"Today we are going to talk about operational security," I said.

When we'd first started, some of the older children had questioned how I knew things. By this point, they no longer bothered.

They didn't even ask what I meant; they already knew I'd follow up with an explanation.

"In muggle military organizations, operational security is a way of trying to see through the enemies eyes, to anticipate the things that they might do to try to steal that information from you, and then figuring out ways to stop them from doing that. It's difficult in the Muggle world... it's harder in this one. Why might that be?"

"Anybody can be imperio'd," Colin Creevy said. "Even if they don't want to be."

"Can anybody think of a way to combat that?" I asked.

Everyone looked around, and nobody said anything. Finally one girl raised her hand.

"The Fidelius charm?"

"That can work for some kinds of secrets," I said.

Personally I would have loved to master that spell. I'd have had it cast on Gringotts and held the entire bank hostage until the Wizarding world gave into our demands. Unfortunately, it was considered such a difficult spell that even our seventh years couldn't manage it, although they might have been able to if they'd been better educated.

"I'm looking for something simpler, though," I said.

Nobody raised their hands.

"You can't give away a secret if you don't know it," I said. "Imagine that we were a group of strangers, and that at every meeting we came in wearing robes and masks, with only the leader knowing who we all were. Would controlling any one person make that much of a difference?"

"They could give away the meeting place," a boy said. "And then they could pick us all up."

"There are ways to deal with that," I said. "Among which is to never actually meet. Split us up into groups of five; the members of each group only know the people in their group, except for the leader, who knows one person from another cell."

"Couldn't you just go from one cell to the next?" Colin asked.

"You could, but each time you do, there's a chance something might go wrong... maybe the person fights back a little better than you thought, maybe they die... maybe your own cover is blown, alerting the other cells to your existence. Compare that to the aurors all showing up to this meeting right now."

Everyone nodded slowly.

"It's too late for us here... we already all know each other, and even if we didn't, muggleborns in Hogwarts is a pretty limited group."

"Didn't we sign a contract?" Harry asked.

He'd been forced to go home for the holidays, much to his dismay, but he was back now.

"It helps," I admitted, "But you could imperio someone into taking the consequences, and there wouldn't be a lot we could do."

That seemed to reach them, and they all looked at each other uncomfortably.

"It's not the only risk, either. You all know what polyjuice potion can do. How would we defeat that?"

"Passwords?" a boy asked. I'd seen him reading spy novels in his room, so he probably was familiar with at least some of this.

"Also, eyes on," I said. "If you suspect that someone is going to try to replace one of your members, it helps if everybody keeps their eyes on each other at all times until the operation is over."

Polyjuice wasn't usually that fast, but I needed them to get used to thinking tactically.

"If you faced two versions of me, and you couldn't tell which was which, what would you do?"

"Riddikulous you both?" Colin asked.

"And if that didn't work?"

"Hit you both with a stunner," Thomas Cooper said. "The one that knocks us out is you."

Everybody laughed.

"He's right," I said. "You are better off stunning both people and figuring out who is the impostor later rather than letting one of them betray you."

After this was all over, I wondered if I might have a career in teaching, Maybe I could teach at Hogwarts, or train aurors or something similar.

It was optimistic of me to think ahead; I'd spent the last year and a half focusing on survival.

"It's time to go back," Hermione said, pointing at her watch.

I nodded.

Finding a time where everyone was able to get together was a challenge; we were no longer the secret we once were, but the others were still bound by the contract they had signed. Also, the room of requirement was our trump card, the place where we would retreat to in an emergency.

To that end, we were holding this meeting in one of the classrooms. We reserved the Room for times when we had to do more hands on training.

Rowle had given his approval to our club and the other professors sometimes listened in. I allowed it only when the sessions were about more innocuous subjects.

I was reserving the Room for when I had to teach them to stab people under the armpits. I somehow thought McGonagall would frown at that.

As everyone began leaving the room, I waited; Snape had been waiting outside, listening in.

He stepped out of the shadows when the last of them had left, stepping into the room.

"The things you know," he began.

"Tough neighborhood," I said, shrugging. It was my standard reply to questions of that sort, yet he occasionally chose to ask. Maybe one day I would actually tell him... possibly after I got really good at the obliviate spell.

"I once asked you not to start a revolution," he said.

I smirked. "Is it a revolution if you change the way people think?"

"It's the only kind of revolution that actually means anything," he said. "Most simply replace one set of rulers with more of the same."

He'd felt the sting of being a half-blood in Slytherin. I had a sense that he at least tacitly approved of some of the things I was doing, although he has suspicions that I had been doing terrible things, or that I was going to do them.

"I suppose I have your organization to thank for your classmates' improved performance. Some of them are... almost passable."

"Unlike the purebloods?" I asked.

He didn't say anything. He just stared at me.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"The new Minister would like to speak to you," he said. "And as your Head of House, I am to escort you there."

As it turned out, I had been wrong about Dumbledore forging the documents linking Umbridge to the Death Eaters. The papers in question had been released upon her death, apparently part of an insurance policy Umbridge had to keep herself from being assassinated.

She'd named the heads of a dozen prominent families as members, and with them under investigation and unable to vote in the elections, Dumbledore's party was able to elect their candidate, Amelia Bones.

According to the older muggleborn students, Bones' parents had been murdered by Voldemort during the first war, along with her brother, his wife and their children. As a result, the consensus was that she was very unlikely to communicate with them, at least voluntarily.

She was considered strict, but fair.

I was a little less enthusiastic. She was the head of Magical Law Enforcement, and she had been unable to clean up her own department. How competent she would be as Minister still remained to be seen. However, it seemed unlikely that she would be actively trying to kill us, so even if she was incompetent, she'd be better than her predecessor.

"This isn't a trap, is it?" I asked. "Like telling a criminal that they've won a prize just so you can trick them into turning themselves in?"

"Do you consider yourself a criminal?" he asked.

"I've done some things," I said. "Necessary things, although some people might disagree."

"I think you'll find Minister Bones to be... somewhat more agreeable than the last Minister."

"A honey badger in a sack would be more agreeable than Umbridge," I said. "Do I need to dress up or something?"

He shook his head.

"Just come along."

I followed him to the Headmaster's office.

Apparently we were going to use the fireplace there to floo out. That could only be done with Rowle's permission, which eased my mind slightly about this being Snape forced to take me to the Death Eaters.

It didn't mean that it might not be a trap. There very well could be a circle of aurors waiting for me on the other side, ready to take me in because they'd listened to pensieve memories and realized that the voice they'd heard had an American accent.

I didn't relax until we were through and into the Ministry.

We were back in the atrium. The poster of Umbridge had been taken off the wall, and it wasn't empty as it had been the last time I'd been here.

People were coming and going through the fireplaces quickly enough that there was always someone entering.

There was a line waiting to go through security.

Instead of a sleepy security guard, they had five aurors working; these men looked grizzled and hardened, and they kept their hands close to their wands at all time. They watched each person coming through the line carefully, apparently looking for any signs of suspicious activities.

I stepped into line and I was soon followed by someone else. Snape stood beside me, waiting patiently. I kept a careful eye on the people around me, just in case. It would be just my luck to have an assassin attack me here when I was in public.

"I suppose I should have asked if you had any contraband on your person," he said quietly.

"I'd have asked to use the restroom first," I said. "I didn't even bring my second wand."

Of course he didn't know about any of my other wands; the ones I'd taken from Death Eaters. I'd found that some of them worked better for me than others. Some of them seemed like they were actively resisting me.

I'd still kept them, hidden all over Hogwarts in places I was likely to be just in case I was somehow caught without my wand.

I hadn't kept Umbridge's wand. It would have been damning evidence, and likely would have led to me being in Azkaban or worse.

I'd dropped it at the scene near her body after wiping it off. I didn't think Wizards knew how to do fingerprinting, but I couldn't take the risk.

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

Looking behind me, I saw a young Wizard. He was staring at me. I tensed up, but felt Snape's hand on my shoulder.

"Are you Miss Hebert?" he asked.

My mind saw an image of his shoving a knife into my stomach; I slipped my hand on my wand, and I stepped back.

"Yes."

"The Hero of Hogwarts?" he asked. He grinned like a maniac.

"I don't call myself that," I said cautiously.

"I wanted to thank you," he said. "I've been dating a seventh year there, Gracie Hawkins... she says you saved her life."

He was young; had he been at Hogwarts last year? I couldn't remember. In any case, seventeen was considered of age in the Wizarding World. Still, dating a school girl seemed a little sketchy to me.

"Gracie is a great girl," I said. "I've learned a lot from her."

"I'm surprised that she would consent to spend any time with you, Mr. Brooks," Snape said. "As I recall, she was the only reason you managed to graduate at all last year, and she was a sixth year."

Brooks flushed, and stared at the floor. Apparently Snape flustered him almost as much as he did some first years.

"All I wanted you to know was that you have people rooting for you," he said. He leaned forward. "Not everybody in our world is a tosser."

"Speak for yourself, Mr. Brooks," Snape said. "And remember that despite her accomplishments, Miss Hebert is still a child."

I allowed myself to grin at him, and he flushed.

He didn't seem as creeped out as most people. Maybe it was because there was the beginnings of something genuine in my smile.

We turned around and didn't speak again, although I did catch several people in line staring at me. My picture had been in the paper often enough that I was a sort of minor celebrity.

They seemed to take a long time running the dark item detector over me and Snape. I was reluctant to give up my wand; that would be an ideal time to capture me after all. I did, though, and it was weighed and returned to me.

I followed Snape to the elevators; there were lift attendants now; apparently working the elevators was too hard for some Wizards. It wasn't as though elevators hadn't been invented long before most of them were born.

"You seem familiar with this place," Snape said.

"I was dragged through here when they threw me into a cell," I said.

The elevator attendant gave me a strange look and I smirked at him.

"Hopefully an experience you aren't eager to repeat," Snape said.

"I'd imagine I'd be a little harder to catch this time," I said.

Maybe I should introduce some of those Death Eater wands into the ventilation system here; if I was ever caught again, I'd be able to summon a wand, and I'd be able to escape, unless Dumbledore used the fidelius spell again.

Being prepared was the best form of defense after all.

We made our way to the Minister's office.

I had a moment where I wondered if the cat portraits on the walls would give me away, but as the two guards outside the door let us in, I saw that everything had been cleared off the walls, leaving the room spartan and plain except for the desk and the fireplace.

There were guards in the corners of the room staring at me and Snape with suspicious eyes. They had the same look that the guards at the front had had, except they looked even more dangerous.

Apparently the Ministry was taking the assassination of two Ministers seriously.

Amelia Bones wasn't an attractive woman. She was square jawed with close cropped gray hair. She was wearing a monocle and sitting at her desk. There were stacks of papers covering her desk; Umbridge hadn't had a tenth of the paperwork.

"Miss Hebert," she said, looking up.

I stood up straight.

This woman might actually be able to make the lives of the muggleborn better; my usual tactic of annoying and angering Ministry officials until they lost their composure wouldn't work here.

"Minister Bones," I said respectfully, nodding my head.

She looked at Snape surprised; apparently she'd expected something else from me. Was I developing a reputation in the Ministry?

"You've done this country a service," she said. "Prevented an atrocity and protected our greatest asset; the next generation."

I stared at her, then frowned.

Was she trying to butter me up for something?

"What do you know about the Order of Merlin?" she asked.

Shrugging, I said, "Nothing much. I wasn't exactly brought up here, and it hasn't come up in Wizarding Studies."

"It was originally created by Merlin to promote laws benefiting and protecting muggles. Over time, the awards that were granted changed to recognize outstanding Wizarding accomplishments."

"Why are we talking about this?" I asked, suspiciously.

"I am planning to nominate you for the Order of Merlin, first class," she said. "This will have the benefit of being well deserved, while being a slap in the face to certain members of our society who hold... antiquated views."

"You expect the Death Eaters to attack the ceremony," I said. "Thereby using me as bait."

"Does that bother you?" she asked. "Given that the offer is genuine. It will enrage the partisans, but they already want you dead. You'll be the youngest recipient in history."

Norvel Twonk, whose painting I'd used to warn the professors during the dementor attack had received the Oder of Merlin posthumously for dying while saving a muggle child. It was why I'd thought he would be loyal.

"The sooner we can eliminate the Death Eaters, the happier I'll be," I said. "Although I'll want a look at the security precautions."

"You'll have that," she said. She hesitated. "I've heard that you have some... interesting ideas about how to tell whether people have been controlled or not."

I'd told that to Snape in confidence. I glanced over at him and saw that he was studiously staring at the fire.

Most likely he'd told Dumbledore, who undoubtedly was the one pulling this woman's strings.

Minister Bones leaned forward.

"I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts about that."

She was in the middle of trying to clean up her department; getting rid of the compromised aurors was the single greatest thing that could be done to strengthen the Ministry right now.

Yet I hesitated.

Would it be easier to let the Ministry fall and then rebuild it from scratch?

Everything I'd heard about this woman suggested that she'd been known for unstinting fairness and honesty throughout her career. She hadn't adorned her office with superfluous decorations; instead she was here, presumably hard at work.

Was it possible to rebuild the Ministry without destroying it?

I'd give them a single chance.

"All right," I said, sitting down. "You might want to write this down. I like to call these Master Stranger Protocols, and they aren't an easy solution. But if you want to weed out the bad apples, you have to start somewhere."

She started writing.

"It goes like this," I began.

Then I told them.