Okay, okay, I know this chapter is a wee bit late… *ducks under maybe thirty-seven shoes* okay, really late, but let me explain. I have been buried under mounds and mounds and mounds and mounds… (trails off)… of work. Yep, tons and tons of work. I know a few people are going to be angry about my not updating for… has it been over a month already? I don't remember. Anyways, first I'll answer some things that were mentioned in a few reviews I still remember:

Alorkin—Would you like to know who placed the rage-inducing potion?... Let's just say every single teacher at Hogwarts will wish they had followed Moody's mantra, "constant vigilance!" Also, as for Snivelly mind-raping anybody… One word: Fidelius.

Grimmhearts—Don't worry, it was only going at a rapid pace in the beginning to… get the ball rolling, I'd say. Once the school year begins, then things slow down a bit, but stay rather… interesting.

A few people have been rather… disgruntled that I'm letting the Order members know. What a few of you know that others don't, is that not all of those order members are walking out with intact memories… A little combination of Obliviate and Fidelius sees to that. Oh, and for those who are wondering… Sirius will be freed. I'm going to devote a chapter to how they find Wormtail and bring him to justice.

What will the pairing be? Let's see… do I make Samantha straight, lesbian, or bi? I'm leaning towards bi… that would be funny. Or will there even be a pairing? Who knows?

Okay, I've rambled on enough. On with the story!

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Manor of the Zodiac Keepers, Basement Level

"Har—er, Sam, are you sure you want to just go on an tell them right away? That's… well, not the wisest path you could take right now, and I'm sure that if you give it some time then it won't matt—"

"Shut up, 'Mione. Just watch," Samantha said, slightly exasperated at the brown-haired witch. Hermione clamped her mouth shut, and with a 'harumph', crossed her arms over her chest. Ron and Ginny sniggered at the action.

"Oh?" Hermione asked, hands now firmly planted on her hips. "If you're so clever, then let's see what you have in mind!" Samantha sighed, and raised her wand at the six figures that were currently in the pensive. She targeted four of them.

"Obliviate. Sopporifis." A bright flash from Samantha's wand later, and four Order members were on the ground, asleep: Remus, Moody, Tonks… and Dumbledore. Sam's three friends could only stare in awe.

"Blimey mate… you knocked Dumbledore out cold. How'd you do it?" Ron was confounded completely at her show of magic. Ginny was trying to piece the puzzle together, while Hermione had a grin on her face.

(A/N: I'm gonna refer to Samantha as Sam from now on. It's easier.)

"It was easy, Ron," Hermione spoke out. "While they were in the pensive, they couldn't use Occlumency or any other form of shielding, so they were easy targets, even Dumbledore. But Sam, why those four? I thought you trusted Professors Lupin and Dumbledore."

Sam gave no reply. Instead, she had already conjured up a sheet of parchment, an inkwell, and a quill, and was writing something out on a piece of paper. Once she was done, she cast an immensely powerful banishing charm, making the four unconscious Order members on the floor disappear.

"Sam… where did you send them to?" Ginny asked, slightly fearful.

"I banished them back to Grimmauld Place. They'll wake up in their beds in… oh, about five hours. Until then… we wait for those two to get out of the memory." Sam turned back to Sirius and Molly, the only two Order members left that she wanted to trust with this information. Lupin would figure out eventually; his werewolf senses would see to that. As for Dumbledore… the longer he was kept in the dark, the better. Dumbledore was capable of quite a bit more than he let on, that was certain.

For the meantime, the four teenagers waited for the Weasley matriarch and the Animagus to come out of the pensive. Sam only hoped that they believed what they saw…

Inside the Pensive…

Sirius and Molly were quite confused.

No, confused was not quite the right word in this case.

Scared didn't fit correctly either.

To be honest, the proper word for their current state was terrified.

Dumbledore, Remus, Alastor, and Nymphadora had all vanished from inside the Pensive the same way that they would have if the four of them had apparated away, but that was impossible. The only other possibility… was that the four of them had been forcibly removed from the pensive.

"Molly… be on your guard. I'm not quite sure what's going on here."

"That girl will be sorry when I'm through with her!" Had Molly been given a pepper-up potion right then, there would have been enough steam billowing from her ears to power the Hogwarts Express.

Sirius was about to reply to the Weasley matriarch when the grey cloudiness that had been surrounding them faded away into a memory, which took place in a location Sirius knew only too well: Azkaban.

Taking in her surroundings, Molly was the first to notice the memory's Harry lying on the floor of the cell. With a hiss inward, Sirius noticed the gleaming circle through which Leonidas entered the cell.

"Molly… do you have any clue what's going on here? In all my years at Azkaban, I never saw anything like this."

"Hush, Black! I'm trying to listen here, so if you don't shut up I'll have Ginny hit you with a Bat-Bogey Hex… after I cast a castration charm or two at you!" Sirius gulped, and promptly shut up.

The ensuing chain of memories left them, for lack of a better word, speechless.

Unknown Location

Lord Voldemort had no idea that pain on the levels he was feeling could possibly exist.

Not two days ago, Potter had been discovered dead in his cell in Azkaban. Lucius' plot had worked perfectly… aside from a singular problem.

Potter was still alive.

Voldemort could feel it through the link he had with the boy. He had even tried accessing the link numerous times, each attempt ending with a horrifyingly painful, and entirely different result.

On his first attempt at accessing the boy's mind, an ancient, foreign magic threaded its way through the link and caused every single patch of flesh on his body to erupt in flames. Had Lucius and Wormtail not been present to cast multiple Freeze-Flame Charms, Voldemort would not have survived.

On his second attempt, all of the blood in the Dark Lord's veins had frozen. He had needed intravenous insertion of frostbite potion from Severus Snape for a period of three hours to remove the frostbite.

On attempt number three, multiple (approximately thirty) lightning bolts had come down from the sky and struck Lord Voldemort repeatedly in the torso, stopping his heart for no less than two minutes. Had his soul been perfectly intact, he would not have survived.

Attempt number four had been far more painful than the other three before it. After attempting to navigate the pathways of the mind link, Voldemort had felt a strange… pressure on his body, and it took him a little over five seconds to realize that gravity was being increased for his surroundings. All of the bones in his arms and legs were completely and utterly shattered by the extra force, and he had needed to have Wormtail magically remove the bones and have Severus give him Skele-Gro.

Every time, Tom Riddle had gone about a different method of accessing the link. This next time… Voldemort was trying to access it through his soul.

Putting up his Occlumency shields, Voldemort drew himself into a state of deep meditation, finding the fragment of his soul that still remained in his body. Confident in his abilities, he attached his conscience to his soul, and then threaded his conscience through the mind link.

His next punishment could be described as nothing short of the Dementor's Kiss, amplified a hundred times and just barely not being completed.

A force that Voldemort could not identify had worked its way into his soul, and was now tearing it apart bit by bit, piece by piece, and then putting the pieces back together, only to begin again. The process was done several hundred times in a span of five seconds.

Suffering from far worse exhaustion than he would have if he had simultaneously created four Horcruxes, Voldemort collapsed forward, but not before hearing a sinister whisper in his ear:

"You have faced the punishments of Belias, Mateus, Addramalech, Zeromus, and Shemhazai. Do not attempt again, for Cúchulainn's vengeance is far, far worse…"

Manor of the Zodiac Keepers

Two minutes went by. Two turned into five, five into ten, ten into twenty, before Sirius and Molly pulled out of the Pensive.

Sam turned around to look at her godfather and her best friend's mother, but was instantly caught up in a hug so strong that she felt her back crack. Not only that, but the young silver-haired girl couldn't breathe. Nope, not one bit.

"Mum!" Ron and Ginny cried out at the same time. "She can't breathe!"

With great reluctance, Molly released Sam, only to have Padfoot jump onto the girl and lick her face in his Animagus form. Padfoot jumped off the teen about two minutes later, transformed back into Sirius, picked her up, and hugged her like there was no tomorrow. And then, of course, Molly Weasley got in a few… choice words.

"Harry James Potter, how dare you fake your own death and then not tell us you were alive! Did you have any idea how worried we were?! If I were in my right mind right now I'd… I'd…"

Mrs. Weasley never finished. Instead, she broke down in tears and hugged Samantha even tighter than she had before. Sam just gave up trying to breathe this time, and held her breath. Why bother, when Molly Weasley could easily crush the breath out of somebody without even trying?

"Molly, let go of my godso—er, goddaughter right this instant! You're suffocating her!" It got to the point that Sirius had to rush forward and actually pull the Weasley matriarch off of Sam while Hermione, Ron, and Ginny could only watch. Sam breathed deeply for a minute or two before she answered her surrogate mother and her godfather back.

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you. It would have been… too hard. I mean, I'm supposed to be dead, and what would you all expect if I suddenly turned up, and in a female body, claiming to be Harry Potter? No, don't answer that. You would all go ballistic. Sirius, you especially, because you would stand for nobody saying anything that could be taken as 'bad' about your godson. And Molly… well, you might have believed me, but then you would have told everybody. And sadly, I think that… I may have to make all five of you here my Secret-Keepers, so that nobody finds out."

All five present were left with jaws reaching the floor. No, not quite the floor. More like a couple of feet underneath the floor. Sam was going to use the Fidelius Charm?

"But Har—er, Sam, you can't really mean to do that, do you?" Sirius asked, worry in his voice. He'd already had one bad experience involving a Fidelius Charm and a poorly chosen Secret-Keeper, so anybody would be able to forgive his misgivings when it came to that specific method of keeping a secret safe.

"Yes, Sirius, I do. It's the only way I can think of at the moment… even with all the new powers I've gained, none of them can help keep a secret. One of them can tell secrets, but only to me, and that won't help. So, for the meantime, until I find a way to keep this secret a better way, this will have to do."

Sam pulled out her spear (or wand, as it was now), and pointed at her three friends, her surrogate mother, and her godfather. "Hermione Granger. Ronald Weasley. Ginevra Weasley. Molly Weasley. Sirius Black. Do you five hereby accept your roles as Secret Keepers of my prior identity?"

Hermione and the three Weasleys muttered their consent first, while Sirius kept shaking his head. Finally, he gave in.

"Yes, I'll be your Secret Keeper. I just hope the charm works better this time than it did before." Sam nodded at Sirius' consent, and raised her wand.

"Fidelius!" A strange sound was heard, like a key turning in a lock, and five flashes of light flew from Sam's wand, striking each of her five Secret Keepers, but not causing any visible effect. Sirius, however, knew exactly what had happened: they were now the only six people alive who knew of Samantha's true identity.

Sam opened her mouth to say something when just then, a piercing sound burst out through the manor. The silver-haired teen recognized it as the security wards that tracked apparition being passed through, and ran to the portrait of Leonidas that was hanging in the next room. He was the guardian of the house in his portrait form, since he retained a small portion of his magic so that he could act as a sentry.

"Leonidas, what happened? Who apparated in here just now, and what are their intents?" It was hard to miss the panic in Samantha's eyes; she had felt Voldemort attempt to contact her through the link, but each time one of the twelve Scions currently under her dominion had held him off. If it wasn't him, then who was it?...

"I trust that all of you are here to listen to what I have to say?" Leonidas asked, before quickly surveying the room. The piercing noise shut off when he was done. "Good, because this could require some… explaining. Samantha, do you know what happened when Lily Evans died when you were one year old?"

"Yes," Sam replied, duly confused. "She sacrificed herself to save me, granting me a magical protection that saved me from Voldemort." The Weasleys all visibly shuddered at the mention of his name. Leonidas wasn't fazed in the slightest, and his portrait nodded, staring down at the six in front of him.

"That, my dear, is only partially correct. In actuality, Lily died mere milliseconds before the Killing Curse struck her body. The protection that she placed on you was a mixture of her love for you, her magic… and her life force. After this, some of Lily's life force was held inside you, protecting you from Voldemort.

"After I cast the Bloodline Alterations spell on you, Lily's protection was no longer needed, as the guardianship of the thirteen Scions took precedence, seeing as how their powers are many millennia older than her protection, and thus the life force that was inside of you sought out Lily's body."

"But what does that mean?" Sam asked the portrait. Leonidas chuckled.

"I would suggest you head up to the manor's infirmary wing to see what it means." The six of them were off at a full sprint as soon as Leonidas finished his last word. Sirius had turned into Padfoot, and was busy navigating the corridors of the manor, tailing Sam just far enough to not step on her feet.

The group of six arrived in the infirmary wing, and staring down at the hospital bed, all of the six present were stunned beyond belief. Lying in the bed was a young woman, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. Her skin was fair, not quite pale, but certainly not tan, and seemed to be glowing in the soft light of the infirmary. Her facial features were incredibly delicate, and her fiery red hair made her appear as a goddess.

Sam could only stammer out one word at the sight of the woman in front of her.

"M-mom?"