Chapter 10 - W10

It was dark, but I was picking up more bugs all the time.

Insects tended to use three main strategies to survive the winter. The first was to avoid the cold. Some did that by migrating like birds. Butterflies were widely known for doing just that. Others would hide at the bottom of ponds, where temperatures were more stable than at the surface. Some would burrow into the earth, beneath the frost line.

Some survived the winter almost unchanged. Mites and snow fleas were in that group.

Some would simply freeze, going into a state of almost suspended animation, waking when the heat of the spring resumed.

The only bugs I had now were the middle group; the others either weren't around, or would die of the cold. There was still life all around, but it wasn't the explosion of life that had been there during the fall. Instead it was more subdued.

Casting a warming charm on both myself and Potter, I said, "We need to get back to the castle. I can't imagine that a head check won't be one of the first things that they do... and the both of us are the people they'll be looking for first."

"Yeah," he said grimly.

He'd managed to hold onto his invisibility cloak, so we weren't entirely done. There was still a chance to get inside the castle without being detected, even though we were probably going to be caught as being out of our rooms.

It hadn't been all that long; ten minutes maybe since the alarm had been set. However, the more time that passed, the more alarmed they were going to be and the more in trouble we were going to be in. If it was just me, I probably could have bluffed my way out of it; however, I didn't know Potter well enough to know whether he would blurt everything out all at once.

It was possible that for once that might be the best option. There was a death snake beneath the school. That seemed like something the administration should know.

I sent the bugs up, but it was late enough that the castle was not lit up. None of the bugs I had available had vision that was good enough to see the castle in the middle of the night.

The forest was to the east of the castle. I wasn't particularly good with directions; I'd always had my bugs and the city to follow. In a city, the bugs were always active, kept warm in human habitations. Checking locations had been easy.

In a forest it was going to be much harder.

"Which way?" Potter asked.

The best thing I could do was pick a direction. We had warming charms which meant we wouldn't freeze to death, and in the middle of winter, it was likely that the more dangerous monsters would have gone to ground.

Still, it was possible that there were more trolls out here. I was a lot better with magic than I'd been even a couple of months ago, but I had no idea how Potter stacked up in magic. Would he back me up, or would he run away screaming in terror. Just being a Gryffindor didn't necessarily mean that he was brave after all, it just meant that he wanted to be.

"Let's go this way," I said.

I had no idea if it was the right way, but our only choices were to either keep moving or to hole up until morning when my bugs could find the direction of the castle. The last thing I wanted to do was to find out that the giant snake had changed its mind and felt like a midnight snack.

He nodded.

I'd felt drawn to something in the center of the forest before; I felt it again. It was something that I'd meant to explore, but this was hardly the time.

Knowing that it was in the center of the forest, and knowing how far we'd walked underground, I could guess that we were on the side of the forest closest to Hogwarts. That meant that I only needed to go away from whatever it was, and we'd get back to the castle sooner or later.

Suddenly, I grabbed Potter's robes and leaned into him.

"Keep quiet," I said.

Easing us into the underbrush was difficult, but a quiet levitation spell managed to lift some of the branches high enough that we could both slip under it. I didn't like being confined to such a small area, but hiding was going to be the best thing I could do for us.

We were surrounded my multiple groups of men.

Potter was silent beside me as we waited in the darkness.

"I can't believe he's asking us to do this on Christmas," the first of two men stepping into the clearing said.

"It's the best time.... their guard will be down, and we'll get a chance to feel out their defenses," the second man said. "The Dark Lord's given us enough spells not to be detected, but he hasn't figured out how to get us inside."

"Why's the boy so important anyhow?" the first man asked.

"He made the Dark Lord look like a fool as a baby," the first one said. "And there's a prophecy, although nobody seems to know what the whole thing is."

"Nobody tells me anything."

"That's because you're an idiot who can't keep his mouth shut."

"Yeah...but do you really believe that we'll find the boy or Avery's pet project out here on Christmas eve?"

"The seer the Dark Lord is using is one of the better ones," the second man said. "Although he could be wrong. Prophecy is tricky. I never put a lot of stock in it."

I marked their faces in my mind.

I'd have Dumbledore look at the pensieve later, or maybe Snape, and see if he could identify them.

"She was sure we'd find them, though?"

"Yeah," the second man said. He was shorter and stout, but there was a harder look on his face. The first man was younger and didn't look particularly bright. "Said we ought to be careful though. The Terror is with him."

"How dangerous can a firstie be?" the first man asked. "I can take care of a little girl all by myself."

"She killed a troll," the man said. "Avery checked. I doubt she's going to be much against full fledged wizards, though."

"So we just have to find them," the first man said. "And bring them to the Dark Lord?"

"Just the boy. He said we're to kill the girl."

I could feel Potter stiffening beside me, but I squeezed his shoulder tightly in warning. If it was just these two wizards, I might have a chance. Darkness powder and a good solid knife might be enough, although it depended on how competent they were.

However, I could hear three other groups of two in the forest. They were searching in a grid pattern, and if I engaged with these, then the others would come running. There was no way that I could fight eight grown wizards at once.

It was possible that I might have trouble with just two.

The fact that my bug count was a lot smaller than normal also made this a dangerous encounter. I didn't have the option of revealing my secret and choking them to death.

The bad thing was that the others were moving in a pattern that was getting closer to us all the time. It made me wonder if they were honing in on something, using some kind of tracking spell that I hadn't heard about before.

We didn't have a lot of options. We could continue to try to hide, but it was looking like they'd caught our scent somehow. We could run, but a spell to the back might take us out even quicker. We could fight and die.

None of those were options that I wanted to think much about.

Our best option might be to go back to the entrance to the chamber underneath Hogwarts. It was possible that Potter might be able to turn the monster against the men who were chasing us, which would be delightfully ironic. With any luck they'd kill each other off and then our problems would be solved.

The problem was that the entrance was ten minutes away. I was closer to whatever it was in the forest that had been pulling at me now.

Closing my eyes, I reached out with my power. My power had always gotten stronger when I'd felt trapped... and while this wasn't the same power, it seemed to work much the same. Magic was an expression of my mind, after all, and I had vivid memories of how it worked.

I felt them suddenly; they were an alien presence at the edge of my vision. They were bugs, but bigger than any that I'd ever used with the exception of Atlas and his kin. It took me a moment to get control of them; they actually fought my control in a way that no other bugs ever had.

Getting control of their vision, I could see that they were spiders. It was hard to get a sense of perspective, but it looked like they were huge, at least the size of dogs, and maybe as large as horses. I desperately wanted to know what they were, but now was not the time.

Potter sneezed beside me, and suddenly the branches of the bush we were hiding under were pulled aside, and we were being dragged out at wandpoint.

One of the wizards whistled, and I felt the others moving in.

"It's Potter and his pet mudblood!" the first and dumber wizard said. He was pointing his wand at me, and he'd managed to get my wand while I was distracted.

"We're supposed to kill the mudblood," the second wizard said.

"You think Avery would pay us to bring her to him?" the first one asked.

A nasty smile spread across the face of the second Wizard. "He's got some nasty plans for her. After all the shite she's pulled on pureblood kids, might be the best thing for her. Avery's been a right twat over this whole thing."

That was the problem with having idiots working with you. They couldn't follow directions. Would I be better to stay silent, or to pretend to be afraid and to cry? That might actually encourage them to kill me.

"You'd better let us go!" Potter shouted beside me. They hadn't even bothered taking his wand, an expression of contempt that they might live to regret. I was close enough that I might be able to grab it and use it. However, the wands in our face suggested that would be a bad idea without some form of distraction.

One of the men waved his wand, and Potter fell to the ground screaming. It didn't last for very long, but it felt like it was much longer.

My bugs would show up on the white snow; however, I had them moving under my dress, scattering to the inside of my robes and ready to be deployed. Some of them were moving things out of my fanny pack, including the darkness powder, the crackers, and the other things that I thought I'd need.

The knife was heavy for the bugs I had on me, so I left it in the pack. I doubted I would be able to use it.

"Gibbon!" one of the men coming through the trees said. "You found them! This is a great day for the Dark Lord!"

The second man stared at me, and asked, "Why is the mudblood still alive?"

"We figured Avery might want some quality time with her," Gibbon said, grinning. "Maybe it'll put him in a better mood."

"Hmph," the other man said. "Well, we'd better get moving. Dumbledore has the castle on full alert. He must have added some alarms that the Dark Lord doesn't know about."

"The Dark Lord didn't say that we couldn't have fun with the boy," Gibbon said. He pointed the wand again.

"He didn't say you could, either," I said.

"What?"

"He told you to bring the boy to him unharmed, and you've already what, used the Cruciatis curse on him? You think he'll be happy about that?"

"What would you know about it, you little bitch?" he asked. He pointed his wand at me and a moment later my world was full of pain.

I laughed.

It hurt; on the scale I was used to it was an eight on a scale of ten. However, I'd experienced a twelve, and no pain I experienced would ever compare.

Staggering to my feet, I forced myself to smile.

"What?" the man said, his wand suddenly going limp.

"This isn't a chance I normally give people," I said. "But I'm feeling generous. Run away and I will let you live, for today at least. If you don't, then I will kill you. I'll kill your friends, your families. I will destroy everything you've ever loved."

"You won't be going anywhere," the man sneered. "It's not worth bothering with you."

He was going to try to kill me.

"I warned you," I said.

The bugs dropped darkness powder into my hands, and I threw it to the ground, dodging to the side. Green light flashed to the spot where I had been, but the things I had summoned were already in the trees. They dropped down onto the men. There were flashes of green light in the darkness, with the screams of dying men. I lunged forward and I grabbed the wand the Death Eater in front of me was using.

His grip tightened, but I reached up and shoved a cracker in his mouth.

I felt his grip loosen, and the man began to fall. Apparently the Christmas Crackers weren't as safe as they'd been made out to be.

A moment later it was over. The spiders began to drag the men off into the forest.

I heard Potter rooting around; he'd finally revived himself enough from the pain to try to do something constructive.

By the time the darkness powder began to lift, there was only one man left on the ground. There wasn't anything left of his jaw, and he was unconscious.

"Episkey," I said. "Episkey."

It wasn't enough to repair his jaw, but it did stop the bleeding.

"What are you doing?" Potter asked. "And where are the others?"

"I saw some giant spiders in the trees," I said. "It looked like they were going to attack, so I dropped some darkness powder to help them."

"And this?" he asked.

"It might be good for the aurors to have somebody to interrogate," I said. "We just have to get him tied up and get him to the castle. Most likely they'll forget about giving us points if we bring them something else to distract them."

He stared at me; his face looked drawn and worn.

I stripped him of his robes and used them to tie his hands behind him. After the death of Filch, I'd looked up the Levicorpus spell.

Casting it now, the men was levitated by one ankle.

"Let's go," I said.

The man behind us had half his face destroyed, but I was sure that Wizarding medicine could repair him well enough that he could answer questions.

I had a feeling that this incident was going to improve my reputation with some people, but it was likely to move me up Voldemort's list. I'd been enjoying my time as being just Avery's pet project, but killing five death eaters and capturing one was going to be a setback for him.

Most people like him didn't like setbacks. They often took them personally. I was going to have to be even more careful now than I had been before.

The man was in front of us, floating. His face bashed into branch after branch. I didn't particularly care.

"What are we going to tell them about the snake?" Potter asked.

"The truth," I said. "We were out exploring after hours, stumbled into a secret passage, and fell into a snake pit."

"They'll kill it," he said.

"They should," I said. "If you didn't speak snake, it would have eaten you."

He looked at me strangely.

"I'd have gotten away, but then everybody would have blamed me," I said. "which probably means I'd have ended up in Azkaban."

"She's a person," he said. "All snakes are."

"You've talked to snakes before?" I asked.

"Sure. Haven't you? I thought it was just a wizard thing, like jaunting."

"Jaunting?"

"Like on the Tomorrow People," he said. "Well, the reruns. I did it once when I was being chased."

"Apparating, you mean?" I asked.

He shook his head. "It didn't feel the same when I did it. Apparating feels like you're being squeezed through a tube. This was something different."

Accidental magic he was talking about. He's apparently been awake when it had happened to him. Interesting.

"Well, I can't speak snake," I said. "it must be one of the rare talents, like being a seer, or a metamorph....uh...whatever."

He frowned. "That means the other wizards won't think she's a person either."

I certainly didn't. Of course, it was possible that I was wrong. I'd been around enough Case 53s to know that outward appearance didn't necessarily reflect on the inner life.

Was the snake a person? If it was, would sending wizards to kill it be the right thing to do?

"She's dangerous, and she's going to kill someone," I said.

"I'll teach you to speak snake," he said.

"She won't," he said. "I'll even teach you to speak snake so that you can talk to her."

"I'm not sure that's something that can be taught," I said. "I think it's a magical power."

"You could be wrong," he said.

Frowning, I thought about it. The snake hadn't made any waves so far, but telling the authorities would be the smart thing to do.

"I reserve the right to change my mind," I said.

He whooped.

"But this is what we're going to tell Dumbledore and the aurors," I said. "And they're going to ask you to share memories with them. I'm going to tell you where to start them, and where to end them. Do that, and you'll keep the snake safe."

With luck, it might keep me safe.1798ShayneTJun 20, 2019View discussionThreadmarks StepsView contentShayneTJun 23, 2019#13,478"Acromantulas?" the girl said. "Is that what they were called?"

Moody scowled at the girl.

He'd been hearing earsful about her from a variety of people, and none of it was good. She was Slytherin, which was to be expected given the other things he'd heard about her. She was clever and violent and dangerous.

It was a perfect prescription for a Dark Lord in training. Nothing he had seen had convinced him of anything else. Other Wizards would look at her and they'd have seen an innocent seeming little girl. They'd remember the ridiculous rumor that muggleborn couldn't use magic as everyone else. They'd assume the was as harmless as she looked.

Moody had seen monsters hiding behind the eyes of children, and he had an uneasy feeling that he was looking at one now.

There was no guilt in her eyes, no fear. Any ordinary child would have been shaken by what had happened, even now, hours later. They'd given the boy a calming potion, but hadn't even bothered to offer the girl one. That was enough to tell him that Dumbledore and the staff of the school knew there was something seriously wrong with the girl.

"How did you know they were going to be there?" he demanded.

"I know things sometimes," the girl said, shrugging. "I always just assumed that it was my accidental magic protecting me."

"It stops being accidental at your age," Moody said. "Especially if you do it all the time."

The girl shrugged. "I get some glimpses usually relating to things that are going to harm me. It makes it easier to take... steps."

Steps.

Moody had heard about some of the steps the girl liked to take, and he didn't like any of them. The school had covered up the boy with the boils, but Moody knew who the real suspect there was. How many other things had the girl done that hadn't even been made public?

"I've heard they were looking into you for the death of Argus Filch," Moody said. "Sent a couple of duffers in."

Making an accusation out of the blue sometimes helped; people who were disconcerted made mistakes, said things they hadn't meant to say.

"They didn't find anything because I didn't do it," she said, shrugging.

She was too calm...too confident. A first year should have been quaking in her books at the sight of him. She looked at his scars dispassionately, and without any sign of revulsion. That wasn't ordinary for purebloods; it was even less ordinary for muggleborn. At the very least they tended to stare curiously.

She acted as though she'd seen worse in the past, although it was possible that she might just have an excellent poker face. She was a Slytherin after all.

Still, he'd looked over the files, and there wasn't a motive. It was likely that Filch had run afoul of a Death Eater with a grudge. Making enemies of the last twenty graduating years of Wizarding Britain really hadn't been very bright, not when you had no magic to protect you.

Interrogating her about this might be a lost cause. If she'd done it, she'd covered it up well enough that she was confident that they'd never find him. If she hadn't, interrogating her was just going to antagonize her, which would make her a worse witness about more important matters.

"So you and Potter got lost when you fell through a hole in a secret passage; you found yourself out in the Forbidden Forest. What happened then?"

"I had a flash that the Death Eaters were coming," the girl said. "And another flash warning me about the Acromantulas. I decided to see if the two things coming to kill me would cancel each other out."

The girl said it coldly, as though the deaths of five men and the mutilation of one more didn't bother her at all. Moody had been out to the crime scene, and he'd found the blood covered wands that confirmed her story.

Following the tracks had showed that two more of the Death Eaters had escaped; most likely they'd apparated. There was blood that showed they'd been injured; with any luck at least one of them had died before he could get treatment for the venom.

"So you decided to kill them all," Moody said.

"They decided to kill themselves," the girl said calmly. "I just chose not to save them."

"Right... and then what happened?"

"I dropped some darkness powder when I saw that the Acromantulas were about to attack," the girl said. "And shoved a Christmas Cracker in that guy's mouth. I'm amazed that you guys let kids have those. I got a nice hat out of it, though."

She gestured toward the hat on her head. It was a jaunty sort of beret, colored in the Slytherin colors. Moody could see a bit of blood on the brim though. He wondered if she knew, but was choosing to wear it for the intimidation factor.

"The Acromantula killed the guys who were farther away, but didn't bother with us, probably because we were small and scrawny and they had a lot to eat. I healed up the guy I just killed, as much as I could, then I dragged him to the castle using that spell that lifts people up by one foot. I'm sure the Headmaster has told you the rest."

She wasn't afraid of Dumbledore, but she also didn't have that hero worshiping expression that a lot of the younger kids had. As a muggleborn that wasn't unusual; they didn't have a sense of who and what Dumbledore was. Moody had a feeling, though, that this girl knew exactly what Dumbledore was and it didn't bother her.

"It matches up with what the Potter kid said," Moody said, turning to Snape and Dumbledore. He'd questioned them separately, not that this would make much of a difference. They'd had at least twenty minutes to get their stories straight.

The Potter boy didn't seem like he'd be a very good liar, even though Moody knew that all kids lied. This girl, though, would lie without question.

"Send the girl outside," Moody said. "While we look at the pensieve memories."

He wouldn't trust the girl not to stab him while his face was in the pool. That was mostly true of anyone other than Dumbledore himself, but even more so of the girl.

He waited until they sent the girl out, and then he asked.

"Do you believe her?"

"I am not certain that I believe them about how they found themselves in the Forbidden Forest," Dumbledore said. "But I do believe that they met Death eaters outside."

"Oh, the man she brought back was definitely a Death Eater," Moody said. "I've got a hand picked team questioning him right now, as well as they can given the state of his jaw."

It was possible that this was the break that they'd needed. Moody was sure that there were agents in the Department, but if they could find out who, it might go a long way to restoring the balance of power. Even finding out how Voldemort was always a step ahead of them might help them find ways to ambush his people in return.

Success bred success, and the more Voldemort won, the more people flocked to his banner. Some losses would help to stem that tide, and maybe even get the higher ups in the Ministry to get up off their asses and do something.

"Let's look at the boy's first," Moody said.

The other two men glanced at each other, then nodded.

The three men plunged their faces into the pool.

Potter's memories were muddled; he hadn't seen much, and he'd been distracted by the Cruciatis, which caused all of the memories to become jagged and unreliable.

The girl's memories were clear.

The first part of the confrontation played out just as the boy had remembered, but the memories were clearer.

"Stop," Moody said. "Repeat that."

They listened to the Death Eaters again; this was before they'd discovered the children.

"Voldemort has a Seer?" Moody said. "One specific enough to pinpoint the general area of the children? That's disturbing."

"That's new," Snape said, looking pensive.

Moody scowled and turned toward Dumbledore. "Most seers aren't worth spit, but a good one can be bad in the wrong hands. Your pet seer is still here, right?"

"Sybil is right where she has always been,' Dumbledore said, "And her skills, while real, tend to be somewhat overstated."

"Look into it," Moody shook his head. "The Death Eaters already have too many advantages. We need to keep them from getting any more."

The scene continued.

It surprised Moody that the girl hadn't been more aggressive. From what he'd heard, he'd have expected her to roll into the bushes and grab the boy's wand, or to do something other than simply sit there.

Being trapped at wand point would have been enough for any other Wizard, but....

"She's waiting," he said, pointing. "Delaying. She knows that they are coming."

The girl had her eyes closed when they'd been discovered, Was that the point where she'd seen what was coming? It was an impressive ability if that was true.

Moody watched the girl while the boy was being crucioed. Most children her age would have been screaming if they'd seen their companion being tortured right beside them, especially knowing that they were going to be next.

She simply watched him dispassionately, with a slight tightening of her mouth the only sign of a reaction at all.

A moment later she was taunting them. Interrupting their plans to further torture the boy looked deliberate. He saw that realization on the faces of Dumbledore and Snape as well.

They stopped the memory again.

"She intended for them to turn on her instead of him," Snape said.

Dumbledore frowned. "Because she thought he would break?"

Was it because she knew the Acromantulas weren't ready to arrive yet? A delaying tactic? Letting the boy be tortured would have worked just as well; better in some ways, because they would have moved on to torturing her afterwards, perhaps doubling the time they had before she was killed.

It was subtle, but heroic.

Did it mean that she wasn't as bad as everything else he'd seen so far indicated that she was? Moody couldn't be sure. Even Death Eaters occasionally showed mercy, all but those who were irredeemable.

"She didn't mention the torture in her story," Moody said. "Not something that I would have expected."

The boy hadn't either, but he was a Gryffindor. He probably would have hated anything that made him look weak, especially in front of a girl.

"Perhaps she didn't think it relevant," Snape said. "She has suffered something similar before."

There weren't any records of the girl's family's murder, which was disturbing. It was possible that there were other muggleborn murders that the aurors had never heard about. The only thing that indicated there weren't was the Book and the Quill. It was easy to match known names with the dead. Why was the girl's family simply disappeared, when the others were made to look like accidents?

"Resume," Moody said.

The girl staggered a little when she was hit with the Crucio. All of her muscles were tense, but

There was no visible expression on her face, though. She didn't fall to the ground, screaming. Moody had known full grown aurors who would have been incapacitated.

Staring the man directly in the eye, the girl laughed.

It obviously wasn't a real laugh, but it was enough to disconcert her attacker, who let his wand drop. The man was obviously a fool.

"Stop," Dumbledore said. "That was most peculiar. Did it look like he miscast the spell?"

"No," Moody said grimly. "It affected her. She probably wouldn't have done as well against someone like Riddle or Bellatrix, but it shouldn't have mattered. She shouldn't have been able to push her way through the spell like that."

"She has brain damage," Snape said. He was staring at the girl, whose face was frozen mid-laugh. He looked seriously disturbed. "It was scans of her brain that allowed the Cruciatis cure to be developed."

All three men stood, staring at the scene before them. Moody turned.

His magical eye didn't give him any advantages here; these were just memories after all. But years of experience had alerted him to small details. It was an ability that had kept him alive.

"Look," he said. "In the trees."

The acromantula were in the trees, hidden. Only their eyes were visible, with an occasional limb being placed to look like just another part of the tree. The Death Eaters were facing away from them.

"She's not looking at them," Moody said; the girl's gaze was on the Death Eater, but there was something about her expression, a minute change. It was almost a look of anticipation.

It fit with what he'd heard about her; how she'd often know things without looking. The Death Eaters should have seen her expression and realized that something was happening. They were likely too astonished by her shrugging off the Cruciatis.

Laughing had to have been a calculated gesture. It had convinced the Death Eater to stop his attack, and it had gotten all eyes on her.

Dumbledore gestured, and it began again.

"This isn't a chance I normally give people," the girl said. "But I'm feeling generous. Run away and I will let you live, for today at least. If you don't, then I will kill you. I'll kill your friends, your families. I will destroy everything you've ever loved."

"You won't be going anywhere," the Death Eater sneered. "It's not worth bothering with you."

He still thought he had the upper hand. It made Moody feel a little better; if this was the quality of agent Voldemort was hiring then the Ministry still had a chance.

Not that there weren't a lot of aurors who were just as stupid.

The certainty the girl had.... was it all a bluff, or was she actually the type who would try something like that?

"I warned you," The girl said.

The image froze. The girl was already in the process of dodging to the left. The powder was on its way to the ground.

"Darkness powder.... good stuff," Moody grunted. He liked it in particular because his magical eye could see through it.

The acromantula were already dropping from the trees toward the unsuspecting backs of the Death Eaters.

It looked like the girl was telling the truth. It was amazing.

"She led them right into the trap," Moody said. "Kept them talking long enough so that they were all in the right place, and then she executed it."

Everything went black and they could hear screams and see dim flashes of green light. Moody had already explored the scene. He'd seen the tracks, and this memory and the locations of the flashes matched up with what he'd seen perfectly.

He could heard the sounds of two men apparating.

Watching the girl unflinchingly stopping the bleeding on a man whose face was half blown off was interesting. Seeing her lift him in the air with magic by one food and then drag him behind her like a muggle wagon was interesting as well.

"Did the girl just suggest that bringing him in might keep them from getting House points taken away?" Moody asked.

Snape nodded. He was staring at the scene in front of him, his face expressionless.

"I suspect that Miss Hebert does not care about House points at all," Dumbledore said quietly. "Yet she chose to leave us with this memory."

"Trying to distract us from something?" Moody asked. "Or maybe she was taunting us."

"What will the Ministry's position be on this?" Dumbledore asked, staring at the scene frozen in front of them.

"Exactly what the girl wants, I suspect," Moody said. "We're going to cover it up. It's Christmas so most of the students aren't around. Warn the boy not to talk about what happened. I doubt you'll have to tell the girl."

"I think that would be best for the school," Dumbledore said, nodding. "And the country. Were people to know that Tom was preparing for an attack on the school, there would be a widespread panic."

"They were just scouting," Moody said. "But I think that it would be best if you continue to upgrade the school's defenses. We need to think about what comes next."

"I think Tom might attribute this to his men's incompetence," Dumbledore said. "But I fear that this will have aroused his interest in the girl."

"If they come in force against the school, what will you do?" Moody asked.

"I am not helpless," Dumbledore said. "This school is safer than anywhere else in Britain for the students, and I will continue to make it so. Unfortunately, we live in a world where no place is truly safe. The students would be less safe at home."

Moody nodded.

"I've got a Death Eater to interrogate," he said. "I'm assuming that you'll take care of our two pint-sized heroes."

"I am uncertain who is more at fault," Snape admitted. "Miss Hebert is dangerous, but not foolhardy. The boy on the other hand..."

"He's a Gryffindor," Moody said. He chuckled. "What do you expect... he's the spitting image of his father."

Snape's expression turned sour.

"Both of them shall receive adequate punishments," Dumbledore said. "I would like to accompany you to the interrogation. Perhaps we will finally be able to take steps to win this battle of attrition."

Moody nodded shortly, and they both left Snape alone with his thoughts.1834ShayneTJun 23, 2019View discussionThreadmarks LilyView contentShayneTJun 27, 2019#13,633"Twelve Death Eaters are in custody," Hermione said. "And three safehouses destroyed."

She'd barely gotten off the train, and all she wanted to talk about was the same thing everyone else was talking about. Nothing else had been making as much news over the past week. Rita Skeeter had apparently been run ragged along with her coworkers.

Apparently Moody was better at getting information that I'd thought. I suspected that the Ministry didn't actually know that there was a surviving Death Eater at all; otherwise his companions in the government would have been trying to spring him.

More likely the Death Eater was at some kind of black site, being drained of every last thing he knew through enhanced interrogation. I doubted that they were torturing him, not when they had access to truth potions and mind reading.

If Voldemort was smart, he was going to have to retreat for a while. He'd need to reorganize and use a cell structure for his organization, like other terrorist groups, instead of a top down plan. Agents couldn't reveal knowledge they had never had.

If I were him, I'd be obliviating my entire organization, starting from the bottom up, making sure that only the leaders knew who else was in the organization. Of course, that ran the risk that spies could infiltrate more easily, but there were costs to every strategy.

"That's great," I said. It really was. "I really appreciated the gift you gave me. I'm sorry I didn't get you yours before you left."

"You didn't have to," she said.

"I really did," I said. "It meant a lot to me."

I handed her the package.

I'd had to ask McGonagall to transfigure wrapping paper for me during my detention with her. None of the professors had been overly critical during my detentions, even when Potter and I had claimed that we'd gotten lost and didn't remember where we'd slipped into the secret passage.

I suspected that Dumbledore knew better, but he didn't know that actual truth, because the Monster was still in the basement, alive, at least according to the bugs that I sent down there.

"It's not much," I said. "They didn't let me out so I couldn't buy anything."

She gasped as she pulled out the handkerchief I'd made.

Given that I'd only had a week, and I'd had to make things for several people, it wasn't a large handkerchief.

Some of the spiders in the castle made golden webs. They weren't Golden Orb Spiders; those were native to Madagascar and the climate was all wrong for them. These were more hardly and resilient than those.

There weren't as many of them as the others, and so I'd had to use the golden thread to weave Hermione's name in the otherwise white cloth.

It was a risk giving her spider silk; I certainly wasn't going to give one to Snape. However, I was reasonably certain that neither she nor Neville would reveal anything that I asked them not to.

It wasn't obvious that the handkerchiefs were anything other than ordinary cloth anyway. They were abnormally tough, but Hermione didn't seem like the kind to try to rip her handkerchief.

"You did these?" Hermione asked. "Did you use the spells in Maergaret's Homemaking guide?"

"I didn't use spells," I said.

I carefully didn't say that I didn't use magic, because that would be a lie. As far as I knew, my insect control ability was magically based. Lying to other people was ok; even lying to Hermione if it was necessary. Lying about this would be wrong.

"You did this yourself?" she gasped, looking back at the Handkerchief. "How long did it take you? When did you do it? It must have taken ages!"

A moment later she was hugging me, while I stood awkwardly.

"I wasn't expecting anything from anyone," I admitted. "Not this year. Getting something on Christmas Day was a total surprise."

She grinned, letting go of me.

"So did you have a good Christmas?" she asked.

"It had its moments."

My conversation with Moody had not been followed up on. I assumed it was because the story had never gotten out into the Ministry proper. Otherwise I would have been inundated with people making accusations about me luring the Boy-Who-Lived out into the woods to be killed, no matter how nonsensical that was.

Moody had presumably been smart, keeping it to a small group that he trusted implicitly.

Although I'd spent much of the rest of the week under close observation, I'd had my bugs working on the secret passages. I'd found a passage that led up to the abandoned girl's bathroom; I still hadn't figured out how to open it.

I didn't tell her about what had happened with the Death Eaters. Hermione was still a little high strung, and facing actual Death Eaters might have given her nightmares.

It had surprised me how well the Potter boy had taken it all, despite literally being tortured. It hadn't lasted long, but I'd seen adult men who'd had more obvious psychological effects. Maybe he was just resilient, or maybe, like me he had a past that didn't make it seem quite as bad.

That was the disturbing idea. The general perception was that the boy had lived a charmed life despite being an orphan, hidden away from Wizarding society.

Comments he'd made during our tutoring sessions had made me think otherwise.

As we were walking down the hallway, I lowered my voice.

"Have you ever heard about a creature like a giant snake that kills things by looking at it?"

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"I came across some legends about something like it, and I'm interested," I said casually. "Maybe you could look into it and see what you can find out?"

"And what would you do with something like that if you found it?" she demanded.

I still hadn't decided, actually. The thing seemed to be sleeping in its chamber below the castle, which made sense given that it was winter. I wasn't sure whether it was cold blooded or not; its breath had been warm after all. But a lot of creatures hibernated in winter.

It was a good strategy for reducing caloric needs at a time when calories were scarce. The problem was figuring out just how many calories a thing like that would need. I'd once read that male African Elephants needed 70,000 calories a day. If they'd been carnivorous, that would translate into over a hundred pounds of meat a day.

When the thing awoke fully, would it need the equivalent of a full person a day to survive? Just how vicious was it? Those were questions that I needed answered before I decided whether to kill it, or use it as an ally.

"Get it some sunglasses and ride it into battle?" I said, grinning a little.

She stared at me, and then laughed.

"Where would you attach the sunglasses?" she asked. "Snakes don't have ears."

"Magic," I said knowingly.

It wasn't even a lie. If the snake could be an ally, we'd have to eventually see it in the light, and that meant that there had to be a way of neutralizing its gaze. Killing allies would make it worse than useless in the fight that was coming.

Our detentions were over with; the last thing Dumbledore needed was for people to ask what we'd done to get detentions over the Holidays. He'd given us a slap on the wrist, really. I suspected that he'd have preferred to have awarded us points, except that Moody and the few others in the know expected differently.

Should it get out that I'd endangered the Boy-Who-Lived, it wouldn't look good politically if people knew that I'd been rewarded instead of punished. The punishment had been almost pro-forms; I hadn't been bothered by it at all.

Potter had seemed to understand too. We'd endangered ourselves, after all, even if not intentionally.

"Harry Potter is joining our group," I said casually.

"What?" Hermione asked. "Why?"

"I've spent some time with him over the holidays. I think he'd be a good fit," I said. "And given the circumstances, he's the only Half-Blood that's at much at risk as us muggleborn. He's practically one himself; he was raised by Muggles and didn't know anything about the Wizarding world until shortly before he came here, the same as us."

Hermione frowned.

"You'd have though the Ministry would have taken better care of him than that; after all, he's a national treasure."

"He's a boy," I said. "The same as any other. In some ways, he's had it worse than we have."

"Worse than you?"

"I knew my parents," I said. "And they loved me. That goes a long way to keep you from turning bad."

"And you think he's at risk from that?" she asked.

"I think he's at risk of splatting like a bug on a windshield," I said. It was a reference that a lot of purebloods wouldn't have got, but Hermione did.

She pursed her lips.

"Can he keep the meetings secret from everybody, even his friend Ron Weasley?" she asked.

She had a point. Gryffindors tended to be obsessed with looking brave and with fame. That made them more likely than people from other Houses to want to talk about things, especially if it involved their accomplishments.

The younger Weasley boy seemed fun loving, but he probably didn't have the motivation to join our group. Worse, he seemed prejudiced against Slytherin. While that was actually justified, I wasn't sure that he could look past my inclusion in the group.

"I already let him know what would happen if he did," I said.

I left the implicit threat hanging; actually what I'd told him was that I'd tell Snape about the Monster in Hogwarts basement. He and Snape had never gotten along and he was certain that the man would cut the snake up into potion parts just to spite him.

No, Potter wouldn't be talking to the Weasley boy. Whether he'd be smart enough not to be followed was entirely a different matter. I had some plans to deal with that.

The longer we went on, the greater the chance that we were going to be discovered. It had been a miracle that we hadn't been discovered already. The smartest way to deal with that would be to go public with it, in a way that was socially acceptable.

"I'm thinking that if we should get discovered, we should claim to be starting an underground dueling club," I said.

"Oh?"

"And maybe we should turn it into a legal one eventually," I said. "Or maybe it would be better to start one in advance, and make sure nobody knows we're the ones who did it?"

After all, there might be some people who would boycott it just because it was related to me. If the idea seemingly came from a professor, things might go better.

"Won't that mean that everyone else will get better as fast as you?" Hermione asked.

I gave her a look, and she chuckled sheepishly.

The real enemies weren't the students in this school;; it was the Death Eaters. Getting better in relation to them was the important thing. Still, it showed that she was starting to think strategically. Apparently I was rubbing off on her.

"It's fine sparring with the Weasleys, but you learn better when you have a lot of different styles to fight against. Even for the people who are too good for us, we could learn by watching them fight."

I felt myself getting enthusiastic.

"We could probably even get Travers or Snape to supervise," I said.

"Professor Flitwick was a dueling champion," Hermione said primly. "Just because he's small, you shouldn't forget him."

She still had some house pride. Was that a good thing? I didn't know.

"Do you think people would go for it?" I asked hesitantly. I'd probably be able to convince the muggleborn, assuming I was able to convince them of the danger they and their families were in, but the rest of the students were a lot less likely to join.

"For the chance to fight you and not get stabbed to death?' Hermione shook her head. "Any wizard with an ounce of pride would jump at the chance to join. Of course, there's a lot of lazy duffers at this school."

"Well, you'll never be able to get everyone," I said.

There were always some people who refused to defend themselves, either out of fear or a belief that they weren't going to be the ones affected. Those people wouldn't be useful anyway. Troops who broke and ran left their comrades in a worse situation than if they'd simply never been there at all.

You could plan for a lack of numbers, but a lack of conviction was harder.

I had an ulterior motive for this as well. It was possible that this war against Voldemort might be a drawn out thing; if it was, having a populace who didn't know how to defend themselves was going to be a serious impediment.

Whether Voldemort or the Ministry won, it was possible that either side might turn against me, in which case I was going to need an army. I would need a group of people who were loyal to me, people who were used to listening to me no matter how young or girlish I looked.

Voldemort had sent people to my home in order to kill me and Harry Potter.

It was a violation of the rules that I'd mostly lived by since I was fifteen. The unwritten rules didn't really mean anything; they'd been a way to keep parahumans from killing each other before they could be thrown into the grist mill that was the endbringers.

Yet it bothered me in a fundamental way.

He'd come to my home and he'd tried to have me killed. That made it personal.

Before I'd been fighting one of his minions, in a fight that had been petty and impersonal. This had been ordered by the big man himself, which took him from a distant, impersonal project to something more immediate.

The fact that his bases were being overrun was probably going to make me a somewhat bigger priority,

I doubted that it would be soon, but sooner or later he would be coming for me. At the very least I needed to be training harder. Having people to watch my back would be even better.

"Who should we ask first?" I asked. "Snape, Travers, or Flitwick?"

"Start with Flitwick," Hermione said. "He likes you."

She was right; I suspect that Flitwick saw something of himself in me. He was a creature of two worlds, having to prove himself to a Wizarding population that looked down on him just for what he was. He'd probably become a dueling champion to rub their noses in the fact that their pureblood superiority was pure idiocy.

Also, Flitwick respected competence. In that way he was like Snape, although he was less harsh with people who weren't.

We'd managed to keep Neville's disasters to a minimum, and I suspected that Snape knew we were working with him; he'd backed off of him a little, and the boy had been doing better. It didn't make Snape warm or fuzzy by any means; he was still acerbic.

He was the opposite of Mr. Gladly in a way. Gladly had wanted to be liked by all the students, and he'd bent over backwards to make that happen.

Snape almost seemed to try to push the students away.

I wasn't sure whether this was because he genuinely disliked children, which I suspected was at least somewhat true, or whether it was because as a double agent he couldn't afford to get attached to anyone.

Voldemort presumably had spies among the student population, and anyone Snape favored would make a perfect hostage for his loyalty.

Make a mistake large enough to make Voldemort doubt him, but not enough to eliminate his usefullness as an agent? Use someone he loved as a whipping boy.

It was a lot like that threat I'd made to the Death Eaters. I'd been bluffing, of course. I wasn't going to go after innocent women or children, although it was possible that their families might be following the same path they were.

Voldemort, though, wouldn't hesitate.

"All right," I said. "We'll talk to Flitwick."

I still needed to give Snape my gift. It was a small carving of a Lily.

I'd thought about making a rose; giving him a gift with thorns seemed appropriate. But the romantic meaning behind something like that was a little creepy. I'd seen a book in his office about the meanings of flowers.

Lilies were about purity and innocence. I suspected that he would like the irony of me giving it to him.

I'd created it by taking a branch dropped from the Whomping Willow, and using the cutting spell to carve away at the wood a piece at a time. It had taken a lot of work, but given the gift he'd given me, I suspected that it was worth it.

Cheating a little by having my insects sit on the outside of a real lily wasn't something I felt bad about. It had been like I was sculpting from feel, and unlike a normal sculpture, when I make a mistake, I could use magic to repair it.

The final result had been something I was proud of. I had one more detention with him, and I planned to let him know that I'd cut the wood myself.

After that, I'd have my talk with Flitwick, and maybe we could get the ball rolling.Last edited by a moderator: Jun 30, 20191512ShayneTJun 27, 2019View discussionThreadmarks GiftsView contentShayneTJul 3, 2019#13,743"What is this?" Snape asked. He looked wary at the small, brightly colored box on his desk. McGonagall had taken an almost vicious delight in making the wrapping paper as bright and gaily colorful as possible.

"Your Christmas present," I said. "I know it's a couple of weeks late, but it took me a while to make it."

I'd already given my gift to Neville, another handkerchief like I'd given Hermione. Potter I'd given some Wizard cards. I hadn't seen Draco yet.

Staring at the box as though he thought it held a severed head, Snape looked back up at me. "I do not require gifts from students."

"That Foe-glass you gave me was kind of a big deal. I like to pay people back."

He was silent for a moment, and then he smirked.

I'd certainly paid Voldemort back; the fallout from that debacle was still being felt all through the Wizarding world. It was a sign of just how small the Wizard population was that the deaths of less than a platoon's worth of men had such an outsized impact.

I shrugged, and held the box out to him. Although I was pretending to not care about his opinion of the gift, I'd put a lot of work into it. Having him reject it was going to irritate me.

He opened the box cautiously, looking as though he wanted to use his wand to check it for traps. He didn't, though, for which I gave him props.

"What is this?" he asked.

He was staring at the wooden lily as though it was a rattlesnake in his hand, a combination of horror and apprehension on his face. His entire body was tense for some reason.

"I made it myself," I said. "With a cutting spell."

"What flower is this supposed to be?" he asked, and there was a strange edge to his voice. It was almost as though he was ascribing some meaning to the flower that I hadn't meant to give it. I'd looked through his flower book; had I made a mistake?

"A lily," I said cautiously. "It's a symbol of purity."

He was silent for a long moment, staring at the flower with a look that showed a sudden, old sorrow. For just a moment he looked as though he had aged ten years, but then he straightened up.

"I know what it is," he said tersely. "Who told you?"

"Told me what?" I asked. For once my confusion was genuine.

He was silent for a moment. He studied my face, as though he was looking for any hint of deception. For once, I met his gaze unflinchingly.

"I find myself beginning to believe that you just know more than just about things that put you in danger," he said finally.

I shrugged. I still wasn't sure what this was all about, but I'd apparently stumbled onto a sensitive subject. I'd noticed that the pages in his book talking about lilies were more worn than the other pages; I'd assumed that meant that they were a favorite of his. Perhaps I'd been wrong.

"This...must have taken time," he said. He stared at it. "The cuts are very precise."

"I'm getting good at cutting things," I said brightly. "And it was good practice for later. And I wanted to do something nice for you."

"It is not your place to be... nice," he said. "And it could be dangerous for both of us for you to be seen giving me gifts. There are individuals who would see you dead, people who I am forced to interact. It would go poorly for both of us for this to be discovered."

I rolled my eyes at him.

"I wouldn't give this to you in front of anyone else," I said. "I'm not an idiot."

"You are somewhat less of a dunderhead than your classmates," he admitted reluctantly. "But you are not an adult. Children sometimes make foolish mistakes."

"So do adults," I said. "They join up with people they never should have and get involved with a bad crowd."

"My tolerance for your impudence is not unlimited," he said. "Some conjecture is not simply dangerous to you, but to me."

"They sent six Death Eaters to kill me," I said. "Here. You know that I'm not like other kids. I'm not going to lay down and die. If they kill me, I'm going to take as many of I can with them."

The faintest ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. It was so faint that I could have been mistaken that it even existed. Was that approval, or was he enjoying the thought of what I might do to his Death Eater buddies?

"Please attempt not to drag others along with you," he said. He was silent a moment. "Some enjoy living and do not have a Gryffindor-like tendency to throw themselves into danger."

"I don't do that!" I protested. "Danger throws itself at me! It's like I'm a magnet for trouble."

"On that we can both agree," he said.

"I blame the hat."

Staring at me for a moment, he nodded.

"The Sorting Hat is beholden to no one," he said. "It is an artifact of a bygone age. It is as old as the oldest of the ghosts in Hogwarts, and is possibly one of the oldest minds in the world."

I hadn't done a lot of research on ghosts; although their use as spies was obvious, I lived in a castle full of portraits that served the same purpose. They couldn't damage me physically, and they couldn't take over my mind, so I'd preferred to focus on more immediate concerns.

"I spoke with the hat," he said. "Questioned its choice. It told me that its mandate was not just to do what was good for the individual student, but what was good for the school and for all of Wizarding Britain. It thought that you would be an agent of change."

I shook my head.

"I don't want to be an agent for change. I'm tired of all of that; why can't I simply move on into obscurity."

"I fear you would find obscurity to be rather boring," he said. "You have chosen the only path that is in your nature."

I looked at the lily. What did it mean to him, really?

"Your Dark Lord won't win," I said. "He's too petty and short sighted. Someone like Grindlewald might have had a chance, but Tom is no Grindlewald."

"You don't know what you are talking about," he said stiffly.

He'd once fallen for Voldemort's line.

"He's got vision and determination," I said. "Unwavering conviction. People mistake that for charisma. Everyone wants to be significant; most people channel that into work, or family, or achievement."

"And you know this at eleven, because?"

I ignored him. "People who feel that they can't do that, it's easy to tell them that they deserve better, because of their race, or their gender, or their religion. People like that, all you have to do is tell them that an enemy is attacking their group, and they have to defend it. That gives them permission to use violence."

I'd studied radicalization, especially in reference to the Fallen. They'd worshiped the Endbringers, and while they hadn't been anything nearly as dangerous as the Slaughterhouse Nine, they had been fanatics.

"Get a group of them together, and they will feed on each other. Violence begets violence."

He was staring at me.

"You've researched how to become a Dark Lord," he said. There was an incredulous note in his voice.

"I've read between the lines," I said. "And if you win, then you aren't a dark lord. You're just Minister for Magic, or the Emperor or whatever."

"No one would accept a muggleborn dark lord."

"You never know until you try," I said, grinning at him.

"You just have to find the right leverage. You win by taking existing prejudices and widening them. Tell them you know how the world really is. Make them think they can make a real change. Ultimately the only thing that changes is who's in charge. They'll tell you that you are better than everyone else. If something bad happens to you, it's not your fault; it's the others."

His lips tightened. Had Voldemort used some of those tactics against him? Was I essentially calling him a fool a sap? I didn't mean it that way.

"I'm not planning to become a Dark Lady," I said. "That's a whole lot of work I really don't want to be bothered with. Have you considered running for Dark Lord?"

"What?" he asked, startled.

I suppressed my urge to laugh at the look on his face. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Hadn't the thought of taking over ever occurred to him? He might not have Voldemort's sheer power, but he was at his side constantly.

Even Hitler had generals who had wanted him dead.

"You've got the look already," I said. "All it would take was giving the right people a little... push. Make people believe that what you're offering is better than what the Death Eaters or the Ministry is offering."

He regained his composure. "My position is precarious enough, as apparently you seem to know. I would prefer to keep my head, instead of having the entire Wizarding world after it."

"Well, if you change your mind let me know. Enjoy the present," I said.

Before he had a chance to either thank me or give me detention for some weird reason, I turned and left.

Marching up into the Slytherin dorms, I headed toward the boys stairs. There were no protections on those to prevent the girls from entering, which I thought rather stupid, really. Given the nature of teenagers, it was surprising that there wasn't an explosion of teen pregnancies every year.

Maybe there was a section in the syllabus where the boys and girls were separated and we were given a lecture on contraceptive magics. Likely it was in the restricted section. Maybe it wasn't, and I just hadn't bothered to look it up.

After all, it wasn't something I was going to have to worry about for a good, long while.

It didn't take long for me to find Malfoy. He'd just returned from the holidays with his family, and he was the only one in the common room.

"Malfoy," I said. "We need to talk."

The look of apprehension on his face was amusing. How much had he heard from his father, who was likely in contact with their master? In retrospect, I likely could have discovered whose parents were active Death Eaters simply by their reactions in the aftermath of my adventure in the Forbidden Forest.

Those who didn't react differently were at the very least not being kept in the loop by their parents. Those who were probably were acting as spies for their parents anyway.

Deciding that I would watch everyone around me closely over the next few days, I pushed forward.

"I wanted to thank you for your gift," I said.

The look of relief on his face was palpable.

"I brought you a gift as well," I said, pulling the brightly colored box from behind my back.

The look of anxiety on his face was suddenly back.

What was it with these people? Why did they assume that if I was giving them a gift that it contained some sort of hidden trap? Didn't they know that I tended to be more direct when I intended to move against someone?

He took the gift gingerly.

As I watched, he carefully opened the gift. As he opened the box, I watched his face carefully.

Snape wasn't the only one I'd made a statuette for. I'd put effort into this one; it was a carving of an acromantula, made up as a pendant.

His face paled; I was right that he'd been informed about what had happened. I'd assumed that the chess set was a message from his father. In a way this was my message back to him.

It was a message that what had happened wasn't a coincidence, that the deaths of the Death Eaters had been planned.

People like Malfoy respected strength. The question was whether or not he would share this message with his master, or whether he would keep it to himself.

That would give me a measure of his loyalty; it would tell me whether I actually had an opportunity to turn him toward me, or whether I was barking into the wind.

Voldemort ruled by fear.

How would he deal with this defeat? It made him look bad, but it was being concealed by the Moody.

The series of defeats they were suffering was more damaging than the initial loss, though. There had been other Death Eaters captured, although some of them had escaped already. Undoubtedly this was because some of them were released either by people who were sympathizers in the government, or by people who were controlled by magic.

"What is this? He asked.

"A gift," I said. "And a reminder."

He understood what I was saying immediately. He looked at it more closely.

"This wasn't transfigured. How did you make it?"

"With the cutting charm," I said. "It was good practice for the future."

I didn't smile when I said it, not like I had with Snape. He paled a little. There were more than one kind of message, and he was bright enough that he got it.

It likely boggled his mind that I would have expended this much effort just to make a point. In truth, it had been my proof of concept before I'd worked on Snape's lily. I was very familiar with the shape of spiders, after all.

The spider was actually almost as good as the lily. I'd made fewer mistakes because I'd used actual spiders as models, and because my familiarity with it had made it relatively easy. I'd made some mistakes, but I'd repaired them. It was a nice piece of work overall.

The fact that it reinforced his idea of me as slightly crazy was only a bonus.

"I've decided to make this my symbol," I said. "In honor of…well, I guess you might know."

"Is it true?" he asked in a low voice, looking around.

There was no one around us, and there were no portraits in the Slytherin common room. This was by design, as Slytherins more than those in other houses did not like being overheard while they were making various plans.

My bugs confirmed that there were no invisible watchers, either, at least not any they could hear of smell.

Wizards using invisibility was common; controlling their sound was less common but not unheard of. I doubted that most of them would think about masking their smell. I had some bugs who had acute senses of small, and this was something I was habitually doing now.

I had no intention of being surprised by invisible attackers in the bath, not again.

"Are you asking if Potter and I decided to take a walk out in the forest?" I asked.

If anything, his face paled even further. That was impressive given that his complexion was already pale to begin with.

"I'm not confirming anything," I said. "But if it was true, what would that mean for you?"

"How did you know?" he asked.

"I know a lot of things," I said. "The question is what you intend to do about it."

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Use your head," I said. "Keep your eyes open. Consider who it would be wise to be loyal to; someone that you may never meet, or someone who has the ability to make a real difference in your life."

He looked conflicted.

"You don't understand," he said. "What being disloyal means. It's not just what they do to you; it's what they do to your family."

"And you think I'm different?" I asked.

"I think you go after people who go after you," he said. "But you aren't cruel."

He'd obviously been watching me carefully; more carefully than I'd thought. Obviously, I'd made a big impression on him.

"No one says that loyalties have to be obvious," I said. "Sometimes it is good to keep your true loyalties to yourself."

He frowned.

"No one says you have to openly ally yourself to a mudblood," I said. "But there are little things people can do to help. There's a difference between being obvious like a Gryffindor, and subtle like a Slytherin."

His look turned considering.

"I've looked your family up," I said.

After my encounter with Malfoy senior, I'd been interested in what I could learn, mostly about his history, but Wizards were very interested in family histories.

"They've become successful by knowing which way the wind blows and turning their sails in that direction. They started with nothing, and over time they became one of the richest houses in Wizarding Europe."

"The third richest," he said.

"It's smart," I said. "And that's all I'm asking now. Be smart, watch which way the wind blows, and do what you have to do to keep yourself and your family safe."

He frowned and after a moment he nodded.

I stepped back, and I smiled.

We shook hands.1681ShayneTJul 3, 2019View discussionThreadmarks KingView contentShayneTJul 5, 2019#13,845"A dueling club?" Flitwick looked surprised.

"I just thought that it was a waste," Hermione said. "Hogwarts has a dueling champion as a professor, and we aren't taking advantage of it? It's an unused resource."

I was letting Hermione make the pitch for multiple reasons. First, he was her Head of House.

Second, although her connection to me was well known, it was better that the request didn't come from me. It would give us a measure of plausible deniability. Flitwick was sure to be questioned about who had originated the idea, and I wanted him to be able to be honest about it.

While the man had many sterling qualities, an ability to lie didn't seem like one of them.

Of course, that might simply mean that he was a better liar than everyone else. The best liars cloaked their lies in truth, giving them a aura of respectability.

"I hadn't thought…" Flitwick said. "Do you think that people would be interested?"

"I've asked around," Hermione said. "I thought there wouldn't be a point in bringing it up to you if nobody was interested. There are a lot of Gryffindors who would like a chance to show off. The Ravenclaws think it's an interesting idea. I'm sure we can get the Hufflepuffs to come around."

She didn't say anything about the Slytherins; we hadn't canvassed them for multiple reasons.

For one thing, we weren't sure that we wanted to empower people we might be facing later. Secondly, those who chose to join the dueling club on their own would be those who were probably more open minded.

After all, this was going to be a club in which mudbloods were going to be participating. The pureblood hardliners would likely refuse to participate, unless they saw it as an opportunity to hurt mudbloods with impunity. Those we'd find ways to weed out.

The ones who remained would be those who were willing to overlook their pureblood prejudice, which meant that they weren't so firmly entrenched in Voldemort's camp. That would give me an opportunity to know who I might eventually suborn.

The only way that things were going to change in the Wizarding world was if we could change hearts and minds. One of the problems with the Wizarding world was that people lived twice as long as ordinary muggles.

Even worse, they remained active for much longer than muggles. Dumbledore was over a hundred, and he was busier than any three people. There were wizards who were in their sixteenth decade who were still out and working.

It had the effect of concentrating power in the hands of those who were old, and this meant that ideas that had long since died off in the muggle world were deeply entrenched.

The best chance to change things was to change the minds of the children. New ideas spread in Hogwarts would propagate out, and they would last potentially for two centuries.

There would never be another opportunity to have as much of an impact as right here, and right now. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot in the way of political capital.

I'd been focused only on survival for months now, but if I was going to be successful, I needed to do more than that. I needed to be proactive, and work at changing the situation that was making my life so hard in the first place.

This was the world I was forced to live in, and so making it someplace that was pleasant to live was only going to make my life easier. Assuming that I wasn't murdered in the meantime, there was a chance that I was going to have to spend the next two hundred years living here.

Spending that time living with a group of racist assholes was only going to make my life miserable.

Changing their minds wasn't going to be easy, though. As I'd told Snape, Hitler had preyed on preexisting prejudices, riding them to create the world he'd wanted. Voldemort was doing the same thing.

That was the easy way.

Actually, changing what people believed was a lot harder. It was going against the grain, and it took a lot more groundwork. Furthermore, it wasn't the sort of thing you could just throw in people's faces.

People would fight back against that.

Accusing them of being racists simply made them stop listening to you. Once people had made up their minds, it was very difficult to get them to change it. People loved being right, and even more, they hated being wrong. When they were confronted with the idea that they were wrong, they tended to resist and double down on the original idea.

When people had anecdotal evidence that they were wrong, they often ignored it. There was a tendency to remember the things that confirmed what you believed and to deny the things that did not conform.

Sometimes people went through mental gymnastics to keep their beliefs.

Muggleborn weren't good at magic but Taylor Hebert was?

Then that meant that something was unusual about Taylor Hebert. Maybe she was some sort of mutant, or maybe she wasn't really a muggleborn at all. Wizards weren't always discriminating in their entertainments with muggles after all.

The dueling club would help because it wouldn't just be me.

Hermione would be decent; I'd made sure that she had a leg up with our study group. I suspected that there would be other muggleborns who were anxious to prove that they weren't duffers.

We'd all heard the whispers after all, and I'd seen the looks on the faces of those muggleborns who'd heard them. We'd all heard the jokes that were whispered when people thought we weren't listening. Sometimes the jokes were made deliberately in earshot; far enough that people could pretend to be appalled if we said anything.

It didn't happen much around me, for obvious reasons, but it happened to the others. I suspected that this was creating an undercurrent of anger. It would eventually lead to problems further down the line. Right now, the muggleborn were too afraid to do anything, but people would eventually find ways to repay the constant insults they were being given.

I blinked as I realized Flitwick was speaking again.

"I never realized you had such an interest in dueling Miss Granger," Flitwick said. "This wouldn't have more to do with your friend, Miss Hebert?"

The man was short, but that didn't mean he was stupid.

"Would that be so wrong?" Hermione asked. "For a muggleborn to be interested in bettering themselves? I'm sure you've heard what has been happening to us. What's wrong with making sure that we have at least a chance at defending ourselves?"

"So this would be a club just for the muggleborns?" Flitwick asked.

"I think we all need to learn to defend ourselves," Hermione said. "Pureblood, halfblood, muggleborn, in the end we're all going to have to stand up eventually. If not for this dark lord, then for the next one."

"I'm surprised that you didn't ask Mr. Travers," Flitwick said.

"You shouldn't have to be worrying about such things at your age, Miss Granger."

"Taylor talks all the time about wanting to be just an ordinary student," Hermione said. "By the same token, I think we would all wish that these were ordinary times. They aren't."

"It's a good idea," Flitwick said. "I'll speak to the Headmaster and to Mr. Travers and we'll see what we can do. I expect that I'll have an answer by this weekend."

Hermione nodded.

I wasn't anywhere in the room, of course. Being seen going in would be a tacit admission that I was behind the whole thing.

Hermione came out of Flitwick's office.

"He went for it," I said. "That means that we have a lot of planning to do."

She didn't even ask how I knew.

"Isn't it going to be up to the professors?" she asked.

"You think they won't kick it down to the people who suggested it?" I asked. "Flitwick's one of the better professors, but none of them like to take work that they don't have to take. Offering to help will buy us points too; not house points, but it makes them think better of you."

She nodded.

"Being a Slytherin is complicated," she said.

I shrugged. "It's mostly about thinking about what people want, and getting that for them. If you can do that, then you are more likely to get what you want."

It was strange; listening to the Slytherins all these months had slowly changed my way of thinking.

I'd never been particularly socially adept; when I was young, I'd lived in my own little world. When I was older, I was focused, first on the bullying, and then on my career as a supervillain. Later I'd been focused on saving the world.

Emma had always been the one who'd been focused on being popular. She'd paid attention to what was in style, to who was interested in what. Being popular took as much work as being good at academics. It was just a different skill set, one I'd never been that interested in acquiring.

But listening in on their conversations, I'd begun to understand things I hadn't before. Doubtlessly, the children weren't anything as skilled as their parents in the art of social manipulations. But compared to me they were much better.

Ideally, I'd get the loyalty of someone who knew more about social manipulation than I did to act as my propaganda minister. None of the people in my inner circle currently were particularly skilled in that. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to trust someone like that with my plans either; it would be easy for them to turn out to be a mole. That assumed that anyone assumed that I would be important enough to make that kind of an effort.

So far the attacks against me had been blatant and open, but I couldn't trust that this would always be the case.

Voldemort was likely busy right now with his current problems. If he thought of me at all, he'd likely have his Death Eaters send their children against me.

Most likely it wouldn't be a blatant attack; instead they'd test my supposed seer's ability. They'd try to see what its limits were, and they'd poke and prod until they found something they could give to the people who would make the actual attacks.

"What can we do?" Hermione asked.

"Look up dueling clubs and find out what the generally accepted rules are. Even if Flitwick doesn't want any help, it might give us a leg up over the others. We'll start practicing with the Weasleys so that we make a good showing when it actually starts."

**************

As we went down the passage, I was glad that Potter and I had spent a couple of weeks figuring out how to enter from the girl's bathroom. The solution turned out to be simple; parseltonque was useful as a code because it wasn't spoken by hardly anyone.

It had turned out to be the solution to several of the other secret passages in the castle, some of which turned out to not have been entered in what looked like centuries. Some of them were dangerous and others were still well preserved.

According to Hermione, what we were facing was Slytherin's monster. It was a basilisk. Given its size, it was very old; they grew throughout their lives, much like lobsters and they usually didn't age.

The ways to kill it were relatively simple; it involved using a rooster. Like lobsters, this was part of the reason that there weren't many that were very old. Otherwise this was considered a wizard killer.

"We shouldn't be doing this," I muttered.

"You want her to get hungry?" Potter asked. "She might come looking for something to eat, and that wouldn't be good."

I'd told him about the monster's size and about what I'd discovered.

A monster like this would be useful, but only if it was unknown that we had it. Given preparations, wizards could deal with it fairly easily. We were wearing blindfolds now, even though the Chamber beneath us was pitch black. The possibility that someone might turn on the lights was too strong to be ignored.

It took more walking this time; apparently this entrance wasn't directly over the chamber the way the hole we'd fallen into had been. I used bugs to keep from stumbling, although I could feel their instinctive fear of the monster within.

I could smell it now; without the distractions of the last time I could recognize the light scent of snake.

Snakes tended to have a stronger scent when they were stressed. The fact that the smell now was light was a good thing.

I could hear it now, rustling up ahead of us.

Practicing what I'd been taught, I hissed "Bringers… food, we."

Gamp's law was something that in the normal course of things we wouldn't be learning in first year. However, it had been in Maegaret's book of household spells. Apparently, wizards couldn't simply create food out of thin air; it could be summoned from elsewhere, or replicated however.

Apparently, a template was needed for something as chemically complex as food. It didn't matter if a wooden chair was off a little chemically; as long as it held most of the properties of wood that was good enough. Something that you put in your body was a lot more finicky, and small variations could lead to poisonous or otherwise disastrous results.

The books Hermione had found didn't have a lot of information about the dietary habits of Basilisks, so we had to make some assumptions.

The snake said something I could not follow, with Potter responding.

"She asked if you were stupid," Potter said. "I explained that you were just learning.

I grimaced. Having a snake think I was an idiot wasn't flattering. It had been difficult learning as much of parseltongue as I had, which was probably why most wizards didn't bother. It was probably because Speakers were rare to begin with, and so it was hard to find anyone who could speak it.

Still, I'd get better.

Pulling out the package we'd brought from dinner, I set the roast beef from dinner on the floor. I cast the spell from Maergaret's book over and over again.

A pound of roast beef became something else, a hundred, two hundred, four hundred pounds. It required multiple applications of the spell, but that didn't bother me.

Ordinary snakes could go without eating for weeks at a time; hopefully this thing was the same. I assumed that was the case; otherwise we would have heard about people and animals going missing. It was possible that the exit we'd found to the Forbidden Forest wasn't the only exit but I doubted it.

Hagrid was in contact with the centaurs in the forest; the holidays had offered several chances to talk to him, and he'd been open about the likely dangers in the forest. He'd had no inclinations about a giant snake, and presumably the intelligent denizens of the forest would have had at least some idea.

Eight hundred pounds, sixteen hundred.

The snake slithered forward, and we could hear the sounds of scales against stones. We both took a long step back, and we heard the wet sounds of food being devoured.

"Thank…." The thing said; I couldn't understand much of what else it was saying.

"She says that it hasn't eaten since the last speaker came to feed it, decades ago," Potter said. "She's not clear about how long because it's not like she has clocks down here, or a calendar."

"Can you ask her about the speaker?" I asked.

"A boy," he said. "Smelled like parchment and ink, like both of us."

"Another student?" I asked. I had an uneasy feeling that I knew who the last speaker had been.

My luck wasn't good enough for it to have been a random student. It seemed almost inevitable that Tom was the one who had done it. He'd almost certainly gone to Hogwarts like everyone else, and decades ago would have been long enough for him to have been a child.

"She didn't know his name; I don't think snakes care about those as much as humans do," Potter said.

"I have a bad feeling about that," I said. "Ask her if she's still loyal to him."

There was an exchange that I could not quite follow.

"She was put here by Slytherin," Potter said. "And she's supposed to follow the orders of the heir, who was going to be a Speaker. She thought that was the boy, but now she's not so sure."

I was going to have to work hard to make sure that the thing switched allegiances to me and Potter then. That meant feeding it fairly regularly, although it was possible that the summer break might not be terrible. It had been down here for a thousand years after all, and presumably it had spent a lot of that time sleeping.

"You are the heir of Slytherin," I said.

"What?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter whether it's true of not. I'm betting that the boy was You-Know-Who, or at least somebody that worked for him. Do you really want them in control of a giant murder snake right beneath a school with a thousand helpless students?"

He was silent for a long moment. I couldn't see his expression, of course, but I could imagine his confusion.

"I guess I am the Heir."

"If you say something long enough, eventually it might come true," I said. "We need her to work for us instead of him, and we need her loyalty."

I considered.

"It might actually be true. How much do you know about your own genealogy? I'm willing to bet that almost everyone in the Wizarding World is pretty much descended from one of the founders. There have been fifty generations between us and them, which means that everybody but the muggleborns is probably related to everybody else."

It might even apply to the muggleborns.

I'd heard theories that muggleborns were actually the descendants of squibs who had interbred with the muggle population.

It made sense to me.; presumably the wizarding gene was either a mutation, or the result of interbreeding with almost human magical species. There had been legends that Merlin was the son of a human and a demon, and maybe that was just the origin of the Wizarding race.

In either case, it was possible that it had come from a single origin, either a mutant, or a fertile half-breed.

I didn't bother telling this to Potter.

Just because the snake spoke Parseltongue didn't mean it couldn't understand English. That only occurred to me now, which was possibly a disastrous mistake.

"Parseltongue is pretty rare, though," I said. "So the odds of you being the Heir are pretty high.

He was silent for a moment.

"I've never been the Heir to anything, really."

"Well, all hail to the king," I said without irony.