DISCLAIMER: JK Rowling does not want a phased plasma fanfic in the 40-watt range.

Molly watched him take a bite with a clear look of approval on her face. "I dare say she does. She's said the lack of sentiment makes her a better fighter, and she's put down nearly as many as me at this point, so I don't doubt it lets her see clearer in other ways as well. How do you like the cheese?"

Harry took a moment to chew and swallow. "Bloody good scran, you earned that prize. And yes, Jane said something about her not being emotionally compromised the way Dumbledore is."

"Well, it's good to hear. Tell me, how much of being Harry Potter do you remember?"

-oOo-

Chapter 7

Undisclosed Location, 4 July 2004

Harry froze, the second half of the cracker just short of his lips. Think fast, Harry. "Do you mean any Harry Potter in particular?" He asked, putting the morsel slowly and carefully back down on the plate, "I think I can unbend on operational security enough to tell you it says 'Henry' on my birth certificate, if that helps?" Rule One of Occlumency: don't lie any more than you absolutely have to. Mislead with truthful statements or remain silent, because truthsaying is the most basic discipline of legilimency.

Jane had put a magical bug on him so she could come help if he heard him get into magical difficulty, so it was just a question of how long it was before she could get away and come help with this utter bollocks of a mess.

"I dare say it does," Molly said, a quiet little smile playing about her lips, "I often wondered whether you were a Henry or a Harold behind all the guff they gave out about you, or if your parents really named you just Harry. I don't think I met your mother above twice, and your father maybe a time or two more than that, so I never knew, you see? And the first time I properly met you when my boys brought you home to visit, well, I can't recall whether it went out of my mind to ask or I couldn't think of a way to ask. Even if I had, I dare say you'd no idea yourself, what with those awful people you were given to by Albus, and he was too busy to contradict the legend everyone was building. Or had some reason for not contradicting it, you could never tell with Albus. It was cleverness of that sort that got him killed, of course, once they'd winkled him out of his place of power at Hogwarts."

Harry stayed still and quiet, trying his best - don't get desperate, desperation is the opposite of what I want here - to get into a no-mind state in which he'd have no facial tells that'd give this terrifying woman any clue she was right. That she was speculating out loud was disaster enough: if anyone overheard her it was a fucking catastrophe. He couldn't see anyone listening in, but even without magical eavesdropping that guaranteed nothing. You could get discreet RF bugs from fucking Argos these days. He had a pistol, but until he had time to carve runes into some bullets for it, it was good for exactly one shot against a wizard or witch, and he knew he wasn't quick enough or accurate enough or straight-up cold-blooded enough to draw, shoot and kill with the one shot he'd get. He carefully set the thought aside. So far, beside the alarming ability she'd shown to see through his disguise, she seemed friendly enough and Jane vouched for her. The problem was she was being too friendly without any thought for security.

She kept talking despite his silence. "As for me knowing it's you, dear, well, I'm prouder than I used to be that I raised a pack of mischievous hellions. It's not the first time I've seen ageing potion used, you see? Very common article among magical children bent on getting into things they shouldn't. And while those eyes of yours have aged, I saw them across the breakfast table for weeks at a time. I'd know them anywhere, I always remember thinking you'd grow up to be quite the heartbreaker, bless you. My daughter's head wasn't the only one you turned, oh no. Do you know I was the only adult you'd look in the eye without hiding behind your fringe? I was always better with other peoples' children than my own."

She said the last bit wistfully. It wasn't just listening to Albus Dumbledore she regretted, Harry deduced. If she'd lost four of seven kids there was probably plenty there to regret. Having one of her kids turn traitor and the other turn himself in for an amnesty offered by obvious villains - although without walking a mile in the lad's shoes Harry wasn't going to call him an idiot quite yet - almost certainly came with a healthy ration of guilt all by itself.

"What that told me about your home life, well, I told myself it couldn't be that bad, not if Albus had been in charge of placing you there. He surely would have seen to it you were decently looked after. Some children are just naturally shy, after all. That's what I told myself. Molly, I said, it's not your place to get involved. Well, now we know where that sort of thinking leads, and here I sit hoping for more reprisal raids to snap more people out of the self-same thing I was guilty of myself."

"Molly," Harry said, gently, unsure where the words were coming from, "I want you to think about who might be listening in. That kid you knew back in the day, well, wherever he is now - that kid ought to be the last person you should be talking about out loud where anyone can hear."

As if on cue, there were footsteps in the hallway, and the kitchen door opened. "See?" Harry said, gesturing over his shoulder, "whoever that is almost certainly doesn't need to know, and in a world with legilimencers, keeping information out of heads that don't need it is important."

"The Corporal is correct, Molly," came Jane's voice from behind Harry, "and in addition the possibility of magical eavesdropping must be borne in mind. I heard everything you said via the listening charm on the top button of the Corporal's shirt. I will now perform charms to find -"

Molly slapped her palm on the kitchen table. Not forcefully, but hard enough to interrupt. And, apparently, to close the door behind Jane firmly but without, to Harry's ear, slamming it. Into the silence, she said, "I'll thank you to remember, Jane, that I am a kitchen witch, in her kitchen. One of seven kitchens, no less, and I'm sure you're the last person I need to teach basic arithmancy to."

"What is a kitchen witch, please? I am unfamiliar with the term." Jane asked, causing Harry's eyebrows to lift in surprise. He'd sort of got the impression that Jane knew at least the basics of everything magical, enough to at least know where to look something up.

Molly chuckled. "You're politer about that than you used to be, I have to say. Poor Luna used to get so frustrated with your overconfidence in your scholarship. You're familiar with Domains and Places of Power, yes?" Harry could hear the capital letters.

"Yes -" Harry didn't turn to look at Jane, but he could tell that she had interrupted herself. He'd not objected in the slightest to her habit of rattling off definitions and useful information whenever they came up. He needed to learn, and fast, so it was helpful, but he suspected it was a bit annoying to everyone else and she knew it.

"Well," Molly went on, "the right sort of kitchen, the sort that's the beating heart of a home, can be a Place of Power for the witch whose Domain it is. Or wizard, I suppose, if he could get over himself enough to get himself well hefted in such a kitchen. He'd have to be a muggle-born, I suppose, Sandra at the dairy told me all about that there feminism all the young muggle ladies are after these days. It's certainly politer and more constructive than the hexes, hatpins and howlers approach I grew up with. That aside, I've my own home and the five safe-houses I do for, and it turns out the dairy counts as a kitchen once it became everything that the farm revolved around, and they all treat me like I'm in charge of it. Seven kitchens, Jane. Seven, no less. Gives me power when I'm out of doors, for all it's less than I have here at my table."

"Nevertheless, we might be overheard -"

Another slap on the table. "We are in my domain and place of power, young lady, and only one-seventh part of it, at that. Nothing happens here save by my let and leave. Your listening charm worked because I permitted it, not otherwise. And I can see you thinking there has to be a way around it, and I'll tell you, not one that's been discovered in a thousand years and more. A wizard in his tower and a witch in her kitchen, as my granny would say it, may she rest. For some reason the muggles in this country forgot the tradition of keeping a poppet of their local witch in the kitchen to boost her power to help them, but they still do it in Germany and Scandinavia."

Harry had swivelled his chair so he could see both women, and Jane was the nearest he'd yet seen her to displaying open emotion. She was somewhere between confused and frustrated. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio," he quoted at her.

"Hah!" Molly exclaimed, and then laughed aloud. Once she'd subsided, "Yes, Shakespeare. Warwickshire lad, you know. Knew how to spin pretty words, that boy did. I'm kin to the Hathaways he married into, on my mother's side, they're one of those families with a foot in both worlds, always have been. But I'm getting off the point here, which is that he -" she pointed at Harry, "used to be Harry Potter and I was wondering how much of it he remembers. And why, having found the poor boy, you didn't tell anyone, not least me. You know Albus told me to help you all I can."

Jane pulled out a chair and took a seat. "I have modified Dumbledore's plan for this eventuality."

"You have? Good. I dare say whatever he came up with was too clever by half and ignored most of the problem anyway. And he had an awful habit of assuming that what was taught at Hogwarts was the beginning and end of magic, too, which as Harry here rightly observes ain't necessarily so. So, what help can I be? And while you're thinking on that, remember that you've just learned I'm a lot stronger than you assumed. Seven kitchens, remember. Harry, dear, more tea?"

"Please, Molly," he said, passing over his mug, "and if there's some pickles to go with that cheese?"

Molly visibly brightened at the prospect of feeding him. "Mostly shop-bought stuff, I'm sorry to say, but it ain't bad for all that. Piccalilli or Branston? Or if you prefer something that isn't a tracklement I've got some spiced brown pickled onions that Mrs. Sheasby who I know from the Women's Institute does. What she does with the spices isn't much short of magical, she's one that didn't miss her Hogwarts letter by all that much, I reckon."

Harry loved pickled onions so opted for those. Somehow - clearly kitchen witch magic at work - cheese and biscuits with his tea rapidly came to include a bowl of deliciously herby leek-and-potato soup from what turned out to be the only cauldron on the range that wasn't brewing potions, bread fresh out of the oven under the range, butter that had definitely never seen the inside of a supermarket, and the promise of scones with home-made summer fruit jam and clotted cream to follow. And an apology that she only had shop-bought crackers by way of biscuits for the cheese.

Jane had acquiesced in refuelling herself, and while they ate Molly commandeered the Elves of the Regiment to put a bowl of soup and a quarter of a cottage loaf in the hands of everyone the Healers didn't have on nil-by-mouth, with scones, butter and jam for anyone that asked. Harry noticed that both elves treated Molly like she was the last link in the chain of command before the Queen Herself, with inch-perfect drill and salutes sharp enough to cut yourself on. They were beings of magic, he supposed, recognising the power she wielded. And that recognition made him feel, suddenly, a lot better about having met Molly Weasley.

Once they had eaten - and the elves had reported back that they had the ground floor clean and the deceased laid out respectfully in the cellar, a detail that caused Molly to mutter about having a word with the healers and the Order members who were supposed to be acting as orderlies - Jane was the first to speak. "Mrs. Weasley, how much do you know of the plan Dumbledore entrusted me with?"

"More than he thought he told me, I'm pretty sure."

"Not sure it's important immediately," Harry said, interrupting her because he'd had chance to think while getting his soup down him, mostly about possible plans to put forward that absolutely did not mention time travel "There are some immediate actions-on for the casualty rush you've just had, probably some bollockings to deliver, and since you've got me here as a trained logistics specialist I might be able to help with the organisation of these houses for the bits outside your kitchens. Fresh pair of eyes, if nothing else. More important, though, is getting people out of the way of reprisal raids. Jane tells me that the muggle borns get lifted out of the country as soon as they're detected so they can go be refugees, yes?"

"They do, yes. It's the main use for these safe houses, giving the poor dears somewhere they can't be detected while their parents are shutting their lives down to emigrate."

Harry nodded along, wizards might be able to organise a trip abroad with a few galleons for a portkey, but the muggle side of things took a lot more work. Even just going abroad for a year or two of expat work was a big deal, and emigration was a whole lot more than that. And while there was probably some paperwork - parchmentwork? - for magical emigration, it almost certainly wasn't up to modern computerised standards of bureaucracy, which begged Harry's next question, "Why aren't more magical families emigrating?"

Molly nodded her acknowledgement of it being a good question, "There would be, and in the first few weeks there were, but Those People realised there wasn't much point taking over the government if they didn't have anyone to lord over and closed down all the avenues of foreign travel to anyone that wasn't what they saw as the right sort, and even they could only go if they were leaving family behind. Portkeys, carriages, broom flight across borders, all closed down except to them as has more courage than sense. There's an emigration scheme, but you've to leave everything behind. And I mean everything, the few that tried it turned up in the countries they were moving to with no memory of ever having had children, to go along with losing everything but the clothes on their backs and their wands. And if they weren't five-generation purebloods, they lost the wands too. We still don't know what happened to the children. And ain't told them that lost them that they're gone, either, it'd be too cruel."

Harry was getting that feeling he always got when things were too much to deal with. Floaty in the head, calm, out of himself. Almost as good as the meditative state for calm, and it let him think quickly and clearly. "Do they watch the non-magical ports? Airports? The channel tunnel?"

"They probably don't, no. Most of 'em won't have any idea there even is a tunnel under the channel, nor that those little specks in the sky can fly you halfway around the world and serve you dinner on the way. They might watch the ports, but it'll be a half-hearted thing, they haven't a bull's notion just how many muggles there actually are, I certainly didn't until I crossed over. And I see what you're driving at, but a lot of these people, they wouldn't know where to begin if you told them to book a muggle railway or ferry ticket, and they haven't a hope with air travel at all. Add on that a lot of them are still scared of muggles - the witch hunts are the first thing they teach in magical history, and I was right surprised to learn how differently they're remembered by muggle historians - and getting them to shift is quite the proposition. That's assuming they don't think it ain't going to get worse and will probably all blow over soon."

Harry had been thinking while Molly had been talking: he'd seen the same thing on the muggle side. "Sounds about right, refugees leave at one of two times, late and too late. The reasons are probably similar on the muggle side, too. I think the trick's going to be just organising it all for them so they don't get daunted by the size of the job. I mean, I've been to a dozen countries on three different continents, and never once bought my own ticket. All I had to do was turn up when and where I was told and get on whatever plane they pointed me at. Jane and I have some time to kill between now and a particular date we can't miss, and we're going to fill it with operations to throw as much bollocks at the enemy as we can come up with so they can't stop what we're planning. Or have a harder time of it than they might have otherwise, at least. If they're losing essential workers left, right, and centre that's only going to help, right? On top of it being the right thing to do, of course. We're probably going to provoke a lot more reprisals before we're done, so getting the civilians out of the way first is only fair."

Jane, whether or not she had cottoned to what Harry was actually trying to do, said, "Harry is correct. The enemy recruits from the uppermost and lowest echelons of magical society. Removal of the technically skilled workforce between those two socio-economic strata will hamper their ability to operate significant governmental functions, and it is those elements of society that are best placed to afford to relocate."

"Good," Harry said, "so as I see it we've got two problems. First is evading the restriction on magical travel which we can do by hiding them among muggle travellers. They'll need to be properly briefed so they blend in, and reassured that nobody's going to dunk them in a pond or burn them at the stake or something. The worst cases are going to need to be accompanied by someone who can keep them from making complete tits of themselves and drawing attention. The second problem is the whole leave-everything-behind thing, nobody's going to go if they arrive with just the clothes on their backs. Jane, how easy is it to make those space-expanded things so there's no magic detected from the outside?"

"The charms against scrying are technically challenging, but for the minority of mages capable of meeting that challenge, not time-consuming or exhausting."

"So you can furnish each family with a shipping container's worth of luggage that'll go in an ordinary suitcase? Maybe something on it that'll make a muggle customs bloke ignore it?"

"Again, technically challenging but not difficult for those equal to the task."

Molly was frowning in thought. "How do we get all these one-way tickets past the muggle authorities? Everything I see on the news since that business in New York with the aeroplanes says that they're watching for suspicious travellers. With the best will in the world, even the half-blood families have pure-blood members who are going to stand out."

Harry shrugged. "They won't act the same kind of strange as someone who's planning to blow up an aircraft, and security's lower on ships and trains anyway. As for suspicious patterns of travel, we can buy return tickets to tourist destinations, maybe even buy package tours on last-minute deals. Set up a couple of dummy corporations and send anyone who fits that profile as business travellers."

"You know how to do that?" Molly was looking at him with open bafflement.

Harry grinned back, "For the three years after they wiped my memory, my foster-dad was a company-commercial lawyer. He kept trying to nudge me toward his line of work, even though I kept telling him that sitting behind a desk sounded like hell to me. I still picked up a thing or two, and if you want a shell company there are firms that'll set one up for you. All you need is a credit card and a telephone for just one, and if you want a lot of them they'll run you a tab with thirty-day terms. I'm probably missing some of the subtleties, but to hear Richard talk so were most of his clients. It'll let us launder wizard gold into the muggle system without involving the goblins, too." From Jane's description of Gringotts, the goblins wouldn't give a shit about evasion of currency-exchange laws, but also didn't give a shit about banking confidentiality.

"The wizard gold is not worth very much," Jane put in, "A galleon is pure gold but under the enchantments the actual coin is very small indeed. The goblins made sure that each galleon was five pounds' worth of gold exactly as mandated by treaty."

Harry waved off the concern. "So use it to buy commodities from wizards in bulk to sell to muggles and convert it that way. Anything that you can do that with is goods taken out of the magical economy and money dumped back in. I doubt we'll be doing it long enough to really make a harmful difference to the magical economy, but every little helps as the advert says." He didn't know much economics, but he knew that matching the money supply to the goods in circulation was important.

"Assuming all of these things can be made to work, how are we going to find people who want to move?" Molly asked.

"You've got a house full right now. And four other houses that you know of. And everyone they can persuade to leave before they go themselves. Get this Order that Jane mentioned to pass the word, tell them to prioritise skilled wizards and witches and their families. Ministry workers who've realised they can't work within the system and want a way out. People who supply goods and services to the Ministry and got caught in reprisal raids. Or are worried they'll get caught in the next reprisal raid. Jane can make the luggage they'll need, and teach the method to everyone who's up to it, and ask them to send back the luggage for the next wave. We're going to have to move fast, because in the enemy's shoes if I noticed it happening I'd start taking hostages."

"It'd be Claig Castle all over again," Molly agreed, nodding, "I was one of the first in there, the camp where they were holding the muggleborns and their families. Jane was part of the support group for that raid, the last big one we did."

"There were atrocities," Jane agreed.

"And you only saw it after we'd cleaned up the worst," Molly said, a bitter note in her voice, "That was the day my third child died in my heart. He'd already thrown us over for a Ministry career, and when his father told him what was coming he said he'd try and work within the system. Ha! There's no working within that system, this country won't be clean again until the whole lot's torn down and burnt. And to think I encouraged the little shit when he said he wanted to work at the Ministry."

Harry didn't think he could say anything that wouldn't make Molly's obvious hurt worse. Jane was also silent. Harry noticed that Molly had said nothing about her son having betrayed his father: it wouldn't have surprised him to learn that it'd been kept from her to spare her the heartbreak.

"There's one other thing," Molly went on, "I hear from my eldest - his mother-in-law is something important in the French ministry - that a lot of continental countries are watching British magical expats carefully. They think british purebloods are going to start spreading neogrindelwaldism, so anyone we send is going to be watched."

Jane had the answer to that, "Brief the transportees. Explain to them that being under auror surveillance is preferable to being dead, and that they should be as cooperative as possible. Your Charles faces the same problem in Romania. He told me that he got on friendly terms with his assigned magical law enforcement agent to the point of having regular drinks with the man. It allowed him to be instrumental in the apprehension of a Death Eater spy at the Dragon Reserve."

"That'd work," Harry agreed, "not that everyone's going to get that lucky with their local Special Branch man, but making the effort will go a long way in letting them settle and make new lives. Plus we should spread them out as much as possible, the last thing they want to do is form expat ghettoes. They need to blend in, treat it as a new start." Until the winter solstice, Harry thought, although it's probably best not to assume we're going to succeed. This is a way for the plan to fail safe.

Molly considered that for a moment and then nodded. "I'll try and arrange a meeting here for, say, a week's time to sort out the details. Maybe sooner. More than a few of the order are muggle-raised halfbloods, able to pass. If you can brief them on the clever stuff with the companies and the travel booking, that ought to spread the load. And you'll need the spare time, because that as you did up Northumberland way? You should be doing more of that. Make them shit themselves every time they answer the Taboo. And don't look at me like that, it leaked from the Obliviators, it was muggles that found them and called the police. Something about muggle explosions? And here you are in your Army uniform."

Harry chuckled. "It's a fair cop. Not sure whether that's going to work a second time, but I've been thinking about that rule you people have about apparating to just outside the front door. Right where they're not going to notice a tripwire. Or have their shields up when some smartarse sprays them with fully-automatic fire from three hundred metres away. Or any one of a dozen other things, like the ways I've got to get incendiaries inside their homes, chemical weapons made from household chemicals, and actual experience of fighting their side of an insurgency so I can put us all ahead of where they'll be when they finally shape up to the point of knowing their arses from the elbows. And all this is assuming that the plan we've got for cutting runes into my bullets to go through shield charms doesn't work out."

Molly's grin looked as heathenish as Harry's felt. "I'm glad you've grown up a bit from the sweet, polite, shy little boy you were when I first met you. Runes, you say? So not all your magic is gone?"

"Not all, no," Harry confirmed, "I've got a rifle and a few hundred rounds, all with rune charms for total silence. It's eerie to shoot it. But, yes, all my own work. Jane says I shouldn't use it more than I absolutely must, or they'll start with counter-measures that are harder to beat."

"I dare say they will. Although from the sounds you've got plenty of other ideas. I reckon I can throw a few notions of my own into the pot, I used to get good marks in poisons from old Sluggy, may he rest in peace. Which reminds me," she said, turning to Jane, "I got a lead on where Snape's hiding."

"Good. What have you learned, and how reliable is the information?"

"Very reliable, one of the families in here got fingered for being resistance - they weren't, but probably will be now - and their eldest worked under a Death Eater at the Ministry. Who they overheard saying Snape had a bolthole in the, and they quoted the exact words, 'muggle shithole rookery he grew up in.' Which is why I want to know how much Corporal Henry here remembers of being Harry Potter, because the other thing I know about the Severus fucking Snape as got my boys thrown in Azkaban is that he knew Harry's mother before Hogwarts, which ought to tell us which town that particular shithole rookery is in."

"Cokeworth. In Staffordshire," Harry said. "I remember Aunt Petunia, all right, and how she liked to crack on she was posh. I laughed like a fucking drain the day I found out she was from some northern mill-town."

"How hard is it to hire a private detective?" Molly asked.

"Not hard," Harry said, "but they might do something daft like knock on his door to confirm he's there, or give themselves away some other way. Thing is, while he might be looking after his personal security now, he probably hasn't always. So we get in the reference section of the local library and go through old electoral registers for every house that was occupied by a family named Snape up until he turned eighteen, late seventies some time if he's of an age with my mum. Cokeworth's not a big place, we could probably do a drive-by recce of every address on the register in under an hour. There won't be many, Snape's not a common name. After that it's just surveillance, and I've got elves on the strength. They can get in and out with no bugger the wiser and tell us exactly where he lives. Get us in, too, even if he's got it magically protected." Harry had heard some nightmarish tales about how easy it was to find people from the tiniest scraps of information. Most of the soldiers who'd sat through the same briefings and lectures on personal security assumed they were horror stories to scare them straight, but when Harry had mentioned it to Richard he'd confirmed that yes, private detectives could find out a great deal starting from very little, he'd seen them do it.

Molly looked over at Jane for confirmation. After a moment of consideration, she said, "I would defer to Harry. He has lived longer in the muggle world than either of us, with a fully-established identity and greater breadth of experience than many if not most. Snape is a high-value target and a greater threat than most Death Eaters to the plan we have been discussing. While his muggle knowledge is less current than even my own, he has less imperative to remain stealthy in the muggle world and can therefore use legilimency and mind-altering magic freely in support of his goals."

"The current plan isn't the only one he's a threat to, now, is it?" Molly said, a crafty grin spreading across her face, "there's also the plan you've been trying to distract me from asking about. I'm pretty sure Albus's plan didn't include evacuating civilians at all, he was never the sort to give a monkey's about the little people. Excepting maybe in the abstract, or when he got his nose rubbed in it like we kept trying to do after Claig Castle. I distinctly recall you giving him what-for over that, back before that bitch took all the spitfire out of you. No, I reckon Albus has got some wing-and-a-prayer scheme for time travel that he's set you on. You think it might work?"

Harry couldn't help but chuckle. Yeah, Molly Fucking Weasley was dangerous. "No comment," he said before Jane could say anything, "but for my own personal entertainment, what clues did you put together to get that conclusion?"

Molly shrugged. "It was at poor Sirius Black's wake that poor Remus organised, may both those poor boys rest in peace. Albus reminisced about you two using a time turner to rescue Sirius when you were nothing but children, like he didn't have the political clout back then to shove the whole thing before the Wizengamot for the full-dress trial that he should've seen to in the first place, if he hadn't been too busy swearing up one side and down the other that Snape was on the side of the angels - but I'm rambling. Hunting and cheese-making don't keep me nearly busy enough not to sit around getting mardy about the mistakes everyone made, my own not the least of them, but sometimes when I think about how Albus sat around doing bugger all when he could have made it quite clear he'd act if a line was crossed? It makes me think I should take up necromancy just so's I could call up his shade and give him a piece of my mind."

"I'm told he kept me out of Azkaban," Harry offered, "so there's that."

"And well done it was too. Trouble is, it was the only time he kept anyone out of prison. Sirius Black, Hagrid, Sturgis Podmore, my boys Fred and George, there are others that I don't think you ever met. Carted off to the Dementors and not so much as a peep out of the great Dumbledore. Alastor Moody had the right idea, fought until he dropped and carried a potion-bomb to take the last few with him. Would've been Augusta Longbottom too, but they didn't send nearly as many after her and she fought her way clear and went on the run. Foolish of them, after the trouble they had with Moody, to think his ex-girlfriend would be any easier a bargain. No notion where her and her Neville, who was in Gryffindor with you two, ended up. Gone muggle or left the country, and I couldn't begin to guess which for all I wish them the best. Jane here, if she hadn't emigrated just weeks before it all went sour, I dare say she'd have seen the inside of Azkaban. Albus was powerful enough he could set the whole Ministry at defiance if he'd just roused himself. Sometimes I'm apt to think that that Skeeter bitch was telling the truth in that book she wrote about him, and it was all the lies and guilt had built up in him to the point he couldn't do anything."

Harry had no idea what book Molly was talking about, but made a note to ask Jane if she had a copy. If they made it back into the past, Dumbledore was going to be important.

Jane said, "I was able to verify, from independent sources, that much of what Skeeter wrote as at least circumstantially true. Aberforth Dumbledore confirmed some of the more damning passages regarding his brother's association with Gellert Grindelwald. I speculate that the disastrous outcome of that first venture into radical politics and revolutionary planning left Albus Dumbledore fearful that all insurgencies would inevitably descend into atrocity."

"You don't agree?" Molly asked over the rim of her tea-mug.

"I do not. There are numerous historical counter-examples which Dumbledore ignored. I do not know whether that was because he dismissed muggle history as irrelevant or because he preferred to take counsel of his fears. Whatever his reasoning, it seems likely that Gellert Grindelwald had what would nowadays be called antisocial personality disorder. If so, it would be a much more strongly causative factor in his subsequent criminal behaviour and extremist politics, quite apart from the pre-existing political and material factors that led to his message being accepted by large enough numbers to bring about open magical warfare."

Molly put down her mug. "You're saying Grindelwald was a wrong 'un from the start, and magical Europe was ready for a scrap no matter who turned up to lead it? Shan't disagree. We got off the point again. Albus told the story about you two and the time turner, which put it in my head. He must've forgotten he'd mentioned it when he told me about you being 'uniquely qualified' for the mission he'd given you. Being too clever by half as usual, thinking we'd all assume it was because you've got ice-water in your veins these days. Except that ain't unique to you, now, is it? Between them that want revenge like the Tonks ladies, and those as are naturally cool under fire like young Mr. Wood, we've got plenty who'll see a thing done and not count the cost nor flinch from doing the needful no matter how distasteful. The only thing that's really unique to you is you having experience with time magic. So I suspected, and then I mentioned about having time over again and bless you Harry, you flinched. Tell me, is the date you're waiting for one of the solstices?"

Jane got the blank look on her face that Harry recognised as her trying to tally up the logical pros and cons, and rather than pass up a potential resource like Molly, said, "It is, as it happens. How much did Dumbledore tell you about the spell?"

Molly waved off the question, "Not a thing, dear. Doing a working like that, the winter solstice is about the only time you can. The bottom of the wheel of the year, a new beginning, looking forward and back all at once, it's all first-principles stuff. I may have grown up to be a housewife and a kitchen witch, but that didn't make me forget all my scholarship. Nor rule out keeping my theory up to scratch to fill the long winter evenings. I doubt I could craft the magic you'll be using, but I reckon I could follow along if you didn't mind me moving my lips while I read." She grinned at him and took a bite of her scone.

Harry chuckled at the self-deprecating humour. "Jane, just how many can we fit in the circle? You were getting on with including the elves."

"Molly joining us will make it simpler."

"Five for a new beginning?" Molly suggested.

"Just so. Better than seven for raw power, although I would want to confirm that with finite arithmancy before ruling out recruiting two more travellers."

"That'd be difficult, with everyone being frightened of time travel," Harry said, wondering if that fear was as widespread as Jane had suggested. Molly hadn't batted an eye, after all.

"It will at that," Molly agreed, "the laws against it were passed for horrifyingly good reason back when I was a girl. For now let's just say I had my doubts until I got the measure of you, young man, and deduced that you'd be going back. Albus was right about you being central to everything, people cared about you and the heart went out of a lot of folk when you vanished. You can explain the plan for how we're going to get away with it later, of course."

"I'm assured we'll be undetectable," Harry said, "we're not going by the well-known method. Moving our minds back into our younger selves, apparently."

She took a moment over that, tapping a finger on her chin. When she'd thought it through, she said, "Well, then, all the better that I'm a part of it. If you're going back far enough to make a difference, you'll both be children, or look it at any rate. Best to have someone along who'll still look like an adult."

"Hah, yes," Harry agreed, "I'd been wracking my brains over ways around that particular problem. Jane's a bit stymied with predicting how the adults will react, what with the lack of empathy." Harry was also privately worried about her psychological state once she was back in time. Nothing specific, but living a couple of years without emotions, fighting a nasty guerilla war and then time-travelling to suddenly get all those feelings back? Harry couldn't see that it'd do her any good at all. He was fairly sure he'd be due some time with his underpants on his head and a pencil in each nostril without having endured the same level of shit Jane had.

"I was counting on your considerable improvisational skills, Harry," Jane said, "which may sound like sarcastic humour but is in fact quite serious. You have survived several situations that ought to have killed you by quick thinking and decisive action under pressure."

Molly waved her wand to send the plates and mugs off to the sink to wash themselves and stood up. "Well, with all that settled at least as far as knowing we have to make plans, shall we get back to caring for the wounded, looking to my supplies for these houses, and planning the murder of Severus Snape?"

Spinner's End, Cokeworth, Staffordshire, 18 July 2004

Severus Snape, current head of the Department of Magical Education - a job he had on the strength of being the only Death Eater with actual teaching experience - was in the habit of not opening his eyes when he awoke. Growing up as he had, habits of caution like that went back further than he could clearly remember.

What he did not expect was for the choice to be taken away from him as an awakening charm surged along his nerves and wrenched him from hard-won, dreamless sleep to wide-eyed, panting alertness.

There was something over his eyes, though. Cloth of some sort. He tried to raise his arms to rip it away, and discovered he was bound. The familiar shape of his mattress beneath him, but some sort of hard shell that pinned him in place. Held him, in fact, exactly in the position he'd been sleeping in.

A voice, that disagreeable Granger bint, the one so many of his compatriots were terrified of to the point of there being a ten thousand galleon bounty on her head, was the first thing he heard. "He has countermeasures against both Veritaserum and Unctuous Unction. The shriving rite to purge him of those will require a full lunar month."

"We can't keep him that long, dear," that was Molly Weasley. The one the DMLE called Bloody Molly. She was thought to have fled wizarding Britain entirely, nothing had been heard from her for months. That she was back was concerning, not that Snape thought he'd have a chance to report. Hearing her voice told him that the most he could hope for at this point was facing his death with dignity unless - yes. If they let him talk, he might be able to make a deal. The papers in his safe might well buy his life, convince them he'd turned his coat a third time. Or, rather, if he played his cards right, hadn't turned it a second time when Dumbledore had pinned his hopes on a fool's dream of a prophesied saviour. He had no other hope of survival: he'd taken care to ensure nobody knew the exact address of this particular bolthole.

"Sure about that?" A voice Snape didn't know. Male, adult, home counties accent, lower-class. "Keep him sedated, or similar?"

"That would be incompatible with the shriving. The subject must be awake to endure the fasting." Granger was correct. Insufferable though she was, what she knew she knew well and applied properly. It was a loss to magic that she'd been born a mudblood and thereby unacceptable to magical society as it was rather than as Snape wished it might be. Forlornly, because the resistance to the Dark Lord was doomed.

"Lieutenant SAH!" the voice of a house elf. "All of the enemy's papers and parchments, sah!" Snape hoped against hope that they hadn't got into his safe. He'd charmed it heavily against wizards getting in, but he had no idea what elves were capable of. The oddly-forceful elf voice went on, "These ones in particular seem important, Lieutenant sah! Private Oshin found an iron box with bad magic. Fortunately the Private was able to rip the door off." Snape's heart clenched tight in fear. The one bargaining chip he had, spent before he even awoke.

"Ah, so that was what that noise was." Definite amusement in the male voice. Male voice with a muggle military rank. In command of at least one soldier who knew how to force a safe door. Had the Order of the Phoenix broken the Statute? Even the Dark Lord thought it far too early to start in on the muggles: until the magical world was united under him, he said, the Statute was to be respected. If the Order had convinced the muggles to send in their troops, that would bring in the ICW, and everything was going to go to shit.

"Do not touch!" Granger again, sounding like she was snapping out a warning, "Snape was noted for his skill with poisons. There are several contact poisons that he could have applied."

Snape reflected, ruefully, that Granger was ahead of him on that score. He really should have considered that. He prided himself on being more open to rational thought than most wizards. As a salve to his pride, he reflected that Granger, these days, had nothing but. Lestrange had done worse than she knew when she branched out into emotional torture and unwittingly used it to remove all of Granger's self-imposed limits.

He was surprised to suddenly get his vision back, and noted that Granger had used a rune-cloth over his face. An older method of diagnosing poisonings, but one that with the appropriate charms in support could also reveal beneficial potions in the subject's system. Who would have thought, he reflected ruefully, that when he had damned her for a know-it-all in her third year she would take it as a challenge?

Her method of immobilising him, he could see, was actually innovative. She'd transfigured his bedlinens and blankets into some sort of hard muggle plastic and shaped them to fit him perfectly. Down to and including individual fingers, which even ruled out his limited repertoire of gesture-based wandless magic. Wandless transfiguration-by-touch was a knack he'd never mastered, for all he'd marvelled at Lily's instinctive ability with it as a child. The only magics he could do by silent will alone were legilimency and some trifling party-trick spells. Molly Weasley had her wand trained between his eyes: if he spoke any incantation he was a dead man.

It was when Granger moved aside to let him see the third of his captors - how the bloody hell had they got in? - that he got his deepest shock of the morning. "Potter!" he exclaimed.

"Someone else who recognises me that I can't remember," Potter said, a sour tone in his voice. "For some reason, though, the sound of your voice is ringing a bell. A rather nasty one."

"You lost the memory of my work as a spy for Dumbledore," Snape said, forcing himself to adopt a reasonable, conciliatory tone, "if he ever told you in the first place. I played the role of villain well enough that you doubtless have subconscious bad memories of me."

Potter shrugged. "Really don't need 'em. You're enemy personnel, and everyone seems to agree that we can't take you prisoner. War criminal, too, since you carried on warlike operations during a time of armistice, what with your efforts to get our side thrown in Azkaban. Maybe you were Dumbledore's spy, maybe you weren't, but he's dead and can't vouch for you. Far as we know, you never turned your coat at all. You should probably keep mum about it if you did, because otherwise it looks like you've turned your coat twice. Not a good look, that."

Granger looked up from where she was speed-reading his paperwork. "This is a file of evidence that would tend to incriminate one of my best sources within the Ministry. Snape's death would hamper that investigation and preserve my source's value. As well as permitting him to continue his acts of sabotage."

"I found him, yes," Snape agreed, knowing immediately who he'd been talking about. He had a case that was almost good enough to have the boy brought in for interrogation, and had been waiting for more evidence and the most politically opportune moment, "but I haven't told anyone. But if I've found him, someone else will also. I can help extract him -"

"He would refuse," Granger said, "he gave specific advance directives that he was not to be rescued if it appeared he was about to be compromised or captured. He intends to expend his life to do as much damage to the enemy as possible."

A chill ran through Snape. Before it had all fallen apart, before Potter had been neutralised and Dumbledore had forsaken all reason, Snape had thought the cause to be one worth his life, at need. It had taken time for him to wake up from that foolishness, but wake up he had. First by playing double agent in the opposite direction - without telling anyone, it being death to admit anything - and finally by taking Dumbledore off the board. The Dark Lord had hoped to demoralise the Order of the Phoenix. It had worked for most of them - some even took the offered amnesty like utter fools - but for the hard core all it had done was unleash them: Dumbledore turned out to have been the main civilising influence. It was just Snape's bad luck that Percy Fucking Weasley would turn out to be part of that hard core. Still, he had to at least try. "He could be persuaded - Molly! Granger's source is your son, Percy. Do you not want to grant him a chance of survival?"

Molly Weasely's tone was wintry. "I have no son by that name. Not since Claig Castle, and his part in what we found there. Miss Granger's spy can take his chances the same as the rest of us. If you've really told no-one, I don't doubt someone can warn him, for whatever good it'll do."

"Snape is uncommonly rational by wizard standards. I judge it unlikely that there are senior enemy personnel capable of getting as far as he has in detecting Percival's espionage. It is wholly improbable if not impossible that the enemy have anyone who can get beyond the suggestive, circumstantial case that Snape has built." Snape's heart sank as Granger's dull, emotionless tones pronounced his death sentence.

He sought out Potter's eyes, hoping against hope that he could get into the man's mind via legilimency and do something, anything. He wasn't strong in the art without a wand, his command of the mind arts was heavily skewed to the defensive, but -

Potter's mind was like a cold, foggy morning. Nothing visible, no feeling, no thoughts, no murmuring chatter of internal monologue. His surprise froze him for only the most fleeting moment, but it was enough for his view of Potter's eyes - so like Lily's - to be obstructed by the ugly, black maw of a muggle gun.

"That was rude," Potter said, with no more emotion in his voice than if he'd been remarking on the weather, "does anyone else want to do the honours? Or have a reason for leaving him alive?"

"As an occlumens he may be resistant to obliviation," Granger supplied.

Snape had not, in fact, carried his study of the art that far - false-mind techniques were hard to master and vital to his continued survival, so he had focussed there - but there was no way any of these would believe him. He felt the warmth as his bladder cut loose, adding indignity to helplessness. He began to struggle, hoping against hope that there was some weakness in Granger's work. He almost certainly couldn't fight his way free, but he could at least die fighting.

"We've left enough traces here that only fire'll cover our tracks," Weasley added, sounding indifferent to Snape's increasingly desperate thrashing in his bonds, "You've as much reason as I have to put him down, Harry, but I'll do it if need be. Or we could just set fire to the place and leave him to burn? He deserves it."

"That's three votes of three, then," Potter said.

The thought of dying bound and helpless in a fire horrified him, and he had no doubt that Molly Weasley would relish it and Granger would only care for the practicalities. That left Potter as the only one who might grant him grace. He needed no great effort to scream his fear at the man. "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR THEN POTTER? DO -"

He didn't hear the single shot to the face that killed him instantly.

Nor Granger's spell of exorcism that laid his ghost.

AUTHOR NOTES

(Note I forgot from the last chapter) West Midlands accent: there are actually several distinct ones, but they form an audibly-related group. Julie Walters and Mark Williams, who played Molly and Arthur, are from that part of the world, and used their native accents in the movies. (Toned down a bit so nobody demanded subtitles, mind.)

Writing Molly Weasley is exhausting. Like many ladies Of A Certain Age, she can talk for England. She's most of the reason that what was chapter 6 in my notes is chapters 6 and 7 as-written.

You really could get discreet RF bugs from Argos, a chain of catalogue stores that operates in the UK and Ireland. Still can: the actual working parts of a basic baby monitor are tiny and easily extracted.

Hexes and Howlers are self-explanatory. Hatpins, however: ladies shanking importunate males with their hatpins was a 'social problem' of the 19th century that should never have gone away. Three inches of steel to the meat of the thigh discourages the blighters from giving the rest of us a bad name.

A kitchen witch in the modern sense is a good-luck effigy of a witch in your kitchen. The tradition survives in parts of Germany and Scandinavia, but died out in England some time after it was last documented in the 16th century.

Since Shakespeare has come up, feel free to take any opinions you may have that he couldn't have written all the stuff credited to him and shove 'em where the sun don't shine.

Cottage loaves are one of those excellent things you can hardly ever find any more - they were all but vanished when I was a lad - because they're hard to make a profit off of. They're also near impossible to slice for sandwich makings. Even your niche little traditional bakeries only do a few each day so you've got to get in early for them.

Astute readers will have noticed my sly little dig at the whole 'memory charm a couple to believe they have no daughter and want to emigrate' thing. If Hermione really did that, her parents would still have been in the UK at the end of Deathly Hallows while the utter bureaucratic bugger-up was being processed. Assuming they didn't end up in secure psychiatric care.

The witch-hunts described by Binns in the books bear no resemblance to the ones that actually happened. In reality, JKR's 'print the legend' approach to history. In the Potterverse it's anti-muggle propaganda to keep the magical populace scared, and like all good propaganda starts from the truth and uses it as a foundation.

The anti-emigration measures have tragic historical precedent (minus the child-theft: the purebloods are a different sort of bigot). Naturally, the motive for Nazi Germany doing it that way - their appalling currency exchange problems - was rather different. That's on top of peoples' natural reluctance to up sticks and emigrate because they didn't think it could get that bad. "The pessimists went to New York and Palestine. The optimists went to Auschwitz."

Claig Castle is a ruin on an uninhabited island between the Hebrides and the coast of Scotland. Only the ground floor of one structure remains: there is some documentary evidence that Clan MacDonald used it to hold prisoners.

"Special Branch" - not the name they go by nowadays, "Counter Terrorism Command" is the current re-brand. Originally founded in Ireland to suppress the independence movement, they're viewed as either heroic fighters in the shadows against the insidious terrorist threat or the UK's Gestapo.

I've placed Cokeworth roughly where Leek is in our world, in the northern tip of Staffordshire. It's only the North by the standards of a home counties boy like Harry. North Midlands would be more accurate.

Electoral registration is compulsory in the UK. Local government send out regular mailings asking for updates to their records, and send people out to canvass at least a couple of wards a year in person. The public record of the register is one tool in the private inquiry agent's arsenal, and some of them really are scary good. Client confidentiality forbids me sharing details, you'll have to take my word for it.

If you get the underpants and pencils reference, you'll have noticed Harry is actually being mildly optimistic about his mental health. If you didn't get it, go watch Blackadder Goes Forth, now. And watch Blackadder, Blackadder II and Blackadder The Third while you're about it. Thank me later.

Fic recommendation: The Lioness by Aya_Diefair, on AO3 and FFN alike. Another author's stab at the character Molly should have been but wasn't.