Despite being the most obvious place to look for a horcrux, the glass cabinets in the Black drawing room didn't yield one. It took a few days of sorting through the collection of dark artifacts to make sure, since several of them were almost as nasty as a horcrux.

We had, indeed, called in the Tonks family, who were surprised to be admitted into the house's wards as easily as their own homes. Ted and Andromeda, who were lawyers, were already building their case for Andromeda never having been officially disowned, just blasted off of the wards. Apparently the head of the family at the time had been too weak to stand up to Walburga, but also hadn't done anything legally to support her opinions. Sirius had, after all, remained the heir until his death even though he'd been removed from the tapestry by his mother. Andromeda really didn't want to rejoin the family, but wanted to make sure that her daughter would receive her proper inheritance.

The youngest Tonks, who was starting to allow more people to get away with calling her Dora since Remus had coined the pet name, claimed she didn't want anything from the house of Black. But she was enough of a pragmatist to take it if there weren't any strings attached. After all, all she would do by denying her inheritance was leave more money in the hands of the Malfoys.

And all three of them were a big help when they used their days off to assist us getting through the house. In particular, Andromeda and Dora, as full members of the wards now, were much safer users of the Black library. Fully a quarter of the books had done their best to try to kill me and Moody when we'd initially gone in.

I hadn't shared the existence of Bob with any of the Tonkses, so was only using his help on days they weren't around. I liked Ted and Andromeda well enough, but didn't trust them that completely, and Dora was still an auror so needed all the plausible deniability she could get about things her friends did that might not technically be legal. It was bad enough that so many aurors were secretly Dumbledore's vigilantes without giving them unrelated crimes to lie about.

By the Tuesday after September's full moon, we'd basically cleaned out all the obvious threats, and were onto the harder task of figuring out all the places in the house that dark artifacts could be hidden away. I felt like I'd never scrub the doxycide fumes fully out of my hair, and was pleased to leave the four of them to deal with the place for a day while I taught students… how to basically do what I'd been doing all month.

And that gave me an idea.

I had all my classes meet me on the seventh floor, rather than at the normal defense classroom. "We get to use the Room of Requirement?" one of the second-year Gryffindors in my first period asked, excitedly. I'd had her on at least one of my substitute days the previous year, and had seen her around the common room, but spaced on her name. The hardest thing about teaching was just remembering all the names.

"You do," I agreed, holding open the door for the kids to file into the room across from the tapestry of the dancing trolls (and the portraits and suits of armor Dumbledore had moved in to watch the area, once the Room was discovered). "You've all covered the common dangers of magical residences already, right?"

Inside, I'd done a pretty good job of imagining a house floorplan that wasn't totally similar to the Black residence but had a lot of the same creepy atmosphere. It was my own personal haunted house. I could tell the 12-year-olds were a little frightened just being in there, so I'd done a good job.

I closed the door behind me and regarded the children across the elaborate foyer I'd set up, and explained, "For the first part of class, we're going to walk around and discuss what dangerous creatures might be able to infest various parts of an old magical house like this one. For the second part, we're going to see if you can handle certain pests."

The Room of Requirement couldn't really make anything you could imagine. It had a lot of leeway for architecture, but any kind of prop that could be moved around seemed to be a real object the Room had in storage. We'd experimented, and if you forcibly ripped or blasted something off of a wall, usually it would almost instantly evaporate.

And I definitely couldn't get it to generate animate objects or creatures. At least by using my imagination alone.

The trick my grandmother, Professor McGonagall, had figured out late in the previous year was that the room did seem to make it much easier to use conjurations and transfigurations, particularly if they fit the "theme" of the room and you were the one in charge of it. For a transfiguration mistress like her, she would be terrifyingly effective if she could get someone to fight her in there, with the speed at which she could create mobile constructs. (It was a shame she hadn't known about that feature when she'd dueled a possessed Professor Lockhart there over a year earlier.)

For me, who needed a ritual circle and several minutes for even the most basic transfigurations, the room brought me up to basically average for a wand wizard of my skill. But I was a Hogwarts graduate, so that skill wasn't insignificant.

Which meant, with the Room's help, I was able to create some pretty accurate conjured and transfigured examples of the magical pests I'd been fighting all week. The kids didn't think about the curtains and there were actual squeals of surprise when my doxy swarm emerged to chase them around. They weren't actually venomous, of course, so the biggest danger was kids shoving each other in their haste to run away.

I went a lot easier on the first-years in my next period, save for one jump scare with a conjured boggart for one Dennis Creevey, who seemed thrilled. The kid was probably a ton of fun for the staff in an actual haunted house. "This was so neat!" he thanked me as he left class.

I did not go easy on my sixth-year NEWT class, especially since it included the Weasley twins. I'd enlisted the few members of my seventh-year class that didn't take herbology (which was in the same period) to help me out. We turned the whole place into a running battle against household pests, magical beasts that could conceivably hide in a magical house, and, for the pièce de résistance, a transformed werewolf modeled on Fenrir Greyback that came bowling out of the basement when they all thought they were safe.

Fred and George vowed eventual retribution at being made to shriek in tandem in front of the whole class when it burst out behind them.

While I wasn't surprised that the Gryffindors in the class had done well, I was impressed by Cedric Diggory, who was less reckless but no less confident in his abilities. While the hotshots from my own house were pairing off or chasing monsters single-handedly, he was organizing the rest of the class into an effective defensive line against the stronger threats. Maybe I'd write a nice letter home to give his over-enthusiastic father something to crow about to the other parents.

I hustled that class out rather than letting them dawdle to talk on their way to lunch, then hastily paced three times up and down the hallway, resetting the room just in time for Mathilda to come striding up the hall, grinning to see me. She'd been in the aforementioned herbology class, and was still a little dirty from messing around with potting soil.

Which was why I'd swapped the room over to resemble an extremely classy hotel room with a giant shower, more than large enough for two.

What? I hadn't seen her for nearly a month and had legitimate control of the Room of Requirement all day. We wound up with time to have a couple of quick sandwiches I'd had the elves bring up before she had to rush out to her afternoon potions class and I had to scurry to reset the room before my fourth period showed up.

Somehow, Draco Malfoy got there in time to see Mathilda hustling off and just drawled at me, "Magnets."

Since his presumptive girlfriend, Pansy Parkinson, was right behind him, I held off on the return comment I wanted to make.

After class, he lagged behind, letting his extensive posse of Slytherins wait for him in the hall as he suggested, "I'm guessing from the decor you've been busy at my manor?"

"Moody and Dresden Pest Control Experts, established 1994," I nodded. "The item we're looking for hasn't turned up in the obvious locations, so you're getting a pretty thorough cleaning."

He sized me up and asked, "Just you and Moody?"

I couldn't tell if he was fishing or actually had some way to monitor the wards. While I hadn't wanted to bring it up, I wasn't going to lie about it and lose the kid's trust. "Your other aunt and her family have been helping. The wards were broken in part because they hadn't been properly disowned. Once we fixed the family tapestry, they were allowed back in. They've been a big help."

Draco went stone-faced for a moment, then shrugged, "After the last few years, I can understand how Aunt Andromeda may have been put in an impossible position by the family. While marrying a muggleborn wasn't ideal… I feel like, if I were head of house, I would have handled the situation better. I'll speak to my mother about a reconciliation. Hopefully before she realizes you've made it a fait accompli."

"The Tonkses are good people," I assured him. "And they're talented and loyal. Good people to have in your corner as family."

He considered and then smirked, "I think I can spin it to my father as a net positive that I'm now head of house for a talented set of lawyers and a promising new auror. If I understand it correctly, one that's already used to taking on projects outside of her official chain of command."

I just rolled my eyes and told him, "Yes. You're getting terrifyingly good at politics, Draco. Don't you have another class to get to?"

"No, I have a free period," he drawled, but then allowed, "But I see Lovegood peeking in the door, so I assume you do. See you later, Harry." With that he strolled out of the room like he owned the place.

Luna saw me clenching my jaw as she entered and blithely suggested, "It's a good thing that you're teaching Draco Malfoy to be a good person. You'd be giving him dangerous advantages if he was bad."

I didn't disagree with her.

The last two periods went well, though they were mostly composed of lower-years I didn't know very well other than Luna. I was shuffling the last period out and getting ready to try to meet Mathilda for dinner when the last person I wanted to see strolled through the door.

If Draco had walked like he owned the place, Maeve moved like she'd used to own the place and was still salty about me removing the control she'd had over the Room. The sidhe princess masquerading as Draco's disaffected slightly-older aunt closed the door behind her as she entered. Her white dreadlocks bobbed as she quickly scanned the room for other students, before settling on me with a hard look.

She explained, her Irish accent slipping and her fae features becoming more apparent, "You know, this room is technically not part of the school's wards. I'm pretty sure I could kill you here and they wouldn't try to save you. Dumbledore might not even know what happened." I started to roll my eyes at the weird threat from her, but she was starting to draw in power, ice crystals forming on her hands as she rolled up her sleeves. "Why don't we find out?"