"I know things sometimes," I said. "It's part of what kept me alive when I was on my own after my parents were killed."

That was true in multiple ways.

I stared at my hands. Looking him in the eyes would be a mistake; Dumbledore was supposed to be the most powerful Wizard in Britain, possibly the entire world. It was possible that he could do things with mind reading that weren't in any of the three books I'd read.

None of the books had even had that much detail; I suspected that someone had censored the Hogwarts library, although it was possible that the books were in the Restricted Section.

Dumbledore frowned, staring at me as though I was an interesting puzzle. I could see him perfectly well despite looking at my hands through my bugs.

"Sometimes a young witches' accidental magic does what it has to to keep them alive," he said. "It's rare for them to be able to use it consciously under the age of eleven, though."

"I don't think it happened until after the murder," I said. "If it had... I think things might have gone differently."

I likely wouldn't have been here at all, and instead another child would be standing here in my place. That wasn't something that I was willing to share; it was possible that Dumbledore would insist on exorcising me to save Millie Scribner, even if she was really already dead.

"You certainly seem rather... competent in the things you do," he said.

I laughed, and the sound seemed bitter even to my own ears.

"What other choice do I have? Lay down and die? Either I'm better than the people around me, or I'm dead. There's no ground in between."

"Not even unicorns?" he asked.

I froze, then shook my head.

"Unicorns are a happy dream, but I can't enjoy them unless I'm alive. You know what's out there even better than I do. We don't live in a world where a muggleborn can afford to relax."

"So let us get back to what happened. Your special sense alerted you that something was wrong," he said.

"And then I heard a noise," I said. "Maybe a rock, maybe the sound of a robe swishing. It was quiet at the moment that I heard it, and when there's a sound where there should not be a sound, you take action."

"I saw the cloud of darkness outside," he said. "Peruvian Darkness powder?"

I nodded.

"I threw it behind me. If I was wrong I was only out a little powder. I wasn't wrong."

"I followed your trail," he said. "You made for the greenhouses. Were you planning to come and see me?"

I shook my head. "I hoped to put him off, but I didn't know about that tracking spell. Once I saw him use it, I ran."

He was silent for a moment, frowning in thought as though I was an interesting problem to be solved. He obviously wanted to ask me more questions, but he knew that pressing me was likely to make me clam up entirely. What exactly did he want to know from me?

"Most students would not have done nearly so well," he said. "Nor many adults."

"I'm not most students," I said. "Do you have any idea who might have done this?"

"Other than Voldermort's followers, the family of Mr. Avery and the family of three Gryffindor students?" Dumbledore asked. He shook his head, even though I wasn't looking at him. "You've made a lot of enemies, Miss Hebert."

"So what are you going to do about it?" I asked.

"What I should have done from the beginning," he said. "I will place anti-intruder charms on the walls and the gates. It will not protect the grounds but it will keep intruders from coming within the walls."

"You didn't have those already?" I asked in disbelief. "I thought Hogwarts was supposed to be one of the safest places in Wizarding Britain?"

"Part of the reason for that is that most British Wizards consider it sacred ground, Miss Hebert," he said. "Even during the first war, Voldemort did not attack Hogwarts, and so far it has not been a target... now that it has, steps must be taken."

"I suppose that means my Hogsmeade weekend is off the table," I joked, smiling a little.

"It is perhaps fortunate that First years are not allowed to go. There would be a problem in any case as parents are required to sign a permission slip."

Right. My parents were supposed to be dead.

"Has there been any progress in finding a family to keep me for the summer?" I asked. "I'm planning to stay over the winter for obvious reasons, and I'd be perfectly happy staying here over the summer too."

"Unsupervised?" he asked. "No, that would not do. Most of the staff have lives outside of the school, and much of those lives are explored when school is not in session."

I scowled and looked over his shoulder. There were so many books and small objects to look at that it was easy to excuse not looking at him in the eye. I wasn't sure which one was the pensieve. Did he even keep one in his office.

"There are still several candidates to take you," Dumbledore said. "But I would prefer to keep the decision as to who until we are closer to the summer break. There have been unfortunate incidents involving information at this school."

"You don't think I'd tell anyone?" I asked. "I understand how important secrecy is."

"I'm sure you do," he said. "But you can understand the need for secrets."

"If I find that they are unsuitable, I'll likely end up in a culvert somewhere," I warned him. "Although with what I know about the Wizarding world now, I'd probably do a lot better than I did the first time."

"Magic performed around young wizards tend to be detected," Dumbledore said.

"So remove the Trace from me," I said, looking up at him. I stared at his beard. "It's the only way to be sure that I'm safe."

"The Trace is inviolable," Dumbledore said. "And not easily broken, even by me. Only time itself can break it."

I grimaced, not sure that I believed him.

"There are places that are protected by magic," Dumbledore said. "That can't be found. Perhaps you will be placed there."

"And then my guardian is confounded, or mind controlled, and suddenly we're having Death Eaters over for dinner," I said.

"Secrecy is the best guard against something like that," he said.

"There doesn't seem to be many other options," I admitted. "Maybe leaving the country for the summer might help... assuming I haven't angered anyone enough to have them send someone after me."

He thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Perhaps a grand tour," he said. "Europe is nice in the summer, and I know some people who are planning just such a trip."

"Are they people I'd get along with?" I asked suspiciously.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "I think you see yourself as a pragmatist, Miss Hebert, and for the sake of your survival you would put up with even very disagreeable people knowing it was only for a few months."

I nodded slowly.

"You don't seem as impulsive as other children your age," he continued. "In many ways, you seem older than you really are."

I frantically shoved my responses into the bugs in the walls. What did he know?

"But that often happens to children who have been through great trauma," he said. "They feel that they must be adults, and in your case, that's not entirely untrue."

I hid my relief just as I had my moment of panic.

"Still," he said. "I would like to do more about finding the people who have killed your parents."

"The pensieve?" I asked.

He stared at me, one eyebrow raised. "You have heard about them?"

"Professor McGonagall mentioned it," I said. "I'd be perfectly happy to show those memories to you, but I have some concerns."

"The pensieve requires the consent of the wizard," Dumbledore said. "Resisting would degrade the images to the point of being incomprehensible. The wizard also chooses the memories that are revealed; should we proceed I will require that you focus on everything you remember from that night."

"I don't remember being tortured," I admitted. "I don't remember anything prior to waking up next to my parents' dead bodies and hearing them talking."

"It's strange that they would have bothered to obliviate you," he said.

"Maybe they didn't," I said, "Maybe it was just the trauma of what happened that made me not want to remember."

For all I knew, I really was Millie Scribner, and my accidental magic had simply summoned the memories of Taylor Hebert to replace my own. That was an explanation just as horrifying as the idea that I had taken over the body of a screaming child.

"Perhaps," he said slowly. "Is this something you are ready to try?"

I nodded.

He pulled out his wand and came to stand next to my chair. "This will not hurt."

"That means it will hurt," I said. "When nurses say it won't hurt, it hurts, and when they say it will be a big stick, it doesn't hurt much at all."

"Then I should tell you it will hurt tremendously," he said. "And allow you to be disappointed. Instead you will feel a coldness at your temple, and the memory itself will fade somewhat, and become less intense."

"So you could use it to help people with trauma then?" I asked.

"What?"

"If you can make memories less intense... people who have been through horrible things are sometimes tormented by the memories," I said. "If you can make them forget, even a little, wouldn't that help them get better?"

He looked startled, and then a moment later, thoughtful.

"Are you speaking about yourself, Miss Hebert?"

His expression didn't seem to be about me at all. Instead he seemed preoccupied and was making conversation just to make conversation.

I shook my head. "I don't remember any of it at all. That's probably why I'm so well adjusted."

Sometimes a joke could deflect people's attention away from things you didn't want them to talk about. I'd had two years of court mandated therapy, but the Protectorate had continued to place me in stressful situation after stressful situation. Or maybe it had been me who had done that. It had felt like I was damaging myself as fast as the therapists had been healing me.

A small smirk appeared on his lips. "I'm sure that is true. Shall we begin?"

I nodded, and looked down at my hands again.

"I want you to remember the day of your parents' murder... anything you can remember," he said "Focus on that memory, as hard as you can."

I thought back, and focusing, I felt something cold at my temple. My eyes were closed, but my bugs saw a sine of something silvery being pulled from my temple. Dumbledore frowned, and then he put the stuff into a vial.

A moment later it was done. The memory in my head felt... faded somehow. It was still there, but it was a shadow of its former self. It was like several years had passed in an instant, and the memory seemed less important.

Someone who knew what they were doing could change someone's personality like this; remove traumas, make other things seem more important. There were people back on Earth bet who would have killed to be able to do this, and it was in the hands of an old man who used it to what, remember where he'd put his bathrobe?

I opened my eyes, and Dumbledore held the vial up to the light.

He did something, and a moment later a hidden cabinet in the wall sprang open. A podium slid out; it's top was a metal bowl filled with water.

Stepping toward it, Dumbledore added the silvery strand to the bowl. I found myself steeping toward it without consciously meaning to.

An image of my own face was swimming around inside the bowl; fortunately it was my new face, and not my old one.

"What do we do now?" I asked. My voice was hushed. This felt strangely momentous.

"We put our faces in the bowl," Dumbledore said.

I stared at him, for a moment forgetting to avoid his eyes. Was he really expecting me to put my face in the same bowl that he had? Was the water cleaned, ever, or had it been used by the Headmaster and all of the Headmasters before him? Surely it would have evaporated at some point.

"It's the only way," he said gently.

I sighed, and I waited a moment, and then I lowered my face into the bowl. I kept an eye on him with my bugs, and I had one hand on my wand. I saw that he was lowering his face into the bowl as well, and after a moment I relaxed, as the magic overtook me.

There was blackness surrounding me, but somehow I was able to see Dumbledore surrounding me.

"I think you enjoyed that a little too much," I heard a voice say.

"A man who doesn't enjoy what he does isn't a man at all," the second voice said. This voice was much deeper, and it was raspy. There was a deep rumble to his voice.

I frowned. I didn't remember them saying that, not at all. I listened intensely. The first man had a tenor voice, with a slightly different accent than what I was used to.

Dumbledore held up his hand, and everything stopped. He frowned.

"The first voice had a West Midlands accent," he said. "The second has a Yorkshire accent."

I looked at him in confusion.

"I suppose as an American you cannot tell the difference, but imagine that you heard two men talking, and one was from your South, and the other from New York. You'd be able to tell the difference."

"Do you recognize either voice?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"I fear that I have seen hundreds of students in my time as headmaster, and even if I remembered all of their voices, adult voices change over time."

He lifted his hand, and everything started up again.

"It's almost too easy," I heard the first voice say again. "Killing muggleborns before they get their letters. Why didn't anybody else ever think of this?"

"Because Hogwarts keeps the Book locked up tighter than a Gringott's vault. Even our man inside only got a look at a few names, or we'd be making a clean sweep this year."

The second man sounded regretful. Now that I knew what the terms meant, I could understand what they were saying better.

I listened as they made their way through the rest of the conversation. The sound at the end I now recognized as the sound of apparation. I hadn't heard it very often, but it was distinctive.

Suddenly the world around us exploded into full color, and we were back in the alley.

The alley was dingy, and Millie's parents were lying on the ground five feet away from me. I looked small from this angle, smaller than I thought of myself as really. It looked like we'd been dressed out for a night on the town.

They hadn't taken anything from her purse. That would have been a clear sign to police that this wasn't a robbery gone wrong.

I rose slowly to my feet and I looked down at them dispassionately. I was staring down at my own arms, and muttering "What the hell?"

I looked down at the people who were supposed to be my parents, and there was no emotion at all on my face. Instead, I walked over to the woman and rummaged around in her purse. I found a pocket mirror, and I opened it, staring at myself.

Running my hands up and down my body, I watched myself do a quick check of my own body, obviously looking for injuries. When I didn't find any, I dug through the woman's bag, and rolled the man over and took his wallet.

It was chilling how blank and lacking emotion my face was.

"Not the reaction of most girls your age to the deaths of their parents," Dumbledore murmured from beside me.

"I was in shock," I said.

We watched as I rifled through their wallets, looking at the money and pulling the rings off the womans fingers and the earrings out of her ears.

"I know this looks bad," I said. "But I did what I had to in order to survive."

Taking the man's keys, I headed for the street. I tried several cars before I found the right one, and I slipped into the seat, which was on the wrong side.

I pulled the seat up as far as it would go, and my feet barely reaching the pedals, I started the car and I drove off, somewhat unsteadily.

The vision ended, and suddenly I was pulling my face from the pool. My face was wet, and Dumbledore dried it with a wave of his hand.

I hadn't meant to show as much of that memory as I had. Was this going to cause him to look at me differently?