Chapter 116: Preparation

Raiding the Ministry of Magic was ordinarily a stupid idea, but they needed supplies, and the dark lord was on the loose. Four time turners, a broom (Minerva had hers in her pouch already), and two pouches later they were gone.

Unfortunately, the death eater's wards against time turners work quite well. A time-turned rescue of Harry was not going to work. This did, however, give them most of two more hours to put to good use, in which the death eaters could (probably) not yet persue them.

"You stole from the Ministry's supplies", Amelia Bones was screaming, "you tried to confront the Dark Lord without even notifying aurors, and you brought these muggles here. Are you out of your blooming minds? There'll be hell to pay-"

"This muggle", Alastor countered, "has bloodied the Dark Lord. Dumbledore is lost. You should take up your position in the Wizengamot, though I don't think you can hold it for long."

"Nobody has ever laid finger, spell, hex, or jink on the Dark Lord, and few have confronted him and lived. How did you this deed?"

"Shotgun", Michael offered.

Amelia Bones was not happy. "He will hunt you to the ends of the earth!"

"Well that solves that problem." Then to his newly acquired pouch, "Starflight Handbook." Up came one textbook. "Here is knowledge. If you have wisdom, and if power can be had (and I saw last summer that the laws of thermodynamics can be set aside) we can go farther than the ends of the earth."

It was a poor choice of words on his part. Amelia frowned, though with her wrinkled leathery old skin it was hard to tell.

Diagon Alley had its stores of magical supplies, and when you truly don't care about how many galleons you spend because you know you won't be around tomorrow to worry if you don't spend them like water, you can get quite a lot of stuff.

Minerva broke the law a few times in buying magical artifacts for the Evans-Verres couple. She was acting like a true Gryffindor for once. It needed doing with what Michael was planning. The full magnitude she had not caught on yet, but some inkling of it was there to be seen for anybody who chose to see it. Into pouches went shelves of bezors, a few custom healing potions for which an all-purpose bezor just wouldn't cut it, fast-acting anti-bends potions (why in the world Michael insisted on those she could not grasp, but Alastor assured her he saw something in it). But the chests really did seem like too much. They were too heavy to haul around when running for your lives and she was convinced they would run out of something else before the potions they could fit into pouches. Alastor Moody laid down his own coin for them, and then converted a tall stack of galleons to muggle money. He said only "We're not done shopping yet."

The bookstore. Alastor Moody bought a few first year textbooks, including potions and some elementary charms, then talked very carefully with the store owner. It seemed strange to the store owner how the books on how to create new charms made sense to buy at the same time as the first year books, and for the same person no less. Pressing without explaining was obnoxious, but trying to explain the madness of what he was going to /do/ was worse. Eventually the store owner relented because it was Moody and his hands had plenty of galleons, and not because he had a lick of sense at all.

The diving sport store was closed. This did not bother Alastor Moody at all. He apprated in, selected two diving pressure suits (what luck the store even had them; most stores only had sport wetsuits and drysuits, neither of which would cut it for this), dropped the amount of money the signs said they cost, and apparated out. It didn't feel like stealing in the slightest. His money was as good as anybody else's, and the shop owner simply wasn't around to receive it.

Minerva was beginning to catch on. Obviously Michael meant to get beyond reach of magic.

Hours later, Hermoine awoke. The night was cool, and the stars shone brightly overhead. Whatever Tom Riddle had done to hide the twilight and the moon was still operating, but she did not know this. She looked around, discovered she could see by starlight well enough to walk around without bumping into anything, found Harry's pouch lying there, and picked it up. She didn't yet know it was Harry's pouch, but it seemed like a good idea anyway.

Slowly thought caught up with her as she blundered her way back to Hogwarts and to the Ravenclaw tower. The painting asked "What takes but never gives?" which was entirely the wrong riddle to select for this particular occasion. Hermoine lifted her hand to knock on the frame of the painting, and not yet knowing her own strength, gave the painting a tremendous jarring. The painting perceived its own foolishness and opened.

Between the adrenaline still coursing through her blood and being off schedule, for the day for her should have had a few more hours in it, she was not yet tired. Her blow had awoken quite a few Ravenclaws and the girls had taken notice of her pretty fast when she got in. It did not take too long for someone to send for Professor Flitwick.

Professor Flitwick was in turn not in a particularly good mood for having been awoken and certain it was a prank in incredibly poor taste. On finding Hermoine his first words were Polyflus Reverso. After trying a few other anti-shapechanging spells and discovering they just bounce off, he gave up.

"I suppose I'm just going to have to believe you really are her then", he said. Of course nobody would go through that much work to make a false body and not be prepared to lie about it. "I'd much rather have my best student alive than dead anyway. Welcome back!"

AN: Hermoine does not have super sight. I can see like this.