Last time...

"I think I need a drink." Tony admitted honestly. He's not even sure why.

"Don't mind if I do." She replied with aplomb.

"I mind if you do." Tony snorted. "No little sister of mine is going to become an alcoholic at fourteen."

"Fifteen, thanks to a bit of time travel in third year, and I would like to point out that theoretically I'm older than you." Hera commented, putting on full aristocratic airs as she continued. "Don't worry, little brother, I'll keep you on the straight and narrow."


Chapter 43

"Okay, so how are we doing this?" Tony asked, as they were driven through the city.

"We get to the phone booth first." Hera relayed. "The Ministry of Magic isn't actually part of the building, but it's anchored to it."

"So it's like a fold in space, or a shift in planes of existence?" Tony theorized, brightening when Hera nodded.

"It's exactly like that, though those old fuddy duddies will get all huffy at hearing non-magical explanations to how magic works." Hera confirmed with a nod. "Most everything you see exists in three dimensional space, right? So these folds or shifts in planes of existence are like a fourth dimensional space, and the shops in Diagon Alley, those are folds in space inside of folds in space, so those are like fifth dimensional spaces. Those bags I told you about that Hermione and I made, those would count as sixth dimensional spaces, because of all the layers that go into them, but they're so small they don't affect anything even though the space inside them is immense; same thing for school trunks."

"Like a Bag of Holding! And your trunk…which isn't really a trunk right now…How did he get it to look like a necklace exactly?" Tony wondered, looking at the small charm at the hollow of her throat. It looked like a small green stone.

"Transfiguration. I'll be able to turn it back into a trunk and expand it to normal size whenever. This just saves on space. Wizards have solved the hoarding problem, by making all our things teeny tiny to be put in spaces bigger on the inside than out, so we can hoard more things." She replied a bit distractedly, and then went back to her explanations from before. "The phone booth is the access point to the Ministry, which is surrounded by people. Apparently busy people make for good camouflage, because no one's paying attention to you. Add a few notice-me-not charms, and a muggle repellent or two, and they never notice; even the determined ones. We'll need to head straight for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, where the Familiar registration is, which is used for the more exotic ones so that people don't freak out. Because of what Jör is, we might run into a lot of paperwork, and the Department of Mysteries might want a look too.

We might want to stop by the Department for International Magical Cooperation, as there is a section of it that deals with trade. You'll most likely go through MACUSA for that, but this way Fudge will feel like he matters, and you'll be bringing him in a lot of votes because of pro-muggle attitudes. I'll have Malfoy back me up when he's human again. He's Fudge's main lobbyist, I mean supporter with donations. Also, we should stop by the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts to make sure that we have a copy of the regulations when trying to make whatever, because we don't want whatever we make to be able to turn malicious on anyone; Curses, things like that. Plus, Arthur would appreciate the visit."

"What about getting you an exemption to use magic outside of school during the summers and holidays?" Tony asked. "Snape said your wandless magic is off the charts, but that sometimes you switch between the two without realizing it. You can't use your wand outside of school right now, and you might need it. I would rather you be protected from bureaucrats than not."

"That's not necessarily true. I've been made 'Of Age' by Magic, thanks to the tournament, which means the trace isn't on my wand anymore." Hera pointed out. "I could do whatever, within reason, and be fine."

"If a Ministry flunky doesn't decide to take things into their own hands because you one upped them, and made them look bad." Tony reminded her.

Hera looked thoughtful, nodding absentmindedly. "That would be…Improper use of Magic office then, and if not then they would know where I should go. We would still have to go through MACUSA just to be safe."

...

"I see we went with the complete lack of any and all subtlety." Severus commented, seeing the pair step out of the elevator. "How very Gryffindor of you, Miss Potter."

Potter smiled wide, snickering along with her brother. He wandered what she was doing when she raised her hand, at least until she snapped her fingers. Jör, and he could only imagine what the name implied, was wrapped all over her shoulders and waist. He hadn't been there before, and there'd been no impression on her clothes to suggest anything had been. Jör stuck his head out from under her hair just enough to where the red feather was easily visible, looking as innocent as any basilisk could.

"How's this for subtle?" She asked with a wicked shark like grin.

It was a far cry from the girl he'd seen just a day prior, though the scars were still fresh. Draco had Floo called him from Stark's flat, begging him to come as quickly as he could. When Severus had stepped through the Floo, being brought to where the girl was, he'd understood immediately why. Her lips were sewn shut, and she looked like she'd cried herself to sleep. Stark looked worried out of his mind, holding her in his arms in the floor as he rested against a wall, rambling about sleepwalking and the things she'd done. He hadn't thought to be worried about the rather large snake that was pretending to be a blanket until it was all over, and by then the realization that a basilisk could choose whether or not to petrify or kill or not was put to the wayside.

"At least you didn't ride in here on the back of a giant lion, or some such thing." Severus replied with a sniff. "Now, let's see if we can make it to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures before someone conjures a chicken, shall we?"

...

As one would expect, panic ensued the moment people realized that there was a basilisk wrapped around the saviour of the wizarding world. They hadn't even made it through the atrium. Many started conjuring or summoning roosters just to get them to crow, but there was truth to Jör's words. He was immune to the sound, and would not be killed by such poultry things; pun intended. If they didn't think of something soon, people were going to start flinging spells next.

"Excuse me!" She called out, silencing the crowd that had gathered. "Would someone direct us to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures? I need to register a basilisk familiar, if you don't mind."

...

No one in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures believed Jör was a real basilisk, at least not until he petrified a rat in front of them, and then they were both terrified and ecstatic. There was talk of getting Newt Scamander to come over just to see this. The Auror department was called, and then Hera had to answer a lot of questions, which both solved and raised more of them. Hagrid would get to repeat his education privately based on the testimony given by the basilisk that had been the one to kill Myrtle under the Imperius curse, which raised the question of who had cast it in the first place. She explained that it had been a student named Tom Riddle Jr who had cast the curse upon the basilisk when he could have just asked, though no one seemed to realize just who she was talking about, and many balked at the fact that she could let a creature such as that climb all over her when it talked so casually about eating people on request.

No one had raised a basilisk in some time, as just breeding them was illegal enough to get you thrown into Azkaban, and not many magicals survived seeing them born. A Familiar bond meant that it was protected, however, and that was something that the Aurory hadn't had to deal with…ever. Given that this basilisk in particular had also killed a girl, not many were keen on allowing her to take it with her, but were uncertain of how to stop such a thing. Requests, orders, and demands to know where the basilisk had been found were sidestepped. Apparently 'At school' was not enough of an answer.

So, it was with great consternation that the Aurory let her go. She hadn't bred the basilisk, and it was protected as a Familiar. There was nothing for them to do, though they did caution her against promoting the breeding of basilisks or trying to get them to be familiars. She'd assured them that the whole thing had been an accident, and that the basilisk in question had only probably bonded to her due to her ability to speak to it. She suggested that the basilisk's extreme loneliness had played a part, and that she wasn't going to suggest that her friends or anyone else hunt down a basilisk for their very own, lest they get eaten and/or petrified.

Once they let her go, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures went over tagging procedures to disguise Jör when he was among the muggles, and to mark him as a protected familiar among the wizards. There would be a lot of fuss for a while, even if the wizards paid attention to the marking, but that was to be expected with such an exotic Familiar. Newt Scamander actually did end up coming over just to see the basilisk, and was ecstatic to talk with Hera, even more so when he realized she could translate so that he could have conversations with Jör as well. He was thrilled to talk with Tony, and the two struck up an easy friendship. Professor Snape even talked with him about the use of certain ingredients in potions and how they affected animals verses their affect on people.

The Department of Mysteries was rather fascinated by Jör's ability to shrink himself down, and made a note about the second set of eyelids. They hadn't known about that, nor had they known that a basilisk could be choosy and use targeted petrification. They found that out when someone released a flock of roosters in the room, and Jör petrified those without killing or petrifying anyone else. She found out Jör could shrink himself even further down if he really wanted, watching as he shrank himself down to be able to wrap around her neck. When asked why he hadn't done that in the first place, Jör shrugged as only he could, and just replied that pranking people was fun.


After visiting with Arthur Weasley, who had been as worried as any good father would be about a giant death dealing snake wrapped around a child they cared for, they decided to head over to the Magical Menagerie to get Jör some things for when he stayed wherever she and Tony were going to go. They still hadn't talked about that, but Tony hoped that she would agree to come with him to the states for a bit. She could use some time to just be a teenager, or to even figure out what that meant. She had enough going on in her life with just going to magic school, the added stress of having someone trying to kill her every year, and the assimilation of who she had been with who she was now. There should be times where she could just let go of all the stress, but she'd had to be the adult for far too long, and now she didn't know how to stop.

"I can only assume Jör is…" Snape trailed off, his eyes tracking Hera's movement through the shop.

"Yeah, but she doesn't want to say his name, thinks it will jinx things or something. Keeps calling him 'Not me'." Tony replied, doing the same. "She said what happens to him hasn't yet, so they're coexisting in the same time frame. I didn't think that was possible, but-"

"Potter has a habit of making impossible things…possible." Snape sighed in frustration. "She threw her soul across time and space. At this point, I shouldn't be surprised."

"That's what had happened with last night." Tony revealed. She hadn't said not to tell anyone, though he wouldn't be advertising anything to anyone else. This guy was her Master, her Mentor. "He'd had his lips sewn shut, and she took the punishment into herself so that the others could help him. They couldn't remove the thread due to some physical compulsion, but she could. They were in the same room together, whether he was awake for it or not. How is that even possible?"

"Only the Norns could say for certain." Snape shrugged.

"One more thing. She knows what it means, that the piece of that soul is in her scar. She might not know what it's called, but she knows what the magic of it is, what it means." Tony sighed, unsure of how to proceed. "One minute she looks ready to give up, and the next she's trying to tell me it's okay if I don't want to be her brother anymore. It's like she expects me to just…abandon her."

"Considering the Dursleys treatment, it is not as surprising as one might think." Snape supposed. "Eventually, Stark, it will sink in for her that you are not going anywhere. She does seem to bounce back from things with a resilience I wish I could have had in my youth."

"Think you would have joined the DE's if you'd had that?" Tony asked, looking over at him, curious.

"I was every mistake a Slytherin should have never made, but they are mistakes that I own, Stark. It does not do to dwell on what ifs." Snape stated, looking over at him with snide condescension, before returning to his watch of Hera. "I do wonder though, if I had not been so pigheaded, would I have seen sense sooner? Would she have her parents now?"

Neither of them were expecting Hera to just pop up in front of them.

"You two should know that you're not nearly as quiet as you think you are. Also, what ifs are destructive, so stop it." Hera stated, arching an eyebrow at them both, making a show of pointing her finger at them both. Tony felt terribly caught out for some reason, but she didn't stay long enough for him to object at all, disappearing back further into the shop once more.


"Was it really that difficult?" Hera sighed, once Dobby had returned Lucius Malfoy and the others to their human selves. They were seated in what she assumed was a room for large meetings at Malfoy Manor. For all she knew, it could have very well been their dining room. "All I asked was that you treat those around you with a modicum of dignity and respect."

"I am a Lord, and I am to act like it." Lucius countered haughtily. "I seem to remember you saying that as well."

"A Lord does not have to act like an arse!" She snapped, pinning him with a look. "You think that you are above others, and in a sense that is true. You certainly have more money than most others, and you wield it like it's power. You wield it well enough that others believe it too. After all, if you can afford to buy a politician, what can't you do?"

"I see you understand then, so I fail to see the problem." Lucius scoffed.

"The problem is that you've been bluffing for so long, you've forgotten what wielding true power should look like." Hera replied, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair.

"And you do?" One of the others…Nott Sr, she realized.

"You watched me reverse a ritual on the fly and disembody your Dark Lord with nothing more than a thought, and all because no one had told me it couldn't be done." Hera reminded him, with a sneer. "You then watched me create an illusion so lifelike that it fooled Minister Fudge."

"It didn't fool the Headmaster." Professor Snape quietly reminded her, a cautionary tone to remind her to rein in her mounting anger. She gave him a subtle nod in thanks, and he returned to sipping on his tea.

"It wasn't designed to fool the Headmaster, and I was admittedly already suffering from magical exhaustion and doing magic I wasn't sure was even possible in the first place." Hera sighed, admittedly frustrated. "Perhaps if I had put a bit more effort into it, he and the Minister wouldn't be at each other's throats just now."

"The Dark Lord would have-"

"Your Dark Lord used parlour tricks and scare tactics the way you lot use money and reputation. It wasn't particularly powerful, but it was a smart move. I'll give him that." She countered, to the outrage of those present; holding up a hand to stop their protests. "In the beginning, all he had to do was bribe you with everything you ever wanted. It works on spoiled children, so why not you? When the results weren't quite so forthcoming, he blamed others. You went with the lie not because you believed him, but because you already blamed others for your problems, and making someone else pay is always more fun. He fed you shock and fear in equal measure, and you were damned before you thought to care about it, lured in by the illusion of power he gave you. The only reason he was such an unstoppable force was the fact that he had you right where he wanted you, an army to do his bidding. You gave him your power. If you don't want it back, who am I to stop you?"

She stood up to leave, but didn't get very far.

"You mean that literally, don't you?" Lucius asked quietly. Hera turned slowly back to the table of people, and nodded. "How do you know that?"

He wasn't asking as if to mock her, and was genuinely curious. It is after judging this that she gave in, walking over to him, and gesturing for him to hold out his forearm.

"Who among you can see magic?" Hera asked, looking to them all. "I mean the way it moves, the way it feels, the layers of it, how it interacts with other magics, things of the like."

None of them could.

"Dobby?" She called, and was rewarded with a now familiar pop as the elf in question stood just a ways away from her.

"What is Harry Potter be needings, Miss?" Dobby asked fondly, before glancing with wariness at the others present.

"Could you get Draco for me, please?"

He was gone a second later, and Draco was quickly walking into the room not five minutes later.

"You pulled me from a winning hand, I'll have you know." Draco commented lazily, before looking about the room. "What did you need?"

"May I cast a projection of your magic?" Hera asked hesitantly.

Draco looked thoughtful, but at least it wasn't a no. "Why?"

"If I look close enough, I can see different layers of magic. I want to show them what the Dark Mark is doing to their magic, but for that I need-"

"You need a control group." Draco realized, nodding. "Alright, Hera, let's see it. I'm kind of curious now."

Hera made a series of minute hand gestures, before there was something like a glowing nervous-system next to Draco.

"This is a basic projection of Draco's magic. It's not detailed, but you get the picture. See how light it is? It doesn't mean that he has a Light inclined core. It just means that his magic isn't fighting anything in his own body. It's healthy." Hera explained, before turning to Lucius. "Can I show a projection of your magic, so you can see the difference?"

Lucius nodded absentmindedly, distracted by the representation of his son's magic. Hera made another few minute hand gestures, and they were now looking at another glowing nervous system, but this one was quite different. It wasn't glowing as brightly, dimming, and looked sickly. Hera gasped at the difference. Lucius was by no means an old man, and even then it should not have looked this…drained.

"How are all of you not dead?" Hera asked, looking at the network before her. "How did you not notice this was happening to you?"

"When the mark was first given, there was a surge of power." Professor Snape answered as the others took in the image before them. "Like a drug, it gave a feeling of euphoria, and by the time I even noticed the pain was there, I was used to carrying it. It was a bit like wearing ankle weights that way, I suppose. I only truly realized how much weight I had been carrying the moment you took it away."

"This is why he's as powerful as he is. He took the magic from all of you, and he could because you offered it willingly, whether you realized that was what you were giving him or not." Hera realized, still staring at the network. "He used a good bit of this magic just trying to bring himself back. If you take it back, your magic, he'd have to get by on his own…or use up those who are still loyal to him."

She vanished the projections, and looked around at them all.

"I chose not to turn you over to the Ministry for one reason. Your children love you. It's the exact thing He will use against you." She informed them. "You all should take the time to decide what you want to do, and ask yourselves if you're comfortable with being used up, if you want that parasitic magic used on your children."