AN: And so, after a horrendous leave of absence after my previous computer committed suicide by spontaneous combustion and took all my work with it, the series continues. Chapters may be updated slower than usual, as I'm being forced to rewrite everything that was lost in the incident. Please be patient. Cheers, Marquis Black.

Willis had to give it to the Colonel—the lady knew her business.

The location she had provided the scout team was an amazing scouting point, as far as such locations went. Nestled between two mountain rises was a small outcrop that overlooked the entire Hogwarts valley. Hidden away by the trees and bushes that littered it, Willis and his reduced team could easily gather information on anything going on in the valley without ever being noticed.

At present, they were hard at work in analyzing the Hogwarts wards.

"Got a signal yet?" asked Willis as he lowered the binoculars from his eyes, having found nothing interesting on the grounds themselves. He was talking to Miles, who was fiddling with a strange machine that looked like a bass amplifier with an antennae on top.

Miles shook his head in the negative as he continued to turn the various knobs, his tongue slightly stuck out between his teeth. "Nothing yet. Whatever's been done to the wards, it's being incredibly tough to tune into."

Naomi Porter, the only female left in the squad after the Colonel had taken Hilliard with her, stood watch a few feet away, her rifle pointed down. "Not the first time the Ward Spectrometer has a tough time," she reminded them. "Remember the bitch of a time we had in Toulouse?"

Miles chuckled. "I thought we'd never get the damn thing running," he replied, clearly remembering the event.

"Can't really blame it, though," mentioned Jameson as he relaxed by sitting down against a tree trunk. "The Spectrometer was rushed through manufacturing based on yet-untested theory. It's only because we needed it that we got it. Otherwise, it wouldn't have come out for what? Three more years?"

O'Neill nodded, lighting up a cigarette. "Nothing beats Weasley & Weasley products, looks like," he agreed. "If it were them, the machine would probably work."

That went without saying, really. W&W Corporation was the biggest supplier of damn near everything in the Empire. Starting as a joke shop, the twin Weasley brothers had expanded their mercantile focus onto everything they could think of. They had begun making an even greater killing once they had successfully recruited Alexandra Potter-Roberts and their older brother Bill to work for their R&D department. The Potters themselves were big investors in W&W Corporation, owning about 20% of the stock.

"What is this, a commercial?" demanded Willis grumpily. "Get the damn thing working, Miles. The column's probably about five days away, and we've still got bupkis."

"I could transform and check out the grounds?" suggested Jameson, but Willis shook his head.

"Not until we know just what the wards are. If one of them is a physical ward, you'll collide and probably hurt yourself."

Porter raised an eyebrow. "What are the odds of that? If Riddle could pull off something like that, why not expand it much farther away, like he did with the Electromagnetic ward?"

O'Neill shook his head, his cigarette hanging limply from his mouth. "Riddle's a crazy bastard, but he's also got an ego to match. Keeping his opponents out of his turf would just feel like cowardice to him—Nah, he's willing to weaken his opponents, but not run from them." He blew out smoke.

Willis gave a short nod at O'Neill's assessment, but was determined to have the wards analyzed before sending Jameson on his scouting flight. "Regardless. Miles, get the Spectrometer working soon. We're wasting valuable time here."

"I'm working, I'm working…" grumbled Miles, even as he bit down on the handle of the screwdriver he had pulled out to tinker with the stubborn machine. He tried to mumble something through the screwdriver, but it came out unintelligible. Willis was certain that the intended message was not fit for polite company.

Half an hour passed before Miles thumped the machine on the side with a fist and a low, mechanical whir started to sound louder and louder. The Imperial scout got to his feet with a pleased grin.

"Right, got the thing working now. Any ward we want readings on first?" he asked, getting ready to turn the knobs as required.

Willis raised his binoculars to look at the grounds again. "Get a general reading first, then look for physical wards and then make your way through the defensive wards list," he ordered.

Miles nodded, twisting the knobs on the machine appropriately and pressing a few switches here and there. The Spectrometer really wasn't all that user-friendly with its interface. "General reading coming right up."

A few beeps later and a sheet of paper was released from a small, slot-like opening. Miles quickly snatched it from the machine and began reading it for the results.

"Well?" asked Porter, somewhat impatiently.

Miles gave her a mock glare for pushing him before relating the results. "Okay, according to this lousy thing, we're dealing with twenty four different wards, of which seventeen are defensive countermeasures, and the rest are miscellaneous."

"Check for physical wards," ordered Willis without skipping a beat. Miles quickly repeated his previous actions with the Spectrometer, albeit inputting a different configuration this time. Once again, the machine whirred to life and ejected a sheet of paper.

"None," was Miles' declaration. "Looks like O'Neill's right. The bugger's not interested in keeping us away—just weakening us."

Willis ignored the grumble from Miles and the snicker from Jameson, mainly due to the fact that he could also hear the sound of coins jingling, which meant Willis had probably lost a bet on the presence of physical wards—probably to O'Neill.

Instead, the somber-looking sergeant lowered his binoculars again and addressed Jameson without turning to look at him. "Jameson."

Jameson had a good idea what was coming, but indulged his superior nonetheless. "Yeah?"

"You're up."

Jameson grinned. "Finally."

Jameson got his feet slowly, enjoying the stretching feeling it gave his legs to do so. He then began doing stretching exercises in order to increase his overall flexibility, focusing particularly on his legs. One wrong slip and he could die.

None of his comrades seemed to be particularly distracted by him, either. They had all seen his performances previously, so while a newbie might find his antics suicidal, they found it ordinary.

"How long this time?" asked the only remaining wizard in the group as he stretched his arms now. It was always good to know these things before he actually went through with his job—it made sure he didn't wander off.

Willis considered the question for a moment before finally saying, "The usual. Ninety minutes. Come back earlier if you find something."

"Any other parameters?" asked Jameson as he bent backwards alarmingly. Surprisingly, his spine didn't seem all that stressed by the act.

Willis shook his head. "Nah. Should be a normal scouting run," he assured his subordinate, before mentally adding, 'Well, I hope so, anyway.'

Jameson nodded as he stretched his arms behind his head. "Right, then. Who wants to time me this time?" It was a personal game of Jameson's to see if he could beat his record every time he did this sort of thing.

Porter rolled her eyes and looked away while O'Neill kept staring at him blankly, his cigarette still lit. When it was apparent no one would speak up, Miles groaned out loud before getting to his feet slowly. "Fine, fine, I'll do it," he said wearily as he reached into his pants pocket and retrieved a timer.

Pressing a button on the top-left, he nodded at Jameson. "Whenever you're ready," he said.

Jameson gave his comrade a cheery grin before getting into a rocket start stance about twenty meters away from the edge of the cliff. "Count it down, Miles!" he prompted, causing the soldier in question to roll his eyes.

"Three…two…," Jameson raised his buttocks a little higher in anticipation, and Miles felt mischievous all of a sudden. "One and a half…"

A snort from O'Neill and a snicker from Porter, while Willis stayed silent, though the slight twitch in his lips gave him away. Jameson groaned, dropping his head in mock disappointment.

"Really, Miles? Really?" he demanded wearily.

Miles cocked Jameson a grin. "Fine, fine. One…" he resumed counting. "GO!"

Just as he pressed the button on the timer, Jameson sprang into a sprint, quickly accelerating to his max speed. Even as the man neared the cliff edge, he made no moves to stop, and instead grounded his left foot deep into the ground at the edge and jumped clean off the cliff.

"There he goes," commented Willis blandly as he looked down the cliff.

"He's still a crazy fucker for doing this, I say," added O'Neill as he took a deep drag from his cigarette.

Porter shrugged, watching from the corner of her eyes as Miles approached the cliff side to look down towards the falling Jameson. "Everyone has their habits. Normal soldiers clean their rifles, Navy guys sweep the decks…"

Miles pressed the stop button on his timer. "…and our only Animagus in the group likes to jump off cliffs as he transforms," he finished, ducking his head backwards just in time to avoid colliding with a black raven that had flown straight up the cliff.

"Did he beat his time, at least?" asked O'Neill, holding his cigarette between two fingers.

Miles checked his watch before shaking his head. "Nope. Zero point two seconds too slow."

"Zero point three would have made him a pancake on the rocks below," reminded Willis as he looked down the cliff side. "The fool was lucky he stretched and loosened up for the transformation."

"You think he'll ever stop doing that?" asked Porter as she kept her gaze on the sea of trees behind the group.

Miles let out a barking laugh. "Hardly! The man's too much of an adrenaline junkie. I heard he used to pull this sort of thing off before the joined up, just for kicks."

Willis decided not to comment on that—partially because he couldn't. It sometimes boggled his mind how some people found near-death situations a thrill. As if dodging bullets and spells wasn't enough!

Putting that thought aside, Willis lowered his binoculars and turned to his remaining men. "Okay, we've got an hour and a half before Jameson comes back. Miles, get back on the Spectrometer and get a full readout on all the wards set up around the castle and its grounds. O'Neill, you switch with Porter in thirty minutes, and I'll take the third shift after that."

"Yes, sir!" came the expected chorused reply.

An hour passed and Jameson had not seen fit to return from his scouting flight yet, which somewhat reassured the scouting team, since it meant there were no nasty surprises waiting for them that the Animagus could make out. So, while the only wizard in the group kept his flight going, Willis was determined to take advantage of the 'so far, so good' situation by scouting out the rest of the area.

"Okay, so we know that the Colonel found a passage that leads down into the valley below, right?" he reminded his men, who nodded as one. "We're going to find it and assess its viability."

Porter raised her eyebrows. "What for?" she asked. Typically, she would have shut her mouth and followed orders, as she was supposed to, but the fact that the Imperial column already had its own designated way into the valley conflicted with her sergeant's intentions. "The column's already got its way in, doesn't it?" she continued, voicing her thoughts.

Willis nodded. "Yeah, they do," he confirmed. "But it's much further away than this path of the Colonel's is, and it strikes me that if we know that path is there, then so does Riddle. Unlike the Colonel's passageway, the designated one is well known and documented. If we can find them another way in, then we'd be giving our lads an advantage."

Willis was pleased when Porter, Miles, and O'Neill seemed to easily accept this logic. People who were on what they thought were wild goose hunts tended to overlook things in their reluctance.

"Right, let's leave Jameson a message that we'll be gone for the next hour, just so he doesn't freak out when he finds no one here in thirty minutes," said Willis as he nodded to O'Neill, who promptly wrote out the note on a piece of paper in big, bold lettering. They couldn't send him a magical message because none of them were Wizards, and even if they could, such messages would have given away their position. Radios were out, partly due to the wards, and also because Jameson had no way of using one when he was transformed into a raven.

Once the note was tacked to the most obvious tree near the edge of the outcrop, as well as a continuously shining red bulb to catch Jameson's attention in case he missed the very obvious note, the foursome made their way into the dense forest that hid the outcrop and headed west, where the path Susan had showed them allegedly lay.

The walk through the forested area was not all bad, in truth. The air was dry and cool, but not so much as to freeze their bones—cold enough that being clothed with their light trench coats was good enough to keep them warm. Also, they had thus far seen nothing more of the strange tracks that had previously alarmed them, and all four were seriously considering writing off the previous encounter as a random occurrence—probably some genetically bred plaything of the Death Eaters that had finally found its freedom in its masters' deaths.

Finally, after about another hour's walk, they reached what they assumed to be the path Susan had told them about. However, to their surprise, it was not as small as she'd led them to believe.

Quite simply, it was actually rather wide. Wide enough for the Imperial column to march through, too. No crevices to fall into, either.

"D'ya think we might have gotten the wrong path?" suggested Miles after a moment of bewildered silence. All four of them were staring, dumbstruck, at the rather convenient way into the valley below.

"This is exactly where the Colonel said it'd be," reminded Willis after he double checked the information mentally. "Proportions are way off, though."

"Gee, ya think?" asked Porter sarcastically.

"Maybe the Colonel's memory was affected by her youth?" suggested O'Neill stoically. "She may have misjudged the path when she first found it."

"Missing a fifty meter gap between mountains is a heck of an oversight, O'Neill," pointed out Porter.

"Erosi—"

"Don't even get me started, Miles," threatened Porter as she cut off her squad mate.

"I agree with Porter," concurred Willis eliciting a thankful look from the blonde woman. "Magic can explain a lot, but it can't explain this gap. Not unless it's been deliberately altered or the Colonel's memory's been tampered with. Something's wrong."

O'Neill and Miles exchanged a look. "Well, what are we supposed to do, then?" asked Miles in the end.

Willis sighed. He really, really hated complications. "Let's go back and fetch Jameson. He can check the place out for magical alterations and whatnot. Miles, O'Neill, you two stay here and guard the place, just in case."

Both men nodded once and tightened their grips on their rifles. "Yes, sir!"

Willis turned his attention to Porter now. "Come on, we'll have to make good time for Jameson to be able to do his evaluation under sunlight."

With a nod, Porter made to follow him, only briefly turning to her two other squad mates to give them a cheery, cheeky wave. Miles responded with an amused grin, and O'Neill ignored it altogether and lit up another cigarette.

The duo found Jameson impatiently waiting for them at the outcrop.

"What the hell took you guys so long?" he demanded as he got to his feet. "It's been, what?" he checked his watch. "Two hours?!"

Porter shot him a tired glare, while Willis ignored him altogether and went to fetch a bottle of water from his knapsack. Jameson then noticed that the group was two short.

"Hey, where are O'Neill and Miles?" he asked, confused.

"Sarge made them stand guard at the Colonel's passage into the valley," explained Porter shortly as she gratefully accepted the bottle of water Willis had extended to her. "We need you to come with us to check it out for magical traps and illusions."

Jameson raised an eyebrow. "What about this place? We're just leaving it without any guard?"

Willis shrugged. "Haven't got the manpower for it, and this is more important."

Porter spoke up then. "Actually, sir, I'll stay behind," she offered. "It's not safe to leave the equipment unguarded, and I could use the break."

Willis gave her a critical look before reluctantly nodding. "Fine. Porter's on guard duty till we get back. Jameson, you're with me."

Jameson actually seemed happy to be given a reason to move around. Obviously, waiting in the same place for two hours had been like torture for the man. In fact, he had already started to go ahead, leaving Willis and Porter alone for a moment.

Willis gave his remaining female subordinate a hard stare. "Keep your eyes open," he told her seriously. "Jameson might be fine, but he's also very lucky. I don't want to come back and find you gone and our equipment missing, got it?"

Porter nodded in affirmation just as seriously. "I know. Got it, sir."

Willis just stared at her for a second before giving a final nod and turning to leave. Within seconds, Willis had disappeared into the foliage, leaving Porter to herself.

Sighing at finally catching a break, she looked around for a good guarding spot and quickly settled on a particularly high and foliage-dense tree. Slinging her rifle onto her back, she stretched her arms for a few seconds and cracked her fingers before firmly latching onto the tree's trunk. Once she was sure she had a good hold, she then pushed and pulled her way up the trunk until she found a good, thick solid branch that gave her both adequate cover and good line of sight with the outcrop. This way, no one would see her, but she would see them.

Satisfied with her guarding spot, she leaned back against the trunk, fastened her rifle's strap across her frame, and settled the weapon on her extended legs. If she had to wait for a few hours for her friends to come back, there was no reason she had to be in some uncomfortable position in order to do so.

Porter was startled awake by the sound of a few branches snapping. Silently cursing herself for having fallen asleep on duty, she nonetheless quickly rallied herself and subtly peered down into the small clearing below to see who had entered her domain. She relaxed when she saw it was O'Neill, Willis, Miles, and Jameson. Obviously, they had either succeeded, or withdrawn for the day.

Speaking of which, Porter judged the day to be settling into dusk, given the orange-purple colour of the horizon. The lads had taken their time, it seemed. Unfortunately, that didn't tell her whether or not they succeeded; they might have just decided to take it easy after successfully mapping out the mountain pass.

She was about to go down to meet them when something about their disposition struck her as odd. All four of them seemed to walking differently from before. Jameson tended to slouch in his walk; Willis was stiff-backed and militaristic; Miles was easy going but spry; and O'Neill was casual and indifferent.

Yet now they all walked like predators on the hunt: slightly leaning forward and their weapons up. A little off guard from this unusual behaviour, Porter hesitated in getting down. After all, she had heard of shape-shifting magic users. Instead, she shifted closer to the trunk of the tree and made herself as small as possible, all the while tightening her grip on her rifle. Barely at first, she could nonetheless start hearing the four beneath her start talking.

"—find her," Miles was saying. It didn't take a rocket scientist for Porter to realize they were talking about her.

"Look harder, then!" snapped Willis. Or, at the very least, his doppelganger. "You know our orderssss! No loossssse endssss!"

Porter arched an eyebrow. Willis had never, in all her years of knowing him, stressed out the esses in a word. Something was very wrong.

"The female must be here sssssomewhere…Sssshe can't have gone far…" noted Miles, in the same, hissing tone that Willis had spoken.

If she had her doubts prior to this, Porter held none now. This was not her squad. These were not the lads she had fought alongside of and slept under the stars with. Not the comrades she had grown close to and defended with her life.

Instead of worry and grief for her comrades, though, she felt boiling rage fill her. These…people had probably done something to them and taken on their image. That alone was unforgivable in her book.

With all the expertise of a trained sniper, Porter smoothly lowered her rifle to eye level and quietly tracked the impostors. Whichever of the bastards gave her the first clean shot would be getting a new hole in their head. As luck would have it, her first target was Willis, who walked right into her sights as he roughly snapped at his comrades.

Porter was glad that her sergeant's impostor would be the first to go. It would be therapeutic. If she could take him down, then she was sure she would have no emotional qualms with offing the other doppelgangers.

Her rifle barely budged as she adjusted it and herself to get a better lock on the fake Willis' head. Porter's tongue was protruding between her teeth as she poured every drop of concentration and willpower she had into this one shot.

As the blonde woman finally put her trigger finger through the metal loop where the trigger hung, she proceeded to almost mechanically shut off her emotional responses to what she was planning to do. If she had been honest with herself, she would have admitted reluctance at firing at the fake Willis due to the fact that she may have held feelings for the scruffy, older man. But that was irrelevant now. This was not that man. This was a man wearing that man's skin.

And he had to go.

Porter's index finger carefully touched the hair trigger on her rifle but did not pull just yet. The fake Willis was moving a bit, and she had to slightly readjust her aim all the time.

Then, quite suddenly, the fake Willis stopped walking around.

This was it.

Just as she was about to jerk back her index finger, Porter heard something right before a hand grabbed her by the mouth and everything went black.

"There you are."

"She fell?" asked Neville as he peered down the outcrop.

Willis nodded gravely. "It must have happened while the rest of us were out scouting the pass," he told his superior.

Neville didn't much like that scenario. The scouting team under Willis was one of the best in the service, and wouldn't have made rookie mistakes like that. Yet, the evidence was all there—the tell tale piece of ground that had crumbled due to pressure at the edge, Porter's rifle laying on the ground—it was all there.

"Did you retrieve her body?" he asked softly as he silently mourned the loss of a soldier under his command.

Willis nodded somberly. "It was not in the best of conditions after her fall, but we managed to retrieve it and give it a proper burial."

"Where?" asked Neville bluntly, catching Willis slightly off guard.

"Inside the forested area behind us, sir," answered Willis quickly. "We really wanted to have her body transported back to Harrisburg, but…"

Neville nodded. "The decomposition wouldn't have allowed it. I understand. I'm just glad that she was given a final resting place," he stated neutrally, before turning away from the cliff edge and returning to his escort.

The entire army column, after having successfully linked up with General Guinness' own force, had finally reached their destination—the only known path into Hogwarts Valley. That is, until Willis had contacted Neville and pointed out the other path they had found, which upon inspection led to an even better crossing angle towards the opposite Hogwarts docks.

Neville calmly made his way back to his camp, leaving the scouting team by themselves at the outcrop. Returning the occasional salute to his men as he passed them by, he made his way directly towards his command tent, where he had installed a communicator device that linked him to the Invincible.

At the entrance, he made sure to dismiss his escort before walking into the tent and closing the flap. He then pulled out his wand and casted a privacy charm throughout the inside of the tent—this way, his conversation would not be spied upon.

Standing on the circular platform on the floor, he patiently waited for the device to fire up, and after a few seconds, the holographic image of Harry Potter appeared, apparently sitting in his command chair.

"Speak to me, Neville," the soft voice belied the rising excitement in the Duke's eyes.

"It is as you foresaw," reported Neville with a respectful tilt of the head. "The pieces are in place. We are ready to move out at your command."

Post-AN: Just to be clear, reviews are still welcome. Frankly, after the disappointing loss of my work, I could use the encouragement.