"The ceremony won't happen for a while," I told Hermione.

We were in the library, where I was looking up dark curses using a pass from Lockhart. He'd proven remarkably easy to manipulate, and we'd developed a weird sort of working relationship. He was a fraud, but he was a useful one, and so I left him alone.

I'd told him that I had given information to various people, to be released if I was suddenly forgetful. He seemed to respect that, and for the most part he left me alone.

"They've still got to get their house in order," I continued," And the things I told them are going to take a while to implement."

The version of the protocols I'd given them was of necessity an abbreviated one. I didn't have Alexandria's perfect memory. I wasn't one of the people who administered them, and we didn't have access to the kind of sophisticated technology that really helped with the thousand different ways that people could be mastered.

However, I'd been put under master/stranger isolation at least a dozen times while I'd been searching for the Slaughterhouse Nine, and at least some of the technology could be replicated with Wizard spells.

They'd already caught a couple of aurors who had been under the imperius. As a result, the process was going through a larger scale trial. It was being kept a secret, administered by the most trustworthy agents of the Department of Mysteries.

They were disguising it as a new experiment, and they were obliviating those tested afterwards, whether they were cleared or determined to be compromised, in order to keep someone from figuring out how to subvert the program.

The fact that it had been successful proved that even this, poor man's version of the protocols would work good enough.

They hadn't been arresting, or even doing anything to the compromised aurors for fear that movement would reveal their hand to the Death Eaters.

I had no idea what was going to happen to the aurors who'd been caught. Did the Ministry have some sort of deprogramming protocols, or were they simply released from service?

The only reason I knew about it at all was that Professor Snape was giving me occasional updates. Apparently he was considered my handler, much to his dismay.

Considering that I found him tolerable, I wasn't sure what the problem was.

"I'm just worried about the summer," Hermione said. "What's going to happen then? Are they still going to send us to orphanages, or foster us with Wizarding families?"

"I talked to the Minister about that," I said.

Getting access to the leader of the government wasn't an opportunity to be wasted. Usually that took a lot of political influence, or at least a lot of galleons. I'd done my best to push the muggleborn agenda.

"And?" she asked impatiently.

Considering that she had good parents that she loved, I could understand why she was so worried. Being forced to foster somewhere else might mean that she wouldn't be able to see them for the next five years.

"Well," I said carefully. "It wasn't like there were a lot of choices. We could use the Umbridge plan, only with Wizarding families who actually like us, we could send everybody somewhere else over the summer, or we could do something else."

She stared at me, waiting.

"You know how most pureblood homes have magical defenses?" I asked. "I got the Ministry to spring to have those put up in the homes of the muggleborn."

"What?" she asked.

"It wouldn't be enough to stop a determined attack," I said, "But we're putting floo connections in all the homes and hopefully there will be enough advance warning to get the families out."

"What about people in flats or houses that don't have fireplaces?"

"They'll be encouraged to move," I said. "Or have one put in."

"Won't the Death Eaters just floo into the houses?" Hermione asked.

"They've got a way to make the floos only active when the people inside allow it," I said. "We'll be able to visit each other by calling ahead by telephone."

If the person on the other end of the line didn't have the connection, it simply wouldn't work at all. I wasn't sure what would happen if the connection was shut off while the person was in transit. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

"It's not a permanent solution," I said. "It's going to cost a lot, which means that the people who set this kind of thing up are going to be busy. They're already working on it, with your families house being first on the list."

She stared at me.

I shrugged.

"The people around me are the ones who are most likely to be at risk," I said.

"Won't they just attack the parents when they go to work?" Hermione asked.

"They seem to want to catch the muggleborn and don't care that much about the muggles," I said. "It's a risk, though."

"And won't we be in danger when we leave the house?"

"We won't be leaving the house," I said. "I've suggested that the parents invest in video game systems, because it'll be too dangerous for most of us to go outside."

Her face scrunched up.

"It was the best I could make of a bad situation," I said. "We all have to make sacrifices until this war is over. The Longbottoms have volunteered their home for us to meet during the summer to continue our training."

"They won't be able to keep this up forever," I said. "And it's possible that they may not finish with everyone's houses in time, in which case some people are going to double up. At my suggestion they're starting with the people least able to protect themselves and working their way up. Sixth years go last."

"Not seventh years?"

"They'll be adults," I said. "They won't be living at home. And I have other plans for them."

As adults, they'd be able to go places and do things that children couldn't possibly do. Several of the boys had already agreed to be my agents over the summer.

We needed money for our organization; what little money I'd saved up from robbing my host body's parents' home was rapidly vanishing. We needed a stable source of funds, and the scam that I'd had Lupin running in France would work just as well here.

I already had a seventh year whose brother was a used car dealer. He'd search for salvage cars, have his magical relative repair them, and sell them for a profit. The seventh year would keep half the money and send half of it on to us in the form of galleons.

At five galleons to the British pound, even a single salvage car would be enough to keep us going for a while. It wasn't like we had a lot of expenses; mostly we needed to purchase magical components and items and equipment.

"What about you?" Hermione asked. "Does Mr. Lupin even still have a house? I heard that his cottage was damaged when the Death Eaters came for him."

"It was a rental," I said. "He was kicked out. He's doing better now, of course."

Dumbledore was paying him out of his own pocket to do whatever he was doing. He was also making money off the used car thing; enough that he was feeling rather flush the last time I'd spoken to him.

Of course, flush for him would have been pocket change for the Malfoys. Werewolves tended to get used to poverty.

Hermione was quiet.

"I'm not sure yet," I admitted. "It's not even clear whether or not I'll be staying with him this summer. They tend to like to keep things like that a secret for obvious reasons."

"He's going to be able to come back, isn't he?"

"Madam Bones has rescinded the werewolf laws," I said. "Released all werewolves from prison unless they have other crimes they are accountable for."

I had an uneasy feeling that wouldn't be enough. The Ministry had killed some of the werewolves, and some of those who had survived likely resented the government, for decades of institutional racism if for nothing else.

I felt a presence behind me.

Millicent stood, hesitant.

She'd spent much of the last year in a state of shock and depression after Tracey's death, becoming a shadow of her old self. I'd barely seen her even though we were roommates, with her not getting up until after I'd gone, and in bed before I got back to my rooms.

Depression wasn't anything to make light of; I'd seen it with my father and I'd felt traces of it myself on occasion, enough that I'd tried to talk to her, but nothing had worked. I'd gotten busy afterwards, and then time had slipped away from me.

"Taylor?" she asked. "Can we talk?"

I glanced at Hermione, who nodded and stood up.

"I've got some things to check on," she said. She left quickly.

Millie sat down slowly beside me. She'd lost weight over the past four months; she hadn't been eating for a long time, and while she looked better, she still had bags under her eyes.

"How are you doing?" I asked.

I'd tried to talk to her several times before, but she'd never been interested. I would have pushed harder, but part of me had wondered if she'd blamed me for Tracey's death. She and Tracey had been friends for a long time, and they'd gotten even closer over the last school year.

"It's all real, isn't is?' she asked tonelessly.

I didn't have to ask what she meant. After Mom had died, there had been a time where nothing had felt real. I'd gotten over that pretty quickly, but I think it had taken Dad longer.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm sorry it happened that way."

"It shouldn't have happened at all," she said. "Tracey never did anything to anybody. She didn't deserve that."

"No," I said. "She didn't."

I could have continued but I didn't. I could tell that she wanted to talk.

"I blamed you, you know," she said, not looking at me. "For getting her killed."

"I know," I said.

I hadn't been sure, but I'd suspected. It had been there in the way that she wouldn't look at me, in the way that she'd been avoiding me all semester.

"If you hadn't been there, Tracey wouldn't have been killed," she said.

"Not there and then," I said. "But two or three years down the line? She was a half-blood, and her family was pretty liberal. Do you think the Death Eaters wouldn't have come for her sooner or later?"

I was deflecting my own culpability, but I didn't see what else I could do. I pushed my guilt away into the swarm, and my mind cleared.

"It could have been me," she said, looking up at me. "Or my family. If we hadn't..."

"Your family took precautions," I said. "Tracey asked hers to do so, but they laughed it off. I've got a letter that she sent me over the summer; they couldn't reach me, so they held it till I got back here. I can show it to you."

"My parents didn't want to believe it either," she said, staring at the table. "But I kept telling them and telling them."

"You made them listen," I said.

Giving her a sense of control might help with her trauma. People tended to be more overwhelmed by things that they couldn't control, which was why people worried about flying a plane, but not about driving to the airport when accident statistics said that they should be worried about driving far more than flying.

"I've been thinking about it for a long time," she said, "And I realized it wasn't your fault at all... it was theirs. They ruin everything."

"We'll get them," I said. "Me, the Ministry, someone. They'll pay for the things they've done."

It wasn't a promise. It was a certainty.

I'd make them pay, even if it happened after I was dead.

She looked up, her expression suddenly determined.

"I want to make them pay," she said.

"We aren't dealing with bullies anymore," I said. "Or... at least not just that. You know what the Death Eaters are likely to do if they find out you're helping me. The muggleborn don't have a choice... Harry Potter doesn't have a choice. They're all on the list to be killed. You... you have a choice."

"Tracey had a choice too," Millicent said. "And she paid for that. I want to make them pay for that."

I frowned.

Millicent had been out of this for months; most people barely even remembered that she was my roommate. Did I have the right to put her at risk when I didn't have to?

There had been people who had disapproved of the Wards program, convinced that they were creating child soldiers. They hadn't understood that the nature of our powers had meant that we were driven for conflict. We'd have been out fighting whether or not the government supported us.

Wizards didn't have that kind of drive. Most of them were just as lazy as most muggles or even more so.

Yet I'd seen the look of steely determination in her eyes before. If I didn't help her, she was likely to get herself in trouble.

"You're going to have a lot of catching up," I said. "The others have half a year of training on you and it's more advanced than the stuff we were doing last year."

"I'll work hard," she said.

She had worked very hard last year; assuming she could keep her depression in check, she should be able to this year too. She was likely to be rusty in her combat skills, and she'd need a bit of training to make up for the tactics and strategy skills I'd been developing with the others, but it was possible that she could catch up.

It would make her only the second Slytherin in our organization, but even Ron Weasley didn't mind her terribly, and he didn't like anybody that wore green.

He seemed to think that I wanted to mount the heads of my enemies on the wall or something.

Did wizards even have taxidermists? Muggle artists would likely have questions about something like that.

Even if I was inclined to something like that. Voldemort's head would make a horrifying ornament.

I had a momentary image of his head on my wall, and I shuddered.

"I'll see what I can do," I said.

We had to start getting members from the other groups; I'd been reluctant before in part because I hadn't wanted to make them targets. The rest of us had already been targets, so all I'd been doing was giving them a better chance than they already had.

But now that an actual government that didn't want to kill us was forming, we couldn't afford to be seen as just a muggleborn organization. That would lead us to being marginalized.

Kids our age couldn't vote, and as muggleborns, neither could our parents. We didn't have anyone to advocate for us really, except for a few radical activists that people tended to dismiss out of hand.

We'd need the help of half-bloods and purebloods. They had parents who might be able to speak out for us, parents who had connections that might actually be able to get things done.

I had no illusions that Madam Bones would be able to fix everything. Wizarding society was by definition nepotistic. We'd have to leverage that if we wanted to forward our agenda.

As much as I like Madam Bones, it was likely that we weren't always going to see eye to eye. She was worried about the security of the Ministry and about maintaining its continued existence. Our concerns extended further than that.

If I could change the minds of this generation of Hogwarts students, and we could keep from being murdered in the meantime, then things would change eventually as the old guard started to die off. It was the usual way things changed; efforts by the young.

That was the reason that people like Thomas Jefferson, who'd been liberal for his day would have been considered a bigot now. The world was filled with incremental change, change that seemed to go faster and faster to those who were stuck in the old way of thinking.

Sometimes the world seemed almost unrecognizable to the very old, which was why some of them seemed to withdraw from a world they were no longer able to make sense of.

Some of the old guard would never accept the kind of changes that needed to happen. It was inevitable that there would be hard liners who tried to fight back.

If some of the old guard happened to have accidents in order to speed that change, well, sometimes eggs had to be cracked to make an omelet.

"Hey," I asked Millicent. "Are you hungry? Let's go down to the kitchen and get something to eat."

I'd figured out how to sweet talk some of the House Elves into making special orders for me; I got tired of a constant diet of heavy British food and occasionally wanted some fruit or pasta, a hamburger or pizza.

I'd been working with the muggleborn students to advocate for pizza and pasta night; Rowle didn't seem entirely against the idea, but it hadn't happened yet.

Still, an evening omelet sounded pretty good.

"Let's go crack a few eggs."