"There's been no sign of him," I said. "Not for three days."

"Maybe he's not coming here?" Neville asked hopefully. "The last thing we need is another crazed Death Eater on the grounds."

"I still want the details of that spell," I said. "He's been in Azkaban for more than a decade; and we've never heard any of the other Death Eaters using it. It's possible that he hasn't taught it to them yet."

We were sitting in the Room of Requirement, me and a group of my ten closest allies. The Room was made up to look like the Pentagon from some movie that didn't exist in my world, something about a hacker almost causing a nuclear war.

There was a wall of huge screens on one wall, large enough that they'd have been tinkertech back at home. There were banks of computer monitors featuring the best consoles 1983 technology had to offer.

None of it worked, of course; apparently the boys thought it had the right atmosphere for these kinds of meetings.

Personally, I would have preferred a Protectorate conference room, but some of the boys were apparently geeks.

"It's important to deny the enemy assets," Hermione said primly. "Wars are matters of attrition."

"It's less true of Wizarding wars than muggle," I admitted. "We don't need oil, or machines or ammunition, or even that much in the way of food or water. For us, attrition is about manpower."

"Kill enough of them and eventually they'll have to give up," Harry said. He was staring at his hands.

He'd been uncharacteristically quiet since we'd talked about just who Sirius Black was, and what he meant to him in his personal history.

"I talked to Remus," I said. "And he tells me that Sirius is an Animagus. He appears to be a black dog. I noticed one watching the castle three days ago, but I haven't seen one since."

"He killed my parents," Harry said. He scowled and his hands tensed.

"None of us saw his face in the mirror," Hermione said. "Doesn't that mean there's more to the story than we're hearing about?"

"Maybe he's good enough to beat the mirror," Harry said.

""Maybe there's a reason he's not our enemy," Hermione said. "Maybe he was imperiused into doing it, and he's sorry now."

"He admitted to it!" Harry said. "In front of witnesses."

"That just means that we have to find out what really happened," I said. "What else did you find out, Hermione?"

"There was never a trial," Hermione said. "No proof that he ever did anything. The Ministry just locked him up because they found him on the scene."

"Yeah," Neville said. "If Taylor was found standing over a bunch of bodies, they'd probably blame her too."

I heard a snigger from the back of the room.

"What?" I asked. "I don't get found standing over bodies very often."

I saw Hermione scribbling something in her notebook. I'd had bugs try to read it, but she had everything written in some kind of code.

"Right," Harry said. "Taylor would make sure that she never got found out."

"I'm not nearly as murderous as everyone seems to think," I said peevishly.

Everyone chuckled at that.

"Maybe he wasn't as smart as Taylor and got caught," Neville said.

I doubted it, even given the nature of the Wizarding justice system. The look in the man's eyes had been crazed and evil looking even before he'd gotten to Azkaban. Even if he'd been innocent when he'd gone in, would there be anything of the man he'd been coming out.

"He was my parent's friend once," Harry said grudgingly. "Maybe I should give him a chance."

"Just because he isn't our enemy now doesn't mean he won't go through us to get to whatever he's here after."

"If you see him, don't engage unless you outnumber him at least three to one, with at least two fifth years to back you up," I said. "Get the information to the rest of us, and we'll come for you."

"You won't know if he comes?" Hermione asked.

"My power's got a limited range," I said. "Enough to cover the school, sure, but not the whole country."

I had plans to change that. I was working on transmutation as hard as I could. It might take me years, but magic was as much a matter of intent as science. I was hoping to eventually recreate the relay bugs Panacea had made for me.

I'd be able to improve my range geometrically, even if I wouldn't be able to fully control that many bugs. It'd be a power multiplier and a game changer. Covering an entire city would be possible, and the thought of being able to stretch a thin line to another city while I was somewhere else was enticing.

"So?" Hermione asked.

"That means if I want to find black, I have to go to Hogsmeade," I said. "If he's anywhere nearby I'll be able to find him, and with any luck we'll be able to intterogate him."

I'd found a spell that turned a rock into a dog in an old book that the Room had somehow provided. Unlike the other things the room made, this one was real and could be taken out of the room. That had led me to finding the opposite spell, one that turned dogs into rocks.

With a shrinking spell, I'd be able to transport Black fairly easily, and I'd interrogate him on my own.

There were some things that the others shouldn't see, after all.

"You can't do that," Hermione protested. "They've got a Seer, and they might be waiting for you."

"I'll take a team," I lied.

It wasn't that I was overconfident. It was that I had advantages that they didn't know about.

I didn't have to go into town the normal way; all I needed was to get halfway through the tunnel to the Wailing Willow, and my power would extend to the area above me. I could be there and back before anyone noticed, unless I found him.

If the Death Eaters were waiting for me, I'd have to have a plan to escape from them, but I wasn't sure that Voldemort had that kind of manpower anymore.

Getting me would be a coup for him, but while his Seer was undeniably powerful, he or she couldn't see everything. Even Dinah had been limited in the questions she could answer a day. It very well could be that they weren't looking.

"It's a bad idea," Hermione argued. "A lot of risk for not much gain. We've only got a few more days before we're back at home, and Harry will be safe."

"Everyone will be," I said firmly. "And if they aren't, we'll make whoever hurt them pay for every ounce of blood that's spilled."

"Which will hopefully be none," Neville said firmly.

"Well, hopefully none of ours anyway," I said. I stared at the blank screens. "How are you coming on the Veritaserum, Hermione?"

She shook her head.

"That's N.E.W.T. Level work; I'm not nearly ready for it. I've got a team of seventh years working on it; but it takes a full lunar cycle to produce."

"Which is why we're making multiple doses all at once. How are we doing with the mass production of simple potions?"

We were starting with the easiest potions, reasoning that if we could start with those, then we could eventually work our way up to things that were harder.

"There are some steps that having multiple people doing the work is fine; others where it seems to be a problem."

"You're keeping track of any useful mistakes, right?"

She nodded.

"So far we've discovered ways to make a very powerful acid, three kinds of new poisons, and a potion that explodes with contact with air."

"I'm interested in the acids, and the exploding potion," I said. "Have the recipes written up and put into the book."

"I already did," she said. "We're up to forty two recipes."

Some of them were just alternative brewings that had effects that were only somewhat different than the norm, but those effects were useful in a dozen different ways. The fact that they would be unexpected was one of the best things.

"I'm a little concerned with the effects of the modified Bulgeye potion," she continued. "It seems dangerous to include in the book."

We had multiple copies stashed around the castle so that no one could deprive us of them. They were written in a code known only by me and Hermione.

The usual bulgeye potion caused the eyes to swell. Who in the hell had thought that would be a good idea to create, I didn't know. What we did know was that it wasn't at all hard to make the effect happen much more rapidly, and much more explosively."

"We've tried everything we could to replace the rat's eyes," Hermione said. "But apparently it counts as curse damage."

"I'd ask if Ron sang the "three blind mice" song to them, but I doubt he knows it."

"I'm not letting him anywhere near the potions experiments. He's not as dangerous as Neville, but he doesn't have the stomach for the things that we're doing."

I thought she was being a little critical of Neville. He wasn't all that bad at potions, not since he'd managed to control his anxiety around Snape to at least some extent.

"We are able to put confusing concoctions into hard candies," Hermione said. "Thanks to the twins."

"Would have been a lot more useful when our last headmaster was here," I muttered.\

Hermione winced almost imperceptibly, even as several of the others chuckled. The others thought I was joking, but she knew me well enough to know that I'd have drugged the most powerful wizard in Great Britain if I thought it was necessary.

"Being able to deliver them as an aerosol would be helpful," I said.

"The problem is the dosing," Hermione said. "Most potions require a fairly high dose to take effect, and when you spray them most of it is lost in the air. Only a small amount gets into the lungs. Then there's the problem of an errant gust of wind."

"They can be easily countered by a bubblehead charm, too," Angus McConnell said. He was one of our most loyal seventh years, a Gryffindor, although I suspected he'd been a borderline Ravenclaw.

"It might work even better with a bubblehead charm," I said. "Provided you can get the aerosol inside."

"Because the spell would keep it inside, and they'd keep breathing it!" Hermione said. "But wouldn't they just dismiss it and recast it?"

"People tend to panic when they can't breathe," I said. "Especially when they think they should be able to. They breathe even faster than normal. We just need a delivery system."

"What about birds?" Neville asked.

"What?"

"Well, everybody knows how birds... uh... like to target things anyway."

"Poop, you mean?" Harry asked.

"Yeah," Neville said, looking down. "So what if we had the potions in some kind of bubble that breaks when it impacts something."

"They'd see them coming," Hermione said.

"Make them invisible and silent," Harry said. "First thing you'd know about it is when you feel something wet, and then you're gagging."

"See if old military style gas masks can be used to avoid this tactic," I said. "The last thing we want is for them to use it against us."

"That'll cost," Hermione warned. "We're already stretched thin with the cost of the potion's experiments."

"I'll find us some more money," I said. At her look, I held up my hand. "I won't even hold up Gringott's."

"I thought you wanted to make friends with the goblins?"

"That's why I won't rob them," I said. "And nobody is friends with the goblins. Allies, maybe."

The fact that nobody made fun of the idea that I might be able to pull it off was reassuring. These kids seemed to think I could do anything, and I planned to live up to it as much as I could.

In my old life, I hadn't been able to focus on saving anyone in particular, because I'd had to focus on saving the entire multiverse. Nothing in my old life couldn't be sacrificed, because the consequences of losing had been inconceivable.

Now, though?

I could afford the luxury of actually caring about people. It was possible that I wouldn't be able to protect all of them, but I planned on making the enemy pay dearly for every drop of our blood they spilled.

"Let's keep up the research as long as we can. I'll try to get more money in the meantime. Anyone who has ideas about how we might make money, drop the ideas off with Hermione and we'll discuss them in the next meeting. Put the word out to the people in the outer ranks; for all we know a first year might have a better idea than starting a lemonade stand."

I rose to my feet.

"We don't have much time left to get things done, so lets try to get everything accomplished while we can. With the Trace gone, I expect you all to keep up your studies over the summer, but be sure to be mindful of the Statute of Secrecy; the last thing we need is to make enemies of this Administration."

There was only so many times you could replace the Minister for Magic before people started getting suspicious. Plus, I actually liked Bones.

Everyone nodded, and as we left, I looked around at the War Room. I was going to have to be more careful about letting the nerds pick the setting; the office chairs from a nineteen eighties movies were presumably designed in the sixties, and they were uncomfortable.

The moment before I left the room, I disillusioned myself. Everyone who was capable of it did so as well, and those who couldn't were taken care of by their comrades.

The door wouldn't open until I gave the all clear, which I did, and we scattered as quickly as possible. Although we were now a publicly known organization, the Room of Requirement was still a secret. Should there be an attack on the castle, we'd retreat here if we could. We'd discovered that the room could store artifacts and retrieve them if we left them inside and changed the settings.

We now had a store of magical tricks and weapons preparing for the inevitable siege of the castle. They were stored here where Rowle, or whatever Headmaster came next wouldn't be able to confiscate them.

Instead of heading for the library, like Hermione and the others expected, I headed instead for the secret passageway leading out. According to the twins, it lead out to a supposedly haunted shack in Hogsmeade.

Even getting there would be a little dangerous; I'd have to leave the castle walls to reach the secret entrance at the base of the Whomping Willow. The tree could detect you even if you were disillusioned, and there was a knot at the base of the tree that I had to reach to deactivate it.

Slipping outside wasn't that hard.

All of the students were now keyed to the outside doors and gates; they could enter and leave at will; a necessary precaution so that if something did get into the castle people could get out. An alarm would be raised if someone who wasn't keyed in tried to pass; this was to keep a pureblood sympathetic to the Death Eaters from simply opening the door.

It was dark, and walking down the slope of the hill seemed surprisingly unfamiliar. I'd been trapped inside the castle for an entire school year, and it had been longer since I'd walked these grasses.

Part of me wondered how they kept the grass so short; presumably it was either through using magic, or maybe Hagrid had giant goats roaming the lawn every night. There wasn't any goat scat, though.

Slipping under the branches, I massaged the knot and an entrance opened before me.

I slipped inside, and found myself moving through a lightness, low tunnel. Even last year I wouldn't have had any trouble making my way through the tunnel, but now I had to stoop a little.

The earth was alive with things that I could sense; bugs and other things. There were enough that I didn't even need light. I was able to walk quietly through the tunnel without making a misstep.

I stiffened as I realized that someone was waiting for me in the shack. There was a figure simply sitting in the darkness.

Quickly I expanded my search outward. No one was visible anywhere nearby, but I was disillusioned myself. I couldn't hear the sounds of breathing, but there were spells for that as well.

From beneath my robes came my secret weapon; five thousand mosquitoes. They flew forward through the tunnel and up through openings in the roof of the shack.

Mosquitoes had the ability to detect human blood types from a hundred feet away, through a combination of smell, sight and heat detection.

The Death Eaters would likely disillusion themselves. They might make themselves silent, and they might even mask their scents, but I doubted that they'd think to mask their heat signature.

Nothing was nearby, not until I reached nearby buildings where people were supposed to be.

It was dark in the shack, but there were a few beams of light there, enough that I could barely see the figured huddled in the corner.

"Black?" I asked, my wand held out.

I wanted to stun him and ask questions after I'd tied him up, but his wand was carefully set just out of his easy reach, and the bugs on his body made it unfortunately clear that not only didn't he have any weapons, he wasn't wearing anything under his robes either.

I could smell him from all the way across the room, with my human nose.

"Terror," I heard a voice say. It sounded raspy, like something that hadn't been used in a long time.

"Yes," I said, tensing.

"I've come here for you," Sirius Black said.