Chapter 14 - W14

"That was rather more...enthusiastic than I expected, Miss Hebert," Lockhart said.

Cornish Pixies apparently had blue blood. I hadn't known that; it was an electric blue that didn't appear in nature.

"They were coming right at me," I said absently. "Had to defend myself."

"Couldn't you have stunned them?" he asked faintly.

"I suppose," I said. "But I've read that they reproduce like cockroaches, and if you let them get loose next thing you know the whole place is infested with them. We had a boggart infestation last year you know."

"I've heard a little about that," he said. "Weren't you involved?"

I shrugged.

Everyone else in the room seemed shocked. They really shouldn't have been; they'd gone to school with me for a year.

I was proud that Hermione had gotten off some shots as well, even though the others hadn't done nearly as well.

Most of them had frozen when the pixies were released. The few who hadn't were dueling club alumni, and I needed to keep an eye on them.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked.

Part of me almost wished I was. I had a plan to escape Hogwarts, and I could likely make my way in France reasonably well now that I knew where the magical neighborhoods were. If it didn't mean leaving Hermione and Neville and the others, I might do it anyway.

After all, why should I save people who were too stupid to save themselves?

Voldemort was a big deal in Britain, but I doubted that he'd get much traction in the wider magical world. The Americans would set things right if he caused too much trouble.

There was pixie blood all over my robes. I cleaned it with a spell.

He shook his head.

"Five points to Slytherin for a rather enthusiastic defense. I fear I'll have to change my lesson plan for the other classes though... those were the only pixies I had."

"You've got bodies," I pointed out. "Some of them aren't even completely exploded. Why not do an anatomy lesson?"

He stared at me for a moment, and then smiled.

"An excellent idea Miss Hebert. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

"I've heard that Cornish Pixies also are used in some potions ingredients," I said. "You might ask Professor Snape if he could use any of the rest of this."

He frowned thoughtfully. "You are full of ideas, young lady."

"My life is full of lemons," I said wily. "You either roll with it, or you get rolled."

He stared at me for a moment.

"It's good to have practical lessons," I said. "Are you going to bring other monsters for us to kill?"

"I think this will be the only time," he said carefully. "I'd thought the rumors about you to be exaggerated."

I shrugged.

"All lies," I said. "I'm a perfectly normal twelve year old girl."

"I have trouble believing that," he said.

"Ask anybody," I said.

I heard a few incredulous guffaws in the background, but I chose to ignore them.

"I had planned to have a pop quiz," he said finally. "But it looks like we are well out of time. Please study the first three chapters of my book Wanderings with Werewolves."

We all nodded.

As we stepped out of the room, Hermione turned to me.

"He's really pretty, isn't he?" she asked.

"Yes?" I said dubiously. He wouldn't have been my type even in my old body, and in my new body that sort of thing hadn't even been on my mind.

It would have been disgusting anyway.

"But I remembered what you said about people lying, even in books," she said. "And these things in the newspapers about us being werewolves has really made me doubt some of the things that I've read."

"OK?" I said slowly.

"I think he's a fraud," she said in a low voice.

"Oh?"

"I've read all of his books three times," she said. She flushed a little. "And at first I was really, really impressed. But I started to notice that the timelines don't match up."

"That's interesting," I said.

"Supposedly he fought the Wagga Wagga Werewolf in Australia at the exact same time that he banished a banshee in Thailand."

"Maybe he apparated?"

"It gets more dangerous the farther you go. Maybe Dumbledore could apparate that far, but nobody else. Most wizards can barely apparate the length of Britain in one go; it's part of the reason we use portkeys."

"Maybe he used a portkey," I said.

"He was also rescuing the Giant Fire Crab in the forests of Fiji and fighting vampires in Romania on the same day too," she said. "There's other discrepancies."

"Maybe he got the dates wrong," I said. "It could be human error or maybe his editors made a mistake."

"Not this many," she said. She scowled. "And I really wanted to believe that we had a good defense professor this year. Professor Travers was decent last year, even if he was a little..."

"Opinionated?" I asked mildly.

"What if he made it all up?" she asked.

"Maybe he exaggerated a few things to make it sound better," I said. "They call that artistic license."

She stared at me.

"Are you actually Taylor, or are you a transfigured Death Eater?"

"You should have your wand out when you ask me that," I said. "But I'm really me. Why?"

"Why are you defending him like this? I'd have thought you'd be the first one to be suspicious."

"I hope he's as good as he says he is," I said. "Because we're going to need that going forward. If he's a fraud, we'll deal with that when it comes to it, same as if he's a Death Eater."

If he was a Death Eater, it was likely that this was going to be my last year at school. I didn't say it, but I could see understanding on Hermione's face.

Stupid no murdering rule.

"I'll keep an eye on him," I said. "But there isn't really anything we can do about it now. I don't think the Headmaster likes me, so if I run to him complaining that the Defense Professor is a fraud, he probably won't listen. And maybe he'll be good."

"It was irresponsible to release the pixies," she said. "Especially when he knew how you'd react."

"Maybe that was the point," I said. "It was our class that he released them in. Maybe he was trying to see how I would react."

Judging me by my own actions. It was manipulative, but I could respect the urge. He'd heard rumors about me, and he'd experimented to see whether they were true. It wasn't a bad thought process. It also made me think that he wasn't a Death Eater; they wouldn't have had to test me. They'd have known how I would react.

Still, it was possible that he was going to be a fraud. I'd have to pay attention in the future to how he taught the class. If he was good, I didn't particularly care if he'd embellished his actions.

Hermione's lips tightened. The idea that books would lie offended her on a fundamental level, and she was outraged that a man would be reaping benefits from being a good liar.

I didn't care personally. The Wizarding public was gullible; that was probably because in the absence of decades of television and radio and with basically only one outlet for news they were more credulous.

In all likelihood, the muggles of this time were probably more credulous than they had been in mine. The generation before that had probably been even less so. I'd heard somewhere that forty percent of the men who fought in World War Two couldn't read.

A population like that would believe anything, which is why people like P.T. Barnum had been able to sew half a monkey on a fish, and people had believed him.

Wizards only had the benefits of a fifth grade education before starting a school that didn't educate them at all in anything other than their specialty. While there were credulous educated people too, not having a basic understanding of political science and history would make anyone less prepared to deal with what they read.

Even Umbridge's strategy was suspect.

It was likely that she was ramming through legislation as fast as she could while she still had support due to the "emergency" at a time when she still had the votes.

Yet she was likely to create more problems than she solved by scapegoating the werewolves.

It was likely to drive them into the arms of Voldemort, simply as a way of protecting themselves. Scapegoating the muggleborn might actually create resistance movements.

She should have implemented the changes more gradually, but it was likely that she was doing it in part to placate a panicked public. People liked to see the people in charge doing something; it made them feel safer.

Even if it didn't accomplish anything, in the eyes of a politician, doing something was always better than doing nothing.

In reality, sometimes doing nothing was the best thing.

"I heard you were asked to be a beater this year," Hermione said. "Are you going to try out?"

"Millie told you?" I asked.

She nodded.

"No," I said.

"It's a good way to become popular fast," she said. "In fact, I've heard that Harry is trying out."

"A year ago, I'd have said it was just an excuse to get me up on a broom where someone could hurt or kill me," I said. "But that's no longer true."

"So why not?"

"Being a Beater will make me popular with the Slytherins," I said. "But how will the other houses feel about me?"

She frowned.

"How will Harry and the twins feel when I give them broken arms and black eyes, knock some of their teeth out?" I asked.

I shook my head. "I already have a reputation as somebody who is crazy and unstable. Seeing me up on the pitch beating the hell out of people will just make that worse."

"You do that in the Dueling club," she said.

"It's accepted... wizardly," I said. "Beater...that's just going to remind them of what I did with a sock full of galleons that time."

"All right,' she said. "I just thought you might enjoy yourself."

"I might, but it's not worth the risk of losing friendships over," I said. "And I suspect that before this is over we're going to need all four houses if we're going to get through this with minimum casualties."

"Maybe you could be seeker," she said.

"Take the K out of that word, and what do you get?" I asked.

"Seeeeeer?"

"Right. It wouldn't be fair to anyone. How fun would the game be if I caught the snitch in the first five minutes each time? How soon would it be before everyone hated me?" I asked. "Even if I was somehow able to shut it off, which I wouldn't because that would leave me vulnerable, would anyone believe that I had?"

She frowned, and then sighed.

"It's not fun if one team always wins," I said.

"So how are you going to get everyone on your side?" she asked. "And what are you going to do with them if you have them? We're just school kids."

"School kids have killed Death Eaters before."

"You've killed Death Eaters," she said dryly. "A lot of people don't even believe that you're actually a school kid."

I carefully kept my expression neutral.

"Some people think that you are actually an auror polyjuiced into the form of a little girl, or that you are the reincarnation of Grindlewald, which is ridiculous considering that he is still alive. Some people think you're the Queen of Boggarts, or that you're a little girl who's been possessed by a demonic spirit."

The last one was a little too close for comfort, but I didn't let my face show any expression.

"But I know what you are," Hermione said.

"What's that?" I asked.

"A Genius," she said. "I mean, some people are geniuses at math or physics, and some people are geniuses at.... uh....hurting people."

I stared at her flatly.

"Just the people that need to be hurt," she said hurriedly. "I know you'd never hurt an innocent person."

"Right," I said.

There were extenuating circumstances for that one time I had. It had been a mercy killing.

"Are you ready for the class in Wizarding Culture?" she asked. "I'm actually kind of excited."

"I'm not," I said. "They've had a couple of days to prepare it, so it's probably going to be half assed and insulting."

"Well, they've lived as Wizards their entire life, so they have to know something about the subject."

"They'll put a pureblood in the position," I said. "and he won't know what we don't know. All he'll know is what muggleborns do that annoy purebloods."

"Well, won't it be good to at least learn how not to annoy them?" she asked.

"Maybe," I said. "But a halfblood would be a better professor. Someone who knows how both worlds work would be able to tell us just how far apart those worlds are."

"Maybe you're wrong," she said. "At least this professor hasn't published any books."

"We'll see," I said.

We headed for the classroom we'd been assigned. Wizarding class had been shoehorned in during a period that normally would have been free time for us.

That means that the pureblood kids would have three hours a week where they could study or relax that we didn't. The fact that it would make studying for OWLS harder probably had nothing to do with it.

If the muggleborn suddenly started struggling with their classes, that couldn't be blamed on the administration, right?

Stepping into the classroom, I heard Hermione murmur beside me.

The classroom was at least twice as large in each dimension as it normally was, presumably to accommodate the larger numbers of students.

As I entered, the first years turned and stared at me, murmuring to themselves. Apparently I already had a reputation. The older students however were very careful not to make eye contact. They were very quiet.

I suspected that they were afraid that I would sit by them. Whether it was because of what I might do, or because my roommate had been sent to me in a box and they were afraid of what becoming my friend might mean, I didn't know.

I was the only Slytherin in the room, but the other three houses were equally represented.

I took a seat next to Hermione in the Ravenclaw section, and I heard an audible sigh of relief from the other sections. I turned to stare at them, and people paled, turning away quickly.

"Welcome class," a woman said.

She was a tall and slender woman. Her face was long, and not entirely attractive, but her robes were immaculate and hung well on her frame.

"My name is Morana Burke," she said in a sing song voice..She spoke slowly and loudly, as though all of us were in Kindergaerten. "I will be your professor today."

I glanced at Hermione, who looked perplexed.

"The Wizarding world may not have any of your televisons, or electricity, but it's got charms of it's own. There are also dangers; it's easy to offend people when you don't really mean to. The way I spoke to you just now? How did it make you feel?"

Everyone was silent for a long moment, as though they were afraid she would take points for what they were inevitably going to say.

Hermione raised her hands slowly.

"Like you thought we were stupid," she said. "Slow."

"But I just introduced myself," she said. "How could that be a problem?"

"It was the way you introduced yourself." a male fourth year said, without raising his hand.

"And that's the problem with the Wizarding World," she said. "Sometimes it's not what you say, but how you say it. There's a lot of little assumptions that people don't understand, and it creates friction."

"And what makes you an expect on what we don't know?" I asked.

"I married a muggleborn," she said. "And I watched him struggle for years, even with my help. I've been pushing for a class like this for a long time, and this is the first year that they called me up and decided to give it a try."

"I thought this was just a way for the Ministry to humiliate us," a seventh year said.

"It is, I think," Professor Burke said. "But I've been given free reign over the curriculum, and I'm going to work hard to make this a class that will actually be of use to you. This won't be a class like muggle studies."

"Oh?" I asked.

"When I was in school, muggle studies was a class created by people who didn't know the first thing about muggles, or their information was outdated by fifty years. It didn't really prepare me for the world my husband lived in, and I want something better for all of you."

"How will this help us?" a third year girl asked.

"Some of you will be in the opporite of my situation. You'll marry into pureblood families, and you'll have to deal with the in-laws for the rest of your lives. Others will have to do business with purebloods. At the very least, it would be useful to know when they are insulting you."

I saw a lot of people sitting up, suddenly looking more interested.

Maybe this wouldn't be a waste of time after all.

Beside me, Hermione began taking notes.1803ShayneTAug 14, 2019View discussionThreadmarks InfestedView contentShayneTAug 20, 2019#17,177In the absence of the Death Eater's kids, life quickly settled into a routine. There was no one left at the school who would try to bully me; the Slytherins knew me well enough not to try, the Hufflepuffs were too intimidated. The Ravenclaws seemed to think of me as an interesting specimen to study, and the Gryffindors pretended that they weren't afraid of me, but they didn't try anything either.

Given that, it was easy to settle into the role of being a regular student.

I followed the news, of course. There were stories of aurors battling werewolves all over the island of Britain; how many of those were actually Death Eaters I couldn't be sure.

There were terrorist attacks in a number of areas, with the Muggleborn Liberation Front claiming responsibility every time. I suspected that most of them were disguised Death Eater attacks, designed to put more pressure on the new government to force them to make life more difficult for the muggleborn.

Curfews were put into place, ones that affected everyone except the government.

Wizards were used to having their freedoms, so the curfews were unpopular.

Still, things at Hogwarts had never been quieter. My guess was that Voldemort was spending time rebuilding his forces, while occasionally launching terrorist attacks to keep the government lunging at shadows.

The new Headmaster was a humorless bureaucrat, but he was good at discipline.

The same couldn't be said of our new Defense Professor.

"Now as I was saying," he said. "Fighting werewolves is tricky business. In their wolf form they are simply beasts, but they are smarter than ordinary animals. They have a native cunning, and if they cannot get you head on, they will attack from the shadows."

The more I watched him, the more I was certain that Hermione was right. Lockhart didn't have a certain look in his eye; someone who had done everything he'd claimed to have done would have had a hardened look. Those kind of experiences changed a person.

I'd seen that kind of look in Moody, in Snape, even in Dumbledore, although he did his best to hide it.

Lockhart, though seemed soft.

Half the girls in the class seemed enraptured by him, while the boys seemed disgusted.

"There was a rumor that Miss Hebert and Miss Granger were werewolves," Lockhart said. "But last week certainly put those rumors to rest."

I'd shown up to a nighttime Quidditch game, along with Hermione.

Potter was their team's new Seeker, and he seemed to be doing amazingly well. He was an ace at flying, and he seemed to have a natural eye for seeing things moving.

Flint had been angry that I had chosen not to join the team, but he hadn't pressed the issue after I'd looked him in the eye for a long while.

"More importantly," he said. "Werewolves are simply wizards during the day. You can deal with them as you would deal with any other Wizard."

"And how is that?" I asked.

Lockhart had mostly ignored me during the first few weeks of classes. Apparently my first incident with the Cornish pixies had spooked him.

"With a Stunner, my dear," he said, smiling widely. "After which, you simply call the aurors."

"I'm a muggleborn," I said. "How do you call the aurors without a telephone."

"Well," he said. "There is the patronus spell, which is exceptionally good at sending messages. You can also communicate through the floo network."

"I don't think many of us can cast a Patronus," I said. "And we won't always be near a fireplace."

"In that case, your best bet is to run," he said. He looked at me for a moment. "Murdering a fallen adversary is a good way to end up in Azkaban, after all."

"Even if it's a werewolf?" Malfoy asked.

He seemed to have an irrational fear of werewolves. I hadn't understood until I had learned that one of the most notorious werewolves in the country was an associate of his fathers. Fenrir Greyback wasn't simply a Death Eater; there were unsavory rumors about him that made Draco's unease perfectly sensible.

"The Ministry right now might look the other way," Lockhart said. "But they might not. It depends on your connections."

That... was actually useful information.

"So you're saying that the justice system depends on whether people like you?"

Lockhart smiled sadly at me.

Was he implying that no one liked me?

"I'm afraid that has always been the case," he said. "But never more than now. The current administration is...very much determined to prosecute those who do not abide by the rule of law."

He frowned pensively.

"Why several of my adventures would now be considered illegal by today's standards," he said.

He frowned, then said, "But class is ending, so read chapters three through seven of Magical Me, and write a one page report on why I am the most amazing hero of the modern age."

I could hear some Ravenclaw girls sigh; I would have preferred to believe the Slytherin girls to be wiser, but some of them had an expression on their faces that I didn't like.

"Can I speak to you, professor?" I asked.

As the other students filed out of the room, he nodded. He looked a little anxious.

"I'm doing an independent research project," I said. "But some of the books I need are in the restricted section."

"Books are in the restricted section for a reason," he said. "Have you asked your other professors?"

I shook my head.

"It's a defense project, so I thought it wouldn't be right going over your head. Besides, who better to help me than the Hero of a thousand battles."

"Hero of a thousand battles... I like that," he said. "You don't mind if I borrow it?"

"Feel free," I said.

"What is this project?"

"Last year there was an incident in dueling club. Someone attacked me with cursed snakes."

He nodded sagely.

I'd noticed that he'd shown no interest in renewing the dueling club, which had been canceled at the end of last year, once Travers had been fired.

"I want to know how to protect myself from that... and maybe learn how to teach my friends."

I was lying, of course. What I really wanted to know was how to curse animals in the first place. If I was able to deliver curses through bugs, then I would have a massive advantage. It would be the kind of game changer that would make everything easier, at least until people understood my power.

"That seems like advanced magic," he said. "If it were any other student, I'd be inclined to say no. However, you have a greater need to defend yourself than the other students."

The other professors knew better than to let me have access, but with a little luck...

He scribbled out a permission slip.

I'd used my bugs to read the titles on the spines of every book in the restricted section, so I knew what books to ask for.

Heading for the library, I stepped up to Madam Pince.

She stared at the permission slip.

"What is this?" she asked as though it wasn't obvious.

"Permission slip," I said. "I've got a special project."

She stared at me, intensely enough that I wondered if she was a legilimens. Presumably she was waiting for me to back down, as though I was trying to pass along a forgery.

Most people were intimidated by silence and would be tempted to fill the silence with anything, often incriminating themselves because they were nervous.

I simply waited, any anxiety I was feeling pushed into the insects in the walls.

She examined the slip for what seemed like forever before leading me back to the stacks. She hesitated as she waited to lift the rope.

I watched her carefully. If there was some spell she used to deactivate the books, I wanted to know it. I didn't see her do anything, though. It was possible that there was some other mechanism that I could not see.

"You aren't allowed to take the books out of the library," she said.

I nodded.

Stepping inside, I moved to pull the titles that I wanted. I had no way to know which books would have what I needed, although I'd found references in books in the general library that would help lead me to the books I needed.

Picking a half dozen books, I handed them to Madam Pince; she stared at me suspiciously before taking the books behind her desk.

I watched what she did through my bugs. There was a series of wand movements, but she did it silently, which was a problem for me. I couldn't learn a spell like that from wand movements alone.

I'd watched her with other students doing the same thing, so I was reasonably familiar with what she was doing.

She handed the books to me, and I headed for one foe the tables. It was time to get researching.

I actually planned to do what I'd told Lockhart along the way. It was possible that they'd use cursed animals against me again, and learning how to protect myself from that would be just as important as learning to use the spells offensively.

For the next two hours I made notes. It was a Friday and I had more time than usual; something I planned to use to my greatest advantage. Sooner or later, Snape would hear about what I was doing and he'd put a stop to it. I had to get as much information as I could, and then I would have Lockhart give permission slips to Hermione, to Harry and to Neville.

By the time I was done, I would have a pretty good idea of what I needed to do, even if my spell casting skills weren't up to the challenge. After that, I'd have to work on getting good enough to actually do what had to be done.

It would give me a secret defense that would make sudden Death Eater attacks much less terrifying than they had been in the past.

I felt a young, blonde haired girl sit next to me. I'd seen her at the sorting but I didn't remember her name. She was a first year, and a Ravenclaw, and she didn't seem like an important person.

"I've never spoken to a boggart before," the girl said. Her voice had a strange, dreamy quality. "I think it's quite interesting."

"I'm not a boggart," I said. I didn't look at her. There was a particularly interesting passage involving a spell designed to cause someone to cough up their own entrails.

"That doesn't seem to be the consensus," the girl said. "I've seen a few of you from a distance, and a couple of them even changed forms."

"There was an... incident last year," I said. "And a lot of people are afraid of me."

"More than one," she said. "From what I hear. You're quite famous, aren't you."

"Maybe," I said, looking at her. "Is there something you want?"

"To meet a boggart," she said. "And to find out why you are infested."

"What?" I asked flatly.

"You were infested once," she said. "Some kind of worm creature burrowing into your brain. At first I thought it was some sort of mutated aquavirus maggot, but it was too large."

I felt a chill down my spine.

"And is it still infesting me?" I asked.

"No," she said. "But something like that, I'd think it would keep looking."

What did she know, and how did she know it? It was possible that she was just saying random things that I was ascribing meaning to, but real seers existed in this world, and it was possible that people with other wild talents did as well.

After all, I'd heard of parseltongues and metamorphmagi. How many more wild talents existed, and how could I take advantage of them?

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Luna Lovegood," she said. "My father owns the Quibbler."

Ah.... the local conspiracy rag.

Still, it was the one source of news that wasn't under control of the Ministry, which made her an invaluable contact.

"Look," I said. "I don't have much time with these particular books, but I'd like to talk to you later."

She peered over my shoulder at an illustration on the book.

"Are you sure you aren't a boggart?" she asked. "This seems like the kind of book a boggart might study."

"People are trying to kill me," I said. "So I have to learn how to defend myself."

"You are quite violent," she said. "It's probably the aftereffects of the maggots, That can't be good for the brain."

"You just said I wasn't infested," I pointed out.

I didn't even have my own brain. I doubted that I had a corona.

If I didn't have access to my passenger now, there was no way it would find me, not in this body, not on this world. She didn't know what she was talking about.

"Or maybe you're really a ghost," she said.

Again, I felt a chill up my spine.

"Ghosts can't read books," I said. Pointedly I turned a page.

"A ghost pretending to be a normal girl," she said. "Which is like a boggart, really, except that it used to be someone and a boggart didn't."

"I'll tell you what," I said. "Tell Hermione Granger that I sent you. We've got a study group that meets three times a week, and you might be a perfect fit."

With the defense club gone, I'd had to reinstate our old group.

I'd expanded our membership to several of the more trustworthy Slytherins, as well as to some of the muggleborns from Wizarding Studies classes. It was going very well, even though the group was unsanctioned by the school, and there was some worry that the Headmaster wouldn't approve.

"I'd enjoy that," she said. "I think a lot of the girls from my year are infested with Mesopotamian ear worms. Hermione seems to be free of them."

"Right," I said.

I hadn't detected any insects inside anyone, except for a couple of kids who had lice. I'd caused those to abandon them at night, and I'd fed them to some of my other insects. The last thing I needed was for the staff to be looking for insects or even thinking about them.

Finding lice on some of the children might cause them to start using insect repelling spells, and that would be very bad for me.

"Well..." I said.

She stared at me for a moment, then nodded.

"I will speak to you later, Miss Boggart," she said.

She rose and sauntered out of the library.

I frowned. There was something about the girl that bothered me. It took me a moment to identify it.

Unlike every other first year, she hadn't been afraid of me at all.

I looked back down at my book. Lovegood was a mystery to be solved another time. The project I was working on wasn't something that would bear fruit immediately. It might not even be something I was capable of for another couple of years, but if I didn't start now, it was possible that I might never learn it.

I might not be at this school next year, after all.

I could see the writing on the wall. The restrictions on muggleborns weren't as draconian as those against werewolves, in part because werewolves were a tiny portion of the population, and so there wasn't that much disruption in exiling them.

Muggleborn were a different matter, which meant that restrictions had to seem reasonable.

Freedoms would be restricted a little at a time, each time pushing the boundary just a little bit further. Once people got used to the new order, it would be pushed forward again.

I fully expected to be exiled from the school over the next couple of years, and from what I understood, a library like the one at Hogwarts simply didn't exist, at least withour without paying an arm and a leg to simply buy the books you needed.

After two hours, I sighed and rose to my feet. I slipped my notes into my pouch, and I handed the books back to Madam Pince.

I wrote a short list of books on a note, and heading back to the Slytherin dorms, I found Miles Bletchly in the common room.

"Hebert," he said.

He was one of our study partners in the group, but he still maintained a certain distance in public for the sake of his family. We weren't certain that some of our classmates weren't being blackmailed into being spies for the Death Eaters. It would be easy to threaten someone's family.

I slipped him the note under the pretense of shaking his hand.

"Ask Fletcher if he can get these books," I said. "I'll get you the money later."

Bletchley and a couple of the other Slytherins were perfect for this. As Slytherins they would be expected to be interested in books on the darker magics. Fletcher was a smuggler, but if he knew that I was the one asking, he'd likely run to Dumbledore.

My connection to them wasn't clear, not in the way that it would have been if Hermione or Neville had asked for the books.

He nodded.

"I'll see you on Tuesday," I said quietly. "You know the place."

"Yeah," he said. He looked down at his book, even as he slipped the note into his pocket so adroitly that no one would have noticed.

There was a lot in the books that I didn't understand; despite all my work, there was a lot of theory that I was missing. Having the books would help a lot once I'd mastered that theory.

Once I did, everything was going to change.1644ShayneTAug 20, 2019View discussionThreadmarks CloaksView contentShayneTAug 22, 2019#17,261"Muggleborns freed from Azkaban!" the headline screamed.

Everyone was talking about it; apparently a team of muggleborn terrorists had broken into Azkaban; they'd not only freed every Muggleborn imprisoned by the Umbridge administration, but they'd freed some others who were certifiably guilty of crimes.

A couple of others had escaped in the chaos, including a pureblood named Sirius Black, and Bellatrix Lestrange, Volemort's second in command.

An entire host of other Death Eaters remained in custody, so it didn't seem like a play by Voldemort, but I couldn't be sure. Several of the Death Eaters had been murdered in their cells, likely revenge for their crimes against whoever had killed them.

Of course, if this was a false flag operation the ones who had been killed could have been killed due to disloyalty, or simply to make the illusion of a muggle resistance more plausible.

"This is going to be a problem," I said to the others in Wizarding Studies class.

The Professor had already left the room, and I was standing up and facing them. She'd been called out to speak to members of the Ministry through the flu network. I could hear her now, arguing that her curriculum was what the Ministry had asked for, even though it clearly was not.

"It's got nothing to do with us," a muggleborn fifth year boy said. "We didn't do it."

By definition it was true. Anyone with a muggleborn parents was a half blood, and they wouldn't be in this class. None of the students in the room were likely related to whoever did it, but it wasn't going to matter.

"It's going to make the government paranoid," I said. "And that means that they'll crack down, hard. I wouldn't be surprised if we started to see aurors patrolling the hallways, or worse."

The weather outside was getting unseasonably cold. I could see frost on the window despite the fact that it had been a warm autumn day only an hour ago. I began pulling my bugs inside the castle; there was no point in letting them get killed by an unseasonable cold spell.

"They wouldn't do that!" a fourth year girl protested. "This is the United Kingdom! We have rights!"

"Haven't you been listening in class?" I asked. "The Wizards pay lip service to being part of the UK, but they've really carved out their own little secret country in the middle of the muggle world. It's not like going from the UK to America...it's more like going from America to Iraq."

In this world, the Americans had gone to war there for some reason; it was one of several differences I'd already noticed. Most things were almost identical, but apparently Scion and the parahumans had a bigger impact than I'd realized.

"Women have more rights among Wizardkind," I said, "Because a wand more than makes up for being smaller and weaker. But muggleborns... we don't have the same kind of rights we're used to here."

"Nobody does," a sixth year boy said. "The courts are corrupt, and it's more about who you know than what you did."

"We don't have any connections," I said. "And the system is going to keep us from getting any. And this... I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see some pretty bad legislation over the next few days, stuff that we aren't going to like very much."

"I hope you're wrong," the sixth year said, "But I don't think that you are."

The room burst into muttering, and as it was a large crowd, it was some time before we got people to be quiet again.

"We need to keep our heads down," the sixth year said. "Don't draw attention to ourselves."

I nodded.

"They'll be looking for an excuse, from all of us," I said. "But especially from me."

I'd been working on my exit plan for the last two months since school had started. I'd included provisions to take Hermione if Necessary, and maybe even Harry and Neville and Millie, although it would be incredibly difficult if I was to try to take all of them.

My head snapped around; Headmaster Rowle was headed our way.

"We'd better leave," I said. "Or they'll assume that we're conspiring against them."

We were, in a way, but I didn't tell them that. Voldemort had decided to make his own cause more popular by turning the people against another enemy.

I could do the same thing.

I'd been working to network over the past month and a half; it had been hard at first; people were reluctant to talk to me for some reason, but eventually some of my fellow muggleborns had begun to thaw to me, which had led others to follow suit.

Already, even the seventh years were listening to me, not like I was a little girl, but like I knew what I was talking about.

Personally, I thought that I did, but only time would tell. In the meantime, I needed to get the class to stay as safe as possible.

Everyone began filing out of the class.

Professor Burke had a habit of leaving class a little early, almost as though she was encouraging us to talk among ourselves while maintaining plausible deniability. That wasn't the case today; I could still hear a Ministry official raking her over the coals in the headmaster's office.

Apparently the class hadn't been intended to be the positive experience that it had proved to be, and they were demanding that she crack down harder on us.

It made sense that she might have secret urges to help us; in the course of her class, she'd shown a familiarity with the muggle world that most purebloods would never admit to having. She loved to make comparisons that made things clear to us.

I'd wondered whether or not she was really married to a muggleborn; if she wasn't, she was very good at emulating someone who had.

I followed the others into the hallway outside.

"I don't like the look of those clouds," the boy in front of me muttered.

I could feel the cold air outside; it felt odd somehow, and my bugs were feeling.... something they couldn't identify. It made them afraid and they only remained in place because I forced them to.

The sky was turning dark, and I could see my breath in the air.

There was something coming; I shifted my awareness from the ongoing drama inside the Headmaster's office to the highest open windows in the castle. I sent bugs out to see what they could see, and what they saw worried me.

Cowled floating figures were circling the castle; was this a Death Eater attack?

I pulled out my wand. I hadn't been aware that Wizards could fly without a broom. If that was a spell that was available, I wanted to learn it.

Three of the creatures creatures broke away from the others, and they levitated over the walls.

While the walls were proof against creatures coming through the gate, obviously flight was less protected against. Was that an intentional flaw in the defenses, or had no one thought of it?

They were wearing dark hooded cloaks, and their faces were concealed. Occasionally a flash of rotting skin was exposed.

"Dementors!" I heard a seventh year yell.

I staggered for a moment.

The world around me vanished suddenly, replaced by a hellscape filled with the bodies of Scion's victims. Smoke burned my lungs, bringing with it the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh. I would have expected to hear the screams of the dying, but I didn't, because there weren't any wounded.

I was alone on a world where I had failed to protect everyone.

Images flashed through my mind; Leviathan, the Simurgh, Behemoth, the Nine. They flashed faster and faster through my mind, even as I felt a wave of overwhelming despair pass through me.

I shoved it away; the moment my emotions passed into my bugs, the world cleared around me, and suddenly I could see again.

Children were screaming and climbing over each other. A few had dropped to the ground even though the Dementors hadn't reached them yet.

The dementors almost seemed to enjoy the terror they were creating; they didn't seem as though they were in a hurry. Was this their natural state, or had they been told to do this to create the maximum amount of terror?

My mind raced.

Travers had taught us about these things last year, but it had been a while.

They were like boggarts, but infinitely worse. They were seemingly unkillable, and only a high level spell was able to repel them. It wasn't one that I had bothered to learn, since it hadn't seemed useful. I was regretting that decision now, of course, especially since it seemed that my classmates didn't know it either. I could see a couple of the seventh years struggling with the spell, with tiny sparks of light coming from their wands, but none of them were able to be very effective.

These things ate souls, and if I was right, this part of the castle didn't have anyone in it but the muggleborns.

I pulled out my wand. I pointed my wand at a stick on the ground. Transforming it into a variation on my club wasn't hard, and a moment later I stepped forward.

These things were blind; they hunted by emotions. If that was true, then I would be invisible to them. I couldn't depend on that, but it might give me the edge I needed.

A dementor had picked Colin Creevy up by the neck, and was bringing him close to his face.

I'd found the boy annoying, especially since he'd followed me around with his camera almost as much as he did Harry. He seemed obsessed with celebrity.

I stepped up to it and smashed it in the face with my club. I did it over and over again until it dropped the boy and lashed out at me. I ducked and smashed it in its torso.

My club crushed wetly into its side.

Were these things actually immortal, or were they just immune to magic? Had anyone actually tried mundane ways of killing them?

A second dementor had a struggling seventh year. I smashed it in the back of the head.

I struck at its joints; even if it didn't have physical pain, at least physics would still apply. It lunged toward me, dropping the boy.

The third dementor lunged toward me as well; apparently they were able to communicate among themselves, and they were intelligent enough to realize that they were under attack.

I ducked and weaved, and lashed out with my club, even as the other students pulled the younger ones back.

The entire world narrowed as I struggled to fight all three of them at once. Contrary to what Hollywood fight movies would tell you, three on one were very bad odds. The fact that I was invisible to them, that I was smaller than they were, and faster was the only thing that made it viable in the first place.

All it would take was for one of them to get hold of me and it would all be over.

I could vaguely sense Hermione and some of the older children trying to blast spells at us; they were hampered by the need to avoid hitting me, and nothing they did seemed to have any kind of effect.

They ate souls, and all that remained of what was actually me was a soul. If I died here, this was it; no afterlife, no chance at another world, just eternal oblivion.

It was a sign of just how crazy Wizards were that they thought that this was better than simply killing people.

I could hear my own breath rasping in my lungs as I ducked beneath an arm lunging at me from behind. They were getting closer, probably because they could hear the sound of my breathing, which was getting louder and louder. A summer filled with swimming couldn't make up for a year and a half of sitting in classrooms.

Sooner or later I was going to have to release my insects, but I doubted that they'd do much good. These things didn't seem to breathe, and they didn't have eyes. Insects could maybe eat their bodies, but that would take hours, and I doubted that they would sit still for that for long.

I was tiring and they weren't. The end of this was a foregone conclusion, unless I simply decided to cut my losses and run. If I did that, they'd turn on the other children.

Many of them had run inside, but a few were still on the ground, moaning. If I stopped fighting, they'd lose their souls, and I didn't want to be responsible for that.

Whoever had set this up was going to die, and in pain. It was a vow that I made for myself.

"Expecto Patronum!" I heard a shout in a rich, full voice.

A silvery wolf exploded out of a wand, and the dementors hissed, and immediately backed off.

I stared at them warily, even as I watched behind me with my bugs.

Headmaster Rowle was standing in the middle of the students, his face looking enraged.

"Go back!" he shouted. "This is not the place for you! You will stay outside the walls or you will not be here at all!"

The things tried to lunge forward, but the wolf interposed itself between us and it. It pushed them back over and over, and eventually it pushed them over the walls.

Rowle stared at the walls suspiciously.

"Is anyone hurt?" he asked.

I looked around; my arms and legs felt like they were made of lead, even though it hadn't objectively been that long.

I was going to have to work on my martial arts skills; they'd apparently grown rusty with disuse.

Every child on the ground was still alive, and some of them were starting to wake up.

"We'd have been dead if it wasn't for Taylor," Hermione said.

"Who was responsible for this?" I demanded. I rose to my feet and caught my breath. "Were you planning to wait until they'd Kissed a lot of us, and the rest so terrified that they'd leave the school?"

His face flushed red and he scowled.

My hand tightened around my wand. Part of me wanted to blast him right now, in front of a group of twenty of the Muggleborn who'd stayed behind to fight.

"You've been through something traumatic," he said. "And so I will be merciful. If you make an accusation like that again, we will be having words."

"If I can prove it, we won't be," I said. "Why are there dementors outside the castle."

"I was going to make an announcement at dinner," he said. "The Ministry has put up the dementors to guard the school against the Muggle Liberation Front. Also, there's some worry about Sirius Black and some of the others who escaped."

"And the dementors happened to attack the corner of the castle where only the muggleborn wewre at?" I asked. "Doesn't that seem like something that would take an inside job to arrange?"

"Miss Hebert..." he said. "I warned you once."

"This is what they think of us," I said. "Maybe it wasn't Headmaster Rowle...maybe it was the Ministry. They want us as dead and gone as the werewolves."

Dead werewolves had been popping up all over Britain. It was thought to be the work of people who blamed them for the attacks., although it could have just as easily been the work of corrupt aurors. No one had taken credit.

No matter what happened, it was likely that a number of the muggleborn parents would withdraw their children from school. Once they did, it would be easy to pick them off one by one.

"This won't happen again," he said.

"This was an attack on the school," I said. "By the Ministry itself!"

"You are paranoid," he said. "If it was a few rogue dementors. If they'd really meant to finish you off, wouldn't they have used all of them?"

We were both speaking to the students, some of whom were filtering back outside now that the danger was gone.

"Plausible deniability," I said. "They wanted us dead, but for it to not be their fault."

Rowle pulled out his wand, and my wand snapped up.

"Put down your wand!" he snapped.

I didn't until he put the wand to his own throat.

"All students are to return to their dormitories," he said, his voice magically projected everywhere.

To their credit, the students who'd remained to try and fight stared at the two of us uncertainly. They didn't move.

"Go!" Rowle shouted.

I nodded slightly, and they began to file one by one inside the castle. Hermione was the last to do so; she looked back at me with a troubled look on her face.

"Not you," Rowle snapped, even though I hadn't moved to go. "We're going to have a discussion."

He made as though to grab my arm, and my wand snapped up. He looked down at it, then in my eyes, and he took a step back.

"Come to my office," he said.1630ShayneTAug 22, 2019View discussionThreadmarks OverthrowView contentShayneTAug 26, 2019#17,534"Were you trying to start a riot?" Rowle asked.

I stared up at him and didn't say anything. I was used to having to look up at everyone, but he was a very large man, and he was clearly used to using his size to intimidate people. He loomed over me, standing just a little too close, although I noticed that he carefully kept his hand away from his wand.

It shouldn't have worked; even the smallest Wizard could beat the largest muggle. Human nature was what it was, however, and it had apparently worked often enough for him to keep using it.

"Do you really think being hauled off to Azkaban would do your classmates any good?"

"They wouldn't be..."

"If I was what you think I am, I'd have them sent to Azkaban or possibly home in pine boxes," he said. "I'm no Dumbledore, but I could have taken the lot of them."

If he was really that confident, he wouldn't be so cautious with me... unless it was because I was an unknown quantity. I'd been known to kill six Death Eaters, and he hadn't really seen me fight. That kind of caution spoke well of him; it suggested that he was a little less stupid than some of them.

Either that, or he simply didn't have a lot of confidence in the kinds of Wizards produced by this school, which might be another sign of not being stupid.

"The Ministry just tried to kill us," I said.

"I agree," he said.

"What?"

"Dementors don't go off plan like that, not unless they are offered a temptation they can't resist or they are ordered to. I can't imagine that any muggleborn is particularly happy right now, not with the way the political world is... which means that they'd make substandard targets.."

"You knew...."

He shook his head and scowled. "I don't know why you think that we're your enemies. Most purebloods don't agree with all this claptrap. Muggleborns are Wizards too; it's not like they are muggles."

I let that pass. He hadn't answered my question.

"There are elements of the government who don't agree that muggleborn deserve the same rights as everyone else," he continued. "I had no idea that they would go this far, but I suspected that they would try something."

"And that's why you were already on your way to us?" I asked.

He shook his head and scowled.

"I just knew that leaving a class of over a hundred children without supervision was a terrible idea," he said. "We're lucky you didn't burn down the castle."

"You don't think much of children, do you?"

"I was a child once," he said dourly. "That was enough. Where do you think the evil in Death Eaters and their ilk comes from? They never outgrew what comes naturally to them as children."

Ah. So children were evil.

"So what do you intend to do about it?" I asked. "They just tried to murder possibly a quarter of the students remaining in Hogwarts. Whatever you think of muggles, do you think they'll leave their children in this school once they found out what happened?"

"Nobody was hurt," he said.

"Wizards think like that," I asked. "Because they can heal from almost anything. Muggles are a lot more fragile, which means they ware even more protective of their children. If you don't believe me, just ask professor..."

He waved his hands.

"I'll think of something. The important thing is that you don't spread rumors that I had anything to do with this."

"Why?" I asked. "It would probably make you more popular in the government."

"I don't care about that," he said. "I came here to turn boys into men, and girls into women, not to kill them."

Presumably to make them less evil?

I stared at him assessingly. It was possible that I'd misread him; I still wasn't sure.

"Is the Ministry going to remove the dementors?" I asked.

He stared at me, and then said, "I'll protest, but they'll insist that this was a tragic mistake, that they are doing everything they can to keep the students safe."

"Then teach us the patronus spell," I said.

"That's a high order spell," he said, "Difficult to learn. Ask Lockhart."

"Do you really think Lockhart can cast it?"

There was the slightest wince on his face before it smoothed into impassiveness.

"Perhaps have Flitwick teach it in his classes," I said. "To everyone who can learn it, but especially the muggleborns since we've been targeted."

He frowned, then nodded.

"I'll speak to Filius," he said. He stared at me. "As for you, I'm going to have to have you in detention."

Looking at the chains hanging behind him, I shook my head.

"Not the chains," he said. "Those are just for the worst of the worst...the Weasleys if we can catch them. But if I'm not seen to discipline you, I will have no authority whatsoever."

I realized that I was shivering.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked. He reached out and grabbed my arm, then hissed.

Pulling out his wand, he pointed it at me. Immediately I felt warmth surrounding me.

"What is this?"

"It's cold around the dementors," I admitted. "And once I stopped moving..."

This body was smaller than my last, and that meant that the cold penetrated faster. I didn't have enough body fat to keep myself warm. The cold had penetrated all the way to my bones, even with the warming charm, I felt chilled.

"We'll get you down to Pomfrey," he said. "Do you need chocolate?"

"Chocolate?" I asked. Was he like Dumbledore? I'd always wondered if those candies he offered everyone were laced with something. I was probably wrong.

"To deal with the aftereffects of dealing with the Dementor's affect on people," he said. He stared at me. "You didn't feel it at all, did you?"

"You have to have happy memories for them to steal," I said. I met his gaze. "And I haven't had that many since I moved to this world... the Wizarding World."

"And before that?" he asked.

"I grew up in a tough neighborhood," I said. "I haven't been happy in a long time, and I know how to deal with that."

He didn't look convinced, but he gestured for me to follow, and we headed for the infirmary.

The room was filled with weeping students. It looked like a war zone. Some of the students had been trampled in the panic as the others tried to get away; others were dealing with the emotional aftereffects of what had happened.

Heads started to turn as soon as we entered the room, and voices quieted, although I could hear some of the students still moaning in the background.

Everyone was staring at me.

Hermione wasn't here; the students who'd fought and not been injured had all been sent to their quarters. These were those who'd been left lying on the ground, the wounded, and the most vulnerable.

I saw a sudden movement from my left, and my hand went to my wand. Before I could raise it, I was enveloped in a hug by Colin Creevy. He sobbed into my shirt, and muttered something, I assumed thanking me.

I stood stiffly in his embrace. The cold must be affecting my reaction speed, or the exhaustion. I felt suddenly drained, as though I'd been running for miles. Slowly, Colin pulled away from me and looked up with me, with something in his eyes that it took me a moment to identify.

It was gratitude.

One student, I didn't see who, began to clap.

The others rose to their feet, those that were able, and they all began to clap. I heard them cheering, and it took me a moment to understand.

This felt strange.

I'd had moments like this in my own life; there'd been a moment in a school cafeteria when students had stood up for me against the world's premiere heroes, forming a human shield.

But this was the first time it had happened in this world. I'd had more rejection here than I'd had at home; for being a mudblood, for being violent, for being different. It shouldn't have mattered; they were just children, and their opinion should have meant nothing to me. For some reason, though, I felt a lump in my throat.

Rowle must have sensed my unease, because he said "Being on the side of what's right often means no one notices or cares. But then there are moments like this...appreciate it while it lasts."

Rowle waited until the applause had died down before gesturing for Madam Pomfrey.

"Miss Hebert got chilled when she was fighting the dementors," Rowle said. "Take care of her as you will."

"Are you injured, Miss Hebert?" she asked, moving suddenly to my side. "I've been hearing some unbelievable stories about you."

I shrugged.

Most of the stories about me were unbelievable, including some that were outright ridiculous. That Luna girl still thought I was some kind of mutant boggart.

"Nothing that can't be fixed," I said.

She pointed her wand at me, something I wouldn't have allowed from another wizard without an explanation.

"Some muscle stiffness," she said. "Bruises on your left arm and right knee. Your core body temperature is low; that's why you are shivering."

She made several notes on a sheet of paper, which she handed to me. I looked at it, but didn't understand anything on it, except that there was an outline of a human body that looked a little like the targets used on a gun range. She's made marks on the places where I was presumably injured.

"I'll be fine in a little bit," I said. "Why don't you help those who need it?"

"I've got the sixth and seventh years helping with the minor sprains and injuries," she said. "With those who are emotionally more stable handing out chocolate. Take a bed, Miss Hebert, and someone will be around to you shortly."

The beds were all taken up, so I sat in one of the visitor's chairs.

Students surrounded me almost immediately, hands reaching out to touch me as they thanked me over and over. Some of them had questions.

I didn't like being crowded like this; it would be easy for someone to slip in and attack me in the middle of all the well wishers.

"Back off," I heard a male voice say. It was one of the seventh years, and he pushed his way through the others. "She needs help just as much as any of you, so back the hell up!"

It took a little bit, but everyone seemed to get the hint. They backed up, leaving a ten foot ring around me.

"I'm sorry about that," he said. "I don't think anybody's really themselves right now."

He pulled out his wand, and looking at my paper, I proceeded to cast spells on the parts of me that had been injured. I felt a sudden absence of a pain I hadn't even been aware of.

"I don't know what to make of you, Hebert," he said. "It was all I could do to stand up out there and you... it was like it didn't affect you at all."

"You don't give in to despair," I said after a long moment when I realized that he was looking for some kind of an answer. Everyone huddled around us was listening too. "You fight through it, and you beat it."

I knew it wasn't that simple. I'd seen my own father's depression, and there had been times in my life where I'd been so depressed that it had been hard to move. But these kids needed something more than the idea that working through despair was a long and arduous task. They needed something to aspire to.

Miss Yamada had even questioned whether my throwing myself at Lung on my first night as a hero had been an unconscious form of committing suicide.

Looking up at everyone, I said, "I've had some experience with all of this, and I can tell you one thing."

Everyone stared at me expectantly.

"We're going to have to help each other," I said. "In America, the muggle military has a saying... Leave no man behind."

I saw people looking down at their feet. These weren't the people who'd tried lobbing spells. These were the people who had run, or who had been trampled, or those who'd simply collapsed.

"I can't fight," One girl said. "Not those."

"Then you help somebody else run," I said. "Get to a door and enlarge it so they can't get through."

"I'm not brave," she said.

"You don't have to be brave to help people," I said. "You just have to do it. Things like this are going to happen in this world, more now than ever."

Helping people at a risk to yourself, even when you were afraid was the very definition of brave. But I couldn't let them think that bravery was something that was inborn; it was the result of choices people made to overcome fear.

"Maybe I'll just go home," a fourth year said.

"And how will you explain missing three and a half years of school?" I asked. "What kind of a job will you get without an education?"

I saw the realization on the faces of some of the crowd, while I could see that others had already thought about it.

"This place is a trap, even when there's not a war on," I said. "They make it so that we can't ever go back to the muggle world; they cut our tied and they make us live completely in their world."

"We could still go home, at least until this is all over," One sullen boy said.

"They've been killing muggleborn before they come here," I said. "How are you going to defend yourself at home? By yourselves? They'll start picking through everybody who goes home and you'll all be dead in a week.

There was a sudden murmuring of dismay from the crowd.

"They've backed us into a corner," I said. "And the only way we're going to survive is if we are better than they are. That's not just morally. Most Wizards don't even know the shield spell by the time they graduate. We all need to know the patronus, shields and other spells... enough that we can get away if we are attacked."

I could see some resistance on the faces of some; I'd have had an easier time convincing those who had stepped up to fight in the first place. I could see a sort of resigned acceptance on other faces.

"How?" I heard a girl say. "Lockhart isn't teaching us anything like combat spells."

"Then we have to take things in our own hand. How many of you were in the dueling club last year?"

A smattering of them raised their hands; mostly those who had collapsed without having a chance to fight. I had an ugly suspicion that those were the children who'd had the worst childhoods, given what I knew.

None of the others raised their hands, or even admitted to have attending.

"We need to do something like that again," I said. "In secret, because if some people in the Ministry hear about it, they'll make it out like we are a muggleborn army training to take over."

"Is that what we'd be doing?" a small boy asked.

"No," I lied. "We'd just be learning to protect ourselves."

Eventually the Wizarding world was going to have to change. The statute of Secrecy was going to be incredibly difficult to maintain once cell phones started uploading suspicious activity to an Internet the purebloods did not understand.

If I were running things, I'd have muggleborns joining the muggle military and intelligence agencies. With key people in place, it would be easier to keep track of what governments knew, and to be able to make changes as necessary. Once those people retired, they'd be able to train aurors to be better at their jobs as well.

The seventh year said, "You sound like somebody who wants to overthrow the system. You know...after today, I'm kind of OK with that."

I looked around.

"There will be traitors among us, people who will try to sell us out to the Ministry or the Death Eaters."

Everyone shook their heads.

"What if they threatened to kill your family?" I asked. "That would be different. If we were to start teaching each other, it would have to be something that no one knew about and no one could talk about."

"You just told it to all of us," the seventh year said. "Kind of hard to keep it a secret."

"There are ways," I said.

I'd had something like this in the back of my mind for a while, and I'd researched what had to be done.

"How many of you might be interested?"

A hand went up, followed by another, and then another. Pretty soon, almost everyone standing around me had raised their hands.

"What's going on?" I heard Pomprey say. She'd left the room to get some more potions, something that I'd made sure of before I'd started my treasonous remarks.

"Go back to your beds this instant!" she said. "Miss Hebert will still be here tomorrow, assuming young Mister Jeffries knew his healing as well as his marks say he does."

"Mark Jeffries,' the seventh year said. "I think this is going to be an interesting year."1528ShayneTAug 26, 2019View discussionThreadmarks RequirementView contentShayneTAug 28, 2019#17,658"I found it when I got lost," Colin said. "And I....uh....needed to use the loo."

"So it becomes anything you want?" I asked.

How had I missed something like this? It wasn't on the twins map, and I hadn't ever really noticed any of the bugs on the wall, probably because the space beyond wasn't actually in real space at all. When Colin had showed it to me earlier in the day I'd been flabbergasted.

"Nothing living," Colin said. "And I don't think everything in there is real. I tried taking some things out and they vanished."

"All right," I said.

I'd already tried this out but I was speaking for the benefit of the others. It was time to show them what I had learned.

I closed my eyes, and then I paced back and forth in front of the wall. I'd found that it was important to have a coherent image in your mind of what you wanted, or things could get a little weird.

A door opened, and we looked inside.

I heard the others gasp.

Inside was a representation of Brockton Bay after Leviathan had hit. There were bodies on the ground, and the devastation looked like a bomb had hit. Above was an eternally clouded night sky. The smell of the ocean in the air was unmistakable... salt and rotten fish, and other, worse scents.

"Bring everyone in," I said.

The whole thing only stretched two city blocks, but it was enchanted to look like it extended further, It smelled like it was going to rain. I felt a wave of nostalgia; it was exactly like I remembered.

They slipped into the room, more than two dozen of them. All of them looked a little apprehensive, which made sense, considering what we'd forced them to do. We'd gotten fifty members to agree to join, which was surprising when they learned what the contract they'd signed was meant to do.

No one would speak about this on pain of the worst curses our seventh years could think of. I'd had several of the older students ready to obliviate anyone who refused to sign; they'd never know that they'd refused the call.

I'd been convinced that less than half would join; we were asking for a lot, and I was sure that at least some of them would turn away.

We'd lost only two of them. Each of them had signed the pledge, some more firmly than others, but none of them had turned away.

Was it because the Ministry had pushed them into a corner? Or was it because of some quirk of human nature than said that the bigger the sacrifice, the more valuable the thing was that you were making the sacrifice for.

Was it personal loyalty to me? Since I'd stood between the entire class and the dementors, the muggleborn had been looking at me differently. It was useful, but it made me strangely uncomfortable.

Even back at home as Weaver, while I'd had the fear and respect of people, I'd never had this kind of devotion.

The twenty who had stood and fought had joined thirty of those who had been in the Hospital\ They were a ragtag group, a mixture of grades ranging from second year on up. The only first year was Colin Creevy. I suspected that the other first years had been convinced that they wouldn't have anything to offer.

The only non-muggleborns here were Harry Potter and Neville.

The door closed behind the last straggler, and I looked outside, even though I didn't have to. There was no one in the hall outside, and this was one of the halls that didn't have paintings.

I turned to them, and I could see the look of apprehension on their faces.

"We're going to learn Urban Warfare," I said. "It's the nastiest, ugliest kind of warfare there is. Most muggle wars are fought from a distance... drop a bomb and it's quick and easy. You never even have to think about the person you have killed. Even guns kill, often from such a distance that the person you are shooting barely seems human."

I stepped toward them.

"We don't have that option. Wizard spells are slow and imprecise, and that means that you need to be close enough to see the whites of their eyes before you can be sure of hitting them."

"Are we joining the army?" Colin was the youngest and he looked it. He looked tiny compared to everyone else, and he looked even more nervous than most. There was a look of hero worship when he looked at me, though.

I'd have preferred that he not have sent those pictures off to the Daley Prophet and the Quibbler, but he'd been certain that it would only do the cause good. Whether they would be published or not, and what kind of story was going to come of it was still to be determined.

If we were lucky, public outrage would cause the dementors to be withdrawn from the school. I doubted we'd be that lucky. Undoubtedly the Ministry would be quick to claim that it was a mistake, or maybe they'd claim that muggleborn had somehow lured the dementors into the castle themselves.

"We're learning to survive," I said, taking a deep breath.

I gestured, and four seventh years stepped forward.

I pulled some dark cloaks from a pile by my feet, and I handed them to them.

"The first thing I want to do is show you what real combat is like," I said. "And to do that, we need enemies. These boys are going to play Death Eaters, and you.... you are playing yourselves. Good luck."

I'd gone over strategy with all four boys already; I'd taken them through this location and I'd told them what they needed to do.

All four boys whirled their wands around themselves, and a moment later their bodies shimmered and they disapparated.

There was a sound of pounding feet, and a moment later four of the children standing and staring went down due to invisible stunners. The others were still staring. That didn't bode well for their reaction speed; we were going to have to work on that.

"I think you'd better run," I said.

They scattered in panic. Half of them were down in the first minute.

I was pleased to see that Hermione, Neville and Harry were not among them. Our training last year had been one on one, not in group tactics, but at least it had taught them how to move and how to dodge.

Ducking slightly to the side, I avoided a stunner that one of the seventh years launched at me. He was known to be a joker, and I'd been expecting something like this. I pointed my wand behind me without looking and directed a stinging hex at him.

No more spells were directed at me.

Using my bugs, I was able to keep track of everything that was happening. Some of the students tried hiding, but against an invisible enemy it was useless.

It took five minutes to get the last of them. Hermione was the second to fall, and Harry was the last. He was surprisingly nimble and fast, and some of the others had already woken up and were watching as it took four seventh years to finally bring him down.

I made a note of the others who had lasted the longest; they were the ones who had potential.

When everyone finally woke up, I said, "If those had been real Death Eaters, you'd have all been dead."

"We can't fight Death Eaters!" Colin said. He sounded a little panicked.

He wasn't the only one. I could see that a lot of the confidence the group had been showing when we'd stepped into the room was gone. I couldn't afford to leave it that way. These kids weren't recruits to the Wards. They hadn't signed contracts to join up to a paramilitary organization. That meant that I needed a lighter touch.

"I'm going to show you how," I said. I paused. "What do you know about wolves?"

"They're like dogs, right?" A fourth year asked. "But meaner?"

If this had been a group of purebloods they wouldn't have known even that much. But the muggleborn had watched television; their image of wolves was formed by innumerable dramas and possibly from nature documentaries.

"They hunt in packs," Hermione said. "Attacking from all sides."

"Unless you are fighting Dumbledore or the Dark Lord himself, most Wizards will go down if they face enough spellfire. You probably will never be good enough to beat a Death Eater by yourself. But ten of you?"

"You supposedly beat six Death Eaters as a first year," a sixth year said. He stared at me.

"I cheat," I said bluntly. "I don't care about honor, or being heroic, or any of that claptrap. When people are trying to murder me, I murder them back, and even better. The Bible says an eye for an eye... I don't believe that. If they take my eye, I'm going to take both of their eyes, their hands and their feet.... and probably their friend's just in case."

I saw some people wincing, but others seemed more open.

"I don't expect you to be that way," I said. "I've been through some things, and your lives have likely been better. But you have to be pragmatic if you are to survive. You know what our motto is..."

"Sly as a Slytherin, brave as a Gryffindor, Smart as a Ravenclaw, and Loyal as a Hufflepuff," everyone said.

Hermione had been the one who'd come up with it; she'd said that we needed something to show that we were more than just our Houses. The house system was designed to pull us apart, and we needed unity.

"It'll take qualities of every house to keep us alive. We can't just be better than them, we have to rub it in their faces. They think that Muggleborns aren't good at magic... we'll be the top of our class. They think we are lesser? We'll prove them wrong."

"How?" Colin asked. "They get to do magic during the summer, and the purebloods have tutors."

"We help each other," I said. "If one of us is bad at something, the rest of us help to lift them up. If we see someone being bullied, we will not stand for it; if you aren't brave enough to do it yourself, come and get a teacher or get someone who can."

I'd been thinking about this for a while now.

"The system is stacked against us. Being allowed to do magic during the summers gives the purebloods a huge advantage over the rest of us; so does having family libraries and tutors. The only way to counteract that is through hard work."

Hermione stepped up next to me.

"You all signed the contract," she said. "And you know what it means if you tell anyone outside of this room. The official story is that we considered creating an organization, but we decided that we didn't have time."

"If there is someone you want to nominate for membership, come to us, and we will consider it," I said.

I very specifically hadn't signed the contract, and I wasn't bound by any of its tenets. No one had questioned that, which I considered to be a good sign.

The fact that no one questioned two second year girls making decisions for the seventh years was a miracle in and of itself. We looked ridiculous next to the sixth and seventh years. In the regular world they would have looked at us as children, but no one here was looking at me that way.

"Now, it's time to learn tactics," I said. "Let's split up into squads of five. I want people of different years in the same squads; that'll force those in lower years to catch up."

"It won't hold some of us back?" Jeffries asked.

"I'll have more advanced training for you later," I said. "You will be the leaders and you need to learn how to lead."

I had plans for these kids. I'd have felt guilty about it, but the alternative would have been even worse. At least I planned to help them defend themselves.

"All right," I said. "The first thing that I'm going to teach you about cover. You know what the only thing that can stop the Killing Curse is?"

"Harry Potter?" Neville asked.

Everybody laughed, and the mood in the room suddenly changed. I'd been right to bring him along. Despite being a pureblood, he was well liked by the people who knew him.

"Besides that," I said. "Actual physical barriers can stop it. I've wondered why Wizards don't use tower shields to stop it; I'd have thought that it would be easy enough to enchant to levitate in front of you."

"It blocks the vision," Jeffries said. "And won't stop a lot of spells."

"The muggle police make transparent plastic riot shields," I said. "Why not use those?"

"A good wizard would just blast the shield, and then hit you with a Killing curse after," A sixth year said. "Or transfigure the shield into something else."

"And while they're doing that, you've got time to use the entrail expelling charm on them," I said. "It seems like a win to me."

"What if you're facing more than one wizard. They could crack it a lot easier than a regular shield, right?" Colin asked.

"What if you used a hardening charm on it?" Hermione asked. "Then it might protect you from other things too."

"It's something we'll need to think about," I said. "But the truth is that you won't have a shield most of the time. That means that you will have to learn to use the terrain around you. How many of you have seen action movies?"

Everyone raised their hands except Neville and Harry.

"Some of the things you see in those movies is wrong. Using two guns just means missing with both of them. Bullets will go right through a car door; if you want to hide; a car will provide concealment but not protection. If you want protection, hide behind the wheels or the engine block. There's other things, but the thing they get right is people hiding behind things when the bullets start flying."

"It doesn't seem very Wizardly," a sixth year complained.

"I'd rather be a living muggle than a dead Wizard," I said. "And a living wizard is even better. How to most Wizard battles seem to go?"

"One on one," Jeffries said. "Best man wins."

"And you're hoping that your man is the one who is just a little quicker than theirs," I said. "We don't have that kind of luxury. If we want to win, we have to fight like muggles."

"We don't have guns," Colin said nervously.

"Just because I'm an American doesn't mean that I'm obsessed with guns," I said. I looked at everyone's expression. "Oh... it's not because I'm an American."

Apparently everyone just assumed that I'd use guns.

I could see the appeal, but guns were too complicated to transfigure unless you were already an expert. They required parts that worked together to very small tolerances. They were loud and noisy, and I still wasn't convinced that a shield spell wouldn't work against a bullet.

I suspected that it would, actually. A supersonic rifle round might be able to kill a wizard before he had a chance to cast a spell, but this was Britain. Back at home I could have gotten guns and explosives easy.

Here I wouldn't even know where to start looking.

I had other ideas already, though. Ambushes while disillusioned, with overwhelming force. Multiple wizards with waves of blasting curses acting as artillery. Wizards on brooms as a hit and run strike force.

But first I had to teach them the basics. I had to teach them teamwork, how to move, to take cover. There was a lot to cover and I couldn't be sure how much time we were going to have.

"Let's just split into groups," I said tiredly. "And let's see if we can't turn the lot of you into the kind of people the Ministry is going to be afraid of."

"Why the Ministry?" Jeffries asked.

"Because we aren't going to be able to make the Death Eaters afraid," I said. "And we scare the Ministry more than the Death eaters do."

"What?" This time it was Hermione who spoke.

"Think about it. If the Dark Lord takes over, it'll pretty much be like it is now, at least for them. As a pureblood, all you have to do is keep your head down and don't make too many waves and you'll be fine. The half-bloods will have it worse, but really the only ones it'll be a disaster for is us."

"But why would they be afraid of us?" she asked. She looked confused.

"Because we represent everything changing. They're afraid that we'll demand some of the stuff we've gotten used to... electric lights, television, ball point pens. More importantly, if we gain power, they fear that means they'll have to lose it. They've been resting on the accomplishments of their ancestors for the past thousand years, and the thought that they might actually have to work to find their place in the world terrifies them."

Power was the one universal constant. No matter what world I was on, I was sure that it would always be the same. The people who had power would do anything they could to maintain it.

"Groups of five, people!" I said.

All I could hope was that it was going to be enough.