Getting fitted for robes wasn't any more fun than it had been in my last life. It wasn't even all that different. The proprietor used a magical measuring tape, but Parian had all of her clothing move by themselves.

Still I stood and pretended that it wasn't terribly boring.

Despite what Snape had said, I hadn't gone down to the great room for breakfast. Instead I'd found a simple meal waiting beside my bed when I'd woke up. There had been more than I could eat, but a letter from Madam Pomprey told me to eat everything, because I was a little malnourished.

Apparently pizza and Sikh temple food hadn't been enough for me.

I closed my eyes and focused my senses on the bugs around me. I found Snape on the other side of the shop. He apparently had one of those silencing fields up, and he was talking to a white haired man. They had deliberately turned themselves so that no one would see their faces or lips. Was lip reading a skill known by wizards, or was Snape just being paranoid?

"He is back," the other man was saying. He had a narrow, pointed face and hair so blonde that it looked white. He carried a walking stick with a snakes head.

I found myself wondering if I would be allowed a walking stick like that at Hogwarts. I'd carried a collapsible baton in my life as a super villain and super hero and using a stick was something I was skilled with.

"You've seen him yourself?" Snape asked.

"The Yaxleys and the Carrows have. They have been reaching out to the others and have been going out on hand picked missions for the Dark Lord."

"Like eliminating mudbloods before they can get to Hogwarts?" Snape asked. "That seems foolish; it's likely to attract scrutiny before the people who need to be in place are back in power."

"I don't know anything about that," the other man said. "Although who cares if a few mudbloods go missing? The important thing is that it's only a matter of time before he calls us all back to service."

"It doesn't sound like the Dark Lord's plan," Snape said. "It's too petty for him, and he usually had his eye on the bigger picture."

"There have been some rumors that he... isn't the same man he was before he vanished," the other man looked troubled. "If his sanity is worse than it was before, it won't bode well for any of us. Bellatrix is bad enough, but she can't match him for power."

"I wouldn't mention those fears to anyone else," Snape said. "You know how he reacted to unpleasant news when he was himself."

The white haired man shuddered. "Well, there's nothing that can be done about it now," he said.

"It's best to take no action until you see which way the wind is blowing," Snape agreed. "Lest you face the displeasure of the Dark Lord himself."

It seemed strange to me that everyone was so afraid of someone named Tom. Tom the Dark Lord didn't seem to have much of a ring to it. Hopefully he had another name.

"I understand that your son will be attending this year," Snape continued.

"Yes," the other man said. "He will do the Malfoy family proud."

Ah... Malfoy. Learning which of my classmates were the children of death eaters wasn't going to be easy, but I was going to have to make a list. I doubted I'd ever be able to fully trust any of them; anyone could be subverted, but the children had most likely been taught racial hatred from the time they were born.

It was difficult, but not impossible to overcome that kind of upbringing. Theo had been the son of Kaiser, and he'd heard white supremacist rhetoric his entire life. Of course, Theo admitted that his father had only given lip service to the ideology, which may have made it easier for him to escape the ideas. Still, in the end, Theo had been a hero.

It meant that I couldn't automatically count any of the children out, even if their families were members of the group that was trying to kill muggle-borns.

I had little doubt that those who bought into the ideology would make themselves known to me, especially since I was capable of listening in on them without them knowing about it.

Both men were silent for a moment.

"This is the year that Potter is supposed to attend," Malfoy said.

"I do not want to talk about that," Snape said. He sounded irritated.

"The Dark Lord will undoubtedly have plans for him, once he's gotten enough pieces in place. I understand that you have strong feelings about the boy..."

"I have no feelings about him," Snape said. "But contempt."

"The Dark Lord will be pleased. Are you here to get new robes?"

"I have a wayward student I have been required to sheppard... an orphan. Dumbledore has commanded it."

"A mudblood?" Malfoy asked.

"Does it matter?" Snape asked. "As long as she is supposed to be under my protection, I will be held responsible. I will have to be seen to defend her, lest I be seen as incompetent, or worse."

"Ah," Malfoy said. He seemed to lose interest as the proprietress approached.

The silencing field around them vanished.

Snape headed back toward me while Malfoy completed his transaction with the woman. It surprised me that Malfoy would get robes from the same shop as a poor orphan like me. In the regular world, the rich hated rubbing elbows with those who were their lessers.

Maybe the Wizarding population was so small that there simply weren't that many shops to be had. I'd asked Snape on the way to Diagon Alley how many Wizards there were in Great Britain, and he'd told me that there were approximately ten thousand.

That would give a worldwide estimate of perhaps a million wizards, assuming the demographics were the same everywhere. In my world, there had been one parahuman per eight thousand people in urban areas, and one in twenty six thousand in rural areas.

There had been approximately seven hundred thousand parahumans in the entire world, and so wizards were somewhat more populous. The fact that they had been able to keep themselves secret was mind-boggling, and had to involve some sort of Stranger effect.

Parahumans had changed the entire history of our world, and because we knew of another world, Earth Aleph where there had been fewer of them, we had been able to see just how much of a difference they had made.

"Is she done?" Snape asked.

"She is."

I'd been forced to buy three pair of plain work robes, a pointed hat, a pair of protective gloves, and a winter cloak. On Snape's advice, I'd paid a little more for the gloves to have them in dragonhide. He said that potions class often involved caustic chemicals and cheaper gloves often led to grief.

He'd also dragged me off to get Cauldrons, another item he insisted I pay more for than the basic set. According to him, some potions were caustic enough to burn through the bottom of them, and cheap cauldrons were likely to result in injury.

If that was true, then why did they even sell the cheap ones? Was that something that pureblood families told their children about, increasing the chances the muggleborns would get hurt?

As we left the shop, I slipped back into my hooded sweatshirt, and pulled the hoodie up. Snape looked down at me approvingly. While the hoodie would identify me as a muggleborn, it would also hide my face, which would be useful.

Whoever had killed my host body had apparently spent some time doing so, and they'd be likely to recognize my face. Personally I thought Snape and Dumbledore were foolish to bring me here. I'd already been here before and I could have just as easily given Snape my money.

All my being here did was tell prospective muggle murderers that a child was being ferried around by Snape. He was a double agent, so all they had to do was ask him about it, and he had to tell the truth, because there was at least one other agent in the school.

Was Dumbledore using me as bait? He hadn't seemed like the type when I met him, but the best schemers rarely seemed like schemers.

I didn't believe Dumbledore about it being a member of the board of governors. People like that wouldn't risk their position to kill two or three schoolchildren. They'd only do it for a large gain. Most likely it was a teacher, or someone no one would expect, like the janitor.

I'd gotten a bog standard school trunk; this was one item that Snape didn't seem to care whether I spent a lot of money or not. As I didn't have the money for any of the really fancy charms that I wanted, one trunk was basically like another.

He wouldn't let me step near the joke shop.

Although he made an effort to look confident, I could see that he was watching the crowds closely as we made our way toward the next store.

"I presume you won't be wanting an owl."

"An owl?"

"A Wizarding owl can find anyone in the world; they are used to send messages. The school has it's own selection of owls; I assume that you don't have anyone you would want to contact."

I shook my head. There was no one in the world that I needed to talk to. Besides, I suspected that it wouldn't be that hard to intercept a bird if I did.

In any case, I didn't have the time or the inclination to take care of an animal.

"Cats and toads are also on the allowed list of pets," he said. "But I suppose you have no interest in them because you can't weaponize them."

I glanced up at him. "You don't think? I can think of three different ways."

I was lying, of course. I could only think of two.

He stared at me for a long moment.

"But I'm looking forward to a stress free next several years," I said. "Since Dumbledore assured me that the adults were going to take care of all of the problems."

"I can't take points until I discover which house you are in, but lying is not appreciated at Hogwarts," he said.

"Good thing we're not there," I said.

"The Headmaster thought that owning a pet might have a...calming influence on you, given the deaths of your parents."

"So a cat is supposed to replace my parents?" I asked. "What kind of advice is that? You should probably offer me therapy.

"Wizards don't have therapists," he said.

"Color me surprised," I said. "Your culture would probably be a lot healthier if you did."

He ignored what I'd just said. "I think we are done here."

"Is there anything in Knockturn Alley that might be of interest to me?" I asked. "I still have money left."

"Knockturn Alley isn't for the likes of you. The people who are after you are likely to be there."

"That didn't exactly answer my question," I said.

"I'm sure there would be a number of things there that you would be interested in. My duty as a professor at the school is to protect all of my students, and so I have to keep you from possessing them."

"All right, then," I said. "Lead on."

We returned to Hogwarts, and I proceeded to spend the next few days in my rooms or at the library. Food mysteriously appeared in my room, and so I spent the time studying everything I could. I found a few references to legilemency and occlumency, enough to know that I should avoid people's eyes. The really interesting stuff was apparently in the restricted section, which neither Snape nor Dumbledore had reason to lend me access to.

I took up running early every morning, but I didn't see anyone else. I typically ran around the castle, although I stayed close enough that I could dart to the nearest door should someone come to try to abduct me.

The rest of the time I spent exploring the castle.

Given my ability to sense and control bugs, this was easier for me than it would have been for the average student. When you could sense the bugs in a secret passage behind the wall, you could use its senses to determine whether it was actually a secret passage, or just a walled off space.

Figuring out how to open those passages was a lot harder, especially since the portraits were always watching. I couldn't just go knocking on the walls. For one thing, if the staff knew where the secret passages were, they'd want to know how I knew about them.

So I had bugs looking for trigger mechanisms and the like, but unfortunately, the wizards tended to use magic for that as much as they did everything else. As often as not there wasn't much in the way of a trigger. I'd simply have to keep an eye on those locations and see if I could see how people got through those locations.

I made a simple map of the castle, noting all the secret passages that I could find, and I hid it in my fanny pack.

My control over bugs continued to increase, doubling one, then again, and then yet again. By the end of the week I could control over one hundred bugs at once. It was easier to control them as a group; the kind of multitasking I'd once been capable of gave me headaches, but even that was growing easier with time.

The rest of the time was spent trying out magic. A lot of it was trial and error; apparently wand movements were just as important as saying the words, and pronunciation was important too. I managed to get the cutting spell to work, and the levitation spell to work, and I practiced those as much as I could.

Either spell would be useful, and I suspected that older students would tend to take advantage of powerless firsties.

I'd tried turning the other cheek in my last like, and all it had gotten me was burned. That wasn't going to happen again.

Minor bullying probably wouldn't bother me that much; none of these children would have the emotional leverage to really hurt me, not the way Emma had. She'd known all my hopes and fears and she'd used it against me.

But I wouldn't put up with being physically attacked. These were people who had attacked and killed children. Most likely it hadn't been the kids at school, but that wasn't guaranteed. There had been kids at Winslow that I was almost certain had murdered someone, possibly as an initiation into one of the gangs.

Some of them were almost certainly the children of Death Eaters. I'd found that term in some of the histories, and I found it particularly uninspiring.

If I'd been creating a name for my minions, it would have been something more like Death Bringers, or Deadites or something. What did Death Eater even mean?

Also, nobody mentioned the Dark Lord Tom in any of the books. In fact they refused to use his name at all. Apparently there had been a Taboo on his name, a spell that informed his people whenever his name was said, and he'd sent his merry band of terrorists to make people pay.

Given the kind of power he'd had, I was surprised that he hadn't been more successful. He should have worked on getting more support from the populace before he attempted an uprising. The Wizarding world wasn't like the non-magical world.

My world was a lot more dangerous than this one, and even there not everyone had guns. Most people had been unarmed, and they'd be reasonably easy to round up and force to do what you wanted.

Wizards were all armed, almost by definition. If you didn't have popular support from them, you'd never be able to take them over. Tom should have worked to take over the press, and to have infiltrated the government.

He should have been like Coil, and worked from within the government, even as he controlled the terrorist organization outside of it. A couple of false flag operations, and he could have pushed himself into a position of power without anyone realizing that he was a dark lord at all.

A real Dark Lord would be like Palpatine in the later Star Wars movies, not that these people would have seen those yet. The man had become leader first, and then used his evil plans to consolidate total power afterwards.

Working as a terrorist the way Tom had... that was just being an amateur.

The week passed before I was ready, and on the last day I was forced to go all the way across the country just so I could ride on a train on the way back. While I'd never actually ridden on a train before, I doubted that it would impress me much. After all, I'd ridden in Dragon's Dragon-craft, and I'd been in assorted other vehicles.

Yet I felt my stomach tighten into a knot. I was about to be surrounded by children, some of them children of the people who wanted to kill me. At the very least they might be spying for their parents, and at the worst they might try to kill me.

Strangely enough, that wasn't the part that made me nervous.

It was the fact that they were children. How was I supposed to interact with them? I wouldn't have any interests in common with even the oldest of them, other than magic, and they'd expect me to act like a child of my apparent age.

I hadn't been all that great as an eleven year old the first time around. I'd been gawky and awkward and overly affectionate. Now that I'd seen a war for the survival of all the worlds, fought Scion and the Slaughterhouse 9 and the Slaughterhouse 9000...

Children were going to be as alien to me I was to them.