"I think Karkaroff is in trouble."

Rowle, Moody and Madam Maxime were standing together as I approached them.

They all stiffened.

"I saw him going toward the Skrewt pens," I said. "They're lethargic now because they're in their warming pens, but if he opens one..."

"Why'd he be going out there?" Moody asked skeptically.

"I've got Care for Magical Creatures in the morning," I said. "I assume he's trying to find a way to kill me without being blamed for it."

Madam Maxime gasped, but neither of the other two looked surprised.

"And you're warning us about someone who wants you dead?" Moody asked skeptically.

"I'm the first person the aurors always talk to," I said. "I just thought I'd skip the middle man."

"And how do we know this isn't just a distraction?" Moody asked.

"I'll keep an eye out," I said. "But I think we'd better get Hagrid and a couple of aurors."

"I will remain here and watch over zee students," Madam Maxime said firmly. She looked out over the crowd with a grim eye. "I will not let anyzing to happen to zem."

Moody hesitated, then he nodded toward Tonks and Briggs. Briggs was an older auror with salt and pepper hair. He was a family man and he seemed nice. I liked him.

We headed out through the Faerie garden, and we were only halfway down the lawn when we heard the screaming begin.

Karkaroff was on the ground, and it looked like three of the Skrewts were fighting over his body. They ripped his arm off as we watched, and the spells from the adults around me bounced off their shells.

"Hit the underside," I shouted. "They aren't as magic resistant there."

The next five minutes were a nightmarish battle.

Of course I was directing the Skrewts the whole time; I had to make them look effective enough to have killed a Headmaster, while not allowing them to be effective enough to actually kill anyone else.

I hated having to lose these; in my opinion five should have been enough to have finished Karkaroff, but he'd tampered with the doors to their cages. He'd tampered with ten, and it looked like he had been going for overkill and had intended to open them all.

I couldn't have aurors questioning why only some of the bugs had escaped.

So I slid under a skrewt, stabbing up at its soft underbelly with regret, while making it look as menacing as possible.

Moody was as good as I'd thought, lighting fast despite his leg. However, he was bowled over by two of the skrewts, and I had to kill one of them while Rowle took care of the other.

Hagrid was weeping, but he fought them with his bare hands.

When it was done, we stood over eleven corpses, only one of which was human.

The only sound was that of everyone gasping.

"I think ninety of these things might be a serious mistake," Rowle said. "We're going to have to rethink the last challenge."

Moody stared grimly at the carnage.

"One of these would be too much for a student."

I waved my knife, which was covered with ichor. The ichor was starting to burn my hands, so I vanished it quickly and began to clean my wand.

"What was he doing here?" Tonks asked.

She picked up his wand, and began checking for previous spells.

"Sabotaging the locks on the cages," she said grimly. She looked up. "Do you think he was trying to open all of them?"

"Would have been a disaster, what with the dance going on," Moody said.

I looked up, startled.

It hadn't even occurred to me that this might have been an attempt to cause a massacre at the dance. Had I gotten so self centered that I thought everything was about me?

"Kill a bunch of kids," Moody said. "People start losing faith in the Ministry. Might be enough to drive the Minister out of office since this is a Ministry sponsored thing with aurors for protection."

"People might start wondering why we're growing death machines to try to kill three children," Rowle said wryly. "We're probably going to have to put all of these down."

Hagrid sat down heavily. He looked devastated.

"It's not certain," Rowle said. "But I'm going to have to talk to the board of governors, and Ministry officials, and it's likely."

That wasn't going to happen, of course. I'd put too much work into the Skrewts to lose eighty five surviving members based simply on lethality.

It's why I wanted them.

"Secure the site," Moody growled. "we don't want any more of these things getting out while the kids are still at the party."

"It's a pity we couldn't have saved Karkaroff," I said.

Moody looked at me.

"I wonder if you didn't delay coming to us until you were sure things weren't going to go well fro him."

I shrugged.

"I couldn't be sure he was going to do something stupid, not until he did it. Maybe he just wanted to examine these things in the middle of the night to give his candidate an advantage during the Tournament."

"Teachers aren't supposed to help students," Moody growled.

"He was a cheater then," I said. "He helped his champion every step of the way. I think he figured that ours had a whole school to help, while his only had eleven not-so-bright classmates."

"Home court advantage," Moody said. "And they still never won even when we held it at their school."

"Is this going to mean an international incident?" I asked.

Rowle nodded grimly.

"We might be able to minimize the damage if the investigation is thorough."

"Well, let's get to it," I said cheerfully. "I've got a party to get back to."

They all stared at me.

The mud, blood and ichor had slid right off my dress, just like it was supposed to.

"Do I have something on my face?" I asked. I reached up and felt.

Wetness covered the left side of my face. It wasn't ichor; my face would be burning if that was true. It had to be blood, likely from one of the aurors.

I felt something drop on my face from up above. Was it raining?

I looked up and quickly stepped back.

"I found his arm," I said. I grimaced. Witches' Weekly needed a spell to make blood roll off skin too.

It was perched precariously, sticking out from it's place on Hagrid's roof.

"I'll need to clean up before I go back," I said.

"There's a clean up station in the greenhouses," Rowle said. "I'll accompany you and open the doors."

"I can get there just fine," I said.

"They're magically locked," he said. "A simple unlocking charm won't... oh, right. Carry on then."

As I made my way to the greenhouses, I plotted out my next steps.

Cleaning up as quickly as I could, I summoned my bugs. They reached my stash of time turners, and by the time I reached a deserted hall while disillusioned, they had one ready by a vent. I reached down and I pulled the vent up, slipping the time turner into my hand.

I then gave it several twists.

I'd figured out a way to become invisible to myself a while back; it was a variation of the disillusionment spell, only done with my own magic.

If I turned into my animagus form, could my previous self control me? What would that do to the space time continuum?

It meant that I couldn't control insects, not without my former self sensing it, but I could still sense them.

I slipped down through a secret tunnel, and I slid down the slide leading to the Basilisk.

I'd covered my eyes with a blindfold. The last thing I needed was for an errant spark to reveal the thing to me and me to die through sheer incompetence.

"Incompetent speaker,' the basilisk hissed. "It is not your usual time."

"I like you let me bring not prey to stay near here."

"What?" it asked. "I can barely understand you."

It was worse than the French when it came to being stuffy about language. Sometimes I thought the thing was a bit of a slob.

"Bugs," I said. "Big with fire asses."

"Fire asses,' It said skeptically. "Really?"

"Yes," I said. "Fire from asses."

"If they attack me, I will eat them," It said.

"I control.," I said. "Keep quiet."

"Keep them in the far cavern," it said. "And keep them quiet. I am trying to sleep."

With that agreement, I headed back upstairs. I'd found a different route upward, one that led to the deserted girl's bathroom. This one was a little better than the other one, and it didn't require that I exit out into the Forbidden Forest.

I'd gone back in time an hour, because I hadn't been sure how long it would take to convince the snake. It hadn't taken nearly as long as I'd thought, and I resolved to double its feed so it wouldn't be tempted to have a late night snack.

I unshrunk my broom, and I disillusioned myself again. I flew out of the castle, and I spent the next twenty minutes casting spells to silence the cages.

This was for two reasons.

First, Karkaroff would certainly hear if the bugs broke free early. There were going to be questions about that, but the theory was going to be that he'd been too busy fighting the first bug to notice the others.

The other reason was that later tonight, I was going to have the Skrewts escape. When I did, I didn't need the aurors trying to strop them.

The moment that I felt myself leave the timestream, I expanded my powers once again, grabbing the Skrewts before they could run amok.

I set them to digging their way through the backs of their cages, even as I rejoined the party, having discarded my time turner and my broom in the ventilation system.

By the time the party had wound down, the Skrewts were already at the entrance to Chamber hidden in the Forbidden Forest, filing their way inside.

They all smelled and sensed the snake, but I kept them docile. They were capable of hibernation, something that Hagrid didn't even know they could do.

When the party wound down, I went to bed.

After disillusioning myself, I shrank down into my insect form and I flew through the vents to the one by the entrance. I returned to my normal form, still disillusioned, and I grabbed my broom.

I flew over to the place where the Skrewts had escaped; the aurors were vigilant, but they hadn't noticed that the cages behind them were empty.

It helped that they were more crates than cages; I'd led Hagrid to believe that they were agitated by the sight of people, and that blocking the view would make them more docile.

In their natural state, even the smell of people would agitate them.

I'd done it for this very reason. I'd foreseen that something like this might happen; the Wizards were stupid, but they weren't enitirely lacking in common sense.

There's no way I'd have allowed something like the Skrewts near my children; once they killed a Headmaster it would even be worse.

I'd found a spell to erase tracks.

I cast it, murmuring as quietly as I could. I still saw an auror whirl around.

I'd shot forward, moving out of range of the human revealing spell before he could cast it.

I then cast the track erasure spell several more times.

I kept those insects that could survive in the cold watching for me in all directions.

I'd have my people work on a mass warming spell. I'd tell them it was for groups of people, but it would actually be perfect for my swarm. Right now I'd have to cast warming spells on each individual bug, and that would quickly become time prohibitive.

My advantage was that the Skrewts were very nearby, and they weren't really bothered by the cold, other than to become a little more lethargic. Their internal heat would keep them alive in weather that would kill a polar bear.

If Voldemort and his people attacked, I'd have my own army to face them with.

They didn't, and I returned to my room unscathed.

Had Voldemort started getting smarter and started asking whether attacking me would be successful? If that was true, then I was in trouble, because that meant that he would only attack me when it was likely he could kill me.

Prophecies were tricky, though. The Seers of this universe tended to be less clear than the best of our Thinkers. However, no prophecy was ever certain.

The next morning, Hermione met me at the door to the Great Hall, which had been converted back to a place where we could get breakfast.

"What's going on?" she asked me. "There are aurors everywhere, and nobody is saying anything."

"Karkaroff is dead," I said in a low voice. "He was trying to sabotage the Skrewts so that they'd kill me... or maybe everyone in our class. The Ministry is considering whether it is to be considered an act of war."

"What?" she squeaked.

I wasn't sure how I'd been unclear. I'd been listening to the aurors talking among themselves all this morning.

"The Minister of Norway is coming here to address charges that this was an attack on the children of Britain," I said. "Also, apparently Durmstrang is in Norway."

"He was trying to kill us?"

"Or maybe just me," I said impatiently. "I told you he was a Death Eater. He tried to have some of his students poison me."

Her eyes went wide.

"Oh. I forget to tell you that," I said. "It must have slipped my mind."

"You didn't tell me about an assassination attempt?"

"If I told everybody about every time people tried to kill me, I wouldn't have any time to get anything done," I said airily. Upon seeing the hurt look on her face, I sighed. "I should have told you, though. I'm sorry."

"Do you think we'll really go to war?" Hermione asked.

I shook my head.

"Karkaroff's former employment is well known," I said. "However, Norway hired him despite that, and so the Ministry will probably try to squeeze some trade concessions out of them in return for making this all go away."

"Why do you still look worried then?" Hermione asked.

"Because having the Minister of Norway come here is a good way to really get us into a war if we can't protect him."

"Wizards don't go to war," Hermione said. "Not against other Wizards anyway."

"Wizards are people," I said. "And people war. I'm not worried about Norway; they've got a tenth the population of muggle Britain, and so unless there's something weird about the fertility there, they probably only have a thousand wizards or so."

Even as fragmented as we were, we could probably beat Norway just by weight of sheer numbers.

"However, they are part of the International Confederation of Wizards," I said. "And that would mean that the rest of the world would be against us."

"So they'd be throwing a million wizards at us?"

"They wouldn't," I said. "Because every wizarding nation had a nuclear football if their backs are against a wall."

"Go public?" Hermione's voice rose in pitch. I was pleased that she got it so fast.

"Going public would mean that enemies would be too busy trying to hide from the muggles to be much of a threat anymore. It's part of the reason we haven't had any war in almost seventy years."

"Why would the Death Eaters want that?" Hermione asked. "The confederation could march ten times our numbers in Wizards here, and there wouldn't be anything they could do."

"They may be stupid enough to think that they could unify the country that way, rally us behind a world that hates us. It works for countries like North Korea."

North Korea was still a thing here, right?

It had been devoured by the Chinese in my version of reality, a couple of years before the end.

"And it wouldn't work here?"

"Wizards can apparate," I said. "Slip into the muggle population and slip out through the ports... on airlines even, if they're particularly savvy. You can't keep news from the outside out. Also, the Wizarding population here is pretty apathetic."

"Not about their kids, they aren't," Hermione said. "Even a mild manner Witch would turn into a demon if she's protecting her kids. Harry's mom faced down Voldemort himself, and she knew he'd kill her."

"The Ministry is also concerned because it seems like someone has stolen all of the Skrewts."

Hermione stared at me and then nodded knowingly.

"What?" I asked irritably.

"You loved those things," Hermione said. "I saw you hand feeding them. You'd be a lot more upset if someone else stole them."

At least she said it in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible over the sounds of people eating breakfast.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "And it seems like a subject that should maybe be closed."

She nodded.

"The Ministry seems to be worried that the Death Eaters did it anyway," I said. "As a way to create a sort of insect army."

"And what do you think?" she asked.

"Well, if the Norwegians come riding in on skrewtback, then we'll know it was them," I said. "Otherwise, it's an open question."

"We'd be skrewt then," Hermione said. She grinned.

I stared at her, shocked.

She looked at me primly. "I am learning to speak American," she said in a haughty voice.

"Oh, go eat an biscuit," I said, pushing her in the direction of the Ravenclaw table.

"Bread, you mean?" she asked, still using her fancy accent. "It's not time for tea."

"Right," I said. "Guess I'll just go have some bread, even though it looks exactly like a biscuit."

She grinned at me, and we parted ways.