Several people were able to find the message – "help me" – I hid in Rita's article last chapter; I hope you guys enjoyed the reminder of how much horror I put in this story on the sly. No one figured out the source of William Milner, but I wasn't really expecting anyone to get that without being in my head. William Beecher Scoville and Brenda Milner were the neuroscientists who discovered that the hippocampus was involved in the formation of memories (hence "Memoratory", memory and oratory).

Next chapter may or may not be delayed. I take my second board exam in two weeks, so I don't know yet if that weekend will be spent writing or cramming.

Disclaimer: Did Muggleborn and Muggle-raised kids immediately and uniformly adopt swearing to Merlin, seemingly without any reservations at all? If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.

Chapter 38
Murder is the Best Solution

There were many differences between the magical and Muggle worlds, but it was the little things that still caught Lily off-guard sometimes. Having grown up in a Catholic household, appellations to Merlin occasionally sounded wrong to her ears even after twenty-five years, and she knew she was considered strange for refusing to go out into the various magical communities on Sundays. The Sabbath wizards generally did not keep holy. This was a rare exception, and she was only going along with it because it was the one day Jenny said she could meet.

A witch at the other end of the pub glanced her way, and her heart skipped a few beats before the stranger dismissed Lily and turned back to her dinner. She knew intellectually that she had nothing to worry about; it was not a crime to be out in public, and at Jenny's strongly worded request she had covered herself in a glamour of an utterly unremarkable brunette. The problem was that very precaution had apparently told her instincts to be on the lookout for anything dangerous. If her daughter did not arrive soon, her heart might just give out before they had a chance to talk.

"Margaret, there you are! I almost thought you'd forgotten we were supposed to get together tonight."

A hand clapped down on her shoulder, and Lily looked up into unfamiliar eyes. Had she accidentally made her illusion look like a real person, someone who was supposed to be at the Three Broomsticks? That would be just her luck. "I'm sorry, sir, but I think you have me confused for someone else—"

His laugh cut her off. "I know it's been years since we last saw each other, but surely I don't look that different." The dirty-blond wizard flicked his eyes at their surroundings and hissed so softly that she could barely make it out, "Just shut up and play along." Her eyes widened – what was going on?! – but before she could say anything or try to get someone's attention, the strange man grabbed her right elbow and pulled her out of the chair. Shifting so he was no longer holding her up but instead had her wand arm pinned against his side, he dragged her toward the stairwell that led to the pub's private rooms.

Lily opened her mouth to scream for help, but not a peep emerged. He had silenced her!

They turned the corner, and now that they were out of the crowd's sight he inexplicably let her go with an irritated huff. This was certainly the strangest kidnapping she had ever imagined! "By the Baron, Lily, it's like you know nothing of subterfuge."

Confused by the strange oath, it took her a moment to realize what else had been said. "You know who I am?" The man gave her a look, and the pieces finally connected. "Wait, Jenn-ifer?"

If her daughter had noticed the verbal stumble on her name, she chose to ignore it. "How many other people were you planning to meet today? Did you think when I said you shouldn't look like yourself that I was just going to waltz inside with my natural appearance? That would completely ruin the point of sneaking out of the castle in the first place." She pulled open the door leading into the second of Rosmerta's private rooms, and though Lily could not see her face, she just knew her daughter was rolling her – his? – hazel eyes.

"Well, I didn't— How did you even know who I was?!"

"Everyone has their talents; this is one of mine." Nodding at the serving girl whom they had interrupted setting the table with a couple of goblets and a basket of spiced flatbreads, Jenny waited until they were again alone before adding, "You don't grow up blind without picking up a few tricks here and there."

Rather than respond to that – because really, what was there to say? – Lily waved her wand in front of her face to dispel her glamour. She expected Jenny to do the same, but instead the younger witch rapped her own wand against her head. The masculine face bubbled and flowed, melting back into her daughter's appearance while she stared in shocked disbelief. Glamours were easy and, more importantly, safe; messing up on one of those was of no consequence. But this? "You used human transfiguration on yourself?!" she demanded in a shriek. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?! All it takes is one mistake and you could be disfigured for life, maybe even die!"

"Your concern is unnecessary and unwanted," Jenny replied with a haughty sneer as she shrunk her unadorned blue robe to fit her smaller frame. "I may not be a Metamorphmagus, but I'm still a Black, and our blood carries with it a tremendous capacity for self-transformation. How else do you think Sirius and your husband were able to become Animagi, an ability few wizards can accomplish, before they even passed their OWLs? Frankly, it's more of a surprise that Pettigrew was able to keep up with them, especially with how Sirius talks about his skills or lack thereof.

"Now," the girl said, pouring herself a goblet of butterbeer while Lily took a few seconds to soothe her frantic heart, which was really only to be expected upon learning that her daughter was playing with magics far beyond her level, "what made it so important that we meet as soon as humanly possible?"

"Dumbledore."

For some reason, a sharp grin crossed Jenny's face. "The old goat has been bleating to the Order about the unfairness of the world, I take it?"

"Jennifer!" she scolded. "How could you say something like that?"

"Because I don't worship the ground he walks on."

"He has made mistakes, I'll grant you that," she replied slowly, "and especially with you. But even if you have reasons to dislike him, he's still the man in charge of the Light, and he's our best, our only hope to defeat Voldemort."

Jenny rolled her eyes and tossed her hair back. "Except you've missed the tiny detail that I'm not Light. I am the heiress of traditionally the most influential Dark House in the Wizengamot, and my personal politics lean more toward Neutral than anything." She leaned back in her chair, indifferent to Lily's scandalized expression, and rolled her glass between her palms. "Either way, I see no reason to lament his fall from grace."

"Your politics won't matter if Voldemort wins," Lily reminded her, holding back a sigh. Of course, she had forgotten that Jenny had such a cynical view of the world that even Ebenezer Scrooge would have thought her uncharitable. It was too bad that Mind Healers worked exclusively with brain trauma and magics that affected the mind; Jenny desperately needed to visit a therapist. She would be so much happier if she could just rid herself of all this baggage!

"Have you ever met Amelia Bones?" Reluctantly, Lily nodded. Bones was a good director of the DMLE, she would not deny that, but as Minister? Fudge might have been a weak man, but Bones needed someone who would restrain her excesses. She was cast from much the same mold as Bartemius Crouch, at least when it came to permitting and even encouraging excessive force. "If I had to pick which of the two I would support in this war, it would be her without a doubt every single time. At least she won't let the guilty walk free."

"No, she'd just have them killed in a firefight." Jenny quirked an eyebrow at her retort, almost as if confused why that was a problem. "You were the one claiming that Dumbledore being powerless was good for the Dark, but Bones's way of fighting this war would see many of those Houses exterminated. We would rather have the Death Eaters rehabilitated, and that can't happen when they're all dead."

As distasteful as it was to side with the Dark Sect, she expected this would be the point that finally got across to Jenny. Her daughter's, for lack of a better term, bloodthirstiness was still disturbing, however. Even if she were not raised in the Light, to think that someone born to them could be so—

"So Dumbledore watches his enemies go free and instead sticks his supporters in Azkaban for crimes they didn't commit? Yes, I'm certainly going to side with him now."

Lily frowned at the sarcasm practically dripping from Jenny's words. "Sirius's imprisonment was a special circumstance."

"Of course," Jenny agreed in a saccharine voice. "I mean, one person accused of killing another with dark magic? Surely no one else would ever do something like that. And I guess the Death Eaters are so horrible because they use Tripping Jinxes instead of Tickling Charms."

That sigh escaped from her now. She should not have expected Jenny to understand; how could she when she was only born in the closing days of the War? Lily considered voicing that thought for a moment before dismissing it. Jenny would undoubtedly consider it patronizing, just as she herself would have when she was her daughter's age.

"What's been going on at Hogwarts?" she asked, clumsily trying to change the subject. There really were no good segues from their previous conversation. "I heard that something happened to the Weasley twins a couple of days ago, but Molly, their mother, didn't want to talk about it."

"I expect she wouldn't," Jenny replied after a moment's pause. "Two weeks ago, right after Marchbanks took over, they played a prank during dinner that involved setting a few hundred pounds of fireworks off in the Great Hall. Supposedly there were going to be punished for it, but they pulled a couple more that were just as disruptive. Marchbanks got tired of it and expelled them both. Thankfully, she threw them out on their ears before they did anything worth getting the MLEP involved. The most common theory going around is that the stress of the upcoming NEWTs got to them, but their roommates claim that they didn't care about their scores." Leaning back, she added in an extraordinarily bland tone, "And all things considered, I'm starting to wonder if that wasn't just their own way of protesting Dumbledore's removal."

That would certainly explain Molly's reluctance to discuss matters, Lily silently agreed. Hogwarts covered the Ministry's fees for sitting the OWL and NEWT exams, but now that the twins were expelled, they or Molly and Arthur would have to scrape together the galleons for it themselves if Fred and George were ever going to get decent jobs. If Danny tried to pull some foolishness like that, oh how he would regret it.

And not just Danny… Maternal worries coming to the fore, she gently prodded, "But thankfully you would never do something like that, right?"

"Of course I—" Jaw clacking shut mid-sentence, Jenny's violet eyes narrowed suspiciously. "I am not one who would pull some ill-timed stunt to show my displeasure of the Ministry exercising their authority. You should be more concerned that your son will try to emulate them. After all, your family is close to the Weasleys, are you not?"

"We are, but that doesn't mean I can't worry about you, too," she whispered. "You're still my daughter."

"No, I'm not." Jenny's voice was full of hard finality.

"I-I know we're not officially related anymore, and I understand that you have reasons for not wanting to change that, but—"

"Lady Potter." Lily cringed at the flat tone that title was delivered in, and her expression only deepened when she saw Jenny's smoldering glare. "I am going to say this in such a way that you cannot possibly misunderstand. You. Abandoned. Me," Jenny growled, jabbing the table with each word for emphasis. "I spent my entire life without you around, and at no point in the last, oh, ten years have I ever thought, 'If only Mummy and Daddy loved me, everything would be wonderful.'"

Her 'little girl' voice was ruined by her sneer of disdain, which persisted as she continued, "You seem to be laboring under the misconception that if you talk at me long enough, I will discover some deep-seated need to have my 'mother' in my life. I now suspect that this was the real intention you had when you wrote me to arrange this meeting, to further your goal of developing some maternal-filial relationship like you might have had had you not been such a short-sighted, arrogant fool." Her daughter's bark made Lily flinch. "I will tell you this now so you do not waste my time again: that ship sailed a long, long time ago, and there is nothing you can ever do to call it back."

"I know that!" she shouted back, dashing tears off her cheeks. "How could I not?! Believe me, there is nothing – nothing – I would like more than to find some way to go back and undo that decision. Tell James and Dumbledore where they can shove their advice and—"

"What?" Her shouting almost drowned out Jenny's near-whisper, but it was just loud enough that she cut off the torrent of self-flagellation. "What does Dumbledore have to do with any of this?"

Lily had no clue where this sudden burst of curiosity was coming from, but at least the girl's furious expression had dimmed. That could only be a good thing. "He's the one who told us you were a Squib. After that Halloween, we called him over to check on you and Danny. He said that Danny was okay except for his curse scar, but when he examined you, he said that you didn't have any magic. Since you two were practically inseparable, we couldn't say for certain that the accidental magic we had seen hadn't all come from Danny, so we assumed he was right. It was a mistake, I know, but we were a little preoccupied trying to decide what we could do that would be best for… you…"

What happened next was the most horrifying thing Lily had ever witnessed, and she knew it would come back to haunt her in her dreams that night: Jenny's expression suddenly went… blank. Her face, which had previously been cycling through confusion, irritation, and astonishment, smoothed over until not even a single hint of any emotion could be seen; it was as if everything had been locked behind foot-thick steel doors. Even her eyes changed, dilating to the point that thin rims of purple could just barely be found encircling pools of soulless black.

Jenny abruptly stood, almost knocking her chair backward with her jerky movements. "If you will excuse me, Lady Potter," she said mechanically, "I think this discussion is best ended now." Without another word, she turned and began walking toward the door.

Surging to her feet, Lily reached out for her daughter's shoulder. "Jennifer, wait a— Aaargh!"

She yanked her hand back and stared at it in utter shock, tears of pain streaming unnoticed down her cheek. Her entire palm was bright red, small patches of white marking where blisters were sure to come springing up. A mother's and child's magics were complementary, the result of them being connected for nine months; it was a common phenomenon that a hurt or upset child could be soothed by nothing more than his mother's presence. And yet, somehow, Jenny's very aura had burned her. A rejection stronger than any mere words could express.

The click of the door closing behind her rang loud in the silence.

"Miss Black? Are you all right?" Filius asked, knocking hard on the door that led into the dueling room. He knew it was her, as they were the only ones who used this room – and honestly, they were probably also the only ones who knew it even existed – but it was the strength of the protective charms on the door that had alerted him to something being dreadfully wrong. He did not have the girl's sensitivity to magic, but the sheer power laid upon the old wood was great enough that even Argus could have felt it.

There was no answer, and he grabbed for the handle. Incredibly, it turned without the slightest hint of resistance. Why had she left the door unlocked but reinforced it to such a ludicrous extent?

He pulled the door open, and the momentary glance he got was enough to answer his question. The room was completely filled with blue and white fire, the wards on the walls literally shrieking under the pressure, and the only clear spot in the entire space was where his student stood screaming in rage and madness. Those unholy flames leapt at him while he stared, and he barely had time to slam the door shut before they consumed him. His forehead fell forward to rest against the hot wood as his stomach rebelled, the vile stench of such concentrated dark magic almost overwhelming him.

After another few seconds, he straightened and wiped the cold sweat from his brow. What had set the girl off, he had no clue, and honestly he wasn't sure he wanted to know. One thought, however, was crystal clear: I better come back later.

Tracey's hands shook as she folded the letter back up. She should have known this was going to happen; really, she should have. Learning that he would do this to her was not a surprise at all. She still had not expected it.

Standing from the Slytherin table, she did not say a word to anyone as she gathered her things and left. Most of her housemates hated her for her polluted blood, anyway; if she told them what was happening, they would likely cheer him on rather than offer to help her. Of course, it wasn't as if they could help even if they wanted to. He had planned this out to account for every last detail, and there was no course she could see to stop it. Her life was over.

"Tracey!" She slowly turned around, though for all that she was pleased Jen had followed her, it did little to pierce through her depression. The Ravenclaw stared at her with narrowed eyes. "What's wrong?"

Her voice was flat. "Nothing. I'm fine." It was better for Jen not to try banging her head against an immovable object. She had made it clear that she would go to whatever lengths were needed for her friends, but all that would happen now was the girl wasting the Blacks' influence.

Jen's lips thinned, and without warning her hand landed on Tracey's cheek. When it pulled away, tears clung to her fingertips. "Don't lie to me. What. Happened?"

"He…" Tracey held up the letter, her hands still shaking. Taking a deep breath to try calming herself, she explained, "Do you remember how my grandfather offered me three thousand galleons if I abdicated my position as heir? Apparently I didn't move fast enough, and he's now decided to take different measures. I'm…" Her voice broke, and a few more tears escaped. "I'm arranged to be married."

"We both knew that was going to happen eventually," Jen said slowly, "so that can't be all there is to it."

"No, it's not. Mum wrote me as soon as she found out all the details of the contract; Taggle, our house-elf, told her about it, and she went poking around in his study. On the surface, it's fairly standard, but…"

Jen stepped to her side and, their arms now linked together, began guiding her away from the Entrance Hall. "But?"

"He's in his sixties, some business associate of Grandfather's," she whispered, "but if it was just that, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with it. There are plenty of older wizards who'd be happy with a teenage wife. No, it's the clauses at the end that make it so horrible. I will be the official Head of House, no one can change that, but the contract gives my husband the authority to represent me in all political and legal matters. I'd run the family in name only, and with him in charge of the legal stuff, I wouldn't be able to change it. I'll be trapped, and to make things worse, if I die, he gets adopted and becomes the new Lord Davis. This guy has the exact same views as my grandfather; I won't survive my wedding night, and it'll all be nice and legal and no one will care." A sob tore its way free of her throat, and she spun Jen around and threw herself at her friend. "I don't know what to do!"

Jen's arms wrapped around her tightly. "No matter how bad things get, there is always, always a way out," the girl whispered in her ear. "My mentor gave me this advice a long time ago, and it has never been wrong before. This will be no different. How long do you have before this contract goes into effect?"

"I'm getting married on the first day it's permitted. Happy seventeenth birthday to me," she croaked out with a strangled, mocking chuckle.

"Then we have time." A short hum echoed in Jen's throat as an idea came to her. "Your grandfather isn't going to file this contract until your sixteenth birthday, is he?"

"No, but only because the Ministry considers all marriage contracts submitted before then to be unenforceable. You can bet it'll be the first bit of mail the Ministry receives on my birthday, though," she grumbled.

Jen laughed then. Laughed, like all their problems had been solved! "Then that's the solution. Just leave this to me."

"Jen, no!" She pulled out of her friend's embrace and shook her head desperately. "You can't fight this. Your House is powerful, but do you think the Wizengamot is going to accept you interfering in another House's internal matters? All that'll happen is—"

A finger came to rest on her lips, and Tracey's eyes flicked to Jen's arm and then to her face. The other girl's hands then reached for hers and gripped them gently. "Tracey, do you trust me?"

Tracey barely kept from laughing hysterically. Hadn't she asked something along those same lines earlier this year, whether Jen was trustworthy with her secrets? And hadn't Jen proved to be as good as her word? "Yes."

"Then don't worry. You'll be fine." A cold glint appeared in Jen's eyes, and Tracey was not quite sure whether she liked it or not. If it somehow got her out of this, though? Right now, she would take whatever help she could get. "I will take care of everything."

The clock struck two, and green flames surged from the fireplace as Jen stepped out. Her fury, carefully banked ever since Tracey had come to her a week previously, threatened to escape its bonds and course through her veins, and she took a moment to calm the beast. She could not afford to use dark magic here. This had to be perfect.

"Miss?" She turned to the side to look at the house-elf that was standing nervously in the doorway. "It bes late at night, miss, and Taggle thinks no one supposed to bes here right now. Yous needs to come back in the morning."

The smile she gave the little servant was unlikely to be as comforting as she wanted. "Hello, Taggle. Tracey told me quite a bit about you."

"Oh, yous bes friends with Miss Tracey?" the elf asked, his expression brightening considerably. "But she bes up at school right now. She not here."

She nodded. "I know that, but she told me some disturbing things that were going on here that could hurt her. Things her mother told her, and that you told her mother." The elf winced and looked away. "You love them very much, don't you?"

"Taggle does," the elf whispered. "Theys don't yell at Taggle or bes mean when Taggle makes mistakes. Theys always really nice."

"I know. Tracey is a good friend to me, too. But now she's in trouble." Taggle nodded sadly. "And since she is so good to me, she deserves me being good to her. I'm here to make her problem go away."

"Yous can do that?"

"Yes, I can, but I need your help to do it." Taggle's head bobbed up and down excitedly, and Jen hid a smile. She had thought very carefully about how she was going to phrase her discussion with the elf, and though Tracey did not know it, the Slytherin had been a great help in piecing together a mental image of how he behaved. "You see, no one can know that I was here, but since you're such a good and devoted elf"—Taggle blushed at the compliment—"if someone orders you to tell the truth, you'll have to tell them who I am. For me to help Tracey, I have to make sure you don't remember. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"You needs to Obliviesiviate Taggle."

She grinned at the little elf. Not only had Taggle figured out what was needed, he showed no fear of it. Tracey was indeed lucky to have such an elf looking out for her. "That's right. I promise that it won't hurt you even a little bit. Is that all right?"

This was the hardest part of her job. House-elves had magic very different from a human's, and one of their idiosyncrasies was that their minds could not be affected without their consent. An elf's master could get around that by commanding the elf to give consent, but as Jen was not a Davis, she did not have that convenient loophole. She held her breath for just a second, worried about having to execute her plan B. Tracey would not be pleased if she had to take that course of action.

But after brief consideration, Taggle nodded. "Okays. If it bes helping Miss Tracey and Miss Mary."

"Thank you." She waved her hand, sending Taggle into a deep sleep and gently lowering the tiny body to the floor, and then she erased their entire conversation from his mind. So that's part one done, she thought to herself as she walked toward the visible stairwell. Pulling a chain from her pocket, she watched the glass ball at the end rise to point up and to the left. Now comes the easy stuff.

Following her tracking charm, she silently walked the halls until she came to a decorated door. Jen pushed it open and peered inside to find her quarry right where he was supposed to be. Wallace Davis did not wake when she closed the door, but he did as soon as she snapped her fingers.

Though admittedly, that probably had more to do with the body-bind she placed upon him than the sound.

Only Wallace's eyes could move within her spell, and it did not take long for them to alight on her. "Good morning," she said to Tracey's grandfather in a cheery voice. "You probably remember me, but just in case, I'm Jen Black. Tracey's best friend."

His gaze radiated confusion.

"She told me you've been a bad, bad boy," she continued as though speaking to a young child. The finger she wagged at his face only furthered the comparison. "Arranging her marriage with an old pal of yours, and then making it so she couldn't do anything about it. Tsk tsk."

He seemed to understand what she was talking about now, and his struggles to escape her binding redoubled. Jen rolled her eyes and sat on the edge of his bed. "Now, I haven't seen the contract myself, but just from what I've heard about it, I have to commend you. You did your best to cut off any way Tracey could get out from under it, and you did it so very well. In the end, I could only think of one way to help her, even if it was also the first idea that popped in my head.

"You see," she whispered, leaning in conspiratorially, "the only problem with your plan? You have to be alive on Tracey's sixteenth birthday to file the contract." She smiled nastily. "If, however, something unfortunate happened to you before then, the whole thing comes tumbling down. Any legal document submitted by a Head of House posthumously is automatically rendered invalid without his successor's signature, and as soon as you die, Tracey becomes Lady Davis. Oh, she'll need a regent until she turns seventeen, but she gets to pick who that is all on her own, and no one will be able to enter her into any contracts without her express consent. And do you really think she would sign the contract you've so carefully written up that would all but sell her into slavery to her husband?" She shook her head. "I don't think so, either."

Ignoring Wallace's ineffectual spasms, Jen laid her hand upon his shirtless chest. "Now I could just kill you with any number of spells, but I don't want it to be obvious that you were murdered. That would lead to an investigation, and we don't want that, now do we? Thankfully, it's well-known that you have the so-called Black Curse," she added as she flicked a lock of his hair, already completely white despite seventy-two being only middle-aged for most wizards, "so no one is going to question the obvious too much if you die in your sleep."

Magic, carefully kept neutral in alignment just for this purpose, shot from her hand and wrapped around his heart. Her spell squeezed, each pulse tightening the bands of energy. After five, his heart sped up to compensate for the restriction; after ten, it was working as hard as it could to keep his blood flowing.

After thirty, Wallace's heart did not have room to beat at all.

She leaned closer to Wallace's face, smiling as she watched the light behind his eyes begin to dim. "And besides, if I had killed you immediately, we wouldn't have had the chance for this pleasant little chat. Goodbye, Wallace Davis."

Three minutes after casting her spell, Jen nodded to herself and stood. Tracey was safe now. Opening the bedroom door, she reoriented herself and began the walk back to the fireplace. The Floo Network was monitored, but the Leaky Cauldron's fireplace was known to be available for public use at any time for those who had paid for a room for the night. She had not done so, merely broken into the pub, but just in case there was an investigation, the DMLE would be too busy questioning the Cauldron's residents to bother going after Tracey. It was perfect.

A door further down the hall opened, and a man stepped out while rubbing his eyes. His hand dropped, and then his gaze met hers.

Thankfully, only one of them knew that. Immediately after the strange man walked out, she had diverted what little available light there was coming from the wall sconces around her. The utter lack of light blinded her once again, but through her sonar she could feel him slowly walking her way and muttering to himself.

She took a soft step away from him and pressed her back against the wall, holding her breath so the only half-awake man would not hear her as he walked past and investigate. Her magical sense was wonderful – she would never deny that – and it had served her well as her primary method of navigation for ten years, but it did have one flaw: it could not penetrate solid barriers like walls and doors. Only in Grimmauld Place did it give her total awareness like that.

Normally, that weakness was a non-issue, but here that lack of warning could all too easily have given her presence away. She could have wrapped her invisibility around herself immediately after she finished Wallace off, she supposed, but this was the home stretch, not to mention the first point it was a viable option. House-elves could see through invisibility cloaks and Disillusionment Charms, and while her own spell worked by a completely different method, she had been leery of testing it; if she were caught, Taggle would have had much less reason to trust her claims that she was a friend of Tracey's and instead might have roused the rest of the household. Once he was unconscious, she could have used it, but by then she knew there was no one in the hallway to catch her, and remaining unseen would have taken away from ensuring that Wallace knew exactly why he was going to die that night.

Although now that I think back on it, why is it that Grimmauld Place's wards accepted me so quickly?, she wondered silently. At first I thought it was because I'm Sirius's, and therefore House Black's, heir, but he told me that I had never been there, and later I needed to be keyed in to give me influence over the wards. And while yes, I was already a descendant of the Blacks through James, that's still three generations between Dorea Potter and me. I would have expected the recognition to be diluted somewhat by then, but my connection to the house was no clearer when the blood adoption process finished than it was when I first entered.

Shrugging, she followed in the man's tracks for a few meters until he passed the staircase, though rather than trust the stairs not to alert him she thrust her left hand upward and conjured the personal gravity well she relied on for her flight. She frowned as she noticed for the first time how unwieldy it was in such close quarters; every other time she had used it, she either had plenty of space in which to move in a straight line or only needed it as a glorified hover charm. It was not, however, that practical for drifting down a flight of stairs at less than free fall speeds. Something else to work on when I get a chance.

Eventually she reached the foyer, and from there it was a short walk back to the fireplace. Giving the hallway one last sweep, she smiled to herself as she let her invisibility drop and threw a handful of Floo powder into the fireplace.

And no one will ever know.

Silently Watches out.