Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters created by JK Rowling or anything else that might belong to her.

I can give it all back to you

-Meetings and Letters -

The mansion seemed oddly quiet once Harry had left. It was certainly less noisy and Lucinda decided to enjoy the silence as long as it lasted. She sat down in the library with a muggle book she was reading that she had been neglecting for some time now. She decided that wait was all she could do until she got a reply from Dumbeldore and she hoped that the reply would come fast because she was easily bored when waiting for something. Patience was not one of her virtues, but as long as she had something to do it was no problem.

She finished the book rather quickly, it hadn't been much left of it, so she went out in the garden to enjoy the unusually nice November weather. The sun was shining and you could actually hear some birds sing. It was simply a beautiful day. She wandered around for about an hour or so and then she stopped at the nearby lake and watched the sunbeams play on the rippled water that actually steamed from the heat. She didn't think of going back to the house until she saw the silhouette of Eric on the horizon, the Headmaster had already answered her letter and it hadn't been a whole day yet. She didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing.

When she came back inside Eric was sitting on the back of one of the chairs in the dining room, waiting for her. He tilted his head and gazed at her when she came in the room as to say that she was late. Lucinda just smiled at him and took the letter attached to his leg from him. She decided not to read the letter right there. She went up to her own room and sat herself in front of the fireplace. She was a bit surprised to see that Eric had followed her. Maybe Dumbeldore had told the bird to take a reply back to him. Maybe she could hope to meet with the Headmaster sometime soon. She smiled and opened the letter.

"Miss Evans I will grant your whish to have a meeting with Professor Snape, mister Malfoy and me. The meeting will be held here at Hogwarts in my office, the password will be "wine gums". Will the thenth of December 10 am be a fitting time? Let me know if not.

I have to admit that I do not entirely trust you, even with mister Potter's sincere reassurances that you are on our side. I have taken the freedom to consult Professor Snape in the matter and he too is sceptical, more than me I might add. You are a complete stranger to us and it is hard to trust anyone after the things we all have lived through the last months. However, these are matters that we will have to deal with when we meet.

If nothing else is said I will expect you on December 10th.

Albus Dumbeldore"

So, he didn't trust her. It's not like she had expected him to do so right away, but in the letter he had sounded so sceptical. She had thought it would all run smooth as a knife through butter with Harry reassuring she was one of the good guys. But, then again, he had no reason to trust her. She could have forced Harry to write his part of the letter for all he knew. She just had to prove she could be trusted when she met him. And then there was Snape. Although he was only mentioned in the letter she already disliked him. Who was he to say that she was untrustworthy? The letter hadn't even been to him and he didn't trust her. He had absolutely no reason to not trust her.

Lucinda could feel herself get worked up over almost nothing and decided she had to calm down. Although she was a bit worried about the meeting. If Snape was everything Harry said he was, she would have to fight herself not to get in a fight with him. If she could get that worked up by a letter with his opinions mentioned in it, she didn't even want to imagine how she would be affected by the real thing. Maybe the irritation towards Snape lay in the family. Harry disliked him, his father did (although Lucinda wasn't related to him), Lily had done so and for all Lucinda knew her father might have done so as well. She knew that theory wouldn't hold in the end, but she wanted a rational explanation for her sudden burst of anger, triggered by one single line in a letter. It wasn't like her to burst into flames like that. It was more like Harry.

That was one of the ways Harry and Lucinda was different, and probably the way that showed the most. Harry had the ever-wild Gryffindor temper, while Lucinda was more collected and calm. They were both very cunning, but Harry was more impulsive and even more impatient than his sister.

Either way, Lucinda wrote a quick reply to Dumbeldore saying she would be very pleased to meet them on December 10th. she sent it off with Eric and poured herself a glass of wine. All in all it had been a good day.

The time passed quickly up until the meeting with Dumbeldore. Lucinda was busy getting bedrooms for her future guests ready. She thought it would be best to count on that they would be staying in the mansion and it gave her something to do while she waited for the days to pass. On December ninth everything was ready for them to move in. Lucinda had been forced to open up some rooms that hadn't been used for years to fit the four guests in. It was really only three bedrooms that had been in use as long as she had lived in the mansion, her, Harry's and one for eventual guests. She thought it best to leave Harry's room alone. She didn't think he wanted any of the guests sleeping there, and it would be inconvenient if he came back without notice. So she had with the help of the house elves made three more rooms liveable and if she had to say it herself, she was quite pleased with how they had turned out. They all had large fireplaces with nice big sofas in front of them. The beds were big and soft and the colours of the rooms were mostly dark. All the room had bathrooms connected to them and she saw to that there were clean towels in every one of them. She had thought of decorating one of the rooms in Gryffindor colours and let chance decide which one of the four Slytherins got it. Then she decided that would be cruel and decorated all the rooms in the same manner.

The next morning around nine a clock she apparated outside Hogwarts and walked up to the castle. She was surprised by how much of it had been rebuilt in so short time, but she also noted that there were many months, or maybe even years of hard work left. She looked around for a bit and then she asked a stern looking lady that she imagined would be Professor McGonogal for the way to the Headmasters office. She was shown to a partially finished tower with a smug looking gargoyle in front of the entrance to it. The gargoyle asked for the password and Lucinda said, "wine gums" just as the letter had said and it let her in. she couldn't quite make out the expression of the woman she thought to be McGonogal when she entered the tower. It was a mixture of suspicion, curiosity and something else, maybe recognition, although that couldn't have been it.

There was a peculiar stair up to the door to the Headmasters office. Lucinda didn't have to move to get upwards, the stairs moved instead. She knocked on the door and waited for an answer. Instead the door flung up by itself. Lucinda took a deep breath and stepped inside the room.

The moment the dark haired girl stepped into the room Tom Riddle felt more awake, more alive than he had done since that fateful night he lost his powers. She seemed to radiate some sort of power and it affected him in the oddest of ways. He shouldn't be able to feel her power at all now that he was a squib, but he did and it made him wonder if he still had some of it left. Whatever this connection that he felt meant, he would find it out.

Lucinda war terribly nervous had she had to try hard not to show it as she stepped up to the Headmasters desk. The man smiled at her and it seemed sincere. She stuck out his had to him and presented herself.

"Lucinda Evans, pleased to finally meet you." She smiled and hoped her nervousness didn't show. The Headmaster pointed her to a seat in front to the desk and twinkled a bit.

"Pleased to meet you to, Lucinda. To your left is Professor Severus Snape and to your right is Mister Draco Malfoy." Lucinda greeted them both with a short nod. "We have agreed to meet with you to hear what you have to say. As you might understand we want to make sure that you are what you say you are and that we can trust you."

"Of course." Lucinda's mind raced, how was she going to convince them that her intentions were good. She had a feeling it wouldn't be easy. She couldn't tell them about Harry being her brother. They had decided that that would be a secret for as long as possible. Therefore she couldn't tell them about her mother and show them the picture of Lily holding her as a baby. The picture had convinced Harry to trust her a little bit, but she couldn't use it on the people she now had to convince. She looked around the room and noticed that there were two more people in the room, two young men. One blonde that looked strikingly a lot like Draco and one with black hair that could have been Harry's older brother if he had had one. Tom Riddle and Lucius Malfoy she realized.

She locked eyes with Tom and it felt like she knew him. She couldn't stop staring into those eyes that looked so much like hers and it was like she could almost feel what he felt, like she could do with Harry. What was going on? She could feel his confusion as well as her own and it wasn't until she felt a hand on her shoulder that she ripped her eyes away from Tom's.

"Miss Evans, are you all right?" She looked into the black eyes of Severus Snape. He actually looked a bit concerned. She must look very confused. She straightened her face and let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

"Yes, I'm fine. Why wasn't I told they would be here?" She asked. Draco answered.

"We couldn't leave them alone. Tom just keep trying to kill himself and my father isn't being all that better, and it is after all them that we are discussing, it isn't more than right that they are here."

"I see, well, I don't know where to start so why don't you ask any questions that you have and I will try to answer them the best I can." Lucinda hoped that she would be able to answer the questions at all. She wasn't that sure of what to expect and she had no idea of what to do if she failed to convince them. What would she say to Harry if she did? She just had to manage this without screwing up. She had to get the former dark wizards to the mansion.

Dumbeldore asked the first question.

"As I understand it, Harry wrote the letter to me together with you." Lucinda nodded. "How do you know him, he hasn't been able to spend much time outside school at any point besides the summers, which he spent with the Dursleys." Dumbeldore looked a bit stern, but above all curious.

"I came in contact with Harry during the last term of his seventh year. It was I who contacted him because I thought I would be able to help him in his mission. At first he didn't trust my intentions and was overall very suspicious, but I convinced him not to tell anyone about me and eventually we arranged a meeting on a Hogsmeade weekend. It was during that meeting that he started to trust me and when he left school he agreed to let me train him on the weekends, alongside the training he received from you." Lucinda tried to tell them everything as accurate as possible, without mentioning her true connection to Harry. It was hard, but she thought she did pretty well. She stopped talking and waited for the next question to come. She didn't want to seem too eager, that might give the impression that she was hiding something, but on the other hand, so would leaving too much out too. The next question came from Snape.

"What exactly was it you were teaching him that you think we couldn't?" His voice were very hostile and his expression even more so. He would be hard to win over. Lucinda had a feeling it couldn't be done through just words and that it would take much time. But he wasn't the person she had to convince the most. The Headmaster was.

"After years of training and research I specialize in the Dark Arts," Someone drew in a deep breath and the tension in the room heightened. "but more important in my opinion, in Ancient magic, an art form far too underestimated by modern wizards. I felt that he needed to know some of these things to succeed and I must say that I was right." She put on a small, satisfied smirk and looked Snape in the eyes. Draco fired the next question.

"Did you teach Potter the spell he used to.." He nodded towards Tom and Lucius.

"He actually found it himself one night in my library. I was asleep and to be honest with you, I had never heard of it before. We started researching it the morning after and within a week we were testing it on rats. Harry found that particular animal very fitting." She smirked. "Quite soon we moved on to a bit larger magical creatures, but we didn't have time to go any further before the first attack came." Lucinda sighed. "We could only hope that it would work, but when Harry stood there I knew he wouldn't fail. Such power.." She seemed to drift of into her memories, but in fact it was an act. She was fully aware of everything she was doing and she was now watching the other's reactions very closely. Dumbeldore sparkled and she took that as a good sign. The younger Malfoy looked very arrogant, but she could see that he was curious. Snape was hard to read. Lucinda had always thought of herself as a good judge of character and a good reader of people's expressions, but this man simply had no expression. She could think of no other way of describing him as cold, or blank.

"When did this training take place?" Asked Dumbeldore

"During the weekends. Once he had learned to apparate, Harry came to the Mansion on his spare time to study in the library or practice spells with me."

"Is that the same mansion that you and Harry would like to move these two?" Dumbeldore pointed towards Tom and Lucius.

"Yes it is."

"May I ask where it is located? I might be good to know if there is an emergency." He was asking about the Mansion. Lucinda gained some more hope. If he was asking about the Mansion, maybe he was considering letting Tom and Lucius live there.

"In the countryside northwest of London. It is quite far from any major city or village." She answered. "It is connected to the floo network and you can apparate there, but only to certain rooms. The others have anti apparition wards on them."

"You said before that you knew that Potter wouldn't fail when he was casting the spell. Were you here?" Draco asked.

"Yes, I was here during the final battle. I only watched, I didn't want to be involved too much. I stayed close to Harry all the time in case he would need my help."

"Are you saying that you were there the whole time and didn't do anything? Why, you certainly seem capable of both magic and interfering." That couldn't have come from anyone but Snape and Lucinda answered it in a challenging tone.

"You, as a Slytherin should know. It wasn't my battle and therefore I stayed out of it. I only got involved as much as I had to due to my loyalty to Harry except for one time. I helped a skinny boy with a toad escape from three Death Eaters. They were about to cast the killing curse on him when I sent them flying into the lake. He seemed so out of place in the battlefield that I had to do something." She saw recognition in Snape's eyes when she talked about Longbottom. Harry had told her about the hate/hate relationship between the teacher and the student and she had figured out that the boy she had saved from the Death Eaters must have been Neville.

"Why was it not your battle?" Dumbeldore asked. He now looked only curious and his eyes sparkled non-stop.

"Well, I don't, to begin with, consider myself either light or dark. I don't believe you can draw lines between good or bad. It is simply a matter of perception." To this Dumbeldore nodded in understanding and Snape looked a bit more interested in what she had to say. "I have never been involved in the wizarding world because I have never really lived in it. I don't see it as my business to interfere."

"You can't have grown up with muggles, not with the knowledge you say you have." Draco was perfectly right.

"No I didn't grow up with muggles, but I didn't grow up in the normal wizarding society either. Let's just say that there are schools with locations more secret than Durmstang's and wards stronger than Hogwart's." Lucinda was definitely not ready to talk about her past with these people. Harry knew most of it, but far from all. She just hoped they were going to accept her answer and move on to the next question.

Suddenly, and quite luckily for Lucinda, a loud cry from a crow reached their ears through an open window in the roof. Soon they could see a majestic bird coming closer and closer. It flew through the window and landed on the back of Lucinda's chair. It stretched out its leg and looked at Lucinda as if to tell her to take the letter attached to it. She took the letter and waited for the bird to fly away again. It just kept looking at her with intelligent eyes.

"Do you want me to reply now?" She asked the bird. It made an approving sound and Lucinda took it as a yes. She looked around the room at the others. They had grown very quiet. Her eyes once again locked with Tom and she could once again feel that they were somehow connected. She tore away her attention from him and opened the letter.

"Hey Lucinda,

Have you spoken to the Headmaster yet? How did it go? I hope everything's still all right.

I am not going to tell you where I am, in case anyone else reads this letter. I don't want to be found. I can, however, tell you that I am having the time of my life, even though I miss everyone terribly sometimes. Can you believe that I actually caught myself missing Professor Snape yesterday? Haha!

Well, I was just writing to see if everything was okay and to say that I miss you.

Be nice!

Yours forever,

Harry"

When she had read the letter she thought for a while and then she decided that the others should see it. That might help to convince them that she was trustworthy.

"It's from Harry." She said and handed over the letter to Dumbeldore. "It's to me, but I thought you might want to read it."

"Thank you dear, it seems our hero is doing quite well." Dumbeldore smiled for the first time and it was a genuine smile. He handed the letter back.

"Let me see it." Snape demanded. Lucinda handed the letter to him and studied the look on his face when he read it. She thought it looked a bit puzzled.

"Well, it seems like his intolerable handwriting and it seems genuine in contents too." Was he saying that he believed her? "Now, don't think that I trust you, but I believe you are telling the truth, even though you are hiding something." He was and Lucinda's mood got a big boost upwards. She asked Dumbeldore if she could have a piece of paper and a quill to write a reply. He put them in front of her on the desk, but just before she started writing he said:

"Don't you want to give Harry a proper reply to his questions?" Lucinda looked puzzled and he continued. "Maybe we should decide what to do before you reply to him."

"Yes, that is a good idea." She answered.

Dumbeldore asked Draco and Snape what they thought. Draco had nothing against moving, but Snape was reluctant to the idea. Eventually he gave in and agreed to move, but only after it had been decided that they could move back to the old safe house if anything suspicious occurred. Dumbeldore finally turned towards Tom and Lucius and asked them how they felt about it. Lucinda didn't think their answers would matter but it would be good to know what they thought.

Lucius answered first. He said that he didn't care as long as he didn't have to show himself in the wizarding world. He looked so small in his new younger form, yet he managed to keep that Malfoy-ish arrogant air around him.

Tom was quiet for quite some time. When everyone had given up on hearing his answer he raised his voice. It was very clear and youthful.

"This will be interesting." He said.

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This chapter took longer than the others. Sorry to keep you waiting. Please review or I will punish you all by sending rabid house elves to chase you all around the world. Mwahahahahaaa!!