Thanks to ukrainianelfhorse, my lovely guest, and luluguineapig with all the great reviews since my last update (lulu with six (6!) of 'em – wow!) Really happy people are reading along and liking the story enough to chime in; you have criticisms, comments, whatever, feel free to let me know!

Lily's third year draws closer, but first we stop in at a familiar locale as disgruntlement over the state of things pervades and meet someone I've been hinting at for quite a while...


"They did what?"

Hermione's gasp made Lily wince. She knew she was in some sort of trouble, but she didn't understand it: There she'd been, talking about career possibilities with the Minister of Magic of all people, then she'd been heading down the elevator, walking back to her dad's office when the Headmaster had stopped her – and then everything'd gone haywire until here they were, huddling in Hermione's personal office. It was a spacious place, about half as large as the Minister's quarters, complete with an oaken, jade-inlaid desk long enough to seat three people and covered in all manner of books, papers, maps, and notes. A giant corkboard twice as long as Lily was tall hung on one wall of the office, a hundred colorful pins holding up pictures, notes, and scraps of parchment.

From one notably large picture stared a middle-aged woman with pale skin, jet black hair, and deep blue, almost purple eyes, her slightly-raised eyebrows, subtle smile, and the lazy way she ran a finger through her hair from time to time giving off a cocky air. What is she up to? read a rough scrawl beneath the picture. From a green pushpin beside it ran a red line of yarn to a Gringotts logo nearby, the bank's golden logo divided in half by a black line of yarn. Beside the woman's photo was a newspaper clipping from the Daily Prophet, reading, "FELL ACCUSES MINISTRY OF SYSTEMIC CORRUPTION: Notorious populist and social critic Alanis Fell called out the Ministry of Magic over the shocking results of the recent Minister vote…"

Examining the cork board interested Lily a lot more than listening to Harry and Hermione argue. Couldn't they just drop this? She didn't remember anything bad happening after she'd left the Auror office with the Minister, not until Maribor had made a scene in the hall, at least.

"Hogwarts's Headmaster found her when she was coming back and noticed it in her eyes. I looked too, Hermione, definitely somebody gave her something," said Harry. Lily wanted to shrink into a ball as they talked about her as if she wasn't there. "Whatever John was here for, he had the Veritaserum antidote on him, and I gave it to her. Also…"

Harry glanced Lily's way, scrunched up his face, pulled out his wand, and put the tip of it to his temple while giving Hermione a knowing look. Whatever he meant she seemed to understand: She pulled up a chair, sat down across from Lily, and asked, "Lily, do you remember what you talked about with the Minister?"

"Nothing bad!" Lily protested, feeling borderline hysterical at being left out of the loop. "We talked about internships and things!"

"Anything in particular?"

Lily waved her hand, closing her eyes to try and remember how the conversation went. Why was it hard to remember when she'd had it so recently? "He mentioned about trying out for a position over summer break sometime after fifth year…and then the junior assistant to the Minister position…and then we talked about grades and OWLs and NEWTs and things…that was it, I swear!"

Hermione gave Harry a wry frown, stood up, and said in a quiet voice, "Probably just a small memory charm."

"What?" Lily asked. Sisyphean futility crept over her as Hermione and Harry continued to council.

"Look, this is actually a good thing," Hermione went on, ignoring Lily. "If the Minister wants to throw his cards on the table and say out loud that he doesn't trust his subordinates and that he's willing to play dirty, we can play dirty, too. I kind of wanted him or one of his cronies to do something when we brought Lily in – "

Harry cut her off: "Wait a minute, did you bring Lily in just to use her as bait?"

"I'm right here, Dad! Aunt Hermione! What's going on?"

"Bait's a really harsh word, Harry. It's more like temptation. Look, it worked, we learned something!"

"That's exactly the same thing as bait, Hermione. You can't just enlist her in whatever you're planning. You could also clue me in."

Hermione cut off Lily's continued protests before they began: "This whole Gringotts buying the Minister of Magic position is fishy, Harry, come on. They put their crony into the top spot in the Ministry just as the bank is splitting down the middle, with the goblins and the rich families siding with the Ministry all of the sudden as everyone else thinks this Alanis Fell woman is great, just as she's shrieking to anyone who listens that the sky is falling? Well, I'm not going to pick sides in whatever this mess is. I want to know what's really going on, and if that means getting my hands dirty, fine, I'll do it."

"What is this all about?" Lily said, bunching up her fists. "The man with the Headmaster said something about Gringotts too, and – "

That got it: Both Harry and Hermione's heads swiveled over to stare at her. "Who?" asked Harry.

"It was…this frumpy guy, the Headmaster said he did something with education, his name was…Stennis, or something…"

Harry and Hermione exchanged glances. "Did you hear anything about that?" asked the latter.

"Just a little," said Lily, aware that she'd overstepped what she was comfortable admitting, especially with Hermione rolling ahead with whatever her grand scheme was at two hundred kilometers per hour. "The man said something about coming and going to Hogwarts, and something about cutting costs. I don't remember it all. What's this about?"

"Coming and going to the school? From the Ministry? You sure?" Harry asked. When Lily nodded, he glanced Hermione's way and muttered, "That's Umbridge-esque."

Hermione's eyes lit up. Harry, noticing that he'd sparked an idea that led down problematic paths, motioned to say something, but she cut him off with a hand: "Lily you want to help us out?"

Lily wrapped her arms over her chest. The last time she'd tried to help out, she'd ended up letting a dark wizard into the school and indirectly had sent Hagrid into partial retirement on account of his injuries. "Help with what?"

"If someone from the Ministry shows up a lot at school…if it's even the man you said you saw talking to your Headmaster…try and get to know him and play friends," said Hermione, a hint of cunning in her words. "Kiss up to him. Pretend like you really, really want to get into the Ministry after school. Even if you have to talk bad about me to get close, that's alright. Just if you hear anything strange about the Ministry, or about Hogwarts, or about anyone in particular…let your dad and I know."

Harry sighed, looking helpless before Hermione's persuasion. "Lily, if you don't want to do anything, don't feel like you have to. You don't have to…well, spy for us."

"Harry, please, we did much worse by our third years."

"I'll do it," said Lily out of the blue. "I'll do it."

While her dad had his heart in the right place, Lily felt energized by Hermione's idea. This whole deal with something going on in the Ministry, with…whatever regarding the Ministry had made them so upset…with this Gringotts business was, all of it, made Lily hungry for more. Being a spy sounded like fun.

She just had to be more careful about what came in the mail this time.

Summer sped up through late July and into August. Lily found herself giving in to James's Quidditch pestering more often as she thought about her own house's tryouts in the coming year, what with five of the seven players from the horrible team of the last two years having graduated. The mundane concerns of schoolwork and classes crept back into Lily's mind – boring things, especially after her second year had been nothing but mundane. The thought of spying on Hogwarts for Harry and Hermione filled her with excitement: It was something to do that wasn't answering the increasingly insane riddles of the Ravenclaw common room's entrance statue or struggling to stay awake in History of Magic or listening to Wayne Torres attempt to explain the rules of Muggle sports to Logan.

A small part of her did miss those everyday joys, though. She missed Natalie and Logan and the chatter of the hallways, the autumn sun reflecting off the Black Lake on the last warm day of the year, the scrumptious meals and the Great Hall's myriad floating candles. Soon. Soon she'd be ignoring it all as an everyday haze, but for now, it was a sweet reminisce.

By the time Lily tromped off to Diagon Alley for school supply shopping with her mother and brothers, Hogwarts felt closer than ever.

"Mum, really, serious," James protested as they all stood outside Broomstix – Every Essential for Your Boom, from Elementary to Expert! "Really need a new broom. That old one's just…it doesn't turn half as fast as it could."

Ginny gave him a skeptical look. "James, it's perfectly fine. You're not a Seeker, for Merlin's sake. Beaters don't need state-of-the-art stuff that'll bankrupt our family."

"You want Gryffindor to win this year, don't you Mum? I mean…come on, now…"

"Oh dear, you might have to earn your victory for once," said Ginny, rolling her eyes at her oldest son. "You can buy something for your broom, James, but not a new one entirely. And I'm coming in, too. Al, can you take Lily for books while I'm babysitting your brother?"

Lily was happy to get away from the combination of James and Quidditch for a bit. Diagon Alley was a lot nicer near its giant, landmark bookstore, Flourish and Blotts. The shop itself was a monstrous building, sporting a new renovation that had doubled it in size and added all sorts of secluded bookshelves, reading areas, and even an outdoor, umbrella-strewn patio where patrons flipped through newly-bought tomes. Across the way ringed the din from Ron and George's mammoth joke shop: Every year they'd striven to out-do the gaudy exterior of the year before, leading to this year's iteration with flaming depictions of Veela dancing above the firework-spewing green-and-orange cone roof.

"Oh, let's not go over there just yet," Al groaned Lily craned her neck to get a better view of the displays in the joke shop windows. "Someone over there I really don't want to talk to."

"Who?" asked Lily.

Al jabbed a subtle finger towards a tall, blonde-haired and green-eyed boy in a stark white robe standing in front of the front entrance of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, poking at a short, dark-skinned girl's hair and making her laugh. "That guy.

"Who is he?"

"An absolute clown. His name's Tanner Wynch; he's a Hufflepuff in my year. He's the Keeper on their Quidditch team, thinks he's awesome."

"Why don't you just put him in detention or something? You're a prefect now."

Al snorted, "Lily, that's abusing being a prefect. I can't just say, hey, screw you, go to detention, your face is bad."

"Well, just think up an excuse."

"Wait, can you say that again? I want to make sure you're an imposter. The sister I grew up with was afraid of coloring outside the lines in her books."

Perhaps they shook off the guy Al didn't want to see, but Lily didn't make it two steps into Flourish and Blott's before she ran into someone she wasn't so keen on, either. Between floor-to-ceiling shelves laden with books stood Scorpius Malfoy, scowling as he thumbed through a thick, sparkling fresh copy of Advanced Rune Translation. He'd grown a lot since his third year: Scorpius was one of the tallest boys Lily knew, filling out his frame even though he wasn't much of an athlete. He'd let his silvery-blonde hair grow long but kept it sleek, like the hair of some rich patrician of ancient years old.

He looked up as Al and Lily stepped into the store, nodding a cool greeting at Al and glancing at Lily with a look of amusement. Swell guy. Lily stuffed her hands in her pockets and headed off to an adjacent textbooks section in the labyrinthine store. She'd had little to do with Scorpius since their rendezvous her first year, even as she knew he and Hugo were still best friends. Different strokes…

As Lily was looking over her required course books list, however, she heard his voice drawling behind her: "Arithmancy? You're even more of a nerd than Hugo lets on."

Lily looked back to see him loitering against the side of a shelf, tossing The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5 from hand to hand. She rolled her eyes and went back to her book list, but he plucked it from her hands to have a look himself.

"Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. That's miserable," said Scorpius, grimacing at the parchment. "Are you a masochist?"

"Maybe I like learning things," Lily snapped, snatching the parchment back and ripping it in the process. "What do you take, Divination or something?"

He shrugged. "Matter of fact I do. It's an easy pass. You envious of my easy class? I'd say you're red with envy, but it might just be your hair."

"Or it's you making me mad that you're wasting my time. Go away, Scorpius."

"That's rude of you. Maybe I wanted to talk Arithmancy."

"And how much you think it's nerdy, sure. Go away."

"So moody," he snorted, leaving her in peace at last.

She didn't make it much longer before running into another Hogwarts familiar face – although this time it wasn't a student. Professor Yaro from Transfiguration wandered about the bookstore's ground floor, a copy of some thin and novel-looking book clutched in one hand. His youthful good looks had never faded – if anything, he'd only bolstered them with a thin beard that strengthened his jaw and gave the dark, foreign teacher an aura of authority.

"Ah," he said, noticing her. "Being responsible and buying textbooks? I wish I could say the same, but I like cheap crime thrillers like this."

He waved his book in one hand. A trenchcoat-wearing, cigar-smoking man hunched over on the cover as a seductive-looking, raven-haired woman in a tight red dress eyed him from down a stylized alley, a knife clenched in one hand. Cheap crime thriller doesn't do that justice. "Are you buying class supplies, professor?"

"Sadly, no, I'm not that responsible," he said with a shrug. "Buying entertainment, yes. The difficult life of an instructor. I won Professor Longbottom's earnings for next month in a recent game of chance we had. Rather than save it, I instead will blow it all today on trinkets I do not need and food that will shave years off of my life."

Lily laughed. She'd never gotten to know Yaro very well, something that looked like a mistake in hindsight. "I, um…you went to Durmstrang, right professor?"

"I did. Boring, chilly place."

"Er…I heard about the disappearances going on around there from…people," said Lily, recalling what she'd heard at the Ministry. "I'm sorry."

Yaro waved off her concern: "That's all in Norway, Lily, far from my home. I am from Estonia. No one I know fell off the map in whatever has been occurring around there. Although it does make one sad to see such things with no answers for it. I remember many friends from the region, and I hope such disappearances are a one-time thing."

Indeed. Lily wasn't done running into people, however: No sooner had Yaro walked out of the shop than another professor walked in, clapping him on the back and stopping on a dime as he spotted Lily.

"Trying to look like an intellectual with your arms full of books? You're not fooling me," Professor Vos said, standing in the doorway with his best attempt at a bright smile.

"Professor!" Lily shouted. She didn't know whether to wave or run up and shake his hand or hug him, so she waffled on all three and ended up doing an awkward little dance in place.

Vos looked tougher yet wearier than Lily remembered from just two months back at the end of her second year. Lines creased his face – something she should have expected, given that the man was in his late forties – but he still kept himself in tip-top shape physically. Vos's shoulders and arms looked more muscular than ever, bulging out of a camouflage t-shirt he wore, the green-and-brown military pattern interrupted with bright white words in French and a golden symbol on the chest that Lily recognized from the one emblazed on the green-and-red flag in his office.

"Is this a Muggle shirt?" she said, trying to make out what the foreign language said.

Vos flicked the sleeves. "Yah. This is old. Relic of what I was doing in the nineties. If you're not busy, I can go tell you about it over a drink in the Leaky Cauldron. You can regale me about whatever it is you get up to during summer."

Lily didn't need a second prompting. She dumped her books on her brother ("Just buy them, Al! I'll see you later!") and tromped off after Vos.

The Leaky Cauldron was the one place in Diagon Alley that desperately needed a renovation: It was old and smelled old, like Lily's grandfather's shed where he kept all the Muggle gadgets and trinkets he messed around with in retirement. The wooden beams supporting the roof looked in danger of collapsing any day now, and the oaken bar top itself was chipped and dented here and there, souvenirs of tavern disputes that hadn't ended with words.

"Ruttin' love this place," Vos said as he clunked a butterbeer in front of Lily in a corner booth, plopping down with a full half a bottle of firewhisky. "Believe it or not, Professor Longbottom and his wife used to run this joint. Long time ago, before he became a professor."

"It's not really Professor Longbottom's kind of place," said Lily, nursing her bottle and looking around. The clientele was a motley sort today – a group of young wizards all laughing and clinking glasses around a card game at one end of the tavern, while at the opposite end stood a gaggle of extremely pale, tall men in long black cloaks. In another world, Lily would have thought they were vampires. Wait a minute, they probably are.

Vos shrugged and took a long swig from his bottle. "Yah, Neville's not such a simple guy. Really great man, though. Oh, speaking of – his wife's a Healer, if you don't know, and I convinced the Headmaster to boot Justman's ass out of the castle. Technically he got a job offer from a magical hospital in Canada, but I'm not sorry to see him go. I am sorry that I won't get the chance to hex him out a window. 'Cuz of that, though, Neville's wife, Hannah, is going to be the school's matron this year."

He moved to say something else, but right then he spotted someone entering through the door off of Diagon Alley. "Bliksem; you have got to be fookin' kidding me," he groaned, crouching low over the table to avoid being seen. "All the bars in the magical world and she comes into this one."

It didn't work. The new arrival spotted Vos from across the tavern and walked in their direction immediately. She was a beautiful woman in Lily's eyes – tall, strong, and retaining some of her youth with pale skin and long, wavy black hair that curled at its ends, her eyes a deep, regal blue that looked almost purple in the dingy light of the Leaky Cauldron. She was easily the best-dressed person here, wearing a gown-like, full-length, sleeveless black robe that clung tight to her shoulders and hips before billowing around her knees.

"Get out, succubus," moaned Vos as she pulled up a chair to the edge of their booth.

"You don't mean that," the woman said with a voice like velvet. Grabbing Vos's whisky bottle, she added, "You wouldn't have bought my drink if you meant it."

Lily edged to the corner of the booth, unsure what to make of the turn of events. Vos looked…peeved. He glared at the woman as she took a long swig of whisky: "What are you doing here?"

She set the bottle down, wiped her lip, and said, "Nice French Foreign Legion shirt. You actually keep up with any of your Muggle friends, Jurre?"

"What are you fookin' doing here?"

"That's rude. You even brought a guest and you're acting all Rhodesian in front of her."

Lily kept her mouth clamped shut as she watched their increasingly hostile exchange, clutching her butterbeer to her chest. Something about the woman was familiar, really, as if she'd seen her before – something that made her recall her visit to the Ministry, even.

Vos breathed out heavily, snatching the whisky bottle back from the woman. "This is Lily Potter. That Potter's daughter. Lily, this...um…I know her…is Alanis Fell."

Swallowing hard, Lily remembered Hermione's corkboard – what is she doing? She remembered Vos's tale her first year, his story of his flight to Britain from Germany and Sion, all with one woman at his side – one who, apparently, had found a good time to corner him in the Leaky Tavern on a summer afternoon.

"The Lily Potter?" Alanis asked, flicking a finger at her. "The one involved in that Hogwarts incident a little over a year ago? So you know our mutual friend?"

Lily narrowed her eyes. "What mutual friend?"

"She was there when Sion showed up, yes," Vos grumbled into his alcohol. "Look, Alanis, you shouldn't even be here. I read about the kind of shite you're stirring up in the papers, the Ministry thinking you're a danger. They're going to gun you down in the street at this rate. Why are you here?"

"Mostly because I saw you coming out of Flourish and Blotts and followed you. It's been way, way too long since we chatted," she said. "And if you really read the Prophet, you'll see that for every person who hates what I have to say about wizarding Britain, there's someone else who shares my opinion. People think the Ministry's shifty after that new Minister of Magic got the job. I'd say I'm pretty popular, Jurre. Is that somehow worse than hiding up at Hogwarts like you're doing?"

She turned towards Lily, who'd huddled against the wall, trying to appear as small as possible. "You like your professor here, Lily? Is a good teacher?"

Lily eyed her suspiciously. "He's the best teacher at Hogwarts."

"Well, that's good to hear," Alanis said, turning to Vos with a sly smile. "And look, all the time I pushed you about kids and you end up being good with them."

Vos slammed his bottle onto the table with a murderous expression, shocking the huddle of vampires in the tavern. "We are not having that conversation here! Not in front of my student especially!"

"How old are you, Lily? Thirteen?" Alanis asked. "When you get a bit older and start having boyfriends, remember that this is what a nasty ex-lovers' spat looks like."

"Professor Vos wanted to know why you were here, and you didn't answer him," Lily said, feeling increasingly anxious about this. A nice afternoon at Diagon Alley had suddenly turned sour, and Vos looked about one more offense away from pulling out his wand and driving Alanis Fell through a wall.

"You sound a lot like how I imagined your dad back during Voldemort's heyday," said Alanis, pulling the whisky bottle back from Vos and taking a swig. "All business. Ready to be a hero. I'm getting to it, Lily. Tell me this: What's your dad think about the Ministry of Magic, hm?"

He wants me to spy on it at Hogwarts, but I'm sure not telling you that. "He doesn't talk about it much."

"Oh, come on, I saw the newspaper clip when Hermione Weasley herself called out the Ministry over the new Minister," Alanis said, wiggling the bottle's neck in between her fingers. "It's funny; she and I are really on the same side here. The Ministry is full of idiots, just like it was back during the Voldemort days, and it's headed by an idiot. Only this time they're not facing a dark wizard obsessed with blood purity and whatnot, but someone a lot smarter, and they're going to get destroyed if they don't stop screwing around."

"What?" Vos bellyached.

"Jurre, give me a break. You can't tell me you didn't see those disappearances up near Durmstrang in Norway and thought it was just random chance. Sion tried to assassinate you in your castle and you're still satisfied hiding back there?"

Vos scowled at her. "You think Sion's abducting people in Norway for…shites and giggles?"

"I think someone else we know is ordering him to do it," Alanis said, her eyes wide, "and I think the two people who know him best, both of whom are sitting around this table and aren't your student, should do something about it before he comes to Britain."

Lily finally spoke up, realizing just how deep this conversation was going: "Wait, is this that…mentor you said, Professor? He's behind those abductions?"

Alanis looked impressed. "You told her all that, Jurre? We might as well adopt her and become a wonderful little family."

"Fook off."

"Sometime before you go back to school with this drunkard, Lily, ask your dad about how well the Ministry did the last time they tried to fight a dark wizard," said Alanis, ignoring Vos. "Ask him about how they left everyone in Britain out to dry as they ignored Voldemort coming back to power, brushing away when his Death Eaters would kill someone's entire family and blaming it on a tragic accident. Then think about the Ministry today, the same one your aunt railed against after that rigged vote. How well do you think they would do against someone who really has no regard for human life?"

Vos snorted away her warning. "And your great idea is to spark a schism in wizarding Britain. Brilliant. I'm not helping you become a public enemy, Alanis. If you want to become a demagogue and bring the entire Ministry down on your head, go for it."

Alanis leaned over the table suddenly, drawing close to Vos with a serious expression. "Jurre, look across the table. If you were willing to tell her about all this, if she was there to see Sion attack you, then I'm willing to bet Lily here is one of your favorite students, isn't she? Picture what happens when he and Sion gather enough strength to start acting on all those plans that made us leave Germany! Imagine those two running over this impotent Ministry of Magic and abducting Lily here next! When you're facing off against your own student on the battlefield, except she's been twisted and morphed into one of his beasts – "

"I can protect myself!" Lily protested. "If this is all like that man who came to Hogwarts, I can fight that."

"You're brave, Lily, and you sound like you have a good head, but you have no idea what this man is capable of," Alanis said, her eyes bright and her face flushed. "We didn't for the longest time, either. If you think Sion's anything, that man's just his apprentice."

"Stop bullshitting her," Vos spat. "Don't drag her into this hellhole. This isn't even what this is about, Alanis. I know why you're railing against the Ministry instead of actually going out to hunt down Sion and kill him, if you're so concerned. This is revenge. You're mad that the Ministry did nothing when the Death Eaters gunned down your family, so now that you have the knowledge to hurt the system, you're doing just that. This has nothing to do with our mentor."

Alanis stormed up from her chair, her eyes flashing with anger. "This has everything to do with doing the right thing, because Britain is my home, and Hogwarts is my school, and my family is buried in this country. But if you're not going to help me and we're not going to act like adults, then I did waste my time trying to convince you to be a man, Jurre. Go hide behind your walls and teach Astronomy."

She turned to leave, but glanced back at Lily: "Find yourself a better role model, Lily. A brave girl like you shouldn't be looking up to a coward."