But we're doing something different."

The scene jostled and moved.

"This is my Mom and Dad," Hermione said.

Her parents didn't look that much like her. Their hair was rather normal, and their teeth looked perfect. Yet there was a sense of intelligence in the way they held themselves, and in the way they looked at me.

"Hello Taylor," the woman said. "We understand that you've been good to our daughter."

"Some of the things we've been hearing..." the man started.

"It's Christmas," the woman interrupted, "And Taylor is all by herself. Hermione was worried about you, you know, She was worried that you'd burn all your presents and spend the whole holiday brooding like Batman."

"She makes you sound like Batman," her father muttered. "Are you sure your last name isn't Wayne?"

If my Dad wasn't such a nerd, I wouldn't have gotten the reference. The old style of comic books had gone out of style when real parahumans had come on the scene, but my Dad had made me see some of the old movies from Earth Aleph.

I was actually flattered.

"Well, dungeons are a little like caves," I said. "And I like to fight the good fight. I don't have a utility belt, though."

"Just a magic bum bag," Hermione said. "Like you think I didn't notice. You pull more stuff out of there than can actually fit inside."

"Sounds like Batman," her dad said. "My mates always wondered if he had half his equipment shoved up his..."

"Dad!" Hermione said. Her face turned beet red.

He grinned. "I was going to say cape. What did you think I was going to say?"

"Annnyway," Hermione said, "I knew you were going to be there all alone, and I thought you might like to see a little of our Christmas. We took your advice, and we're doing a Meditteranean trip."

She spun the mirror again, and I could see that there was a tiny Christmas tree on a table in the corner, with a large stack of gifts underneath it.

"I'll give you your gift when you get back," I said. "I really appreciate the book. It's really cool."

"It's no two way mirror though," Hermione said. "I'm kind of jealous. Magic for Christmas...what could be better?"

"Is it ok for you to be using this?" I asked. "Won't it violate the Trace or whatever?"

"I asked Neville's grandmother," Hermione said. "And she said the Trace only detects new magic, not spells that are already in place. We still have to make sure that no muggle gets their hands on it; that really would get us in trouble."

"I really appreciate this," I said. For once, I actually meant it. "I....didn't expect anything this morning."

"You've helped people, Taylor," Hermione said. "And Wizards and Witches have long memories. You should enjoy it."

I nodded.

"It's getting close to breakfast. I'll talk to you this evening after dinner."

She smiled and it lit up her face. "We can talk about the gifts we got. I know about a lot of yours, of course, but there might be some I haven't heard about."

"How did you all keep this from me?" I asked.

It worried me; was it because of my reduced range because of the cold; I didn't have nearly enough bugs to cover as much space as I would like. Or was it because I'd been so focused on my enemies that I hadn't been paying attention to my friends?

She shrugged. "We passed notes and didn't talk about it much."

I forced myself to smile. "This means a lot. I was feeling a little down. Thanks for everything."

A moment later the mirror went dark, and then it was a normal mirror again.

The only thing that was left was a small envelope with Alice Longbottom's name on it. I carefully opened it, and I noticed that all there was was a single piece of paper.

The words on the paper were written in a childish scrawl; it looked as though the writer had struggled to complete each and every letter. The words weren't childish at all, though.

"Thank you for my life," was all it said.

There wasn't anything else in the envelope, but there didn't have to be.

It was funny that the thing that Mom would have been most proud of that I'd accomplished in this world had been the thing I'd put the least effort into. It had been a casual, off the cuff remark, and yet there were people benefiting from it that I would never meet.

As I gathered my gifts to put them in my room or my fanny pack, I found that my eyes burned. I must not have slept well the night before, probaby because the House Elves had amost woken me.

My throat was tight too. I wondered if I might visit Pomfrey; it wouldn't be good to come down with something that Wizards could cure.

Still, as I headed for breakfast, that feeling of gloom that I'd woken up with had almost entirely dissipated, and I found myself actually looking forward to the day.1999ShayneTJun 12, 2019View discussionThreadmarks Christmas DayView contentShayneTJun 16, 2019#12,719"This isn't the kind of Christmas you're used to," I asked Potter.

We were sitting on a ledge and staring out a window at the snow. There weren't enough students for a snowball fight, but a couple of students were making snowmen. I wondered if they were going to animate them.

Could I make a Frosty the snowman type hat eventually? Maybe having hats that could animate bodies would make the Sorting Hat jealous. It wouldn't even have to be snowmen; animating corpses would likely be more useful, and wouldn't have the whole heat and fire problem.

Of course, snowmen would be easier to make than corpses, at first at least, but they were crap during the summer, so likely not. Or maybe I could get them to animate trash, a little like Mush.

Harry Potter snorted.

"Yeah...this Christmas is fantastic. Only way it could be better was if Ron had stayed around. I actually got presents this year, and people are happy to have me around."

"Must be nice," I said. "You should be glad you didn't end up in Slytherin. Being a half-blood would be all right, but killing off old Moldy shorts would have probably ruffled a few feathers."

"You aren't scared of him at all, are you?" he asked, looking at me strangely. "Everybody else, even the adults are terrified of him."

"He's a small time symptom of a bigger problem," I said. "Most Dark Wizards are, at least as far as I can see."

"What do you mean?" he asked slowly.

"It's a problem with Wizarding society," I said. "Actually, in parts of muggle society too. There are people who don't get a fair chance to have a say in what's going to happen to them... a Dark Wizard rises and tells them that he'll give them that chance, but the new government he creates ends up just as bad as the last one."

"You act like Dark Wizards wins sometimes," he said, looking surprised.

"Of course they do... I've read the history books. It's just that if they win they generally don't get called Dark Wizards. They're considered just and right. History is written by the winners, or at least the people who fawn over all of them."

"You've got some pretty definite ideas about how things should be," he said. "I thought Slytherins were more flexible than that."

"You mean that they follow whoever has the power?" I asked. "That's probably true. But you have to have somebody who thinks they know better than everyone else, or nothing would ever get done/"

"What?"

"Well... you've heard of comic book superheroes, right?"

"Like Batman, or Bananaman," he said.

Bananaman? Whatever.

"Right. Well, Superheroes think that things should be a certain way. Usually, that's the way things already are. Supervillains believe just as strongly that things should change. Because superheroes tend to side with the government, they get all the good press."

"So supervillains aren't bad?"

"Some of them are very bad," I said. "But not all of them are as bad as the others. They all get the same label though. It's the same thing with Dark Lords. Somebody who is a revolutionary gets that label when they are really just trying to change things for the better."

"I thought you said they didn't make anything any better?"

"Usually they don't. Some of them mean to, but power is addicting, especially power over other people. Even if they don't fall victim to it, their followers might, or if not them, then their descendants."

"So you-know-who isn't bad?"

"His people tortured people until they were insane," I said. "And he tried to murder a baby, unsuccessfully. That's a combination of being evil and incompetent that's pretty dangerous."

He stared at me, then laughed shortly. "Trust a Slytherin to make fun of the thing that ruined my life."

I shrugged. "Terrible things happen to everybody. The question is whether you get up, dust yourself and do something about it, or if you decide to lay down and die. I don't believe in giving up."

"Not everybody can be...you," he said. "Sometimes you don't have any power to change things."

He was right, of course. When I'd been abused by Emma, Sophia and Madison, there hadn't been much I could do. I could have tried to fight back, but that would have only led to more pain.

There were things that I hadn't been willing to do, but the consequences of those would have led to jail or worse.

"Then you watch and wait," I said. "You won't always be powerless, and there will come a time when things change. That's when you make your move."

"You can be pretty cold sometimes."

"I'm a Slytherin," I said, shrugging. "As much as I didn't want to be, the hat was probably right. Personally, I think that the people I'd want at my back would have the characteristics of all of the houses. I'd want people who were smart as a Ravenclaw, loyal as a Hufflepuff, brave as a Gryffindor, and as sly as a Slytherin. Give me twenty wizards like that, and I'd have control of Wizarding Britain in a year, and the world within ten."

"Isn't that what you-konow-who tried?" Potter asked.

"He's an idiot," I said. "Trying to rule through terror means that you always have to worry about someone stabbing you in the back. If you make people think they want you to rule them, it works much better."

He looked at me strangely. "Aren't you doing that?"

"I'm not trying to rule anybody," I said irritably. "I just want people to leave me alone. If they did that, I'd be fine."

"Even if people were getting hurt?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Lets say they weren't targeting you.... maybe you're a pureblood, but they're still going after muggleborn. Would you do anything or wouldn't you?"

"I can't answer that," I said. "Being a pureblood would mean that I would be a fundamentally different person. I'd like to think that I would, but there's no guarantee. The person I am now? I couldn't stand by and let people get hurt."

"They're getting hurt now," Potter said.

"I'm waiting for my moment," I said. "As a first year, I'm not as powerful as some people would like to think."

Not even me, really. It was frustrating, being this limited.

Magic had endless applications; parahumans typically only had one power, albeit often a power with multiple uses. Wizards could do almost anything, given enough time and creativity. I wanted to be able to do all of those things, but magic took hard work too, and spells were like math in a way.

In math, everything led to everything else. Without addition and subtraction, you couldn't do multiplication. Without multiplication, you couldn't do division. Without all of those skills, you couldn't even start the higher order skills.

It was the same with magic. I couldn't simply start wandlessly and silently casting spells like I was Merlin himself. Skills led to other skills, and while I had the advantage of determination and a good work ethic, I wasn't even as much of a magical genius as Hermione.

Reading ahead was only going to take me so far; some magic required practical demonstration, and the Weasley twins were only third years.

In magic, I was finding, it was better to be a master of a few spells rather than know a vast number of spells that you could barely cast.

Harry was silent for a moment. "My relatives hate me for being a Wizard."

I stared at him. That wasn't the kind of revelation that you shared with a stranger unless it was something that you just had to say.

"Then it's not really about you, is it?"

He looked up at me, surprised.

"People hate what they don't understand, and I'm not sure I understand this thing that we do. It's got to be even scarier to be powerless. That's not so bad if nobody has power, but when somebody sees that other people do...they probably feel a little jealous."

His face tightened.

"You don't know them. The way they treat me isn't right."

"Are they abusing you?" I asked. "Because there are things the muggle authorities can do. The Wizards don't seem to have a lot, but being a half-blood means you have a foot in both worlds. Use what you have to in order to get out."

"Nobody would believe me," he said sullenly. "And I've had a talk with Dumbledore. He told me that there's magical protections on my house to keep me safe, which is why he keeps me there."

"He can't find another place with magical protections?" I asked. "Did you tell him how bad it is at home?"

He shook his head.

"Maybe you should," I said. "Wizards have ways of changing people's minds, and if he has to keep you with them, maybe he can make them be nicer to you. Maybe he can just terrify them into compliance, or maybe he can make them forget that they hate you. Either way, you win."

"It won't be the same as if they really loved me," he said.

"But at least the abuse will stop. I'm not aware of any magic that can make someone genuinely love you, although I've heard of love potions. From what I understand, those are bad ideas, though."

He frowned and looked down at the floor. It looked like he was considering what I was saying, which was good.

I'd been lucky.

My parents had loved me. Even though my mother had died, she'd left me with the memory of that love, and that had been part of what had helped me get through the dark days ahead. Even in the darkest days of my father's depression I hadn't doubted that he loved me. He hadn't been able to show it, but I'd known.

What would it have been like to have been raised in a household without love, with people who actively despised you?

Potter didn't look like he was terribly abused, but then almost no one did. He was underweight, but he'd been filling out over the past few months.

He seemed to be gregarious, and seemed carefree and happy; was that a mask to cover his underlying pain?

I'd have liked to have helped him, but I wasn't in a position to do much. Going to his house and terrifying his adoptive parents would likely just make them turn their fear into anger, which they'd take out on him.

It would require an actual threat of retaliation from someone that they knew who could follow through, like Dumbledore to actually make a difference.

Calling the muggle authorities would just get him thrown out of the house, and then he'd be in the same situation as me over the summer break. The Death Eaters were on the rise, and leaving the protection of the house would be a good way to get him killed.

"You can't be loved," I said. "Not at home. That doesn't mean you won't find other people who love you. Sometimes friends can be your second family."

I felt a sudden wave of sadness. Sarah, Rachel, Brian...they'd been good to me despite being villains. I hadn't been as close to my team in the Wards, except maybe Golem, but they'd been decent as well.

He nodded.

"Ron was going to stay for Christmas, but there was something about an aunt coming home or something that interfered."

"Oh?" I said casually.

"Ron wasn't that excited, because he'd never met her, but some of his oldest brothers remembered her."

So essentially I'd cheated him out of Christmas with a his friend. I'd have felt bad about that, except that the cure had helped more people than it had hurt, and sometimes it was important to be pragmatic about things like that.

"It's almost time for dinner," I said. "I've heard that it's going to be something special."

"Yeah!" he said enthusiastically, seemingly forgetting his upset about his family and Ron. "Hagrid told me all about it. Since everybody is stuck here away from their families, they try to make the dinner something special."

"So let's go," I said.

He was right about the dinner.

There were turkeys, roasts and potatoes. There was a kind of sausage that was apparently called chipolatas. There were other foods too, although most of them were undeniably British.

There were Wizarding fireworks on the table too; some of the Gryffindors pulled them, and they went off with a blast that sounded like a cannon; it engulfed them in a cloud of blue smoke, and ejected an admiral's hat and several white mice.

Some of the other students also used them, and while the sound and the smoke seemed the same, the colors were different, and the things that emerged seemed almost random, like the old toys in the bottom of cereal cartons, from before people realized that kids would either swallow them or just tear the box up looking for them.

Whenever anyone wasn't looking, I began slipping as many of the fireworks as I could reach into my fanny pack. They were free, and you never know when you might need a distraction and a puff of smoke. I was reasonably sure that my bugs would be able to activate one too. I might even be able to activate several. It wouldn't give me much of an advantage, but sometimes there was a thin razor's edge between being dead, and being not dead.

I saw Snape frown several times as he looked toward me. I suspected that he was noticing the disappearing party favors, even though I was only slipping them into my pack when no one was looking. The best time to do so tended to be when one of the other students used their firework, because there was a human tendency to look at the source of a loud noise.

I smiled at Snape sweetly, and he looked vaguely disturbed.

I was either going to have to work on looking more sincere when I smiled, or I was going to have to work on my public persona.

Dumbledore was wearing some sort of flowered monstrosity instead of his usual hat. It looked a little girlish on his head, but from what I'd seen, Wizard fashions had diverted from muggle fashions a long time ago.

Scotsmen wore kilts, after all, and no one assumed that meant they were crossdressing. I was going to have to learn to check my assumptions when dealing with different cultures. After all, my experiences with different cultures was very limited.

I'd been in different countries during Endbringer attacks, but those had typically been frantic efforts to keep people alive, and the surroundings had barely registered with me. My only interaction with the locals had usually been to scream instructions to them,.or use my bugs to find survivors.

Other than that, I'd spent my entire life in the States. While there were certainly regional cultural variations, the States were really homogeneous compared to the rest of the world.

There was a silver sickle in my flaming pudding, which seemed like a health hazard frankly. I had to frown a moment; galleons were worth five pounds, and there were seventeen sickles in a galleon. It was irritating that they didn't use the decimal system for their money, because that made mental conversions a lot harder.

It wasn't a lot of money; I had a lot more than that hidden in my room. Neither Millie or Tracey had touched it, and none of the other girls had gone after it either. I suspected that my reputation as a seer and as someone likely to seek violent revenge had led to that.

The things that came out of the fireworks apparently didn't disappear, which meant that the kids who had shot them off left laden with all sorts of Christmas gifts.

For appearances sake, I did blast one off, and I found myself in possession of a grow your own warts kit.

It was the perfect gift for someone living in a dorm filled with girls who hated her. It would make for a subtle form of revenge if used at the right time.

All in all, I found myself satisfied as Christmas ended. I had stolen more than a dozen fireworks which were now in my pack, I had a belly filled with food that was even better than the usual excellent quality of their food.

Finally, I was planning on sneaking into the restricted section of the library. Now was the perfect time; everyone was going to be in a food coma, and a lot of the paintings were off partying with paintings in other castles. Some of them were still on duty, but I could send my bugs out short term to watch before going back into my fanny pack and the warmth of my robes.

Reading those books might give me some of the answers I had; among those answers were what was in the books that made them restricted.

It had nagged at me all semester. There was no better way to make someone want to do something than to tell them that they couldn't.

I wasn't even going to enter the restricted section myself. I was going to see if I could use magic to lift a book across the line, or if they had some sort of magical alarm system. I already had my escape route plotted just in case.

If this worked out, my magical skills might get much better in a much shorter period than I'd planned for.

This was going to be great.1632ShayneTJun 16, 2019View discussionThreadmarks FallView contentShayneTJun 18, 2019#12,867As we ran through the hallways, I wondered how it had all gone wrong.

Apparently the entry to the restricted section wasn't protected at all; instead each and every one of the books were individually charmed to sound an alarm when they were opened. That seemed a little like overkill, but maybe magic didn't have a terrible cost other than the time it took to ward each and every book.

The Wizard-hours that would have taken weren't something I was qualified to estimate. Apparently they thought it was important, which made it even more important that I get into the restricted section. What were they trying to hide? How useful were the books in the restricted section?

Obviously I wasn't going to be able to find out until I was able to deal with the protective spells on the books or until I could convince a teacher that I deserved a pass. That second option didn't seem like it was a thing that was going to happen.

Where in the hell did he get an invisibility cape? We were both running underneath the cape, but it wasn't exactly meant for running, and I was sure that our feet were showing sometimes. Worse, I kept worrying that one of us was going to trip over the thing.

He'd already been in the library when I'd gotten there, and I'd detected him first with my bugs and then with my spell. It hadn't given me his exact location, but it had been close enough for me to sneak up on him.

I'd figured that one of the teachers wouldn't have needed an excuse to be invisible; if they were it was because they were doing something underhanded. Yet stabbing Travers, or worse, Snape wouldn't do me any favors.

Putting exploratory bugs out on him had shown that not only was he too small to be a professor (and too large to be Flitwick.) I'd been about to tackle him when he'd opened one of the books.

That was when everything went to hell.

If Hogwarts wasn't under increased security precautions, it would have been relatively easy to get away. But that wasn't the case now. Dumbledore had put in more security precautions than I'd thought.

"He's here!" I heard one of the paintings scream.

We were running through the hall under the invisible cloak. That had the unfortunate effect of leaving our footsteps audible, even if they were less visible than I'd thought.

Grabbing Potter, I used my bugs to open a passage up ahead. This one was purposefully out of sight of any portraits. Pulling him inside, the door shut behind us, just as the animated suits of armor came moving quickly down the hallway.

We were both quiet, even though the dust in the hall made up both want to sneeze.

Grabbing Potter's sleeve, I pulled him into the darkness. If we were too close to the hallway, one of the professors would reveal us using the human revealing spell. I'd studied the spell extensively, and I knew just how far we had to go to be undetected.

Unfortunately, that didn't take us any closer to the dungeons or the Gryffindor tower. It took us into the bowels of the castle.

The castle had been built in a time when muggles still periodically liked to purge the Wizarding population, so these secret passages were part of the castles defenses. However, some of the secret passages had been forgotten in the thousand years since that time.

There had been several passages that I'd hoped to explore over the holidays, some of which I still hadn't figured out how to open. This one required moving a torch sconce, but I'd seen other passages that required a code word, and I suspected that those were lost to time. Figuring that out might take someone with Dumbledore levels of skill.

This was one of them. It had taken me forever to figure out how to open the door, and I hadn't gotten a chance to explore, because I especially was under close observation by the staff and by the other students. That was partially because I'd been the victim of an assassination attempt once already, and also, I suspected because they were afraid of what I was going to do.

Even now I was using bugs to create a commotion in the hallways. It was only a matter of time before they thought to do a head check, and then the jig would be up. I had bugs knocking over swords on those few suits of armor that weren't animated, and doing other things that would look as though invisible feet would be making their way further into the castle.

Pushing deeper and deeper into the passage, we finally got far enough that the spell wouldn't reveal up. We were far enough into the tunnel that it was pitch black.

The place was filled with spiders, and spider webs, which meant that I had a good picture of the area around us. It was obviously old from the growths of spiders, and it was possible that the spiders here might be good to start growing a swarm.

At home I'd been somewhat limited in what I could do with my spiders because some of them would eat each other whenever I left my range of control. Here, though I was hardly ever far enough away for that to be a problem. I'd have to figure out something to do with them during the summer; I'd already caused a Bevy of Boggarts to infest the school. Some of these spiders were poisonous.

"We need to get back to our rooms," I said quietly. "And soon. I don't know where this goes."

"I thought you were the girl who knows everything," he muttered.

"Where'd you get the cape?" I asked. Having him reflect on my seer abilities was the last thing I needed. No one needed to know what my limitations were, because that would mean they'd figure out where my blind spots were. The fact that my friends had been able to surprise me for Christmas was horrifying enough.

"It was a gift," he said.

"Out of the fireworks?" I asked. If that was the case, I was going to open mine as soon as I got back into my room. I suspected not, though. I'd been watching what people were getting, to see if anything was good enough for me to ignore the use of the things as a distraction.

It had mostly been cheap crap, although there had been some nice chess sets and other items. There hadn't been anything that I'd needed.

He shook his head. "I got a note.... said it belonged to my father. Don't know who sent it."

"It was probably Dumbledore," I said. "This is exactly the kind of thing he'd do...give a kid an invisibility cloak when I've been attacked by invisible people. That was always going to end well."

"It worked out all right," he said sullenly.

At least he'd had the sense not to try to follow me around, although it was possible that had been the next thing on his agenda. Boys at this age weren't the brightest of creatures, and he was a Gryffindor, which meant he was predisposed to jumping in before he looked.

"Why were you in the restricted book section?" I asked. "

"I'd gotten an invisibility cloak," he said. "What else was I going to do with it? It wasn't like I could bother Ron or Neville with it, and the girls' stairs work even if you are invisible."

"Tried that one out did you?" I asked dryly.

"Ron says the girls get better bathrooms than we do!" he protested. "With bubbles and...pink...and magic mirrors."

I would have stared at him, but I couldn't see anything. I compensated by letting some of the bugs out of my fanny pack, spreading them out and letting some settle on Potter.

"Only some of that is true," I said. "And you still shouldn't be trying."

"Well, you shouldn't... " he began, and then he stepped back. His foot slipped and he grabbed my shirt to try to right himself. The ground crumbled underneath us, and suddenly we were both sliding downward.

Potter screamed, but I managed to remain silent, although it wasn't for a lack of trying.

Was it a trap of some kind, or simply the result of a thousand years of neglect? I barely had time to think about it before I crashed into Potter's back.

I'd thought that the darkness before was bad, but this was a blackness the like of which I couldn't remember, darker than Grue's power....I couldn't see my own hands. I pushed myself away from Potter. It was shocking how scrawny he still was, even after all this time.

Reaching for my wand to cast a light spell, I froze as I felt the surface we had landed on. It was soft, yet careful examination showed that it felt like there were scales. It was some sort of a skin, which no longer had its original occupant.

There were only two kinds of things that shed their skins like this, and if it were one type, I'd have sensed and been able to control it.

It was then that I could feel something like a strange, hot wind blowing over us. It smelled rank, like rotting meat and rancid blood.

"There's something in here with us," Potter said.

I felt it was rather stupid of him to say anything; whatever was in here with us had doubtlessly already heard the sound of us crashing though the roof. Why give away our position if he didn't have to?

There were hardly any bugs in the chamber we were in; it was almost as though all the bugs that had once been here had vacated out of self preservation, or they'd been killed.

From my fanny pack, bugs began to scatter throughout the chamber. It took a moment, but eventually I began to get a sense of the chamber we were in. It was massive, but the thing that we were hearing, feeling, was right in front of us. My bugs encountered scales.

Spreading out, they began to get a sense of the size of the thing. It was huge; about the length of a Semi trailer, maybe a little longer. It was taller than me, and as far as I could tell, it seemed like it was the shape of a giant snake.

I froze. Either the thing could see us, in which case it would be attracted by movement, or it could hear us. It was close enough that even given its size, I wasn't sure that I'd be able to duck out of the way in time, and Potter would be dead for sure.

Desperately, I sent my bugs further and further afield, looking for an exit. Until I knew where we were going to go, moving was just likely to attract the attention of the thing.

Still, staying here wasn't an option. Sooner or later, the thing was going to get curious, and a lot of animals explored by taking a nip out of things. At the size of it, a nip would cut either one of us in two, or worse, it would just swallow us whole.

Bugs who got near its fangs died almost instantly, in agony. I grimaced, glad there was no one to see. The thing was poisonous.

How to tell Potter that we needed to leave without alerting the creature? If it was one of the Undersiders, I might be able to use my bugs somehow, but Potter didn't know anything.

"I think we should get out of here," I murmured in Potter's ear. I spoke almost inaudibly, but I heard the sound of movement nevertheless.

There was a monstrous sound of scales sliding on stone, and the breath on our faces got hotter.

I grabbed Potter's robes tightly and prepared to dodge to the side. Alone I probably could have done it; an animal that size probably wasn't all that fast unless it was enhanced by magic. However, given the closeness of the thing and the fact that I'd be pulling Potter along behind me, I was afraid that I wasn't going to be fast enough.

I heard a monstrous hissing sound. There was a hissing and rasping reply from beside me. It was Potter.

"He says he's hungry," Potter said.

Potter spoke snake? That wasn't a talent I'd heard about, but I was just learning about magic. It was useful now, but only if Potter kept his wits about him. How could you bluff a snake?

"Tell it we aren't food. It's not time for it to wake up yet," I said quietly. The last thing I wanted to do was to antagonize it. Obviously the snake could hear, because it was speaking to Potter, unless his speech was working on a magical level.

He hissed and spit beside me, and for the next minute, there was a conversation between them that I didn't understand. I didn't like it, and I considered my options.

My darkness powder likely wouldn't work on a snake; they were reputed to have the ability to sense things in the dark with their tongues. Also, it was already dark; we'd be more hindered than it would. The marbles wouldn't work on a thing with no legs.

The Christmas fireworks might, depending on how good its hearing was. Despite its ability to hear Potter, it was possible that it was deaf. I had a vague recollection that snakes couldn't hear. They didn't have visible ears anyway, so even if it could hear, the crackers might do nothing but antagonize it.

I sent my bugs out farther and father, seeing a way out. I found a sudden breeze to the east, and I tugged on Potter's shirt.

"If I make a light, is that going to set him off?" I asked.

"He says that if we look in his eyes it will kill us," Potter said. He sounded fascinated instead of scared.

"Isn't that lovely," I muttered. Trust Hogwarts to have a monster in the caverns underneath it with poison fangs and the ability to kill by sight. It would explain why there were no bugs, assuming that there was light down here sometimes. It was possible that enough sunlight got in from the entrance that I was sensing to make a difference.

Or maybe there were magical torches that lit when the thing wanted them to.

"I think it's lonely," he said, after another conversation with it.

"It's poisonous," I said. "And it can kill us by looking at it. That means that even if it's friendly it could kill us without meaning to. Also, it's fifty feet long, which means it could roll over on us."

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"How do you think?" I asked. It wasn't really answering his question, but by letting him come up with his own answer, I wouldn't have to come up with my own. "I know the way out."

"It wants us to come back," Potter said.

"Tell it we will," I said.

Lying to a fifty foot snake wasn't a problem. Dying because of one was. Ultimately, I was going to have Potter say whatever he had to in order to get both of us to safety.

He spoke, and a moment later said, "He'll let us leave."

I felt a sudden sense of relief. I'd been afraid that I was going to end up getting Potter killed, and that was likely to end up bad for me. Getting out on my own would have been difficult but possible, but with Potter would have been almost impossible.

Now we had a chance. With luck, I might even be able to pin Filch's murder on the thing. Wizards didn't tend to question very well, and if there was an obvious explanation, they'd be likely to go for it.

"Good," I said. I pulled him along as quickly as I could.

He stumbled along behind me, but I moved without a misstep. A carpet of bugs were moving before me, giving me a mental sketch of the room by feel.

"Do you hear that?" Potter asked. For the first time he sounded worried.

He was hearing the sounds of the bugs from my fanny pack moving in the darkness. He hadn't been scared around the snake, but now he was scared?

"It's nothing," I said shortly. I kept pulling him behind me, and he stumbled along.

There was an opening up ahead. It felt like it was blocked by brambles.

"Don't look behind us," I said.

The monster wasn't within sight; I had bugs behind us checking. However, the ones on the floor had already moved ahead through the brambles, exploring the forest outside.

"Lumos," I said with my wand out.

Although I'd intentionally left the light dim, we both blinked and struggled to adjust our vision. The bramble in front of us was thick and impenetrable.

"Do you have your wand?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"Make a light," I said. He did so, and I began using my wand to cut away at the bottom left corner of the branches. It required several spells, and even so I didn't cut more than a small opening; the last thing we needed was to encourage the thing back behind us to go out and explore in the daylight.

The opening I'd made was small enough that the only reasons we could squeeze our way through was because we were both tiny and scrawny. Even so, I felt it rip away at my robes.

As we stepped out into the outside, I could see the moon up in the sky. We were in the middle of a forest, and the trees looked like trees I'd seen before.

We were in the middle of the Forbidden Forest.