Sloane Sidero had been sleeping the deep sleep of someone who thought themselves perfectly safe. A rarity for someone in her line of work, to be sure. But the effort to enact the horrendously complicated Fidelius Charm had been well worth it.
The squib who held the secret didn't even know they did so, making Sidero's residence a perfect fortress against the world. Here she spent her days delving into the depths of magic, free from the meddling bureaucracy of the Ministry or the quick wands of those damned Auror's.
Here she could study forbidden arts, experiment with the deepest magics and weave wicked curses. So what if the price of her knowledge was the lives of countless Muggles and Mudbloods, progress demanded sacrifice, just not hers.
So when Sloane Sidero was roughly woken from her much needed rest to find herself without wand and bound to a hard wooden chair her brain, formidable though it was took a long time to process how anyone could have found her.
A tall young man with vivid green eyes stood in front of her, wand held loosely in his hands. Behind him a another man was leaning over her best cauldron, scraping the delicate metal with each rotation, occasionally clanging her favourite stirring rod onto the side. It set her teeth on edge.
But all else was forgotten when she saw the young woman with bushy hair holding her cat in her arms. Princess had her eyes closed and was purring contentedly in the intruders arms. They must have done something to her poor cat!.
"Hello Sloane, my name is Harry Potter and you have something that I need," said boy closest to her with a lazy smile on his face.
"Whatever it is you think I have, I haven't got it. I'm a potion maker not some goblin hoarding treasure," she spat. She wasn't going to let them see her fear, she was Sloane Sidero, she had forgotten more about magic then these three children would ever know.
The boy laughed, "But that's simply not true at all, why just this room alone has enough rare ingredients alone to make Snape drool. However, I'm after something far more valuable."
Sloane tensed in her restraints. It couldn't be true, she'd been so careful. Not even Dumbledore had suspected anything and now this brat stood before her, in her own house no less, somehow aware of her most precious treasure?
Her mind raced, no it couldn't be true. He was bluffing, fishing for details. He probably suspected she had something of value and was hoping she'd blurt it out. She had to give them something of sufficient value that they'd believe it was her true treasure, but what?
One thing came to mind. She hated to lose it, but it was a trifle compared to her real treasure. Besides, she could always brew more when she was done stringing up these thieves.
She hung her head, as if in defeat, "Fine," she said, her voice broken and horse, "I'll show you where it is."
"Excellent," said Potter, waving his wand and freeing her from the chair, "lead on."
Sloane rose from her chair, her form hunched and cowering, as her eyes darted around the room looking for anything she could use. If she lead him into the basement she might get her hands on a flask of Erumpent oil. The volatile liquid would make short work of the thief, then all that was needed was to find one of her wands and she would make the fools beg for death!
As she opened the door to the basement she couldn't stop the cruel smile that stretched her weathered face. Boys and their wands, idiots the lot of them. The Potter boy lit the tip of his wand and followed after her into the darkness.
"It's just over there," she said, pointing into an empty corner of the room with a wrinkled hand. Just as she hoped the boy looked and pointed his wand away from her. In that instant she dived for a nearby table, tore off the wax lid of a small bottle and through the contents at Potter.
At the same time she dived under the table to avoid the impending explosion. She clamped her hands over her ears and waited.
And waited.
Finally she opened her eye to see Potter standing there, wholly intact, "How?" she croaked.
"I swapped the Erumpent oil for water before I ever woke you up. Now if you through rolling around in the dust, I'm on a rather a tight schedule."
She gaped at him. How could he possibly have known, "Are you a Seer, is that how you found me?"
He smiled again, "Something like that. Just assume I know you better than you know yourself. Now let's press on."
He made a shooing motion at her. She could feel the flood rushing to her face as she fought done the urge to strangle the life from him. How she hated that mocking glint in his eyes. She swore to herself that as soon as she was free, and she would be free, she would use all her arts, acquired over long years of perilous experimentation to destroy Potter. It would be a thing of beauty. Mages born a thousand years from this day would still talk of what Sloane Sidero did to Harry Potter in little more than a whisper lest the attract even an inkling of the suffering she had in store for-
"Yes, yes, thousand years of torment, very good," The brat shot a jolt of yellow light into her thigh, stinging her flesh like a hard slap, "Monologue on your own time, Sidero. Some of us have better things to do."
Sloane grit her teeth. Damned fool, young he might be, but Potter clearly wasn't without some power. She hadn't at all suspected he might be a Legilimens but she filed it away for later use. After all, when one gazed into the abyss…
They arrived at a large picture frame, cover in a dusty white sheet. Without prompting, Potter vanished the sheet revealing a portrait of a stone hallway, leading endlessly into the depths of the canvas. A door split the wall on one side in two and light shone from within, washing the stone of the hallway in pale blue.
Potter look at her expectantly, the ever present laughter glinting in his eyes.
"I need my wand to enter," she tried.
"We both know you don't," he replied calmly, "You decided it would be too risky to tie the enchantment to your wand, given the chance you might lose it."
"How could you possible know that?"
"Maybe I'll tell you someday," then shot another stinging curse at her, "Hurry up, dear."
Seething, Sloane faced the picture frame once more, then stepped into it. Her perception wavered and squeezed unnaturally and she stumbled slightly before adjusting to the two dimensional plane.
She walked down the hallway to the door and entered. There it was, a bubbling pot of perfect molten gold, Felix Felicis. Oh how she longed to down a days worth, an hours worth, even a moment's. With pure luck pumping through her veins she would turn the table on the thieves and introduce them to the all unendurable delights that her wickedness could devise.
But she could not, for within the frame, all paint. Indeed that was the point, for a picture of a potion could last a thousand times the life of a real potion. She would have to remove it from its vault to make any use of it whatsoever.
Reality shuddered as she expanded once more into the material plane. For the briefest of moments she was overwhelmed, yet that was long enough for Potter to take the precious liquid from her.
"Thanks," said Potter lightly and pointed his wand at her. Red light rocketed from its tip and crashed into her chest and all was darkness.
Sloane groaned as she roused again. Two stunners in one night at her age, what was that fool boy thinking. She made to stand up, only to find herself bound again to the same chair. Potter was there, still completely at ease. Ginger seemed to be finished ruining her finest cauldron and Bushy still had her cat in her arms.
Potter was saying something to the other two, his words seeped slowly into her foggy mind, "-still be a bit drowsy from the stunners, but it's nothing that won't wear off in the next hour or two.
Ginger was staring greedily at the Felix Felicis, "Imagine what we could do with all this!"
"Luck will only take you so far, Ronald, besides that much would be toxic," said Bushy.
"I wasn't suggesting we drink it all, Hermione!" Protested the one called Ronald.
Bushy was about to retort when Potter clapped his hands loudly, "Enough, we don't have time. I need the Felix for a very specific purpose, but before we do that we need what we really came for."
Sloane's heart froze in her chest. It just wasn't possible. She'd given them a king's ransom in luck but it appeared this Potter knew her every move before she did. Potter turned to her.
"We need the stone, Sidero. I know you have it so don't bother denying it. I also know that you are the only one that can call it forth, you protected it even better than this," he said gesturing to the pot of luck.
"I'll never talk!" she spat.
"You always say that," replied Potter confidently, moving to the stove where the redhead over stirred whatever it was he was trying to make. Potter gave it a sniff then reeled back, coughing.
"Merlin Ron, that is horrid, one of the worst I've seen," then inexplicably Potter clapped Ronald on the back as if he couldn't be happier. Then those bright green eyes found her again, "Now Sidero, call the stone or I dunk Princess in the cauldron and let you deal with whatever manages to crawl back out!"
A chill ran through Sloane. There was perhaps three things in all the world that she truly valued. Her work, her life and her cat. Potter had once again proved himself a powerful seer.
"You best kill me after this, Potter. I will find you and I will pull such screams from your tattered soul as to-"
Potter waved his wand and her jaw snapped shut.
"Right, sometimes just the threat is enough, oh well. Hermione, if you could please place Princess on the bench there, please."
Bushy looked torn about it for a moment, then slowly released the cat onto the bench. Potter then trained his wand on Princess, "Imperio."
Princess shivered once and then started to walk jerkily towards the cauldron.
Potter spared her a glance over his shoulder, "You can stop this at any time Sidero, just call the stone and we'll release you and the cat."
Sloane Sidero knew herself to be many things. She was wicked and conniving, brilliant and driven but she was not brave. The darkness in her soul was not that of the petty dark lords who sought to topple empires, but the hunger for the deepest magics. All manner of ghastly transgression were permitted in her pursuit. Her hands were drenched in blood. The blood of the lost, the weak and the innocent.
She protected herself from the madness with her overriding belief that progress required sacrifice. A thousand years from now, the deaths she had caused, the agony she had wrought from decades of victims would be silent and all that would remain was her grand works.
One thing she allowed herself to care about, a last tether to humanity, lest she lose herself to her dark arts, and Harry Potter was about to drown it in some foul potion. Her mind was a blur of strategies and calculations as her precious cat stuttered ever closer to the boiling cauldron.
She snapped and mentally called forth the stone. It appeared before her in the air, then fell to the ground with all the gravitas of loose gravel.
"Finite," said Potter then picked up the tiny fragment of stone, he closed his eyes as if bracing himself for something, but nothing happened.
Sloane struggled in her bindings, glaring hard eyed at Potter, demanding release. He had wrested the stone from her, but she would get it back. She would hunt him every moment of every day until she pried it from his thieving hands.
Potter still knelt on the ground, his eyes still closed, "Ron, Hermione; I'm about to do something that's going to upset you. I ask you to trust me, just for a little bit longer. Trust that I'm working towards a better world… for all of us," he let out a sigh, "Do I have it?"
"Yeah mate, you do," said Ron gravely.
"Hermione?" Harry asked.
"...Yes."
Potter opened his eyes and it seemed to Sloane that his eyes had never shone so bright. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a snitch of all things. He held it before him for a moment and then said, "I am about to die."
The Snitch split in two, revealing a black stone with a jagged crack running down the center. Potter's hands were steady as he plucked it from it's spot, then his eyes, his terrible burning eyes locked onto hers.
"This is the second Hallow, the Resurrection Stone."
Bushy and Ginger both gasped, but Sloane couldn't take make herself look away from the man in front of her.
"It is perhaps the greatest work of soul magic ever created… if indeed it was created. You are a foul, broken creature, Sidero. You could have been so much more, could have brought light to this fading world."
Again he paused and the room was silent.
"For what it is worth, I am sorry for what I am about to do… Avada Kedavra!"
For the fraction of a second, all was green.