Someone to Love

by The Ferryman

Honks. what if Ginny died at the Battle of Hogwarts and Tonks lived? Riddle is dead, the battle won, but the war is not yet over. Two grieving people have one chance to clean up the MoM for good, the clock's ticking, while caring for a baby half-werewolf.

7. The Times They Are AChangin'

Chapter 7: The Times They Are A-Changin'

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

-Bob Dylan-

I hate portkeys.

Such a simple statement probably isn't on par with high-energy charms or multi-dimensional thaumaturgy, but it is a brilliant statement of fact. Given the severe dearth of facts in the wizarding world it probably has all sorts of profound implications but since I'm not Hermione what those implications are eludes me. However, it doesn't change the fact that I hate portkeys.

I'd just had time for my hate of portkeys to crystallize in my mind when the one Travers' had tossed me brought me to my, or rather its, destination. Once again I missed the landing and ended up flat on my face.

Let me clear something up. Missing a portkey landing is often described as being 'slammed to the ground' or some such nonsense. Since you aren't actually moving, just going from being vertical in one place to being horizontal in another, there really isn't enough momentum to be properly slammed into anything.

It just feels that way.

So after suddenly appearing and feeling as though I'd run face-first into the earth, I rolled left. Something red and loud blasted through the area I'd been in, or would have been in if I'd been able to land properly. Since I'm almost as well known for my proficiency with portkeys as I am for my proficiency with the floo it meant that whoever ambushed me had either expected me to stick my landing (for once), or hadn't done all their research.

Sloppy, that. Hermione would never have let me get away with it.

I rolled again and ended up behind a tombstone marked Harry Potter, June 16—

Exactly when he lived from until he died are obscured by the stone turning into dust by some curse or other, but the name and day certainly didn't bode well for this Harry Potter.

I tossed up a shield, threw a reductor at the biggest monument I could find behind me in an attempt to throw off my attacker's estimate of where I was, and then lunged for the next nearest chunk of stone to put between me and my attacker.

There was coughing behind me. Hopefully someone was now experiencing the joys of marble dust in the lungs. I tried to disapparate only for it to fail. Anti-apparation ward. Depending on how those are set they can have a number of nasty effects. The worst ones I've ever heard of (Sirius' father was seriously paranoid) act like big razor nets. Apparating through it turns the apparatee into very tiny pieces. Albus', I've been told, feel like you've been hit with a full body-bind. This wasn't anything so complex. It was quicker, short duration, and meant to not attract a lot of attention. Instead of razor wires it felt like being smacked with a cricket bat. Pain flowered behind my left eye and spread out through my body.

I drew the Elder wand with my left hand, using it to conjure a shield that stopped a couple of curses I couldn't identify before returning with a stunner from my normal holly wand. Like the incoming curses the stunner flared against the shield and didn't go through.

Okay, so I couldn't attack and defend at the same time, I was willing to settle for stopping the curses coming my way. Unfortunately the two in front of me were joined by a third flanking from the left, so I faded right and back towards some mausoleums.

This entire situation was insane. Travers couldn't honestly expect to get away with this. Both Percy and Bill would attest that Travers had been alone in the room with me and I hadn't left. As soon as I got back I was going to round up Neville and maybe one of those posse things on the muggle westerns Dudley used to watch during his 'cowboy' craze—Vernon had, thankfully, put his foot down for once when Dudley demanded a horse. Heck, I didn't even need to bother with it. I just had to let the public know that Travers had attempted to kill Harry Potter and then sit back and watch as they crucified him.

Probably a little harsh, but Tra—wait. Travers…son of a hippogriff. I should have known. One of the Death Eaters had been named Travers. If he wasn't the same one he was probably related and if the Lestranges and Carrows were anything to go by Death Eaters came in broods.

I had some serious housecleaning to do. Fortunately if dragon's blood worked cleaning ovens it should be equally handy at cleaning…other things. Maybe I could see if Charlie had one he could lone me. Have dragonfire take off the top half-inch of slime, heh.

"Going somewhere, Potter?" a voice asked behind me.

I turned and wordlessly cast a banishing spell. A wizard in dark robes and a silver mask—more Death Munchers, fun and joy—made an umph sound as he was slammed into the wall of a crypt. I hit him with a sticking charm, a stunner, this tricky little jinx Hermione found that reversed his left knee joint, and then shattered the other with a bludgeoning curse. I didn't get the jinx quite right; it looked like it had fused the joint together instead. Oh well, beggars, choosers.

A flicker of poisonous green light caught my eye, but the killing curse missed wide to the right and I was on the move again.

It was time to change the game and get some help. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be any handy muggles around to go call the newspapers about a bunch of people in bathrobes flinging bright lights at each other. Fortunately there were ways around that. I pointed my wand at the sky and uttered a spell I'd heard before but had never really felt the urge to try.

"Morsmordre."

The thing worked as advertised, a thick coil of green smoke poured out of my wand and into the air where it formed a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth. Definitely attention-grabbing. Of course, the Aurors had never managed to respond in time to its sighting before Voldemort took over, but at least it was a start.

For my second trick I tapped my badge and called up Draco.

"What do you want, Potter?" he demanded.

"Go find Hermione, Ron, the other Weasleys, and arrest Travers."

"Arrest Travers," Draco repeated.

"Well I thought about having you insinuate to a reporter that he worked for the Death Munchers and set me up to be killed, but I decided I would rather crucify him myself rather than let someone else do it for me."

Draco was silent for a moment, "You think because his cousin was one—"

"Oh no, I have proof," I said. "He slipped me a portkey and I'm fighting at least three or four of your father's old buddies right now. I mean, black robes, silver masks, killing curses, and big ugly smoke signals and all."

"Why call me?" Draco asked, apparently unconcerned that I was in the middle of a life-or-death fight. "How do you know I won't ignore this call?"

"One, these calls are monitored," I said, I didn't actually know if they were or weren't, but it was a safe bet that he didn't know either, "I'm willing to bet that you can't find and get rid of all the recordings before all hell breaks loose when people realize that the Chosen One is dead.

"Reason two, enlightened self-interest. The only reason your family isn't rotting in a cell in Azkaban, or worse, is because of me. Even if you do get rid of the recordings what do you think is going to happen once I'm gone?"

"Arrest Travers, trust the weasels. Anything else you want, Potter? Take out the trash maybe? Send a rescue squad?"

"Would you?" I asked. "Tell them to look for the floating skull and snake over a cemetery."

A Death Eater stepped out from behind a mausoleum and started to yell "I found him!"

He got as far as the second word before I hit him with a summoning charm, then a banishing charm as he flew towards me. I told Draco I had to go, closed the connection, and summoned the Death Eater over again, following up with a body-bind and a tickling charm from the Elder Wand—have you ever been tickled while unable to move? It is seriously unpleasant—then stomped on his wand for good measure.

There was an open grave nearby and I half considered burying him but I didn't have time for that. There was a pile of dirt under a green tarp and I levitated the tarp, then the sod beneath it, stashed the Death Eater on the dirt and quickly charmed the sod and tarp back into place. I tossed around a few reductor curses—did you know that if you concentrate and have two wands you can fire the curse twice at the same time?—for ambience, and tossed a long-burning fire-spell into the open grave for good measure and then it was time to move again.

There was a shout from behind me.

I moved faster.

Ideally I needed to find the edge of the anti-apparation jinx, instead I had cover. Having great big things to duck behind is great, but it also has two downsides. First, it cut off my line of sight. Second, the Death Munchers were in among the crypts and mausoleums as well. I ducked behind one mausoleum, circled a second, and then tossed an off-hand banishing spell at the ground and promptly found myself in the air.

Okay, that sucked. I probably just made myself a big target for anyone who was watching that wasn't stuck in among the houses of the dead and decaying, but more problematically one of said house's stone roofs was rushing up at me.

Unlike the portkey it really did feel like I slammed into something stone. No curses came at me, however, so I put up with the bruises and peeked over the edge.

Stupid Death Muncher wasn't looking up. Heh.

I grabbed a broken branch, thought for a moment, and then transfigured it into a flower pot filled with dirt and a transfigured a leaf into geranium for inside of it. One hover charm later—selected because you don't have to consciously maintain it like you do a levitation charm—and a banishing spell and the Death Eater slumped to the ground. Before you ask, no, I didn't choose the flower pot because of Dudley's Saturday morning cartoons or some traditional thing. I did it because after listening to every variation of Potter that people could possibly come up with over the last sixteen years, using a flower pot was…poetic. Maybe it could be my new trademark spell, Potter's Flower Pot of Pain.

I jumped down from the roof, the Death Eater made a convenient cushion to jump down onto…just as another Death Muncher came around the corner. Fool I was, I froze.

"Crucio!"

Needless to say the Death Eater didn't.

I flinched, expecting to once again the worse pain a human can feel…only I didn't. The spell hit me and did nothing. The Death Eater started to bring up his wand again when a cat-hole appeared in a marble wall in the crypt to my right and Pixel exploded out of it. She was hissing like, well, an enraged cat, and her fur was standing up so that she looked like she'd about tripled in size.

She jumped, clawed her way up his robes as easily as she had streaked across the ground, and claws flashed as she exploded into his face like a berserk buzz-saw. The Death Eater brought his wand around but a disarming spell took care of that and she rode him to the ground as I summoned the wand and snapped it like I had the others. I turned away to find the one wand of the Death Eater I dropped the pot on and broke it as well.

Someone would probably bitch about me destroying evidence or something. Screw them, I was fighting for my life here and so many purebloods are helpless with their wands. Makes me wonder why exactly they think they're so much better than muggles if taking away their wand is all that it takes to drop them down to that level.

The Death Eater on the ground was screaming and trying to throw Pixel off, but she had latched her teeth into his arm and sunk her claws in so he wasn't accomplishing much.

I tried to hit him with a stunner but he was moving too much and Pixel was in the way, which is when his partner ducked around a corner and hit me with the Cruciatus. You'd think sooner or later they'd realize it doesn't work on me any more and give it up. I fired a pair of stunners, an impediment jinx, and a disarmer in rapid succession. He blocked the first two, dodged the third, and then tossed his wand into the air with a little flick so that when my last curse hit him it didn't do anything. He caught the wand and retaliated with something that was bright, orange, and ugly-looking. I dodged to my side as I watched the wall of a crypt burst into flames—not flame-charring, mind you, the stone was actually burning.

I didn't have much left in my bag of tricks so I reached for something I hadn't tried before. The previous summer when I had been at the Weasleys on the day before Bill's and Fleur's wedding, Ginny and I had managed to escape from her mother. We'd gone to the pond and she'd spent a couple hours teaching me her bat-bogey hex. An early miss-cast on my part had led to my first foray into spell creation. The result was, when I pointed my wand and cried out the words, bogies started to stream out of his nose and form into tiny bats that assaulted him…but only after they had burst into gobs of flame.

The Potter-Weasley Flaming Snot-Bat Hex had its first field trial and got a ten-wand rating as the man tried to extinguish his burning clothing.

The other man had rolled to his knees by this point and slammed Pixel face-first into a crypt, then used his other hand to pull her off and fling her away. He went for a second wand, but I was already calling up another spell. Unlike the Potter-Weasley Flaming Snot-Bat Hex this was one I'd seen used…once. I'd looked it up later, but had never practiced it.

There was a sharp crack, a puff of smoke, and instead of a ferret there was a thing that looked like a mangy cross between a squirrel and a dachshund, lying on the ground.

It probably wasn't a surprise that it hadn't worked. I mean, I'm better at the practical than the theory, but human transfiguration wasn't covered until seventh year transfiguration and I'd spent all of my seventh year living in a tent chasing down Horcruxes and avoiding Death Eaters.

"Banner!" screamed the Death Eater besieged by flaming snot-bats. "Banner, banner, banner."

I started to curse him again but felt an increasingly all-too-familiar tug—

—and slammed into the floor of my office.

Draco, Arthur, and Bill were waiting for me, along with Travers who was sitting in a chair. Only Draco had his wand out and it was quietly, but firmly, covering Travers.

"That took a bit longer than expected," Travers said. "Will you call off your pet Death Eater now?"

I blinked, "What?" I mean, I'd heard Severus referred to as Albus' 'pet Death Eater'—mostly by Order members, but there had been a few others. But Severus' and Malfoy's situations weren't remotely…oh sweet and merciful Merlin, they were.

"It was a training scenario, Harry," Bill explained. "Ron told me about it last night. I understand that it looks and feels realistic, but I suppose that isn't really surprising."

"A training scenario?" I asked. "Bill, they were flinging around the Killing and Cruciatus curses like they were candy."

"Under controlled circumstances, yes," Bill said. "I asked. They make sure to aim well away with the Killing curse and the Cruciatus doesn't exactly cause any permanent damage?"

"You've heard about Frank and Alice Longbottom, haven't you?" I asked.

"That was a very different situation," Arthur said quickly.

"Only if you know the people in masks aren't going to torture you into insanity," I said. "Now why did whoever it was start screaming 'banner'?"

Travers blinked at me, "It was the emergency word. It immediately ends the training scenario if something dangerous or a bad injury happens. What happened?"

"Boss," someone called, slamming my officer door open. "Boss, Potter just—" Williamson, dressed in Death Eater robes though without the mask or hood, froze when he saw me.

"Yes," I asked coolly, "Just what has Potter done now?"

"You nearly killed Dawlish," he informed me.

Poor Dawlish, the man just could not get a break.

"Did you?" Travers demanded.

"Did I what?" I demanded right back. "I found myself in a fight with Death Eaters so I bloody well defended myself."

"You transfigured him into…something!" Williamson retorted. "The Healers are attempting to reverse it now but they don't think it's likely. And Lew Carol is badly burned and the Healers say they're not sure they can put Proudfoot's leg to rights."

"Human transfiguration?" Bill asked, sounding impressed. "That's—"

"Really difficult, I know," I said. "Also doesn't usually work, it takes too long and is too easy to block or we'd have just transfigured the Death Eaters into lumps of coal and been done with it." They definitely deserved it for Christmas, but I doubted that that particular custom had made the transition from muggle to magical world.

Arthur frowned at me, "Harry, human transfiguration is dangerous at the best of times. You spent all of last year, when you normally—"

"I am aware of what we missed," I seethed. "I thought he was a Death Eater, and he hurt Pixel," I added.

"Who?" Williamson asked.

"My cat," I said. "He slammed her into a crypt and then threw her."

Williamson's face was starting to turn an unhealthy purple and I held up my hand before he could retort.

"I thought I was under attack and…I'm really tired of loosing people I care about," I said. "If it helps the Healers I was attempting to turn him into a ferret, and as for…Carol, I think you said, I was trying a joint reversing spell."

Williamson gave me an ugly look, then turned around and slammed his way out of my office.

I crossed to my desk, letting my wands fall out of my hands onto it before collapsing into the chair.

"If you'll call off Malfoy now," Travers said coolly, "I'll go see how much of a mess you made of your Aurors."

"Tell us about your cousin first," I said.

He gave me a dark look. "My cousin's side of the family and mine both agreed that changes needed to be made in the wizarding world. We didn't agree on the methods, or even what changes needed to be made. End of story." He didn't bother waiting for me to say anything to Draco, just shouldered him aside as he stormed out of the room.

"We should be getting back to work," Arthur said carefully.

I nodded distractedly and he left, followed by Bill who promised to go look for Pixel.

"So you already did that little test?" I asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"Sure," he said. "I made a portkey and got out. They weren't expecting Father to have taught me how to do that."

The fireplace flared and a moment later Kingsley stepped out. "Harry, I just got off the fire with one of our muggle-relations experts. There was a disturbance in a London cemetery not ten minutes ago. It included the presence of the Dark Mark—"

"Ten minutes, huh," I said. "We need to work on that response time." Kingsley looked at me and I shrugged. "It's probably nothing."

"Excuse me?" Kingsley asked.

"Travers came up with this test thing, dropped me into a running spell-battle with a half-dozen Aurors dressed up as Death Eaters. There was probably some kind of muggle repulsion field up so I sent up the Dark Mark to get above that. I was hoping for some help. Instead I got told off for nearly killing one of them. I'll probably get told off again for seriously injuring several more."

"Several more?" Draco asked.

I shrugged.

"You mentioned a failed joint-reversal spell," he said.

I sighed and nodded.

"And burns?"

"Burns?" Kingsley asked.

I shrugged again.

"Want to talk about it?" Kingsley asked.

"Sure, Kingsley, I'd love to talk about it," I said broad smile. "My name is Harry Potter and I'm messed up because this bad man was trying to kill me since I was one. I killed him a couple of days ago and I feel really, really bad about it."

"I think I'm going to be ill," Draco said, making a face.

"Draco, get lost."

"Of course, mon Capitaine," he said, giving this sarcastic little bow before showing himself out of my office.

"What's there to talk about Kingsley?" I asked.

Kingsley was silent for a moment. "I know what happened yesterday was an accident, Harry. But considering what I just heard, I'm worried about you. If you start killing first—"

"Is that what you think I'm doing?" I asked coolly.

"It is a disturbing trend," Kingsley said carefully. "I'm not blaming you, mind, and I doubt anyone is going to confess to being disappointed in you for killing You-Know-Who—"

"Merlin, not you too."

"Voldemort." He grinned suddenly, "You start not using his name because of the Taboo and it becomes a habit. As I was saying, nobody is unhappy that you killed him, but—"

"But I didn't kill him," I said flatly.

Kingsley paused. "You didn't?" he asked. "I thought—"

"You thought, everyone thought, wrong," I said. "I didn't kill him. I just…bounced his killing curse back at him."

Kingsley whistled softly. "Can you teach that trick?"

"No," I said, "But it's easy enough to learn. You just have to become intimately acquainted with the Killing curse…from the receiving end. It's not something I would recommend of course, but there it is. The fact is I didn't kill anyone until yesterday and that was an accident, though I suppose if you wanted to be technical you could blame me for Quirrel's death as well as Voldemort's. I didn't actually do the killing, mind you, but I….created the situation where his death was inevitable."

"How many people know about that one?" Kingsley asked.

"That are still alive?" I asked. "I don't know, maybe a half dozen or so that I've told the story to, you, whoever Albus told, and the people that any of them have told."

Kingsley was silent for a long while. "You can't keep having accidents, Harry."

"Just what is that supposed to mean?"

"If people start to see you as a killer, someone who is more likely to kill a suspected dark wizard rather than arrest him, either by accident or design, it will seriously damage your reputation."

"I don't intend to ever kill anyone by accident again," I said firmly.

Kingsley started to reply, then stopped. "I'm not sure I care for how carefully that was worded," he said.

"And I'm not sure how you want me to respond to that," I said.

"Harry…" Kingsley began, then apparently thought better of it because he sighed. "If the public decides that you're, well, another Mad-Eye Moody, more willing to bring a criminal in dead than alive—"

"Dragon dung, Kingsley," I said. "All my life, at least since I found out about magic, it's been Dark Lord this, Death Eaters that, the First War, the Second War, the War against Grindelwald. Make up your mind. Am I a soldier fighting a war, or am I bobby trying to bring a hoodlum in?

"Am I supposed to stop them by whatever means I have to in order to keep people safe, or do you want me to wait until they actually do something and then go, investigate, and do nothing because they've already disapparated away? Can I just have my people open up and drop the bastards, maybe alive or maybe dead, or do we have to wear brightly colored uniforms that say 'curse me' and walk down Diagon Alley announcing ourselves in broad daylight and giving 'ample warning'? You can't have it both ways. We're either soldiers, or we're police. Not both"

"Did it ever occur to you that the people you have working for you might not be soldiers?" Kingsley asked.

"And maybe that's why Voldemort took over the Ministry," I said. "Maybe what we really needed were a bunch of Alistair Moody's willing to bring in Death Eaters dead if that's what it took."

"It's not that simple," he said.

"When is it ever?" I asked. "How did we get on this topic of conversation anyway?"

"You put three of your Aurors in St. Mungos," he said with a frown.

"I put three people who were dressed like Death Eaters, were attacking me like Death Eaters, and were using similar spells as Death Eaters, in St. Mungos," I said. "You didn't like that. Apparently I was supposed to inform them they were all under arrest and demand they come quietly."

"I never said that," he said. "Look, Harry, you're obviously upset—"

"Upset?" I asked. "Upset. Upset doesn't begin to cover it, Kingsley! Every year for the past seven years, with the possible exception of my third year at Hogwarts, Voldemort or one of his minions has tried to kill me. I've had friends tortured, brutalized, and murdered by his followers. With a very few exceptions that I don't even need all my fingers to name, everyone I've met prior to a couple of days ago that has worked in this place has done their best to make my life miserable, or worse. I've had dementors sent after me, and then persecuted for defending myself against them. I've been slandered, called insane, deluded, and a liar. The Ministry sent a toad to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, but instead of teaching she sacked teachers, dispensed truth serums like they were pepper-up potions, forced students to use blood quills until they were scarred, and justified the use of the Cruciatus on students. Scrimgeour couldn't have her sacked, oh no, he kept her on while using the same tactics that had gotten Sirius a twelve-year all-expenses-paid vacation in the resort prison of Azkaban, and trying to get me to be his cute little morale-boosting puppet. The toad he wouldn't sack just spent most of the past year directing the Ministry's crusade against muggle-borns. One of my Aurors, just to bring things back around, almost lost her father due to that bitch's work; he was, in fact, reported dead months ago, and he may still die.

"I spent a large portion of my fifth year, when I wasn't carving 'I won't tell lies' into my hand, doing her job teaching Defense because she wouldn't. Less than three days ago more than a third of those people I taught were killed. Ten people—eleven if you count Justin who no one has seen or heard from in months—many of them I've known since my first year. We lost more people in proportion than any other group at the Battle of Hogwarts. The only ones of us who weren't injured were the ones who weren't there…a grand total of four, including Justin. You remember the bit with Marietta, Zach Smith ran, and Dennis Creevey was deemed to young by McGonagall and sent away with the younger students.

"The man who was the closest thing to an uncle I had was killed. One of my closest friends was killed. My girlfriend was killed and I can't even go to her funeral. Upset doesn't even begin to describe how I feel, Kingsley," I concluded.

"Feel better?" he asked impassively.

I shrugged, "a little…maybe."

"Good, find someone to vent to, it helps," he said. "But not me, I don't have time to hold your hand."

"I didn't ask you to," I said coldly, but there was very little energy in it.

Kingsley crossed to where a window frame had been hung in my office. It was a great big one, looking down from a London skyscraper. "Looks like a sudden storm is brewing," he commented before turning back to me. "Okay, Harry, if you had to choose soldier or cop, how would you play it?"

"You want my ideas?" I asked.

"You usually have good ones," he said. "Not always practical, but they're usually…unique. I had an interesting talk with a goblin earlier…your doing, I presume?"

I nodded.

"So…thoughts?"

I shrugged, "We have a year where everything we, by which I mean you, say goes. Let's use it."

"And when that year is over, then what?" he asked. "A new government is just going to emerge from the woodwork?"

"That's your job, Kingsley."

"No, it's our job," he said sternly. "I need your help on this, Harry. But if you sour the public to you having you as part of the Ministry is going to be more of a hindrance than a help. You can't trade terror for terror and by targeting the purebloods that's just what you're doing."

"I'm not just targeting the purebloods," I snapped. "I'm targeting the Death Eaters' support. It's not enough to take out the Death Eaters, whether it's sticking them in prison or killing them. We have to…tear out the rot, the type of thinking that condones and supports their vision of what society should be. If we don't it's like a weed. Rip of the stem and leaves and it'll come back. You have to destroy the roots as well."

Kingsley gave me a blank look. "Are you listening to yourself?" he asked after a moment. "You're talking about doing the same thing Voldemort did, only instead of rounding up muggle-borns you want to imprison people who think like he does. The idea is…insane, we're supposed to be the good guys and you want to resort to the same tactics you just accused Fudge and Scrimgeour of using."

"I didn't say that," I protested.

"No?" he asked. "In your little vision of the future where would people like Draco Malfoy belong?"

Well…fuck. "Damn you for making this more complicated than it had to be," I muttered.

Kingsley snorted. "I'm not the one making this complicated, you're the one trying to make things simple. That doesn't work in real life, Harry."

"Fine, it's the wrong call," I said. "But what's the point of having the power to clean up this mess if we're not going to use it."

"I wouldn't have thought, given how close you and Dumbledore were, to be advocating that we…use the power we have."

"Well, I suppose we could sit on it and expect it to lay phoenix eggs or something," I said, "but since we had it I figured we might as well actually do something worthwhile with it."

"And just how would you go about using that power?"

"How would I know, Kingsley?" I asked. "End hunger, create a workable solution for world peace, save the whales…maybe buy everybody a puppy. Oh wait, I know, get rid of the corruption and the prejudice in magical society so that my godson doesn't have to grow up with it the way I did."

"What made you think that wasn't my goal as well, Harry?" Kingsley asked softly.

"I don't know," I admitted. I took a deep breath and let it out. "Okay, let me ask this. Why are you so hot on public perception? I can understand doing it to keep them the nice docile sheep they are right now, but there's something more you have in mind."

"You need to think long-term, Harry," Kingsley said. "The Death Eaters are an external threat. The bigger one, as you pointed out, are the 'roots', the society that agrees with their goals if not necessarily their methods. What we need is a legislature—the Wizengamot—that not only agrees with our goals and purposes, but will actively work with us towards them. We need a judicial body, one that is fair and competent, and likewise willing to work towards those goals, especially if you ever want to be able to give the Death Eaters trials.

"And finally we need both of those sooner rather than later. The sooner we have a Wizengamot the sooner we appear legitimate to the everyday wizard and witch, and the more time the new Wizengamot has to feel their way into their positions before they have to start doing the job for real, the better. The same goes for the new judiciary and for similar reasons. Sure you can hold Umbridge without a trial, at least for the next year, but the longer you do that the longer it appears that you are using the same tactics as Fudge and Scrimgeour, irregardless of whether or not you are planning on giving her a trial."

I nodded in reluctant agreement. It wasn't as…simple as my plans had been, but he was right. I had been headed for the same, flawed, solutions that Fudge and Scrimgeour had used, and for worse reasons. Fudge and Scrimgeour had locked people up without trials because they saw them as threats. I had just advocated doing the same to the Draco Malfoys of the world simply because I couldn't see a place for them in it. I had given Draco a job because Albus and Severus had seen something in him, and because I wanted him where I could keep an eye on him. It wasn't possible for me to do the same with all of the people who thought like him, and, as Shacklebolt had pointed out, simply arresting them and locking them up would make me no better than Voldemort.

That wasn't really an option, which only left me with the question of how to actually do my job. Isolating the Death Eaters from any support still seemed like the best first step, but how it was done depended on the question I still didn't have an answer for. Was I a soldier fighting—leading or commanding now, I suppose—a war, or was I a cop? Fortunately there was a chance I could do both.

"Hermione and I talked about this over the last year," I said. "The muggles have some great rules where warfare is concerned. Did you know that the deliberate targeting of civilians, murder and the like, is a capital crime? We could give each one a short, legal, military trial…and then hang them."

Kingsley gave me a look that said the solution was the last one he wanted. "And if you were a law enforcement officer instead of a soldier?" he asked.

Lucky me that was something else Hermione had talked about.

"What Voldemort and his followers attempted to do was a political act," I said. "The methods they used were of terror, fear, and oppression, but their goals, a society were pure-blood wizards and witches ruled and muggle-borns were done away with, were purely political. I suppose technically we could bring charges of treason, sedition and insurrection, thing like that, but those too are political charges since they're crimes against a legitimate government."

Kingsley nodded slowly. "I understand your reasoning, Harry, but where are you going with this? I assume you're talking about involving the Wizengamot in some way, possibly even the Queen?"

"Actually," I said, "I'm not. Actually I'm going exactly the opposite way. Look, Voldemort and his Death Eaters got support from those witches and wizards who agreed with their political goals, right? Housing, new recruits, money, magical devices, all sorts of other things. What I'm thinking of is stop making this about politics, about…lifestyles and forms of government. No charges of being Death Eaters, no charges about supporting Voldemort, no charges of anything…political. I'd brand them as criminals, get the press behind it, stop making this about anti-muggles and anti-muggleborn, and instead portray them as a gang of psychopathic murders. I'd call them criminals and put them on trial as such. Totally ignore the political message they were trying to send."

"That didn't exactly work for the muggles, Harry."

"Not immediately, no, but it worked well enough," I said. "Look, Kingsley, it comes down to the same thing. If we try them as insurrectionists or whatever, we give them a little that legitimacy you harped about—at least in the eyes of those who support them. The same thing would happen, of course, if we decided they were soldiers and treated them as such, but in that case we could be a lot more…permanent with them. The last real option we have is to brand them common criminals, it's not as quick as it would be if we hung them, but it also avoids giving them a…political victory.

"Those are the only three options I see. We can't mix and choose, let them be one thing today and something else tomorrow. It is also a decision that needs to be made now. I'd prefer to go the 'soldier' route, I started that the other day when I had the properties they'd used burned. In many ways I think it is the least complicated, and having a military trial where we can control the verdict avoids any complication that could come in the judiciary let's them off and we have to interfere."

"The whole reason for having a judiciary is to prevent the kind of abuse you just suggested, Harry," Kingsley said sternly.

"A whole lot of Death Eaters got away last time because they bought or threatened their way out of Azkaban," I said. "If the same thing happens are you willing to just let them walk free because you aren't willing to use all the powers that you currently have? Oh, I'll go after any judge—or whatever you come up with—who does, but I'm not going to let them get away with it either. My concern is that if they do, and then we have to do something, it'll give the impression that the judiciary is, well, no more independent than the last one we had. Even if we give them new trials it'll appear as though we're on a witch hunt…or wizard hunt as the case may be."

Kingsley didn't smile at the small joke so I pressed on. "In any case it's a decision that needs to be made soon, immediately really. And then it's a decision that we're all going to have to stick with."

"That sounds an awful lot like an ultimatum," Kingsley observed.

"If either of us had been thinking we would have discussed it before," I said, "but we damn well have to have a plan, or at least the beginnings of one, when we go your little meeting tomorrow. Don't we?"

"And what do we tell her when she asks why we didn't settle this before?" he asked. "As you said, we let a lot of his followers walk free after the last…conflict."

"Tell her the truth. Tell her that the previous Ministers were incompetent fools."

"Funny," he said with a snort, "not exactly in keeping with proper protocol, mind you, but funny." He gave me a long look and asked softly, "How are things going here otherwise?"

"I'm making it up as I go along, what did you think I was doing?" I asked. "I don't have a clue how to be an Auror. I was supposed to be training this afternoon but apparently that's now off my schedule. Percy probably has something like 'Introduction to Ministerial Parchment-work' that he wants to teach me but that I've been avoiding."

"In that case I'm going to call a meeting in about two hours between myself, Department heads, and a few heads from the major sub-departments. You're right. We need to have a plan or at least a working outline of what we want to accomplish. I, we, all of us have been reacting. We need to be more proactive."

"Well, it'll be nice to have some direction as to what I'm supposed to do," I said. "I want to get my cat and make sure she's all right first, and then I'm going to go visit those people I put in St. Mungos."

Kingsley nodded. "We'll be in the conference room on the same floor as my office. I'm sure you know where it is."

"I can find it," I said as a cat-hole opened in the wall and Pixel limped out. I stood and went over to her, and she made a pained meow as I carefully picked her up.

"May I?" Kingsley asked, drawing his wand.

I looked at him.

"O on Care of Magical Creatures N.E.W.T." he said. "Thought it might come in handy against dark beasts, but it seems all I ever use it for is healing this animal or that that my daughters bring home…mostly bunnies and very few ever need more than a good anti-flea charm."

I nodded and he came over and waved his wand over her while chanting softly. "Broken right shoulder," he said, before starting another spell that sounded similar to some that I'd heard Madam Pomfrey use at various times. "That should do it," he said finally. "Try to keep her still for a couple of days, but if she wants to move around, let her."

I nodded. "Thanks."

He smiled, "It wasn't a problem, Harry. It's nice to have the opportunity to use magic for something other than destroying things or doing parchment-work."

"Fair enough," I said. "Um, could you send a messenger-patronus to Bill?"

"You can't?" he asked, clearly surprised.

"It was one trick I never quite worked out, and since Hogwarts…" I shrugged. A happy memory isn't enough to work the spell, you have to be able to immerse yourself in it, remember exactly how you felt at the time. Needless to say Happy Harry memories were in short supply.

"I'll see to it," he said after giving me a searching look. He nodded to me and showed himself out.

I stared at the window into London for a while as I rubbed purple goo into Pixel's wound. Draco was lounging against one of the cubicles right by my office door when I opened it. He looked at me, then turned back to buffing his nails on his robe.

"Meeting," I said. "Conference room down the hall from the Minister's office. You and I, one hour."

He looked surprised, but I did my best Severus impression (none too good) and swept past him before he could say anything else. I ducked into the conference room. Percy and Lavender were mirroring each other on either side of the table. Percy's side was filled with thick tomes and scrolls of parchment in neatly arranged stacks, while Lavender's was filled with a clutter of sketches and colored ink pots.

"You're still here, Lavender?"

"It's a convenient place to work, I can ask questions and solicit feedback, and it's quiet," she said. "What do you need now? Muggle formal-wear?"

"Probably in the future, but not right now," I said.

Pixel leapt gingerly from my arms to the table, which she padded across to Lavender, hopped down into my former classmate's lap, and began purring loud enough to be heard from across the room.

"I never knew you as a cat person," Lavender said.

"She sort of adopted me," I said. "She's supposed to take it easy, besides the obvious wound she just had her shoulder repaired. Given the number of bones I've broken and had fixed I can testify that it takes a lot out of you."

"And idea what breed she is?" Lavender asked, reaching down with one hand to stroke Pixel's spine.

The purring got louder.

"Something magical?" I asked with a shrug. "All I know is that she can walk through walls. Can I leave her here with you?" I asked.

Lavender shrugged, then looked down at Pixel and nodded. "As long as she doesn't try to help me," she said with a grin.

I used my office floo to go to Grimmauld Place where I tumbled out in privacy, before apparating to safe point conveniently close to St. Mungos. I used my badge to get past the mannequin, walked through the waiting room quickly enough that no one stopped me, and caught the lift up to the fourth floor (spell damage et al.).

The floor had been expanded since the last time I'd been there. Seven long halls met at a central hub, where there was a seven-sided counter with harried medi-witches sitting behind it. The halls had doors, each with a sign indicating one ward or another in various colors that probably meant something to the various Healers. I stopped one witch behind the desk for directions. It took my badge, a look at my scar, and a written authorization—also sometimes called an autograph—but I got a list of the wards I wanted to visit, and how to find them.

The Aurors had all been clustered together in a ward of their own. A Healer was just coming out when I arrived. He gave me a bleary look through bloodshot eyes and told me I couldn't go in.

I pulled out my badge.

He looked at it closely, then blinked up at me. I sighed and moved a fringe of hair out of the way of my scar. "I-I'm s-sorry, H-Harry, er, A-Auror P-Potter," he said in a stutter that reminded me of Quirrel, only where Quirrel had always seemed nervous this seemed more of an impediment…or maybe it was just irreversible spell damage. "B-but I n-need Authorization f-f-first."

I sighed and signed my name to a scrap of parchment which he very happily pocketed.

"Auror L-ew-ew C-Carol is d-doing f-f-fine," he said. "H-he can b-be released-d-d-d short-ortly. W-we r-removed f-four bones from Prou-Prou-ou—"

"Proudfoot," I said.

He gave me a look, "His l-leg. W-we w-will have h-him put-ut-ut b-back to r-rights b-b-by morning."

"What about Dawlish?"

"S-s-some idiot t-tried t-to t-t-trans-transfigure h-him into a f-ferret," the Healer said. "I-it w-was t-touch and g-go, b-b-but once w-we knew w-what had happened-pened-d-d w-we w-were able to fix him r-right up-p-p. H-he j-just needs to shave off his fur."

"Right," I said. I considered asking him if they were in their own ward for security or for some other reason, decided it didn't really matter and would probably be nearly incomprehensible, nodded to him, and went in.

Dawlish was easy to identify, he was the only one covered with brown fur. A second Auror I vaguely remembered from Tonks' security detachment at Hogwarts was in the bed next to him with a book. The third one had to be Carol, but I couldn't tell if I recognized him or not since his entire face was lathered with a glowing blue paste which had small, green, sparkling crystals in it.

"Sir," Dawlish said in a strangled voice that sounded like I was using magic to forcibly extract teeth.

"Dawlish," I said. What the hell do you say to a guy you tried to transfigure into a weasel? I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head. "Healers say you can get out of here and shave the fur off."

He glared at me.

I turned to Proudfoot, "Sorry about the leg."

He grimaced, "I'll be all right."

"Skele-Gro?" I asked.

"You asked the Healer?"

"I have experience with it," I said. I gestured towards the limp-looking ridge in the blanket. "I broke an arm playing Quidditch my second year. My DADA professor insisted on healing it, instead he removed all the bones in the arm."

"Lockhart?" he asked with another grimace.

I nodded.

"He always was a screw-up," Dawlish said. "Except with oblivious charms, he was an excellent obliviator."

Proudfoot and Carol made sounds of agreement.

"Did he do the hand to?" Proudfoot asked.

"And the scapula, and half the collarbone," I said.

He winced, "Healers left the foot and hip. They said that the only thing they really needed to remove was everything in the knee but Skele-Gro can sometimes behave…oddly when it has to fix rather than replace a bone so they took out the leg bones as well."

I turned to Carol. "They also say you'll be out of here shortly."

"I wasn't burned that bad," he said in a surprisingly friendly voice. "Hurts, of course, burns always do…what was it, by the way? I never saw that spell before."

I shrugged. "It's a modification of a prank." I said, which was true enough, in a way, without having to go into the whole truth.

"Dangerous prank, setting people on fire like that."

"Oh the original didn't have the flaming gobs of snot," I said. I paused and added a flippant, "It's just, you know, everything's better where there's fire involved."

It got a chuckle, but there didn't seem to be anything else to say after that so I left. I walked to the end of the hall and made a left into the corridor that went around the circumference of the floor. A door on the right led to the ward that held the wounded survivors of the DA. Lavender's injury had been both the worst (if you didn't count those that were dead), bad enough that the first news I'd had about her was that she was expected to die. Typical of the wizarding world's perverse sense of humor she'd also been the easiest for the medi-witches, -wizards, and Healers to, well, heal.

The room was six-sided including the side the door was in. Alicia, Ernie, Angelina, Cho, and Hannah each had a bed and their own wall. Each had their own collection of brightly colored spheres floating around above their beds, and shelves full of silvery magical devices that whirled, or whirred, or emitted tiny puffs of colored smoke. All of which probably meant something to the Healers, but only reminded me of the Headmaster's (or Headmistress' as the case may be) office at Hogwarts when Albus Dumbledore was still alive.

None of them looked at me right away so I tried to figure out how they were arranged. It might have been wound severity, but I couldn't read the silver instrument-things and magic doesn't always leave visible wounds. It took me a moment to realize they were in alphabetical order by last name going from right to left (not reverse-alphabetical order going left to right which would have amounted to the same thing, but in a more logical way).

"Harry?"

I turned, Alicia's voice was a dry rasp.

"Hey, Alicia," I said. I cocked my head to the side, "You've looked better."

She gave me a sour look, though the teal-colored goop that was oozing from a bandage around her head took from it.

"Now," I said, "from my experience, I know that the most annoying question I can possible ask you is, 'how do you feel?' Since I have a pretty good idea, speaking, again, from past experience, I know the answer to said question is 'how do you think I feel?' So instead I'm only going to ask if you feel better than you did yesterday?"

She rolled her eyes, then nodded tiredly.

"Good, see, you're getting better," I said. "We'll have you back up on a broom in no time."

"Hey Harry."

The others had all looked up and were watching me, but only Hannah was sitting up in her bed. In fact she had several pillows behind her propping her up and she had an open book in her lap. In the wizarding world the fact that she looked the healthiest was probably a sign that she was the worst off.

"Hannah," I said.

She looked at the door, then back at me and smiled. "Finally trading in on your fame?" she asked in a soft, weak-sounding voice. Soft was normal for her, weak was not.

"My fame?" I asked.

"They haven't allowed us visitors," she explained.

"Oh," I said. "I didn't ask."

"What's been happening?" Ernie asked from his bed.

"What do you know?" I asked.

"Nothing," Hannah said. "Nobody's told us anything except that we won at Hogwarts. Angie is pretty sure Fred is dead, and we know Lavender was badly hurt but since she isn't here we're pretty sure she's dead too. Other than that…" she shrugged.

"We won at Hogwarts," I said. "Voldemort's dead. Unlike last time that claim was made we have a body make of that what you will. I haven't felt anything from my scar—" no sense in mentioning the nightmare "—so I suppose it's better than even odds that he's gone for good this time. Along with him we captured or killed most of his supporters. Some, most notably Bellatrix Lestrange, escaped.

"As far as the DA goes…Lavender is alive. She can't walk; some kind of spine injury. I don't know enough about medical magic to say if it's something that can be fixed once more of the emergency patients are out of the Healers' way. Justin is still missing—"

"Which probably means he's dead," Ernie said flatly. Ernie and Justin had been, were, best friends. Odd considering that they were, respectively, ninth-generation pureblood and exceedingly well-off muggleborn. It was probably a Hufflepuff thing, and, heck, I wondered the same thing about myself and Ron sometimes.

"Maybe," I admitted. "On the other hand the Aurors raided a Death Eater safe-house yesterday and rescued a muggleborn that had been reported dead so…" I shrugged.

"Who?" Hannah asked. Apparently she'd been appointed group spokeswitch.

"Ted Tonks," I said. "I know he was in Hufflepuff way back when, not sure what year. I think his daughter was still in Hogwarts our first year."

"Nym Tonks," Hannah said.

Nym? I had to remember that for a rainy day.

"You already know about Fred," I said. He took a deep breath and continued, "The DA also lost Colin Creevy, Parvati and Padma Patil, Anthony Goldstein, Terry Boot, Katie Bell, Michael Corner…and Ginny Weasley." There, I said it, and I felt like Dumbledore had force-fed me that vile green potion of Tom Riddle's. "Susan Bones," I forced myself to go on, "was reported in stable condition by the Healers shortly after the battle, but has since been reported dead."

Angelina made a sound of protest as Hannah slumped back against her pillows. Cho looked very pale under her bandages.

"Well," Ernie said in a flat, hard voice that really didn't belong to someone who looked like warmed-over death—I should know, it's a look I've worn enough. "Now we know."

I wasn't paying much attention to him, instead I was looking at Cho who had gone from pale to grey. "Cho?" I asked, moving over to her bed.

Okay, so maybe telling them the truth wasn't such a hot idea. Maybe especially since it had included telling her that four of the seven of her housemates that had joined the DA were dead…including the one that, at least so far as I know, she had been dating. Of course, that had been at the end of Michael's fifth year and I had never bothered to keep up with what happened as far as they were concerned. "Cho?" I asked again.

Cho really didn't look good, and the things that were whirling and spinning and stuff seemed to agree. The glowing spheres were shading more towards ugly-looking purples and angry reds. At a guess those weren't good signs either. No Healers were rushing in, but for all I know they were trusting their little magic gizmos instead of practical, sensible monitoring charms of one kind or another. So assuming—foolish, I know—that competent medical help is on its way, how do you keep alive someone who wants to die until they got there?

In the muggle movies I used to listen to from the cupboard under the stairs the Hero—yours truly—usually had some really teary speech at this point. One about death and self-sacrifice and how 'what would so-and-so think' that would magically (wink, wink) inspire those still standing (or lying in their sickbeds as the case may be) to keep living. I didn't have one of those. What I did have were three years of Oliver Wood Quidditch speeches, and another of Angelina Johnson Quidditch speeches, Ron's copy of A History of Great Quidditch Speeches (Oliver was in it, he'd gotten even better since going Pro), and several very scary incidents involving Minerva McGonagall with a fanatical gleam in her eyes and 'Quidditch' on her lips, to draw on.

"Suck it up, Chang," I said, putting on my best Fierce Scowl™ and trying not to laugh. After a certain point these speeches had always seemed more comedic than inspiring. "You take one spill into the pitch and you act like you're done for. What are the recruiters going to think? You won, start acting like it!"

She gave me a look like I had lost my mind, and her lips were starting to turn blue which meant that there was a time-delayed prank with her lunch, she was cold, or…something about not having enough blood…I think.

"C'mon, Chang, your death would be really inconvenient, and inconsiderate on your part, right now."

Still nothing, um…

"Fine," I said. "You know what you are? Selfish, that's what. Me, me, me, I, I, I…everything's about you. You don't care that your absence would hurt us, don't care that it'd make us less than what we are, don't care that you might have some middling degree of talent that I might possibly have a use for."

Angelina was making a wheezing sound. Probably would be rolling on the floor if she felt better.

"Harry—" Alicia's voice was a strained whisper.

"Angie's fine," I said. Cho was glaring at me which was better, but not by a whole hell of a lot. Still, time to mellow it down a little.

"You think you're the only person here who's lost someone?" I asked.

Her glare faded into a puzzled expression.

Ravenclaws, heh. Get them focused on a puzzle and it's half the battle won.

She looked away from me, to her right. "'m sorry, Angelina," she said, "Ernie."

Angelina nodded tightly; Ernie just got this pinched look.

Okay, Angelina I understood. She and Fred had been dating. But Ernie? I shook my head and realized that Cho was staring at me.

"Ginny?" she whispered.

I nodded, feeling like I really needed to sit down. "Our breakup was for public consumption," I said. Never mind that I had thought that I meant it at the time. What can I say; I didn't get into Gryffindor because of my brains…that was always Hermione's job. "We'd planned to get engaged after Tommy Riddle's death. Better?"

She nodded.

"Good," I said, I turned to look towards Angelina who was still wheezing. "And you can stop laughing now."

"Laughing?" Ernie asked me. That was almost as stereotypical Hufflepuff as Cho's response had been Ravenclaw. Get them to focus on someone else and everything was right as rain. Heck, it was even working for me—at least it did as long as my Gryffindor side didn't keep reminding me of the truth. He turned to Angelina who was pulling herself up in her bed. "Sorry, Angie, but you really were that awful."

"Don' ca' me 'Angie'," Angelina slurred.

"Um," Hannah looked at me, then at Angelina. "What was so funny…if you don't mind my asking?"

Angelina began wheezing again.

"My fifth year," I said dryly. "Before I started the DA. Umbridge had taken to making sure that the detentions she was assigning overlapped the Gryffindor Quidditch Team's practice schedule. My dearly beloved 'Captain' really let me have it a few times, though she made sure that all of the ones after the first one were private."

"You cribbed all of that from Quidditch pep-talks?" Ernie asked.

Cho was sitting up a little in her bed and sipping from a goblet of effervescent potion that had been on a small shelf next to it. She didn't look as well as she had when I first came in, but she did look a lot better than she had a moment before.

I turned back to Ernie and shrugged as Angelina finally managed to stop wheezing.

"At least he chose to crib from you instead of Oliver," Alicia told her friend in a rasp. "This is it—"

"—th' bi' one—" Angelina slurred.

"—the one we've all been waiting for," I continued. "Oliver's pep-talks were all the same," I explained to the rest.

"She really said you had a middling talent?" Cho asked.

"Yeah, she did," I said.

"You were never a middling talent on a broom," Cho said.

I shrugged. "Now I am. Not good enough for any professional team to take me, not as anything other than a mascot. I spent too much time playing on brooms that were too good. Don't get me wrong, I'm good, but playing a school game of Quidditch or out-flying a dragon is different than professional-quality. I don't have that edge. Maybe I could have if I'd flown less advanced brooms, had been forced to develop my skills, that edge, but I didn't."

"So when you were talking about me, you were being metaphorical?" Cho asked.

"Well, I suppose there is one more bit of news," I said. "Kingsley Shaklebolt was named Minister of Magic. One of the first things he did was declare martial law which means our corner of the wizarding world dances to whatever tune he calls for the next year or so. The second thing he did was ask me to take over as Chief of Aurors."

The door flew open and a Healer burst in. I got out of her way as she bustled over to Cho, her wand whipping back and forth between Cho and the instruments over her bed. I moved over to Hannah's bed as the Healer began to pull out potion vials from a carpetbag.

"That's Healer Quinn," Hannah told me quietly. "She's pretty good, but doesn't allow us visitors. She doesn't want us to 'stress our delicate condition'."

"It's nice to find out they have some way of monitoring their patients," I said as Cho reluctantly began downing the contents of the vials. "Or was this part of a regular schedule?"

"Monitoring charms, I think," Hannah said. "How is everyone else?"

"Most of the DA was banged up but easily fixed. Professor McGonagall wouldn't let Dennis fight so he's safe, and Zacharias Smith left with the other evacuees, but everyone else was there. I know Vincent Crabbe is dead, but I haven't really sat down and read the casualty list. It…" I shrugged. "What was with Ernie?"

"He and Susan started dating last year when," Hannah shrugged.

"Damn," I said.

She nodded.

"I've never had to deliver news like that before," I said. "Telling people that Voldemort was back was easier."

"Do you know about any of the other muggleborns?" Hannah asked after a moment.

"I haven't really been in contact for most of the past year so I don't really know," I admitted. "Dean Thomas is around, Hermione too, Terry, as I said, is dead… I just realized how few muggleborns were in the DA."

Hannah nodded again.

"Anyway, we probably lost a third or so of our year, maybe more, dead or missing—"

"You," the Healer had turned from Cho and rounded on me with a hiss so fierce that I mistook it for parsletounge at first. "Who are you? What are you doing here? This is a Restricted Ward. This-This is an outrage, that's what this is! I am calling the Aurors—"

"I am the Aurors," I said dryly, producing my shield.

"—I'll have you in Azkaban so fast you'll have a nose bleed. People are trying to heal here!" she continued in a shrill voice that reminded me of Hermione in the week or so before the O.W.L exams.

I slowly drew my wand as her shrill climbed into a painful shriek, at which point I tagged her with a calming charm.

She took a deep breath to continue her tirade, stopped, let it out, then gave me a thankful look. "Thank you, Dearie, that was an excellently cast calming charm."

I nodded and offered her my shield again.

"An Auror? But you can't be more than—" She stopped abruptly, then looked up at me. "Are you really—" she breathed.

I nodded and held up a finger to my lips. "I'm incognito," I said.

Her eyes got really wide and she made this hyper-fast head-bobbing nod.

"I'm conducting an investigation," I continued on in my best 'I want to share a secret with you' manner—none too good, but the inhabitants of the wizarding world are, generally, easily duped. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything."

"No," she whispered back, "of course not, Mr., er, Auror Potter."

"Would you mind waiting outside?" I asked.

She did, it was obvious, but she went and waited outside anyway.

"Chief Auho'," Angelina said.

"Is he insane?" Hannah asked.

"Desperate, I think," I said, really considering the question for the first time. "People trust me right now, for what that's worth. I have an outsider's view of what's wrong with the Ministry, and I've been vocal about it in the past. I also have a…middling talent for fighting dark wizards."

Angelina began wheezing again and there were a couple of small smiles from the other inhabitants of the ward.

After that there just didn't seem to be anything else to say. I traded pleasantries for a while, asked about the food—hospital fair, I had enough experience with Madam Pomfrey's version that I shouldn't have bothered. Finally I left, telling Angelina I needed a captain for the Auror's quidditch team for the inter-departmental pick-up league.

Healer Quinn was waiting right outside the door.

"How are they?" I asked.

She sniffed and started to reply, but I help up a hand.

"Generally, and only if you feel comfortable telling me and not as part of an investigation. They're my friends, I'm concerned."

Her expression softened some. "They're healing well, but they'll be in for some time. Ms. Abbott was the worst off, spell damage on top of blunt force trauma. The poor thing didn't get out of the way of a troll club in time."

I had a really hard time picturing Hannah as a 'poor thing', some of that probably due to the fact that her badger patronus was the only one I'd seen actually inflict physical damage. It'd taken particular exception to a table leg and had latched on and not let go until it had dissipated, leaving behind deep gouge marks.

"—regime of charms and potions."

Healer Quinn looked at me expectantly and I nodded.

She shrugged. "That's time consuming, not particularly difficult, and then only because we want to avoid side-effects of potion-interactions and the like. Ms. Spinnet will probably be here the longest. She managed to inhale a bit of an incendiary charm and burned her lungs away. It'll be a while before the new set is full grown in."

"Um, if she burned her lungs, and the new ones aren't grown in, how—"

"Oh we glamored up a pair for her to use in the mean time," the Healer assured me, "but they're only an illusion; in-out, in-out, you see?—she has no control over them and the charm has to be replaced every thirteen hours."

"Oh," I said. I decided then and there that I had no desire, ever, of becoming a Healer. Bones I could understand. Growing someone a new pair of lungs? Or how about using an illusion to breathe?

I thanked her and started down the hall to my last destination.

Ted Tonks turned out to be in an isolated ward that even my badge, scar, and authorizations (or autographs) couldn't get me on to. In a way it was kind of a pleasant surprise, in another it was more than mildly aggravating. I mean, you go around without security anywhere you look for so long only to find it in the place that the whole side trip had been about.

Visiting the Aurors had been expected of me, was the right thing to do, and had mollified Travers. Yes, I had cared about them—at least a little—but they weren't close friends and, in the case of Dawlish, had caused me problems before (not to mention attacking my cat). The DA on the other hand, well, they were the DA. I'd played on the same Quidditch team as two of them since first year, and against a third. They had stood by me when Umbridge orchestrated her reign of terror, stood by me when Voldemort offered them their lives in exchange for me. Most of them had left me heaping mounds of chocolate during my annual spell in Madam Pomfrey's care. Visiting them was the least I could do.

Since I couldn't get in I decided to head up to the tearoom. I could likely apparate from there, and it would give me another way of gauging the attitude of the wizarding world aside from the chaos of the Ministry and Diagon Alley.

I managed to avoid Healers and portraits alike, only to find myself in a moderately crowded room filled with people lounging around with broad placid smiles on their faces. Apparently the only teas being served came with a healthy dose of calming drought inside of it.

A few witches and wizards that weren't under the influence were scattered around at various tables. In one corner at a table by herself, was a witch with heavy lidded eyes and long dark hair. I had my wand in my hand a moment before I realized I was once again looking at Andromeda Tonks. In a hovering chair next to her Teddy was making an enthusiastic mess of something green and orange, while his hair gently flickered through pastel colors.

I ordered us some tea, and had to flash my badge and sign an authorization notice to get a pot without a calming drought in it. It turned out that they were making the tea from calming droughts instead of spiking it, so I wandered over to the table in the corner while they set to boiling water.

"Is this seat taken?" I asked.

"I really don't want—" she stopped. "Mr. Potter," she said. "Or is it Auror Potter now?"

"Auror, for now, might not be in the near future," I admitted. "Some of the people who are supposedly in charge of me aren't exactly thrilled with my work."

"I suppose I should thank you for rescuing my husband," she said after a moment.

I shrugged. "If you want to. Honestly, I never was really comfortable with all the…adulation that people seem to be giving me, and since it is kind of my job now, if you don't want to make a production of it I really won't mind."

Her lips twitched in what might have been a smile. "I'll keep that in mind," she said. "Has there been any progress with bringing to justice those responsible?"

"I can't really comment on that, on going investigation and all," I said, "but not really. No. It's still early though."

She was quiet for a long moment. "Knowing my sister, you won't catch her until she makes a mistake. Very likely she will leave a long trail of bodies behind her before that happens."

"Yeah, I've gotten that impression of her," I said. "How's Ted? Given the way Tonks left when she got the message, I assume you sent…" I shrugged.

"Yes," she said. "A very interesting cat you have, she arrived just as I was about to go find an owl. Ted is much the same."

"Oh," I said. "I thought, well…"

"That he was dead?" Andromeda asked, arching one perfect eyebrow. The bags under her eyes from lack of sleep were less perfect but she acted like they weren't there. "No, they needed her for potion ingredients."

"Excuse me?" I blurted.

"Her blood," she said. "She is, after all, his daughter."

"I'm not following," I said bluntly.

"Do you know how blood replenishing potions are made?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"Do you know that blood has different types?" she asked.

I'm muggle-raised, not stupid (some people's opinions and certain test scores aside). "Yes," I said instead.

"General blood-replenishing potions need a little blood in them as an ingredient and work for all blood-types. More effective potions can be made for specific blood types, but require blood of the same type the potion is specific for. Ted has a moderately rare type, and his treatment is quickly exhausting present stocks of that blood-type. Nymphadora just happens to have the same type."

Which explained my missing auror, and why her mother had said that they were using her for potion ingredients. I nodded sagely. In his chair Teddy giggled and scrunched up his nose. A moment later his hair turned jet black, his eyes turned glass-bottle green, and a small thin scar appeared off-center to the right of his forehead. I reached up to my forehead, my scar was just left of center.

"Better hide that scar, kid, or people'll talk," I told him.

He gurgled and turned his eyes wolf-yellow. It was a distinctly unnerving sight.

A tea tray came fluttering through the air and settled down before us.

I helped myself to a cup, and loaded it with sugar and cream, and poured tea over the top. "It's real tea," I said.

She sniffed disdainfully at my tea (take the lady out of the Black family, but you can't take the Black family out of her) and poured her own cup with precise, practiced movements, commanded the silver tongs to add two lumps of sugar, stirred twice, and took a single sip before setting the cup back down.

Teddy offered me some of his green goop, which I politely declined. He pouted at me, then turned to his grandmother and waved around a goop-covered hand as his hair turned, briefly, bubblegum pink.

"Your mother is…busy," Andromeda informed him, but a smile leaked through.

He gurgled and clapped his hands. That was apparently baby for 'I'm done eating' because she waved her wand over him, vanishing the goop. Andromeda searched around in her purse for a moment and came out with the plush werewolf I had transfigured. Teddy grabbed onto it with small pink fingers that disappeared in the fur, and a moment later stuck the tuft of the tail in his mouth and began sucking happily.

"He really does love that toy," Andromeda said.

I nodded.

"Dora said that you transfigured it?" she asked.

"I had this bottle that he'd finished off and…" I shrugged. She seemed nice enough, but I didn't really know her and there were a lot of strange witches and wizards around. Going into the unhappy childhood of Harry Potter wasn't exactly something I wanted to do under the circumstances.

"It's a good piece of work," she said.

"Thank you," I said.

She watched Teddy quietly for a moment. "I was…uncertain when my daughter she was marrying a werewolf."

Funny that. In the muggle world the issue would have probably have been their ages. "The year Remus taught Defense Against the Dark Arts was probably my safest at Hogwarts," I said instead. "Of course, given the way he was run out at the end of the year when his affliction came out…" I shrugged.

She smiled, "You are much like Ted. He didn't see it as a thing to be concerned about as long as appropriate measures were taken. Fair enough, Mr. Potter. I, who had tried so hard and long to distance myself from my family's prejudices, found that I shared those of the common wizard and witch. To be honest I was a great deal more than merely 'uncertain'. I was also wrong."

She looked at Teddy and the toy again. "I didn't ask her, mostly because I didn't want to know but also because the question would hurt her…"

It wasn't exactly hard to figure out what she wanted to know but didn't want to ask. "It matches Remus," I said.

"You saw him transformed then?"

"Once," I said. "It was very…memorable." I finished off my tea in one go. "I really have to be going."

She nodded. "Of course, thank you, Mr. Potter."

"Please, call me Harry," I said.

"And I am Andromeda," she said.

I couldn't think of anything else to say so I nodded and left.

I apparated to Grimmauld place. On a hunch I went up to the drawing room and picked up the five books Severus had entrusted to me and took them over to the battered couch. A word and a flick of a wand conjured a small glowing globe that would last a few minutes. The first book was a potions textbook, one that he was in the process of writing or had finished writing. I set it aside and opened the second book. It was the largest of the five, the size of something Hermione would check out for some 'light reading' with heavy catches to keep it closed.

"A Booke of Ingredients for Magick Brews and Elixirs of All Kinde, Their Preparations and Properties, and the Interactions Thereof," I read from the title page. It sounded like something that had been written centuries ago and would have been useful seven years ago, but the byline was also by Severus and it too was clearly unpublished. The third book seemed to be some kind of journal or diary; I flipped through a couple of pages before I set it too aside. I'd have to read it, but for now my time was short.

It was in the fourth book that I found what I was looking for—a compendium of Dark Arts, also written by Severus. It was fairly sizeable, only somewhat smaller than the book about potion ingredients. Lucky for me, back in our fifth year when the O.W.L.s were looming over us, Hermione had taught Ron and me a cute little spell in that would search a book for a specific word or phrase.

"Find me Sectumsempra," I muttered, stabbing the title page with the tip of my holly wand.

The book jumped in my hands, the pages quickly began to turn themselves before stopping two-thirds of the way through the book where a single word glowed blue.

"Sectumsempra," I read, "…variation of the cutting curse…whip-like execution…difficult to block…counter—here we go."

The couch shifted and I looked up to find Pixel staring back at me. "Feeling better?" I asked.

Purr. Head-butt.

"I take it that's a yes," I said, scratching her behind the ears.

Purr. Tail flick.

"You do know that you're supposed to be taking it easy," I said.

She flicked an ear, as though to ask 'what are you, stupid?'

I found a scrap of parchment in one pocket, and there was a beautiful silver inkwell with two large plumes on a side-table. I quickly scrawled down a brief note to Andromeda with the counter-spell and wand movements needed to fix the damage caused by the Sectumsempra curse. It was probably too late since Tonks and I had managed to undo the spell, but then the Healers might find it useful in the future.

I hoped we would never have to find out.

Pixel took the note and disappeared through a small hole in the wall that closed up behind her. That done I cleaned up the books, and used the floo to fire-call my office. Only once I was sure that the coast was clear did I use it to floo to my office, including the extra tumble thanks to Routing.

Draco Malfoy, of course, had positioned himself so that I hadn't been able to see him from the fireplace and saw the whole thing. Instead of smirking, sneering, or making one of his usual comments he just looked at me, and then pointedly at his watch. "You're going to be late."

"We," I said.

He looked at me, and for just a moment his mask slipped. He started to asked something, but quickly schooled his features into a polite, blank mask once more.

"Out with it."

"Excuse me?" he asked in a board tone.

"You were going to say something," I said.

"I was going to ask if you still wanted me to attend the meeting with you," he said.

"Why wouldn't I?" I asked.

He raised one of his eyebrows in a carefully studied expression.

"Oh for the love of—" I grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and marched him towards the door. "I don't have time for this."

"Get your hands off me, Potter."

"That's 'get your hands off me, Chief Auror Potter, Sir,'" I said snidely. "Get over yourself, Draco. It was annoying in school and it's annoying now."

"Bringing me to this meeting is foolish on your part," he said as we left the Auror Office. "I have no allies in the Ministry that you can use, and quite a few of them are upset with myself or my family. My presence will only antagonize the people that you need to bring around to your way of thinking."

"I'm counting on it," I said.

"What?"

"The wizarding world is too complacent," I said. "I want to shake them up, keep them off balance. The more they are reacting to me the less they are thinking about what I'm trying to do to them."

"You're crazy," he said conversationally.

"Possibly," I agreed. "Maybe even probably."

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me your plans," he said.

"I was thinking of saving them for a surprise, but sure, why not." We arrived at the lifts and I punched the button to call one. "First, Aurors are going to be responsible for dealing with Dark Wizards, same as usual…"

The Conference Room—unimaginative, I know—was a big chamber with high stone walls, a stone floor, and a stone ceiling that was marred by black smudges from centuries of smoke from torches mounted in stone sockets along the walls. A large circular table—wood, not stone—filled the center of the room. A crowd of wizards and witches filled most of the rest of the room—nobody was sitting at the table yet.

As Draco and I entered a wizard in a grey robe with a grey hood pulled over his head disguising his face, approached. "Chief Auror Potter." It wasn't a question.

"Yes," I said.

"I am Bob," he said. "Advisor to the Ministry from the Department of Mysteries."

"Right," I said. "That's not your real name, is it?"

He didn't answer.

"Let me guess, your real name is one of those Mysteries," I said.

He didn't answer that either.

"I need a way to kill dementors," I told him.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I don't like them, and I don't trust them. And I think putting them and Death Eaters in close proximity is asking for trouble, but I don't have a better place to put the things."

"Ahh," he said.

"I also need to know everything that Rookwood worked on, or had access to, while he was a member of your department."

"We are aware of this," he said. "You ask for Secrets of the Department of Mysteries."

"Rookwood, and thus the Death Eaters, already have access to those Secrets," I told him. "I'll go after them without knowing, but if anything happens to my people because I didn't know about those Secrets, I'll be very unhappy."

"Your happiness is not the concern of the Department of Mysteries," he said. "But in exchange for your discretion where those Secrets are concerned, especially in any formal documentation, I shall see what I can do."

He turned and moved away.

"Nice to meet you," I said.

I wandered into the crowd, avoiding the people I didn't know and not really finding anyone that I did until I bumped into the father of a dead friend.

"Director Diggory," I said.

"Mr. Potter," he said uncomfortably, "I understand it's Chief of Aurors, now?"

"For now," I said. "I'm going to make myself extremely unpopular, probably. It might be interesting to see just how long I keep the position."

"I am sure the public will be very much relieved by you leading the Aurors," he said.

"I don't plan on being a figurehead," I said.

His face fell slightly. "Oh." He was silent for a moment and then said in a softer tone, "I imagine you're finding yourself a bit overwhelmed."

"More than a bit," I said. "Fortunately Travers is good at his job and Kingsley loaned me Percy Weasley and he's been keeping me from drowning in parchment."

He nodded sagely, "one of those hazards they never tell you about before time. If there is anything I can help you with, you'll let me know?"

"Actually there is," I said. "Two things, now that I think of it. I need you to loan me one of the Goblin Liaisons, someone who has a really good working relationship with them and preferably has a good head for money management."

He frowned at me. "Can I ask why?"

"I want to see if I can get the Goblins to help me go after the Death Eaters that are still out there," I told him. "Go after their money, freeze their accounts, maybe even seize some of it. It's just and idea right now, but…"

Amos nodded slowly. "Well, Chief Auror—"

"Harry, please.

He looked at me. "…Harry," he agreed after a moment. "You can try hiring William Weasley, you know his brother Ron and their father, I believe? He was assigned to us by Gringotts a few times to help clear up certain points."

"I already did," I said. "Unfortunately the Auror officer needs his skills as a Cursebreaker, it turns out it didn't have one when I took over. Until we can hire another one he's all we have and he never worked Gringotts financial side."

"I might have someone," he told me after thinking for a moment. "I'll have to check with him, of course."

"That'd be fine."

"How soon would you need him?"

"As soon as possible," I said. "I have some personal business with Ragnok tomorrow and I'll bring up the possibility, but the actual negotiations and establishing how things would work can wait a little. But the sooner we can get it approved, if we can, the better."

"Agreed," he said. "What was your second question?"

"My second question is who is responsible for investigating crimes concerning non-humans?"

"Well, it depends on the crime," he said. "The Werewolf Registration Office is in my department, for example, but refusal to register is filed under Administrative Law, not Malfeasance."

"Okay, but say a wizard murders a centaur," I said. "Do they report it to the Centaur Liaison Office or the Law Enforcement Patrol?"

"Murder a centaur?" he asked skeptically.

"Hypothetically," I said. "Who is responsible?"

"In theory the DRCMC is now responsible for investigating any crimes where a major party is considered a non-human," he said. "In practice such an investigation almost always starts in the DMLE and stays there, either in the Law Enforcement Patrol or the Auror Office. I mean, aside from the Werewolf Capture Unit and the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau, we don't really have any field teams outside of inspectors who deal with magical pets and pests."

A gong sounded and people began moving for chairs at the table, and then the arguments started.

I watched for a while, then I put up a silencing charm that dropped the volume two or three dozen…whatevers that are used to measure sound. Effectively the noise level dropped to something like the World Cup when Krum caught the snitch. Draco was sipping on water looking rather bored with the whole thing.

"Is this normal?" I asked him.

"How should I know, Potter?"

I raised an eyebrow.

He scowled. "Probably."

"Okay," I said. I reached into my robes and came out with a thick folder full of parchment that contained Percy's Ministry Bureaucracy 101 and began to read my way through Chapter 1, the Philosophy of Bureaucracy. This was followed by chapters on 'How to File things where they'll never be found', 'how to submit memos that will never be read', and 'how to time your work so that quills snap and ink-pots run out so that you can take an unscheduled break while you are supposed to be fetching more office supplies'.

I was halfway through 'how to direct inquiries to anywhere except where you will have to deal with them' when I decided that things had gone on long enough and bundled the parchment back into the folder. "Did anything get decided?" I asked Draco.

"We now have an interim Director of Magical Games and Sports," Draco said. Even he looked a bit disgusted.

"That's okay, Draco, I've just thought of the perfect use for you," I said.

"Potter," he said.

"No, no," I said. "None of that. You'll love it, really. Just wait." I wanted to grin and cackle, but I've never really managed a good Evil Laugh. Maybe I should see about getting one of those Voice Coach people like Petunia got Dudley back when she wanted him to join the church choir?

Nah.

I stood, brandishing my wand and cast a rather minor charm that should have created a bright flash of light and a dull bang.

FLASH-ka BOOM!

The center of the circular table disappeared, leaving a ring-shaped table that would have been nicely symbolic if I knew what it was symbolic of other than I had put far more into that spell than I had intended.

Oops.

I stood up, the ringing in my ears slowly dying and I spelled the rest of it away with a flick of my wand. The spell had taken my silencing charm with it so it had to be even worse for them…which was when I noticed I had everyone's attention, which, I admit, was sort of the plan but…I had everyone's attention. "Yes, er, congratulations to the interim-Director for Magical Games and Sports," I said. Since I wasn't sure who that was I just swept the table with a look and continued, "Since we have decided nothing else of substance I am going to tell you what I plan to do, and then I'm going to leave you to argue about it."

It looked like they were about to start arguing again so I hit them all with a silencing spell, then undid it for Kingsley, Connie Hammer, Diggory, and one or two other people that I actually recognized.

"Right. First off, I don't have the people I need to do my job," I said. "To fix this I'm going to rob other offices for people I think can do the job or will otherwise be of use to me. Even if all they do is sit at a desk filling out parchment work, that's one more trained Auror I can have doing something that is actually useful.

"My second measure to increase the number of Aurors is to recruit a bunch of people fresh out of Hogwarts. I know them, so I know I can trust them, which doesn't hold true for most of you. I'll pair them with an Auror who has experience, and training will be fitted in to whenever they aren't out there doing a job that wouldn't be necessary if anyone had bothered to do their jobs twenty or thirty years ago."

"Harry, that's not fair," Kingsley said. "Most of the people here were only very junior members of the Ministry thirty years ago, if they were in it at all."

I shrugged. "Maybe it is unfair," I said, "but that doesn't mean it's untrue."

I turned back to the rest of the table. "Now, with all of these Aurors, I'm going to do four things. First, I'm going to go and capture all of Voldemort's followers still on the loose. I'll give 'em a fair chance to surrender, but I won't place their lives over the lives of my Aurors or anyone that they're going to be putting in danger or holding hostage or whatever.

"What happens then is up to you people, and specifically whatever judicial system you come up with. If you don't come up with something fair, effective, and uncorrupt, I will use muggle courts. I understand that appealing to muggle law is a tactic commonly used by the defense, but if you don't do your jobs you will find that I am quite capable of shoving power-dampening potions down people's throats and turning them over to the muggles to deal with.

"The second thing I'm going to do is investigate all of those magical crimes against the non-magical community that someone should have been stopping, and, aside from two men in an over-worked under-staffed office that investigated one small segment of crimes, everyone has been ignoring. You don't have any need to know how I'm going to do this, aside from the aforementioned judiciary. One thing I will tell you about, is that tomorrow when Kingsley and I have our sit-down with Her Majesty about how incredibly fucked up this all is, I'm going to suggest an exchange program. One of my Aurors to work with her policemen and one of her officers to work with my Aurors. That person, that muggle, will have full and complete access to anything that I and my Aurors have full and complete access to."

Draco sounded like he was drowning and the table erupted into noise as three or four people took down my silencing charm. One or two cast Sonorus charms to be heard over the rest. I drew the Elder Wand and loosed a silencing charm that dropped the volume to nil. Heh, maybe I will keep the thing around.

"The third thing I'm going to do is investigate any crimes wizards or witches against magical non-humans," I had played with the wording and decided it was the best I'd come up with. I did, however, pause to make a note to sic Hermione on the problem. The trick there would be to stop her from coming up with any acronym associations. "Director Diggory," I went on with a nod to Amos, "says that he has, in the past, forwarded complaints to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and nothing has come of it. That ends today.

"The fourth thing I'm going to do set aside a number of Aurors specifically to investigate the Ministry, the Wizengamot, the Aurors, and anyone else in power that they feel like. Their mandate will be anti-corruption.

"For the past seven years I have watched friends taken to Azkaban without a trial because people in power needed to be 'seen doing something'. I have watched wizards and witches talk their way out of Azkaban claiming bewitchment and a hefty contribution to the coffers of those in charge. Maybe it was naïve of me to hope that such a move was unnecessary, that muggles had such people because they weren't…like us. The truth is, aside from their being a lot more of them and the fact that they have to work to do all the things we can achieve with a flick of our wands, they are exactly like us.

"Well I have had enough. I don't want the job. I don't think I have enough people to do all the jobs I've just taken on. But history has shown that we won't stop crimes committed by our people against muggles. History has shown that we won't stop crimes committed against goblins, and centaurs, and mer-people, and all the rest. And history has shown that we won't stop ourselves when someone rubs a couple of galleons in front of our noses.

"This is final notice, for you and for all of your people." I gave them all a stern look, then I turned and headed for the door.

Draco caught up to me in the hall.

"So what do you think?" I asked.

He didn't respond.

"Draco?"

He shot me an annoyed look and gestured at his mouth.

"Oh," I said. I snapped my fingers.

"Where the bloody hell did you learn that silencing charm?" he asked.

Hmm. Truth or— "You remember all that time I spent in the library with Hermione?" I asked.

"Yes…" he said slowly.

"Well I spent it in the library with Hermione," I said, and my inner Severus Snape smirked. "What did you think?"

"When the public finds out that you're inviting a muggle to come live in the wizarding world you'll have a riot on your hands," he said.

"Oh, I'm not going to invite anyone here," I said.

"But you said—"

"Hmm, I suppose I may have. Darn, I meant to imply it. Oh well."

"Potter," he growled.

"I'm going to suggest that I appoint an Auror to liaison with the Met. Since she actually does have some authority on our side of the fence, as it were, she'll probably accept," I said. "Assuming, of course, that she doesn't decide to just disband the entire government and start over."

Now that was a pleasant thought.

"And if she accepts you're thinking she'll appoint a muggle to liaise with us," Draco said.

"Pretty much."

He gave me a look. "That's pretty Slytherin."

"The Hat told me I'd do well there."

"Why didn't you?" he asked. "I know I would have if I'd been given the same choice."

"Because I had met you twice, and you managed to insult both of my first two friends," I said.

"I still don't like you," he said.

"Likewise," I said, and it was good to know that some things don't change.

He stopped so suddenly I was three steps past him before I stopped and turned around.

"What's your angle, Potter?" he asked. "Did you take one too many Cruciatus curses to the head?"

"Less than a hundred hours ago I took a Killing curse to the chest, from a Dark Lord that few ages have ever seen and none equaled," I told him. "I saw things that you can't hope to have the experience to ever understand. The truth is that I didn't need your mother's help. I won. He could have cut my heart out with a knife and I still would have won because I had taken from him that thing he most cherished. I made him mortal.

"I out-dueled him anyway. I killed the thing that sent you screaming from the forest our first year, that possessed Ginny and sent the basilisk that lived in the Chamber of Secrets loose our second year, that orchestrated my death in my fourth year and came so very close to succeeding, that haunted my dreams in my fifth year and then tried to possess me… I killed him. I have nothing left to prove, not to myself, and certainly not to anyone out there. The people that might have made it matter are dead.

"So no angle, Draco. No games, no manipulations. Just a job I've been asked to do, that I'm going to do to the best of my ability and if they don't like it they can get rid of me. As far as you go, well, as I said, Dumbledore and Severus both saw something in you that was worth saving. I'm not so sure. To me you're still that petty little schoolyard bully. Still, I've been wrong before, and Dumbledore and Severus were both pretty smart in their own ways, so I'm giving you a chance."

I smirked at him. A genuine smirk. I suddenly understood why he liked the expression. It was humor, but it was also power. It was having the other guy at a disadvantage. "There's your angle, if you want it. Prove me wrong."

I used a hand on the Elder wand to conjure up a puff of air as I turned. It wasn't as effective at making my robes billow as whatever spell Severus used, but it probably looked pretty cool. Looking unique was just as effective as an Avada Kedavra to the chest, in its own way of course. Severus' billowing cloaks and Albus' gold-star-covered purple robes taught me that.