"I'm not surprised yeh can see em," Hagrid said. "But I'm kind of sorry that you can. I feel like it's my fault."

"You think it was the troll?" I asked, surprised.

We were in his hut, having finished the long, sweaty job of cleaning the thestral stalls. I had no idea whether what they would have left behind would be invisible or not; I could see them just fine, so it stood to reason that I could see their manure just as easily.

"Wasn't it, though?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Death eaters killed my parents and tortured me," I said. "I thought all the staff knew."

He stared at me.

"Sometimes they don't share things with me... they think I can't hide a secret."

I'd cleaned my hands and arms, but I still felt grimy and uncomfortable. Still, Hagrid had been the one to introduce me to the Unicorns, and he was my best bet at getting to see them again, so I needed to stay on his good side.

He shook his head. "That thing with the troll... it shouldn'ta happened. I just didn't think it would..."

"It wasn't," I said. "I know how to handle myself."

"Kids yer age always think they do," he said. "But its not yer job to take care of yerself...not yet."

"Who else, then?" I asked. "I don't have anybody left, and school is well and good, but the professors won't always be here. I've got to learn to defend myself, just like every witch and wizard."

"Yeh think it's bad here," he shook his head. "It's worse out there. There's a lot the papers don't talk about; the Ministry doesn't want people to panic. It's not just muggleborns disappearin."

"Oh?" I asked casually.

"I shouldn't be tellin ye this, but aurors have gone missin too... and not just muggleborns."

I nodded.

"And they just vanished, without any sign of where they went," I said. "What do you think the odds are that it was just a series of unfortunate accidents."

"That's what some people are sayin... that bein an auror is dangerous, and there's gonna be more losses some years than others. The Headmaster doesn't believe it, though."

"He shouldn't," I said. "Muggle wars tend to be about attrition. Whoever has more men and weapons to keep throwing at a problem tends to win. I think it's probably the same with Wizards... except that it's harder to replace a skilled Wizard than it is to build another gun. I'll bet he's getting rid of the most dedicated aurors too, leaving the ones who are more likely to fall into line for alter."

Hagrid frowned.

"That means they have to have people inside the aurors organization who know everybody well enough to know who the hardliners are, and who will likely follow the new administration."

"New administration?"

"Voldemort's planning to take over the Ministry, isn't he?" I asked. "Or replace it entirely, but it's probably easier to take it over first."

Hagrid winced at my use of the name, then shook his head. "He always wanted to tear it down. That's why he kept attackin the muggles last time; the Ministry spent so much time trying to keep the secret that it came close to collapsing."

"Well, either way, I bet a skilled auror takes a long time to replace," I said.

It was why crossbows replaced longbows, and muskets replaced crossbows. They weren't really superior weapons, at least at first, but they were easier to use. A skilled longbowman took years to train, but musketmen could be replaced quickly.

Wizards were closer to skilled bowmen. They took years to become competent with magic, and once they were gone, they were hard to simply slot someone else in. Aurors had an even more specialized skill set.

"Have they been training aurors up over the last few years?" I asked. "Or are there fewer than there used to be."

"The Ministry's been cuttin back on them," Hagrid said. "No war, and things were quiet., so they didn't see the need."

"Presumably his people pushed for that over the years," I said. "They spent years weakening the Ministry from within, like termites eating away at a house. You can't see the rot on the outside, not until it's too late."

I was starting to respect Tom Riddle a lot more.

He'd been killed, and yet his servants had been so convinced that he was going to return that they had continued to carry out his plan. Or maybe they hadn't believed he was coming back but a weakened Ministry had fit with their own goals. Either way, it had left him in a batter position once he'd returned.

"You seem to know a lot about wars for a little girl," Hagrid said.

"You obviously haven't been a little girl," I said, grinning. "It's a kind of war just getting through every day."

I carefully set my hot chocolate down. I'd thought the trick with the rock cakes was to soak them in liquids until they were soft enough to be eaten by someone who wasn't at least partially inhuman. I'd been soaking mine for almost half an hour, and they still weren't edible.

"Have you ever seen a pensieve?" I asked.

"Headmaster's got one, I guess."

"It sounds like a handy thing to have," I said. "Being able to look over memories. You might be able to catch things you missed."

"They don't work that good for me," Hagrid said. "I'm tough against magic."

"Well, that sounds handy too," I said. "Which means that you should probably watch out."

"What? Why?"

"The last war, a lot of people pretended like they were under mind control spells. My bet is that this time, there really will be... unless the Ministry has an easy way to detect those."

Hagrid shook his head. "If it was easy, people wouldn't have been able to plead out."

"I'm guessing the people who have gone missing are some of the people who'd be able to resist the spell?"

He nodded slowly.

"So you'd be tough to control?" I asked.

He frowned. "I've had stunners bounce offa me. Nobody ever tried to use the Imperius on me."

That he remembered. The problem with Masters was that if they could make you forget that you'd been mastered, you'd never really be able to tell if your thoughts were your own. The Master-Stranger Protocols had been the best that the Protectorate could come up with.

I'd had the resistance training, but that was no guarantee that I'd be able to resist magical mind control. These people didn't have anything, as far as I could tell.

It had been bad enough in my world; one in eight thousand people had been parahumans in the more crowded towns, and of those, only a small proportion had been Masters. That meant that there were probably only a few Masters in any given town, and many of them were people like me who could control things that weren't humans.

But in this world, any adult wizard who chose to learn the right spells was potentially a Master. It was illegal, but that had rarely stopped anyone who was determined.

Someone who had a dedicated group of followers who weren't worried about the law could accomplish a lot if they were careful. It was a dangerous strategy; they had to make sure that every single attack went through, and not a single enemy escaped.

They had to keep the aurors from realizing that they had been attacked until it was too late, and they were probably doing this by putting their own people in positions of power, or by controlling the minds of the people who were in power.

If they'd already done everything they needed, there would be no need for secrecy, but for the moment they were likely getting into position.

It was a long term strategy that showed better planning than I'd expected. Everything I'd heard from my listening in to the conversations between the Slytherins in Hogwarts suggested that the Ministry and the Newspapers were the two main sources of power in the Wizarding world.

They didn't have armies, because they didn't have to. Every Wizard had his own weapon, and in an emergency, the women could be called up as easily as the men.

But if rumor was correct, Voldemort had put a curse on the Defense position, which would have crippled the training of years of Wizards. According to the Weasley Twins, a lot of adults couldn't even master a basic Shield spell. That had to be due to years of incompetent teachers.

After all, adults had no trouble with other sorts of magic, the kind taught by Flitwick and McGonagall. It was only in Defense that they were weak.

If that had been part of his plan, I had to appreciate his cunning. He'd essentially neutered the younger members of Wizarding society for ten years or more. Most likely the Pureblood children who were the children of his followers would receive extra, competent instruction in the summers.

"If you're hard to control, then you might end up a target," I said. "Maybe not now, but eventually. They might try to use the Ministry to do it, too," I said.

Hagrid scowled. "That happened to me when I was a boy."

"So be careful," I said. "I'd like to see the Unicorns again at least once before I die."

"Get permission from the Headmaster or Mr. Snape, and I'd be happy to take you," he said.

I nodded. "It's getting late, I'd better get going."

It was dark as I left Hagrid's hut and started my way back up toward the castle. There was a cold breeze, and I shivered in the October wind. Brockton Bay was cold in the winter, but I didn't have the same kind of warm clothing here as I did there.

Additionally, I was smaller, with less body fat, and that meant that I felt the cold more intensely, especially in the dungeons. I kept meaning to learn the warming charm, but I'd been busy with half a dozen other projects, including learning defensive magic, keeping up with schoolwork and spying on my classmates.

I was making my way up the lawn when I heard a sound behind me. I froze; my bugs weren't seeing anything, but there was an unfamiliar smell.

Suddenly aware of how dark it was, I reached into my fanny pack and pulled out my Bowie knife. I'd heard that some Wizards could disillusion themselves, and it was possible that one was following me right now.

My ears strained to hear any other strange sounds, but the grass was soft, and it would have been very easy for someone to walk silently on it.

I hurried to get to the castle. I'd be safer there from an invisible opponent, if only because their shoes were likely to make noise on the hard floor. I'd also be closer to help if I kept to hallways that had portraits; while they couldn't do anything on their own, they could leave their portraits and get a professor, or the Headmaster.

Dealing with Strangers had always been unpleasant; Aisha had been annoying, but she was on my side.

Disillusionment wasn't taught at Hogwarts, which limited the people it could possibly be. It almost had to be an adult, or at least one of the older students who had picked the spell up somewhere else.

I began to gather a swarm of gnats; here in Scotland they were apparently called midges. It was hard for them to fly in this amount of wind, but I didn't need for them to attack someone. All I needed for was...

There.

One of my gnats impacted something that it couldn't see, and once it did, it vanished from the sight of the other midges around it. The invisible figure was behind me and to the right, and it was catching up to me rapidly.

I was tempted to attack him, but it was possible that it was only Snape or Dumbledore spying on me. I didn't think that was the case, and if it was an enemy wizard, I'd be in a lot of trouble.

I could use my bugs to create a distraction, but that was a last resort, as it would get rid of my greatest asset in staying alive.

There was one other choice, however.

Reaching into my fanny pack, I grabbed the Peruvian Darkness powder, and I threw it behind me, ducking as a spell flew over my head.

Not Dumbledore then.

I began to sprint for the castle doors even as the darkness spread out behind me. Fighting an adult wizard would be stupid; what I needed to do was to get to a place where there were a lot of people, and there weren't many places like that at this hour.

A spell flashed past me again, but it wasn't well aimed. They were still inside the darkness and were shooting blind. I had several gnats on him or her now, and as I reached the gate, I slipped inside.

He'd expect me to head straight for the doors, but at this hour there wouldn't be anyone in that part of the castle. Instead I sprinted to the left, heading for the greenhouses.

I managed to turn the corner as they moved through the gate.

They'd stopped when I'd dropped the Darkness Powder, probably because they'd assumed that I was going to go on the offense. In retrospect I probably should have, but if they were a decent wizard, I'd have ended up with an unforgivable to the face.

They were heading toward the doors now, slowly. Apparently they expected me to ambush them. That increased the chance that it was someone at the school who was doing it, or at least someone who was receiving letters and information from someone at the school.

My bugs saw a golden light surrounding the area I knew my invisible assailant to be in, and a moment later footprints began to appear on the grass; my footprints. How they knew they were my footprints as apposed to the hundreds of others that had passed through the area on a day to day basis I did not know.

Maybe they were able to demand that it only show the most recent set of footprints.

Cursing under my breath, I sprinted for the side door. It lead into a hallway filled with classrooms to my right. I reached the end of the hall and turned right, just as a spell flew over my head. I had midges on their wand now, so I could tell where they were aiming.

Halfway down the hallway, the entrance to the Headmaster's office presented itself.

"Chocolate cockroaches," I said, hoping that the password hadn't changed.

The gargoyle let me in, and I quickly made my way up the stairs toward the Headmaster's office.

"Miss Hebert," Dumbledore said. He was still in his daytime robes.

"I'm being chased by an invisible Wizard," I gasped.

Not doing more endurance running was proving to be a problem. I doubted that I'd have been able to run much further, and that was terrible considering that this was only a fraction of the distance I;d been able to run in my own body.

He frowned and stood up, leaving the office.

I stared at his flaming bird, who stared back at me, then snapped at one of my bugs. I felt the invisible wizard moving rapidly away, and moments later he was outside of my range.

It was five minutes later when Dumbledore returned. The time seemed to stretch out, and I simply stood and stared at a painting as I kept track of what he was doing with my bugs. The genial, grandfatherly demeanor he affected for the students was gone when he thought that people weren't watching.

Instead he was coldly efficient in his investigations, and I saw glimpses of why he was considered the most dangerous Wizard in all of Britain. Whatever his motives, from his expression I gathered that he took the safety of his students quite seriously, despite the contradiction involved in all the usual dangers in things like flying class and Quidditch.

Finally, he returned, grandfatherly mask back in place.

"I found a set of tracks following yours," he said. "Although the portraits didn't see anyone following you. They did see the discharge of a wand aimed at you."

"Did the tracks leave Hogwarts, or did they double back?" I asked.

"I could not ascertain," he said. "There are spells that can obscure tracks, and they used them."

"So it wasn't a student," I said.

If they were able to obscure themselves from Dumbledore, they weren't just a schoolboy. The fact they they'd known he was coming wasn't as indicative. Apparently almost every British Wizard had gone to Hogwarts; which meant that even the adults would know where the Headmaster's office was.

"I've been wanting to speak to you," he said. "Would you like a lemon drop?"

I shook my head. I'd heard of Veritaserum, and there were probably other things that could be put in candies that would make it easier for him to interrogate someone. While he didn't seem like the type to drug a student, I couldn't simply assume he was as good as he pretended to be.

"Perhaps you'd like to take a seat."

I frowned. I'd been wanting to ask him about the pensieve, but I had a feeling that he was intending to ask a lot of questions that I could not answer.

However, if adult Wizards had found me here at Hogwarts, I couldn't simply wait.

I sat down.

"My first question is how you knew there was an invisible person behind you in the first place," he said.