Time seemed to pass agonizingly slowly as Harry and Elise waited for the return of the translator. For a short period of time they watched the wind sweep small amounts of sand across the dunes, but when that turned out to be too boring to continue, the two began to talk a little.

"Elise?" Harry started as he stared out into the massive expanse of desert. She looked up to him and hmm'd in response. Harry soon found his fingers intertwining among themselves. "If you're interested, I have some information for you."

The girl sat up a bit straighter and folded her hands into her lap. "What kind of information? You aren't going to tell me you're leaving us are you?" She asked, worry etched into her face.

With a small solemn smile Harry shook his head. "No no, nothing like that. It's well- it's about your ancestors." He looked to her finally and watched her face transform a bit as the eager girl nodded. "So you want to know?"

Elise nearly bounced as she shifted to sit on her knees. "Of course I want to know! Do you have any idea how rare it is to know where you come from? I'd be able to start my own tapestry if I couldn't ever find mine."

With a half chuckle, Harry straightened himself up. "Well, as you, and I'm sure the rest of the group, er, clan knows, Snape and I aren't exactly from around here." He told her, to which she quickly nodded. "Truth is, we're not even from this time."

A small giggle erupted from the 12 year old's mouth. "That's kind of obvious. The legend said they'd be from the past, and we're all pretty convinced you two are from the legend."

Curiously, Harry's brow raised. "Now that whole legend bit someone is going to have to fill us in on- properly more than just the prophecy that we've already heard like four times since we arrived."

"But my ancestors?" Elise asked, her own brows pulled up in worry.

The young man nodded and his smile returned. "Well your earrings. They once belonged to a great girl, her name was Luna Lovegood. She was sweet, airy, a little ethereal in nature. Kind of like you to a point. I know this because I bought her those earrings as a graduation present. See she was a year behind me in school, and what with the war knocking my education back a year, her and I graduated at the same time."

Elise leaned back on her heels as her shoulders relaxed and she stared off somewhat into space as she tried to imagine her ancestor. "Was she smart?"

"Well, yes." Harry replied. He tilted his head up and closed his eyes. "She was a Ravenclaw, and back then, Hogwarts, the castle we're staying at, you were sorted into different houses. Ravenclaw House was known for being really smart. But she wasn't smart in the conventional sense where she studied super hard and always got high marks, no she was smart on a whole other level. Always knew what to say, never expected anything of anyone, always right there to help you if you needed it. No matter what kind of problem you were having she'd always have a way to keep your mind busy or help you through it if you needed. She was a great friend."

A somewhat serene smile had crept onto Elise's face. "Are there more? You said ancestors, plural, so I assume you knew more of mine?"

Harry's smile fell and he shifted somewhat. "Uhh yeah, your namesake. Draco Malfoy… and Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, his parents. That uhh- that's a whole other story. Maybe another time." He smiled gingerly as he didn't really want to burst her bubble of happiness. In his mind it was best she have this moment to reminisce on someone who wasn't a total prat.

After a few minutes of silence, the translator returned with a woman, someone he hadn't seen before from this clan. The two stood up to greet them, but the woman simply stared from beneath her hijab. She raised an eyebrow and looked back to the translator to ask him something in her language. He nodded, she said something more, and then they looked back to the two.

"This is the leader of our clan. All decisions go through her and are final. She wants to see a demonstration of your magic. Something useful." The translator informed them.

Harry frowned then suddenly had an idea. He urged Elise to take small clumps of sand and make more charcoal with it, and when she did, the girl handed her product proudly to the woman. Truly the woman was mildly impressed as she nodded and looked over it. Harry raised a finger then winked towards them both and lifted his wand into the air. "Aguamenti!" He stated and soon, from the tip of his wand, water burst forth like a magical fountain sprinkler.

The woman looked up as the water came pouring down over them all in drops much akin to rain. The smile on her face grew and the translator stood dumbfounded. The woman laughed and leaned her head back to take in the water then spread her arms as though she'd never felt anything as wonderful. Soon she smacked the translator on the arm to gain his attention so that he may do his job and translate.

"She says, 'I haven't seen that much water since I was a child'." He supplied as he wiped his face from the water. When he saw the confusion on the young man's face, he elaborated. "After the war happened and the last bombs dropped, everything was in ruin. The desert overcame everything else in the land. It used to be lush with vegitation, skyscrapers dotted the landscape, and frankly it was amazing, but once the desert grew… well I'm sure you can imagine how hard it became to find resources." He cleared his throat and looked back to the woman who had begun speaking again. "She asked, 'You can teach us this? How to do this? And all you want in return is to raid the village near our camp, which you've seen has already had everything useful taken from it'?"

Harry nodded his head. "Yes, and yes. I believe there may be information there that can help us. Unlimited water, unlimited fire-" He pointed his wand to the side as the translator told the woman what he'd said and gave a small incendio. "Unlimited charcoal for kindling to keep a fire going. Also there's another trade I had in mind. Those seeds we gave you with the fruit baskets, we can bring you a fertilizing potion for them later which would grow them significantly faster, and some proper soil to plant them in as well as pots to plant them in so you can cultivate them. But if we make a trade for that, we want something else in return." He bargained.

A smile spread over the woman's face and she narrowed her eyes to him as the translator filled her in. She held up her finger then reached into her pocket and pulled out a small bag. Its contents spilled out into her hand, and Harry's eyes widened. The translator explained that she'd trade him those for it. Harry had seen these before, felt them before. "Basilisk scales." He whispered as he ran a finger over them. Briefly he wondered how she found these, then decided he didn't want to know. Realizing these to be a great potion catalyst and something Snape could use to help their own clan, he agreed to the trade then and there. She held on to them until they fulfilled their end of the bargain though, and he explained the wand making to the translator. "We have a boy, a child wandcrafter. He can feel the ingredients needed to make everyone in your clan wands, but it takes a while, a lot of energy. I can come back with him and aid him in his process but it could take hours depending on how many people you have… Er, how many people do you have?"

"Including us?" The translator asked. "Eight."

"That shouldn't be a problem then. A couple of hours maybe. Thanks- eh I never got your name." Harry realized with a tinge.

The translator smirked. "That's because I never told you, and I'm not going to. That's something you have to earn. Meet us tomorrow, at this spot. We will be waiting. We must warm up some others of the clan to the idea first."

Harry nodded and soon he was off, back to the castle. Quickly he ran to tell Snape about the trade he'd just agreed to and Elise ran to tell Livius of the ancestor she'd just learned about.

Lika frowned as she watched her Master toss some bundled dried plants vaguely shaped like a ball in the air just to catch it again… over… and over… and over. Romi had snuck off earlier to head back to her joke shop, the only place she really felt she owned.

When the ball missed Romi's hand and fell to the floor, the young woman didn't so much as bat an eye. She simply let it roll to wherever it stopped, then sighed and stared at the ceiling. "Master?" Lika asked quietly as she watched the frown deepen on Romi's face. "Why is you and the dark one fighting?"

A scoff slipped from her lips as Romi shifted to sit up. "We're not fighting, he was just an asshole who likes to think that because he's old he gets to tell everyone what to do and have bad ideas like ruin probably the first good night's sleep in years for umpteen people who at the time were basically homeless and starving."

Lika flopped onto the floor on her bottom and whined. "But I don't get it. You say his idea bad, Lika don't think it's bad. Good to prepare, if war comes, be prepared. I wasn't prepared last time, that's how I… That's how… Lika lost…" Her throat tightened and her big eyes welled up. "If Lika had woke up in time, if Lika had been prepared, Lika… my… my baby." She sniffled and rubbed her nose as tears started leaking out.

Romi's face softened and she shifted down to embrace her friend. "You're right, it's good to be prepared, but that wasn't what he was suggesting." She let Lika go and sat on the floor herself, elbows resting on her propped up knees as she worriedly looked to her little house elf friend. "He just wanted to get the beds moved. 'Assessing peoples' preparedness' as he called it was an afterthought; an excuse to justify waking up a bunch of people who hadn't had sleep like that in years. Yeah, the quality of sleep would have been better on proper beds, and after the beds were put in the quality became better, but the castle was warm, it was safe, there were two wizards there who could actually control their magic. For the first time in a long time, I, and I know some if not most others, were able to let our guard down and some of them could actually sleep deeply instead of waking up every five minutes to check if someone's stealing their stuff. You and me, we've had it lucky. We got to sleep like rocks all the time 'cause we kept hidden in places nobody thought to look, we don't keep much stuff, and we stayed alone and kept quiet. Most of those people didn't though, they couldn't for whatever reason. They had families, homesteads, if you could call them that, they were targets."

Lika shook her head and wiped on nose on the bottom of her ragged shirt. "No." She said before the looked to her Master. "No. The dark man knows things, you know the legend, what it say. It say he knows how to fight, he knows how to outsmart the bad people cause he used to be a bad people until the light man saved him. Now they both good people, and Lika thinks if the dark man can help us fight off the bad people, then we should listen to what he say."

"I'll listen to what he says when he stops acting all high and mighty about it." Romi muttered.

"Oh Merlin, you're just as stubborn as me back in the day." A male voice called from the side.

In a flash, Lika and Romi were battle ready, but were not prepared to come face to face with a ghost. "Who are you? What do you want?" Romi demanded, her wand pointed at him.

The ghost put his hands up in the air. "Sorry I… Ever since Harry and Snape's come back to Hogwarts it's like the school's released its grip on the ghosts there. We're free to roam now. I just… just wanted to check out my brother's joke shop one last time."

Romi's arm lowered some and her demeanor faltered. "Your brother?"

"Heh…" The ghost said as he put a hand on the back of his neck. "Yeah, well I'm already dead so there's no sense in hiding it I guess- my name's Ron Weasley. I died in the school a couple centuries back, and when I was alive, this used to be a joke shop. George ran-" His face was struck with something akin to grief. "George and F-Fred… they ran the shop. Until Fred… Fred died. And then… I guess I died." His face contorted some and if he had a body a pang would have shot through it. "Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude."

He turned to leave when Romi called out. "I'm a Weasley." She waited for him to turn back around and he certainly did. "Did you know your line carried on?"

Ron smiled a bit sadly. "One of my brothers' lines, yes, but not mine. My wife and I never had kids. We tried but… something was wrong with me. But it is nice to see the Weasleys endured all this time… maybe… unless I think too much about the poverty, lack of magical control, starvation, murders against my family name, and watching only one more generation of Weasleys after me come to the school before they were too poor to buy the supplies necessary to attend."

With that, Ron disappeared through the wall and Romi sighed heavily. "Well he was depressing." She muttered before she sat back down on the floor and tossed her head back. "Lika, I'm sorry but I'm not going to just start liking that Snape guy because he may have actually planned something instead of it being an afterthought that sounded like a good idea to some and a bad idea to others. I can apologize for being rude though." She began to gather up what little stuff she still kept at the joke shop. With a makeshift bag out of some of the fabric she'd taken from their robe store haul, she decided she was going back to Hogwarts. "Rubbish name." She muttered before she began her trek back towards the floo.

"Master?" Her house elf called as she ran to catch up. "Lika can apparate now… Remember?" She held out her hand.

Romi smiled and took it with a nod. When they arrived, Romi frowned. The scene before her was possibly more ridiculous than the name those two kept calling the castle.

Harry was bouncing on one of the beds, tossing, turning, then he got off and moved to another bed to do much the same. "This one still needs a bit more spring in it, but it's almost there."

Snape nodded and cast a spell onto the mattress, then Harry repeated his earlier bouncing ritual, this time with the statement it had too much spring. Once more and it was finally perfect.

"What are you doing?" Romi asked as she dropped her bag onto the ground.

Harry beamed from ear to ear. "Madame Tasslefi had a GREAT idea! She said that since we only had so many beds, and Snape and me could transfigure stuff, that we could just transfigure more beds and test them to make sure they matched. That way everybody could sleep at once, except the people who keep watch at night for guard duty but they can sleep in the day. This way we can get so much more done at once with everyone helping."

Snape grunted in agreement. Romi sighed and tapped Snape on the shoulder. "Look, you were right. I don't know you, I don't know what you've been through, and I don't know what hardships you've faced. I still think it was a dick move to try to wake everyone up in the middle of what was probably their first good night's sleep in years, but I shouldn't have said that… But I don't apologize for the fun of it, and what I'm saying struck a chord with me. I don't know you- I don't know anything about either of you outside of legends and that you're both very strange. Everyone here basically knows one another's' life stories, but nobody here really knows anything about you two. So I wanna know. Who are you both, what have you done? What hardships have you faced?"

Snape glared towards her in silence for a few seconds before he scrunched his nose a bit. "Apology accepted… but you'll not get a story out of me, I've far too much to do. Ask Mr. Bouncy."

Harry frowned. "Hey! For that I'm gonna tell her what you did."

"I don't care! Nothing about that matters anymore anyway, it's not like the Death Eaters or their rogue groups still exist." Snape stated as he walked over to another pile of supplies and began to transfigure them now that he had the parameters of a 'proper bed' according to Potter sorted out.

Romi looked to Harry with a new sense of urgency on her face. "Okay, now you have to tell me everything about you two, gogogo." She insisted.

Harry easily slid in to the tale. "Ok, so get this, Snape was Death Eater. Long story, but he was also a spy for us good guys. He saved me like three times when I went to school here so I could grow up to defeat the tyrant Voldemort who hated non-magical folk. Snape was such a gigantic arse in school, nobody could stand him but he had to be because otherwise he'd get outed as a spy-"

"Wait, you went to school with him? Aren't you like way younger?" Romi asked slightly confused.

Harry shook his head. "Nono, he was my teacher. Anyway, so-" The young man told tales, mostly of him because he didn't really have many of Snape, but he did divulge what Snape had done for the Order of the Phoenix, and basically recounted his life story starting from the day he found out he was a wizard.

Once Snape had done the beds, he set out to transfiguring rocks into pots and gathering fresh soil from the forest outside for the following day's trade. The truth was he did care; he cared an awful lot about what Harry was telling those people about him. He'd worked so hard for so many decades to keep his identity, his truth, his allegiance hidden. He and the rest of the Order, even Harry himself had worked so hard…. For what? For the wizarding world to fall to ruin, for Voldemort's successor, who he didn't even know was possible to exist because nobody knew that giant arse of a Dark Lord had impregnated anyone, for that kind of person to gain control and to plunge the world into a frankly horrifying nightmarish apocalyptic state? This, THIS was what everyone had been working so hard for?!

And why wasn't Potter seemingly affected by any of this? Going on all chipper, like this was some sort of great news, like they hadn't failed in everything they were trying to do. Making friends- yes these people needed guidance, and Snape could concede to teaching them what he knew, but damn it all how dare Potter get to be so unaffected and happy. Damn that brat!

Wasn't it bad enough that there was already one prophecy that changed everything, now they were both caught up in another? With a world population of what, maybe 100 people total? The castle was dying, the people were dying, and the whole damn world was dying. It was desolate, barren, a wasteland of unusable materials except what scraps could be barely salvaged. And here this prophecy was that people kept repeating, the light and the dark one, working together to restore balance to the world. Pff, balance. Never was such a thing in Snape's opinion. He felt he should have just ended it there in the shrieking shack and never lived to see this.

"Son of a bitch!" Snape said quietly as he plunged his fist in through one of the pots he'd just transfigured, breaking it and slicing his hand in the process. The sound pierced through the noise and the clatter of the pot's pieces against the stone floor drew the attention of everyone present.