Remus Lupin looked sick.

He was a tall and lanky man, but his face was pale and although he was young, his skin had premature wrinkles. His brown hair already had slight traces of gray. His robes were shabby and worn. He looked exhausted.

If he was a classmate of Harry's parents, then he shouldn't look this old.

If I was an actual eleven year old, then I wouldn't have noticed, likely, but I wasn't. This was not a healthy man.

Dumbledore was standing beside him, and the look he was giving him indicated that maybe there was more to this man than initial appearances would indicate.

"Miss Hebert," he said.

I nodded to him. My wand was in my hand inside my robes.

While I was sure Dumbledore thought this man was safe, there was nothing in this world we lived in that could be certain, not when every Wizard could be a mind controller or shapechanger.

The bugs didn't smell polyjuice on him, but there was a sick, acrid scent to him, something like a dog that was ill. If that was the smell a werewolf had, it'd be useful to know. It was possible that given his general look that he was sick with something else.

"Mr. Lupin," I said, nodding.

"I must admit that I have no idea how to raise a child," he said.

"I barely remember how to be one," I said. "Treat me like an adult, and I'll return the favor.

He frowned. "I fear that's not what Dumbledore here wanted for you. He fears that your circumstances are doing you mental harm."

Making me a sociopath, did he mean? He might be right.

Dumbledore wisely remained silent. He'd made his position clear during those times I'd spoken to him. He'd wanted me placed with a normal family where I could socialize with normal people.

"I've had to be on guard for the past few months, surrounded by enemies," I said. "That can be a little wearing."

I hadn't really been able to enjoy myself much, not really. There had been places and times where I'd found small pieces of joy, but they'd been few and far between.

"Perhaps we'll be able to find a place for you that is more to your liking," he said.

I nodded.

Anything would be better than being constantly on my guard. Unfortunately, I couldn't really trust this man. At best, he was a spy for Dumbledore, there to find out as much about me as he could and report back to his master.

At worst, he was working for Voldemort, possibly even against his will.

Yet despite knowing that, I couldn't help but instinctively like him. He reminded me a little of my father. My father had been a man downtrodden by life, one who'd fought the system and lost. He'd done everything he could to make his city better, and nothing he'd ever done had mattered.

This man had that same slump in his shoulders. It was a combination of a lifetime of defeats and an indomitable will that despite everything he was going to keep fighting.

"The hardest part will be getting out of here," Lupin said. "There will be people watching for us, and there are anti-apparition wards up throughout most of the Ministry."

"Have Dumbledore accompany us," I said. "Is there a way to track where someone has apparated to?"

"No," he said. "Not unless you grab onto them as they go."

"So it's not a problem," I said. "Apparate us somewhere random, and then do it again several times until we get to where we are going."

"As you can see, there is nothing wrong with Miss Hebert's mind," Dumbledore said.

"Your trunk," he said.

I pulled out my wand, pointed it, and I shrank it. I made to put it in my fanny pack.

"Your trunk isn't expanded on the inside, is it?" Lupin asked.

I shook my head.

"Good."

"Why?" I asked.

"Putting an expanded space inside another expanded space can sometimes be unstable. Sometimes the things inside get crushed into a fine paste. There are Wizards who have tried living in expanded trunks, only to end up crushed to death when the spells failed."

I winced.

I'd been luck with Hermione and Neville. I'd have to make sure that I was never in that kind of a situation again.

"There are some spells I'd like to learn over the summer," I said. "Things that will help me protect Harry and myself better."

Disillusionment was the first spell I wanted to learn. It wasn't perfect, but there had been times when I would have been able to slip away without fighting if I'd had it. If I could cast it on other people, it might be even more useful.

Lupin glanced at Dumbledore. Undoubtedly the man had suggested that he limit whet he taught me over the summer.

"We'll discuss it later," he said.

I'd have an entire summer to get his trust, and with luck I might be able to wheedle some training out of him.

"Let's go,' Dumbledore said.

I nodded, and I stood between the two of them as we stepped out into the greater Ministry.

I'd seen all of it before, through my bugs, but it was more impressive with my own eyes. My vision through bugs was often looking down on the scene from above. In my current form I wasn't very tall. It was likely that I would never be as tall as my original body.

There was a fountain in the main hall. It had a noble looking Wizard, with his wand pointed up in the air. Beside him was a beautiful witch. Surrounding him, and lower down were statues of a goblin, a centaur, and a house elf. The non-humans were looking adoringly up at the Wizard and the Witch.

The message given by the fountain was clear to everyone who entered the Ministry. Wizards and Witches were the pinnacle of creation, and all other creatures were lesser. The fact that they hadn't even bothered to have a muggle made me wonder. Was it because a muggle would be indistinguishable from the Wizard, or was it because muggles weren't considered good enough to even adore Wizards from afar?

Except for certain Christian groups who had fundamental issues with the concept of magic, I suspected that most muggles these days would react to Wizards the same way people in my world had reacted to Capes. They'd have feared them, accepted them and idolized them in equal measures.

I doubted that even those Christian groups that didn't approve would try to bring back the Inquisition. The world had moved past that. More likely they'd have simply been worried about the state of the souls of Wizardkind and tried to get them to voluntarily stop using magic. They might even get some converts.

There would always be the radical, lunatic fringe, of course. However, that was true of any group.

The Statue of Secrecy might be entirely unnecessary. When it had been instituted, ordinary people had been superstitious and vindictive. In the minds of the Wizards, muggles were still that way, and in their imagination the response would be the same as it had been in the sixteen hundreds, except with better weapons.

But I'd lived in a world where people had powers, and they'd been accepted. Part of that had been the Endbringers, and through the continuous public relations efforts of the Protectorate. But that just meant that integration would have to be handled carefully.

It would require some sacrifices on the part of the Wizards. They were essentially self governing now, and the people in their government would essentially lose their jobs. That was the reason that the Statute would continue to be enforced even if the people in power knew that it would be safe.

People in power never wanted to give it up.

"Hold on tightly," Lupin said.

I grabbed his left arm, and a moment later it felt as though we were being pulled through a tube.

I blinked as I realized that we were in a small cottage. It wasn't very well kept up, and the whole thing looked just as shabby as his robes. The man wasn't rich, it was clear.

I'd heard about the limited employment opportunities offered to werewolves. It didn't make sense to me; unless you had a night job, it wouldn't even interfere with work, so why bother?

"We aren't staying," he said. "I'm going to grab my things and we'll be leaving. There should be a team of aurors arriving in..."

There were several pops as people appeared all around me. Lupin had his hand on my wand arm, and he tightened it.

"They'll be coming,' he told one of the aurors. "So you'd better be ready."

The man nodded grimly.

"People know where I live," Lupin said. "Which was the entire point of parading me and you through the halls of the Ministry. They'll be coming to kill you, and we're going to leave a little surprise for them."

It took him only a couple of minutes to grab his bags. I could hear popping sounds coming from outside.

"That's our cur to leave, Lupin said. He grabbed my arm, and the world compressed all around us. It felt like something was wrong; the squeezing sensation lasted much longer than it normally did, and the pressure grew until it was hard to breathe or even think.

We emerged onto a street by the docks.

"They were putting up an anti-apparition jink," Lupin said. His face was pale. "They responded a lot more quicky than I thought they would."

Given that I'd killed between six to twelve of their men, the only surprising thing was that they hadn't responded even faster.

"It'll illegal to apparate to another country," Lupin said quietly. "And countries have ways of watching for that. We can't be sure that You-Know-Who doesn't have agents in France, so we'll have to be careful."

"I'm going to disillusion us both," Lupin said. "And we're going to sneak aboard a muggle ferry."

He pointed his wand at me, and tapped me on the head. It felt as though he'd cracked an egg on my skull, and I felt a cold sensation surrounding me. Looking down, I could see that my clothes and skin were taking on the exact color and texture of the surrounding environment.

I'd seen Tinkertech that could do things like this, and there were rumors that the US military had been trying to reverse engineer tinkertech to do exactly this, using cameras.

Lupin whirled his wand around himself and he disappeared as well.

I could still sens him through my bugs; I could hear and smell him perfectly well. He was effectively invisible, though.

"Which ferry are we going to hitch a ride on?" I asked.

The port that was around the corner was filled with a variety of ships. Taking the ferry made sense because it would have been harder to hide on one of the smaller ships.

"The one with all the cars on it," he said. "You know what cars are, right?"

"I'm a muggleborn," I said dryly. "I wasn't raised in a cave in Africa. What are the odds that they've got someone waiting for us?"

"There are sixty three ferry crossings a day across ten routes," he said. "There's a chance that he'll have someone waiting, but..."

"We'll deal with it when we can," I said.

I found myself wishing that my foe-glass was smaller; I'd have liked a look at it about now, but it was packed away and shrunk inside my luggage. I'd tried using my bugs to look at it before, but it typically only showed the bugs nearest enemy, which were typically spiders or one of the cats that roamed Hogwarts.

We walked down the slope toward the docks.

"I don't know much about you," Lupin said quietly. "You're an American?"

"Born and raised," I said.

In one sense I was telling the truth, even if I was in the body of a British girl.

"You've killed," he said. "That doesn't bother you?"

"I like living," I said. "I like for my friends to stay alive. If people insist on trying to kill us, I've got a right to defend myself. I don't like having to do it... I'd rather that people just left me alone. But from the moment that damn hat put me in Slytherin, this was all inevitable."

In my career as a warlord, it had been a long time before I'd killed anyone. It had gotten easier over time, but it wasn't supposed to be easy.

"I'm good at pushing things off," I admitted. "At doing what needs to be done, and worrying about it later."

"Killing damages the soul' Lupin said. "That's what Dumbledore always says."

"Which may be why he's so passive in all of this," I said. "He's got enough power to take on half the Death Eaters at once, and if he did, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in. Even politically he's got a lot of power that he's not using."

"It's complicated," Lupin said. "His position isn't as secure as you might think, and if we lose some of the swing votes in the Wizengamot, the government may fall to the Death Eaters without a single spell needing to be cast in anger."

"So he lets them keep imperiusing the members until the whole government is a puppet of the opposition?' I asked.

I actually liked Dumbledore, somewhat. That didn't blind me to his faults.

Reaching the Ferry, which was backed up against the pier, we moved cautiously.

"Be careful," Lupin said. "If they do have someone waiting, they'll be watching for us."

We walked beside a truck as it was being loaded onto the ship, moving carefully around the people who were waving the truck into place.

It took forty five minutes for all of the trucks and cars to be loaded into place. According to Lupin, we were looking forward to a three hour trip across the water, and then we'd have to dodge Wizards in France who'd be watching for us.

I'd have preferred to have gone through the chunnel, but apparently in this time period it wasn't finished yet.

The last of the cars was finally settled into place, and the ferry began to move. I felt myself relax a little.

There were a lot of people on the ferry, but I'd been watching all of them carefully. Most of them seemed like ordinary muggle tourists. None of them had the distinct oddness of dress that most purebloods affected, pretending that they knew nothing about muggle fashion.

Of course, if they were really trying to catch us undercover, they'd be more careful that that.

I closed my eyes and focused.

What would be different and distinctive about Wizards, something that I could use to differentiate them from the muggles?

No one seemed to be paying any sort of undue attention to their surroundings.

If Voldemort had sent a team, he'd almost certainly have sent more than one person; after all, I'd killed five of his people by myself.

The fact that he'd need to have a team of at least ten meant that he probably didn't have enough people to cover all the ferrys, much less the airplanes, private boats and other ways of getting across the channel. Still, I couldn't help but feel paranoid.

I caught a glance between two rough looking men, men who didn't look like they should have known each other.

"They're here," I murmured to Lupin.

"Who?" he asked.

"The man in the wool overcoat and the other one in the leather jacket," I said. "There are likely others that I haven't spotted yet."

I felt something wash over me.

"They've spotted us," Lupin said. He grabbed my arm, but nothing happened.

"It's an anti-apparition jinx," he said.

People that I wouldn't have thought would be working for Voldemort started making their way in our direction. There was a woman with a stroller; now that I looked more closely, what she had in the stroller wasn't a baby at all, but was something twisted and hideous.

A heavyset man with a reddened face was coming too.

"You should get under the truck now," Lupin said calmly.

I glanced at the empty space where I knew he was, and then I didn't argue. I was at a disadvantage here on the water; there were bugs, but not so many terrestrial bugs as I would have liked.

The human revealing spell was good at revealing intruders, but it wasn't specific enough to reveal how many people people were hiding or even exact locations. It was possible to work your way through...

The woman with the baby carriage turned, pulling out her wand and pointed it at the man in the coat. Green light flashed out, but the man in the coat managed to dodge, ducking behind a car while returning fire.

Suddenly light was flashing everywhere as people began launching spell after spell at each other.

They'd used me as bait. I wasn't sure whether I should be angry or admiring of them. They'd had people waiting just in case the Death Eaters came running, or maybe they deliberately slipped the information to someone they knew was compromised.

It wouldn't have surprised me if they'd used the vote against me as a sort of test to see who had been taken over; it would have been easy enough to compare someone's previous voting record to their current one and get an idea of whether something had changed.

Master Stranger techniques relied on having a baseline as well.

The battle seemed to go on forever, and there wasn't a lot that I could do. From my position under the truck I didn't have an angle on any of the Death Eaters, and I wasn't entirely sure who was on our side anyway. The last thing I needed to do was attack and kill an auror and end up in Azkaban for a real crime.

The muggles on board were screaming and huddling, and all I could think was that the obliviators would be working overtime with this.

The fight took almost five minutes, and the end result seemed to be seven stunned and captured Death Eaters and three dead Aurors.

People were already popping in to obliviate the muggles and to clean up any superficial damage that had been done by the battle. By the time we reached France no one would know that anything had happened.

As I slipped out from under the truck, Lupin dispelled the disillusionment.

"From all reports, I thought you'd insist on participating in the battle," he said.

"I'm not a Gryffindor," I said irritably. "I don't kill people just for the glory."

"This lot will give up more information," he said. "And maybe things will be calmer by the time we return."

I nodded.

"Say, do you think I could get a beret in France," I asked. "My friend Hermione admired the one I wear some time, and wanted one like it."

"We're meeting up with her family," he said. "Dumbledore thought it important that you interact with other children outside of school, and he felt that as your friend, Miss Granger needed a little more protection than most muggleborn students, so we're killing two birds with one spell, so to speak."