Hey Lovelies so one of my stories is now completely finished, the writing process anyway, and so I've taken on a second new challenge this week. I want you all to let me know what you think of this one, it's different than anything else I've done so far, and I have added too this chapter since it first went up! I would love to hear your thoughts!

Chapter 1 – Constant Vigilance

There was a collective silence throughout The Burrow as the members of the Order tried to determine what they were going to do next. Dumbledore had perished less than a month earlier, at the hand of a man that they had included in their ranks. There had been more murders, more unexplained disappearances, more "accidents", and they were at a loss. There were far fewer people willing to fight for the loosing side in a war.

"What are we going to do? We can't just sit by and do nothing! Snape was a traitor, now they have all of our secrets! What is he waiting for? How do we find out what's going on if we don't have someone we can trust on the inside?" Harry was pacing the kitchen, far too worked up to sit calmly and discuss things rationally.

There was a knock on the back door and Harry, being the one that was already standing went to answer it. Knowing that only one of their own would be able to make it through the wards surrounding the house he wrenched the door open without looking to see whom it was.

He stormed away into the kitchen only for everyone else to suddenly go silent as they took in the woman standing framed in the doorway. She was tall, with raven-black curls that were streaked with silver hanging loose around her shoulders. Her black dress embroidered with silver thread hugged her figure under a sparkling silver corset laced with emerald laces. Minerva McGonagall looked more like the goddess she was named for than the teacher that they had all come to know.

Alastor Moody was the first to recover from his shock. After all, he remembered seeing her this way before. "Minerva." He stood and nodded his head to her out of respect, offering her his seat at the table.

She gave him a small smile as she stepped over the threshold and shook her head.

"That's alright Alastor, I'm not staying. I did overhear Harry's boisterous questions though, and I think I can provide the answers that he's looking for."

Both of Moody's eyes locked on her as she finished her sentence. "Oh no you don't!" His voice was a lot harsher than many of those around the table were expecting. "You will not be doing that Missy." He pointed a grizzled, twisted finger at her, but she didn't so much as bat an eye.

"I think we are a little old for you to be calling me Missy, Mad-Eye." She raised an eyebrow towards the man she considered her friend.

"I don't care Minerva. You are not going." He was staring her down with both of his eyes, but she was staring right back.

"Who are you to stop me Alastor? If I have the potential to put a stop to this, if after all of these years I can make this right, I have to try."

"No you don't." He took a step towards her. "You know deep down that not one lick of this your fault. You are not responsible for how this all turned out. You cannot blame yourself for this war. It wasn't you that caused this."

"This war, the last war…who knows maybe if I hadn't have done what I did, if I hadn't have left, none of this would have happened! None of those people would have had to die! All of those deaths, I could have stopped them!"

With every sentence her voice was raising and she and Moody were gravitating closer and closer to each other. The rest of the people in the room were watching the interaction like a tennis match, no one really understanding the argument that was happening in front of them.

"Minerva…"

"Oh no you don't. Don't you Minerva me." She stuck out her hand towards him. "I need them Alastor."

"No." He stepped back out of her reach. "You don't have to do this Minerva. You don't have to go back to him." He tried one last time to try and persuade her to change her mind. She did not have to bear the weight of the war, of both wars, on her shoulders. This was not her fault. None of this was her fault. "When you gave them to me you told me that you never wanted to see them again. That if you ever asked for them I was not to give them back."

"I know that!" She snapped at him. "But I can't go waltzing back up there and expect him to simply let me in. He's not going to take me back without them, we both know that, and I have to try." Her voice was calmer this time. "You need eyes on the inside, and I can give them to you."

She looked around at everyone sitting in the room before turning back to face Mad-Eye. "I can save you. All of you. You just have to let me try." She was determined and he could see it in her emerald eyes.

He closed his own for a long moment and took a deep breath in. When he opened them again he let it out and reached slowly into one of the deepest inside pockets of his cloak. From there he pulled a small, black velvet, box. He flipped it open and the light caught the diamonds in the two, delicate, silver, rings that lay nestled together on the satin bed.

He pulled them out as one and took her left hand gently in his. With a sad and resigned smile he pushed the rings up her finger to rest in the place that a long time ago she had vowed they would never leave. She closed her eyes as she felt the weight of them on her hand once more. A single, silent, tear escaped down her cheek as Moody kissed her forehead gently.

"Constant vigilance, Mrs. Riddle." He let her go as they heard the collective gasp echoing from those gathered in front of them.

Minerva turned around to face the room. Surely somebody would say something. This wasn't the kind of news you can receive and then pretend you never knew about. She smiled knowingly when it was Hermione that spoke up first.

"Professor? Is that still alright?" Minerva nodded and Hermione continued. "I don't mean to sound rude or anything, it's just, why did none of us know that you were married? And more specifically, why you were married to him?"

"First of all Hermione, there is no were to it. I am married to him. I have been since we were your age. I was eighteen, he was twenty, and I have been Minerva Riddle for close to half a century. As far as you lot not knowing, it's a secret that I have kept very close all of these years. It's not something that I wanted everyone to know."

"But you're on our side?" Harry was staring at her with piercing green eyes, now that Dumbledore's gone you're in charge of the Light. "How can you be married to the Dark?"

"Harry there is a lot more to a person than the Light and the Dark. We have both inside of us, and we must choose our own paths. I didn't always believe in the same things that my husband did. I didn't make the same choices. Choices are how one becomes Light or Dark."

"But you left him?" Tonks spoke up from next to Remus. "Riddle? You walked away?"

"In a sense. Physically, yes. I left his side and hid behind the one person that he refused to challenge. Now, that person is gone. I have to go back. I have to take my place beside him. It is only chance you all have."

She smiled at them all one last time and turned towards the door to go. "Professor?"

Hermione's voice drew her back around. "Yes Ms. Granger?"

There were tears in Hermione's brown eyes, as she looked up at her mentor from where she was sitting. "How do you know that he will take you back? That he won't just kill you? After all, you left him."

"You're right, I did. But not all of me did. I may have left him, but when you love someone for as long as I loved him. You can never truly leave them behind. I have faith that my husband will take me back because I know more about him than Albus ever dreamed to."

"He didn't know that you were married to him?" Harry looked confused. "How could he not know?"

"Not many people did." Moody spoke up from beside her. "I was one of the few that they trusted enough to let come to the ceremony. They had to have witnesses see. Me and Augusta, well Longbottom by then, for Minerva, and Abraxas Malfoy and," he looked over at Minerva, "who was the other one?"

"Avery."

"Right, well Abraxas and Avery are both dead, and I'm sure Augusta kept your secret. I sure didn't tell anyone. I'd say the three of us are probably the last ones left that know. Besides him of course."

"Narcissa knows."

"What?" He turned to look at her. "How?"

"Abraxas told her. She said he couldn't go to his grave without telling someone, and he thought that she was the safest choice." She paused for a moment, "She is the most gifted Occlumens I've ever encountered. She always was."

"And she told you she knew?"

"When Draco started at Hogwarts. She wrote to me and told me that she knew, and asked if I would watch out for her son." She let out her breath through her nose and shook her head slowly. "It seems I failed at that. Which is why I must return. No one else needs to get hurt. And I truly believe that I can help end this."

"Professor?" Ron spoke up from across the room. "There is only one way this can all end."

Her emerald eyes were like daggers as she turned them on him. "I am well aware of that Mr. Weasley."

"You never answered Hermione's question Professor."

She turned to Harry, "Which one was that?"

"What if he kills you?"

"If I can guarantee you one thing in this world Mr. Potter, it is that I will not die at my husband's hand. He doesn't have it in him." There was a far off look in her eyes, and for a moment nobody moved. Then she shook her head to clear her thoughts and with a tight-lipped smile she spun around and marched towards the door.

The swish of the black fabric behind her, and the glint of silver and emerald in the last dying rays of sunlight as she strode through the yard left Harry with one thought. Mrs. Riddle was by all means an equal to the man she had married.