"The bombs were a bad idea," I said. "We didn't have enough information on how strong the blast would be and that almost got me killed."

If it had been my time we'd have been able to find everything we needed on the internet. Having it as a directional blast would have made it harder, but we'd have figured it out eventually.

The libraries in muggle England in the early nineties hadn't had a lot of that kind of information; worse, I'd been forced to send muggleborns who hadn't had to deal with card catalogs in years and they hadn't been able to stay for a long period for fear of being attacked in public.

If we'd had time to keep looking the information probably existed in mining charts or something, but we'd been forced to guesstimate which was apparently a very bad idea with explosives.

I stared across the desk at them. This time, someone had decided to make the Room of Requirement look like the oval office. I felt a little strange sitting in the big chair, especially as the desk and the chair dwarfed me, but it was better than some of the other things they'd come up with. I let them do it because it got them better at visualizing details.

That could be important in a lot of areas. Visualization was paramount in transfiguration. It was also important in curse breaking, in looking for clues, and in seeing what a room should like and seeing the subtle differences that indicate a trap.

Also it was a chance for them to engage in their childish whimsy, and I had stolen enough of their childhoods already.

It gave me an idea of what they liked to watch when they weren't busy being an underground child guerrilla movement. So far we'd had a GI Joe Base, Skeletor's castle, the Ghostbusters firehouse, the teenage mutant ninja turtle sewers, and the Thundercats lair. They'd put us in several James Bond Villain lairs, and in the TARDIS. They'd competed with each other as to who could be both the most creative and the closest to the original material.

We'd all been a little disturbed when Edmund had sent us to Ponyville, though.

It did seem strange that they'd put me in the Nixon white house. It seemed like half the places they created for us were villain lairs.

I had to assume it was because the villains got all the coolest gear.

"I'm not blaming anyone," I added. "I was the one who came up with the idea, and you were the ones who helped me."

"Does that mean that we should stop researching the spell to reverse a shrinking spell when someone touches an object?" George asked. "Because that one still seems useful."

"No," I said. "And we might still use explosives at some point. If we do, though, we'll want to go big with it, and we'll want to be nowhere close. It'd be better if nobody that's uninvolved was close either."

Moody might come after me, but if the Death Eater threat was ended, I'd consider it an even trade. However, if we weren't able to decapitate them, then I'd be throwing away all my capital with the government for nothing.

"So, why were you out there?" Hermione asked. "You've told all of us not to go out on our own."

"I went to meet with Black," I said. "He was waiting for me in the shack."

It was technically true, even if it gave them the4 impression that I had been waiting for him.

"And?"

"I'm not sure he did it," I said. "But I don't know that he didn't."

We'd told Harry everything, of course. He was sitting in the corner, staring at his hands. If Black was guilty, then Harry would want vengeance. If he were innocent, then he'd want him freed. For the moment he was in a strange sort of limbo where he didn't know what to believe.

"The problem is that we need to take a look at his memories," I said. "We have to make sure that he doesn't get loose, and we need to do it all without getting caught."

"Can we get a pensive?" I asked, looking up.

Nothing happened, and I sighed.

The Room was able to create certain types of magical items, but they were all minor things of the sort that students at Hogwarrts would have available to them. Something like a pensieve had been a long shot. It was rare and expensive.

Some of the boys theorized that the Room had a secret storage place for certain items, and the other things that were in the room were just an illusion. They suspected that the castle itself somehow stored lost items within this space.

"That means that we're going to have to rob the Headmaster," I said.

"What?" Hermione asked, shocked. "I thought you liked Headmaster Rowle."

"When I said rob him, I really meant that we were going to borrow his pensieve and take it back to him before he missed it."

She didn't look as relieved as I would hope.

"And how are you going to get Mr. Black to put his memories inside?" Hermione asked skeptically. "Are you going to smuggle him inside the castle?"

"I already did," I said. I pulled the rock out of my pocket and held it up.

She stared at it, slightly horrified.

"You turned Mr. Black into a rock?"

"He can't hurt anyone this way," I said. "And if he's innocent, then nobody can find and hurt him before we can prove he is innocent. Also, he's not aging, so he'll get to live more of his life in a Death Eater free world, which is a bonus for anybody."

"Then you should turn us all into rocks," Hermione said dryly. "And wake us up in a hundred years."

"Moody told me Voldemort may have found a way to become immortal," I said.

Everyone gasped and stared at me, and it wasn't because I'd said his name. Harry paled as he looked up at me.

"You don't seem worried."

"Well," I said, "Immortal doesn't matter much if I turn you into a rock and drop you into the bottom of the deepest ocean, or sneak you onto a muggle satellite launching into space."

Hermione frowned.

"I've got at least a dozen ways to deal with an immortal," I said. "And our assignment this week, after the pensieve is dealt with, is to come up with as many ideas as possible for that."

"Can we even use a pensieve?" Hermione asked.

"I've had it done to me," I said.

"I can do it," Edmund said. He stared at his hands. The teasing had been merciless over the pony thing, until I'd put a stop to it. Edmund seemed a little slow compared to the other sixth years, at least emotionally. He was good with magic.

I'd gotten permission for him to go with Hagrid to go help with the Unicorn herds. I hadn't gone myself because I'd have been attacked, but I suspected that Edmund wasn't important enough for the Death eaters to go after, not when Hagrid was there.

Voldemort had lost enough resources that I doubted that anyone short of Hermione or Harry, Neville or other members of my inner circle would merit a response. I kept the others in out of caution, of course, but mental health was sometimes almost as important as physical health.

Edmund understood the risks, and he'd been visibly happier after dealing with the unicorns. If Voldemort killed him, it would enrage my base, and it would only make them more loyal to me. I didn't want that, of course. I liked Edmund well enough.

Still, Voldemort had a habit of pulling small victories from every defeat, and I was going to have to do that if I wanted to keep up.

"Do we even need to do this?" Hermione asked. "Why not just let Black go? If he really hates Death Eaters, he'll fight them on his own anyway, and we won't be saddled with someone the Ministry considers a criminal. If he's a Death Eater, then he can't do us any more harm if he's not close to us."

"If he's innocent, then he's my Godfather," Harry said quietly. "That means that he's the only real family I have left."

"You've got your aunt and uncle," Hermine said.

Harry scowled and looked down at his hands. "He'd be my only real family."

Right.

Harry was quiet about his family circumstances. He'd told a little to Ron, but he seemed embarrassed about it. I'd heard enough to understand that he wasn't happy at home. He was likely hoping that Black would end up like Remus for me.

Hopefully this wouldn't blow up in our faces.

Hermione stared at Harry, then nodded.

"So how would we do it then?" she asked. "It can't be that easy to break into the Headmaster's office."

"It is," I said. "But it's hard to break in undetected. There's a lot of paintings in that office, and while a lot of them sleep at night, there's always at least one of two insomniacs."

"You've been planing to break into the headmaster's office already?" Hermione asked.

"I have a conversation I have to have with a hat," I said. "And possibly a reckoning. I like to keep my promises, after all."

"You're seeking vengeance on the Sorting Hat?" Hermione asked incredulously.

"Every problem I've had since I came here is its fault," I said. "I'd have been perfectly happy as a Hufflepuff or a Ravenclaw. The Death Eaters wouldn't have targeted me... I'd have been a normal student."

"How many of us would have been dead?" Hermione asked.

"I'd have been with you when the dementors attacked either way," I said.

"But we wouldn't have been ready," Hermione said. "You made us what we are today, and the only reason anybody listened to you is because they saw you fighting."

I frowned.

She had a point.

Yet part of me wanted to argue. There was no way that the Hat could have known any of the good things that came from my being sent to Slytherin, but it could have easily predicted the bad things. The only way it could have known was if it was at least a little precognitive.

Was that how it picked houses? Not based on who the eleven year old was, but on who they would become?

In that case I needed to talk to it even more.

"All right," I said, rubbing my hands. "We're going to break into the office. Rowle is a creature of habit. He changes the password to his gargoyle every night before going to bed. The portraits are usually asleep by eleven. He's got a sneakoscope in there which will light up and wake the paintings."

"What's the range?" Hermione asked, writing it down. She was already making a sketch of what she remembered of the layout of the office.

"I'm not sure," I said. "I'm pretty sure that it only covers his office; if it went further than that, it'd go off all the time."

False positives on alarm systems were bad; too many of them, and human nature was to dismiss them, which would cause people to dismiss them.

"If it reaches the hallway, we're in trouble," Hermione said. "We'd need line of sight to disable it."

"Why not steal it during the day?" Neville asked suddenly.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"He disables the sneakoscope every time you go in there, right?" Neville asked.

I nodded. I didn't consider myself an untrustworthy person in general, but the Headmaster couldn't trust him any more than I could trust him.

"The pensieve is in a cabinet," I said. "It'd be tough to get to without opening it; everybody would notice."

"Use a distraction?" he asked. "Myrtle could lead Peeves in there, have him knock over things, open the door."

"Myrtle likes to gossip," I said. "Or else she'd be here with the rest of us."

"Plausible deniability," Hermione said. "Use intermediaries. Make her think it's a prank for the Twins."

"Would she go for that?" Harry asked. "I don't think she likes them all that much."

"The more people we involve, the more likely the whole thing gets found out," I said. "And the timing would have to be perfect on something like that. There's a lot of eyes in that room, and someone would likely see the pensieve vanish."

"So what do we do?" Hermione asked.

"Peruvian darkness powder," I said. "That'll keep the lights from waking the portraits up. Silencing charms tend to have to be cast on specific objects or people. How are we coming with the area effect version?"

Hermione shook her head. "It's a fifth year charm to start with; it's not as easy to modify as some of the easier charms. We've got a team on it, but if it was easy someone would have come up with it before."

It'd be a game changer.

If I could blanket an area with a silence spell, then wizards would be limited to those spells they could cast soundlessly. While every fifth year and above was supposed to be able to cast wordlessly, spells cast that way tended to be weaker than spoken spells. It would weaken my enemies.

"I'll find out the range on the sneakoscope," I said. "I'll show up to his office unexpectedly and listen for how soon it goes off."

"If we can get to the door, we can silence it," I said. "Otherwise I'll have to figure out a way to break it while visiting the office. Most likely we'll have to look at a pocket sneakoscope; as far as I've been able to tell, the big ones tend to work pretty similarly to the smaller ones."

Hermione nodded.

"The twins will know how to break one," she said. "They've done it before."

"Well then," I said. "It sounds like we have a plan.

"I wasn't expecting you, Miss Hebert," Rowle said.

We'd developed an understanding; as long as I didn't cause trouble, he'd ignore most of my activities. I'd never seen him actually use the chains in his office. Whether that was because my people were keeping the school buttoned down or because it had all been a bluff from the beginning I couldn't be sure.

"We need to talk," I said. "I need to know what is going to happen to me over the summer. Will I be going back with Remus, or will there be other arrangements?"

He looked at me for a moment, and then shook his head.

"I'm not sure," he said. "The Ministry is keeping the details of your security arrangements secret from anyone who doesn't need to know."

"So the same as last year," I said. I shook my head. "If they really wanted to make sure things were safe they'd teach me occlumency."

"The only way to do that would be to let someone into your mind," Rowle said. "You don't seem like the sort of person who would be comfortable with that."

It was true, of course. I had secrets that no one could ever know, not until all my enemies were dead. Letting someone into my mind was out of the question, and so I was reduced to what I could learn from books about grounding myself and trying to keep a mental barrier. Until I could get someone to test that barrier I could never know how well I was doing, and that meant I couldn't correct any of my mistakes.

"Is repeated obliviation damaging?" I asked.

Rowle looked uncomfortable. "Yes. I don't think you could agree to get anyone to agree to..."

"Well, I have to get back to class," I said. I stood up. "If you hear anything about my summer accommodation, please let me know."

He nodded.

As I stepped into the stairwell, I suppressed a grin. The Sneakoscope didn't extend into the hallway, which meant that getting the pensieve was a go.

Tonight we'd break into the headmaster's office, and I'd get the pensieve and the hat. We'd return it before morning, with any luck. It'd mean having to dodge the aurors wandering the halls, but with luck I'd be able to get the hat as well and ask some of the questions that had been plaguing me this whole time.

The hat had seen others like me in the past. What did it know about my resurrection?

Was it precognitive, and if it was, what did it know?

I was using the Sirius situation as an excuse to get the others to go along with my stealing the hat, mostly because I didn't want to explain to them why I needed it. However, if the man turned out to be innocent, it could be useful to have an adult that no one knew about on our side.

None of our people had graduated yet, and he'd be able to go places we couldn't, especially if we were able to prove him innocent. Also, it was likely his resources had been frozen when he was imprisoned, but from what I recalled his family was supposed to be fairly wealthy. He might be the solution to our money worries.

If he was a Death Eater, it might be possible to interrogate him.

No matter what happened, a great deal rested on tonight.

I couldn't wait.