For the next hour I lay in the dark and listened to their whispered plans about what they wanted to do with me. There were three or four others who were egging them on, but who were not planning to join in. I took careful note of their names and faces.

To their credit, most of the other Slytherins didn't seem to know much about it; they went to bed and stayed there. I had to suppose that even if a moderately racist Slytherin was annoyed by having a mudblood in the house, first years weren't that important to most upperclassmen.

They were planning to catch me while I was asleep. Some of the things they planned to do to me were sickening, but they did not plan to kill me. They simply wanted to make my life in Hogwarts so terrible that I'd drop out on my own.

That meant that lethal measures were likely off the table, and that made my job a lot harder.

Hits to the head with a weapon could always kill; hit someone hard enough to knock them out, and you risked permanent brain damage or death.

Yet many of my ordinary strategies would have to be changed. Even without the threat posed by their wands, their sheer size was a huge problem. They had a major advantage in reach on me, and I simply didn't have the strength or mass to manage a leg sweep on them.

There wouldn't be any comparison at all between their level of strength and mine. They were each likely four times as strong as I was, and there were three of them.

Furthermore, although my improvised blackjack was going to be painful, I didn't have any idea how many hits I was going to make before the sock split and the whole thing broke down. I'd used six pairs of socks, one inside the other, hoping to get more use out of it before it broke, but I still wasn't certain. I would have used more, but six pair were all I owned.

I'd have to treat them like I was treating brutes, and I wouldn't be able to limit the damage I did as much as I would have liked because if I didn't do enough then they'd get hold of me. Surprise, skill and the environment were my only advantages.

If I'd had my extendable baton, I'd be less worried about this fight. As it was... well...

Sighing, I got out of bed. It was time.

"What's going on?" Millicent asked sleepily.

I'd have to watch out for that; apparently she was a light sleeper.

"Nothing," I said. "Go back to sleep."

Walking over the the door, I stood by the side of it. I already had bugs standing on top of the marbles; I'd experimented earlier and they were too small to trigger the tripping spells on the marbles. They were moving them into place.

I had bugs on the boys, especially on their arms. They'd be like gunmen, aiming a weapon except that they wouldn't have to use two hands.

I could hear the boys whispering now with my own ears. It was a sign that they weren't professionals; if they had been, I wouldn't have heard a thing until they were using the blankets of my bed to hold me down.

Carefully I pulled the Peruvian darkness powder out of my pocket and I prepared to throw it down with my left hand. I'd spent a lot of time working with a Cape whose power involved darkness, and so I was experienced in working in the dark. While I hadn't been with the Undersiders for years, I'd kept up my practice in fighting in the dark, or sometimes when simply surrounded by swarms of so many insects that no one could see anything.

This was my element.

The door opened, and my sap went down, smashing his wand.

The entire world went black as the powder hit the floor and billowed out. A moment later I had brought my blackjack around again, smashing him in the knee. He gave a muffled scream and went down, sliding backward as the first of the marbles went out from under his feet, pushed by my insects.

One body slid back against the far wall, struck by the first, and the third muttered something that sounded like Lumnos. It didn't help.

With bugs moving the marbles out of my way, I stepped out onto the landing. The bugs still weren't as precise as I would have liked, but all I needed was for the marbles to move in and out of a general area.

I ducked as a spell lashed out where I had been; apparently I wasn't as quiet as I had thought.

A hit to the wrist and I heard a crack; it sounded like the third boy's wrist was broken. I heard a scream, and then I leaped aside as the second boy grabbed for my foot. He was flailing around, shoving his friend off of him.

I brought my sap down on his elbow, and I heard something else snap. The sap was slower than I would like; after every attack I had to spend precious seconds trying to bring it around to get it into position to attack again.

I kicked the second boy in the head again and again. Normally I wouldn't have done that, but I was small and weak enough that it probably wouldn't do that much damage. Using the sap would have been lethal.

With wrists and elbows broken, I doubted that the boys could attack with their wands; it was possible that they could use their off hands, though, and so I already had insects carrying their wands back into the room.

"You bitch!" I heard the third one mutter. He was already getting to his feet.

"You can give up now and we'll end this," I said. I moved as I did so, as all three boys lunged for where they heard my voice.

I'd already moved, skipping up the stairs as they slammed into each other. I brought my sap down again and again, hitting them in the shoulderblades, the clavicles and the knees.

Finally, I felt my socks give way, splitting and the galleons tinkling against the stone floor.

My bugs moved the marbles to where they needed to be, and I heard a scream as the boys went flying backwards and down the stairs. This was the most dangerous part, as it was possible that they could break their necks on the way down. As they were mostly prone, I doubted that they would suffer that much damage.

The remaining marbles moved out of my way, pushed by insects, and I stepped down the stairs and into the dim light of the common room.

All three boys were bloody and I saw Draco Malfoy standing at the foot of the boy's stairs staring at us with his mouth open. I had my wand drawn.

"Get Snape," I said. "The boys here had an accident."

He stood there motionless.

"NOW!" I snapped.

Malfoy was out the entrance in a flash, and I could hear him screaming bloody murder.

All three boys were trying to rise to their feet, and I snapped out a Diffindo spell, cutting the arm of Michael's robe. The hem fluttered to the floor and all three of them froze.

I pointed the wand out of them.

"I could have cut your throats," I said. "It would have been easier, and less trouble for me really. This is me being merciful. I won't be again."

I let that sink in. I could see color draining from their faces at the realization that I was telling the truth, although it might also be from their injuries.

Snape was suddenly in the room.

He hadn't changed out of his robes; he'd struck me as the kind to keep late hours, or maybe he'd expected something like this.

"Put the wand down, Miss Hebert," He said. He had his wand out, but carefully not aimed at me. I had no doubt that he'd be able to snap it into place before I got a spell off. Unlike these two boys, he didn't strike me as an amateur.

Professor McGonagall was there a moment later, holding a squirming Draco.

"What's the meaning of this?" she asked.

"These three boys need medical attention," I said coolly. "They were trying to get up the girls' stairs and suffered a fall."

"And I am to assume that the marbles I see on the floor didn't have anything to do with it?" Snape asked dryly.

"I was playing marbles with my roommates by the door," I admitted. "I was going to clean it up in the morning. I didn't leave them out in the stairwell."

My bugs were already pushing them back into the room, so it wasn't even a lie.

"And the billowing clouds of darkness behind you?" Snape asked.

"I must have dropped my Peruvian Darkness powder when I got up to help them," I said.

There was already a crowd of boys gathered by the stairs, staring out at us.

"Your wand, Miss Hebert," Snape demanded. I handed it over, stepping carefully around the boys, although I doubted that they would do anything in front of two teachers. If they would, things were far worse here than I thought.

"Sevarus?" McGonegall asked.

"Priori incantato," Snape muttered. "Hmm...cutting spell, wingardium, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting..."

"I did not cut these boys," I said. "You can check. I've just been...practicing."

I said this as much for the benefit of my audience as for Snape. One of the most important things about becoming a warlord was developing a reputation. I couldn't afford to have any of the Slytherins watching to be able to lie to themselves and think it was an accident.

At the same time I couldn't simply admit that I had beaten the boys with a sock full of galleons.

Some of the boys peering out of the hallway were now staring at me, and I could almost see them connecting the dots in their minds.

"Why have you been practicing the cutting spell so diligently, Miss Hebert?" Snape asked.

"You wouldn't let me have a knife," I said, shrugging. "How else was I going to cur... things."

"She's an eleven year old girl," McGonagall said, shocked. "How did they bypass the defense on the stairs?"

The fact that they were standing around discussing this instead of giving the boys immediate medical attention actually boded well for me. The looks McGonagall was giving the boys were not friendly at all.

"Mr. McCutchin was a prefect," Snape said. The tone of his voice suggested that the past tense was intentional.

"I see," McGonagall said disapprovingly. "We'd best get them to Poppy, and then we'll wake the Headmaster."

I held my hand out, and Snape reluctantly handed me back my wand.

"I will need their wands as well, Miss Hebert," Snape said. "For the investigation."

I nodded, and as I made my way up the stairs in the blackness, I gathered up the galleons that had spilled out on the stairs. I was impressed that the Peruvian Darkness powder still hadn't dissipated; maybe I'd gotten my money's worth after all.

Two of the wands were still intact, and one was broken.

"Go back to bed," Snape snapped at the waiting boys in the hall as I returned. He gestured, and Draco quickly ran to the stairs to join the staring crowd. "I will speak with all of you in the morning before breakfast... except for you, Miss Hebert. I will need you to come with me to speak with the Headmaster, and I suspect that we are going to have a long night."

A moment later, all three of the boys were levitated into the air, and we were walking through the nighttime halls.

"I expected more discretion from you, Miss Hebert," Snape said in a low voice. McGonagall was walking in front of us.

"What else could I do?" I asked. "You knew that something like this was going to happen or you wouldn't have been dressed and ready. Aren't you supposed to protect students?"

"It's generally best to let things...sort themselves out," Snape said.

"How did that work out for you?" I asked.

Looking at him, with greasy hair and teeth the way they were, I could only imagine how it would have been for him when he was younger.

The look he gave me was cold, and I immediately lifted my hands.

"I'm just saying that if you stopped people from hurting each other you might do a better job of turning people into productive citizens."

"The Wizarding world isn't like the muggle world," Snape said. "There aren't as many... protections here as there are there. Those who don't learn to protect themselves will be in trouble."

There was a stiffness in the way he held himself that said it might be personal for him. I probably wouldn't have noticed except that I suspected that I knew how he felt. An ordinary child probably wouldn't have noticed because they tended to barely see their teachers as human.

I remembered being shocked as a child the first time I'd seen a teacher at a grocery store. It had never occurred to me that they had personal lives outside of school. It was like I'd thought they were wheeled into a closet and plugged in to recharge.

Snape wasn't even that old; in his early or mid-thirties, he was younger than my Dad. He'd had a life before he'd gotten into the double agent business; most likely he'd gone to this school. He'd probably been bullied.

How he couldn't understand that bullying had to be stamped out I couldn't understand.

I'd done some research on the subject when I'd worked at the Protectorate, during my minuscule amounts of free time, and I'd been surprised to learn that bullying was worse in rural areas than in urban areas. In the cities, you could be anonymous. You could float from one neighborhood to another, and get away from the bullying that way.

You could change schools. It hadn't worked for me, but a lot of kids did.

In a rural environment, there often wasn't another school for a hundred miles, and everyone knew everyone else. You couldn't change schools and you were trapped. Your reputation as a victim or a bully followed you, and it was hard to change.

That was essentially the problem here. This was the only Wizarding School in Britain, and the nearest one spoke French, which I did not speak.

I could try to go to school in America, but I suspected that the authorities there would be a lot more diligent about tracking down my non-existent parents. They'd likely discover that I was a British child named Millie Scrivener, and they'd send me back.

Or they'd discover that I was possessing her dead body and they'd do something worse to me.

For better or worse I was stuck here, and while I could ignore certain kinds of abuse, I did not want to spend the next seven years dodging attacks around every corner. The only way to stop that was to slap down anyone who attacked me hard and with prejudice.

"It's only going to get worse," I said. "If they keep attacking me. If you don't stop them I will."

"Don't make threats, Miss Hebert," Snape said. "I've given you more latitude than I would another student in light of your... unique circumstances."

"I think you know that I don't make threats," I said.

It was a lie, of course. I make threats all of the time. The difference was that I was perfectly willing to follow up on them.

"Have you heard about Azkaban?" he asked.

"Not much."

"It's the prison our kind use to contain our criminals. We have no other prisons. It is guarded by creatures that drain every bit of joy from the prisoners, leaving nothing but agony and pain. Should they try to escape, the creatures devour their souls, denying them any hope of an afterlife."

"They call that the Kiss, and it is the highest penalty Wizardkind has."

Snape looked absolutely serious.

"I fear that you are on your way to sharing a cell with some of the Dark Lord's worst," he said. "And prolonged exposure to the Dementors will, as their name suggests leave you mad."

"What if you don't have any?" I asked.

"Any what?" Snape glanced at me.

"Any joy for them to devour?"

"Then they will dig deeper. They will steal memories of your father, of your mother. Happiness with friends, first loves, all of it will drain away leaving nothing behind but dust and bitterness."

"Well... that would be bad," I said.

Would I be better off not remembering Mom or Dad? Would it hurt less, and would I miss them less, or would the joy be gone but the pain remain? From the way Snape was talking, I suspected that it was the latter.

"Were you any other student, I'd demand that you tell the truth," Snape said.

"What... you want me to say that I overheard what they were planning, so I waited in my room with a sock filled with galleons, Peruvian darkness powder, and marbles enspelled with a tripping jinx? Who would believe a story like that? I'm eleven years old."

He stared at me.

"The story I'm going to tell is that they were trying to break into my room, they tripped over my marbles, and they hurt themselves on the way down the stairs. Nobody would believe that a girl my size would defeat three upperclassmen without any magic."

"If you don't consider Peruvian Darkness powder and tripping marbles magic, what do you consider magic?"

"Being able to blast them in the face with fire," I said. "Or turn them into frogs. You can do things with frogs."

He stared at me, and then he didn't say anything else as we headed for the Headmaster's office.