It took three days for it to filter down through the grapevine that Pettigrew had escaped. I hadn't put it together earlier but of course he had. Perhaps I should have paid a bit more attention to the story as Harry was telling it, then I would have noted the mention of 'Wormtail' and consciously realized he had escaped Ministry custody. Sometimes I'm an idiot. But once I'd put it together and heard of how he'd snuck onto the grounds to enchant the portkey I went on the warpath. If the ministry had warned us beforehand then we could have increased security. I could have found him through the wards instead of stalking Skeeter. My rage was nothing compared to Sirius' in this case. He up and punched the Minister in the face, which is how he ended up losing the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Due to the curse it was known that he couldn't stay for long but still, it had been nice to hope that the destruction of the Diadem would mean the breaking of that voodoo. He got to finish out the year but the Governors made it clear that he wasn't welcome back next year unless he was in the capacity of a Student's guardian.

I spent a week or so in the hospital wing, the first part with Harry. Once he left I was kept behind by Poppy for 'observation'. Students visited me, which was nice. Homework was also brought so that I could help them but I couldn't escape so I went with it. I ended up having to assist with essays for History of Magic that Binns had handed out. It was a relief when I was finally granted freedom, feeling better than I had in a long while. Apparently the extended rest had allowed me to recover better than the other times before...exactly as Poppy had been telling me it would.

The end of the year feast was grim. At least in this reality it was only because of the dark lord's return, rather than a memorial service for a student. I watched the proceedings with a blank face, examining the people in front of me for doubt. Most were unsure if Dumbles was to be believed. Some, namely a good number of Slytherins, looked torn. They didn't know what to think of this. On one hand some of their families were in a position to make a profit, or lose miserably yet again. On the other hand they could finally pay for their betrayal from last time. Halfway through the feast a young Ravenclaw had a breakdown and had to be escorted out by a Prefect. I poked my food viciously with a fork, only to pause when Sirius spoke up from my right.

"You know Mara, no one would blame you, if you went back to America now that all...this is going on."

I rolled my eyes, pointing my fork at him,

"Shut up and eat your pie, Canine. I'm not going anywhere."

He opened his mouth to say something else so I shoved a plate towards him.

"Pie."

There were eyes on us at the staff table, gauging my reaction to his question. I ignored them the best I could, going on with my meal and leaving at the next possible opportunity. I was only in my room for a minimum of five minutes before there was a knock at the door. I opened it with a wave of my hand, not bothering to drop any of the floating calculations. At this point speculation about Voldemort would make sense, I needn't bother about getting caught. The person at the door wasn't who I expected. Rather than Sirius, hell bent on convincing me to go home, it was Harry. He looked around the place suspiciously before stepping inside.

"You're not leaving?"

"Erm, no?"

"Sirius said he was going to try to convince you it was too dangerous."

I snorted in a very unladylike fashion, gesturing at the portrait of the Doctor.

"Did he ever tell you a story, any story, about an adventure we went on?"
Harry nodded, his eyes lighting up.

"But he never gave specifics, like where you were or who you were fighting."

I shrugged,

"Doesn't matter, what you should take away from that is that Voldemort doesn't scare me."

"You don't get it, he isn't human."

"In this case all monsters are human, Harry. I've seen things you wouldn't believe, lost things you could never understand. I know things, secrets that must never be told, knowledge that must never be spoken. Your villain doesn't really compare to some of it. So, no. I won't be running away. I'm going to stand and fight, right here beside you. Because like it or not, you are a teenager and the fate of the world doesn't actually rest on your shoulders, no matter what anyone might tell you, or how it might feel."

Ignoring the amused look the Doctor gave me for stealing his past words I beckoned forwards a few nonsense numbers and letters in languages Harry wouldn't understand.

"I've already started planning. Snakey isn't going to know what hit him. But the real problem right now is the Ministry. My influence, or rather that of my moles', doesn't go far enough to get anything done yet. I'm looking at maybe at least this coming Christmas, perhaps a bit later, before the whole thing is in the palm of my hand."

He looked at the numbers and letters with a look in his eyes that I understood immediately.

"I'm not going to leave you out of the loop."

His head snapped over to look at me, eyes wide. I sighed,

"Others tell you that you're a child, that you don't need to know what's going on, they keep secrets from you. And then they turn around and expect you to do something about it since you've had nothing but miraculous success so far. However, like it or not, you're involved. I said before that you're a child and you won't be fighting alone, or at all if I can help it, but you won't be left wandering cluelessly either."

There was a bit of hesitation before he pointed at the numbers floating in front of him.

"What's all this then?"

"Mostly the werewolf stuff and how I plan to use it politically. I feel horrible about it, but it'll get us places. Voldie used a potential 'cure' to get werewolves to his side, and I do beleive that will be the plan once again. Thing is, if we do it first…"

He gave me a nod of understanding, a sad expression on his face.

"I hate it. All of it. The politics, the lies, the fighting."

I gave a small half-smile.

"Me too kid, me too."

There was a knock on the doorframe and Sirius stuck his head inside, looking at the two of us quizzically.

"Am I interrupting something?"
When Harry didn't respond I piped up,

"Oh, only our nefarious planning on usurping your government using time travel, flamingos, and mad rabbits."

Harry nodded sagely,

"Indeed. Important stuff."

The ex-professor rolled his eyes at us, jerking his thumb out towards the hallway behind him.

"It's getting late, pup. Why don't you head back to the tower."

It wasn't phrased as a question and the kid picked up on that pretty quickly, scrambling out the door, waving to me on the way out and mouthing a quick 'thank you'. I gave him a thumbs up and a smile as he disappeared out the door before turning to his godfather.

I stared at the man until he finally sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

"How are we progressing on the serum?"

I smirked, enjoying my victory as I pulled up the information, walking him through the progress we'd made since including a potions master and an herbologist. The Doctor was practically bouncing with excitement, pointing out any bits he deemed 'cool'. The relationship between the Doctor and Sirius was a complicated thing. While they had different views on several things they were also both children at heart and terrifyingly competent when angered. It made a heartwarming scene, the two of them arguing magical concepts in my sitting room.

The summer started out mostly like the previous one. I cleaned everything religiously and then went to creating lesson plans. The school year had been a learning experience for me as well as the kids. This was the first year that I'd had to do different curriculums for each year level. Now I knew mostly what worked and what wasn't strictly a good idea. I apparently had too much free time what with not teaching any year lower than third and being a toss up between Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, and Divination anyway. I now had to teach an elective. I had at first, when reading the books/watching the movies, assumed that the above mentioned classes were the electives. I was wrong. 'Electives' here are classes that don't count towards OWL's or any other form of standardized testing, they're only any good for curiosity or looking good on a résumé. I now was being called on by the governors and the ministry to teach an 'elective' that focused solely on what muggles thought about magic throughout history. It was similar to history of magic, only, from the muggles point of view. How muggles perceived magic, and where they saw it in everyday life. My normal classes were history, plain and simple, completely as the muggles saw it. Now I was going to have to go into detail on witch hunts and muggle wiccans.

I was almost positive that it was supposed to counterbalance my other class. This one wouldn't look good for the muggles. They literally hunted down things out of the ordinary to throw them in rivers or set them on fire. Well, joke's on these people, I plan on showing at least one episode of Supernatural and teaching them about that version of stuff just to take up a semester. Hey, some consider fandom a 'cult'. Seriously though, salt circles and holy water were legit, I'd checked. I would also have to tell about Salem though, but they'd already heard of it in Charms when they learned that charm that made flames tickle. From what I'd seen the witch hunts were mostly a joke for actual trained witches, but that just makes it horrible looking, with muggles misplacing blame and murdering their own.

Either way I was pissy that the governors were making me teach more classes. I was also sort of pissy about my class being certified for OWL testing, but honestly it meant I was doing my job properly. Apparently there's an OWL and NEWT test for my subject but since it hasn't been taught at Hogwarts no one was getting the rating. It wasn't looked on well for most jobs around here anyway so it didn't really matter unless you wanted something to do with muggles. If that was the case then there were absolute bullshit Ministry courses that you could take and get a certificate. It was so uncommon that the Governors put off hiring someone at Hogwarts to teach it on the grounds that it wasn't exactly necessary and it would free up a bit of the budget. The only reason it was being taught now was because Dumbles pulled some strings and played the 'you fucked up her memory' card.

I was ranting about it to Molly one day when Arthur waltzed in from his muggle toy playground, brandishing some wires and looking thrilled when he saw me. From there things kind of spiraled until there was an explosion from the twins room. The three of us sat in silence for a second before Molly started shouting. She was halfway up the stairs when the fireplace flared green, signaling a floo call. She practically sprinted back down to take it, eventually stepping through to speak in person. Arthur and I exchanged confused looks before I decided I'd outstayed my welcome. The next day I received a letter that said the damage the twins did with that explosion was more extensive than they'd assumed at first and they weren't allowing visitors for the next while, staying with 'Muriel' while it was being fixed. I knew better. They'd moved to Grimmauld. The Order was officially back together, and I wasn't invited.

Hurtful, but not completely unexpected. I didn't exactly appear useful to them, or perhaps I wasn't 'trustworthy'. Without my visits to the Burrow or my classes I had much more free time for my research and workouts. My health was back to normal, I was functioning at the same level as before the World Cup, once again able to run from every police force on the planet, and many others besides. Halfway through the fourth week after the Burrow went under 'construction' I was invited to lunch at the Leaky Cauldron with Percy. Straight out of the flames I knew something was wrong with him. I set up wards as best as possible to prevent eavesdropping and flopped down into the booth opposite him.

"Spill, kid. What's got you looking so nervous?"
He lasted about six seconds of direct eye contact.

"I've moved out of my parents house."

I raised an eyebrow at him over the menu in my hands.

"Well yeah, everyone has. Molly says you're all living with Muriel while-"

He waved his hand, snorting,

"Yeah, no. Erm, I mean, well, that's not what I meant. I mean, I am no longer living in a home owned by family. I'm staying in a place in London. To be closer to work, you see."

Complete bullshit. Floo travel. Apparating. Distance didn't mean shit to wizards, he knew I was aware of this. Kid was dropping hints for me, how cute.

I rolled my eyes behind the menu so he couldn't see it,

"Good on you, I guess. If you need help with anything I'm a floo call or a letter away."

I managed to get a good bit of information on the Ministry from him in the next half hour. I also verified that he believed Harry. The fact that I'd pointed out the damage of dark curses and had the portkey and it's purpose thoroughly checked, but not really the secondary location, revealed meant a lot. It isn't possible for someone to 'Crucio' themselves. Magic doesn't allow for it. Just like suicide by magic. It takes powerful dark rituals to use one's own magic to kill themselves, or hurt themselves extensively. And frankly, a fourth year just isn't capable of those, miraculous defeat of a dark lord or not.

I also managed to schedule a time for Apparition lessons at the ministry. Apparently some people aren't able to learn at school for some reason or another and the ministry holds both classes and certification seminars during the summer. The Doctor was particularly excited about me learning that bit of magic. I'd be able to appear and disappear just like the TARDIS. We had a lot of careful experimentation planned on whether or not somewhere I'd been before in the other dimension I could go in this dimension by Apparating. If so then there were some rather interesting encounters in my future, not to mention several destroyed Horcruxes.

~TimeLordOfPie