"I want to thank you," I said. "Actually, we do."

Millie was standing behind me, staring at the floor. We were in the library, and a lot of the other students were out watching tryouts for something called Quidditch. I had a vague notion about what it was, but I'd never been particularly into sports. I'd heard that they flew around and tried to hit each other with bats, which sounded ridiculously dangerous, even if I'd probably be good at it.

"Why?" Susan Bones asked. "For telling the truth?"

"There are people who wouldn't have said anything."

"My aunt is the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She told me that justice would be done a lot more often if people were willing to speak up."

"That takes courage," Millie muttered from behind me.

"Well, I'm no Gryffindor," Susan said, "But I know wrong when I see it. What those boys were doing was wrong."

The girl next to her, Hannah Abbott said "We really were looking for a teacher, or at least a prefect. But we still get lost sometimes around here."

"You're lucky to be in Hufflepuff. You've got people to watch your back," I said.

Susan nodded slowly. "I don't suppose that you have that. It was pretty brave, what you did with those boys. I don't think I could have charged them like that."

So they'd seen a little more than they'd admitted to. What they'd said had been enough, however.

I hesitated. "I'm starting a new study group. You probably know Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom. Me and Millie here will make four."

"A study group with all four houses?" Susan asked. "And what will you be studying?"

"Everything," I said. "Anything one of us is weak in, the others who are stronger will help them."

"That sounds a lot like what they tell us in Hufflepuff," Hannah said. "I wouldn't have thought to hear that from a Slytherin."

I leaned forward. "I'm not really a Slytherin, you know."

"What?" she asked.

"I'm a Gryffindor undercover," I said. "I used ventriloquism on the hat to make everybody think I'm a Slytherin."

Hannah stared at me.

Susan giggled. "That sounds like exactly the kind of lie a Slytherin would tell a Hufflepuff."

I grinned at her. "What's more likely? That I'm a Gryffindor in disguise, or that a muggleborn actually got into Slytherin?"

"Well, there's a lot of rumors going around about you," Susan admitted. "People wondering about who you really are."

"Oh?" I asked casually. "What are they saying about me?"

I probably knew, of course, but even with my bugs I couldn't be listening everywhere all the time at once.

"Some of them are saying that you've been planted here by the Americans to find you-know-who."

"And what would I do if I found him?" I asked. "They'd have sent someone older."

Not that I wouldn't try to kill him if I was strong enough. I had a lot of experience and cutting the head off the snake did tend to be an effective tactic.

But it was likely going to be a long time before that happened. After all, he was reputed to be the second strongest Wizard in all of Britain, behind only Dumbledore.

I'd never seen Dumbledore do a lot of magic, and I wished I had that chance, because it would give me a hint about what I was dealing with. Were the Weasely Twins any good at all, or were we just schoolkids playing without a hint of the speed or knowledge that real Wizards had.

"I guess that's true," she said."It's not like you really are some kind of monster in disguise."

"Growl?" I said, then grinned at her. "Maybe I'm really the undead revenant of a murdered girl out to get the people who went after my family."

Her face went blank. "You shouldn't joke about that."

"Given the way things are, I'm pretty sure that me and the other muggleborns are pretty much the only ones who can joke about that kind of thing."

"My entire family was murdered by You-Know-Who," Susan said. "During the last war. I'm not the only one either. Don't think that just because we're pure bloods we're all on the same side."

I raised my hands.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know. Then you understand what it's like."

She nodded slowly.

"Maybe you don't want to join our group,' I said. "I'm sure there are people who are going to pressure you into not joining."

She gave me a look.

"I believe in doing the right thing," she said. "If other people had I might still have a family."

She hesitated. "When are you meeting?"

"Tomorrow night in the library after dinner," I said. "I've got detention tonight."

"At the rate you're going, that's where you'll be spending the rest of the year," she said. She thought for a moment, then finally nodded. "I'll be there."

"Me too," Hannah said quietly. "I wish I'd been more brave when those boys were acting like that."

"It's hard to be brave," I said. "But getting better is easy. You just have to want it, and work for it."

"That's what they say in Hufflepuff too," Hannah said. "It's weird to hear it from a Slytherin."

"I'm not a normal Slytherin," I said. "And neither is Millie here. You should have seen her pounding that boy's face into the ground."

Millie flushed and stared at the ground.

"We'll see you tomorrow evening," Susan said.

I smiled at her, and for once I meant it. I wasn't going to be able to do this alone; I was going to need allies, and the close knit nature of the Hufflepuffs meant that they were more easily influenced by their members than people in other houses.

If I could convince Susan and Hannah that I was a good person to know, they'd convince their classmates for me, and my job would become exponentially easier.

Getting the Hufflepuffs on my side would be a decisive victory. Hermione was working on the Ravenclaws, but they tended to be standoffish, and the Gryffindors were giving Neville flack about his association with me.

Figuring out how to turn the tide of opinion in my favor wasn't going to be easy. It wasn't as simple as having good publicity, because I didn't have any of the usual Protectorate or Cauldron methods of manipulating opinions.

Still, I'd at least sat through some of Glen Chamber's classes on public relations, and I had a general idea of what I had to do, which was more than could be said of a genuine eleven year old in my position. My original self at this age would have been clueless.

"Come along Millie," I said. "We still have things to do before dark."

She followed behind me. It was disturbing how much her opinion of me had changed in the space of a day. She'd been cautious and avoided me before, watching me as though I was a Cobra about to strike.

She watched me just as much now, but it was clear that she had a very different opinion of me now. It actually felt a little uncomfortable.

We walked.

"Pansy," I said.

She looked up at me. Her hands were still a little discolored from what had happened to me, although it was fading fast.

"What?" she snapped.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," I said.

She stared at me. "And I should care what a mudblood thinks why?"

I leaned forward.

"Who do you think got revenge for what happened to you?"

She continued to stare at me; her gaze wasn't any friendlier. "I heard that he fell in the tub himself. That's what the aurors say."

I shrugged. "That might be true."

"Are you saying it's not?"

"I'm not saying anything," I said. "But let's say hypothetically that you knew someone who was willing to do all kinds of crazy things to get back at the people who hurt her friends. Wouldn't it be a good idea to actually be friends with her, instead of being one of those people."

"Those people?"

"People who don't have much of a survival instinct," I said. "Idiots."

She flushed. "Are you calling me an idiot?"

"Other than opening my mail, I haven't seen you do anything actually stupid," I said. "And that wasn't really stupid, it was just naive."

"You can't go your whole life not opening mail," she said. "It's the mail."

"In any case, I'm glad you weren't hurt worse."

She made a gesture that I didn't understand. It looked like a reversed peace sign. The gasp from Millie behind me gave me a little context though.

"Or not," I said.

I suspected that the Pansy might be a lost cause. She wasn't particularly bright as far as I could see, and she didn't have the flexibility of mind to look past her own prejudices.

Someone like Draco Malfoy, on the other hand was actually a better candidate for conversion. He was one of the brighter people in class, and his family was known to be opportunistic. They went where the power was, and that meant they were willing to bend.

When a Dark Lord arose, that meant they might be prone to falter, but it also meant that they respected power and those who had it.

He was already taking my advice and bragging less. He'd really enjoyed the attention he'd gotten when the new brooms were delivered to the class; I'd seen him sneaking looks art me, although I'd been careful to pretend not to notice.

While having people openly on my side was important, having people on my side that no one knew about might be even more useful.

Hermione was struggling to convert the Ravenclaws in part because they knew she was my friend, and so anything she said about me was suspect. Anything said by the Weasleys, or by Draco, should I manage to convince him would be given a lot more weight.

"You can't win everyone over," I said to Millie as we walked away. "But it doesn't hurt to give them a chance."

She nodded, as though everything I was saying was important. Maybe to her it was.

From what I'd overheard her talking about to Tracey, she hadn't just been ignored by her family for being a half blood; after all, her mother was a muggle. However, the final nail in the coffin had been the fact that she had never been considered pretty, not even as a child.

That meant that her value to the family was much less; it was going to be a lot harder for her to get married and have the children that the family seemed to value so much.

Now I was telling her that the important thing wasn't how you looked, but what you could accomplish. That had to be enormously attractive to her; a final option for her to make her place in the world when looks or status wouldn't do.

The fact that Pansy, who had both looks and status would reject me wasn't likely to deter Millie. She'd seen that kind of behavior her entire life. The fact that it didn't bother me though, that was probably new and refreshing.

She'd been following me around all day like a puppy. It would have irritated me, but Gemma was right; there was safety in numbers. While it was true that there were some bullies who wouldn't be deterred by multiple victims, most of them preferred to wait until their target was alone. It wasn't always because they were cowards either; sometimes it was just for plausible deniability. Without witnesses it would be my word against theirs.

The rest of the day went without incident.

My first detention was to be with the groundskeeper, the Case 53 I'd seen at the train station. Some of the Slytherins thought he was a half-giant, but I had a hard time imagining a normal human mating with something that was even larger than he was. Was cross species breeding even possible? People had said that Flitwick was part goblin, but it was possible that they were just an offshoot human species, maybe even Homo floresiensis. The effects of magic might have mutated them even further, and it was possible that Wizards had altered their genetics.

Were Wizards essentially bio-tinkers? How many of the magical species that existed the results of Wizardly tampering, and how many of them were natural species? The history books didn't even try to speculate, and I hadn't seen anybody who was even trying to theorize about the subject.

I was directed across the lawn, towards the groundskeeper's hut. It was massively oversized, which made sense.

A familiar head of white hair was in front of me. I blinked. Malfoy was serving detention?

I hurried to catch up to him.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"Same as you," he said without looking at me. "I got into a fight with a Gryffindor"

As we approached the hut, I realized that I recognized several other people waiting outside. Terence Higgs was a third year, and team seeker. Miles Bletchly was the Keeper, and Hestia Carrow wasn't anything. All were third years.

Hagrid stepped out of the hut. He was even more massive close up than I had remembered; most of the time I'd seen him since the first he'd been sitting down at dinner.

"Listen up," he said. "Yer all here fer fightin. I'd have thought after last year, you lot would have learned better. Normally the Gryffindors would be right here with you, but the Headmaster didn't think you could be trusted not to get into a scuffle so they're going to be here tomorrow night instead."

Had there been that many incidents that I wasn't aware of? I'd thought I'd been doing a good job, but it was disturbing to think about just how many things I might be missing.

"Gather round," Hagrid said. "Tonight we go into the Forbidden Forest."

I frowned, looked around and found a stick on the ground. I transfigured it into a Bowie knife.

"What are you doing?" Malfoy asked. He looked a little pale.

"I've heard there are werewolves in the forest," I said, teasing him. I'd heard him trying to scare some of the other first years with speculations about what might be in the forest. I held up the blade. "I hope silver plating is enough. Pure silver is too soft to make a good weapon."

He moaned low in his throat, but he clearly didn't want to look like a coward in front of the older boys.

I leaned close to him. "If anything comes after us, all you have to do is be faster than them, and you'll be fine."

"Why?"

"Most things stop and eat what they catch," I said. "Which will give us plenty of time to run."

He blinked at that and looked faintly nauseous.

I suppressed my urge to grin at him. The school wouldn't be sending us into danger, and it looked like Hagrid was big enough to handle anything that should come up. In any case, there were three other older students to help. We were going to be fine.

"What will we be doing?" Hestia Carrow asked. She had a twin sister, who curiously wasn't here. I found myself wondering which Griffendor she'd gotten into a fight with.

"There's a unicorn about to give birth in the forest. Yer gonna help me make sure that there's no problems. She's had problems birthing before, and she hasn't looked well recently. I got word from some of the Centaurs that she's already started. This will be a rare opportunity to see something that Wizards hardly ever see."

"So we're going to be acting like farmers?" Bletchly asked, scowling.

Hagrid shrugged. "If you didn't wanna get yer hands dirty, you shouldn't have been fightin in the halls."

His eye slid past them toward me.

"Yer a young one to be out here," he said.

"She's the meanest one out of all of us," Bletchly said. "Beat up two fourth year Gryffindors that were bullying a half-blood."

There was a tone in his voice; almost one of satisfaction and pride. I'd never heard him say anything against the muggleborn, or even me in particular, but he seemed to dislike the Gryffindors quite a bit. It must have something to do with having some of them fly around trying to hit him with bats.

"Now, what we're gonna do tonight is dangerous," Hagrid said. "So I'm gonna need you all to stay with me. Keep to the path and you'll be fine. Do you all know the spell to send up flares?"

We nodded. Flitwick had taught us last week, and we'd left scorch marks in the ceiling of the classroom. That had been an entertaining class.

"If you get separated from the rest of us, send up a flare and stay put, and we'll come for you."

"We should stay in the middle of the group," I said to Draco. "That way nothing comes up from behind us, and if anything is ahead, the others can take care of it."

He nodded. He still looked a little pale, but his color was coming back.

"We're going to be fine," I said. "Stick next to me, and I'll keep you safe."

"I don't need a mu... muggleborn to keep me safe," he said. I noticed, however that he didn't step away from me.

"All right then," Hagrid said. "Let's go into the forest. With any luck, we'll be back before dawn."