"You promised," Hermione said.

Everything had calmed down finally; the Ministry was leaving a token force of aurors at the castle while everything got cleaned up, and I had been bundled off to Neville's house.

"It's not easy to talk about," I said. "My secrets have been the only thing that have kept us alive for years."

"Voldemort's dead," Hermione said. "Or... not dead, really. I'm still not sure how to feel about what you did to him."

"What Winky did," I corrected.

"What Winky did," she said. "Although I still don't know where she got the time turner."

"A few of them may have gone missing on the night of the raid on the Trace," I said.

"A few?"

"A lot," I said. "The Ministry assumed they'd been taken by the Death Eaters."

Hermione stared a me.

"You stole them."

"Yes...?"

"How many?"

"Fifteen." I said.

"You have fifteen time turners?" Hermione said, raising her voice.

I shushed her. There was no one around, and I'd chosen a spot as far away from any portraits as I could, but that didn't mean we wouldn't be overheard.

"Fourteen."

"Right." she said. She was silent for a moment. "You can control bugs, right?"

"What?"

"I figured you had a power other than just being a seer," she said. "And your animagus form... I was betting that was related."

"Yes. I can use bugs senses."

"How many bugs can you control?" she asked.

"All of them," I said. "From Hogwarts, my senses extend out to the Great Forest, and to the same distance on the other side."

"Bug control..." she said. She looked doubtful. "Is it that useful?"

"You'd be surprised," I said.

"How do you know everything you do?" She asked. "There's no way an eleven year old could have known all that stuff about tactics and fighting before she came to Hogwarts."

"I'm not really fourteen," I said.

"Thirteen," Hermione corrected absently.

"Right," I said. "I'm seven years older than I look. I was reincarnated from another universe, where I was a superhero."

"What?" she asked flatly.

"Well, I was a supervillain first, but I totally became a superhero later."

"A superhero," she said. "Like Batman."

"Whoever that is," I said. "I had powers, and I saved the world... all the worlds that are and will ever be... and then they killed me for it."

I'd half expected the Ministry to try to kill me as a danger. There was danger, and then too dangerous to leave alive. I suspected that I'd come awfully close to the second category.

"Then how are you here?" she asked. "I didn't think people who are reincarnated remembered their last lives."

"I'm not the first," I said. "At least according to the Sorting Hat. There have been a few others; apparently Merlin was one."

"Still," she said.

"A little girl named Millie Scrivener watched her parents being murdered in front of her, and then she was tortured for longer than should be possible. I think that when she was dying she begged for someone to come and make them stop. To make them all stop."

"Accidental magic," she said.

"Yeah. I think she reached through time and space and ripped my soul from the future and stuffed it into her own body as she lay dying."

"From the future?"

"2013," I said.

"What's the future like?" she asked.

"People have telephones they can put in their pockets, that can take pictures, play music, and connect to the Internet. The Internet is huge... you can ask it for information or videos from around the world. Mostly the rest is just the same... I think. I haven't spend a lot of time around the muggles here."

"That's going to make maintaining the statute of Secrecy hard."

"Yeah," I said. "And Wizards are going to have to get in front of it, or they will get discovered the first time a few people post videos on You Tube and then don't remember anything about it...don't ask."

"So we've got twenty years until Wizards get found out?" she asked. "Is that what Luna was talking about?"

"You remember that?" I asked.

"You seemed to take her seriously, so I figured I ought to as well."

"Well, you see, when I saved the world, I didn't save everyone. My entire world was mostly wiped out, with people fleeing to other worlds. Scion... he's an alien who gave all the capes their powers... he planned to destroy all of the earths that ever were or would be... something like ten to the power of eighty universes worth. Before that he killed billions of people on a lot of worlds."

"And you think he's planning to do that on this world." she said.

"I think it's likely he'll end up here," I said. "And we have to stop him. Worse, I don't think we can kill him. You can't change the past through time travel, or at least that's what I've heard."

"Could you... share your memory of him?"

"I think I'll have to," I said. "Because this isn't something that a few plucky schoolkids are going to be able to handle on their own."

"You're going to the government with this?"

"Yeah," I said. "It'll have to be classified at the highest level, but Minister Bones will have to know about it."

"Are you planning to take over the world?" Hermione asked. "In less than twenty years?"

"What makes you think that?"

"Because there's no way to get all the nations to work together," she said. "And something this big... we'd have to, right?"

I hesitated.

"That's not what I'll be telling Minister Bones," I said. "Not at first. I suspect that we may end up at war, soon, and I'll happily help restart the British Empire if that's what it takes to save this planet."

Hermione bit her lip.

"So you were serious when you said you wanted me to be Minister for Magic?" she asked.

"Eventually," I said. "Bones may not survive what's coming, and even if she does, she won't want to be Minister forever. I'll need someone in place to help keep everyone alive."

"What about afterwards?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked blankly.

"Say everything goes your way and you save the world. Are you going to keep it?"

"Maybe?" I said. "I think we're going to need to keep a unified front when it comes to the muggles, and then we'll have to deal with what we've created."

"The Empire?" she asked.

"No. The revolution in magic. What do you know about Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla?"

"Tesla worked for Edison, right?" she asked. "And Edison cheated him out of his earnings?"

"Who do you think was the more brilliant scientist?"

"Tesla," she said.

"And who won?"

She was silent for a moment.

"Edison?"

"Yeah. Muggle science used to be done by brilliant loners, like Tesla, but things didn't start to really pick up until scientists started working in teams. History has always shown that better communication speeds up the rate that humanity learns."

"You mean the printing press?" she asked.

"Further back. Humans spent a couple of million years hardly learning anything because we couldn't speak, or at least not well. A hundred thousand years ago, we started talking and things sped up."

I stood up and walked over to the window.

Harry, Neville and the twins were playing some sort of game on brooms. It wasn't Quidditch, and I wasn't sure it had any formal kind of rules. Ron was on the ground, but he was getting up and gamely getting back up on his broom.

"Still, we didn't learn that much, because every time someone died, anything they hadn't already taught had to be relearned. Five thousand years ago, we learned to write, and things really started to happen. Six hundred years ago, we got the printing press, and it sped up even more."

"What's that got to do with us?" she asked.

"Wizardkind is four hundred years behind the curve," I said. "What happens when we start using muggle style teams for spell research?"

"You already have," she said. She frowned.

"You've seen what they've accomplished in just a few months," I said. "And these are sixth and seventh year students, not spell crafting geniuses. What will happen when we get to actually have the cream of the crop working with us?"

"You mean the Unspeakables?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Assuming they don't hide every advance, it could mean a revolution in what magic can do. If we reunite with the muggles, things might speed up even more. The Internet is coming, and that means that teams of Wizards could work together from all over the world."

"Internet?"

"In the future you'll be able to ask a computer any question, and it's likely that someone somewhere has put the answers in it. Almost every computer in the world will be connected, and the ones that aren't will likely be that way because of security concerns."

"So you're saying that in fifty years we won't recognize the Wizarding world?"

"Less if we do our jobs. That's going to lead to some disruptions."

Hermione was silent.

"It'd be easy to become a tyrant," she said. "And I won't let that happen. I like you too much for that."

"Why do you think I wanted you to be Minister?" I asked. "As a General, I can relax when there's peace. Who wants all the extra work?"

"I'll hold you to that."

"So there are parts of the base that you haven't been to," I said to Lucius.

Being here alone with him might have seemed like a risk; on a one on one fair fight, I doubted I was even up to his standards.

However, I'd already shown him my pensieve memories of cities destroyed and of Scion. He'd been horrified; presumably by the risk of his own family going extinct.

Like I'd told Hermione, I was going to be releasing those memories slowly, to select people. I was going to focus on the people who would be able to help me accomplish what needed to be done.

I froze as my senses expanded.

"I think I may know where it is," I said.

I led him down winding passageways; for all that this was the lowest level of the Ministry, it was one of the oldest. Presumably it hadn't been used all that much even before the place had been wiped from human memory, and afterwards there hadn't been much effort to keep the place up.

The wall was blank, and I wasn't sure how to get through it.

"There's a secret door here, somewhere," I said. "I'm not sure how to open it."

Lucius nodded and we spent the next ten minutes trying various actions and spells until we hit on the right combination of bricks to hit to open the thing.

He hissed as the room beyond lighted up.

"I'd heard they were working on something like this," he said, "But I didn't think they'd got it working."

Jar after jar of brains were in the next room; they were all connected with tubes and wires to a central hub, a machine that reminded me a lot of the machine they'd used for the Trace.

"Seer brains," I said. "Collected shortly after death, still with some of their powers."

There had to be almost fifty brains connected to the machine.

"There seems to be some sort of limit to how often you can use it," Lucius said. "The Dark Lord sometimes complained about it in private. When it works, though, it is much more specific than any one seer could ever manage."

"We've got twenty years," I said. "And I've got experience in dealing with precogs who have limited questions per day. This may end up making the difference between saving everyone and the end of the world."

Lucius nodded.

"Will it help with the muggles?" he asked.

"I think so," I said. "I was thinking of having Draco be our ambassador to them."

"What?"

"A muggleborn might be considered biased," I said. "So it needs to be a pureblood, preferably one who is willing to work with the muggleborn."

He frowned.

"It would be a position of importance, I would presume."

I nodded.

"It'll make him the most famous Wizard in the world, at least among the muggles, and probably in the Wizarding world too."

"I'd have thought you'd have chosen one of your friends," he said. "Perhaps the Longbottom boy?"

"Neville will never be a politician," I said. "But you've been raising Draco for that from birth. He'll be dealing with muggle politicians, and we'd need someone able to move in that world."

Also, I'd already slated Hermione for Minister of magic. Giving Draco this would keep the Malfoys on my side and prevent them from trying to undermine me at the last minute.

It was important to keep the minions happy, after all.

Neville had shown a strength in plant breeding; hopefully I could get him to join one of the research teams in the biologicals division. If someone as ungifted as Hagrid could breed Skrewts, then a team of dedicated researchers could create wonders.

I planned on making sure that they did.

Harry I wasn't as sure about.

Most likely he'd end up as an auror, or maybe head of the secret police. If he wanted something else, I'd find a way to accommodate him.

"So you plan to keep this base secret?" he asked.

"Semi," I said. "There's always a possibility of an attempted coup, or that Bones will fail the next election and we'll be faced with someone else that we don't like.

"Like Umbridge?" he asked.

He suspected that I'd murdered her, but it wasn't something that I was ever going to admit. There was no point in giving someone like Malfoy blackmail material against me.

After all, Draco still loved his father, and he'd be upset if something bad were going to happen to him.

I shrugged.

"Things happen that we can't control. It's important to have plans to deal with the ones that you can foresee."

"And the ones you can't?"

"I'm good at adapting," I said. "But it's better to have plans in place. This machine here will help us to foresee things before they take place."

"It didn't help the Dark Lord that much," Malfoy said.

"He was inexperienced in using something like this," I said. "It requires a different way of thinking to make the most use of precogs."

"Taking advantage of prophecy?" he said. "Such as being Potter's hand?"

"I'm not sure that actually did anything," I said. "And I didn't actually kill the Dark Lord. Still, it's important to hedge your bets using every trick you can think of."

I walked over to the machine and caressed the brass surrounding one of the jars.

"Prophecy is not destiny. It shows what might me, not what must be. We have free will, and we can make the future what we want. All prophecy does is give up brief glimpses of the path ahead, so that we can avoid some of the pitfalls."

He nodded.

"And what now?"

"How do you feel about war with Norway?" I asked.

He frowned.

"Madam Bones seems inclined to try to avoid it, for fear of inciting the International Confederation of Wizards."

"See if you can push for it," I said. "I have reason to believe that Norway is rather lacking in military forces at the moment."

"That would get us into war with Russia, Bulgaria, and Sweden," he said.

"I've been talking to people," I said. "And it seems the Swedes are not as attached to that coalition as one might think."

"You risk getting us into a world war," he said.

"Do you have any alternatives?" I asked. "We're going to need to get control of most of the Wizarding governments over the next twenty years if we're to have any chance of winning against Scion."

"You don't think that they'd be willing to work together if they knew about the threat?"

"People don't believe in a threat until it's right in front of them," I said. "You'd have groups trying to take over the effort, and others trying to undermine their traditional enemies."

He nodded and sighed.

"Won't war simply reduce wizarding numbers?"advisers

"I've got some ideas about that," I said. "Have you ever heard about artificial insemination?"

"What?" he asked.

"Muggle women who do not have a partner sometimes go to muggle doctors who assist them in having children."

"What?" he asked, seeming for the first time shocked and a little clueless.

"Men volunteer to donate," I said. "And sometimes one man can have a hundred children that way."

He stared at me.

"And you wish wizards to participate in this...abomination."

"We could double the number of Wizards in Britain in a single year," I said. "Now, granted, if we started now, we'd only get a couple of years of fully trained Wizards that way, but it'd give us numbers that we might end up needing."

He frowned.

"It would make Britain a powerhouse among nations," he said.

"Oh, we'd be running things by then," I said. "So it wouldn't matter. Let me tell you some of my ideas for taking over, and I'll have you try to pick any obvious flaws in my plans out."

"The Dark Lord never asked for advice," Lucius said.

"And where is he now?" I asked. "No one person can come up with perfect plans all the time. That's why every leader needs advisors, people who feel safe enough to tell them when they are being stupid. Surrounding yourself with yes-men is a good way to get time turnered."

He stared at me, then nodded.

"So let's begin."