Intercession

by VigoGrimborne

Dropped off in a different dimension, different time, and different country, and handed an 'optimal' baby, Taylor Hebert gets to enjoy her retirement. Harry Hebert is a perfectly happy, normal child. What could possibly go wrong? A crossover between Worm and Harry Potter, featuring Post-GM Taylor and initially pre-canon Harry, and following the many plot butterflies that result.

10. Chapter 10

Sirius did not feel good about what he was doing. An uneasy churning in his gut accompanied him in his late-night preparations, unsettled him while he made the tea, and persisted as he added a few drops of a powerful, odorless sleeping potion to the mix for one of the two cups.

Part of his unease was related to wondering whether he could pull it off at all. Taylor might have doubts about her adequacy as a self-taught witch, but that was purely internal, in his opinion. Her bug trick alone made her formidable, to say nothing of the superior animagus substitute he had helped her develop to work with her peculiar magic. Her cleverness with basic spells was outright terrifying when combined with those capabilities.

But for all her competence, she wasn't expecting to be stabbed in the back. Not by him. She fell asleep too quickly to really understand what he had done, and the vermin-clearing spells he had learned in preparation served him well as he cleared out Grimmauld Place as best he could. He didn't even have to fight off a wave of murderous spiders and hornets, as he had suspected he might. The bugs were stuck in a holding pattern, barely moving as he struck them down by the hundreds. Many stared up at him as he worked, eerily focused but not attacking or fleeing.

Truth be told, success made him feel even more like a complete tosser. Here he was, drugging the woman who had saved his arse compensating for his deficiencies in going after Pettigrew, the woman who helped him get his life back on track, Harry's mum. All on Dumbledore's word, the same man who had admitted to trying to drive her out of Harry's life based on nothing more than a feeling he got when illegally rummaging through her mind. The horror of Summoning added weight to Dumbledore's claims, weight that had to be taken seriously, but regardless… That didn't make this okay. Not when it could all just be another lie stacked on top of the rest.

That said, he wasn't turning her over to Dumbledore, or Remus, or anyone else. He knew Taylor. Or he thought he did. If anyone was going to confirm or deny the things Dumbledore suspected, it would be him. Then, and only then, would he decide what else to do. If Dumbledore was wrong, then he would never know Sirius knew Taylor, let alone that the events of tonight had occurred. If he was right, he might still never know, depending on exactly what Sirius found out. 'Put her down,' indeed. Not happening on Sirius' watch.

Taylor was surprisingly light when he lifted her out of her chair. She didn't wear her Muggle false arm when it was just him around, and there wasn't an ounce of excess fat on her body. Her head lolled against his shoulder, and he had to gather her hair out of the way after he set her down in the attic. Stealing her Visio charm and waiting out the blinding majority of the charm's duration, he confirmed that she didn't have any backup magic on her, like Moody had.

That was no surprise. She was open with him. He knew that she had given Moody's little potion vials back, and she didn't know how to make or get portkeys as of yet. Her backup wand was just another wand, not special like her main wand, and he took it away from her anyway, depriving her of her only holdout defense.

He felt like shit for what he was going to do, even if it proved Dumbledore right, so he wasn't going to do it in the cells down in Grimmauld's basement. That was a place for proven enemies, prisoners. The attic was just as warded, having once served as a ritual conduction site back when the occasional Muggleborn witch might 'disappear' just before full moons and nobody cared. It was undoubtedly the site of a hundred horrors, but it didn't have bars, it didn't have bare stone walls, and it didn't make him feel quite as much like he was following in his family's footsteps. He wasn't here to conduct a ritual, and the attic was just an unused extra room nowadays. One with good security.

He reluctantly tied her to a wrought iron chair brought up from storage, securing all of her limbs, her torso, and even her hair back to the chair itself. Then he cast a dozen different restraint charms on her still unconscious form, including an overpowered human transfiguration variant that would resist any new application of human transfiguration. It wouldn't hold an animagus, that was internal magic, but it might just stop however she applied external magic to herself to shift forms.

If it didn't, well, that was why he was in the attic and not somewhere more comfortable. A snake or moose or any other animal would be unable to escape, even if they could do magic. The necessary power or finesse to take down the wards from inside was beyond Taylor. Hell, it was beyond him, and he had grown up around this kind of magic.

He went back down to the kitchen, retrieved the potion that had cost him a substantial amount in Knockturn Alley, as well as the antidote to the sleeping potion, and returned to the attic.

"No going back now," he whispered. It was late, but he wasn't tired at all, and his conscience dictated he get this done without any delay. He had already broken Taylor's trust, and whether or not it was for a good reason remained to be seen. He wouldn't keep her drugged overnight just so he could feel a little more rested before owning up.

He jabbed his wand at the trapdoor and intoned a single word, a carefully-enunciated 'seal.' The attic's security measures activated, and the trapdoor's metal hinges shifted to solid blocks of iron. The smell of the air itself changed, refreshed instead of musty and stale, as the other sealing systems kicked into effect.

Nothing was getting out. Nothing was getting in. He had blanketed the entire attic in vermin-killing charms beforehand, and the defenses included the walls themselves, so nothing could burrow through. Not sound, not light, not most forms of magic. The only feasible way out without tearing the magic itself from the building was for him to lift the security.

The Blacks as a family might be stark raving mad, but their security for their heinous deeds was second to none. A thousand innocents could have died in this room and nobody would ever have known. If there really was something lurking in Taylor, watching and waiting for the right time to strike, it shouldn't be able to leave now.

If there wasn't, then he had destroyed the trust between them for nothing but an old man's delusions. It was only because the old man was Dumbledore, with a very convincing and reasonable story backing him, that Sirius was even considering he might be telling the truth. He didn't blindly trust Dumbledore, not since getting out of Azkaban, but the man had the reputation he did for very good reasons. The dual factors of Dumbledore and Summoning demanded he at least check before calling the man a liar. What kind of fool would completely ignore such a direct, dire warning?

Probably Minister Fudge. That man could win awards for burying his head in the sand.

Sirius went to Taylor, still bound and slumbering, and tilted her head back. From one of the two potions he had brought in he measured out six drops, twice the usual amount. Three drops of veritaserum magically forced the truth from even the strongest-willed. Six put them in such a stupor they could barely think beyond what the questions required them to think about. Another line of defense, as was administering the veritaserum before giving her the antidote to the sleeping potion and waking her up.

Having veritaserum at all was a defense. He had postponed his plans a full week waiting to acquire some, and would have held them back as long as necessary. He didn't trust anything less to work. If nothing else, he would have the truth as she understood it.

Her main wand, he had left in the kitchen, charmed to stick to the table for good measure. Her remaining insects, the ones he couldn't find in his extermination efforts, were all outside too. She had no backup magic on her person. Her remaining limbs were tied down, the chair was magically secured to the floor, there were no sharp edges to cut things with and he had charmed the physical – so they could not be dispelled – ropes imperturbable. He had double-dosed her and locked the attic down, and he knew exactly what he needed to do and ask. If the veritaserum failed, he had four different backup plans to evaluate the situation, albeit that they were all risky and less likely to work.

If he was going to violate her trust on the off chance that there really was some otherworldly thing possessing her, he wasn't going to half-ass it.

Not if. When. Because he had begun and there was no point in turning back now.

He slipped the antidote to the sleeping potion into her mouth, a few more potent drops on her tongue, and waited, his wand trained on her. She woke quickly, but the only sign he had that she was awake at all was her eyes sliding open to reveal a dull, unseeing gaze.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Taylor Anne Hebert," she answered, her voice downright lifeless.

The veritaserum seemed to be working, but he couldn't trust the tone of her voice alone. "What do you think is going on?"

"I am answering questions." Nothing more, just as he would expect from a double-dose of Veritaserum. Most interrogations used a single dose because a double dose sorely limited how much information the speaker could provide. Taylor was barely conscious, and she could only really think about things in direct response to what he asked.

She would hate him for this. She hated being obliviated, and this was another way of taking her agency from her, if only temporarily.

"Do you have any secrets you would not want me to know?" he asked, his mouth dry. He had to prove that she was incapable of holding back first, no matter how much he wanted to just jump to the big question.

"Yes," she said.

"What is the most minor secret you are keeping from me?" he asked.

It took her a few seconds to come up with an answer, which he attributed to the mind-fogging influence of the veritaserum, not any sign of resistance. She couldn't resist. Not without it being obvious. "I think your trouser snake joke is funny. I like your sense of humor."

"That just makes me feel worse about this, you know," he sighed. Why couldn't she have been a cold, calculating bitch like his cousins? Then he could be interrogating her with glee, not feeling like the worst guy in the world. "To your knowledge, are you being controlled by any outside source, or have you been since we first met?"

Taylor's blank eyes stared at the empty air in front of her. "No."

Worst-case scenario averted. No Taylor meat puppet with a thing on the other end, stringing him along for months on end. Or if there was, she was completely unaware of it, which made it slightly less horrific. On to the next worst thing. "Could you be controlled by an outside source?"

"Yes," she answered.

"How?" he asked, trying not to leap to conclusions.

"Imperio. Mind magic. Effective blackmail or coercion. Selective obliviation and confundus. Possibly if I am transfigured into any form of insect. Biotinkering. Nerve hijacking. Physical force. Mental manipulation. Social manipulation. Thinker manipulation. Master manipulation. Possibly mundane hypnosis. Conditioning. Other unknown effects."

It took him a few moments to wrap his mind around that wordy answer. It was his fault, he had asked too broad a question, but… He didn't even know what some of those things were. Muggle stuff, maybe?

"Is there someone or something else in your head with you?" he tried. "Right now?" Maybe if he asked after the effects, not whether the end result could be achieved-

"Yes."

His heart leaped into his throat. "Who is it?" What is it?

"I don't know if it has a true name. I call it my power, my passenger. Someone who knows more named it Queen Administrator, but that was an alias."

"Fuck." That was fucking ominous. "Is it human? Was it ever human?" It looked like he would be delving into his patchwork knowledge of Summoning after all. Damn it all, Dumbledore wasn't wrong.

"No," she said, quashing his last hope for less eldritch answers.

"Do you know what it is?" he pressed.

"Yes," she said simply.

"Okay, what?" he asked. "What is the thing in your head that we are speaking about?" Best he be as precise as possible; bad wording might get him dud answers.

"A piece of a larger whole," Taylor said. "Multidimensional hive mind aliens that travel from star to star seeking innovation. It is a physically massive being that exists in a cordoned-off alternate dimension. The larger entity is dead, so it is… A lingering shard." She seemed to be confused, even under the influence of veritaserum. "A… Lonely knowledge seeker. With no purpose. Broken from the cycle. Attached to a brave host. Working for her, lacking any larger purpose. Learning. Improving. Helping Taylor."

Invisible fingers of terror crept down Sirius' spine as she switched to speaking in third person, and he kept his wand pointed firmly at the head of the woman he was no longer sure was speaking for herself. "Am I talking to Taylor, or to the shard?"

"Taylor… But the shard wishes to help. The shard is using magic to… give information to Taylor. Right now. The magic forcing her to speak is widening the connection. Forcing the shard to speak through her. Magic works on the source of magic, not just the body."

Sirius was in so far over his head he didn't know which way was up. "How do I fix that?" he asked desperately. What good was learning the truth if in doing so he broke the Summoned thing out and gave it Taylor's body altogether?

"It will recede when the effect wears off," the thing speaking through Taylor, or perhaps Taylor herself this time, assured him. "The shard will fix the connection. Narrow it. The shard does not… want… to be in control. Taylor is essential. The shard helps her. That is all that is left."

"But you… the shard could take control?" Sirius asked, only mildly reassured. If he trusted the veritaserum to force even the thing on the other side to speak the truth, then, well… He didn't know. This was why that unnamed wizard had broken Summoning all those years ago! Shit like this!

"Yes." She tilted her head, though she shouldn't have had the will to move at all. Her unfocused eyes continued to stare at nothing, but they were staring a little more in his direction than before. "But it would kill Taylor. The shard does not… want… to kill Taylor."

"How… what does the shard want?" he asked, though he was sure he was going to regret it. World destruction, the souls of the innocent, sacrifices, those were the things the Summons of old traded in. Power and suffering and deals that no sane wizard would ever take.

Still, he had to know.

"To help Taylor," it listed in monotone. "To learn. To see what Taylor does with power. To serve a purpose. To watch. To listen. To understand. To exist forever."

It was too good to be true. "What would the shard do once it knew everything magic had to offer?" he pressed.

"Watch Taylor. See what Taylor does with all magic. Help Taylor. Learn from Taylor."

"Okay… and when Taylor dies?" he asked.

"Taylor will not die. Magic is capable of sustaining humans until heat death. Not the answer, but humans do not need the answer to live until others find the answer."

Sirius knew a lot of that had flown right over his head, but he thought he had the jist of it now… The Summoned monster from another dimension was a Ravenclaw that wanted its favorite human to be immortal so they could do research together forever.

Was it insanity if that didn't actually sound so bad to him?

"Maybe I'm going crazy," Sirius said to himself. "About time, I suppose. What if Taylor did die anyway?" he asked. "What would the shard want then?"

"To resurrect Taylor to full capacity. If impossible, to reform Taylor from collected data. If impossible, to simulate Taylor using magic or data. If impossible, to connect to Taylor's progeny. If impossible, to connect to another human."

He might be mad, but he was pretty sure now that Taylor's summoned mind-monster was as benign as it was possible to be while still being a monster from another dimension. "Do you plan to do horrible things to any other humans?" he asked, thinking about what Dumbledore had told him.

"This shard plans to assist Taylor in whatever she chooses to do." Taylor's voice was growing hoarse.

"Does the shard ever act on its own with or without Taylor's knowledge?" he asked.

"The shard directs her subjects while she is unconscious," was the answer. "Beyond that, no. The shard could, magic is from it, not her, but it does not. That is not the point. Taylor is the point. Her decisions. Her ideas."

"So why is Dumbledore freaking out about horrible things he saw whenever he looked in her mind?" Sirius asked, finally getting around to the root cause of this terrifying mess. If this Summon was so altruistic and helpful, why was Dumbledore getting the willies from it hard enough to obliviate somebody and steal their child? Surely Taylor couldn't have done things so horrible they would prompt that reaction.

"Taylor… I…" she blinked, but her eyes were no more focused than before. "Memories. If he saw memories, he saw my past. Bad memories. Fractured memories. Thousands of perspectives, from every bug. Or the shard's memories. Even worse."

"Of what?" He had looked up the incantation to legilimency in preparation for the veritaserum not being enough, but there was no way in hell he was going to jump into that rabbit hole now.

"Hell," Taylor said. "Death. Monsters. Monstrous acts. The Simurgh. Scion. The entities… experimenting. Learning. Before I killed it. Fighting it."

So Dumbledore had accidentally brushed the memories of Taylor… fighting… an eldritch being, or maybe the eldritch being's personal memories, and was understandably concerned, even if this one piece here was benign. It was no more unbelievable than anything else he had heard tonight, though he had no idea when Taylor could have done any of this, or where. Possibly not in this world, and wasn't that an uncomfortable thought? "You killed the… mind? The leader?"

"The guiding intelligence died because of my plan, my coordination," Taylor confirmed. "It was destroying… everything. I killed it. Now the… shards have no purpose."

"Shards. Plural. What about the others?" Were there other people walking around with less benign multidimensional Ravenclaws in their heads?

"I think it's only me on this world," she said, confirming what he had suspected. "The shield against Summoning… must have worked. Mostly. I was brought here, nobody else was that I know of. The rest are attached to people in unguarded worlds. I have seen no signs of it spreading here."

The veritaserum was beginning to wear off, as indicated by Taylor sounding a little less lifeless. Sirius, by contrast, was only just starting to come off the adrenaline high of conversing with a multidimensional, maybe not technically Summoned but close enough, thing, and not losing his soul, sanity, life, or anything else. He was pretty sure he didn't have much more left in him. Sometime soon, he was going to collapse into a quivering puddle of nerves. Thankfully not literally.

"To be clear," he said, "are you a threat to Harry?"

"I love Harry and I would never hurt him unless he forced me to," Taylor said. "My shard wants him alive in case something happens to me… now that you mentioned it. It didn't think of him before that. I think."

Yes, it was definitely wearing off. "How about Dumbledore?"

"I want to strangle him with his beard," Taylor asserted. "For what he has done. Not because of the shard."

"Anyone else?"

"I want to live my life, with my son, without being in danger. Without being oppressed. Without watching others in danger or oppressed. I am only a threat to the people stopping me from having that."

"What about me?" Sirius asked.

"I don't know. I wasn't before."

That was probably the best he could hope for.

---

Dots and worms and clear shapes were swimming in her eyes.

What were they called? Those little translucent blips and ropes and webs? She had looked it up, back when she first started to persistently see them a few years ago. They weren't magical. Most people saw them. Things floating inside the eyes. Globs of coagulated stuff. Blood, sometimes. Eye fluid.

Floaters.

That was it. She was seeing floaters.

Floaters swam in her vision, most in her right eye. Behind their translucent forms she saw a dusty attic. A tired Sirius.

Her head pounded fiercely. She tried to lift her hand to cover her eyes, to make the headache go away.

What had she been doing? She remembered… talking. To Sirius. He asked questions. She answered them. Sometimes she said things because they came out of her mouth, not because she thought them.

Her hand wouldn't move. Something tugged at her hair, holding her head back. Her legs were tied down, too.

"Wha… What the hell, Sirius?" she asked, her own voice sending jolts of pain through her forehead.

He tied her up. He drugged her, tied her up, and made her answer questions. Made… her shard answer questions?

Amidst all the pain, she could feel a brief burst of distracted confirmation. It was clearer than usual, more nuanced, but that was fading away even as her headache worsened.

Her shard… said… though her… that it was going to fix the connection.

The one Sirius broke. With veritaserum. As if that made any sense. Magic. Still utterly unpredictable.

"That you in there?" Sirius asked.

"Yes… No thanks to you." She knew what had happened. What he had done. Some of why he did it. Dumbledore. Had to be. He'd come back from a meeting with the man a few weeks ago. Lied about it. Because of course he had.

It was always fucking Dumbledore.

Sirius started dispelling the many, many charms and other things holding her down, but she made no move to rise, not even when he started asking her if he was okay.

She wasn't okay. Not hurt, not permanently… But she wasn't okay.

Sirius cut the last of the ropes tying her to the chair, and she knew she could move. He was right behind her.

The floaters in her vision weren't going away. They were distracting.

They were the least of her problems.

He said something else. Something about having ended the lockdown. The trapdoor in the floor swung open of its own accord. He kept talking.

She wasn't listening.

His face hovered in her line of sight; he had come around, leaning in to look at her. She sat limply.

Limply, until she jabbed a fist into his gut. He wheezed in her face, doubling over, and she drew her arm back to twist and drive her elbow into his ear, knocking him over with a vicious blow. Then she stood, as he toppled to the floor.

She kicked him in the ribs, hard. Only once, but hard enough to break bones.

The floaters were still there, in her right eye in particular, and they weren't going away. Wouldn't go away; floaters were permanent. Seeing a lot of new ones at once was a warning sign that she might be in danger of going blind in that eye. She knew, because she had looked it up.

She was angry. So, so angry with him. For making her feel helpless, for surprising her when she had her guard down, for drugging her and violating her trust… For doing it on Dumbledore's behalf.

Her insects came boiling up the trapdoor, pouring into the room like a tidal wave. Every single bug she had established in Grimmauld Place, diminished – Sirius would have killed the ones he could find – but a formidable force nonetheless. More than enough to strip the flesh from his bones. They were waiting, grouped up under the trapdoor. Probably brought there for her by her power, while she was barely conscious.

She could kill him. She had that option.

But she was better than that.

She stalked away, into the mob of insects and down the trapdoor. Her bugs followed, abandoning Sirius to lie on the floor of the attic and wheeze.

Her bugs pulled her things to her as she walked. The coat she had left on the coatrack, her glasses and wand from the kitchen table and her notes from the library.

Maybe she would come back. Maybe she wouldn't. But right now, she was removing herself from the situation and from his presence before she did something she couldn't take back.

She was better, these days. She had to be better. Harry didn't need Skitter. Probably wouldn't want her. Taylor didn't want to be that, either. Even if it was tempting.

Lucky for Sirius. Because the way she felt right now, rational or not, warranted or not, Skitter would have torn him apart.

---

Harry was worried about his mum.

She had come into the castle on a weekday, which was already unusual. She came as Hissy, of course, but she came dragging a big parchment of handwritten notes on spells, along with a few other things he had to go get for her from the secret passage so they wouldn't get damp.

She also wasn't saying much. Just that she was physically fine, and that she didn't want to be alone.

He had only seen his mum this… vulnerable… a few times before. He took her things, hid them under his bed, and let her coil around his shoulders to accompany him to Runes class without any further questions. They got a lot of funny looks from the students who didn't know about his familiar, and he used the excuse that she wasn't feeling well – which was true – when they asked.

That was what he told his friends, too. He didn't know anything more. She wasn't injured, she had told him that, but something had hurt her, or scared her, or just upset her to the point that she would rather curl up on his bed than talk or fight back.

He studied in his room that night, sitting on his bed next to her. His roommates were out, working on some strategies for Cedric to use if the third task involved spellcrafting puzzles. Most of his friends would be out there, working to help Cedric. They could cope without him. These runes weren't going to memorize themselves.

His mum wasn't going to open up to herself. She didn't need him very often – love him, yes, always, but not need him – and he wasn't going to let her down now that she did.

He studied well into the night. His roommates came in and went to bed, drawing their curtains so that the lights wouldn't keep them up. He cast a larger version of the desk silencing ward around himself and his bed and kept working.

"You won't sleep until I talk, is that it?" his mum finally hissed.

"Yes." He wasn't guilting her, but if this was a battle of wills he would go down to the school nurse and ask for a Pepper-Up potion before he gave in. He would get Hermione to brew him one, if necessary. She had to know that.

Besides, she wanted to talk. She would have said if she didn't. That was how she worked.

"I shouldn't be dumping my troubles on my own child," his mum hissed regretfully. "But who else could I turn to? I don't trust anyone like I do you."

"Not Sirius?" He had thought she was getting along with Sirius. As well as she got along with anyone, that was. Better than most.

"Sirius is the problem," his mum hissed. She partially uncoiled herself, rising up over his piled-up blankets to sway back and forth as she looked at him. "Him and Dumbledore. He spoke to Dumbledore. Dumbledore told him just enough to get him to betray me."

Harry startled; he hadn't expected it to be something that important! "Are you in danger? Is Sirius working with Dumbledore? Are they looking for you to do… something?" If they were, he would have to hide her a lot better than this! Sirius knew she was Hissy, Dumbledore knew where he slept, they could come in any moment–

"No, Dumbledore is clueless for now," his mum assured him, her sibilant voice bitter. "He told Sirius… something. Something that convinced Sirius that it was a good idea to drug me, tie me up, and force veritaserum into me until I couldn't even think straight. The only saving grace was he did it all on his own, and I don't think he told anyone."

"He didn't!" Harry exclaimed.

"He did," his mum retorted. "He dragged things out of me, digging for proof of what Dumbledore told him. Things I have not told anyone, things I never meant to tell anyone except you when you were older, things that I did not – do not – trust him to know!"

"Now he does." Harry thought about that. "Do you need help hunting him down and having him obliviated?" He was sure Hermione could learn the spell, and if she couldn't Ginny might already know it thanks to Tom.

"I'll think about it," his mum hissed. She let her lengthy body fall limp across the pile of blankets. "I am not worried about silencing him. One way or another, that will be easy. I do not think he found what Dumbledore told him to look for. He would not have let me go if he did."

"But it must really hurt to not be able to trust him anymore," Harry said. He hoped none of his friends ever betrayed him like that.

"It hurts more to wonder whether I still can," his mum sighed.

"What do you mean?" Even if Sirius had good intentions, there were things you just didn't do to a friend.

"If you think someone is not acting under their own power, do you ask them about it?" his mum hissed. "What if the one controlling them would hurt them if they knew you knew? I understand why he did it. I might do the same." She still sounded angry, though.

"Didn't Dumbledore tell him whatever got him thinking that, though?" Harry asked. "Dumbledore, the same person who obliviated you and basically kidnapped me and lied for years? Why did he listen to Dumbledore?"

"It's… ugh, I hate this." His mum slithered over to lay beside his crossed legs. "If you put aside that Dumbledore was his source, looking solely at what he must have thought was going on based on his questions, it was inarguably the right thing to do, given all of the things he did not know, things I did not tell him or anyone. But I don't want to forgive him. Not for ambushing me somewhere I felt safe. Not for him doing it. I trusted him."

That was a lot trickier. Harry wished he had something meaningful to say, but if it was him he would…

He didn't know what he would do either. Maybe Ginny would know; she had been where Taylor was, sort of, and she had actually been possessed.

"Ginny would have appreciated me sneaking up on her and stunning her back when Tom was running around in her body," he said aloud. "Even if I scared her or broke her trust. And if it was that or letting Tom hurt her, or hurt other people using her, I know what I would do. But if I was wrong and it was all her, then she might not like me very much after."

"You see… It is justified. Sometimes. And the cost of missing a real problem is much higher than that of jumping the gun." His mum hissed, a wordless hiss of frustration. "He is probably moping around that miserable townhouse right now, regretting everything. Even though he was, all things considered, right to check. If I was being practical, I would forgive him right now so that if I ever am possessed or not in control of myself, and he suspects, he does not hesitate to do it again. But I don't want to do that."

"Maybe you should just stay away from him for a while," Harry suggested. She didn't need Sirius.

"I did that. Once. With my father. A while turned into 'indefinitely', and when we eventually reconnected… it was never the same. Not really. I had changed too much." Harry got the impression she had decided on something; she straightened and slithered off his bed, down to the floor. "I won't go back now. I will take some time to myself. But I will confront him about it soon. Before the third task. Thank you."

"I don't think I helped very much," Harry admitted.

"You helped more than you know." She twisted around to look at him. "Now go to bed. It's a school night."

He laughed and threw his pillow at her as she left. Then he went and picked it up, because he was really tired and he had Potions first thing in the morning.

---

Sirius felt like he had kicked a dog, which was especially ironic as he was currently a dog who had quite literally been kicked.

He moped around a bitterly ugly little excuse for a park near Grimmauld Place, a dog with a very bruised rib and a guilty conscience. He didn't want to talk to anyone, or be approached, or anything of the sort, so he was wandering around in his canine form. It was socially acceptable for him to growl at anyone who approached him this way.

Taylor had left, after that well-deserved beating, and she hadn't come back. Two weeks of her continued absence and counting was driving home how much her occasional presence made Grimmauld bearable. She was the only one who came around. Remus certainly didn't, though he had sent an owl asking when the library would be ready.

Sirius didn't particularly want to see Remus. He was on Dumbledore's side, and Dumbledore was the one who had gotten him into this mess. Sirius could and would put that aside to play the part of the wholehearted ally if Remus came around, because whether or not Taylor believed it of him he was not going to betray her and her extradimensional assistant, but not now. Not while he could avoid it.

In the meantime, he was moping. There was an appeal to it, Sirius supposed. Blaming oneself and not doing anything because it was all already ruined. No guilt over not making an effort if making an effort was futile from the start. Ironically, he would have said that was a Remus thing; he'd done it back with that mistake involving Snape and a full moon.

That one was Sirius' fault, too. Maybe he had been lucky to go this long before making a friendship-endangering mistake. He was overdue one.

He stopped to mark a scrubby tree. Anything to postpone going back to Grimmauld Place. It was empty, and it wasn't going to get better. Taylor wouldn't be there. It would just be him, his mother's portrait, that insufferable hat, and all the elf heads mounted on the wall. Hardly a good time.

At least Kreacher was gone. The miserable old elf had chosen to interpret his order about cleaning the house 'and nothing else' to mean no eating or drinking, and ignominiously expired in his grubby little cupboard before Sirius remembered his existence.

Good riddance.

It didn't help Grimmauld Place's ambiance any, though. That building was so steeped in dark magic that it probably fed off of death and betrayal. He had provided it with more of both since moving in.

Sirius moped his way back to Grimmauld place once it got dark, surrendering to the inevitable. Sleeping in his old room was better than sleeping in a ditch or hotel somewhere, and he didn't feel like getting drunk and taking the decision of where to sleep out of his own hands. He'd probably wind up doing something stupid and getting killed in a back-alley brawl.

He shifted back to human in an alleyway, tromped up to the front door of his least favorite building, and stomped past his mother's ugly portrait.

The curtains sprang open, and the old bat's face was already red in anticipation of a screeching, but he yelled first. "Shut the fuck up, you stupid, inbred, sanctimonious, constipated, half-wit half-sized half-human harridan!"

Her face turned an ugly shade of purple, but her mouth was still open and he imagined he could see bile still bubbling up in the back of her throat, so he drew a deep breath to keep going–

The curtains were yanked shut by invisible hands, and he heard a faint buzzing behind him in the sudden silence.

"Sirius."

He fully expected a recreation of their first meeting, terrifying wall of bugs and all, but when he turned she was just standing there in the doorway. A raincoat draped her lean form, one sleeve hanging empty. She didn't look angry, though he had noticed that when she was at her most terrifying she often looked like she was genuinely bored, so her lack of visible anger now was either a good sign or a very bad one.

"Deadly," he said, and then he silently cursed himself for his incessantly loose tongue.

"Never trick, ambush, drug, or trap me in this building again, or my house for that matter." She stepped inside, wiping her boots off on the mat. "I mean it. No matter what. If you need to check me for possession without prior warning, hit me when I'm walking to my car, or at the store, or even at work. Not where I feel safe."

She smiled at him, but it was a smile totally devoid of warmth. "Next time, you might not get me so easily. You might not live through it, either."

Had he once thought she didn't rate very highly on his warped terror scale? Forget that, she was an eleven out of ten. He would even say it was hot if he didn't still have vivid memories of flies forcing their way up his nose.

"I won't ever do it again," he promised.

"You'll do it if you think you have to, and if I'm ever possessed or under the Imperius curse I hope you notice in time to give a repeat performance," she said coldly as she passed him in the hallway. "But not here or in my home."

"Like I said, I won't." He followed her into the living room. "I'm really sorry–"

"For listening to Dumbledore," she interrupted. "That's the only thing you have to be sorry about. What did he tell you?" She pointedly took a pinch of Floo powder and held it in one hand, while standing right next to the fireplace.

The total lack of trust hit him like a dagger to the gut, but it was no less than he deserved. "He called me and Remus in, and said that he needed our help," he explained, giving her nothing but the truth. "As it turns out, whenever someone uses legilimency on you, they get a mindful of your," he lifted his hands to do a quotation gesture, "Ravenclaw friend's eccentricities and your memories. He was a bit suspicious of you having Harry," which he now noticed didn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of Taylor's story, "and when he saw all of that…"

"He decided to obliviate me?" she asked.

"Well, no, not right away," Sirius said. "I'm not defending him, but he tried to figure out what was up with you first, and he landed on Summoning as the only possible explanation. Some Summoned things can spread by close contact or interaction or any number of possible conditions-"

"Fuck." Taylor scowled at nothing, peculiarly angry. "Fuck. Of course. That makes too much sense." She clenched her fist around the Floo powder and punched the solid stone mantelpiece.

"It does?" He didn't know exactly what he had said that made sense, because it had taken him a lot longer to understand Dumbledore's story when he heard it. Maybe he was really good at summarizing?

"What do you do with a danger that could spread by touch, or hearing them speak, or close contact, or just occasional nerve twitches whenever you're around, or a scream, or looking you in the eye?" Taylor asked rhetorically. She walked in front of the fire, then turned around, visibly agitated. "I should have guessed. Him making me forget and then leaving me in place… What methods of transmission was he worried about?"

"All of them?" Sirius guessed. "Legilimency, for sure, and maybe upon death. He didn't know. There's almost nothing on Summoning, just enough that he freaked out. He was an idiot not to ask you–"

"And trigger a suicide condition, or maybe asking 'what's wrong with you' is the trigger for it to spread, or maybe I would be forced to lie if he asked," Taylor interrupted. "No, he couldn't ask. You couldn't ask. Not without me knowing what you suspect. Obliviation doesn't give an explanation as to why, he could just have been a magical kidnapper. If something was waiting to be discovered, Obliviation wouldn't trigger it.

Sirius looked at her as she scowled, then dumped her handful of Floo powder back in the vase. She met his gaze. "I don't like what you did," she said. "What he did is unforgivable. But it wasn't the wrong thing to do."

"Run that by me again," he requested, trying not to get his hopes up.

"He thought I was compromised." She walked over to the chair she often claimed, the nice cushioned leather armchair Sirius had worked hard to clean off once he noticed her using it, since he remembered his mother sitting in it and he couldn't think of anything more likely to stain it to the wooden core. She didn't sit in it, instead opting to perch on one of the arms, still facing him. "Why didn't you come here and tell me what Dumbledore said, so I could explain? You trusted me, but you also lied."

Trusted. Like he didn't trust her now. It was the other way around, and he deserved it. Aside from keeping an eye on her to make sure her shard wasn't a filthy liar, he trusted her completely. Now that he knew what was going on. "If it wasn't really you in there… how could I have been sure asking you wouldn't set it off?"

"How could you be sure questioning me under Veritaserum wouldn't set it off?" she pressed.

"I couldn't," he said honestly, "but I only half believed Dumbledore might be onto something, and I had to do something to prove him wrong. I just took precautions in case he was right."

"The difference is you were reckless enough to do something, instead of biding your time," she said. "That's the only difference."

"Hey, hold on," he objected. "That's not the only difference between me and him. I didn't lie to Harry. I didn't obliviate you. I didn't plan to obliviate you, even if he was right. If you were in danger I was going to do everything in my power to save you, I would have brought Harry in on it, the whole deal. Not sitting around doing research and nothing else!" Admittedly, Dumbledore's way was a lot safer for the world while there was a chance acting directly could antagonize an otherwise dormant danger, but… "If your shard was a monstrous ever-spreading thing like the black unicorn Dumbledore told me about, my approach might have had some very big consequences, but… go big or go home?" he offered. "I didn't want him to be right. It just wasn't something I could ignore, either."

Taylor's shoulders slumped. "Like I said. It wasn't wrong. But it still hurt, coming from you."

"I know," he said. "And I knew it would, going in," he added, compelled to give her the full truth. She had done him the huge favor of not having the conversation with him drugged to the gills with Veritaserum, so he would be truthful on his own. "If it helps, I felt like shit every step of the way and I'll make it up to you any way you want."

"Ten years ago, this would have been it, no matter how well-meaning you were or sorry you are now," she told him. "I don't trust easily. We'd never get back to what we had before."

"What about now?" he asked.

"We'll see." She looked away from him. "I make no promises. But allies are hard to come by for me right now… and friends harder still. I'm not the same person I was back then. We'll stay the course for now. Harry is more important."

"Harry is important, but I don't want my fuck-up to ruin anything else," Sirius objected. "That's important too. If you need to stay away from me for a while–"

"That doesn't help." She shook her head. "Really, it doesn't. Besides, we have a whole collection of different lies and plans on the go that will fail if we can't work together to maintain them. You getting custody of Harry, Moody thinking I'm working for you to assess Hogwarts security, the murmurs of a possible Death Eater resurgence, Barty being on the loose, now you working for Dumbledore…"

"So it's an alliance of necessity, then." Damn if that didn't sting more than it should.

"No," she said, surprising him. "Don't be an idiot, don't violate my trust again – and I do not mean don't check me for possession or mind-altering influence, I mean don't make it so I can't trust you – and you might have a chance." She shook her head. "I like you more than I should."

He would be lying if he said that didn't make him feel better. Fuck the patented Remus ''everything is pointless so I won't try' attitude, he was going to make this right. If Taylor was willing to try and give him another chance, he wasn't going to waste it.

They sat – well, she perched and he stood – in silence. A brooding, thought-provoking silence.

"Ask," she told him.

"Would it be inappropriate if I offered you a backrub as part of my apology?" he blurted out, as that was one of the things currently crossing the back of his mind. The thought immediately prior to that one had been 'what can I do to make it up to her,' and the thought after it 'probably yes, she's not a touchy person', but of course his stupid brain chose the dumb thought in the middle to express to the world. He smacked himself in the forehead.

Taylor stared at him, her expression unreadable. "Do you think about the things you say at all before they leave your mouth?" she asked.

"No," he said firmly, picking his words carefully to avoid shoving his own foot any further down his throat. "I do not. Feel free to sting me for that. What were you expecting a normal, intelligent person to ask you?"

"About… anything in my past," she said. "You know enough to be curious."

"Do you actually want to tell me?" he asked. "Because after what I did, I'm sure as hell not going to demand answers. I'm willing to take you at your word that I don't need to know."

"It would have averted this whole ordeal if I just told you to begin with," she remarked.

"But you didn't know that it would be relevant to anything, and you didn't tell me, so you probably had good reasons to not want to talk about it," Sirius reasoned. "I figure you're from some other world, one with other humans which is a really cool and simultaneously terrifying concept, and that you fought a fuck-ton of Summoned monsters because that other world didn't have our one's shield, or magic at all… Hell if I know how that worked, but I don't need to know the specifics. You did your usual thing of being bloody terrifying and effective, cut off the head of the snake, probably with your teeth and fingernails if you couldn't use magic–"

He knew he saw a tiny smile on her face for a split second, however quickly it disappeared.

"And then after that you wanted a retirement, so you came out to our little piece of nowhere word somehow," Sirius concluded.

"More that someone else decided I needed a forcible retirement, and dropped a child on me to keep me here, but that is otherwise mostly correct," Taylor told him. "In essence."

"That's all I need to know," he said. "Now, if you want to give Dumbledore your full life story… It might get him off your back."

"Not a chance in hell," Taylor said. "What was he planning to do to me, if you could find a way to end the danger, but not save me?"

"Killing you… was on the table," Sirius admitted. "For him and Remus. Not for me. But if you told him–"

"He's worried that I'm possessed by a thing from another dimension, and that it could spread from me, right?" Taylor asked.

"Yes…" Sirius admitted. "Also that it will torture, kill, and attempt to dominate the world… I'll get the unicorn book from Remus, that'll show you what he's worried might happen."

"I am harboring a thing from another dimension," Taylor told him. "It's not inherently good or safe, either. I trust it… maybe a little more now that you got it to explain what it wants, long-term, but still not a lot. And it can, theoretically, spread."

Sirius put both hands to his head, covering his mouth and nose. "Uh… No bad touch, please?" he requested through his cupped hands.

"Theoretically," Taylor said. "You'd know if it got to you. You'd manifest some extra power or sense or ability. From the little I know, if it could still spread it would have already. Probably to Harry, not you. Being in this dimension, with the defenses, might be interfering. I was already connected when I came here, its offspring might not be able to make a connection to someone else who is already here."

That was a comfort; he was wondering whether the Summoning shield still existed, given Taylor's presence. He still wondered how, exactly, it worked, and why Taylor was an exception, but that was best left alone.

"He isn't wrong," Taylor concluded. "Dumbledore. The difference is in the details. Which, if he's been agonizing over this for years, he'll never accept and leave well enough alone."

"I wouldn't say agonizing," Sirius grumbled, remembering Dumbledore's explanation as to what he had been doing. "More like occasionally researching it when he has time. For four years. Getting nowhere."

"Maybe telling him some of the truth will serve to neutralize him, but I don't think so," Taylor concluded. "If he didn't hold so much power, I might do it anyway, just in case it helped. But as it is, I will not tell him the truth only to have him decide I'm too dangerous to leave alive after all."

"It might just be better to have Taylor Hebert disappear," Sirius mused. Now that he knew what Dumbledore was worried about, and that it was just close enough to true that Taylor was right, the old man would probably never leave well enough alone… "You disappear, I get a full-time fake girlfriend, we figure out a way to permanently alter your appearance enough that he doesn't know you're the same person, and we don't let him meet you until you know enough Occlumency to keep him from skimming even your surface thoughts."

"That…" She frowned thoughtfully. "It would mean abandoning my house. My job. The job I was going to give up anyway, soon, but the house… I'll think about it. I've kept my witch identity separate from Taylor Hebert so nobody alerted Dumbledore, but I kept my first name. I would need to set up a new identity, with the new physical appearance."

"It's not a short-term solution," Sirius agreed. "I don't know how we're going to change you enough to be unrecognizable, permanently, with it being comfortable for you." He was just spitballing general ideas at this stage; the actual implementation was going to be difficult to figure out.

"This idea also requires I pretend to be your girlfriend," Taylor said. "I'm not comfortable with that for any extended length of time. Not now."

"There are other lies," he conceded. "Something to keep you in close contact with Harry. Live-in maid or secretary come to mind, but if I told anyone who knows me that lie they would assume you were my girl in one way or another, so I was just cutting out the middleman."

Taylor looked away. "I'll think about it. For now–"

"Hold the course, yeah," he finished for her. "We keep doing what we were doing, I keep an eye on Remus and bury him in research, and in the meantime I shower you in apologetic gifts and favors."

"Those first two," she corrected.

"All three," he insisted. "Let me make it right."

"You can't, not with money or expensive gifts." She glared at him.

"It's not an effective apology if it's something you don't want, is it?" he asked. "You'll see. I know how to make up for a fuck up, I have a lot of practice." There were advantages to being a screw-up. One either got very good at fixing mistakes, or one suffered.

"You can try," she conceded.

He would take that permission and run with it.

---

Taylor had an unusual connection to wands. As far as she understood her situation, she did not need a wand at all. Not to do magic. She had practiced with one that did not fit her, in the beginning, and it hurt, but practicing wandless magic hurt just as much.

On a related note, she now knew three wordless, wandless spells, after much pain and struggle to master them. The countercurse to turn back to a human, Stupefy, and Wingardium Leviosa. It took a lot longer to get a spell down without either words or wand, so it often wasn't worth doing for more obvious spells, but those three? Those were special. Silent, motionless stunners and what amounted to imprecise telekinesis…

Nobody would ever be able to tie her up and interrogate her again. She had not been able to think with the Veritaserum in her, and either the sleeping potion or Sirius' other preparation had negated her power's interference while she was unconscious, but nobody kept prisoners drugged with extremely expensive, short-lived potions at all times. Any time she could think and use magic, she could now stun or move anything in her immediate vicinity, at only the cost of an instant headache if she did so too often in a short span of time.

Paradoxically, mastering more spells without a wand reminded her of exactly how good a painkiller her custom wand was, and how she only had the one. Other wands didn't do that for her. This drove her to Diagon Alley today, going back to do something she should have months ago. Sirius ordering her four arms was ridiculous, but one backup arm was a smart preventative measure. A backup wand was a similarly intelligent precaution. Not one she would take out with her and her primary wand, but one she could leave in a safe place in case of a less immediate emergency.

Ollivander's shop was brightly lit when she entered, contrasting the miserable British weather outside. An older woman was inside with Ollivander, trying each wand he passed her in turn. Taylor waited, watching with interest as the normal wand-fitting procedure continued.

The woman eventually settled on an Oak and Phoenix wand, a plain thing with a gnarled tip, and paid Ollivander. Once she was gone–

"You have done much with that wand," Ollivander remarked, by her side in an instant. The crotchety old man reached out for her wand, but when she refused to let go of it contented himself with running fingers down its length. "Much more than I expected. Your blood curse is certainly unique. Perhaps it is not a curse so much as a failed enhancement, from long ago when men were foolish enough to meddle with their own magic," he mused.

"It's served me well," she replied. "I want another."

"A backup?" he asked. "Or for a friend?"

"You told me none could use it but me," she objected. "What friend would I give a useless wand to?"

"Perhaps not a friend at all," Ollivander said darkly, returning to the stacks of passed-up wands in their elaborate boxes. He turned his back on Taylor to sort the wand boxes and lift them to the counter. "I must say, Ms. Blood Curse, you have an enemy. You paid me and he did not, so I will tell you about his visit to my shop."

"Barty," Taylor guessed. Who else was her enemy, and interested in her wand? She was suddenly much more interested in this than in getting a backup wand.

"The fugitive, yes," Ollivander confirmed, turning back to her. "He came in two months after his escape that the Ministry denies. He pretended to be another, and I played along, but I knew him. He asked after a wand like yours, and I told him there were none like yours, save for one I had made. He pressed me on the subject, and eventually let slip that he thought such a 'vile, unique wand' might be the Death Stick." Ollivander laughed scornfully. "As if the stories would not tell of that wand's appearance if it was anything but ordinary in looks."

Taylor added 'The Death Stick' to her ever-growing list of things to research. Her power sent a distracted sense of curiosity her way. "What did he do when you told him you had made it, and that it was not the artifact he thought it might be?" she asked.

"He left," Ollivander said. "I reported him to the Aurors, but I suspect my report went nowhere."

So she could assume that he probably wasn't fixated on her wand anymore, if that was his initial reason for wanting it. That was… good? Not really. He was still a threat, just one that was no longer known to be fixated on her.

"Did you tell him about its drawbacks?" she asked. That would be important to know.

"Yes," Ollivander said shortly. "He would not have settled for it being just an ordinary wand. I will make another wand for you, at the same price as the first. Is that all you wanted?" He waved his hand dismissively.

"Yes. Thank you." His pissy attitude was annoying, but he had warned her when he got the chance… He couldn't exactly seek her out or owl her, not knowing her name, so he had told her the first chance he got. That deserved a thanks…

And his attitude deserved a tweak to the nose, so she used a few silent levitation charms to switch wands between three boxes when he wasn't looking.

---

Good weather in the British springtime was a gift to be savored, and everyone in Harry's friend group knew it. A day where the wind held to a pleasant breeze, the clouds were sparse and puffy, and the air was pleasantly warm? They were out by the lake as often their classes allowed. Those of them that didn't have mystery projects.

"What do you think it is?" Ginny asked for the third time that afternoon. He and Ginny were the only ones out by the shore at the moment, as Luna had class, Hermione had gone inside to get something to eat, and Neville was busy.

"A plant," Harry said confidently. "It's always a plant with him."

"A plant has him so busy he doesn't have time for preparing Cedric for the third task?" Ginny said doubtfully. "I think he's doing something to help set up the third task. They grew those hedges, maybe it's all plant-based. That's why he's not contributing, he doesn't think he can without it being cheating, because he has inside knowledge!"

"That doesn't stop it from being a plant," Harry argued. "I didn't say what it would be for." He supposed it could be a non-plant project for the third task, but then why had Neville specifically been asked to help? Maybe he was trying to branch out. "We shouldn't pester him about it."

"He's not here to pester," Ginny remarked, leaning back on the blanket she had transfigured from a leaf. "It's just you and me… and the Squid, out there in the lake."

"And Hermione," Harry remarked, seeing their friend in the distance as she walked back from the castle.

"Hermione…" Ginny sighed, staring up at the clouds, her hands behind her head.

"Yup. She's walking towards us."

"Her robes are swaying…" Ginny said dreamily.

"She has something in her hands," Harry noted.

"Books, filled with knowledge, like her head."

"Too small to be books."

"Her wand, which she wields with such confidence and style."

"Too big. I think it's food. Wanna guess what it is?"

"The taste of her lips on mine…"

"No, I don't–" He looked over at Ginny. "Wait, what?"

"She would say no if she wasn't interested, wouldn't she?" Ginny asked, still looking up at the clouds.

"Does she know she can say no without losing your friendship?" Harry asked, suddenly floundering in the deep and treacherous waters of having to give relationship advice. A few quick kisses with Luna did not qualify him to tell other people what they should be doing. He barely knew what he was doing, most of the time.

"Yes," Ginny assured him. "I told her that."

"And she hasn't said no?" he asked.

"No," Ginny said. "She hasn't. I'm not pushing her for an answer. But I'm not pretending I don't want an answer, either. Should I drop it? Pretend I never asked?"

Hermione was getting closer. Harry considered his best friend, and how she had acted ever since the Yule Ball. If he had to guess, based on everything… "If she wasn't willing to consider it she would have said so by now." Hermione never shied away from saying what she thought. If she wasn't giving a straight answer, it was because she didn't have one to give yet. Meaning she didn't know.

"Thanks." Ginny put one hand in front of her eyes. "I needed to hear that. I'd hoped… One good Yule Ball, a goodbye kiss after, and it would all work out. I got the first one, but the other two? Nope. Complicated all the way through."

"It still might. Or, you know, plenty of fish in the sea?" he suggested.

"How many fish are pretty, smart, assertive, and wonderfully diabolical when slighted?" Ginny asked. "With special magic skills, who actually know me, and who will be able to keep up with me once I'm learning new things instead of just filling in the holes in the stuff Tom left me?"

"There are… some other fish," Harry amended. "At least a few. Somewhere. How about…" Luna was taken and not in the least bit diabolical, Susan wasn't either, 'diabolical' actually ruled out most of the girls he knew… "Fleur?" he concluded. "She seems smart and vengeful." Also French, likely to go back to her country after the tournament, with dozens of suitors, but she did seem to fit Ginny's criteria.

"Gorgeous, but too flighty and snooty," was Ginny's verdict.

"Hey Hermione!" Harry called out, letting Ginny know that their friend was getting close enough to possibly overhear if they kept talking. "What've you got there?"

"Owl came for me, for you, from Sirius," Hermione reported. "He sent a package and a letter."

"Why was it for you if it was for me?" Harry asked.

"He wants me to keep Hissy from seeing it," Hermione answered, sitting down on the other side of Ginny. She passed the brown-wrapped box and letter over Ginny's midsection. "It's a weekday, so no problems there. Didn't he do something to make her mad?"

"Something like that," Harry said vaguely. He knew his mum was maybe trying to forgive Sirius, but also hurt by him, so he didn't want to go into all of that with his friends until he knew what the outcome would be. He had some choice words for Sirius, though, which the school owl had delivered a few weeks ago. This would be the response.

Sirius' reputation as a prankster of some renown had Harry cast the one detection charm he knew over the package. It came up clean for listening spells, which was mostly useless so far as diagnostic information went.

Still… Better to read the letter first. He set the package aside–

"Hey," Ginny complained.

"Whoops." He took it and set it on his other side, where it wouldn't be balancing atop his friend's stomach. Hermione giggled as he busied himself opening the letter.

'Harry,' it read, 'you're right. I don't have any excuses. Reasons, but no excuses. Seeing as how your mum hasn't turned me into bug food yet and said I could try to make it up to her, could you give me your opinion on the things in the accompanying package? Would she like anything from there, do you think? Gifts might not be the path to her forgiveness, but I think, if she told you what I did, these specific potential gifts might mean a lot to her. But I'm a verified idiot, so I need a second opinion. Also, be careful, they are Black heirlooms so there are some sharp edges.'

"Why is everyone asking me for relationship advice today?" he said aloud.

"Who else asked you for advice?" Hermione asked.

"Is Sirius dating your mum?" Ginny quickly added, giving him a choice as to which question he wanted to answer.

"No," he said, evading Hermione's question. "I don't think so? Definitely not now, he wants my opinion on these things he wants to give her as an apology for something stupid he did." That said, he opened the package and dumped it out on the grass in front of him. Four distinct items fell out. One was a metal cylinder the size of his pointer finger, one was a wooden pyramid, and the other two were normal-looking Sickles, simple coins with the usual Goblin designs stamped on either side.

"Ooh." Ginny sat up and hunched forward to look at the items. "Artifacts. Does he say what they are?"

Harry looked into the empty box and withdrew a folded bit of parchment. He read it, then looked at the items again. "This one," he pointed to the cylinder, "is a hidden minorly cursed blade. If you stab someone with it, they'll be dizzy until the next time the moon rises."

Ginny gingerly lifted the cylinder and ran a finger along the contoured sides. A long metal spike jutted out of one end, twice as long as the cylinder itself. "I like this," she said.

"The coins," Harry continued, noticing that Hermione was looking at them, "are a special multi-Portkey setup. They only work if you click them together. Neither counts as a portkey on its own, so they can pass for normal coins when apart."

"That's useful," Hermione remarked.

"And this…" Harry poked at the wooden pyramid. "Is a…" He read the note again. "Completely pointless wooden pyramid with 'Sirius Black is an idiot' engraved in runes on every side?"

"Wow, what did he do?" Hermione asked. She put the Portkey coins down to look at the pyramid. "It really does say that."

"I think he should give your mum all of these," Ginny said. "The blade is cool, the portkeys are useful, and the pyramid makes him seem humble."

"Portkeys are good." He pat his robe pocket, where his unofficial 'Hufflepuff safety' portkey was kept. Hermione and Ginny had their own, but anyone who checked their robes and knew what to look for would be able to find them. Taylor would appreciate the extra security of the two-part portkey, he was sure. "I'll tell him to give her all of them."

He hoped Sirius could successfully ease his mum's damaged trust back to where it had been. He didn't like seeing her unhappy. Only time would really tell, though. Maybe by the third task things would be getting better. Either with them, or with Hermione and Ginny…

"Boo!" Two hands went over his eyes. He yelped, fumbled for his Hufflepuff portkey, and then relaxed as he recognized the person who had startled him, leaning back into her grasp. "Luna!"

"You're so easy to sneak up on," Luna laughed.

At least he wasn't having any trouble with his friends, possible girlfriend, or secret plant projects. Somebody in their group ought to be the rock everyone else could come to for advice. He was going to have to get used to that, if said position was destined to always be filled by him. Or maybe Luna…

"I'm learning to cast a ghost octopus," Luna informed the group. "It can't open jars, though."

Yes, it was probably going to have to be him.

---

Taylor was not happy. Things were not back to normal between her and Sirius. But time marched on, heedless of her feelings. In a perfect world, there would have been months spent around Sirius rebuilding her trust in low-stakes situations – or deciding she couldn't trust him anymore – before anything else happened. He was an important part of her plans for the future and one of maybe two adults she knew well enough to rely on in any capacity. The air between them was clear, but only time would smooth over her nerves. Time, and his constant attempts to apologize in varied and creative ways.

This was not a perfect world, no matter how much better it was than her home world, and she didn't have months. The third task of the Triwizard Tournament came far too quickly, arriving on the heels of struggling fruitlessly to find the one person she knew for sure was her enemy.

Barty Crouch Junior had gone to ground, and he wasn't going to pop up in a newspaper article like Pettigrew had. The seedy underworld of Knockturn Alley knew nothing of his whereabouts. There was no talk of Death Eater activity beyond that of speculation from the outside. In the higher but no less seedy rungs of society, Sirius reported stonewalling and some genuine uncertainty. They knew nothing concrete, and that had not changed, not even as the end of the Triwizard Tournament drew near. If a former terrorist was going to get back to his roots, that would be where he did it.

She might not completely trust Sirius. She might not know whether Barty was planning something at all. She might not be particularly interested in watching the third task. But she still met up with Sirius, allowed herself to be side-along Apparated to outside Hogwarts' gates on the day of the tournament. They had a job to do. Lingering distrust had no place in the face of a common enemy.

Moody met them at the gates of Hogwarts at dawn, hours before the event was scheduled to start. "What was the first thing you ever said to me?" he demanded of Taylor.

"It was…" She didn't remember everything she had ever said, but she thought she knew what she had said in that particular instance. "You had better not be looking under my robes with that magical eye of yours," she answered. Moody was betting on her imposter not having bothered learning about such an unimportant thing. It was a safe bet, really. He could ask about any tiny detail, and Barty couldn't dig up everything that had ever happened between them with any number of interrogations. Safety in obscurity.

"Right," he said. "Black, how many times did I curse your robes during Order meetings?"

"How many meetings were there?" Sirius mused. "At least three times for each one. How do we know you're Moody? What did you say when James kicked your chair over before you sat down that one time?"

"Black, ask something the real person stands a chance of remembering," Moody admonished. "I told him to keep his feet to himself or I would replace them with pegs like mine."

"Right, good, that shite's out of the way," Sirius said. "Let's get down to business."

Moody took them to the stands, which had been set up in front of the third task's hedge maze. Taylor knew of the maze, and had ever since they blocked off the Quidditch pitch to make it; Ginny in particular had bemoaned the loss of their best practice place for their pickup Quidditch team.

"Nasty creatures are gonna be loaded into here in an hour," Moody told them. "The outside walls of the maze are spelled nigh-indestructible, and there's a second ward around the stands that will go up at the first sign of danger."

He gave them a brief tour of the maze's interior, which was relatively simple. The maze itself was meant as a delaying factor and a way of ensuring that champions would encounter each other as they backtracked and took different paths. The real danger would come from the creatures and the other champions.

Outside the maze, there was a small stand for where the trophy and prize money would be awarded by the Minister himself. The trophy wasn't there yet; the Minister and his aides weren't due for another two hours.

"I swept the stands, they're clean as of half an hour ago," Moody told them. "There'll be an Auror team watching for tampering here specifically, because Merlin forbid Fudge be in any danger, but that's all the Auror backup I'm allowed."

"One personal team of Aurors?" Sirius shook his head. "It's like they want this to go tits-up."

"Ostriches make bad leaders," Moody growled. "Spectators will come in by the front gate, and I will be there checking each and every one of them with this." He tapped a finger on his magic eye. The fingernail clicked unpleasantly on the hard surface. "You two, I want watching. Anyone comes in from any other direction, check them. I don't give a shit if it's Dumbledore himself, you find an excuse to bare their forearm and search them for flasks of liquid of any kind. Black, you still know the smell of Polyjuice?"

"We both do," Sirius said.

"Good," Moody grunted. "You see anything suspicious, stun first and then come get me. Stun any blighter who tries to take your perp away from you, too. I don't care if you get into a spell shootout with the Aurors, I can smooth that over when I get to you, just keep anyone from taking him away. I'm gonna have words with Barty if we get him."

And so they did. The tournament grounds quickly became a bustling hive of activity, with animal handlers, Ministry officials, and various school-children gawkers getting underfoot. Through it all, Taylor swept most of those arriving with her insects without them noticing, and directed Sirius to personally search the rest, giving the appearance of random checks while in reality checking everyone.

Sirius worked well under her direction, going where indicated and often giving personal spins to his approach to convince recalcitrant officials or annoyed handlers to stop and let him check them, despite him not wearing Auror robes or otherwise bearing any official proof of authority. He wielded his name as Lord Black on some, while dropping the pretense and leveling with others, and for others still leaning on his status as a veteran of the last war, all with just enough charm that it didn't seem consciously manipulative. It wasn't manipulation, she was pretty sure. He just knew how to relate to people.

She wanted to go back to trusting him absolutely. It was a bit of a surprise to realize that she ever had trusted him like that; there were precious few in her life who could claim they had her absolute trust for any length of time at all. Fewer still who might feasibly still be alive in some corner of the multiverse. He had, objectively speaking, done nothing to earn that level of trust.

Nothing except working for the same goals, trusting her, and always offering a friendly ear or insightful explanation or bawdy joke, as needed. Opening his home to her, his library, his resources. Teaching her, siding with her against the world. Now he even knew about her past, in vague details, and had apologized for doing what he had to do to be sure of her. He was still apologizing, every other day.

She had ample time to contemplate Sirius in all his contradictory glory, because they found nothing suspicious in the hours leading up to the third task. Many wizards and witches carried liquids of various kinds on them, and often Taylor had to bug them until they opened their flasks for a drink, but none of their drinks smelled of what she now knew as Polyjuice, and all who arrived stayed long enough that she knew they could not be disguised that way. She checked for glamors too, running gnats into their faces to check for discrepancies between the visual surface and the physical surface, and found exactly two, both covering up ugly warts on otherwise pristine witches. Checking their breath didn't work, as Polyjuice matched the subject's smell perfectly once it was working.

The stands filled with spectators, from the gates and from the castle. The maze filled with dangerous creatures of every imaginable description, even a Sphinx one flustered Ministry worker had tried to persuade to wear a shirt, or at least a bra, to no avail. Harry was up near the top of the student stands; she took the time to place a few wasps on his yellow school tie, just in case. He sat with his friends, ignoring the self-imposed house divide, and she noticed him holding Luna's hand on the sly.

That was something to watch. Her son in the throes of his first crush and possibly getting his first girlfriend were not milestones she intended to miss. After today, she could spend more time with him, and this summer…

Sirius' application for guardianship was in the final stages of approval, past the point where Dumbledore could have clandestinely interfered. Unless the meddling old man intended to make a dramatic gesture to spite someone he considered a trusted ally, Sirius would get custody just before the summer began.

Those things were for the future. For the moment, she bent her will toward finding Barty, wherever he might be hiding. The last few guests arrived and Moody stomped up from the gates, meaning there shouldn't be anyone else entering the area. The Minister's security team arrived and spread out to form a cordon around the Minister, who showed up shortly after. He came with Percy Weasley, who was carrying a hat, an umbrella, and the golden cup for him. Percy was devoid of liquid containers, and the Minister only had a flask of strong alcohol on him, so they were clean. Moody checked each of the Aurors himself.

"If Barty is here we missed him or he doesn't plan to stay for more than an hour," Sirius reported when he and Taylor met up with Moody under the stands. Taylor had already physically swept the area looking for suspicious packages and found nothing, so her worst fear of a bombing of the spectators didn't seem likely to come to pass.

"That'd be risky, but he might be feeling desperate," Moody agreed. "Can't rule it out. Keep an eye out for anyone going places they shouldn't. Taylor, sting me if you need my attention."

"She can just stick a fly up your nose…" Sirius contemplated Moody's wrecked face. "Okay, maybe she should use an ear, my point stands. No need to get stung."

"Get my attention with a bug," Moody huffed. "Sting for urgent, bug in the ear for important but not urgent, bug in the good eye if you caught him and don't need immediate assistance. Same system for Black."

"Well… screw you too?" Sirius said to Moody's departing back. "I don't want to get a bug in the eye for a 'total success' signal."

"Too bad, I don't want to juggle two different sets of signals," Taylor said. "I'm going to find a place to stand that keeps the stands and the maze in my range. You?"

"I'll stick myself somewhere up at the back of the visitor stands, so I can look down at the people watching," Sirius suggested. "Moody will be near Fudge, no doubt. We can cover our bases that way."

"Good." She left Sirius to find a place where the entirety of the maze was within her reach. It was a big maze, but not that big, so she had some leeway. She managed to get all of the maze, the student and adult seating areas, and Fudge's little platform all by standing behind his platform near Percy Weasley.

"Who are you?" Weasley demanded. If his nose upturned any further in condescension it would make him look like a spindly pig.

"Security," she said blandly.

"Don't touch the prize money," he warned. He then proceeded to set a literal bag of galleons behind Fudge's podium and wander off towards the student stands, proving himself either immensely trusting or extremely careless. Sure, she was in plain sight of three of the Aurors, but nobody knew who she was beyond 'Moody's personal security' and she could just take the money and walk away. A thousand galleons was, as far as she could tell, a life-changing amount of money. He was definitely an idiot.

Such uncharitable thoughts occupied Taylor while Ludo Bagman introduced the judges, the champions, and the third task, hyping it up with completely unnecessary embellishments, and then finally got around to explaining the standings and what those first two tasks actually meant in this, last task to decide the ultimate winner.

"Each point is a minute lead," Bagman explained. "First place goes in, then second place waits the point difference between them in minutes before following, and so on. In the first task, Champion Diggory scored eighteen points, Champion Delacour scored twenty-seven points, and Champion Krum scored a perfect thirty points."

The champions, who were waiting by the single entrance to the maze, shifted on their feet impatiently as Bagman continued to draw out the introduction.

"In the second task, Champion Diggory stormed ahead with twenty-five points," Bagman continued. "Champion Delacour scored nine points, and Champion Krum scored twenty-one points. This takes us to their combined scores–"

Which Taylor had already worked out in her head. She eyed Weasley as he sat down in the front row of the student stands and transfigured his robes to look like Hogwarts robes but with more Gryffindor gold and red. Someone wanted to relive his not-so-distant glory days, though not so badly that he had sought out his younger brothers.

"Champion Krum is in the lead with fifty-one points going into the final task!" Bagman announced. "Champion Diggory is right behind him with forty-three points, and Champion Delacour brings up a distant third at just thirty-six points. The other champions will be hard-pressed to catch up with Krum, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion!"

Taylor thought he would say that even if it was obviously a foregone conclusion; people didn't come out to watch and cheer for an inevitability. Then again, she had heard things about the Chudley Cannons that said otherwise…

Moody was over with the judges, working on the scrying bowl. Clouds of mist burst from it just as Bagman finished his score recap, spreading out to form three large clouds, one showing each of the champions.

"No map this time," Bagman said, "so that nobody can give our Champions a hint. Somewhere in the maze there is a cup. First to take the cup wins the tournament!"

Krum set off into the maze, and Bagman put up a big timer to show how long until Cedric could go, but Taylor paid little attention to either of them. She watched the crowd, the Minister, the animal handlers waiting out of sight in case something went wrong, Hagrid a veritable giant among them.

She watched everyone, waiting for someone to do something unusual. If Barty was here, he would have a reason for being here, one worth risking his freedom for. One that involved or at least allowed for sabotage of the second task, unless that was unrelated.

What would a presumed-dead terrorist want with the third task? Why would he care?

To sow terror was the obvious answer. The attack on the second task supported that, to a degree. But why terror based on the performance of the Champions? Was that a crime of opportunity, or the intended outcome? He had wanted her wand but might not now, and his old master was dead and gone. If he was here, what might he intend to get out of it?

It was possible nothing would happen, but Taylor hadn't come here under the assumption that it would be unnecessary. Assuming someone intended to do something…

Cedric went into the maze, and immediately began transfiguring and enchanting several different items, to much anticipation from the crowd. He would be fine.

Percy Weasley stood and started up the stands, headed for his little sister.

Taylor remembered a stuck-up older brother in and out of the Burrow all summer, droning on about cauldrons and being the very image of a proper, anal-retentive government employee in training. She remembered him interacting with Ginny in Hogsmeade, and how Ginny had shrugged off what seemed to be unusual behavior from him. She remembered that he had been there for the second task, present during the choosing of hostages, agreeing with Fudge in pushing for Harry to be a hostage. She remembered him leaving a small fortune right in front of her to go sit with the students, just a few minutes ago.

It didn't add up, and Ginny was sitting in the same row as Harry, between him and Hermione. Ginny wasn't his reason for going up at all, was she?

She stung Moody on the shoulder and Sirius on the arm, and circled around behind the Minister and Bagman to get to the stands without walking right in front of everyone. Percy was moving slowly, picking his way past a contingent of belligerent Slytherins, and he was momentarily stalled when everyone stood to cheer for Cedric banishing a Boggart with a whip of white mist, bypassing the traditional countercurse in favor of effectively aimed brute force.

Fleur entered the maze. At the same time, Taylor and Sirius reached the bottom of the student stands and started up, one on either side. Moody carefully aimed his wand at her from by the maze, silently offering fire support if she could make a target clear.

Percy Weasley reached the row with Harry and Ginny, but they were in the middle. He went one row further up and began stepping over knees and avoiding the backs of heads as he worked towards the center.

Fleur Delacour faced off with the Sphinx. The Sphinx said something about inconsiderate Enlishmen, and Fleur stopped to commiserate with her. The Sphinx let her by without even asking a riddle.

Krum encountered Cedric in an intersection, the former backtracking from a dead end. They exchanged spells, dodging to either side of the hedges to fire at each other from cover, for the plants had proved nigh-invincible to all of the magic the champions leveled against it.

Taylor reached the row Percy Weasley was sidling down. Sirius came up at the other end. Percy saw him.

Percy raised his wand, pointing it at Harry–

The Hufflepuff whose knees he was standing over shoved him to the side and demanded to know why he was blocking her view.

Taylor and Sirius both cast. Percy flopped over as dual stunning spells hit him, collapsing over the annoyed girl's knees and knocking his head on the boy sitting next to her.

It did not feel like this was over. Not by a long shot.

---

Sirius dragged the Weasley-imposter by the shoulders out of the stands, apologizing to the students who had to lean out of his way. "The prat was trying to prank his sister, nothing to see here," he lied. "Just stopping him from making a scene, can't have him ruining the third task– Look, that Sphinx's knockers are out!"

Such distractions served him well, aside from the one Ravenclaw girl who hexed him when he tried that one within hearing distance, and he met Taylor, Harry, Ginny, Hermione, Neville, Luna and Moody at the foot of the stands with his unconscious captive. Moody immediately moved them under the stands and out of sight.

"Why'd you bring the kids?" he demanded of Taylor, who was doing her thing. The thing where she was somehow paying complete attention to them all while also controlling hundreds of bugs all over her person, like she was ready to attack in an instant if the Weasley-imposter woke up and made a break for it.

"She didn't, we want to know what's going on," Hermione said. Ginny and Neville nodded, and Luna smiled guilelessly at Moody. Harry looked to his mother, who shrugged her shoulders.

"This ain't Percy Weasley," Moody declared, poking the stunned redhead with his wand. "I assume."

"He wasn't acting like him, and he was about to get behind Harry with his wand out," Taylor confirmed. "Polyjuice?"

"Or Imperius," Moody agreed. "Not the actions of an innocent man…" he began pawing through Weasley-imposter's robes. "Got it." Moody used the folds of Percy's robes to flick a gnarled twig up out of a sewn-on interior pocket. "Portkey. Keyed… With the overrides to have it work like the security portkeys. Destination… Unknown."

"That's his getaway plan," Sirius said. "Should we follow it?" They could figure out what Barty intended to do once he had Harry, maybe.

"We ought to follow," Moody agreed. "One problem. It's keyed. Nifty spellwork… Will only trigger if Harry is touching it."

"Can it take more than just him?" Taylor asked.

"Aye, five's the limit on this kind of portkey," Moody said. "We don't have a return portkey, though, and I'm not taking the target into the trap. I can maybe break the enchantments, given time–"

"I have a portkey," Harry suggested. Moody glared disbelievingly down at him, and he quickly elaborated. "Every Hufflepuff does, we made them for safety. It goes to Saint Mungo's."

"Good thinking," Moody said gruffly. "Right. This one can take up to four people if I fiddle with the limiting enchantments. Taylor, Me, Black, Harry. The moment we get there Harry uses his own portkey. We three investigate. It won't be warded against portkeys in or out, it needs to let this one through. No danger for Harry, we get to where we need to be."

"We can–" Ginny began.

"You lot can do stunners?" Moody interrupted. The kids all said so, with various levels of disgruntlement. "Good. I need you here. Guard the suspect, here. Barty or Weasley, whichever he might be, don't let up for an instant. If he twitches, hit him again. If someone tries to intervene, tell 'em he's polyjuiced and I left you to keep him in custody. If he turns back into Barty after a half-hour, hide his face and don't tell the Aurors, they've got orders to cover his existence up and I'm not done with him. Don't let anyone, even the Minister, near him. Got it?"

Sirius could almost see the internal battles being waged in their heads; the desire to go on the adventure facing off against the desire to help and be useful. They were an interesting lot; he genuinely didn't know which they would go for. If it were him and the other Marauders back in their day, they'd never settle for being left behind.

"Go," Hermione said. Ginny looked set to argue, but she backed down. Neville pointed his wand at Possibly-Percy and hit him with a Stupefy, "just in case."

"Good." Moody nodded at Neville. "Alright, we go in fast and we go in hard. Harry, wait three seconds and then take your portkey back, and be careful not to bring anyone else with you. Ready, everyone grab on, kid last!'

"One moment." Taylor put her wand in the air.

"We're burning daylight," Moody growled, but he quieted when the buzzing grew too loud to miss.

Tens of thousands of bugs converged on Taylor, coming from the grass, the sky, and the stands above. They burrowed under her robes, grouped up on her back, piled under her hair, and even filled out her robe's empty arm after she detached her false arm and let it fall to the ground.

"Teleporting into a hostile environment is no time for half-measures," Taylor told them.

Sirius hoped she realized that Moody was never going to leave her alone now. He would badger and press her until she gave up whatever eldritch spell she was using for insect control. That many bugs, that coordinated… She wasn't even worried they would sting her!

"That's awesome," Neville whispered. "Can you breed more bees?"

"She has enough bees," Hermione whispered back.

"You can never have enough bees," Ginny said. "If they only sting your enemies."

"I was thinking for pollination," Neville admitted.

"Right," Moody grunted, once the shock had worn off. "Try to keep those aimed away from friendlies. Hold tight and react fast, now! If he's got co-conspirators they shouldn't be expecting enemies to come in, but they are expecting a bewildered Hufflepuff, so they'll be on guard."

The chosen four put their hands in, grabbing the portkey twig. The moment Harry's hand made contact, Sirius felt the naval-hook sensation of portkey travel.

It was gloomy and dark where they landed, a large enclosed space made of well-polished stone. Sirius held his wand in front of him and pivoted, putting his back to their group as he looked around. He saw vaulted ceilings, gray stone, elaborate torches on the walls, a cauldron over simmering coals, and a floor of writhing black shadows from wall to wall–

"Incendio!" he yelled, flinging a blast of fire at the hundreds of black snakes coming for them. Dozens died, and dozens more avoided the fire, and his next two frantic casts. Then they were on him, and the rest of the group.

Fangs bit into his legs, his robes, his shoes. He kicked and cast a flame-freezing charm on himself, then doused his front with fire, scorching them off. Insects buzzed around him and the others – he had his back to someone, probably Taylor – and stung snakes, and his flames helped, Moody was yelling something, there were so many of them! He didn't know a spell better suited to mass snake-killing than incendio, but it wasn't enough–

He heard an especially loud, strident hiss from behind him. The snakes veered off, a bloodied and burnt tide of scale and fang breaking around their defensive circle like the tide.

Something else hissed, from elsewhere in the room, and the fight kicked back into gear. Sirius made good use of the momentary respite, conjuring a bucket of oil and tossing it into the writhing mass as it surged forward, then burning that along with the snakes themselves.

The scent of burnt meat invaded his nostrils, but they kept coming until the closer hiss sounded again. Then another hiss, and it started again. The hisses came faster, back and forth, and Sirius turned to see Harry was one of the two hissing. Taylor was missing, and Moody had a massive dead snake sticking off his shoulder like a shred of mostly-destroyed cape.

Sirius took a step back and ripped the snake off of Moody, seizing it by the jaw and prying its lengthy fangs out of his shoulder. "Where's Taylor?" he demanded, in between the stop and start attacks from the horde of legless monsters.

"Buggered if I – don't throw it away, need the fangs!" Moody gasped, snatching the dead snake from Sirius' grasp. "Venom, need antivenom."

Harry's hissing was providing them a partial respite, and Sirius fully intended to use it to find Taylor. He looked around in between Incendios, gaining an idea of what else was around the room. There were runes carved into the walls, runes of protection and deflection, and the door was sealed with blobs of iron instead of locks. He knew that setup, there would be no getting out by the door. They had portkeyed into a partially-sealed ritual room. Harry might still be able to go, Moody's logic held up, but that would be the only way out. The room was bare save for snake carcasses, still-living snakes, the boiling cauldron, and a freckled pale body tied up in the corner. Percy Weasley.

Taylor shifted into view, grimacing as she changed back from a snake right at the cauldron. She reached in, jabbing her wand downward. "Call them off!" she yelled at the contents of the cauldron.

The hiss Harry was countering, which Sirius now realized was coming from the cauldron, cut off. Harry hissed once more, and the snakes retreated, still numbering in the hundreds despite the mass slaughter.

"Bugger me," Moody grunted. "That was close. Boy, get out of here!"

"Can't, he'll hiss again and none of you speak Parseltongue to tell them off," Harry argued.

"He?" Sirius looked to Taylor, who was staring into the cauldron.

"This… thing," she said. "What is it?"

"I am Lord Voldemort!" a shrill voice shrieked from the cauldron.

Sirius shared an incredulous look with Moody. Moody took point as the three of them approached the cauldron, stepping around and over dozens of momentarily docile snakes.

What lay inside, submerged in a soup of unidentifiable sludge, was an unnatural baby-like creature, something straight from the how-to section of a beginner book on necromancy. A baby-thing that was no baby, though if he knew his dark magic it might have started out as one. It was a human homunculus, and a sickly one inundated with even more dark magic than needed for its creation.

One with Voldemort's red eyes and high voice.

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?" Taylor asked. Her wand poked the thing in the forehead. She sounded utterly unimpressed, though that might have been because she had no personal experience with the thing in the cauldron or the one it claimed to be.

"I can never die," the homunculus declared. "I will return, and you will aid me or you will suffer for opposing me!"

"You're the who attacked the Potters and tried to kill their son?" Taylor asked.

"Yes!" the homunculus said. "Fear–"

"Reducto."

Sirius shielded his face, but he still got potion and homunculus blend all over himself as it exploded out of the cauldron.

"Stay dead this time," Taylor said.

---

The glee Taylor's power felt was completely out of line with the disgusting blend of potion and evil baby-body dark lord, but Taylor understood why. Thanks to Sirius and his veritaserum interrogation, she knew her power wanted her to live forever, and here was a dark lord claiming he was unkillable thanks to magic. It was a lead, though she was going to put her foot down if immortality had to be anything like the existence she had just ended.

The four of them stood around the cauldron, in various states of soaked and covered in chunky bits, shocked by her sudden, explosive decision.

She didn't regret it. She didn't kill often – Winky the house elf was her only confirmed kill in this world – but Voldemort was the obvious exception, akin to this world's Hitler except this world had a real Hitler and another dark lord who was more obviously his magical equivalent. He had tried to kill Harry once, had arranged to kidnap him today, and was a terrorist responsible for hundreds of deaths. Blowing him to pieces before he could do anything was the right move.

"That's going to make the paperwork a bitch," Moody remarked.

Sirius wiped potion from his face. His hands shook, and then he fell.

"Sirius!" Harry cried out, crouching beside him. Moody went to his other side and put a wand to his chest, muttering the beginning of a diagnostic charm–

Taylor saw it, but she didn't have a clear shot. Sirius pointed his wand at Moody, opened his eyes, and they were red. "Reducto!" Sirius shouted.

Moody's body slammed into the floor, defended from fatal harm by his charmed robes, but Sirius was upon him in an instant, blocking her first three spells with his free hand and countering Moody's retaliation with his wand, engaging in a lightning-fast flurry of spells that ended with a shouted "Avada Kedavra" that sapped the life from Moody with an evil green pulse.

This wasn't Sirius.

Taylor set her wasps – the precious few she had left after fighting the snakes amidst all the fire – on him, but he jolted away, his limbs moving unnaturally, and threw three wandless, wordless bolts of spellfire at her, forcing her to dive behind the cauldron. Her wasps struck at his eyes as Harry scrambled away, but he muttered something and a familiar shimmering shield burst out of his robes, denying her bugs purchase on his skin.

"I cannot die!" Voldemort yelled as kicked the cauldron over on top of her. She threw herself out of the way and behind a chunky pile of snake bodies, then kept moving because a single blasting curse would turn her cover into soupy mush. "I will not die!" he yelled as she moved. "You have guaranteed your deaths!" He hissed, and the living snakes all reared up, but Harry hissed right back at him and they turned on each other, killing their brethren.

"Ah," Voldemort said, allowing the snakes to continue killing each other, though he could have hissed to stop it. His red eyes focused on Harry. "Potter. I wondered if there was anything to it. Let us see if you are my equal, after all."

Harry shouted something, waving his wand in a complex motion, but a crackling bolt of red lightning drove him behind the toppled cauldron before he could finish casting. Sirius – but it was really Voldemort – was on him in a second, moving unnaturally quickly, pulling him out by the robes.

Harry grabbed at Sirius' arm, clawing ineffectually at skin and white magic shield alike. Taylor hit Sirius in the back with a stunner. It deflected off the white shield, but the physical impact spun him around and Harry got his wand up to accio a chunk of burnt snake into the back of his head.

The snake skull bounced off another skin-level shield of white light, and Voldemort threw Harry into a pile of still-smoldering snake corpses.

Taylor ran out from behind her meager snake-body cover, her wand waving as she cast four explosive hexes in a row, relying more on their physical impact than any hope of them actually breaking through to harm him. Voldemort piloted Sirius' body with a fast but jerky stiffness, returning with two spells, both sizzling with dark energy that she knew she could only shield, only dodge.

"No witch can outmatch me," he yelled, even as she continued to dodge and run. Fighting close-up, her go-to strategy for dealing with wizards, was worthless if his shield deflected her fists as well as they did her bugs, her spells, and Harry's hands. Magic might break through, powerful magic, but she had the repertoire of a first-year with a learning disability and a knack for charms over their year level, not anything sufficiently dark and powerful.

Voldemort, even in another person's body, had no such problem. He sent a steady stream of sizzling, unrecognizable curses at her, half of them exploding on impact with the ground or the walls and the other half even more ominously blinking away to no apparent effect, so esoteric they must have targeted living things specifically. She exploited her insect-facilitated spatial awareness for all it was worth, dodging before his hands had even finished waving his wand, but the wandless spells he mixed in had no such tell and she avoided those by the skin of her teeth, each one easily capable of tripping her up and killing her in some no doubt gruesome way.

Harry sprinted towards the door while Voldemort was distracted by her. She hoped he was trying to escape, but she knew he wasn't. The only exit he had was his portkey, which he could use at any time, but wasn't. Damn his bravery, she wanted him out of here!

There was movement over by Moody's body, and Taylor noticed Percy Weasley taking Moody's wand, having been freed by the bugs she set to gnawing at his bonds. She dodged a pitch-black spell that howled like the wind, sent a stream of water at Voldemort to block his view, and went on the offensive, casting stunners as fast as she could wave her wand, then faster still as she gave up saying the incantation or moving her wand. Her head throbbed in time with the ever-increasing pace of magic.

Voldemort batted her stunners away like the inconsequential pests they were, only momentarily stymied. Percy Weasley raised his borrowed wand behind the dark lord's back. Harry began casting again, the same overly long incantation he had tried to cast to begin with. Taylor set her bugs in Voldemort's eyes and ears, still hindering his senses even if they couldn't reach his flesh to bite and burrow. She switched to cutting hexes and then explosive hexes, steadily advancing, dodging spells by mere inches with the forewarning and spatial awareness her power granted, pushing, unyielding–

Voldemort snarled, whipped his wand down, and vanished in a crack of displaced air. Harry's spell and Percy Weasley's spell soared through the empty air.

The wards didn't block portkeys or apparition.

Voldemort snapped back into existence behind her.

She turned. Too slow. Too late.

Red-hot pain erupted as a spell connected with her good shoulder, driving her to the ground. She lifted her arm to wield her wand, but there was no arm, no wand. It was on the ground beside her, and her stump – her new stump, even higher up than the other – was gushing blood.

That didn't stop her. The wand had only ever been a crutch. A painkiller.

She knelt, listening to Voldemort's eerily familiar laughter driven through Sirius' body, and drove her knees, lurching towards him and willing herself to shift at the same time, not into the black adder, into something much bigger, much more dangerous.

A boa constrictor struck at Voldemort, writhing around a reflexive blasting curse to wind around his midsection, pinning his arms down. Taylor pummeled his body with wordless, wandless stunners, her headache driving to a fever pitch, rising more rapidly than ever before. The white light shields burned her scales, more as she constricted, Voldemort struggled against her pinning grip and he hissed demands that she cease, yield, but the shields were faltering, shattering with bursts of light, and she found flesh beneath to crush.

Sirius' flesh. His body.

She continued attempting to wandlessly stun him even as she struggled to constrict, her crippling headache well past migraine territory and verging on physically disabling. She didn't want to kill him, not when he was Sirius, but if she had to–

The choice was taken from her when Voldemort maneuvered his wand to her midsection and hit her with something. Something more painful than anything she had ever felt, so painful she let go instead of constricting like shocks were supposed to do, so painful she didn't even feel it when he kicked her away from himself. The pain was all-consuming.

It let up, leaving her snake body twitching raggedly.

He cast a charm on her, one she thought might be meant to force animagi back to their human form. It didn't work, but she shifted back anyway, the few shreds of rational thought left to her insisting that if she was to surprise him again, he mustn't know she wasn't actually an animagus at all.

She regretted it when he hit her with the same immensely painful curse a second time, adding to the agony of having just lost another arm. She convulsed, choking out screams and just plain choking, writhing in the dirt. It lasted forever, an eternity of agony. She hadn't felt such pain… ever. Definitely not since Bakuda's bomb damaged her nerves. Nothing came close.

It ended, leaving her limp on the ground, armless and unarmed, physically incapable of even sitting up. Her eye, the one with the floaters, wasn't working. Darkness covered one half of her vision, a welcome partial respite from reality.

Unseen hands forced her up, tilted her chin back and pulled her eyelids open to meet the gaze of a Sirius with red eyes and an evil smirk. Behind him, Harry and Percy Weasley struggled with their own invisible bonds, petrified from the neck down. Her arm lay on the ground behind her, morbidly intact up to just below the shoulder. Her bugs, the few she had left, littered the battlefield, worthless at the moment against an enemy who had made himself impervious to them. Harry's wand, along with Moody's wand, lay on the ground behind Voldemort, both snapped in half. Voldemort had the only wand in the room besides her own, which he must have known from Barty was useless to everyone but her, and now her as well as she had no hands to use it with.

Her power was eerily silent, not a hint of conveyed emotion to tell her what it was thinking. This, she supposed, might be the sort of situation her power lived for. One that demanded creative problem-solving.

If so, her power was going to be severely disappointed, because she had nothing and no plans, not even an inkling of one. The pain of that curse – it had to be Crucio – made planning and strategizing impossible, even once it was lifted.

"You'll die long and hard for inconveniencing me," Voldemort told her, evil words spilling from Sirius' lips. "You do not even make for a challenging fight. Who are you, pitiful excuse for a witch?"

Not Skitter, that was for sure. She wouldn't lose. Not like this. Someone else.

"I'll take it from your mind," Voldemort hissed. He stared into her eyes, though she could only see him from one.

She remembered, almost involuntarily, introducing herself as Taylor, as Taylor Hebert, as Weaver, as Skitter, as Taylor, all from different times in her life. Voldemort's smug expression morphed to one of consternation, and then curiosity.

Other memories flicked to the forefront of her mind, drawn up like following threads, linked by common ideas. Weaver, her life in Boston, fighting, training, arguing, facing other enemies, powerful ones, inconsequential ones. He seized on the Slaughterhouse Nine, following the threads to her first fight with Mannequin as Skitter, a similarly hopeless-feeling struggle with a marginally better outcome.

He made her think of using her insects to carry supplies to herself to fight Mannequin, and in the back of her mind, under the current memory, an idea germinated. Her insects gathered by her discarded arm, working her wand out from its grip.

"What is all this?" he whispered, delving deeper into her life. Memories, moments, from all over, from different times, different fights, all presumably presented alongside thousands of impossible perspectives, as Dumbledore had seen. They flicked past, showing him horror after horror, scenes of slaughter, desperate struggles, Leviathan–

He recoiled, but then smiled, a deeply disturbing smile, and kept digging. His mental push was a hot poker in her mind, dragging things up from the depths without any care for their surroundings.

Without any care for their physical surroundings here in the ritual room, either. Her insects brought her wand to Harry. But that wasn't enough. He was petrified.

Her magic had never been hers, not really. It was lent, lent like her control of bugs. She provided the meaning to the possibility.

Voldemort found her memories of the Simurgh, of her power, and stopped there, lingering on the scream, the devastation, the untouched danger. On Taylor's knowledge that the Simurgh still existed, somewhere. Planning. Plotting. Always weaving.

She didn't know what he thought of that. Was the Simurgh a terror, even for him? It should be. Or was he foolish enough to see it as a weapon to be harnessed? Possibly as a force of nature to be avoided and weathered if it ever found him?

He looked upon monstrosities more dangerous than he could ever be, more terrifying. It was inevitable he followed that link to Scion.

Wasps and flies and cockroaches manipulated her wand with flawless coordination, waving it in a specific pattern. One last spell, one she had never practiced wordlessly, but driven by more need than ever before.

One failure. Pain.

Two failures. Pain, more this time.

Three failures. Her awareness trembled, wavering back and forth.

She tried a fourth time, and the moment she completed the wand movement her headache spiked, driving the last of her will from her with pure pain. She knew only the memories Voldemort wanted to peruse. The agony, the horror of Scion, the countless deaths. Fighting back. The pure power of hundreds of parahumans, coordinated perfectly. Coordinated by her and the thing that had taken control of her as she was broken, pushing in and influencing her. Her power.

A third presence made itself known in her mind even as he realized that there was a threat. Her power, finally showing itself, the monster that jealously guarded her mind. Voldemort was so deep. So exposed. Her power had learned from its mistake with Dumbledore.

The shards behind powers did not act directly.

Shards were not supposed to act directly.

But magic broke a lot of rules.

What was to come next…

It was out of her hands, and that scared her.

She had never dealt well with having no control over her fate.

"Possessionem Skurge!"

Voldemort and her power were driven from her mind with equal ferocity, the blowback of a magical detonation washing over her and driving everything but her own addled thoughts away in a wash of imposed willpower, a blast of purpose from a spell so powerful it worked on her mind even though it had not been cast at her.

Her power bounced back, only momentarily pushed away. Voldemort did not.

She saw, through one blurry eye and a hundred insect eyes, Sirius' body folding over in the midst of an explosive spell detonation, physically untouched but deprived of volition. Something unholy shrieked.

Harry slumped down, his hand burnt and bloody from the exploded splinters that remained of her wand. Blood streamed down his forehead, seeping from his scar and from the splinters that had cut his face.