"It's a sign of desperation," I said.

We were back in Sirius's home, with the potion vials neatly labeled and hidden. Remus had contacted us, asking that we return from our "vacation" at Neville's for our own safety.

This was the first time I'd seen Dumbledore or Remus in more than a month. I wouldn't have seen Remus the night before in any case as it had been a full moon.

Tonight was as well, so he was going to have to leave soon.

"What do you mean?" Remus asked.

"If they were fighting from a position of power, they'd have attacked a hard target... Gringotts, the Ministry, a place that was well protected. It would show the inability of the government to protect itself."

"But they didn't do that," Hermione said. She was still staring at the paper, where there were pictures of innumerable Diagon alley shops on fire.

Every shop that had been attacked had been owned by a muggleborn or a half-blood. Pureblood shops had been left alone entirely.

"They attacked a soft target," I said. "And they used a bunch of imperiused patsies to do it. Between the Ministry and Dumbledore, they've been under a lot of pressure to stay relevant. People have started to feel safe again because most of the fighting is out of the papers, and the only thing that gets reported is their losses."

Remus frowned.

"I wouldn't have thought that the opinion of the common Wizard would matter much to them."

"It's everything," I said. "Their power has always been based on smoke and mirrors. Every wizard is armed, and they outnumber the Death Eaters a hundred to one. Even Dumbledore would have to run if there were enough Wizards trying to kill him."

Dumbledore stared at me with one eyebrow raised.

"You have to sleep sometimes," I said. "And all it would take would be for some sedative in your soup, and somebody could kill you easily."

Dumbledore carefully put down his soup spoon and stared at the bowl.

I usually had my insects smell my food before I ate it. In this world I couldn't trust anything.

"There are curses that can kill you just from picking something up," I said. "Even the best wizard in the world can be blindsided by something like that, and once all his allies have been killed, he'd have to run away and hide."

"He's immortal," Remus said.

"Really?" I asked. "From what I hear, being killed just leads to his getting a new body later. Just give him the Grindlewald treatment, or worse."

"You make it sound so easy," Dumbledore said dryly.

"Muggle governments can rule people because they have bigger guns and bombs and they are have gangs of people they can dogpile you with. That's not true in the Wizarding world. Any wizard who's willing to work hard enough can become dangerous."

"And how would you deal with them?" Remus asked.

Because Hermione, Harry, Neville and Sirius were here, they had to be circumspect about how they questioned me.

"If they were a muggle terrorist group, you'd target the money, and you'd target communications," I said. "Wizards don't have the same needs. They don't need weapons or ammunition; they can steal food and shelter from the muggles."

Remus looked up sharply at that.

"I'd have thought they'd avoid muggle areas. Most purebloods don't know a lot about them."

I glanced at Sirius.

"You can't assume that every pureblood is ignorant of the muggle world. Tom was raised in a muggle orphanage, after all."

They all frowned at that.

"I doubt he really believes in all that pureblood claptrap anyway," I said. "He's a halfblood. Most likely he believes that he's the only person who really matters. If he could have risen to power by gaining the allegience of the muggleborn, we'd be having a very different conversation right now."

I'd been gathering information about Voldemort from as many sources as I could over the past year. Myrtle had been his classmate, and so had Hagrid.

I had to take both of their reports with a grain of salt, because each was clearly biased in different ways. However, I'd read as many books as I could about the last war in an effort to get an idea of his tactics and strategy.

"He's a sociopath," I said. "He bears all the classic symptoms. I had one of my associates track down his old orphanage. Sixty year old records were difficult to find, but they found them in a back room. Did you know they were worried about him even as a child?"

By associate, I meant Mundungus Fletcher. I hadn't been willing to risk one of my muggleborn seniors on something like that, even if I thought that Voldemort cared about his childhood home that much.

"He hurt animals," I said. "He was a loner and he bullied other children with magic."

I'd had to read between the lines to discover that one.

"And from that what would you guess about his behavior?"

"If he was a muggle he'd end up as a serial killer," I said, "Or maybe the chief executive officer of a large company. A politician maybe. If he was a serial killer, he might collect trophies."

Dumbledore looked thoughtful.

"He had a box," he said. "Of stolen articles taken from the other children."

"Does anyone know how he became immortal?" I asked.

Remus and Dumbledore glanced at each other, in a way that I thought was suspicious.

"I have suspicions, but as of yet no proof," Dumbledore said.

"Well, a lot of things like that have loopholes. I've read about old muggle legends about wizards removing their hearts and hiding them somewhere so they could not be killed. Is that possible?"

"Are you seeking to become immortal yourself, Miss Hebert?" Dumbledore asked cautiously.

I shook my head.

"If we knew he'd hidden his heart, then we could start looking for it,' I said. "If he'd become a vampire, then we could poison our blood, or use sunlight. If he'd drunk unicorn blood... well, we'd figure something out."

"I hardly think that even Tom Riddle would be so foolish as to drink the blood of a unicorn. It would only provide a half life at best, and that would never be enough for him."

"What about the philosopher's stone?" Hermione asked. "I've heard that has let Nicholas Flamel live for hundreds of years."

She'd done some of my research about possible sources of immortality. There weren't many, unfortunately.

"The stone extends life," Dumbledore said. "But it does not prevent death. Nicholas is no more proof from being killed by any means other than sickness or old age than any other wizard."

"You'd have thought he'd have at least tried to get the formula for the stone out of him," I said.

"Why not simply take the stone?" Remus asked.

"What happens if your stone is destroyed?" I asked. "If you can't make another one you are dead. If you have the formula, though, you can make a spare."

"Like having a spare wand?" Remus asked dryly.

I flushed. "It's not a silly idea. It may end up saving my life one day."

"You could hand them out to the people you cared about, so they could live just as long as you," Harry said brightly. "And then you'd never lose anyone."

"I doubt he cares about any one of his followers enough to share a secret like that," Dumbledore said. "It was always important to him to be special, and there is nothing more special than being the only immortal."

"It sounds lonely," Neville said. He stared at the table.

"Friends and followers are interchangeable to him," Dumbledore said. "As far as he is concerned, one is as good as another as long as they are useful."

"He should be more careful," I said. "Wars are about attrition."

The adults clearly knew what I was talking about. So did Hermione. Neville and Harry seemed clueless.

"In the muggle world, the side with the most weapons and men in the end tends to win," I said. "Unless you can break their will to fight. That happens with democracies when they feel that the cost of warfare exceeds whatever goals they have."

Neville looked confused. "But Wizards aren't like that, right?"

"We don't have to worry about ammunition," I said. "So attrition in this case is all about who has the most men and how skilled they are. The Death Eaters were always at a disadvantage in terms of numbers compared to the Ministry. Their opening gambit, with the mind control was a really good way of stopping that."

"But the Strange Master thing you taught them helped stop that," Neville said.

"Master Stranger," I said absently. "It takes a long time to implement, so it's not much good in the field. The protocols are really more about being aware of your comrades in arms and about how they normally act."

"He wasted a lot of manpower trying to kill you," Hermione murmured.

I nodded.

"Once he saw that I was as difficult to kill as I turned out to be, he should have either stopped sending people after me, or he should have come after me himself. I wasn't actively thwarting his plans, at least at first, so I was a problem that could have been left until later."

"He'd invested a lot into killing you," Remus said. "Failure must have seemed humiliating."

"He could have used those men when Dumbledore started pressuring him," I said. "If he didn't have his seer, I doubt he'd even still be something that we'd be talking about."

"You have great confidence in my skills," Dumbledore murmured.

I shook my head.

"You don't have to be as strong as he is. All you need to be is strong enough to distract him long enough for someone else to shoot him in the back."

Remus and Dumbledore both looked horrified by that. None of the kids at the table looked remotely disturbed by it.

"You should be careful about that yourself," I said. "Because if it occurred to me, it will have occurred to him. He'll probably kill whoever does it, and then tell his followers it was because they stole his chance to defeat you and prove himself the strongest Wizard."

"Is that what you'd do?" Dumbledore asked.

I shook my head.

"I'd reward whichever follower did it; in the end it doesn't matter who is the strongest. It's who's still standing, no matter how that happens. Ego had no place in survival."

"Tom always had a massive amount of ego," Dumbledore said.

"It shows that he's afraid," I said. "Afraid of death, of not being good enough. He can't let anyone come too close for fear that they will betray him."

"Lonely," Neville said.

"It almost sounds as though you pity him," Remus said.

"Would you pity a rabid dog?" I asked. "Maybe... but it wouldn't change what had to be done."

"It sounds as though the Seer is his biggest asset," Hermione said. "Is there anything we can do about that?"

"We haven't been able to get any information," Remus said, despite a sharp look from Dumbledore. The kids didn't know that Snape was a double agent, and they weren't going to know, at least until they all learned occlumency, and maybe not even then.

Hermione turned to me, and I shook my head.

There hadn't even been rumors in Hogwarts about the Seer; while it was possible that was because the Death Eater kids had left, I suspected that they wouldn't have known in any case.

"It's his strongest asset," I said. "He's going to keep it from anyone who absolutely doesn't need to know. Mind control means that no secret is safe. If I were him, I'd probably have the seer or seers locked away somewhere that no one could find them."

"You'd have to keep them fed," Remus said.

"You could do it yourself, or use a house elf sworn to silence," I said. "Is it possible to just apparate food to a place without going yourself? If it is, he might just do that."

"Seers don't need their wands to use their skills," Remus mused. "But they generally don't remember the content of their visions, either."

"So use more than one," I said. "And use the Imperius to force them to record each other's prophecies."

"Are you talking about a seer sweatshop?" Hermione asked incredulously. "Seers are highly unreliable at best. Even arithromancy, which is much more scientific is only somewhat reliable."

"Well, he's figured out a way to get better results," I said. "I know he's not feeding them luck potion at least."

"Oh?" Dumbledore asked.

"Because the smarter thing would have been to feed luck potion to his best man before they came after me. It's really hard to make."

"I'm assuming you tried?" he asked.

"Me?" I asked. "No. I'm not nearly good enough to do something like that."

My team was, though.

We'd managed to make one vial in an entire year of trying; the components were hard to acquire and it required six months to brew. We'd failed with five other batches.

I hadn't used any so far for a number of reasons; first, I only had one vial. Secondly, it was supposedly addictive if used too often and poisonous if too much was taken at one time.

The effects of the dose sounded a little like what Contessa's path to victory was supposedly like. You gave over control to the potion, and things went your way.

I hadn't been able to research the limitations of what that meant. It couldn't be as powerful as Contessa's power, or it would be banned by every magical government. My fear was that something like that would be used against me.

Would drinking a vial be enough to give Voldemort an edge over Dumbledore?

Would Voldemort be willing to give over even that much control over his life to an unthinking potion? It was supposed to give you a perfect day, which meant that it probably took its cues from your own conscious and subconscious desires.

I was keeping mine as an absolute last ditch survival aid.

One vial would give twelve hours of luck. It wouldn't allow for impossible outcomes; only make outcomes that were possible and favorable more likely.

There were presumably other limits as well. It made me uneasy about depending on it in anything other than the more dire circumstances.

Also, the ingredients had practically bankrupted us, and I couldn't see trying to mass produce it. If I'd been able to, I would.

Voldemort had been forced to vacate from several bases over the past few months. That likely would have disrupted any potions brewing. I'd had some of my recently adult muggleborn going through the shops in Diagon Alley to see if anything useful was for sale; once we found it, we'd scrounge up the money to buy it.

I'd considered robbing the homes of known Death Eater sympathizers, but the risk of alienating the Ministry was too great. Besides, the last thing I needed was to have some kid working for me killed in a crime.

"I sent some people to shops in Diagon Alley to do some exploratory shopping," I said. "Mostly in the muggleborn shops because I figured we might be able to get a better price. You don't think that might be related to this?"

Dumbledore frowned.

"If he suspected that you had some plan brewing, and that this might make it more difficult, it might have influenced the timing. I doubt it would be the only reason for the attack. That would require him to take you much more seriously than he seems to have done so far."

"Right. He'd have come after me himself if he really cared," I said. I nodded, relieved. It really wasn't all about me.

"I've made a list of people I've seen in my foe glass," I said. "Focusing on the people that I don't recognize. If I could get access to a pensieve..."

"I'll arrange it," Dumbledore said hurriedly. "I'd prefer for you not to break into the castle over the summer. The ensuing Death Eater attack might be rather expensive to repair."

"I was just thinking that if one of the Seers is my enemy, you might recognize their face."

They nodded.

"There aren't that many Seers in Britain, and several have gone missing."

"They may not actually be my enemies," I said. "Since their success rate with me is lower than it is with your people. I just thought I might get lucky and find a clue."

"I assume that you have found your time at the Longbottom's to be productive?" Dumbledore said. Clearly he was trying to change the subject.

All he had to do was peek inside the minds of one of the others and he'd know exactly what we were doing. If he was Snape, I'd have expected him to do exactly that.

However, he wanted my goodwill, even if it was only because I was a lightning rod to draw the attention of the Death eaters away from other targets.

"We've had a perfect summer," I said. "Mr. Black has taught us a lot."

"I'd have thought you'd have chafed at staying in one area for so long," he said.

More like he'd preferred to keep me out of London for fear I'd slip off to the Ministry or do something else dangerous.

"We were thinking of going back there for a while," I said. "Once it's safe, I mean. Neville has an amazing garden. He apparently gained his skill with plants from his mother."

"How is she?" Dumbledore asked. "I only visited Alice once, but she was in the beginning of her recovery."

"Much better, sir!" Neville said. His face lit up, just as I'd hoped it would. He was enthusiastic on the subject of his mother, and he could talk about her for hours at a time.

It was exactly the distraction I needed, and at the same time, it was a subject Neville was proud to talk about.

Hermione and Harry glanced at me once, and then we had a perfectly cozy evening.