The day after the second installment of Ginny's tale was the third Friday of the month, which had begun on a Tuesday. This meant, according to Jessie and Becca, that Pandora would be spending the day (and the weekend to follow) with Xeno, working to get the latest edition of the Quibbler printed and ready for distribution on Monday. Why the magazine was published on the third Monday of the month, none of them had any idea. Luna had once told Ginny it was tradition, and encouraged the accumulation of wide-eyed gobwobblers. Personally, Ginny thought it was simply another way to make its owner seem even more insane than he actually was – a façade which she now knew he had maintained since about this period in order to avoid persecution for his articles while still disseminating the truth… to those who knew how to interpret it.

In any case, this meant that Ginny was inclined to hold off on telling the rest of the story for the moment. Not only was she not inclined to tell it more than once, she greatly desired the serene healer's presence to help keep Lily in check as she began recounting the events of Harry's life (and death – but don't think about that).

Even if she had been willing to tell the rest of it, the Safehouse was, once again, abuzz with activity. Moody came by to have Lily look at a suspicious rash. He suspected poisoning. Lily suspected a prank. Sirius came by to have his burns examined, pick up the latest supply requisition list, and have the curses Moody had set on him removed. Apparently 'I was just checking your CONSTANT VIGILANCE' was not an acceptable excuse for putting an itching potion on a man's towels. James tagged along for the excuse to visit Lily, and also apparently for the opportunity to further mock Sirius about his failed prank. Dumbledore made his weekly visit and insisted on chatting with Ginny, who added as few details as she could to her cover story, and spent the hour after he left attempting to recall everything she might have said, in order to write it down and not contradict herself in the future. Lying about her entire life, she was finding, was more difficult than she had initially imagined it would be.

Frank Longbottom dragged Alice Diggory in late that evening. She insisted she felt perfectly fine, but he was complaining that she 'hadn't been quite right' since the raid the night before. Lily berated them soundly for not reporting in with the other Order Auror teams who had been involved before spending two hours teaching Jessie, Becca, and Ginny a slew of diagnostic charms and the proper differential diagnosis to determine the specific time-delayed mood-altering curse she had been hit with.

It turned out to be fairly nasty.

"So you're saying if we don't get rid of it in the next six hours or so, she's likely to go berserk and try to kill me?" Frank summarized incredulously.

Lily shrugged, closing her reference book with a snap. "Or herself. Sometimes it's not quite strong enough to overcome the target's love. It doesn't quite negate it, but it can re-direct it to become self-destructive, rather than destroying the love in question."

"Well, how do we get rid of it?!" Alice snapped. Her slightly ruddy features had gone pale at the thought of her impending doom, or possibly at the fact that they had come so close to not coming in at all.

"What, you don't want to find out if your love for Frankie here is strong enough to overcome the Madness of Heracles?"

"Lily!" the couple shouted as one.

"Gods and powers, relax! Frank, I need you to go find me a couple of strays. Dogs or cats would be good. Jessie, Becca, set up a pair of Morrison's Circles. Alice, Jenny… I guess you can just keep each other company?" She seemed rather at a loss as to what to do with two extra pairs of hands, but after a moment, she shrugged. "Unless one of you is really good at potions?"

"I'm… not bad," Ginny admitted, curious.

"Not bad according to… your professor?"

"He gave me an 'E' on my fourth year finals."

"Well, knowing his standards… yeah, you can help. Alice…"

"I'll help Frank with the dogs," she volunteered.

"Good! Yes. Do that. And it goes without saying that anything that you see here tonight never happened, right?" the redheaded healer pointed seriously from Frank to Alice and back again.

"Sure, Evans," Frank agreed.

"If whatever we're doing works, I won't say anything," Alice nodded.

"Oh! Didn't I say? Sorry. We're moving the curse from you to one stray, feeding it a modified love potion and setting it at the other stray."

Ginny was sure that all of the others were as shocked as herself, but it was Becca who objected first. "You mean you're gonna make it kill it? Lily, you can't!"

"Look, Beck. It's going to be all I can do to move the curse. I don't have the power to destroy something like that, and I'm not going to fuck around with trying to teach Frank Unmaking on something this important."

"Unmaking?" the auror echoed.

"Abolefascio," Lily said, turning to him. "Yeah, I thought you wouldn't know it. It's extremely dark, and it's the only way to destroy this class of curse, or, well… the least extreme option to destroy it, and still ensure that it is completely destroyed. So the only realistic option is to let it play out. Which means, unless you'd rather watch Alice try to kill Frank…"

The younger girl looked ill. "I don't think I can watch." Jessie nodded uncertainly. Ginny wished she could agree, but after the year she had just had, she was fairly sure she had seen worse. She shrugged. She was curious enough to stick it out.

"That's fine," Lily said blithely. "You don't have to be there when I trigger it."

"You're going to actually trigger it?" Alice objected.

"It's not that dangerous, and I'd rather not spend my night babysitting a couple of strays until the timer runs out by itself. You can leave too, if you like. I'm not going to do it until we're done taking care of you, anyway."

The trainee auror huffed, but said nothing. Her mentor and future husband looked grim, but determined.

"Good? Good." Lily clapped imperiously. "Let's go people, we don't have all night!"

Alice and Frank apparated out with matching cracks as the kids wandered off toward one of the storerooms.

Ginny followed Lily into the makeshift potions lab in the north-east corner of the warehouse. The older witch began muttering aloud almost at once as she searched the shelves. "Let's see. I think we still have enough Cariadona, but that would need the strength boosted considerably as well as the modification for animal use. Do you think it would be faster than brewing a modified batch of Diliction?"

"Erm…" All Ginny knew about love potions had been gathered from conversations between Fred and George as they discussed new product ideas, and she didn't know their recipes.

"Ooh! I forgot I made Amorinora a few months ago! That should work perfectly if – yes! Just enough!" the healer exclaimed, holding a jar of ashwinder eggs to the light. There were only a few left.

"Amorinora?"

"It's the counter to Amortentia," Lily explained, quickly assembling her workspace. "Hand me that mortar? Thanks, love. Anyway, A'nora is just as illegal as A'tentia because it's so easy to turn it into Echo's Tears. Glass cauldron," she pointed at the shelf behind Ginny, who passed it to her. "Thanks. Now, pluck the leaves off this knotweed and – you know Crandon's Rehydration Formula?"

"Um, yeah." Snape had taught them that one in their third year, even though it was OWL standard. It wasn't the easiest potion to make, but it was very quick and very useful, especially since Hogwarts ingredients were stored for months before they were used.

"Good. Whip up a batch and soak the stems until they're pliable, then rinse them in moon-charged water to clear." Ginny set to work stripping dried leaves from the bundle of knotweed, watching from the corner of her eye as Lily crushed dried sea-onion flowers into a powder and poured it into the cauldron, now sitting in a shallow dish of ice and water, along with a greyish, opalescent potion.

As she did so, the older witch continued to explain: "Echo's Tears causes obsession, pure and simple, far past the point of any thought of one's own health or safety. It's somewhat different from Narcissus' Cordial, because it can be targeted to another individual, and it's easier to adapt to animal use than most love or lust potions because most of them operate by building on existing affections or attraction or a preexisting idea of love and what that means to the drinker, and animals don't have that between them. If I had Amortentia, of course, we could just use that, but I hadn't expected to need it, and it takes ages to brew…" she trailed off, carefully piercing each ashwinder egg with a silver needle and allowing the contents – which looked like a cross between egg yolk and lava – to drip into the cauldron and the potion. It immediately turned orange and started smoking, melting the ice in the tray. "How's that knotweed coming?"

"Nearly done," Ginny muttered, stirring the rehydration potion three more times counterclockwise and noting the change in color that indicated it was ready. She dropped the dry bundle of stems into her own cauldron and prodded it under the surface with her stirring rod, pouring the purified water into a series of beakers with her other hand.

"Fabulous. We have a window of about fifteen minutes, now," the healer told her, setting the still-steaming glass cauldron into what seemed to be some sort of distillation apparatus and tidying her workspace. She sighed.

"What is it?" Ginny asked, carefully lifting the mess of now-spaghetti-like greenery from its potion with a pair of stirring rods and dropping it into the first beaker of water.

"Oh, just thinking. I'm going to have to get Peter to bring us more ashwinder eggs tomorrow." She paused, but in such a way that the younger witch was almost certain she hadn't finished her thought. Sure enough, as she moved the knotweed again, Lily continued. "I want your permission to invite James and Sirius over, and give Peter a truth potion in their presence. And to question him about whether he is spying on the Order."

Ginny nearly dropped the plants, fishing them out of the last bath with her slippery, oversized chop-sticks. "What? Here," she passed them to the other witch, who added them to the now-boiling potion and quickly sealed the cover in place. The fumes began to condense into a sickly-looking yellow-green drip.

"You heard me," Lily said, when this task was complete. "I need your permission to act, since this is something I only know from your telling me."

"Didn't Pandora say we should wait, though?"

"On the horcruxes," Lily sniffed dismissively. "And I still think that plan would work. But every day we let Peter fucking Pettigrew walk free is another day he can pass information on the Order to the Death Eaters. Unless you were lying about his involvement?"

"N-no. I'm not – why would I lie about that?" Hard green eyes bored into Ginny's, as though Lily could judge her soul with a glare. She was suddenly very aware that the healers had no real reason to believe her story. She hadn't sworn an oath, after all – for all Lily knew, she was lying. And she could see the sense in cutting off the Death Eaters' source within the Order… and she couldn't seem to think of any convincing reason not to do it. "Okay," she said finally. "I don't think it could hurt…"

The redhead rolled her eyes, all traces of suspicion gone in an instant. "Well, it's probably going to make everything you know from after this point somewhat more subjective, but fuck it: if you're sure about staying and willing to change the timeline, I say go for broke."

"But –" Ginny began, suddenly worried that by changing this now, her information would become irrelevant, and they wouldn't be able to change something more important later – or what if, without Pettigrew to betray the Potters, Voldemort was never defeated, let alone killed?

But Lily cut her off with a grin and "No take-backs!" and before Ginny could explain, Alice and Frank reappeared with a pair of twin apparition cracks and stunned dogs in hand. The healer went to join them at once, leaving the time traveler to sigh and hope that this wasn't all going to end terribly.

xXx

It didn't end terribly, though it was a close call: Sirius nearly throttled Peter before he could explain himself, and then it turned out that he had never been a willing spy in the first place. He broke down in tears of relief as soon as he realized that his (former?) friends weren't simply going to kill him out of hand for being an idiot and a coward, and getting himself into this mess, let alone trying to handle it himself and only getting pulled further into the hole he had dug.

Essentially, or so Ginny gathered, Peter had been a victim as much as anyone, having been blackmailed into a series of ever-more-compromising situations until he had found himself in the unenviable position of having to spy on his friends, lest it be revealed to them (and the aurors) what he had already done. And he hadn't been able to bring himself to admit the truth precisely because he had been such a bloody idiot.

She was uncomfortably reminded of the position she had found herself in back in her first year at Hogwarts, when she had managed to get free of Riddle's diary – if only temporarily – and yet hadn't told anyone about her idiocy, hoping that it was over and no one need ever find out.

The difference was, of course, that Peter's friends had found out, and before he managed to extract himself from the situation.

Well, that and she had been entirely aware by that point that the boy who had seduced her into doing terrible things was not to be trusted, no matter how much she might have loved him once. Peter still seemed to be deluded into thinking his own Tom – Sirius' younger brother, Regulus – had only wanted what was best for him, when really he had been (as was clear to all four of the others) intentionally entrapping Peter, leading him to do something blackmail-worthy.

Peter very obviously couldn't see it.

"Fuck, Pete! What the bloody hell were you thinking trusting Regulus, of all people!"

"Siri – he didn't mean to – he never wanted – and now he's dead!"

Sirius fixed his quivering friend with a steely-eyed glare. "That's what you get when you join up with the Dark Bastard, isn't it?"

James reined in the furious Black with a firm grip on his arm. "Harsh, Pads."

For once, Sirius jerked his arm away. "NO! No it is not! That slimy little git wanted to be a Death Eater since he was a kid. Even if he did get cold feet and run away like a coward at the end –"

"He was worried about you!" Peter interrupted shrilly. "I wouldn't have even started talking to him in the first place, but he was worried about you, and then…" he trailed off miserably.

Sirius seemed to deflate. He shook his head pityingly. "You loved him."

Peter flushed scarlet, but nodded hesitantly.

"Fucking idiot. He was a liar. He was a fucking consummate liar, Pete. I fucking guarantee you were just a job to him. A – an assignment. He didn't care about you, no matter what he told you."

"It wasn't like that!" the pudgy young man protested. "He never said anything –"

Sirius scoffed. "Of course he didn't! He just paid attention to you. Made you feel like he was the only one in the world who understood you. Like you were the only one in the world who understood him. Maybe acted a little reluctant to admit he felt anything, implied weakness that he only trusted you to know about… Fuck, Pete! Seducing someone is not difficult. Ask Evans if you don't believe me!"

Lily glared at the leather-clad Marauder, but she did nod, rather reluctantly. "Regulus was… a nasty piece of work, Peter."

"He was sixteen!" the blond protested.

"He was a Black!" Sirius refuted.

"You're a Black," James pointed out.

Sirius punched him in the arm, hard enough that he failed to hide a wince. "That's how I know what I'm talking about! I fucking guarantee Reg was working on an initiation project when he was sixteen. You don't get into the Death Eaters without proving yourself. You just don't. And he was initiated at seventeen, so."

"I thought you had to kill someone?" James asked.

Sirius shrugged. "Sure, for the initiation ceremony. They pick a muggle that reminds you of the person you care most about in the world. It's symbolic. But to even apply to join, you have to prove you're worthy of the honor." He made a disgusted face, then glared impotently over an ill-concealed expression of unease when he noticed the looks James and Peter were giving him.

"How would you know?" James asked slowly.

Surprisingly, at least to Ginny, it was Lily who defended the wayward Black. "Oh, come off it, Jamie. You know Bellatrix is in charge of training new Death Eaters. I'd be more surprised if Sirius hadn't picked a few things up over the years."

Sirius snorted. "Not that any of it's of much use now, seeing as it's all six years or more out of date. I got pretty good at avoiding all that after third year or so. Regulus though," he added pointedly, looking back to Peter, "was a perfect little Death Eater in Training. He and Narcissa used to make the new recruits teach them Dark spells in the summers for fun."

"I don't think –" Peter began, but Sirius cut him off almost at once.

"Clearly! Fuck, Pete, what would it take to convince you? If he weren't dead, I'd kidnap the bastard and make him tell you himself, but, honestly!"

Lily snorted. "You could kidnap that Rosier kid. Evan."

"Evan?" Sirius asked. "Were you actually on first-name terms with him?"

"We had mutual… acquaintances."

"Fucking Snivellus," James muttered. Lily punched him in the arm, ignoring his look of betrayal and his outraged "He's a Death Eater, Evans!"

"Severus wasn't the one who introduced us, anyway. He helped organize the Samhain and Walpurgis rituals the last couple of years at school."

"The what?" Ginny asked, but she was ignored. James looked equally confused, as did Peter.

Sirius seemed to know what she was talking about, but he just snorted. "Of course he did. Kiss-arse. Right, then, Pete, do I need to go kidnap my cousin to tell you that Reggie was using you, or will you take my bloody word for it? Because honestly, mate… Reg was a Black. You didn't rate to him, except if he could use you. Which he obviously did. And so well you're still defending the git."

Peter glared. "Is that why you're friends with me? Because you're using me somehow?"

The Black scion's lip curled in an ugly smirk. "Of course not. I haven't tried to live up to my family's expectations since I was nine. But Reg did. And he was good at it, telling people what they wanted to hear and getting them to give him what he wanted. In this case, you, in a position where you could be forced to betray us all," he added pointedly.

Peter seemed to deflate. "I believe you," he said sullenly, sniffling slightly.

James sighed, clapping him on the shoulder. "All right. What do we do now, then?" he asked the group at large.

Silence answered his question until, a few seconds later, Lily spoke up with a hesitant tone and reluctant expression which Ginny was entirely certain were false. "Well, if no one else has any ideas, I might have a few suggestions…"