"She said yes?" George asked.

His face was white as a sheet, and Fred was doing an admirable job of not laughing.

I wasn't there, of course, but I was watching.

"I think she was kind of into it," Fred said. "Surprised me really."

If anything, George's face got whiter.

"You know she drowned that guy in boiling potion," he said.

"Rumors," Fred said. "Never proven in a court of law. And the guy didn't die. He was just permanently maimed."

"Nothing she's done has been proven in a court of law!" George said. "And she did that to a guy who just tried to play a prank on her. What do you think she'd do to a guy she's breaking up with?"

"He'd disappear?" Fred asked.

"But he'd envy the boiling potion guy," George said. "A guy would have to be insane to date her. Girls get crazy when they're in love, and she's already..."

"Probably listening to us right now," Fred said smoothly.

George looked like he was going to faint.

"How could you do this to your brother?" he asked. "Haven't we been through everything together?"

"Ron asked me to do it," Fred said. "Getting you back for giving him a lifelong fear of spiders."

"You were involved in that too!"

"Yeah, but you enjoyed it more."

"You were the one who came up with the idea in the first place!" George shouted.

Fred shrugged. He was clearly enjoying his role a little too much.

"You've got to save me," George said. "Pretend to be me."

"She can tell which one of us is which," Fred said. "I had to use Ginny's magical freckle remover and then replace all my freckles to look like yours using that freckle maker we just made."

"Then do that again!"

"So I can be the one to disappear?" Fred asked. He shook his head.

"You don't have my native charm," George said. "She'd never actually fall in love with you, and you'd be fine!"

The other Slytherins in the common room all looked up as I burst out laughing. There were strange, uncomfortable looks on their faces, and a few of them got up and left the room.

"I might do it," Fred said slowly. "But I've already got a date with Hermione."

George flushed.

"You knew I liked her! Why would you..." He frowned. "This is a joke, right?"

"Depends on what you call a joke," Fred said, grinning. "I really did ask Taylor out, and she really did agree. I don't think she's in love with either of us."

"Then why?"

"I think she likes pretty dresses," Fred said, leaning forward. "Have you noticed how she likes to put little costumes and hats on things?"

"Yeah, but that's just animals," George said.

"I've seen her eyeing us," Fred said. "Like she wants to put us in a monkey suit and is just looking for an excuse."

"You think she's going to try to dress us?" George asked. He sounded horrified. "Have you seen the things she puts on animals?"

Making a little suit for Neville's toad and Hermione's weird cat-thing for Christmas didn't seem weird to me. Maybe they just didn't have any sense of taste.

"I think she's actually worried that the Death Eaters are going to try something at the ball, and she wants to be there so she can kill them."

George looked almost insultingly relieved.

"That makes sense then."

"Also, Hermione really agreed to go out with you."

"You can't keep lying to me like this."

"No, this one is actually true. Taylor agreed to go with me, so that all the girls would think I am amazing and want to date me."

George was silent.

"Do you think that will work?"

Fred grinned. "I'm going to find out!"

"Well, I still like Hermione," George said. "She's clever, which is more than you can say for most girls."

"You know she's like Taylor's apprentice, right?" Fred said. "Who knows what kind of dark magics she's taught her?"

"So you're saying she's a Dark-Lady-In-Waiting?"

"Yeah."

"That's kind of fantastic." George said.

"Isn't it though?"

"Still, try not to disappear on me," George said. "I still have to get you back for this one."

"What, for getting you a date without having to get up the courage to ask? Consider it the price of admission."

"That's...all right."

"Seriously, you've given up all thoughts of revenge?" Fred asked incredulously.

"As far as you know."

There was a long silence, and I found myself grinning. I'd managed to curb some of their worst joking habits, some of which had bordered on bullying, but occasionally they were actually pretty funny.

Edmund had asked for help with his egg; apparently help was allowed as long as it wasn't from the professors. I deliberately excused myself, but my team cracked the code in a week.

The Durmstrang team had had to repair their champion's egg, and it hadn't sounded right when they'd used it either.

The next task would involve water; most likely the lake right next to the school.

As a result, I'd started running training simulations in the early morning using warming charms and bubblehead charms with the whole team including Edmund.

It wasn't so much to help him win the task, as it was to know how to deal with things if they inevitably went wrong. We'd gone out exploring every part of the lake.

I hadn't dealt with underwater attacks and strategy much in my previous life, and so had some of the seventh years slip away to Hogsmeade invisibly and go to muggle London through the Floo network.

They retrieved books on underwater tactics which we all studied.

As it turned out, water distorted light, which meant that aiming spells wasn't always as easy.

Attacking from the surface to something under the water meant that for every foot the thing was below the surface you had to aim six inches below the surface, assuming a forty five degree angle.

It wasn't so bad when you were actually underwater.

The thought of hiding in the lake if the castle was invaded appealed to me, so I had the lake mapped over the next few weeks.

I had no doubt that the school would create new challenges for the champions, even underwater, but I wanted to be able to find Edmund or any of the others if they needed help.

Edmund could use a fully corporeal patronus, which was a unicorn, of course, and so he was able to ask for help if he needed it.

In the meantime I had to deal with getting a gown, which true to his word, Fred paid for.

A dressmaker came from Hogsmeade to work on my dress; apparently her boyfriend had been a seventh year muggleborn the year before, and when I'd saved him from the Dementors, I'd gained her loyalty.

The dress we came up with was a brilliant emerald green with a silver lining. It would have impressed me more, but since I was only thirteen as Ron had reminded me recently, it wasn't like I had a figure for it to look good in.

I felt like I looked like a child, and I was a little impatient to finally grow up.

On Christmas Morning, I woke to find gifts at the foot of my bed. Unlike last year, when I'd had only a few presents, this year there had to be almost a hundred.

There was so many presents that they obscured the view of the door. It was a ridiculous number of presents, and the stack was taller than I was.

"The house elves have checked them all for traps," Millicent said from her bed. "Or at least that's what I heard."

It was a security precaution I'd discussed with Rowle almost a month ago. House elves delivered gifts, and that would be an easy way to deliver curses to the entire student population, or just to the muggle born.

For some reason I still hadn't gotten a third roommate, which didn't bother me at all.

"I'll never be able to open them all," I said. "Not before breakfast."

"Pick out a few," she said. "And check the rest later."

I nodded.

I had insects secretly check the outside of all of the boxes, even while I used every curse and trap detection spell I knew.

Then I opened my gifts.

Harry had gotten me a Wizarding chess set; a rather nice one. I'd played a few times with Draco, and in off times with Hermione, Harry and Ron. Ron was the best of us; he'd been playing it for a long time and he had a certain cunning about strategy that was impressive.

Neville got me a potted plant. It took me a moment to recognize the black stem and white flowers.

"Holy Moly," I said.

"What?" Millicent asked.

"It's Moly," I said.

We'd used it to make the counter to the Draught of Endless Death, but in an emergency I could simply eat it and it might help to counteract all sorts of enchantments.

He'd bought it for me as a last ditch defense. I felt a strange warmth in my chest again.

Hermione's present puzzled me for a moment. It looked nothing so much as a handful of tiny bludgers. They were heavy; each had to weigh at least four pounds, and they were only two inches across.

They levitated, and once I read the command word, they were mine. Apparently they could work like a normal bludger, going after anyone who didn't fit a criteria I set or I could verbally direct them.

I suspected I could use my insects to direct them too.

"Damn," I said. "I only mentioned this to Hermione. You think she did the spellwork herself?"

Millicent shrugged.

"Probably. You know how she is."

This was a lot of work, and it would be incredibly useful. It might mean the difference between life and death someday.

That warm feeling in my chest grew.

Sirius and Remus had gotten me a present together. When I saw it, I almost dropped the box.

"A dragon skin coat," I said. I stared at the shiny black scales. "Provides magic resistance. These are hard to come by. How did they do this? It's tough to get them, and I'll grow out of them soon enough."

I hadn't actually grown any taller in a while. Did they think this was as tall as I was ever going to get? Even if that happened, I was likely to fill out, and this coat fit me perfectly.

Maybe it had been enchanted to resize itself?

Given how magic resistant the coat was, it seemed unlikely.

"This... I'm not sure what to even say about this."

Millicent looked like she'd bitten into a lemon. Nonetheless, she handed me a small package.

I opened it, and inside was a small statuette of a unicorn. It looked like it was hand carved.

"What is this?"

"I got Hagrid to get me a hoof that fell off," she said. She looked bashful. "And he taught me how to carve."

"You did this by hand?" I asked.

She nodded.

I hugged her tightly. It had to have taken her forever, and it made me feel a little bad about the gift I'd gotten her.

"Here's what I got you," I said.

I'd had more time to work this year, and so I'd made things of spider silk for all of my friends. I'd learned a few things too, though.

She opened the box, and stared at the set of robes I'd given her.

"They're made of spider silk," I said. "It'll turn blades and protect you from claws. I enchanted it to be fire resistant; in an emergency pull up the hood and turn away from the fire."

She was staring at it, and I had no idea how she felt.

"If you tuck the hood down in the back and pull your collar up, you could even wear it in class," I said.

Before she could say anything else, I said, "And there's something else in the bottom."

She looked through the box until she'd found what I'd gotten her.

I'd used magic to carve a picture frame, which I'd stained using one of the failed potion formulas the team had created. It wasn't useful for anything offensive, but it made an admirable wood staining chemical that you painted once and it dried almost immediately.

We were looking into turning that into a business, at some point, one that would fund our organization, and maybe a muggleborn charity.

"Where'd you get the picture?" she asked. Her eyes were suspiciously shiny.

"Pansy Parkinson," I said.

Her head snapped up.

"She knew someone who knew Tracy's family, and they were able to get the picture out of storage. They were happy for you to have it."

Pansy'd been a bitch about the whole thing, but she'd been too afraid of me to argue.

Millicent stared at the picture for a long time before looking up at me and hugging me.

"We should get to breakfast," I said.

I'd gotten everyone spider silk robes; they were a practical gift in that I'd heard that Fenrir Greyback enjoyed infecting children. I'd also made sure to get each of the people I cared about a gift specially designed for them.

Draco hadn't gotten a robe, but I had gotten him a sneakoscope. Given the nature of Slytherin, it was likely to be entirely useless to him, but hopefully he enjoyed it anyway.

At breakfast, I was mobbed by people.

"How did you have the time to do all this?" Hermione asked. "And where could you have possibly gotten spider silk? This isn't from those spiders out in the Forbidden Forest?"

I shrugged.

I didn't want to be too specific about where I'd gotten the material for eighty robes.

With any luck, they'd assume that I'd contracted it out, like I did a lot of things these days.

At this moment, the bowels of the castle were a horror show that had been laboring on this for more than a year. There were enough spiders there to give Ron Weasley night terrors every night for the rest of his life.

Most of them were poisonous, too. I was going to have to engineer a massive die off before the end of the school year.

"It must have taken forever," she insisted.

"It didn't," I said. "I used magic."

"If it was that easy to make clothes with magic, nobody would go to the shops,' Hermione said stubbornly.

"I'm just better at it than everyone else."

"And the other thing you got me," Hermione said. She leaned closer to me. "How did you know?"

"There's a song about Santa Claus in America," I said. I grinned.

She looked puzzled.

"He knows when you are sleeping... he knows when you're awake..."

"You make it sound creepy,' Hermione said. "But I still loved it."

"I don't understand my gift," Ron said. "You got me a set of robes?"

"You can't be stabbed through them," Harry said. "And they're fireproof. It says so in the note."

"Didn't read it," Ron said.

"It also protects against werewolf bites," I said. "And acromantula bites. It might save your life."

It wasn't as good as my dragonskin coat, but there was no way I could have afforded eighty of those.

Ron's face brightened.

"So it's like armor."

I nodded.

"I really liked the chess set you made for me," Ron said. "The one with everyone's faces on it."

"I didn't do the enchanting on that. Rob the sixth year is wanting to go into the business and he did it for me. I just did the carving."

I'd gotten pretty good at using cutting spells to whittle wood quickly, and a little subtle transfiguration made the results look a lot better.

"Which piece am I?" Hermione asked.

"The White Queen," Ron said. "And I'm the White King. Harry's the Black King. George and Fred are pawns. Taylor's the Black Queen."

He sounded enormously pleased by my choice of roles, and the enchantments Rob had done on them had used little idiosyncrasies in how we talked to make it all the more lifelike.

"It's fantastic," Ron said. "I kind of feel bad for just getting you a sweater."

I hadn't opened his gift yet. Likely the sweater was a gift from his mother, which was heart warming in its own way.

"It's fine," I said.

"The Broom you got me, it's not regulation, is it?" Harry asked.

I shook my head.

"The group made it," I said. "It's got a shrinking charm on it so you can put it in your pocket. That means you'll always have a way to get away."

The problem with keeping a full sized broom in a fanny pack or similar sized expanding pocket was that the mouth of the container had to be large enough, but worse, it took a long time to pull one out.

That wasn't a problem under normal circumstances, but when a raging dragon or a dozen Death Eaters were running for you, even the twenty seconds it took was too long.

"How fast does it go?" Harry asked.

I grinned. "You'll have to find out. The boys said something about overclocking it. I think that means that it's the fastest broom they could come up with. You'll have to ask them what they sacrificed for that; likely it was comfort. I get the impression that it'll outfly anything commercially available, but only for a short time."

Snape stepped into the Great Hall, and the people around me scattered, making their ways to their own tables.

"Miss Hebert," he said.

"Professor," I said.

He gestured, and I headed up toward the head table to speak with him.

"How did you squire ten gallons of Acromantula venom?" he asked in a low voice. "That's eight thousand galleons worth."

The smell of the Skrewts had attracted the acromantula to the edge of the forest. I'd been able to ensnare them. They hadn't understood what was happening, because I was disillusioned when I milked them, but they'd begun to avoid the castle again.

"I expect the price came down recently," I said mildly.

I'd sold twice the amount I'd given him as a gift just in the last week. That sixteen thousand galleons now had us flush with cash, and the market had dropped so much that it wasn't worth selling any more.

"After your gift last year, which has been very useful," I said. "I thought it only right to return the favor."

"Are you involved in market manipulation, Miss Hebert?"

"If I was, is it a crime?" I asked.

I actually didn't know. The Wizarding World seemed like the kind of place where it wouldn't be.

"It's fraud," he said.

"Not if the venom is real," I said. "I hope you enjoy your gift, and Merry Christmas."

He nodded.

I returned to my seat and began breakfast.

Eighty people had given me presents. That shouldn't matter much; a lot of them probably felt obligated since I'd saved their lives once or twice.

Yet somehow it felt good, almost as good as seeing the joy on people's faces from the handpicked gifts I'd made for all of them. I knew every single one of them, and they were all my people to protect.

I could only hope that I was able to keep up my end of the bargain.