"I don't actually see the future," I insisted, "So I may not be able to give you much warning."

The team of aurors who were standing around me had all been certified as clear of the imperius, and I suspected that Minister Bones had been augmenting that with illegitimacy on the side; it was presumably secret, but I'd read between the lines from some of the things that I'd heard.

It had taken two months to purge the Ministry of the aurors who had been compromised, and not all of them had been the victims of the Imperius. Some of them had simply received bribes or been threatened with the deaths of family members.

That time had been relatively free of problems at Hogwarts; we'd continued our training, including Millicent, and we'd slowly added several other members; most of them were halfbloods, but there were a few purebloods as well.

By this time, I was probably teaching a quarter of the entire school population, which was probably raising some eyebrows.

However, those who attended my training sessions tended to be doing better at school and they caused fewer disciplinary problems; discipline was one of the first things we taught after all.

Even the Weasley twins were engaged in fewer pranks; we had focused their creativity into creating tools to help us be more effective; paying for their research. Their goal was to open a prank shop, and a lot of the things they made us could simply be scaled down to be less lethal and more humerous.

"We could have Tonks take your place," Auror Kilcarne said. "It doesn't have to be you."

"I'm got a better chance of surviving an assassination attempt than she does," I said. "I'm faster, smaller, and harder to hit."

Also, I cheated.

Besides, I'd never really been the kind of person who let other people fight her battles for her. I preferred to face them head on and kill them as they may.

"They'll know that it's a trap," I said. "Which means that they're likely to try to cheat. We've tried everything we can to anticipate how they might cheat, but the nature of conflict is they they'll always think of something you don't."

I'd had them go over everything I could think of, and it had visibly impressed them. They'd been shocked at some of the possibilities I'd thought of; contact poison on the medal, on the lectern, poison in the air, explosives under the podium, suicide bombers.

In one way, it was harder to police this than it would have been in a muggle setting. Muggles could be disarmed, checked for weapons, but every Wizard was armed, and disarming them would have roused so much of a protest that the ceremony would have been stopped.

"There will be two hundred in attendance," Moody said. "We've done what we could to look into the backgrounds of all of them, but the new anti-imperius protocols are too slow to use on a bunch of civilians. Some of them will be foreign dignitaries and their entourages. Be alert."

We were going to have plainclothes aurors in the middle of the crowd. Since the Death eaters knew who most of the aurors were, they were going to be polyjuiced iusing hair taken from random muggles; they'd be in the roles of foreign digitaries.

Everything had been searched and scans were being done on the people entering the ceremony as we spoke.

Aurors were already outside; this was being held in the Atrium of the Ministry, both because it was large enough, and because it could be a controlled space. If we'd held it outside, we'd have had to worry about invisible broom riding attackers. In here we could control the narrative.

I sighed.

"Let's go," I said. "The crowd is waiting."

Minister Bones stepped outside, heading for the stage that had been set up where the fountain usually sat. How they'd moved it I wasn't sure.

"Friends, esteemed colleagues," I heard her amplified voice say.

The din of the crowd decreased, fading into an expectant silence.

"Everyone here knows who I am," she said. "But there are some of you who may not know much about our guest tonight. Taylor Hebert came from humble beginnings, born to muggles unsuspecting of the greater, magical world. Yet she has consistently proven that it is not breeding or background that creates greatness."

I could hear the sounds of flash bulbs going off.

"Muggleborn have won this award in the past; the purebloods do not have a monopoly on braveness. Yet there has never been one who has deserved it so richly at such a young age. Miss Herbert didn't simply show bravery when she faced dementors, risking her soul to protect her classmates. She showed leadership in teaching her classmates to protect themselves."

The crowd was silent now.

"There are adults who would not have done nearly as well," Minister Bones said. "When they were faced with a horde of creatures with little more than a handful of spells and a lot of courage."

The transcript of this would be published in all the papers. If Voldemort chose not to attack me, this would enrage his followers. It might spur them to be more reckless, which in turn would make them easier to catch.

I doubted that Bones would have been so effusive in her praise otherwise. She was laying it on thick for political purposes.

"Today it's my honor to award the highest honor given by Wizardkind, to a child who demonstrated exceptional courage in protecting her classmates, and through them, our entire nation. Will you please join me in welcoming Miss Taylor Hebert?"

The crowd applauded, and I tool a deep breath. I'd had midges flying all around the room. They were common in Scotland, and I'd been breeding them for weeks in preparation for this. They were so small as to be almost unnoticeable unless they were at eye level, and I was purposefully keeping them well below that. I didn't detect any strange bulges on any of the Wizards in attendance, no bombs on anyone's chests, and nothing else unusual.

I had midges on everyone's wand arms, and some on other parts of their bodies. A lot of wizards tended to change their stances when they drew their wand, either due to duelist training or for some other reason.

I stepped out onto the stage and for the first time saw the crowd with my own eyes.

They were a mixed group; reporters from several countries, dignitaries, people from all over the globe. It worried me a little that there were representatives from the American Wizarding government; hopefully they wouldn't ask to many questions, or I might end up as the first Order of Merlin recipient who was also a wanted fugitive.

Madam Bones stood beside me, but she carefully stood a little to my left. We'd practiced this; the last thing we needed was for her to get in the way of my wand arm.

The podium had been enchanted to be unbreakable, meaning that it would be good cover for both of us in the event of an attack.

If Voldemort was smart, he'd ignore this event altogether, but the symbolism of it would cause dissension in his ranks. He'd have purebloods baying for my blood, and he'd have to address it, either by giving in or by making examples of some of them.

He'd make some sort of response, although I wasn't sure it would be the large scale attack the Ministry was hoping for. A lone assassin could be as effective as a team, as long as he was fast enough.

I kept a fixed smile on my face as I scanned the crowd with my bugs. Everyone was clapping; no one was going for their wands. So far so good.

The Minister would be disappointed if there wasn't an attack, but it would be nice to have something go right for a while.

There was a small, anomalous spark at one of the fireplaces, so small that no one else seemed to notice. It took me a moment, but I realized that there was a bug here that I could not control.

She was moving around the room; from her movements it looked as though she was trying to find a place to attack from.

Landing behind me and the Minister, her form shimmered, and she lunged forward.

I pointed behind me and said, "Stupefy."

Rita Skeeter fell forward, her wand outstretched. The crowd gasped as aurors rushed forward to grab her.

"She's an animagus," I said quietly to the Minister. "Can turn into a beetle."

The Minister nodded and said something to one of her aides, who hurried off.

"There are forces in this land who would not wish to acknowledge that sometimes the muggleborn can be just as smart, just as brave, just as strong as the rest of us," the Minister said. "This girl is proof that sometimes they can be even more so."

I didn't have much time to react as I felt a dozen arms rising almost in unison. Skeeter must have been a diversion; they'd hoped that we'd assume that the attack was over with and drop our guard.

I lunged upward and grabbed the Minister, pulling her down as a half dozen bolts of green light hit the outside of our overly large podium. The podium shuddered and people screamed as it's unbreakable nature was revealed and the explosion hit the people standing closest to the podium.

My ears were ringing, and everything went quiet, although I could still hear through my bugs.

People were screaming and scattering all around the room. Some of them were dropping to the floor. Those who had attacked us were moving forward, hoping to get around the podium.

I stepped through the trap door behind the podium, the Minister following me. As we closed the trap door, she locked it with a spell, and we crawled under the stage.

Stunners appeared from all around the crowd, seemingly from mid-air. The attackers were dropping quickly. The aurors were disillusioned, and they were going to stay that way until the battle was over.

The aurors were moving already, stunners flying through the air. They were all carrying transparent plastic riot shields purchased from muggle suppliers. They'd all been made unbreakable by magic, and they were turning out to be quite useful against Davao Kendra spells.

The aurors had to keep their magical shields up as well; all it would take would be for someone to explode the wall behind them, for example and the shield would be useless. They also had to watch that someone didn't shoot them in the places the shield did not cover, but they'd had a couple of months to practice.

Disillusionment helped with that; if they moved after shooting, it was possible that the attackers wouldn't know where they'd gone.

My human eyes only saw dim light under the stage, the sounds of explosions and screaming outside.

"Thank you, Miss Hebert," the Minister said in a low voice.

I shook my head. The last thing we needed was for them to identify where we were by sound. While the stage had also been enchanted to be unbreakable, what had been done by magic could always be undone. It was unlikely they'd hear us in the chaos from outside, but it was already getting quieter.

I could hear sobbing from outside, but as the last of the attackers dropped to the floor, I relaxed.

It was silent for several minutes. The Minister stared at me as I stood with my eyes closed.

A series of knocks on the outside of the structure gave us the all clear.

The Minister looked at me, and I nodded confirmation. We headed back to the trap door, and aurors were helping both of us out of the trap door.

"They're all being taken for interrogation," the lead auror said.

The Minister nodded grimly.

People were beginning to stand up; they looked traumatized.

"As you can see," the Minister said, and to her credit, her voice sounded strong and confident. "Some people are determined to live in a past where they could use their power to intimidate others. I have a message for all of them... we will not be intimidated."

People were staring up at her; native reporters and foreign dignitaries as well.

"This is our nation, and Wizarding Britain does not cower before bullies. We stand strong, and we stand tall. I have a message for the world. To those who would try to cast their shadow on our fair soil, to those who would try to destroy the innocent, to destroy our children, I have this to say to you."

She took a deep breath.

"We will fight! We will wage war by land, air and sea against a monstrous tyranny. We will fight our enemy on the fields, on the beaches, in the cities and in the towns. We will drive them before us, pushing them into extinction. They have attacked our children, attacking our only future. There will be no quarter!"

"For too long, they have had their way, fighting against a failing Ministry, helped by collaborators and those they have controlled by magic. I say NO MORE. We shall defend our homeland, whatever the cost may be. Our fathers fought Grindlewald, and we have fought dark lord after dark lord over the past thousand years. This is our fight, and we shall do what Britons have always done in times of great peril. We will take up our wands, and we will do what has to be done."

She grabbed a box which had fallen to the floor when I'd pulled her down.

From it, she pulled a medal. It was iridescent, even though it didn't have to be.

"Taylor Hebert doesn't just represent the best of what a muggleborn should be. She represents a new age, a time when new ideas and innovations shall change everything any of us has ever known. I want you all to give a hand to Taylor Hebert, the youngest ever recipient of the Order of Merlin."

As the medal went around my neck, the applause was tepid at best. It wasn't for a lack of enthusiasm for my accomplishment.

Everyone had a shell shocked look on their faces.

Madam Bones had just declared open war on Voldemort and his people. That was a bombshell even though the Ministry had been searching for them for a while.

It was putting things out into the open, in a place where the general Wizarding public would be forced to think about what had been said and react to it. The Ministry had kept so much hidden that for at least some of these people this was actually shocking.

"Does this mean I get my own chocolate card frog?" I asked loudly.

Chuckles erupted from the crowd, and the mood shifted.

Huh.

Ron Weasley had suggested that joke, although I wasn't sure he'd actually meant for it to be a joke. He collected chocolate frog cards and he might have been serious.

"Yes actually," the Minister said.

Ron's head was going to explode over the chocolate frog thing. Harry had one, although it hadn't gone into circulation yet. Ron had a tendency to be jealous, but as long as Hermione and Neville didn't get one, I figured he'd likely be all right.

The Minister had approved of the joke, feeling that it would somehow reassure people that I was an actual child instead of some kind of homonculus in a little girl costume.

She stood next to me and we smiled for the camera. They flashed over and over again, but I kept my bugs eyes out just in case. A third assassin would be a lot more effective now that the second wave had failed.

There were no more attacks, however.

I remained alert throughout the ceremony, and not just from what was happening in the atrium. Planting people deeper in the Ministry would have been clever as well, despite the new security precautions.

I could hear Skeeter screaming in rage from a special room on the level below us. There were no cracks in the walls for an insect to go through, and ventilation was done by magic.

"You don't understand!" she screamed. "She doesn't exist! Taylor Hebert is an impostor! She's pretending to be someone that she's not and no one will listen to me!"

She'd been studying me, trying to track down my background. She'd been asking questions that I couldn't afford to have people ask.

I sighed.

"I think all this excitement has been a little much for me," I said. "And I need to use the loo."

The crowd was dispersing, and the Minister laughed, looking a little less confident than she had a moment before.

I slipped into the bathroom and a moment later I disillusioned myself.

This wasn't something I wanted to do, but I didn't see that I had any other choice. Skeeter had tried to kill me, and I was beginning to suspect that it wasn't because she had been controlled.

The good thing was that the cell she was in was soundproof. The bad thing was that she would be telling everyone what she knew the moment she was out.

I'd been to the Ministry several times while we were preparing for this event, and I had made certain preparations to help myself in the event of a regime change or in the event that I was arrested again.

I lifted my hand and a wand fell from a vend in the ceiling. It was one of my spare ones.

The last thing I needed was for this to be found on my wand.

It was time to squash certain rumors before they got out of control.