"Muggleborns freed from Azkaban!" the headline screamed.

Everyone was talking about it; apparently a team of muggleborn terrorists had broken into Azkaban; they'd not only freed every Muggleborn imprisoned by the Umbridge administration, but they'd freed some others who were certifiably guilty of crimes.

A couple of others had escaped in the chaos, including a pureblood named Sirius Black, and Bellatrix Lestrange, Volemort's second in command.

An entire host of other Death Eaters remained in custody, so it didn't seem like a play by Voldemort, but I couldn't be sure. Several of the Death Eaters had been murdered in their cells, likely revenge for their crimes against whoever had killed them.

Of course, if this was a false flag operation the ones who had been killed could have beeen killed due to disloyalty, or simply to make the illusion of a muggle resistance more plausible.

"This is going to be a problem," I said to the others in Wizarding Studies class.

The Professor had already left the room, and I was standing up and facing them. She'd been called out to speak to members of the Ministry through the flu network. I could hear her now, arguing that her curriculum was what the Ministry had asked for, even though it clearly was not.

"It's got nothing to do with us," a muggleborn fifth year boy said. "We didn't do it."

By definition it was true. Anyone with a muggleborn parents was a half blood, and they wouldn't be in this class. None of the students in the room were likely related to whoever did it, but it wasn't going to matter.

"It's going to make the government paranoid," I said. "And that means that they'll crack down, hard. I wouldn't be surprised if we started to see aurors patrolling the hallways, or worse."

The weather outside was getting unseasonably cold. I could see frost on the window despite the fact that it had been a warm autumn day only an hour ago. I began pulling my bugs inside the castle; there was no point in letting them get killed by an unsesonable cold spell.

"They wouldn't do that!" a fourth year girl protested. "This is the United Kingdom! We have rights!"

"Haven't you been listening in class?" I asked. "The Wizards pay lip service to being part of the UK, but they've really carved out their own little secret country in the middle of the muggle world. It's not like going from the UK to America...it's more like going from America to Iraq."

In this world, the Americans had gone to war there for some reason; it was one of several differences I'd already noticed. Most things were almost identical, but apparently Scion and the parahumans had a bigger impact than I'd realized.

"Women have more rights among Wizardkind," I said, "Because a wand more than makes up for being smaller and weaker. But muggleborns... we don't have the same kind of rights we're used to here."

"Nobody does," a sixth year boy said. "The courts are corrupt, and it's more about who you know than what you did."

"We don't have any connections," I said. "And the system is going to keep us from getting any. And this... I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see some pretty bad legislation over the next few days, stuff that we aren't going to like very much."

"I hope you're wrong," the sixth year said, "But I don't think that you are."

The room burst into muttering, and as it was a large crowd, it was some time before we got people to be quiet again.

"We need to keep our heads down," the sixth year said. "Don't draw attention to ourselves."

I nodded.

"They'll be looking for an excuse, from all of us," I said. "But especially from me."

I'd been working on my exit plan for the last two months since school had started. I'd included provisions to take Hermione if Necessary, and maybe even Harry and Neville and Millie, although it would be incredibly difficult if I was to try to take all of them.

My head snapped around; Headmaster Rowle was headed our way.

"We'd better leave," I said. "Or they'll assume that we're conspiring against them."

We were, in a way, but I didn't tell them that. Voldemort had decided to make his own cause more popular by turning the people against another enemy.

I could do the same thing.

I'd been working to network over the past month and a half; it had been hard at first; people were reluctant to talk to me for some reason, but eventually some of my fellow muggleborns had begun to thaw to me, which had led others to follow suit.

Already, even the seventh years were listening to me, not like I was a little girl, but like I knew what I was talking about.

Personally, I thought that I did, but only time would tell. In the meantime, I needed to get the class to stay as safe as possible.

Everyone began filing out of the class.

Professor Burke had a habit of leaving class a little early, almost as though she was encouraging us to talk among ourselves while maintaining plausible deniability. That wasn't the case today; I could still hear a Ministry official raking her over the coals in the headmaster's office.

Apparently the class hadn't been intended to be the positive experience that it had proved to be, and they were demanding that she crack down harder on us.

It made sense that she might have secret urges to help us; in the course of her class, she'd shown a familiarity with the muggle world that most purebloods would never admit to having. She loved to make comparisons that made things clear to us.

I'd wondered whether or not she was really married to a muggleborn; if she wasn't, she was very good at emulating someone who had.

I followed the others into the hallway outside.

"I don't like the look of those clouds," the boy in front of me muttered.

I could feel the cold air outside; it felt odd somehow, and my bugs were feeling... something they couldn't identify. It made them afraid and they only remained in place because I forced them to.

The sky was turning dark, and I could see my breath in the air.

There was something coming; I shifted my awareness from the ongoing drama inside the Headmaster's office to the highest open windows in the castle. I sent bugs out to see what they could see, and what they saw worried me.

Cowled floating figures were circling the castle; was this a Death Eater attack?

I pulled out my wand. I hadn't been aware that Wizards could fly without a broom. If that was a spell that was available, I wanted to learn it.

Three of the creatures creatures broke away from the others, and they levitated over the walls.

While the walls were proof against creatures coming through the gate, obviously flight was less protected against. Was that an intentional flaw in the defenses, or had no one thought of it?

They were wearing dark hooded cloaks, and their faces were concealed. Occasionally a flash of rotting skin was exposed.

"Dementors!" I heard a seventh year yell.

I staggered for a moment.

The world around me vanished suddenly, replaced by a hellscape filled with the bodies of Scion's victims. Smoke burned my lungs, bringing with it the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh. I would have expected to hear the screams of the dying, but I didn't, because there weren't any wounded.

I was alone on a world where I had failed to protect everyone.

Images flashed through my mind; Leviathan, the Simurgh, Behemoth, the Nine. They flashed faster and faster through my mind, even as I felt a wave of overwhelming despair pass through me.

I shoved it away; the moment my emotions passed into my bugs, the world cleared around me, and suddenly I could see again.

Children were screaming and climbing over each other. A few had dropped to the ground even though the Dementors hadn't reached them yet.

The dementors almost seemed to enjoy the terror they were creating; they didn't seem as though they were in a hurry. Was this their natural state, or had they been told to do this to create the maximum amount of terror?

My mind raced.

Travers had taught us about these things last year, but it had been a while.

They were like boggarts, but infinitely worse. They were seemingly unkillable, and only a high level spell was able to repel them. It wasn't one that I had bothered to learn, since it hadn't seemed useful. I was regretting that decision now, of course, especially since it seemed that my classmates didn't know it either. I could see a couple of the seventh years struggling with the spell, with tiny sparks of light coming from their wands, but none of them were able to be very effective.

These things ate souls, and if I was right, this part of the castle didn't have anyone in it but the muggleborns.

I pulled out my wand. I pointed my wand at a stick on the ground. Transforming it into a variation on my club wasn't hard, and a moment later I stepped forward.

These things were blind; they hunted by emotions. If that was true, then I would be invisible to them. I couldn't depend on that, but it might give me the edge I needed.

A dementor had picked Colin Creevy up by the neck, and was bringing him close to his face.

I'd found the boy annoying, especially since he'd followed me around with his camera almost as much as he did Harry. He seemed obsessed with celebrity.

I stepped up to it and smashed it in the face with my club. I did it over and over again until it dropped the boy and lashed out at me. I ducked and smashed it in its torso.

My club crushed wetly into its side.

Were these things actually immortal, or were they just immune to magic? Had anyone actually tried mundane ways of killing them?

A second dementor had a struggling seventh year. I smashed it in the back of the head.

I struck at its joints; even if it didn't have physical pain, at least physics would still apply. It lunged toward me, dropping the boy.

The third dementor lunged toward me as well; apparently they were able to communicate among themselves, and they were intelligent enough to realize that they were under attack.

I ducked and weaved, and lashed out with my club, even as the other students pulled the younger ones back.

The entire world narrowed as I struggled to fight all three of them at once. Contrary to what Hollywood fight movies would tell you, three on one were very bad odds. The fact that I was invisible to them, that I was smaller than they were, and faster was the only thing that made it viable in the first place.

All it would take was for one of them to get hold of me and it would all be over.

I could vaguely sense Hermione and some of the older children trying to blast spells at us; they were hampered by the need to avoid hitting me, and nothing they did seemed to have any kind of effect.

They ate souls, and all that remained of what was actually me was a soul. If I died here, this was it; no afterlife, no chance at another world, just eternal oblivion.

It was a sign of just how crazy Wizards were that they thought that this was better than simply killing people.

I could hear my own breath rasping in my lungs as I ducked beneath an arm lunging at me from behind. They were getting closer, probably because they could hear the sound of my breathing, which was getting louder and louder. A summer filled with swimming couldn't make up for a year and a half of sitting in classrooms.

Sooner or later I was going to have to release my insects, but I doubted that they'd do much good. These things didn't seem to breathe, and they didn't have eyes. Insects could maybe eat their bodies, but that would take hours, and I doubted that they would sit still for that for long.

I was tiring and they weren't. The end of this was a foregone conclusion, unless I simply decided to cut my losses and run. If I did that, they'd turn on the other children.

Many of them had run inside, but a few were still on the ground, moaning. If I stopped fighting, they'd lose their souls, and I didn't want to be responsible for that.

Whoever had set this up was going to die, and in pain. It was a vow that I made for myself.

"Expecto Patronum!" I heard a shout in a rich, full voice.

A silvery wolf exploded out of a wand, and the dementors hissed, and immediately backed off.

I stared at them warily, even as I watched behind me with my bugs.

Headmaster Rowle was standing in the middle of the students, his face looking enraged.

"Go back!" he shouted. "This is not the place for you! You will stay outside the walls or you will not be here at all!"

The things tried to lunge forward, but the wolf interposed itself between us and it. It pushed them back over and over, and eventually it pushed them over the walls.

Rowle stared at the walls suspiciously.

"Is anyone hurt?" he asked.

I looked around; my arms and legs felt like they were made of lead, even though it hadn't objectively been that long.

I was going to have to work on my martial arts skills; they'd apparently grown rusty with disuse.

Every child on the ground was still alive, and some of them were starting to wake up.

"We'd have been dead if it wasn't for Taylor," Hermione said.

"Who was responsible for this?" I demanded. I rose to my feet and caught my breath. "Were you planning to wait until they'd Kissed a lot of us, and the rest so terrified that they'd leave the school?"

His face flushed red and he scowled.

My hand tightened around my wand. Part of me wanted to blast him right now, in front of a group of twenty of the Muggleborn who'd stayed behind to fight.

"You've been through something traumatic," he said. "And so I will be merciful. If you make an accusation like that again, we will be having words."

"If I can prove it, we won't be," I said. "Why are there dementors outside the castle."

"I was going to make an announcement at dinner," he said. "The Ministry has put up the dementors to guard the school against the Muggle Liberation Front. Also, there's some worry about Sirius Black and some of the others who escaped."

"And the dementors happened to attack the corner of the castle where only the muggleborn wewre at?" I asked. "Doesn't that seem like something that would take an inside job to arrange?"

"Miss Hebert..." he said. "I warned you once."

"This is what they think of us," I said. "Maybe it wasn't Headmaster Rowle...maybe it was the Ministry. They want us as dead and gone as the werewolves."

Dead werewolves had been popping up all over Britain. It was thought to be the work of people who blamed them for the attacks., although it could have just as easily been the work of corrupt aurors. No one had taken credit.

No matter what happened, it was likely that a number of the muggleborn parents would withdraw their children from school. Once they did, it would be easy to pick them off one by one.

"This won't happen again," he said.

"This was an attack on the school," I said. "By the Ministry itself!"

"You are paranoid," he said. "If it was a few rogue dementors. If they'd really meant to finish you off, wouldn't they have used all of them?"

We were both speaking to the students, some of whom were filtering back outside now that the danger was gone.

"Plausible deniability," I said. "They wanted us dead, but for it to not be their fault."

Rowle pulled out his wand, and my wand snapped up.

"Put down your wand!" he snapped.

I didn't until he put the wand to his own throat.

"All students are to return to their dormitories," he said, his voice magically projected everywhere.

To their credit, the students who'd remained to try and fight stared at the two of us uncertainly. They didn't move.

"Go!" Rowle shouted.

I nodded slightly, and they began to file one by one inside the castle. Hermione was the last to do so; she looked back at me with a troubled look on her face.

"Not you," Rowle snapped, even though I hadn't moved to go. "We're going to have a discussion."

He made as though to grab my arm, and my wand snapped up. He looked down at it, then in my eyes, and he took a step back.

"Come to my office," he said.