It was dark, but I was picking up more bugs all the time.

Insects tended to use three main strategies to survive the winter. The first was to avoid the cold. Some did that by migrating like birds. Butterflies were widely known for doing just that. Others would hide at the bottom of ponds, where temperatures were more stable than at the surface. Some would burrow into the earth, beneath the frost line.

Some survived the winter almost unchanged. Mites and snow fleas were in that group.

Some would simply freeze, going into a state of almost suspended animation, waking when the heat of the spring resumed.

The only bugs I had now were the middle group; the others either weren't around, or would die of the cold. There was still life all around, but it wasn't the explosion of life that had been there during the fall. Instead it was more subdued.

Casting a warming charm on both myself and Potter, I said, "We need to get back to the castle. I can't imagine that a head check won't be one of the first things that they do... and the both of us are the people they'll be looking for first."

"Yeah," he said grimly.

He'd managed to hold onto his invisibility cloak, so we weren't entirely done. There was still a chance to get inside the castle without being detected, even though we were probably going to be caught as being out of our rooms.

It hadn't been all that long; ten minutes maybe since the alarm had been set. However, the more time that passed, the more alarmed they were going to be and the more in trouble we were going to be in. If it was just me, I probably could have bluffed my way out of it; however, I didn't know Potter well enough to know whether he would blurt everything out all at once.

It was possible that for once that might be the best option. There was a death snake beneath the school. That seemed like something the administration should know.

I sent the bugs up, but it was late enough that the castle was not lit up. None of the bugs I had available had vision that was good enough to see the castle in the middle of the night.

The forest was to the east of the castle. I wasn't particularly good with directions; I'd always had my bugs and the city to follow. In a city, the bugs were always active, kept warm in human habitations. Checking locations had been easy.

In a forest it was going to be much harder.

"Which way?" Potter asked.

The best thing I could do was pick a direction. We had warming charms which meant we wouldn't freeze to death, and in the middle of winter, it was likely that the more dangerous monsters would have gone to ground.

Still, it was possible that there were more trolls out here. I was a lot better with magic than I'd been even a couple of months ago, but I had no idea how Potter stacked up in magic. Would he back me up, or would he run away screaming in terror. Just being a Gryffindor didn't necessarily mean that he was brave after all, it just meant that he wanted to be.

"Let's go this way," I said.

I had no idea if it was the right way, but our only choices were to either keep moving or to hole up until morning when my bugs could find the direction of the castle. The last thing I wanted to do was to find out that the giant snake had changed its mind and felt like a midnight snack.

He nodded.

I'd felt drawn to something in the center of the forest before; I felt it again. It was something that I'd meant to explore, but this was hardly the time.

Knowing that it was in the center of the forest, and knowing how far we'd walked underground, I could guess that we were on the side of the forest closest to Hogwarts. That meant that I only needed to go away from whatever it was, and we'd get back to the castle sooner or later.

Suddenly, I grabbed Potter's robes and leaned into him.

"Keep quiet," I said.

Easing us into the underbrush was difficult, but a quiet levitation spell managed to lift some of the branches high enough that we could both slip under it. I didn't like being confined to such a small area, but hiding was going to be the best thing I could do for us.

We were surrounded my multiple groups of men.

Potter was silent beside me as we waited in the darkness.

"I can't believe he's asking us to do this on Christmas," the first of two men stepping into the clearing said.

"It's the best time... their guard will be down, and we'll get a chance to feel out their defenses," the second man said. "The Dark Lord's given us enough spells not to be detected, but he hasn't figured out how to get us inside."

"Why's the boy so important anyhow?" the first man asked.

"He made the Dark Lord look like a fool as a baby," the first one said. "And there's a prophecy, although nobody seems to know what the whole thing is."

"Nobody tells me anything."

"That's because you're an idiot who can't keep his mouth shut."

"Yeah...but do you really believe that we'll find the boy or Avery's pet project out here on Christmas eve?"

"The seer the Dark Lord is using is one of the better ones," the second man said. "Although he could be wrong. Prophecy is tricky. I never put a lot of stock in it."

I marked their faces in my mind.

I'd have Dumbledore look at the pensieve later, or maybe Snape, and see if he could identify them.

"She was sure we'd find them, though?"

"Yeah," the second man said. He was shorter and stout, but there was a harder look on his face. The first man was younger and didn't look particularly bright. "Said we ought to be careful though. The Terror is with him."

"How dangerous can a firstie be?" the first man asked. "I can take care of a little girl all by myself."

"She killed a troll," the man said. "Avery checked. I doubt she's going to be much against full fledged wizards, though."

"So we just have to find them," the first man said. "And bring them to the Dark Lord?"

"Just the boy. He said we're to kill the girl."

I could feel Potter stiffening beside me, but I squeezed his shoulder tightly in warning. If it was just these two wizards, I might have a chance. Darkness powder and a good solid knife might be enough, although it depended on how competent they were.

However, I could hear three other groups of two in the forest. They were searching in a grid pattern, and if I engaged with these, then the others would come running. There was no way that I could fight eight grown wizards at once.

It was possible that I might have trouble with just two.

The fact that my bug count was a lot smaller than normal also made this a dangerous encounter. I didn't have the option of revealing my secret and choking them to death.

The bad thing was that the others were moving in a pattern that was getting closer to us all the time. It made me wonder if they were honing in on something, using some kind of tracking spell that I hadn't heard about before.

We didn't have a lot of options. We could continue to try to hide, but it was looking like they'd caught our scent somehow. We could run, but a spell to the back might take us out even quicker. We could fight and die.

None of those were options that I wanted to think much about.

Our best option might be to go back to the entrance to the chamber underneath Hogwarts. It was possible that Potter might be able to turn the monster against the men who were chasing us, which would be delightfully ironic. With any luck they'd kill each other off and then our problems would be solved.

The problem was that the entrance was ten minutes away. I was closer to whatever it was in the forest that had been pulling at me now.

Closing my eyes, I reached out with my power. My power had always gotten stronger when I'd felt trapped... and while this wasn't the same power, it seemed to work much the same. Magic was an expression of my mind, after all, and I had vivid memories of how it worked.

I felt them suddenly; they were an alien presence at the edge of my vision. They were bugs, but bigger than any that I'd ever used with the exception of Atlas and his kin. It took me a moment to get control of them; they actually fought my control in a way that no other bugs ever had.

Getting control of their vision, I could see that they were spiders. It was hard to get a sense of perspective, but it looked like they were huge, at least the size of dogs, and maybe as large as horses. I desperately wanted to know what they were, but now was not the time.

Potter sneezed beside me, and suddenly the branches of the bush we were hiding under were pulled aside, and we were being dragged out at wandpoint.

One of the wizards whistled, and I felt the others moving in.

"It's Potter and his pet mudblood!" the first and dumber wizard said. He was pointing his wand at me, and he'd managed to get my wand while I was distracted.

"We're supposed to kill the mudblood," the second wizard said.

"You think Avery would pay us to bring her to him?" the first one asked.

A nasty smile spread across the face of the second Wizard. "He's got some nasty plans for her. After all the shite she's pulled on pureblood kids, might be the best thing for her. Avery's been a right twat over this whole thing."

That was the problem with having idiots working with you. They couldn't follow directions. Would I be better to stay silent, or to pretend to be afraid and to cry? That might actually encourage them to kill me.

"You'd better let us go!" Potter shouted beside me. They hadn't even bothered taking his wand, an expression of contempt that they might live to regret. I was close enough that I might be able to grab it and use it. However, the wands in our face suggested that would be a bad idea without some form of distraction.

One of the men waved his wand, and Potter fell to the ground screaming. It didn't last for very long, but it felt like it was much longer.

My bugs would show up on the white snow; however, I had them moving under my dress, scattering to the inside of my robes and ready to be deployed. Some of them were moving things out of my fanny pack, including the darkness powder, the crackers, and the other things that I thought I'd need.

The knife was heavy for the bugs I had on me, so I left it in the pack. I doubted I would be able to use it.

"Gibbon!" one of the men coming through the trees said. "You found them! This is a great day for the Dark Lord!"

The second man stared at me, and asked, "Why is the mudblood still alive?"

"We figured Avery might want some quality time with her," Gibbon said, grinning. "Maybe it'll put him in a better mood."

"Hmph," the other man said. "Well, we'd better get moving. Dumbledore has the castle on full alert. He must have added some alarms that the Dark Lord doesn't know about."

"The Dark Lord didn't say that we couldn't have fun with the boy," Gibbon said. He pointed the wand again.

"He didn't say you could, either," I said.

"What?"

"He told you to bring the boy to him unharmed, and you've already what, used the Cruciatis curse on him? You think he'll be happy about that?"

"What would you know about it, you little bitch?" he asked. He pointed his wand at me and a moment later my world was full of pain.

I laughed.

It hurt; on the scale I was used to it was an eight on a scale of ten. However, I'd experienced a twelve, and no pain I experienced would ever compare.

Staggering to my feet, I forced myself to smile.

"What?" the man said, his wand suddenly going limp.

"This isn't a chance I normally give people," I said. "But I'm feeling generous. Run away and I will let you live, for today at least. If you don't, then I will kill you. I'll kill your friends, your families. I will destroy everything you've ever loved."

"You won't be going anywhere," the man sneered. "It's not worth bothering with you."

He was going to try to kill me.

"I warned you," I said.

The bugs dropped darkness powder into my hands, and I threw it to the ground, dodging to the side. Green light flashed to the spot where I had been, but the things I had summoned were already in the trees. They dropped down onto the men. There were flashes of green light in the darkness, with the screams of dying men. I lunged forward and I grabbed the wand the Death Eater in front of me was using.

His grip tightened, but I reached up and shoved a cracker in his mouth.

I felt his grip loosen, and the man began to fall. Apparently the Christmas Crackers weren't as safe as they'd been made out to be.

A moment later it was over. The spiders began to drag the men off into the forest.

I heard Potter rooting around; he'd finally revived himself enough from the pain to try to do something constructive.

By the time the darkness powder began to lift, there was only one man left on the ground. There wasn't anything left of his jaw, and he was unconscious.

"Episkey," I said. "Episkey."

It wasn't enough to repair his jaw, but it did stop the bleeding.

"What are you doing?" Potter asked. "And where are the others?"

"I saw some giant spiders in the trees," I said. "It looked like they were going to attack, so I dropped some darkness powder to help them."

"And this?" he asked.

"It might be good for the aurors to have somebody to interrogate," I said. "We just have to get him tied up and get him to the castle. Most likely they'll forget about giving us points if we bring them something else to distract them."

He stared at me; his face looked drawn and worn.

I stripped him of his robes and used them to tie his hands behind him. After the death of Filch, I'd looked up the Levicorpus spell.

Casting it now, the men was levitated by one ankle.

"Let's go," I said.

The man behind us had half his face destroyed, but I was sure that Wizarding medicine could repair him well enough that he could answer questions.

I had a feeling that this incident was going to improve my reputation with some people, but it was likely to move me up Voldemort's list. I'd been enjoying my time as being just Avery's pet project, but killing five death eaters and capturing one was going to be a setback for him.

Most people like him didn't like setbacks. They often took them personally. I was going to have to be even more careful now than I had been before.

The man was in front of us, floating. His face bashed into branch after branch. I didn't particularly care.

"What are we going to tell them about the snake?" Potter asked.

"The truth," I said. "We were out exploring after hours, stumbled into a secret passage, and fell into a snake pit."

"They'll kill it," he said.

"They should," I said. "If you didn't speak snake, it would have eaten you."

He looked at me strangely.

"I'd have gotten away, but then everybody would have blamed me," I said. "which probably means I'd have ended up in Azkaban."

"She's a person," he said. "All snakes are."

"You've talked to snakes before?" I asked.

"Sure. Haven't you? I thought it was just a wizard thing, like jaunting."

"Jaunting?"

"Like on the Tomorrow People," he said. "Well, the reruns. I did it once when I was being chased."

"Apparating, you mean?" I asked.

He shook his head. "It didn't feel the same when I did it. Apparating feels like you're being squeezed through a tube. This was something different."

Accidental magic he was talking about. He's apparently been awake when it had happened to him. Interesting.

"Well, I can't speak snake," I said. "it must be one of the rare talents, like being a seer, or a metamorph...uh...whatever."

He frowned. "That means the other wizards won't think she's a person either."

I certainly didn't. Of course, it was possible that I was wrong. I'd been around enough Case 53s to know that outward appearance didn't necessarily reflect on the inner life.

Was the snake a person? If it was, would sending wizards to kill it be the right thing to do?

"She's dangerous, and she's going to kill someone," I said.

"I'll teach you to speak snake," he said.

"She won't," he said. "I'll even teach you to speak snake so that you can talk to her."

"I'm not sure that's something that can be taught," I said. "I think it's a magical power."

"You could be wrong," he said.

Frowning, I thought about it. The snake hadn't made any waves so far, but telling the authorities would be the smart thing to do.

"I reserve the right to change my mind," I said.

He whooped.

"But this is what we're going to tell Dumbledore and the aurors," I said. "And they're going to ask you to share memories with them. I'm going to tell you where to start them, and where to end them. Do that, and you'll keep the snake safe."

With luck, it might keep me safe.