The plan was more or less underway. Hermione had no idea how to cast a False Memory Charm, as she attested over the floo with a bit of a catch in her throat, so they had to bring in Arthur Weasley. He had been working in the Australian Ministry, and though they had some of the same factions, they basically did not have a Department of Mysteries, which crippled the efforts of those equivalent to his opponents back home. Without the ability to disappear inconvenient people when absolutely necessary, they really just had the rhetoric, and with rhetoric could they be opposed.

"If it's quite all right, I'd like to see my son," the older wizard said as soon as he had arrived. Some of the color had faded from his red hair, and it would probably would go white rather than gray when he reached seventy, though he was not there yet.

"Of course, Mr. Weasley. He's... well, he's probably not visibly different from when you were last here."

"I know. You would have told me if he had been better," he said as he followed her to the hut where they were keeping the young Gryffindor. I would have told Hermione first.

"All we really have at this point is that the nat-kadaw said his soul seemed more active. That might mean he's waking up, but we don't want to get anyone's hopes up."

Least of all my own.

"I thought the rebels weren't working with us."

"Well, officially the rebels have stopped rebelling. They've called for a truce with the royal family, and it's been accepted. Remember how we asked you to make people forget where the heir was being held?" Mr. Weasley nodded. "That was a few days before it was decided. The emperor probably only accepted the terms because he thought with all the rebels who had been involved, one of them would eventually give her up for gold or something."

"My allies in Australia are saying we need a new currency. I've managed to convince them that the story about You-Know-Who nicking the stone was true, and he's been buying up the wizarding world. There are some people who think that he will simply exchange gold for the new currency, but gold will actually lose some of its value as a fiat if there is more than one fiat out there. Bill says the goblins won't be happy about it, but he didn't sound sorry."

Hannah had never thought about gold being a fiat; she had not given much thought to economic issues in general, though Ron had expressed some interest in the subject.

They arrived at the hut where the spiritual coma patient was sleeping, having nothing to say while standing over him. The nat-kadaw had been working for the rebels, and she had been more grateful than most that the war had come to a halt, even if her employers had not been given their pipe dream of total victory. She had expressed some amount of disappointment in being disallowed from giving Hannah the promised reward of teaching her how to interact with her other spirit, but that was a problem she could manage, and she would rather have experienced help with Ron any day of the week.

Mr. Weasley stared at his youngest son for a moment.

"Son, if you keep getting yourself hurt like this with your heroics, I'm going to keep having a hard time trying to determine whether I'm meant to be proud or disappointed. If you can hear me right now, don't tell your mother I said this, but all my life I have valued bravery, as has she, and we have always tried to raise our children with our values."

The Hufflepuff witch felt weird listening, but stayed rooted in place. No one had asked her to leave, so perhaps she was meant to hear it as well. Perhaps I'm just too morbidly curious.

"It is very hard to raise your children to be brave," the middle aged wizard continued. "Ever since Bill was born, I knew I would do anything to keep him safe, but I knew I would be making a hypocrite out of myself by not raising him to understand the value of courage. My son can't be the exception to the rule. I can't tell young people to stand up for what's right, and then make my children don't learn the same lesson." He sighed a little. "At some point we decided it was best to really come down about unnecessary risk, because that would keep you safe while reminding you there was such a thing as risk that was right and necessary. I just wish it worked with Ginny."

Hannah had never heard a parent be as honest, especially not with his own son, about how he had raised him, but she imagined that it was a bit different for their family, and Ron was almost a man in the wizarding world. Parents see their children as fellow adults eventually, I suppose.

"We knew things like Quidditch were fine, but we always had to insist on not taking the family brooms out before your Flying classes in Hogwarts, not that she appreciated it. We had hoped that this would add to the positive aspects of going to school, but, well, the way Charlie sees it, Hogwarts was just the place you nearly died a few times, and nothing about her first year there changed that impression. It's not your fault. Forgive your old father for rambling on."

It sounded like something Dumbledore would say.

"Excuse me, sir, did you mean for me to leave?"

"Not entirely," he answered. "I was just about to tell him that if he ever hurt you, well, I wouldn't know exactly what I would do, but he would certainly regret it."

"I don't think he can hear us, Mr. Weasley," she said. "If he could, well..." She did not know how to finish the sentence.

"Well, if he can't, you'll remember it by the time he wakes up." He looked around. "Mad-Eye told me what I need to be doing here. Do you know where to find this prisoner?"

Without saying anything, Hannah walked out of the room and down the street, if it could be called that, to the hut where they were keeping the prisoners. Though Hermione had offered to ward the place, Moody insisted on a Fidelius Charm. It should work, considering our official secret-keeper is an elf belonging to the Black family.

The middle-aged wizard cast a False Memory Charm with the kind of skill that only came with decades of practice. He had already been informed of the main purpose of the ruse; they were convincing him that he had met with a still-living Thorfinn Rowle who welcomed him to meet with the entire royal family. The limitation with false memories was that they were sort of like dreams, at least in her understanding. The moment the victim thought about them seriously, they fell apart, and Legilimency applied an even greater scrutiny to false memories by necessity. It was for this reason, she assumed, that the Memory Charm, was also used whenever a normal person caught sight of magic.

Most commonly, the False Memory Charm was used for creating 'seed memories', which was to say memories that would lead to the formation of other memories. A man who thought he had a lifelong dream of being a chef would probably check out books on cuisine from the library until he managed to convince himself, though even then there was the risk it would fall apart. A false memory was a memory that was in conflict with reality, and reality would reassert itself in the mind of the victim sooner or later. Perhaps the man would see some old law books lying around and start to think about how he would only need those if he wanted to be a lawyer. Perhaps he would speak to his mother again and she would remind him of a time he made a fool of himself in the kitchen, at which point he decided the dining room was where he belonged. Perhaps he would be fooled for years, and go all the way to culinary school before finding he did not nearly have as much passion for the field as he had been lead to believe.

False memories had a way of standing out in the mind, and that was something of a double-edged sword. The benefit was that it made them harder to forget, which would completely defeat the purpose, but it made the victim substantially more likely to examine them. Over time, the individual would come to realize something he believed was false, especially if he spoke with other people who disagreed, though that was another give and take. One of the best tricks in the business was to convince two people of the same thing, because then they would convince each other.

"Is it working?" she asked. Hannah had no idea how Arthur Weasley wanted to approach the problem; she only knew that he had been asked to create a false scenario. "Do you need Hermione to help?"

"Best I can do is create a few responses to questions that might come up. The more you mean to have in there, the longer it takes."

"Okay, have you thought about what people might ask about the royal family?"

"Yes. He didn't meet them personally, it was the heiress who came out to greet him." They both looked over at the young witch she had kidnapped.

"That's a good idea. We know her name and how she looks, but we don't know how her voice sounds. She never responded to any questions the nat-kadaw asked her."

"This nat-kadaw can't go inside her head?"

"No, she can communicate through spirits, and some of them can even go into the spirit world, but... the short version is, that's not the same as Legilimency. Your appearance in the spirit world, as I understand it, is the appearance you choose, so she could easily adopt a fake voice."

"Perhaps we should have had Hermione interrogate her after all."

"We tried, a while back, but her defenses are... I don't know if they're impenetrable, but we didn't manage it. We think she might have had special training, as the heiress."

"Interesting. Is that how you picked her out?"

"No, that was... sort of an educated guess. We didn't know anything about the emperor's succession going in, so I just grabbed the biggest one and ran with her."

"Good, good... do you think you could give an educated guess as to what the Death Eaters might ask? We don't have a chance if he meets with You-Know-Who directly, but if he speaks to a few of the others, and then has to leave for something else, we can manage it. The office had a talking wireless one time, and it was easy enough to catch the bloke that enchanted it to make it insult people, but it was a bit of a trick tracking down all the muggles who had seen it."

"How many of them were there?"

"About three dozen. Wasn't really realistic, so we decided to start this rumor the whole thing had been fake. We got a few people to believe it had been a prank by one of the 'wireless stations' that they have, and we were lucky it sort of snowballed from there. There was a fascinating muggle who said that it is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."

"Which one were you trying to do?"

"It depends on how you look at it. Was the magical world fooling them, or the bloke we arrested? I'll tell you what's even harder, Hannah, it's convincing people they haven't been fooled; don't even try to do that."

"So it basically depends on how many times someone's been fooled already?" she asked. "That's how you decide on your approach?" She received only a nod. "Well, if you're trying to fool him all over again, you could tell him basically anything you wanted about the royal family, unless of course the other Death Eaters know about how you generally do your job."

"Have you ever considered a career in Ministry, Hannah?"

"No, not really." It was a combination of distrust in the institution and her own ability to live that long. "I mean, if we win and if the whole thing's gutted and replaced, then maybe, but..."

"I believe I understand. There are quite a lot of people who did a lot of good work with the Ministry, and magical government in general is not a bad thing. Outside of unrealistic ideal scenarios, Secrecy is perfectly necessary for the sake of the wizarding world." She suspected that was a common belief among anyone who idolized Dumbledore, which in fairness was what the Order was trying to get people to do.

"Abbott-"

She turned around at the sound of the gruff voice, already knowing it was Moody.

"Yes?"

"Message for you. Didn't say whether or not it was important."

"Well, it can wait until I'm done with this," she decided. It was probably an owl or a firecall.

"Any progress, Weasley?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. Hannah here was just about to tell me the kinds of questions a Death Eater would ask."

"I'll do a better job of that. I was trained to think like a Death Eater. You really should have brought me in for this sort of thing."

"Sorry about that, sir," she said, trying not to be annoyed. He really is right. The most I know about them comes from one of their kids, and it's been over a year since I've seen him.

Excusing herself without another word, she walked to the riverside, where the owls and various other birds perched, waiting for treats. As it had been explained to her, the black-necked cranes were only wary of her because she was not in traditional dress and it had, contrary to her fears, nothing to do with the way she smelled. Holding out a hand to the owl that seemed to have noticed her, he dropped the letter on her and demanded a treat.

"Accio owl treat," she incanted, a rodent flying to her hand. The owl grabbed it out of the air without making a sound or even moving his feet. "It's really creepy how you fuckers can turn your heads almost all the way around, just so you know. I suppose you don't get weirded out by how I'm not wearing a long skirt, though, so at least you're not a bunch of hypocrites," she continued, glaring at the cranes for a moment.

Finished with her criticism of the birds, she read the letter, which was apparently from Hermione.

Dear Hannah,

There is a lot in here which I felt I could not say aloud. Please find some place to sit down before continuing.

The Hufflepuff witch felt like that was unnecessary. She had never fallen over whilst reading before, though she could see it happening if she read something about a knockback jinx as a first-year and subconsciously attempted the charm. Fortunately, that only ever happened with the silencing charm, though that had been a pain to remove.

The short version is, you were right about there being a chance of talking sense into the Death Eaters. Diggle used to work for the Ministry, and he remembers a regulatory practice being put into effect that allowed magical children to be rehomed among the nonmagical, for various reasons. Perhaps you do not need to hear them, but I felt I did. The primary cause is that infertility is effectively not a problem in the wizarding world, meaning that witches and wizards can always produce children of their own if they have the gold for the appropriate potions. Another factor was, historically, Hogwarts. Because the children were away for most of the year, and the war took place for several years, the majority of the people killed were adults, leaving some of the children without parents. Without infertile people and with all the especially open-hearted people already having adopted teenagers, there was effectively no one left to adopt something like a hundred newborns.

Magical orphanages exist, as I understand it, and they are quite capable of caring to the physical needs of children, what with magic making food and water and warmth a non-issue, but young witches and wizards are a bit more complicated. There have been numerous reports that accidental magic is more likely to happen earlier among children raised with less constant emotional need, because, as I have discovered, accidental magic is most likely caused by a sudden emotional need, and if that were a constant, the children would be less likely to produce magic. There was also the chance that many of these newborns were squibs, meaning if they went to an orphanage, they would be without magic and without parents to care for them, and it seemed cruel to have them grow up in a world where everyone else could do magic. A new magical orphanage would also be something of a mark of shame for the Ministry.

As a result, the children were sent to nonmagical homes wherein the parents had stated they would be willing to adopt children. They modified the memories of the parents, as well as the appearance of the infant, using a variant of the polyjuice potion that took samples from two people, as well as the Poultice of Permanence, requiring only small quantities of both, because infants are small and not defined. Prominent magical theorists have stated that for the process to produce a magical child, magic cannot be attached to the physical nature of an individual, because the young witch or wizard has a physical nature made from two muggles.

Fortunately, for my purposes, this means my parents may well be my real parents, and they were not just magically coerced into believing I was their daughter.

Hannah realized she was crying as she read the letter. She knew Abbott was a real family, and so that could not have been a story fed to her mother, but she started to think that her father might not really have been one of them, but rather a different wizard or even a witch polyjuiced to looking like him. Well, how would she know, anyway? How would she know his real name was Abbott and not Macnair, Avery, or Rosier? The witch remembered her mother telling her she would be a Hufflepuff one day, like her father, so whoever he was, at least he had the story straight.

She did her best to put aside her own conflicted paternity to better comfort Hermione in the reply, but if it did not come through at all, she felt it would be dishonest. Writing that it felt like her whole life was a lie until she got her Hogwarts letter, she wondered what would happen to other little witches and wizards out there, now that Crouch was devoting every resource to fighting Death Eaters. That's just at home. Who knows what's going on in the rest of the world?

Feeling like she needed a place to lie down, she was sorry she had not had anything to say to make her friend feel better, but at the very least she was able to sympathize, and there was a good chance her friend wanted sympathy. She did not know whether to tell Mr. Weasley or Moody about the letter; they were adults, but not really the kind she would approach when she wanted to cry or something.

"Fascinatin' birds." She looked around when she heard the voice. "Yeh ever heard of a Fwooper? I was jus' talkin' ter Mundungus yesterday, and he says he hasn' seen any in a bit, but they'll be back. Seasonal birds, them- wai' a minute." He looked at her more closely, seeing her magical foundation had been marred by her tears. It was a wonder that even with magic, no one had figured out that witches would not want it to be obvious to everyone that they had been crying. Well, maybe that can be my career if the world ever stops blowing up. I can make it so that girls can cry prettily. "Yeh look like yeh could use a cuppa tea, Miss Abbott."

"That'll work, actually."