Hermione was enjoying a lazy breakfast with her parents Sunday morning, her father reading the paper while Hermione watched the birds outside.

"They're further enhancing the ring of steel," her father sighed. "Not that I mind enhanced safety, but they're playing havoc with the traffic patterns."

"They just murdered those UVFs in Belfast," her mother objected. "The violence isn't stopping. This will help keep us safe."

Hermione blinked. "…sorry, what?"

Her parents glanced over at her.

"Right. You don't get much normal news up in your school, do you?" her father said. "Well. Last year, the IRA carried out the Bipshopsgate bombing, and this year they tried to attack Heathrow. The government's expanding surveillance in London to hopefully detect and prevent future terrorist attacks."

"Surveillance?" Hermione questioned. "Like what?"

"Mostly CCTVs," her mother said. "But there are some manned sentry posts now, too. The armed police are more security theater than actually effective, in my opinion. But it takes time to order, build, and set up hundreds of video cameras."

"…they're building a surveillance state?" Hermione asked slowly. "Where are they putting cameras?"

"Oh, all over," her mother shrugged. "Lots at high traffic areas. Airports, stations, that sort of thing. Places they anticipate terrorists would try to bomb." She looked at Hermione. "Why?"

"The entrance to Platform 9 ¾ is at King's Cross," Hermione said, her throat dry. "What's going to happen if they set up a camera right there?"

"Your government has some sort of task force set up to communicate with non-magic people, don't they?" her father asked. "They've probably discussed it, and the cameras probably don't function a couple days a year or something."

Hermione considered the chaos of the Wizengamot and the priorities of the Heads of Departments.

"What if they haven't?" Hermione asked, pleading. "What would the government do if it saw hundreds of people seemingly disappearing into a wall?"

Her parents paused.

"Launch an investigation," her father said. "Can't imagine they'd do anything else."

"You may have a point," her mother admitted. "If the local police aren't in the know about magic, it would probably raise some alarms." She nodded approvingly at Hermione. "You're right to be concerned. It's a topic to bring up your next session certainly."

"I'll have to," Hermione said, wincing. "I hate to distract them from the werewolves and the World Cup, but if we accidentally bring down the Statue of Secrecy on our heads, there will be a lot worse problems we'll have to handle."


Monday, two days after the party, a preliminary meeting of The Shadows was called. The coven was present, and Millie, Tracey, and Pansy were duly summoned.

"Back again already?" Pansy drawled. "Couldn't get enough of my charming company?"

Harry frowned. "We need to recruit non-Slytherins. Really."

Blaise laughed. "Good luck."

They assembled in the dining room around a large table. Hermione stuck another whiteboard to the wall, taking out a marker.

"Thank you all for coming," she said. "This commences the first official meeting of The Shadows."

"Wait!" Tracey objected. "I'm supposed to bring snacks to the meetings."

Hermione paused. "Err—"

"You can do that from now on," Susan assured Tracey. "Right now, this is an impromptu meeting. You can plan for the scheduled ones from now on."

Tracey relaxed back into her chair, reassured. Hermione paused, meeting Luna's eyes for a moment. Luna nodded, Hermione took a deep breath, and she turned back to her white board.

"If we are to become a formidable political group," she said, "we need to establish clear goals and a group identity. We need to decide who we are and what we stand for, so when we're challenged, we know what we care about and what we will do. We cannot just define ourselves by our enemies."

"Enemies?" Millie said, raising an eyebrow.

"Voldemort and Dumbledore," Harry explained.

Millie's eyebrow rose higher. "Didn't realize we were against Dumbledore."

"We're not against him, exactly," Harry winced. "We just… don't trust him. We're not with him, even if we're not against him."

"Let's clearly define the other players' goals, then," Pansy said. "If any of their goals conflict with one of ours, we'll know we have an enemy on our hands."

It was as good an idea as any. Hermione wrote at the top of the board Voldemort Goals on one side, and Dumbledore Goals on the other.

"Okay," she said. "Who knows what they want?"

"Become immortal for Voldemort," Harry said immediately. "That's always been his number one goal, hasn't it?"

"Take over magical Britain as well," Blaise added. "That's pretty high up there."

Hermione dutifully scrawled both onto the board.

"Dumbledore's primary goal is 'Stop Voldemort'," Susan said. "I'd add 'prevent takeover of the Ministry'. He was pretty keen on that last time."

"The Dark Lord wants to conduct a campaign of genocide against the Muggleborns," Pansy said. She glanced at Hermione. "I presume we're against that?"

"Of course," Hermione said, rolling her eyes.

"He also wants to control the education of children," Luna added. "He wants to train the next generation to think how he wants them to."

"Voldemort, or Dumbledore?" Pansy said cynically. "Dumbledore is doing a fairly good job of it as it is."

Hermione wrote 'control education' under Voldemort's column and shot Pansy a dark look.

"Dumbledore wants to find and destroy the horcruxes," Harry added. "That's pretty important, isn't it?"

Hermione sucked in her breath sharply.

"Are we talking openly about the horcruxes?" she asked, glancing around.

Susan looked anxious, and Blaise winced. Harry looked confused.

"I mean, we trust everyone here, right?" he said. "If they're going to be helping us, they have to know what all's going on."

Pansy looked startled.

"You trust us?" she asked Harry. "You trust me?"

Harry grinned.

"You most of all, really," he said, eyes alight. "You learned what happens when you cross Hermione, and you've never done it again. You've gone the full other direction and thrown in your lot with her."

Pansy considered this.

"…that's true," she said slowly. "I guess I didn't think of it like that before."

"So everyone here is part of the umbra, then," Susan concluded. She considered. "I think that's fair."

"So, then," Tracey said, eyes gleaming. "What's a horcrux?"

While Harry and Blaise explained what horcruxes were, to the horror of the three Slytherin girls, Hermione looked at the board, considering. There was likely to be a third party that wasn't her here, she realized – or at least at first.

"'Ministry goals'?" Susan questioned, watching her write. "You think they won't throw in their lot with Dumbledore and fight against Voldemort?"

"With the number of Dark wizards on the Wizengamot?" Hermione scoffed. "Absolutely not."

She quickly had a list of Ministry goals scrawled out as well:

· Maintain status quo
· Keep goblins and hedges suppressed
· Maintain order
· Suppress panic
· Maintain Statute of Secrecy

"So now our goals," Hermine mused. "What do we want?"

"To save the world," Harry called out immediately.

"What does that even mean?" Blaise wanted to know. "Save the world indeed. Save it from who?"

Hermione rolled her eyes as the boys bickered, but she listed it anyway.

"You seem to dislike unfairness," Susan suggested. "Something about that, maybe?"

Hermione considered.

"That's true," she said decisively. "I despise unfairness. We'll stand against it wherever we can."

She wrote on the board Everyone treated equally, fairly and stepped back.

"What else?" Pansy prompted. "What are you going to do if it comes to war?"

Hermione bit her lip, before writing Positive freedom for everyone on the board.

"I want everyone to be free to do what they want," she said. "Marry who they want, not marry. Have free time to explore their hobbies, not work to death in a factory to survive. I want people to be happy to be alive."

"Good luck with that," Blaise said, smirking. "There's many people who can't be happy unless they know others are unhappy."

"Then those are our enemies," Luna said simply. "And we fight against them."

Hermione was writing another one on the board as they bickered.

"'Control the narrative'?" Tracey asked, reading. "What's that mean?"

Hermione capped her marker.

"Remember with Sirius Black, how the Daily Prophet had everyone whipped up into a frenzy?" she said. "Every time they reported a sighting, people grew more and more alarmed. They put dementors at the school, thinking he was going after Harry. And then after his complaint to the Wizengamot, the Daily Prophet reported on that, and they controlled what people thought about it."

"That's why you're trying to buy the Prophet," Blaise said, realizing, and Hermione nodded.

"If we control the media, we control the narrative," Hermione said. "Then we decide on what the editorial policy should be, what does and doesn't get reported on, and what the public at large thinks."

"Smart," Pansy said. "Do we need to take over the Wizarding Wireless too?"

Hermione paused.

"Um. Maybe?" she asked. "Do people get their news from there?"

"Not right now," Pansy said, shrugging. "But it's another media avenue."

"Because anyone can broadcast a radio signal, it's not likely to help," Susan said. "I think in the last war, there was a 'Resistance Radio' that tried to broadcast what was going on to people. Dumbledore's team ran it."

"Okay. Big question, now," Harry said. "Do we want 'Stop Voldemort' as one of our goals?"

The group considered.

"His genocidal plans go directly against our goals," Millie said. "So even if 'stop Voldemort' isn't one of our goals, he's certainly our enemy, isn't it?"

"Agreed," Susan said firmly. "He is in no way our ally."

"In no way?" Harry asked slyly, giving Susan a pointed look. "Are you sure?"

Susan cottoned on immediately and shot Harry a dark look. Pansy looked intrigued, and Hermione hurried on.

"We can add 'collect remaining horcruxes' to ours, maybe," she said. "Finding those will help move Voldemort closer to being stopped, even if it's not directly opposing him."

"We're a bunch of teens," Blaise drawled. "I would hope we're not going to directly oppose evil wizards in the streets."

Tracey looked pale. "Agreed."

Hermione looked up at their list of goals. It seemed pretty good, really. They could always add more later.

"It seems right now the most direct things to work on would be controlling the media and finding horcruxes," Hermione said, tapping her lips. "Does that seem accurate?"

"You're halfway to owning the Prophet already," Blaise said. "That one's almost done."

"I have to set up an editorial board and figure out how it all works first," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. "It's not just ownership. I'd say we're only at about 25% complete with that one."

"How are we going to find horcruxes?" Pansy wanted to know. "I imagine we don't just go wandering around, hoping we come across pieces of very Dark magic on the ground."

"We'll worry about that later," Harry said firmly. "First, we have to figure out who else we should get to join."

Susan raised her eyebrows. "Do you have someone in mind?"

"Neville," Harry said immediately. "Ron… his family will probably throw their lot in with Dumbledore, if I had to guess. But Neville's family, last time… Neville has reason to not trust Dumbledore, I think. I think he'd want in on our side."

"Draco," said Luna.

"Do you really think we can trust him?" Blaise asked her, serious.

"Hermione already uprooted his entire world view," Luna pointed out. "Doing that without giving him a new direction to go in is cruel. I think he's fairly trustworthy now."

Blaise sighed. "Fine."

"Do we think Theo?" Tracey asked. She looked unsure. "His father is… well, very Dark. But do we know if Theo wants to be a Dark wizard when he grows up or what?"

There was a pause.

"I have no earthly idea," Millie admitted. "Theo keeps his cards close to his chest."

"He might be interested," Tracey said cautiously. "If he knew a third option was available, he might realize he wouldn't have to throw in with the Dark Lord."

Hermione considered.

"We'll meet back here in a week or so," she decided. "In that time, try to reach out to others and carefully poke around. If we can get a good group of people to help, maybe we can really get something done before school starts up again."

"Useful people?" Pansy asked pointedly. "Or any people?"

Hermione bit her lip.

"Just useful people for now. People we can stand," she admitted. "We can look for general foot soldiers later, once we're more established. But right now we need thinking and planning types, not people we'll have to corral."

"Got it." Pansy seemed smug.

"Do we bring them to the next meeting?" Tracey wanted to know. "Do we have an official joining ceremony yet? The Dark Lord has one for his followers."

Hermione laughed. "Let me see what I can come up with."