Chapter 12 - W12

"I think that we should call ourselves Crucible," I said quietly.

There had been several names passed around, but all of them had been as horrible as would be expected when it was pre-teens trying to come up with them. Hermione, despite her competence in other areas had proven terrible at naming things. She kept coming up with embarrassing acronyms.

Some of the names would have been good except for my own personal history. Calling ourselves the Protectorate, or Cauldron just brought up associations in my mind that were unpleasant.

"Why's that better than Cauldron?" Ron asked.

He'd proven to be a boy of his word over the last month, doing his best to catch up with everyone else. The fact that we met three times a week while the dueling club met once a month meant that all of us were rising in the ranks. It was simply a matter of doing more work.

Hermione kept notes for us when we watched the matches between the other students. Spells used, tactics, mistakes made; she took notes both from me and from Potter, who was proving to have a tactical mind.

We then tried to use what we'd learned in our practice sessions. Sometimes the study group did actual studying; the older students didn't help us with that, considering it to be cheating, but we helped each other in the things we were weak in.

Still, Ron tended to be opinionated.

"There are two meanings to Crucible," I said. "First, it's a pot used to melt things at high heat. We are trying to meld all the houses into one cohesive whole. It can also mean a severe trial in which different things interact, creating something new. The American Marines call their final test the Crucible."

"Wasn't there an American play called that," Hermione asked. "About burning witches?"

I frowned.

Well crap.

The naming had been going nowhere, but our skills were getting a lot better. I'd been fighting multiple opponents for the past month; without my bugs it usually didn't end well for me. I was getting better though, and in the meantime, they were learning group tactics.

Working together, I suspected that they might be able to take down even adult Wizards. Against someone like Flitwick or Dumbledore they'd have been meat, but that wasn't the stick they were being measured against.

Still, although the boys worked at transmuting various kinds of furniture and I'd been teaching them about the virtues of seeking cover, our biggest limitation was that we had to work in small spaces. An ideal situation would have been for us to stage war games all through the castle.

Teaching them how to hide, to snipe and then move, that was my ultimate goal, but I still hadn't found the ideal space for that. The Forbidden Forest would have been ideal, but that would have left us vulnerable to real sniping from actual Death Eaters.

The same thing could be said of the outer grounds. I wasn't about to trust whatever nebulous defenses the castle had; they seemed to be stronger in side the castle anyway.

I'd been trying to get the Weasley Twins to transmute me a treadmill, but they'd never seen one, and they thought it was some kind of weird muggle torture device. In a way they were right.

I still couldn't run around the castle, and yet I'd proven to them that endurance was important. Out fights were taking longer and longer as our defenses got better, and sometimes the difference between winning and losing was who flagged later.

It wasn't a matter of magical power; it was simply that as you tired your reaction speed tended to slow, and in Wizarding combat, speed and accuracy were everything.

"We'll figure something out," I said. "They can't all be bad."

"School's about to end," Hermione said. "It may have to wait until next year. Has Dumbledore told you who you will be staying with yet?"

I shook my head.

"He still thinks someone will try reading my mind, and he's not ready to teach me occlumency yet."

Personally I suspected that he was afraid that having my mind entirely blank to him and Snape would be a disaster.

"I've hit up Fletcher, though," I said. "And he says he can get me a book on it before the end of the semester. He's tripling the price that he's paying in Knocturn Alley, though."

"That's highway robbery!" Hermione gasped.

"That's the black market for you," I said. "He's risking his position by moving contraband, so he deserves a profit for it. The Twins have been buying things from him too."

Some of the things they'd been buying had been for me. I suspected that Fletcher was reporting everything I bought to either Snape or Dumbledore himself, and so anything that seemed more dangerous I had to get through intermediaries.

That meant that I owed the twins favors.

They'd long since given up on the idea that their training me was a favor; we'd moved past that. They were developing a reputation as duelists in the school, and apparently that had been getting them some attention from the girls. I wasn't sure they entirely knew what to do about that, but they seemed to be enjoying it, so I wasn't going to argue.

Neville was passing Snape's class, and Hermione was learning how to be a version of me. All of my associates were benefiting from our arrangement, which was a good thing.

Even Ron was doing better at dueling. He hadn't moved up in the ranks yet, but he was reaching the top of his grade. I suspected he'd have been proud of himself if he hadn't kept comparing himself to the rest of us.

Hermione was possibly the brightest witch in her year, despite all appearances. Harry seemed to be naturally gifted in combat. The twins were two years older and gifted at causing chaos. Riggs was older than any of us.

Only Neville, Millie and Tracey were on Ron's level, and he barely seemed to notice them. He only saw us, the people he compared himself to.

Other than Ron, I was the only one who was suffering socially. People had been talking about Warrington's death; I suspected that it had taken some students a while to really process it. Many of them had taken to isolating me even more than they had before. It didn't feel like bullying; it was more like they were afraid to be around me.

It didn't bother me, really. I'd been alone for much of my life, even when people were all around me. Even before Emma had turned on me, I'd been a chatterbox, but I hadn't had many close friends.

Now I had a few friends and everyone else left me alone, and that didn't bother me much. It gave me more time to study and prepare instead of spending all of my time watching my back.

I hoped to get the book on occlumency before the end of term. It was almost certain that Dumbledore was going to put me with a Wizarding family. Not only would placing me with muggles be an almost certain death sentence, but he probably wouldn't trust muggles to handle me.

If I was staying with Wizards, then I most likely would be able to use magic. The system was designed that way nominally due to the secrecy rules, but the fact that it gave pureblood kids a leg up didn't hurt any.

Studying occulmency over the summer would let me teach it to the others next year. I had a sneaking suspicion that some of the Pureblood parents were going to be teaching their children Legilimency over the summer, and we'd need to counter that.

A child spy who was able to look into the minds of other students would know what other students' parents were telling them. My spying on people's letters was a less efficient version of that. Having several agents like that in the school would be invaluable.

I'd tried to get Fletcher to get me a book on Legilimency, but he'd told me that had been specifically forbidden by Snape. It was frustrating, but I planned on trying to get some training as soon as I could.

Sometimes I wondered if there was some sort of penalty for trying too much too fast, but I hadn't heard of anything. I suspected that most kids didn't have the emotional maturity to handle the higher level spells, and they had to be taught the basic theory of magic before they tried various higher difficulty spells.

Seeing that the others were gathering in the room, I spoke up.

"Today I want to talk about the basic strategies for entering a room," I said.

They all stared at me like I had grown a second head.

"Imagine that a Death Eater had been waiting in here, planning to kill all of you," I said. "Just walking in would have gotten you killed. There are ways to make that less likely. Can anyone think of any?"

They all frowned and they were silent for almost a minute.

"A mirror?' Hermione asked finally.

I smiled and nodded.

"And if there are a group of you, moving from hallway to hallway checking for enemies, there are ways to have one person watching to help keep everyone safe as you move forward. I'm going to show these to you today."

They'd questioned my tactical knowledge at first, but I'd managed to put them off until they'd finally learned to simply accept it.

"Let's get started," I said.

***********

"I can't believe they are putting you and Harry on the train," Hermione said.

The last month had been punctuated by increasingly vicious attacks on various Ministry officials, often in their own homes. The fact that most of these were known to be the most loyal and tenacious people in their departments hadn't been made public, but I'd learned about it from various stray comments made by Dumbledore and Snape.

Final exams had been easy for everyone. Even Ron was feeling confident, for all that he'd grumbled endlessly about having to study.

At least he'd kept up with his dueling. He'd finished as top of first year, and the rest of us had finished at the top of our respective years as well. Snape had insisted on keeping me with the fourth years, though.

"They're going to pull both of them off before the train stops, right?" Ron asked.

I was sitting in the compartment with Ron. Harry, Hermione and Neville, Millie and Tracey. Higgs and the twins were in another car, in part because there wouldn't have been room for them, and in part because the twins had their eye on a pretty pair of Ravenclaw girls. Higgs was sitting with the Slytherin Quidditch team.

I nodded.

Word had been spread that the Death Eaters had plans to kill me and Harry. The papers hadn't said anything about me at all, but they'd made a huge deal about Harry.

That had given Moody all the excuse he needed to triple the auror presence at King's crossing. Unfortunately, there was no way to find out how many of those aurors had been recruited to the other side. It was possible that this was going to end up as a bloodbath; if Voldemort had subverted two thirds of them and told them to kill the other third, this could get very ugly very quickly.

Moody had arranged for a gas explosion to seemingly happen in the station; with special charms on the exits designed to obliviate anyone who passed through them. Under the kind of heavy use they'd undoubtedly get they wouldn't last very long, but it would keep the obliviators from having to work themselves to death.

No one was yet sure whether Voldemort wanted to break the Statute of Secrecy and go to war with the muggles, or to simply rule them from the shadow. That would have seemed like a basic part of the platform to me, but it was possible that he was playing both groups off against each other.

"It still doesn't make any sense," Hermione said. "They've got people who are going to polyjuice into you... into all of us, so why have us get on the train at all?"

I suspected that the train renewed the Trace every time that we rode it, but I wasn't going to mention that to Hermione. I could be wrong after all.

"Average polyjuice potions don't last long enough," Harry said. "Or at least that's how Dumbledore explained it to me. He figures that there are kids on board who will be watching us, and telling the Death Eaters somehow."

"Probably by mirror," I said.

It wasn't like wizards were likely to be using cellular phones; I had a vague thought that they might exist in this time period, but that they were huge.

"It's an eight hour trip," Hermione said after a moment. "I guess that makes sense. They'd want people to think that we're just in here, unguarded."

"They'll apparate in once the train stops," I said.

Apparently appareling onto a moving vehicle was more disorienting than onto a stable platform. It wasn't impossible, but if they were going into combat shortly afterwards, they'd want to be at their best.

Disillusioning themselves on the train would have been the smartest thing, except that the train was packed with students; it would have been almost impossible not to be detected by someone simply bumping into them.

The whole thing made me uneasy.

I'd urged them to ambush the ambushers, but now that it was public knowledge that they were after Potter, they had to know that the aurors would be waiting. The entire thing might be a ruse to gut the aurors; if I was Voldemort, I'd have put a bomb in the station set to explode before the children arrived.

My followers would have been encouraged to show up late.

One bomb would destroy a lot of Wizarding Britain; hundreds of Wizarding parents, all of whom were in the opposing parties, and the aurors, gone in a moment.

Then I'd deny responsibility; I'd blame muggle terrorists. I'd pass new laws requiring that the orphaned children be taken in and educated by proper Wizarding families, and if I was actually against the muggleborn, well, they could disappear very easily.

There were a thousand ways this could all go wrong; the problem was that the ball was always in the attackers court. They had the element of surprise, even in a situation like this, because while we knew where they would be and when, we didn't know how they planned to attack.

Was this actually an assassination attempt on Harry?

Killing him would deal a blow to the morale of Wizarding Britain. People had built up a mythology about the Boy-Who-Lived. He'd become almost a talisman against Voldemort and his crew.

Those who'd gone to school with him knew different, but most adult Wizards worshipped him. It made Harry distinctly uncomfortable, but there was going to come a time when we needed that fame.

The Wizarding World was a sleeping giant. Most Wizards could barely defend themselves; they'd let the skills they'd learned in school atrophy, except whatever they used in their jobs.

However, I was convinced that in the same amount of time that it took to train a soldier to shoot a gun, I could train every adult wizard to become an army. It wouldn't matter how powerful Voldemort was if he faced an army of ten thousand enraged Wizards.

That was why I was worrying that he was going to go for a total kill scenario at the train station. This was the sort of operation where he ran the risk of wakening that giant. If people knew he was threatening their children, many would run away, but there were a lot who would fight. The last thing he needed was to empower his enemies, to light a fire of anger in them, or to make them brave because they were protective parents.

There was something I was missing.

The smart thing to do would be to kill Potter without hurting anyone else. That way they'd ruin the morale of the common people, but they'd claim that they had been merciful to the other children.

But killing Potter on the train station would inevitably have casualties. People would die, and most likely children would die. That ran the risk of starting the kind of war that he didn't want to start.

An uneasy feeling in my stomach, I closed my eyes and I expanded my senses outwards. It was the beginning of summer in Scotland, and the numbers of bugs had increased to the point that I had large swarms available to me.

I expanded my senses out as far as I could, looking in every direction.

It took me almost a minute; at this speed bugs kept entering and slipping out of my grasp almost before I could use their senses.

However, I tensed as I saw shadows from above. The insects had a natural fear response; usually something like that was a predator bug, but these were moving too quickly to be birds.

I'd been a fool, assuming that he'd attack the train station.

The train station was well protected and so was Hogwarts. Terrorists rarely attacked hard targets; they preferred to go after soft, easily attacked targets.

The Hogwarts Express was worse than defenseless; there were a certain number of people already on the train who would be happy in taking it over, especially if their parents told them to.

"They're going to attack the train," I said suddenly.1655ShayneTJul 18, 2019View discussionThreadmarks TrolleyView contentShayneTJul 20, 2019#14,845"How many of us can you hide under your cloak?" I asked Harry.

Although the figures above were blurred, they were still casting shadows on the ground. Undoubtedly they thought they hadn't been detected.

"Three, maybe four in a pinch," he said.

Looking around, I grimaced. There were too many of us here to protect that way.

"Ron," I said. "Go up and stay with your brothers. They'll be focusing on muggleborns, so you'll probably be all right if you keep your head down and your mouth shut. Tell your brothers what's happening, but keep it quiet. We don't want to start a panic."

He stared at me, his face white, but he nodded.

"They're in the second train car."

We were at the back of the train. Moody had wanted that because it would make attacks from other students come from only one direction. I'd already planned on that anyway, of course.

He hesitated, glancing at Harry.

"I'm going to do everything I can to keep Harry alive," I said. "But I can't do that if there are hostages all around me."

He nodded, and he was gone a moment later.

Turning to Millie and Tracey, I said, "Go and stay with Flora and Hestia Carrow. They're fairly decent. If you are questioned, don't be afraid to call me a mudblood, or psychotic... anything to make them think that you are on their side. What you are going to tell them is that you hate me and that you were forced to be my roomates.... and only tell them that if you are asked. They aren't going to have a lot of time to do this, and that means they'll be in a hurry. I doubt they'll question you very hard."

They nodded, and got up without questioning me.

"They're in the first car," I said.

That left me with Harry, Hermione and Neville.

"They're going to be after the four of us. Me and Harry for obvious reasons, Hermione because it would hurt me to lose her, and Neville because his mother has taken the cure. We can't just go and hide among the crowds."

We couldn't do it for the same reason Moody hadn't been able to keep disillusioned troops on board; the quarters were too cramped.

"We are going to have to get off the train," I said.

There were six Death Eaters coming; presumably Voldemort had assumed that without a swarm of Acromantula to protect me, I'd be easy meat. Worse, because of my dueling performance, they weren't likely to underestimate me.

There were things I could do to kill them that I didn't dare to do; there were enough kids on the train that using explosions would kill some of them; that would set the entire Wizarding world against me.

The only option was to get on the train while seeming to be on the train.

Reaching into my fanny pack, I pulled out four packets of Darkness powder. I would have the bugs drop them in the back four train cars as I was leaving. Not only would that convince the Death Eaters that I was there, but it would focus them away from the cars in the front, where our friends were.

There was a knock at the door.

The trolley witch was at the door.

"Would anyone like something to eat?" she asked.

I stood up.

"Death Eaters are about to attack this train," I said. "They are on brooms and are disillusioned. Could you please send a message to the aurors?"

She looked at me for a moment, and then her face tightened. Apparently she'd been informed of the upcoming attack, presumably for just such an attempt as this one.

She pulled out her wand, and murmured something.

Three silver cats appeared, and I felt a strange warmth just being in their presence. It reminded me a little of being around the unicorns. For just a moment I felt a surging warmth of hope, and then they were gone.

"We'll just have to see about slowing them down until help comes, won't we," she said. She put her wand to her own throat.

"ALL STUDENTS ARE TO RETURN TO THEIR COMPARTMENTS," she said. "AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED."

I'd never really looked at the trolley witch before; she'd always just been a part of the scenery. Now, though, there was something sinister about her expression.

"The train protects its own," she said. "People forget that."

A moment later she was gone.

I blinked. Somehow she'd gotten onto the roof of the train without my understanding how, and she stood there ignoring the wind. Her trolley was with her.

She looked upward, and then she pulled a pumpkin pasty from the trolley. She tossed it up in the air, and then there was a massive explosion.

I'd managed to get bugs onto the brooms of all six of the Death Eaters, and I could feel them dodging around the explosions.

The trolley witch began to throw more and more of the pasties, and they were getting closer and closer to the disguised Death Eaters.

Flashes of green light began to lash down toward the top of the train.

I could see the frightened faces of students at the window.

"We need to get out," I said. "How many people can ride a broom?"

"At our size we might be able to get three on a broom," Harry said. "But it would be slow. They'd catch up to us in no time."

"Then we need to get two of their brooms," I said. "They probably know that we're in the last car; I'm sure some of the seventh years have mirrors and would have told them. That means that we can't be here."

"Doesn't Malfoy have one of those trunks that are expandible?" Neville asked. "I heard him bragging about it the other day. You can put people inside of there."

"We can't hide in the luggage," Potter said. "They'd be looking for something like that."

"Higgs just taught us the shrinking charm, though," I said. I'd heard that shrinking a human being was complicated and dangerous, but it might be possible that people in an expanded space weren't actually inside normal space at all. There had to be a reason why Moody couldn't see inside my fanny pack.

"You want us to get inside the trunk, and then shrink it," Hermione said flatly.

I nodded.

"Would you rather face that?" I asked.

The trolley witch was incredibly fast. Somehow none of the green bolts managed to hit her. Likely it was because the spells themselves were slow, which meant that from a distance they were easy to anticipate and dodge. It was going to get harder for her the closer they got.

"Let's go, then," Hermione said.

A moment later we were making our way up the train. Along the way, I dropped bits of darkness powder.

Five cars up, we reached Malfoy's compartment.

Opening the door, we saw a group of boys huddled up the window. Malfoy whirled as he saw us.

"Give us your trunk," I said, in a voice that allowed for no argument. My wand was out and pointed at him, so that might have had something to do with his acceptance.

He pointed, and a moment later, we had the trunk down. Harry and Neville were pulling things out of the trunk, and then a moment later, Neville and Hermione were climbing into the trunk.

I closed my eyes and hoped that I wasn't about to crush one of my few friends in this world.

"Reducio," I said.

Draco's face paled even more as he stared at the trunk, now small enough to slip inside my fanny pack. Before I could worry about the implications of putting an enlarged space inside of another enlarged space, I slipped it inside.

No matter how well this worked, there was only a limited amount of air inside that trunk. It was likely that we had less than thirty minutes before they started to suffocate.

We left before the boys had a chance to say anything.

"I'm the better flyer," Harry said. "That means that you'll have to be the gunner."

I nodded.

His being the better flyer wasn't in question; people were ready talking about how he'd likely make the team next year. He flew rings around everyone else, including me.

"Our weight is going to slow things down, though," he said. "I hope you have a plan."

"Yeah," I said. "They're going to expect us to be huddled in the back. We aren't going to do that. We're going to head to the front of the train, and then we're going to attack them from behind. We only need to get a single broomstick, and then we need to keep them from knowing that we've left, for a while at least."

"That's a lot," he said.

"It can be done. Let's go."

We made our way up through several more cars before I thought we were far enough.

The Death Eaters had landed on the roof of the train, presumably because trying to fire from a broom was too unstable to get a clear shot. They were still disillusioned, but I could see their shields dealing with the exploding pastries.

I had bugs on them, and on the roof of the train, it was loud. I was going to depend on that.

Opening the door as quietly as a could, I gestured for Potter to lift me up. He grimaced as I put my shoe on his shoulder, but a moment later I was on the roof of the train.

The one disadvantage to this was that I couldn't actually tell which direction they were looking. I had bugs in their clothes and on their wands, but I couldn't see their faces or their expressions.

It didn't matter.

Crouching low and moving as silently as I could, all I could hear was the whistling of the wind and the sounds of exploding pasties.

I scuttled forward, and I reached into my fanny pack, pulling out my best knife. I'd made several by now, and this was the pinnacle of my art.

The bugs on my opponent alerted me that he was already turning; presumably I'd made a noise that had alerted him. It was too late, though.

My knife lashed out, and I hit the subclavian artery in the front of the shoulder. This had the bonus of being his wand arm, which would make it harder for him to simply use the killing curse on me.

His disillusionment vanished, and now I could see the expressionless mask staring down at me. I shoved my knife into his armpit, then stabbed him in the side of the neck.

That did the trick; blood fountained everywhere, and he stumbled and fell, sliding off the side and falling off the train.

I grabbed his broom, and I could feel the Death Eaters behind me turning; they'd seen their compatriots body flying past them ou8t of the die of their eye.

I dodged as a barrage of green light flew past me.

A moment later, I was back in the space between cars. If they were smart they'd keep some people up top while sending some others down below to trap us.

As we slipped back into the car, I said, "Hold onto the back of my shirt."

Potter complied, and as I saw the door opening all the way at the other end of the car, I send an explosion that rocked the car for a moment.

I threw darkness powder, and as soon as I did, I pulled Potter down. Green light flashed above us dimly, where our heads had been.

I scrambled forward and I opened the door to the compartment to the right. It had four Slytherin fourth years, but a quick set of stunners made short work of them. In the dark they were helpless anyway. I used some quick spellwork to lift their bodies and I arranged them to look like they were sleeping.

Pointing my wand at the window, I used a shrinking charm on it, and with a groan, the air inside the chamber was suddenly buffeted by the wind from outside. The window itself was still inside the frame, although tiny now, and likely the wind would pull it out any time.

From the way the men inside the hallway were moving, I suspected that they'd lit a Hand of Glory. My use of the Peruvian Darkness Powder was well known, and they'd have brought the counter to that. With luck it wouldn't matter.

"Up," I said, and the broom in my hand was suddenly levitating.

Harry crawled on in front of me.

"Wrap us up in your cloak," I said. "After I enlarge it."

A quick spell later, and the cloak was more like a tarp than a cloak. We both struggled with it, trying to cover not just ourselves, but the broom as well. We put the front of the cloak so that the wind would help to drape it over us. It would leave our backsides uncovered, but there wasn't a lot that we could do about that.

A moment later we were outside.

I enlarged the window, which appeared back in its frame.

"Go low," I said into Harry's ear. "Otherwise they'll be able to see us from underneath."

It wasn't really from underneath that they could see us, but from behind, but he got my meaning. We dipped own low, and from above, there was only a shadow from behind as the cloth whipped and fluttered madly behind us.

We dipped until we were only a few feet from the ground.

They were checking the compartments one by one, convinced that sooner of later they'd find one of us. The ones up top were still distracted by the trolley witch, who'd somehow managed to transform her hands into blades and was using those to deflect spells. Who the hell was she?"

"Let's get the hell out of here," I said. "Away from the tracks. Hopefully they won't know where they lost us, which will cost them time, and make us harder to find."

We stopped and floated in mid-air, I grabbed one side of the cloak to keep it from slipping away, and Harry grabbed the other. We let the train pass by us as we sat, invisible.

As we passed the compartments behind, I used my bugs to drop darkness powder in them one by one.

We only had thirty minutes before I had to pull Harry and Neville out, and we only had a single broom. I didn't know the geography of Scotland; not only was I an American, which was notorious for its lack of interest in the rest of the world, I had been educated at Winslow, which had a particularly bad educational system.

Harry was from Surrey apparently, and I really had no idea where that was either.

As we flew so low over a passing lake that I could feel the spray of water on my legs, Harry said, "This is a Nimbus 2000. I've never gotten to fly one before, but they're the fastest brooms on the market."

Apparently Voldemort hadn't wanted to spare any expense when he'd decided to murder us.

"It'll go a hundred miles an hour with one person," he said. "And the two of us probably weigh about the same as one adult."

That was likely true.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Don't you know?" he asked. "I thought you were the Seer."

"There are limits," I said irritably. "If I knew everything, I'd just murder the Death Eaters in their sleep."

"That was pretty horrible, what you did back there," he said quietly. "I never really believed the troll story until now. I thought it was just something that Draco made up."

"It was him or us," I said. "It's always been that way. Kill or be killed. You think I wanted to do that?"

We were silent for several long minutes. I was acutely aware of the fact that Hermione and Neville might be smothering inside Draco's box, but we had to get far enough away that the Death eaters couldn't find us.

With any luck, they'd waste ten to fifteen minutes searching for us on the train cars due to the darkness powder. That would put them ten to fifteen miles ahead of us, and given our broom's speed, it would make us as much as another twenty five miles away.

However, there were undoubtedly ways for them to track us.

"Find us a cave," I said.

"Right," he said.

We were above another mountain lake now.

We'd find a cave, I was sure. The only question was how long it would take them to think of writing a letter to us, and how long it would take the owl to reach us.

Would Dumbledore and company find us first, or would I have to murder a couple of more of them in a last stand?

If we survived this, I could only hope that my summer went better.1696ShayneTJul 20, 2019View discussionThreadmarks Interlude: Death EaterView contentShayneTJul 22, 2019#15,002"Did you see what she did to Nigel?" Thomas asked. He was sweating despite the wind whipping into his face.

It felt like a nightmare.

An easy job, they'd been told. Fly down to the train; the kids they were supposed to kill had been deliberately placed in the last car. Slip in, kill them, slip out. It should have been as easy as taking gold from a bowtruckle. Given that bowtruckles had no interest in gold...

Done while disillusioned, no one should have even known they were there until the Potter kid and the Terror had been found dead.

They'd have left a message for all of Wizarding Britain. The Boy-Who-Lived was a talisman, a symbol of hope to the masses. Kill him, and people would learn that there was no hope. There was only compliance or death.

Even more so, the Hogwarts Express was considered sacred ground. Having the deaths occur there would shock people. It would remind them that their own children were not safe, and if Hogwarts, the safest place in Wizarding Britain couldn't protect their children, then no one was safe, even in their own homes.

Of course, the better Wizards might be able to protect their homes with Fidelius charms, but those were very difficult, and it was rare for Wizards to be skilled enough to cast them. Furthermore, even if they did protect their homes, there was only so long they could hide there. They'd have to come out sooner or later for food.

Copying food was well and good, but it didn't preserve the original forever. Food got old and rotten, and food preservation magic was still in its infancy.

Killing two first year students should have been a task for a single Death Eater. Instead, the Dark Lord had sent six. He'd sent others to distract the aurors at the train station too six of them should have been overkill.

Instead, the Trolley Witch had been waiting for them, and she was a nightmare. They'd managed to escape mostly unharmed, due to good shields and quick reflexes, but the Terror had lived up to her name by murdering Nigel while their backs were turned.

The Killing Curse was kinder. It killed without pain, instantly and mercifully. Thomas had never held with using the Cruciatis curse like some of his peers. No matter what the muggleborn had done, it was better to put them down mercifully than to torture them.

The world would be better without them, but no one had ever said that it was necessary to be cruel.

"Shut up," Jurgen said. "They're wizarding kids. They'll screw up and use magic sooner or later, and then we'll have them."

They had agents in the Trace department; as soon as the owl was sent complaining about the use of magic, they'd finally be able to put this whole mess behind them.

Fortunately, the aurors couldn't apparate into places they didn't have a good mental image of, so wherever they ended up killing the kids it would take a while before the enemy reached them. Unfortunately, that also meant they couldn't simply apparate to the terror and kill her for what she'd done to Nigel.

There had been so much blood. He'd slipped under the train as he fell, and he'd still been alive at the time.

The look in the Terror's eyes hadn't been human either. She'd stared at them as though she could see straight through their disillusionment, and there hadn't been the slightest bit of shock or horror at what she was doing. She'd killed a pureblood as easily as Thomas might have killed a bug. It hadn't bothered her at all.

It was almost as though she didn't realize that purebloods were the only actual humans.

"How in the hell did they get past us?" Gerald asked. "We had people watching. I went through that whole damn train, and we didn't see anything."

"It doesn't matter. We'll get them, and then the Dark Lord will reward us, as well as Nigel's family," Jurgen said. "And we'll make them pay."

Thomas shivered. Jurgen was one of those who liked to play with his victims. His parents had come from Germany, and there were things he'd learned there that made Thomas afraid of him. It wasn't the killing; it was what came before that bothered Thomas.

Jurgen pulled out a mirror shard and he stared at it.

"The bird's been sent," he said. "It should be passing by soon."

Soon was a relative term when it came to owls. Some seemed to take their sweet time, while others seemed to appear at their location faster than should have been possible given their visible flight speed.

They spent the next thirty minutes hovering, stuck in their own thoughts. Thomas didn't dare say too much; free thought wasn't particularly valued in the Death Eaters, not unless you were a rich pureblood. Being a poorer relative meant that sometimes you had to bow and scrape.

Even though Jurgen wasn't a proper British Wizard, he'd proven himself to be cruel enough and good enough at what he did to be higher in the organization. He didn't have patience for fools.

None of the higher ups did. You never wanted to say anything that an enemy could bring up to the superiors. It was a cutthroat world, and the only benefit of joining the Death Eaters was that it meant being part of something bigger.

It meant a chance to change a world that had been going deeply, horribly wrong for most of his life.

Young wizards didn't have a chance in their world, unless they came from the best families. Older wizards had all the best jobs, and because they stayed hale and hearty until shortly before they died, that meant that they kept their jobs for decades... some for as long as a century or more.

Thomas had heard that muggles were so short lived that their whole careers were over in thirty or forty years. Young people would have a chance in a world like that, especially since muggles got sick and died all the time for practically no reason at all.

But in the world they lived in, it was hard to get a meaningful job, and even harder to advance, since the people above hardly ever left or died. There was a line of wizards waiting for every good job, and for every one that got it, a dozen would be forced to live like paupers, forced to scrabble by only on their magic.

It was hard enough being a poor pureblood. Now that the muggleborn thought they deserved their share of the good jobs, it was even harder. Even worse, the muggleborn were willing to work for wages that no pureblood would ever dream of accepting.

It drove wages down for everyone.

Worse, they were given benefits, like a full education at Hogwarts that most of them didn't even pay for. They lived off the backs of hard working, honest citizens, and they didn't give back.

Finding out that he wasn't the only one who had felt this way had been a relief. With the Death Eaters, he'd found a community of people who had understood the danger just as he had.

He hadn't been willing to kill people, not at first, but eventually he'd understood why it was necessary.

The muggleborn were a plague on the world, one that wouldn't stop until they'd eaten every last scrap and destroyed everything that was good and wholesome.

If the muggleborn were allowed to continue, they'd have every Wizard living in a tiny muggle house that looked exactly the same as every other muggle house. Muggles were slaves to something called a Tellyvision that hypnotized them and made them fat.

They ate crappy food and lived horrible lives, and if the muggleborn were to get their way, Wizard lives would be no better. They'd destroy everything that made the Wizarding world great.

He'd heard that some of them even lived halfway in the muggle world. A Wizard could live like a king there, if he wasn't worried about the Statute of Secrecy.

Using magic to copy things and then sell them to muggles, then use that to live high. They took money from honest, hard working Wizard shops, and gave it to stinking muggles, who by all reports didn't even have souls.

They didn't care that there were six or seven billion muggles who would love to murder every wizard man woman and child the moment they realized they still existed.

Only creatures with souls could do magic, and even among those there was a hierarchy.

Muggleborns weren't good at magic, and that was because they only had a sliver of a soul. He'd even heard rumors that they'd gotten their powers by stealing them from the children of Wizards. There had been more and more squibs born of late, which was all the proof he needed that it was true.

He wasn't entirely sure that creatures like House Elves and Goblins had full souls; if they did, why not allow them to use wands? Clearly it was because they were dangerous and could not be trusted.

They were doing God's work in stopping the muggleborn, and killing the Potter brat was part of that. Killing the Terror was just an added bonus.

Keeping something like that in a school with proper pureblooded kids wasn't just an affront to common deceny, it was a constant danger. She'd started out by beating multiple boys, and now she'd killed the kid of someone Thomas knew.

Avery had offered a reward for whoever killed her, one that was half as large as the one on Potter's head.

Potter was the only thing standing between the Dark Lord and the return of Wizarding Britain to it's roots. It was a pity that he had to die. It wasn't even his fault; from all reports he was a fairly decent kid. He was a half blood, of course, which meant that he wasn't as good as a real person, but some half bloods weren't too bad.

It was the fault of Wizarding Britain, for making him a symbol and setting him against the Dark Lord. They should have known better.

The girl, though; her James wouldn't mind killing. She'd murdered Nigel, and there hadn't been a trace of a soul in her eyes, only hatred and anger.

"Here it is," Jurgen called out.

The owl flew past them, ignoring them as it shot directly toward it's target. Thomas felt a rising sense of excitement as he fell into formation.

They ducked down, flying among the trees. The canapy here was open enough to fly easily, and there was no point in flying above the trees, because they'd never see where the owl went.

This was the thing that would finally get him out of the bottom ranks. He would be recognized and that meant good things for his future. Once the Dark Lord took over, he'd be the one strutting around with all of the power, not...

There was a sudden gout of blood from in front of him.

Jurgen's body was falling to the ground, his head falling separately. Blood was fountaining from his neck as his heart beat rapidly for a few moments before death.

Thomas pulled back on his broom, and he barely managed to avoid being decapitated himself. He stopped in mid air and he squinted as he saw the thing that had killed Jurgen. It looked like spiderweb, but it seemed to be made of razor sharp metal instead of being an actual web. In the dim light it had been almost invisible, but now that blood was dripping from it, he could see it clearly.

The others had pulled up before being struck by it, although for some of them it had been close.

Now they were down to four.

"What the hell?" Samuel screamed.

Thomas held his wand up and a moment later it shone as brightly as he could make it. For a moment he was blinded by his own light, and then he saw it. Now that they were looking, they could see that the entire forest around them was draped in spider webs. All of them glistened in the setting sun.

There was nothing back the way they had come, but it almost looked like the forest in front of them was covered in thin lines of web. There wasn't space to fly over it, not without going over the canopy, and below was filled with underbrush.

Was this some diabolical trap set by Moody? If that was the case, then they ahould apparate away right now. They'd lost two of their members, and losing any more would be...

A blast came from among the dense underbrush, and a moment later Samuel exploded into a gout of blood and flesh and gore.

Thomas immediately brought up shields. It wouldn't do anything against the Killing Curse though, and everyone knew that the girl had enough hatred within her to cast that, so he dove down. The other two death eaters did the same, but one of them, the younger guy that he didn't know very well backed up and got tangled in wires that hadn't even been there a moment before.

The boy dropped his wand, and his body dropped, his legs kicking for a moment even as his neck snapped. His body shook convulsively, even as his face turned purple with a lack of oxygen.

Thomas lashed out with a cutting spell, and the boys body fell, but Thomas knew it was too late. The fall itself was likely to have killed him; they were thirty feet up, and this wasn't a Quidditch pitch with softening charms on the floor of the forest.

It was only Thomas and Malcolm now. As a bolt flew over his head, Thomas lashed out with the killing curse at the place in the underbrush where the olt had come from, but there was to much underbrush. While the killing curse sliced through shields like butter, places like this weren't where it performed the best.

Instead he cast a blasting curse into the underbrush. With any luck he should be able to kill her, and then he'd pick the Potter brat off easily.

Returning without killing one of them, in a fight where four of his teammates had been killed, that would mean hours of being tortured. The Dark Lord was already convinced that he had a mole in his ranks, and coming back empty handed wouldn't do him any good.

Thomas apparated to the forest floor even as he heard screams from up above. Gerald's body came falling heavilly, and as it fell beside him, Thomas realized that something had happened to Gerald's eyes. It looked like it had been stung by thousands of insects, causing his eyes to practically implode.

What kind of curse had she used to do that?

Gerald's tongue was swollen, and it looked like he had already been choking on it when he'd fallen from his broom.

The girl wasn't a girl at all. She was like the Trolley Witch; an inhuman abomination. She was the trap that Moody had set, and even if he was punished for hours, it would be better than what the girl had planned for him.

Discretion was the better part of valor.

The girl could be hiding anywhere in the forest, and the attack would come from wherever he least expected it.

Grabbing his broom, Thomas grimaced. He'd be tortured, but going back to tell the Dark Lord was the better of his two choices.

This wasn't where he was meant to die, not to some prepubescent mudblood.

Thomas gathered his will.

He felt a pricking sensation on his wand hand. Looking down, he saw a bee land on it. He tried to shake it off and gather his will again, but he felt another prick and then another.

Looking down, he saw a massive swarm rising from below. It was dark and writing, and it looked like the sea. It was only a moment until it enveloped him, and he felt a moment of panic.

He should have apparated, but instead he flew straight up toward the canopy above. If he could get over the trees then the terror wouldn't be able to see him, and he'd be able to apparate home.

Something snagged at him, and pulled him off his broom.

He was falling suddenly, and a moment later he was in the middle of the bugs. The world around him turned chaotic and dark, and he couldn't see or hear. He felt stinging on his eyes and hands, and bugs entered his mouth.

Suffocating, he didn't have the ability to focus, not enough to apparate, and especially without his wand.

Where had his wand gone, and where....

As he hit the ground, everything turned dark for a moment. He lost consciousness, but then he woke in incredible pain.

He had broken bones; he'd had them before from Quidditch, but never so many, and now he couldn't feel his waist.

There was a shadow above him. It took him a moment to realize that it was the girl. She was using a blasting spell on the bodies, one after the other. She was destroying them, but why? Everyone would know what she had done. There would be no hiding it.

There wouldn't be enough of any of them to reconstruct.

As she approached him, he realized that she wasn't a child at all. She was a demon.

There were bugs crawling all over her, including her face. As she stared down at him, they covered every part of her face except her eyes, which glittered in the dim light.

She hardly seemed to realize that he was alive at all. He tried to call out as she lifted her wand.

It didn't matter. Everything went dark.1826ShayneTJul 22, 2019View discussionThreadmarks DecisionView contentShayneTJul 24, 2019#15,268"We didn't see anything," Harry insisted. "Taylor made us hide in a cave while she went out to face them alone."

What he wasn't saying was that I'd had them hiding under the expanded invisibility cloak, inside Draco's box turned on it's side. The inside had been large enough that they'd have cover, and they could blast away at anyone who found them.

It would have left them vulnerable to anyone who thought to just close the box, but if the Death eaters had gotten that far, I doubted that they would have had much of a chance of survival anyway.

"You're telling me that an eleven year old girl went out to face six Death Eaters by herself?" the auror asked him skeptically. I assumed that he'd been vetted by Moody himself, since he was allowed in the room alone with Harry.

All of us had been separated and were being questioned one after the other by the aurors.

"I don't know what happened," Harry said. "There were some screams, and the sounds of explosions, and then nothing. It didn't last very long."

I'd barely had time to transfigure the metal webs back into ordinary spiderwebs and have the spiders gather them up by the time the aurors had arrived.

"What did she do then?"

"Came back," he said. "Told us the Death Eaters had vanished."

"You didn't see the blood out in the forest?" the auror asked.

"She wouldn't let us out of the cave," Harry admitted. "Not until she was sure the people coming were on our side."

I'd been a little sloppy when I'd been doing cleanup, and I'd missed a man's decapitated head.

A fist slammed on the desk in front of me.

"What happened to the Death Eaters?" Moody was asking me. He stared at me with his artificial eye. It was probably supposed to intimidate me, but I'd known people in my old life who'd looked almost as bad as he did.

I shrugged.

"They're gone, and they aren't coming back. Isn't that good enough?"

We'd been having this discussion for what seemed like hours, and I could see that Hermione and Neville in the other rooms were flagging. Harry seemed to be filled with energy, though. It couldn't be adrenaline; I wasn't sure what was keeping him so chipper.

Maybe it was just because every minute that he was with the aurors was a minute he didn't have to go home.

"There's no way an eleven year old girl kills six Death Eaters on her own, without help," he said.

"I never admitted to killing anyone," I said coolly. We'd been over this multiple times. It was an old law enforcement technique; interrogate someone long enough, and eventually they'd break, and admit to anything just to get out of the room. "Except for one Death Eater on top of the train."

That one had been witnessed by the Trolley Witch and Harry; lying about it would get me nowhere.

"I've seen Potter's pensieve memories of that," he said. "You knew just where to cut him, didn't you?"

"Like I said, I came from a bad neighborhood."

"Which neighborhood was that again?" Moody asked suddenly. This was something he hadn't asked before, and I forced the alarm it roused in me into my bugs.

"I didn't say," I said. "It was a little place near Boston. You wouldn't have heard of it."

It was safe enough to name the region; a skilled linguist could have narrowed it down that much just by listening to me speak. It wasn't as thought I could pretend to be from Texas, not at this late date.

"Try me," he said. "I've been a few places."

"If you've seen Potter's memories, why are you still holding us?" I asked, changing the subject. I couldn't afford for him to take this line of inquiry.

"I haven't seen yours," he responded, challengingly.

"And you won't," I said. At his look, I explained. "Let's say for the sake of argument that an eleven year old did defeat five Death eaters. There's no way even a full grown adult wizard could do something like that, not unless he's had the kind of training and experience that someone like yourself or Dumbledore has."

He nodded slowly, staring at me. Could he do legilimency through his artificial eye.

"So she'd have to use every dirty trick she could think of, and then some," I said. "Your department is filled with people loyal to the current dark lord. Once they got hold of that, it would be easier for them to kill the girl the next time."

"So you want to keep your tricks a secret," he said. "Even how you managed somehow to decapitate a man when there wasn't a spell like that in your wand?"

I'd used Death Eater wands for some of the later spells I'd cast. I'd cast the transmutation spells on the webs with my second wand. I'd realized that I'd never be able to completely clean the forest floor in the time I had, and so I had used my primary wand for a few spells.

"You can do a lot with the right equipment," I said, shrugging.

Hopefully he'd think I was talking about magical tools. Given that he was a wizard, he'd probably think I'd used some sort of magical sword or something.

He was silent for a moment.

"You've killed more people than half the prisoners in Azkaban," Moody said. "And there are people who are calling for your head."

"For protecting Harry and the others?" I asked. "If I'd been alone, I'd have just ridden my broom into muggle Britain and vanished until next year."

"They'd have sent owls to you until they finally got you," he said. "If it turns out you can kill five Death Eaters, then next time he'll send ten."

"Not until he figures out what I did," I said. "He can't risk something like that happening again. It's going to hurt his reputation as it is, and his morale. If he keeps sending people into the blender, eventually people are going to start deserting."

"Is that what you see yourself as?" he asked. He shook his head. He gestured at himself. "You won't be lucky forever. Nobody gets through things like this unscathed."

His entire body was a mass of scars, presumably from curses that couldn't be cured by Wizarding science. I wondered if plastic surgery might have helped; not that he seemed like the kind who would try something like that. His appearance made him more intimidating after all, and that probably made him a better interrogator.

He probably could have gotten a much better prosthetic leg though, even way back here in the early nineties. Meshing Wizarding Healing with muggle science would probably create some amazing results. It might even be possible to make a lifelike prosthetic that actually had feelings through magic, much like some of the best Tinkertech I'd seen.

"There are people who want you expelled for unauthorized use of magic," Moody said. "I'm sure you can guess who they are."

"Could I have a list?" I asked sweetly.

"It would not help your case for members of the Wizengamot to start ending up disappearing," Moody said. "As it is, Potter is going home, so are the others. You are going to be incarcerated until it can be decided what to do with you."

"Killed you mean," I said flatly.

I'd viewed as much of the Ministry as I could on our way here. I suspected that I could find my way out, although I wasn't sure what defenses I'd have to face. I cursed myself for not learning the disillusionment spell sooner. It had seemed useless when the human revealing spell was so easy.

However, if no one was looking for you they wouldn't bother with the spell.

Moody had taken my wand and my fanny pack this time. He wasn't taking any chances.

He was carrying a wand, though. I eyed his wand and I measured the distance between us. The desk would be an impediment, which was probably why it was here instead of a formless room as was usual.

I could use the desk as cover, though.

There were bugs in the vents; I wasn't sure if I would be able to get enough to him to work as a distraction long enough for me to get his wand though. He was reputed to be one of the best aurors, and while I hadn't seen him fight, I suspected I'd have a hard time getting the drop on him.

"You won't be killed," Moody said. "It'll be my people watching you."

I snorted.

"The Death Eaters are going to want vengeance on me. Leave me with no wand, and tied up in a room whose location they know, and I'll be dead by morning."

"We'll put you in a room under the Fidelius charm," he said. "Only I and Dumbledore will know its location."

"And if both of you die, then I'll starve to death?" I asked.

"Suspicious little thing aren't you?" he asked.

"You've got the Ministry to watch your back," I said. "I have no one. Even the Wizards who consider themselves on the side of muggleborns tend to look down on us."

"Crying racism?" he asked. "I'd have thought better of you."

"Says the person who's not a muggleborn," I said. "This society is sick and reforms are needed."

"That's what every dark lord always says," he said.

"Why do you think there's so many of them?" I asked. "People are unhappy, and when that happens, someone always rises up claiming to give them what they want."

Before I could say anything, Moody lifted his wand.

I woke up in a cell somewhere. I could hear water dripping, and yet it was dark. Presumably that was to demoralize me.

I still had my bugs, though, and many of them didn't need lights to get around. I could use their senses to get a measure of the room I was in. There was a toilet, and a sink, a bed and that was about it other than a single door. There were no windows, and while there were vents, there was nothing remotely small enough for me to get into even at my current size.

There were bugs outside, but while I could control them, it was as though when they got within a certain radius of the room they forgot where they were. That was going to make it difficult to use them to do much.

The best I could do was have them look for a key and possibly pass it as close to the door as possible.

I spent the next three days looking not just for a key, but for anything I could use as a key. I explored the Ministry with my powers; there were parts of it that were outside of my range, but not much, and I learned more than I would have ever thought.

They had rooms filled with magical devices, and I spied on Unspeakables doing secretive research into things the government didn't want the Wizarding public to know. There were secrets here; not many of them were spoken out loud, but some of them were, and I began making mental notes.

Blackmail didn't bother me; compared to what I'd done in the past blackmail was the kinder option. It was like the difference between assassinating a leader and going to war. One way would kill a single man, the other would kill millions.

Of course, sometimes killing that single man wouldn't change anything, and might even inflame the hearts of the masses into war, so it wasn't as simple a choice as it seemed.

Still I listened in to conversations, and I had my bugs write down names, people I thought were Death Eaters, who I thought were controlled, and who I thought were simply sympathizers. It was possible that I wasn't right; only in a couple of places did I hear actual damning speech. It still gave me something to investigate, assuming that I was released.

The arguments in the Wizengamot raged fiercely. There were people who believed that not only should I be expelled, but that I should spend my life in Azkaban. Many of them blamed me for the death in the duel.

Others wanted me Kissed. I wasn't going to put up with that, if I had to call every insect in the place to rain hell and havoc down on the entire Ministry.

I had my supporters too. There were people saying that I should be awarded the Order of Merlin for saving the Boy Who lLived, saying that I was a hero.

The lines were closer than I would have liked.

Finally the decision was made. I was to be released, but no mention of my role in the killings was to be made to the press. The attack on the train was to be blamed on werewolf terrorists, and the official story would be that Harry Potter had been carried away by his protective detail.

The Ministry would look good, and I would be forced into anonymity. The consensus was that I was becoming too famous, and that giving me more attention was a terrible thing.

However, Travers was going to lose his position for not controlling me, and Dumbledore was going to be censured. It didn't seem to be anything that would have any binding power, though.

By the time the door finally opened, it had been four days, and my legs felt weak; I'd been spending so much time in my swarm that I'd hardly moved the entire time.

Dumbledore and Moody were on the other side of the door.

"Give me my wand and my fan...er...bum bag," I said.

"You don't want to know how the trial went?" Moody asked.

"I know how it went," I said. "The only question is what happens to me now?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I had a perfectly acceptable family lined up for you. They had children, and there was a possibility that you might be able to enjoy a normal life. After what has happened, they were understandably reluctant to accept you."

"Because I protected Harry Potter?"

"Because you are an unrepentant mass murderer," Moody growled out. "If I had children, I wouldn't want them within a continent of you.

"So what are you going to have me do?" I asked. "Intern at Azkaban or Gringotts?"

If I could do to either of those places what I'd done at the Ministry, I'd be even farther ahead of the game.

"No," Dumbledore said. "I had to call for help from someone who is otherwise unsuitable."

"Who?" I asked.

"Remus Lupin," he said.

"Oh...it's because he's a werewolf, right?" I asked. I'd seen his name on a list in Werewolf Support Services, which was a division of the Being Division of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

"How did you know that?" Moody asked. He stepped toward me angrily.

"His name is a little on the nose, don't you think?" I asked. At Moody's look of confusion, I said, "Remus was one of the brothers, Romulus and Remus who fought over the control of Rome. They were raised by wolves. Lupin literally means wolf. Is his name a pseudonym?"

It was like a Cape name, intended to broadcast to the world his true nature. Was calling yourself Remus Lupin any different than me calling myself Skitter, or Weaver?

"I assure you that Remus Lupin is his birth name," Dumbledore said.

I stared at them both. His name wasn't a pseudonym?

"So is werewolfism hereditary?" I asked, confused.

"No. He was bitten."

"Weird." I said.

Of course, it was strange that we had a Professor Sprout teaching herbology, but I'd just assumed that was a pseudonym too. Maybe her family had been farmers or something.

Maybe her name had inspired her to go into herbology.

Or maybe no one would have taken a Professor Sprout seriously if she was trying to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts.

"It does not bother you that he is a werewolf?" Dumbledore asked carefully.

"If I understand right, that means he's only got a problem a few nights a month, right?" I asked. "My bigger concern is whether or not he's working for the Death Eaters."

"You don't know?" Moody asked.

"My abilities can be spotty sometimes," I said. "Which means I have to stay on my toes."

"I assure you that he is not," Dumbledore said. "I have used every means at my disposal to determine that he will be safe for you to stay with."

"All right," I said. "But I still want my wand."

Moody scowled and tossed my wand and fanny pack onto the floor in front of me. Was he afraid of my taking it directly from his hands? It wasn't like I ever intentionally hurt my allies, at least not if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

I crouched down, keeping an eye on both of them. Grabbing my fanny pack, I flipped through it. I had a few remaining pieces of Peruvian Darkness Powder, but my knives were gone.

I'd slipped my extra wand down the back of Hermione's shirt before the aurors had stormed into the cave. Fortunately, Moody hadn't seen her; he'd been focused on me.

"Where are my knives?" I asked.

"They have been confiscated for the good of Greater Britain," Moody said. "As evidence. You aren't getting them back."

I scowled.

"Fine. Take me to see this Wolfie McWolf-face, or whatever his name is."

If the man was any kind of Wizard, I might be able to wrangle some training out of him over the summer.

If he was enemy, I'd have to be on my guard.

"He was a friend of Harry's father," Dumbledore said quietly. "And I would take it as a personal favor if you do not stab him."

"I'll try," I said.

If my bugs had had fingers, they would have been crossed behind their backs.1771ShayneTJul 24, 2019View discussionThreadmarks FerryView contentShayneTJul 27, 2019#15,610Remus Lupin looked sick.

He was a tall and lanky man, but his face was pale and although he was young, his skin had premature wrinkles. His brown hair already had slight traces of gray. His robes were shabby and worn. He looked exhausted.

If he was a classmate of Harry's parents, then he shouldn't look this old.

If I was an actual eleven year old, then I wouldn't have noticed, likely, but I wasn't. This was not a healthy man.

Dumbledore was standing beside him, and the look he was giving him indicated that maybe there was more to this man than initial appearances would indicate.

"Miss Hebert," he said.

I nodded to him. My wand was in my hand inside my robes.

While I was sure Dumbledore thought this man was safe, there was nothing in this world we lived in that could be certain, not when every Wizard could be a mind controller or shapechanger.

The bugs didn't smell polyjuice on him, but there was a sick, acrid scent to him, something like a dog that was ill. If that was the smell a werewolf had, it'd be useful to know. It was possible that given his general look that he was sick with something else.

"Mr. Lupin," I said, nodding.

"I must admit that I have no idea how to raise a child," he said.

"I barely remember how to be one," I said. "Treat me like an adult, and I'll return the favor.

He frowned. "I fear that's not what Dumbledore here wanted for you. He fears that your circumstances are doing you mental harm."

Making me a sociopath, did he mean? He might be right.

Dumbledore wisely remained silent. He'd made his position clear during those times I'd spoken to him. He'd wanted me placed with a normal family where I could socialize with normal people.

"I've had to be on guard for the past few months, surrounded by enemies," I said. "That can be a little wearing."

I hadn't really been able to enjoy myself much, not really. There had been places and times where I'd found small pieces of joy, but they'd been few and far between.

"Perhaps we'll be able to find a place for you that is more to your liking," he said.

I nodded.

Anything would be better than being constantly on my guard. Unfortunately, I couldn't really trust this man. At best, he was a spy for Dumbledore, there to find out as much about me as he could and report back to his master.

At worst, he was working for Voldemort, possibly even against his will.

Yet despite knowing that, I couldn't help but instinctively like him. He reminded me a little of my father. My father had been a man downtrodden by life, one who'd fought the system and lost. He'd done everything he could to make his city better, and nothing he'd ever done had mattered.

This man had that same slump in his shoulders. It was a combination of a lifetime of defeats and an indomitable will that despite everything he was going to keep fighting.

"The hardest part will be getting out of here," Lupin said. "There will be people watching for us, and there are anti-apparition wards up throughout most of the Ministry."

"Have Dumbledore accompany us," I said. "Is there a way to track where someone has apparated to?"

"No," he said. "Not unless you grab onto them as they go."

"So it's not a problem," I said. "Apparate us somewhere random, and then do it again several times until we get to where we are going."

"As you can see, there is nothing wrong with Miss Hebert's mind," Dumbledore said.

"Your trunk," he said.

I pulled out my wand, pointed it, and I shrank it. I made to put it in my fanny pack.

"Your trunk isn't expanded on the inside, is it?" Lupin asked.

I shook my head.

"Good."

"Why?" I asked.

"Putting an expanded space inside another expanded space can sometimes be unstable. Sometimes the things inside get crushed into a fine paste. There are Wizards who have tried living in expanded trunks, only to end up crushed to death when the spells failed."

I winced.

I'd been luck with Hermione and Neville. I'd have to make sure that I was never in that kind of a situation again.

"There are some spells I'd like to learn over the summer," I said. "Things that will help me protect Harry and myself better."

Disillusionment was the first spell I wanted to learn. It wasn't perfect, but there had been times when I would have been able to slip away without fighting if I'd had it. If I could cast it on other people, it might be even more useful

Lupin glanced at Dumbledore. Undoubtedly the man had suggested that he limit whet he taught me over the summer.

"We'll discuss it later," he said.

I'd have an entire summer to get his trust, and with luck I might be able to wheedle some training out of him.

"Let's go,' Dumbledore said.

I nodded, and I stood between the two of them as we stepped out into the greater Ministry.

I'd seen all of it before, through my bugs, but it was more impressive with my own eyes. My vision through bugs was often looking down on the scene from above. In my current form I wasn't very tall. It was likely that I would never be as tall as my original body.

There was a fountain in the main hall. It had a noble looking Wizard, with his wand pointed up in the air. Beside him was a beautiful witch. Surrounding him, and lower down were statues of a goblin, a centaur, and a house elf. The non-humans were looking adoringly up at the Wizard and the Witch.

The message given by the fountain was clear to everyone who entered the Ministry. Wizards and Witches were the pinnacle of creation, and all other creatures were lesser. The fact that they hadn't even bothered to have a muggle made me wonder. Was it because a muggle would be indistinguishable from the Wizard, or was it because muggles weren't considered good enough to even adore Wizards from afar?

Except for certain Christian groups who had fundamental issues with the concept of magic, I suspected that most muggles these days would react to Wizards the same way people in my world had reacted to Capes. They'd have feared them, accepted them and idolized them in equal measures.

I doubted that even those Christian groups that didn't approve would try to bring back the Inquisition. The world had moved past that. More likely they'd have simply been worried about the state of the souls of Wizardkind and tried to get them to voluntarily stop using magic. They might even get some converts.

There would always be the radical, lunatic fringe, of course. However, that was true of any group.

The Statue of Secrecy might be entirely unnecessary. When it had been instituted, ordinary people had been superstitious and vindictive. In the minds of the Wizards, muggles were still that way, and in their imagination the response would be the same as it had been in the sixteen hundreds, except with better weapons.

But I'd lived in a world where people had powers, and they'd been accepted. Part of that had been the Endbringers, and through the continuous public relations efforts of the Protectorate. But that just meant that integration would have to be handled carefully.

It would require some sacrifices on the part of the Wizards. They were essentially self governing now, and the people in their government would essentially lose their jobs. That was the reason that the Statute would continue to be enforced even if the people in power knew that it would be safe.

People in power never wanted to give it up.

"Hold on tightly," Lupin said.

I grabbed his left arm, and a moment later it felt as though we were being pulled through a tube.

I blinked as I realized that we were in a small cottage. It wasn't very well kept up, and the whole thing looked just as shabby as his robes. The man wasn't rich, it was clear.

I'd heard about the limited employment opportunities offered to werewolves. It didn't make sense to me; unless you had a night job, it wouldn't even interfere with work, so why bother?

"We aren't staying," he said. "I'm going to grab my things and we'll be leaving. There should be a team of aurors arriving in..."

There were several pops as people appeared all around me. Lupin had his hand on my wand arm, and he tightened it.

"They'll be coming,' he told one of the aurors. "So you'd better be ready."

The man nodded grimly.

"People know where I live," Lupin said. "Which was the entire point of parading me and you through the halls of the Ministry. They'll be coming to kill you, and we're going to leave a little surprise for them."

It took him only a couple of minutes to grab his bags. I could hear popping sounds coming from outside.

"That's our cue to leave, Lupin said. He grabbed my arm, and the world compressed all around us. It felt like something was wrong; the squeezing sensation lasted much longer than it normally did, and the pressure grew until it was hard to breathe or even think.

We emerged onto a street by the docks.

"They were putting up an anti-apparition jink," Lupin said. His face was pale. "They responded a lot more quicky than I thought they would."

Given that I'd killed between six to twelve of their men, the only surprising thing was that they hadn't responded even faster.

"It'll illegal to apparate to another country," Lupin said quietly. "And countries have ways of watching for that. We can't be sure that You-Know-Who doesn't have agents in France, so we'll have to be careful."

"I'm going to disillusion us both," Lupin said. "And we're going to sneak aboard a muggle ferry."

He pointed his wand at me, and tapped me on the head. It felt as though he'd cracked an egg on my skull, and I felt a cold sensation surrounding me. Looking down, I could see that my clothes and skin were taking on the exact color and texture of the surrounding environment.

I'd seen Tinkertech that could do things like this, and there were rumors that the US military had been trying to reverse engineer tinkertech to do exactly this, using cameras.

Lupin whirled his wand around himself and he disappeared as well.

I could still sense him through my bugs; I could hear and smell him perfectly well. He was effectively invisible, though.

"Which ferry are we going to hitch a ride on?" I asked.

The port that was around the corner was filled with a variety of ships. Taking the ferry made sense because it would have been harder to hide on one of the smaller ships.

"The one with all the cars on it," he said. "You know what cars are, right?"

"I'm a muggleborn," I said dryly. "I wasn't raised in a cave in Africa. What are the odds that they've got someone waiting for us?"

"There are sixty three ferry crossings a day across ten routes," he said. "There's a chance that he'll have someone waiting, but..."

"We'll deal with it when we can," I said.

I found myself wishing that my foe-glass was smaller; I'd have liked a look at it about now, but it was packed away and shrunk inside my luggage. I'd tried using my bugs to look at it before, but it typically only showed the bugs nearest enemy, which were typically spiders or one of the cats that roamed Hogwarts.

We walked down the slope toward the docks.

"I don't know much about you," Lupin said quietly. "You're an American?"

"Born and raised," I said.

In one sense I was telling the truth, even if I was in the body of a British girl.

"You've killed," he said. "That doesn't bother you?"

"I like living," I said. "I like for my friends to stay alive. If people insist on trying to kill us, I've got a right to defend myself. I don't like having to do it... I'd rather that people just left me alone. But from the moment that damn hat put me in Slytherin, this was all inevitable."

In my career as a warlord, it had been a long time before I'd killed anyone. It had gotten easier over time, but it wasn't supposed to be easy.

"I'm good at pushing things off," I admitted. "At doing what needs to be done, and worrying about it later."

"Killing damages the soul," Lupin said. "That's what Dumbledore always says."

"Which may be why he's so passive in all of this," I said. "He's got enough power to take on half the Death Eaters at once, and if he did, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in. Even politically he's got a lot of power that he's not using."

"It's complicated," Lupin said. "His position isn't as secure as you might think, and if we lose some of the swing votes in the Wizengamot, the government may fall to the Death Eaters without a single spell needing to be cast in anger."

"So he lets them keep imperiusing the members until the whole government is a puppet of the opposition?' I asked.

I actually liked Dumbledore, somewhat. That didn't blind me to his faults.

Reaching the Ferry, which was backed up against the pier, we moved cautiously.

"Be careful," Lupin said. "If they do have someone waiting, they'll be watching for us."

We walked beside a truck as it was being loaded onto the ship, moving carefully around the people who were waving the truck into place.

It took forty five minutes for all of the trucks and cars to be loaded into place. According to Lupin, we were looking forward to a three hour trip across the water, and then we'd have to dodge Wizards in France who'd be watching for us.

I'd have preferred to have gone through the chunnel, but apparently in this time period it wasn't finished yet.

The last of the cars was finally settled into place, and the ferry began to move. I felt myself relax a little.

There were a lot of people on the ferry, but I'd been watching all of them carefully. Most of them seemed like ordinary muggle tourists. None of them had the distinct oddness of dress that most purebloods affected, pretending that they knew nothing about muggle fashion.

Of course, if they were really trying to catch us undercover, they'd be more careful that that.

I closed my eyes and focused.

What would be different and distinctive about Wizards, something that I could use to differentiate them from the muggles?

No one seemed to be paying any sort of undue attention to their surroundings.

If Voldemort had sent a team, he'd almost certainly have sent more than one person; after all, I'd killed five of his people by myself.

The fact that he'd need to have a team of at least ten meant that he probably didn't have enough people to cover all the ferries, much less the airplanes, private boats and other ways of getting across the channel. Still, I couldn't help but feel paranoid.

I caught a glance between two rough looking men, men who didn't look like they should have known each other.

"They're here," I murmured to Lupin.

"Who?" he asked.

"The man in the wool overcoat and the other one in the leather jacket," I said. "There are likely others that I haven't spotted yet."

I felt something wash over me.

"They've spotted us," Lupin said. He grabbed my arm, but nothing happened.

"It's an anti-apparition jinx," he said.

People that I wouldn't have thought would be working for Voldemort started making their way in our direction. There was a woman with a stroller; now that I looked more closely, what she had in the stroller wasn't a baby at all, but was something twisted and hideous.

A heavyset man with a reddened face was coming too.

"You should get under the truck now," Lupin said calmly.

I glanced at the empty space where I knew he was, and then I didn't argue. I was at a disadvantage here on the water; there were bugs, but not so many terrestrial bugs as I would have liked.

The human revealing spell was good at revealing intruders, but it wasn't specific enough to reveal how many people people were hiding or even exact locations. It was possible to work your way through...

The woman with the baby carriage turned, pulling out her wand and pointed it at the man in the coat. Green light flashed out, but the man in the coat managed to dodge, ducking behind a car while returning fire.

Suddenly light was flashing everywhere as people began launching spell after spell at each other.

They'd used me as bait. I wasn't sure whether I should be angry or admiring of them. They'd had people waiting just in case the Death Eaters came running, or maybe they deliberately slipped the information to someone they knew was compromised.

It wouldn't have surprised me if they'd used the vote against me as a sort of test to see who had been taken over; it would have been easy enough to compare someone's previous voting record to their current one and get an idea of whether something had changed.

Master Stranger techniques relied on having a baseline as well.

The battle seemed to go on forever, and there wasn't a lot that I could do. From my position under the truck I didn't have an angle on any of the Death Eaters, and I wasn't entirely sure who was on our side anyway. The last thing I needed to do was attack and kill an auror and end up in Azkaban for a real crime.

The muggles on board were screaming and huddling, and all I could think was that the obliviators would be working overtime with this.

The fight took almost five minutes, and the end result seemed to be seven stunned and captured Death Eaters and three dead Aurors.

People were already popping in to obliviate the muggles and to clean up any superficial damage that had been done by the battle. By the time we reached France no one would know that anything had happened.

As I slipped out from under the truck, Lupin dispelled the disillusionment.

"From all reports, I thought you'd insist on participating in the battle," he said.

"I'm not a Gryffindor," I said irritably. "I don't kill people just for the glory."

"This lot will give up more information," he said. "And maybe things will be calmer by the time we return."

I nodded.

"Say, do you think I could get a beret in France," I asked. "My friend Hermione admired the one I wear some time, and wanted one like it."

"We're meeting up with her family," he said. "Dumbledore thought it important that you interact with other children outside of school, and he felt that as your friend, Miss Granger needed a little more protection than most muggleborn students, so we're killing two birds with one spell, so to speak."