Reflections Through Time
Chapter Five

by Lionheart

Author's Diseased Ranting:
My first real 'Thump' in reading the HP series was at the end of Book 3, where evil triumphs in the typical end of year struggle.

Evil triumphs? Why yes. The real murderer, Peter Pettigrew, gets away and Sirius is forced to remain a fugitive, while Snape almost gets an Order of Merlin for turning him in. A quick act of damage control by Harry and Hermione prevent things from going even worse, but it doesn't remedy the core problem. Then the escaped murderer does what Voldemort had been trying and failing to do for the first two books of the series - starts the process of restoring the Dark Lord's body.

That counts as a win for evil, if not more than one.

A HP factbook I own points out that, right before the big, revelatory conversation in the Shrieking Shack where all the gritty details get revealed at last, and the mystery is put to rest, a door moves on its own. Some of the characters look at it, but pass it off as nothing and then go launching into the great exposing of secrets. Immediately as they are done with exposing Sirius' innocence, however, Snape appears with a wand out to arrest him, and won't listen to any pleas or explanations.

Once that was pointed out I reread that section and yes, I believe that Rowling was hinting that Snape was there as a witness to the entire conversation. He's just evil enough to know the truth and not care one bit about it, wanting to destroy his childhood nemesis while he had a chance, and more than willing to get a prestigious award in the bargain. Snape also exposed Remus as a werewolf, costing him his teaching position, as another jab at his old rivals. That much is stated explicitly.

Regardless of that, however, from that moment at the end of Book 3 to the present, there has not been one true, unvarnished success for the Light side in this entire conflict. The bad guys seem to able to achieve plenty, but nothing's gone right for the Light, at least not without severe loss or consequences. It is almost as if the person who wrote the first two books wasn't even present for the writing of books 4 and on. Certainly her core characters have changed from the inquisitive and able, lucky and plucky crew she began with to something I honestly want to squash under my boot.

Disclaimer: As badly as she's mangled them, the HP characters still belong to Rowling. Somebody call Child Protective Services, quick!

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After the first few months of initial helplessness, Harry found everything got better as his body started to get strong enough that he could move. His parents were startled by his progress. He crawled early and walked early and whenever Lily lost track of him, she'd find him in one of two places: in the study having pulled down one or more of her magic books and playing his 'read like mommy' game where he stared at and occasionally flipped those pages, or out in the garden exploring her plants.

In actuality, Harry was studying as hard as he could.

Nor was he doing this just for himself. Anastasia/Luna and Electra/Ginny were both in newborn bodies and could hardly do a thing for themselves. So now he got to return the favor they had done for him, reading to them to pass away the hours.

Daphne/Hermione was in a body precisely as capable as his. They'd compared dates and her new parents had decided to grant her almost Harry's exact birthday. Where he was born 31 July 1980, the Greengrasses had decided to celebrate hers as if it had been on the 29th of July that same year.

They'd had a fair amount of discussion over whether or not the Prophecy could refer to her now, but that got resolved by the observation that her new parents had never defied the Dork Lord, only avoided him as much as possible.

James had taken the next ghostly warning, the one Urd sent, even more seriously than the first, flooing several members of the Order to meet him there. Lily had left Harry with Molly Weasley (who, while not a top notch front line fighter, served the Order well as their nanny, taking care of children so their mothers could fight), and gone too.

The attack had been another bad one, but with so much of the Order there it was repulsed with ease, and they even took some Death Eaters prisoner, for questioning. That gave them vital information for foiling the next set of attacks.

However, in one of those actions, Harry's mother got hurt.

Resolved he wouldn't let her die for him again, Harry practiced in any way that he could. Knowledge was power, and being helpless or trusting others to think for him got him condemned to Azkaban without a trial the first time around. So he read any book he could pull off his parents' shelves, learned to climb so that he could read books stored higher up, and practiced what he could 'playing' in the garden. Mostly that was Herbology, though instead of making simple mud pies he did go through the motions of mixing potions, using dirt and water and sticks while trying to visualize the real thing in his mind, all of the while sharing every detail with his friends.

Anastasia/Luna turned out to be a big surprise for them. Apparently, she'd absorbed their communal studies of Occlumency and Legilimency better than Harry had. As she was now Lucius Malfoy's daughter, she saw him regularly several times a day, and he had no effective shields.

This surprised most of them, until Hermione reminded them that those were both supposedly very rare arts.

Whatever the cause of Lucius' ignorance, his mind was defenseless to his daughter's probes and she was able, several times a day, to pick his mind for Death Eater plans. The man didn't know everything, unfortunately, but he did work as a key agent for Voldemort in arranging for Ministry forces to be out of place and unavailable for reacting to Death Eater raids. That role gave him more access to vital information than most of Voldemort's slaves, information that Anastasia/Luna would pick out of his undefended brain and pass on to her friends via the mink-link.

His other friends were able to add to this. Daphne/Hermione had absorbed magical history books through her skin, practically. She'd loved the subject and known more about this war before going to Hogwarts than many students had known on graduating. Though none of those she'd read had been precise, chronological accounts of each and every strike or counterstrike, later experience in the Second Rise had allowed her to piece together a very respectable image of how the First Rise had gone.

Electra/Ginny was another surprise, in that she'd grown up in a pureblood household originally the daughter of two Order members. They hadn't talked about it much, but many of their kids had been curious, and between the details each Weasley child (particularly the twins) had ferreted out, they'd been able to piece together a different set of information than found its way into the history books. Also, anniversaries of the deaths of certain friends and family members had been easy and obvious to guess by the way their parents sulked or grew morose.

Anastasia/Luna had known of several friends and family dates of death as well. So those got added to the pile of information they'd accumulated.

From this, the four children decided to do what they could to continue to fuel the side of Light against Voldemort's attacks and raids, and it seemed the best way would be to pass on what they knew to Harry's parents in the form of more ghostly, glowing figures. So Harry at once threw himself into working on two key things: first was he had to copy the girls' power of creating ghostly lights, otherwise they'd never be able to convey the information to his parents. Secondly, he devoted himself to mastering Occlumency and Legilimency.

There was a very good reason for the second, and 'Daphne' in particular felt it was vital to their being able to continue on with the first, once they started.

They were in the past. It was fluid, and could change (as they'd proven by what they had already done). So knowledge of the history of a future that might not come to exist was not the most reliable source of information. It made for an excellent guide, but details which made it useful might change from results of their own actions and make that history useless unless they could constantly update using local information. On the other hand, information picked from the brain of Lucius, while it could serve alone, by itself thwarting attacks, or as a useful compass to correct their knowledge from the future...

... well, Voldemort was paranoid. He probably already suspected a spy within his ranks from the raids that had failed already. And Tom Riddle Jr. had already mastered the counterspy trick of controlling who had access to what information, so that by observing what your enemies do to counter your plans, you can deduce what information they had and thus narrow down who could have told them what, until you've identified the leak.

Then that leak got plugged, pun intended.

So, even though Lucius didn't know he'd be spying for the Light, having his brain picked by his daughter, and Voldemort would certainly be able to verify his servant as not having done a single traitorous deed by doing his own rummaging around in his head, the Dark Idiot would still be able to tell eventually who it was that was destroying his plans by controlling who knew what and carefully seeding misinformation.

The only way to counter that was to obtain a second source of information. It became far, far more difficult to identify a leak when you've got more than one. The best would be another handful of highly-placed Death Eaters, but they felt lucky they had access to one. So, they had to play a bit of intricate spy-gaming of their own.

Pressing himself, building on what he already knew and with helpful encouragement from his friends (and active assistance from Anastasia/Luna), Harry began to read the minds of his parents. What he wanted to know was what they knew from Order meetings. Urd had already told them that Snape was using those as a mine of information for Voldemort. So, what the Order knew, Snape knew, and thus Voldemort knew.

He would be basing his plans, in part, on that knowledge, using it to his advantage.

By knowing what sorts of facts Snape was passing along to Voldemort, they had a good idea of what he was learning, and thus what sort of targets he'd pick, and comparing that to their historical perspective, they'd get a fairly accurate idea of how he'd lay his plans.

It is an inexact science, with lots of guesswork and tangled knots of theory, but that made for a stimulating mental exercise and they didn't have much else to do but think. The friends had discovered that even Hermione had limits on how much she could study without going spare, so discussing and dissecting Voldemort's plans became a highly entertaining form of diversion.

That's probably what made them so very, very good at it.

Knowledge from the future, while incomplete, was still good enough to grant them an excellent overall picture. That was a perspective none of the locals had, on either side. The kids knew most of what Voldemort's side had done before, and generally in what order he'd done it. That, coupled with some information picked up from an unsuspecting Lucius and keeping tabs on what Snape learned through the Order, all run through Harry's own unique insight into how the Dark Lord's thought processes worked (gained through years of he and Tom eavesdropping in on each other's minds through a link that did not currently exist), and the four infants were able to consistently predict Voldemort's attacks and other important events of the war.

Harry would then create ghostly illusions warning his dad, who would then warn the Order, who got to be very good about mustering counterstrikes on demand. They even began to keep a strike force ready, prepared to muster in time to ambush the latest attack. Casualties began to drop, and some began to sense that the war had shifted.

To Voldemort, of course, such a shift was not acceptable.

Snape had already told him that it was this Harry boy who was providing the useful warnings. Dumbledore had been most excited about that fact, and proudly shared it with his whole Order. James was far from happy when the next two warnings were ghostly images of himself and his wife and son, but Harry was just glad they had enough information from Lucius' mind through Luna to give those warnings and get his family out of danger in time.

That led to the Potter family upping their defenses, and keeping guards about. What that meant in practical terms was several close friends staying over, primarily Marauders. A frequent guest was Peter, a fact Harry was both disgusted and immensely relieved by. The murdering rat-man was a spy not even most Death Eaters knew about, but the information he shared with Voldemort was another prime source of data the Dark Idiot used to formulate his plans. Plus, even though Tom Riddle didn't tell Wormtail much, he couldn't get away with not telling him anything. Moldy had to maintain the illusion of some trust, in order to fool the cowardly traitor into believing his master would protect him in exchange for his service. So, by picking through the traitorous rat's mind, Harry was able to add more detail about Tom's plans for the rest of them to foil.

Anastasia was able to match that and raise when Lucius began to have guests over. The minds of visiting Death Eaters were hardly reliable, in that they didn't visit often (except for the LeStranges, Bella being Narcissa's best friend as well as sister), but the information was still useful.

Several times Harry got investigated by Dumbledore, who was fascinated by the boy's apparent ability to predict Death Eater attacks. Or, if not the boy, as some (led by Snape) suggested, then what was the source of this wonderfully useful phenomena?

Harry feigned an exhausted sleep whenever Dumbledore came by, resisting even attempts to wake him up. It wasn't subtle, or particularly elegant, but he just couldn't trust his brand new, ineffectual and barely developed mind shields against the veteran Headmaster. And, more to the point, he didn't trust the old man to act intelligently with the information such contact could offer him.

Call it unfair, but his own history could not provide one example of a choice that Albus Dumbledore made on his behalf that wasn't the absolute worst thing to do under whatever circumstances prevailed at the time.

Besides, whatever Dumbledore knew, Snape learned soon after, and what he knew he told direct to Voldemort. So if they wanted to keep this planning advantage at all, it was imperative that the Headmaster never learn of it, or else Voldemort could easily counter it.

And Anastasia would almost certainly be killed in the bargain.

Even Lily noticed that her wonderfully active boy would instantly fall asleep at the mere presence of the Headmaster, no matter what he was doing or how soon he'd just gotten up, or eaten, or had a diaper change or whatever. Nothing could keep him awake for these visits, and not even gentle prodding would awaken him until after the Headmaster was gone.

Disaster struck as Peter, who'd also noticed this rather obvious ploy, threw a pail of cold water over the baby during one of these visits, when nearly the whole Order was present. Shock brought Harry's illusion of sleep to an end and he sat up, crying loudly. Lily rushed over to him, but Dumbledore picked him up first. Harry tried to keep his eyes shut, but feared the worst...

... when help came from an unexpected direction.

"URD BOLT!!"

The platinum haired goddess came rocketing out of one of the paintings, lightning already lashing out from her outstretched fingers and impacting upon the Headmaster with sufficient force to send him screaming through the air to smash into the far wall. Harry came floating gently into the goddess' arms, unharmed, as the frantic Order members brought their wands to bear.

With an idle, almost negligent flick of one wrist, Urd disarmed and paralyzed them all. Then, with perhaps more force than was necessary, she flared her marks and introduced herself. "My name is Urd, Goddess First Class, First Category, Unlimited License, Norn of the Past and Goddess of Love. And YOU!" her eyes blazed as she pieced the amazed Headmaster with her angry gaze, "are a bumbling old fool who is singlehandedly leading the entire side of Light to ruin! Harry was sent to Earth at this time to destroy Voldemort, and you, Albus Dumbledore, have neither the right nor the privilege to pry into his mind in search of how or why. Is that clear?"

"My dear..." Albus got painfully to his feet.

The angry goddess made a fist and Dumbledore got lifted into the air by his neck, slammed back up against the far wall, his face swiftly turning purple. "I don't have to repeat myself, Dumbledore. But I can see I am wasting my breath. You'd find some excuse to disbelieve or disregard my message after I left. So I'll leave you with one you can't ignore."

The Headmaster screamed as two bolts of lightning lashed out, destroying his eyes and melting them out of their sockets. Shortly after this happened, he was allowed to slump to the floor, breathing heavily.

Dropping him, Urd turned to face the rest of her audience. "As much as I'd love to tell you names of the spies that he's welcomed into your Order," she gave a hard but very brief glance at Snape, which most of them missed (but nearly caused Severus to wet himself), "I came here on strict instructions, which I have carried out. Albus Dumbledore was trespassing with his mind arts on that which he was forbidden to know. If a warning would've sufficed, that's all he would have gotten. Instead, I could tell that he had no intention of being guided by my words, and would have imagined up an excuse not to. Now, without natural eyes, he will be unable to use those skills. My work here is done," she paused on her way out the room to look back at the crowd. "But I think you ought to know that Heaven is aware of you, each individually, and we approve of the struggle against evil. Still, I feel you should know that if it required this whole Earth to be destroyed to stop Voldemort's victory, it would be done. We can make other Earths, but we will not tolerate the triumph of evil. It will simply not be permitted, even if another Earth has to pass away to prevent it. Goodbye."

"Another?!?" Lily squeaked out in terror.

Urd turned to smile at her. "Yes dear, another. There have been quite a few. But, in all honestly, I don't feel that will be needed this time." She bent forward to give the startled mother a friendly pat on one cheek. "Do take care of young Harry for me, will you? I've grown rather fond of the boy."

And with that, she vanished.

So great was the impact of her presence that it was another full minute before anyone moved, despite the effects of her paralysis having vanished when she did. It was a groan from Dumbledore that brought them out of that state and into action.

Religion was rare among witches and wizards, who often didn't believe in any power higher than themselves. So the general consensus after the fact was that they were attacked by a very powerful witch, in spite of the many holes in that story.

Some wondered, however, and through tales and whispered secrets, news of that events had spread, in garbled form, throughout the magical world within weeks. No one quite knew what form of that story to believe, and many more got invented trying to make some form of sense out of it, but in general all agreed that two things were important about the event: Dumbledore's injury (though most didn't know what it was, as the Headmaster acquired a very realistic pair of magical eyeballs shortly afterwards), and the story of Harry's remarkable predictions got carried abroad as an aftereffect.

On some consideration, the four friends agreed that it wasn't so bad that the story of the predictions got spread about. The two key sides were already aware of it, so they weren't keeping anything from Voldemort by keeping it a secret.

Naturally, the Ministry wanted to get involved, making use of the resource that was Harry to do essentially what the Order had been doing, stage counterstrikes and ambushes to counter the raids of Death Eaters. Only, being the Ministry, they had a rather effective core of trained hit wizards and aurors to do the countering. So long as these troops weren't getting sent out on wild goose chases by panicked politicians under Lucius Malfoy's calm suggestions, they made for a far more effective force than a bunch of teachers and clerks.

Casualties began to drop yet again.

Although Harry personally hated the attention, it did inevitably get out that there was a prophecy about him defeating Voldemort. The first two lines of Trelawney's prophecy (the part Voldemort already knew), plus Urd's statement on the matter both became wide-spread general knowledge.

It did wonders for the public's morale, but it did make Harry even more subject to attacks, and under those circumstances his family couldn't just disappear under a Fidelius, as he had to stay somewhat public to keep making predictions. They did put their house under one at Dumbledore's insistence, but a handful of aurors had to be told the secret so they could assist in watching over Harry and passing along any warnings that might be received.

Meanwhile, the Order faded into the background. Some did visit, as friends, but that only generally took place on the times the family was out visiting. His mom and dad still had school, so during the day Harry was taken to the Ministry building (they had a nursery) as a big, visible symbol of what the current leadership was doing to defeat the Dark Lord.

Harry found that this curtailed his activities by quite a bit. On the plus side, what he lost in his ability to read books and play in the garden he made up for by what he was able to read in people's minds. Also, Daphne/Hermione had finally managed to begin getting around enough in the Greengrass manor that, with the help of her telekinesis, she was able to start getting at the family books and take over some of the reading for her friends.

The house elves didn't take her behavior as odd, and those were the ones tasked with her daily care. She saw her new parents twice or three times a day, and just for the heck of it started to read their minds using her newly developing talents.

That turned out to be a windfall better than anyone had been expecting.

To remain neutral, her parents had resolved to protect themselves by a scheme of artful avoidance of either side. In order to do that, successfully escaping recruitment, they'd been forced to develop an excellent information network with multiple redundant sources so that the misdirection or inaccuracy of one was not going to stop or hinder their desire to avoid this conflict. Several times Voldemort's people had tried to convert them or trap the Greengrasses into a situation where they must accept membership, and each time they'd managed to evade.

But, while doing so, they'd assembled an information network superior to either side. And tapping into that via their minds gave Daphne/Hermione an excellent resource for fueling their own predictions.

They were only just starting to realize what a great advantage the mind arts were, and how they must have affected the lives of people like Dumbledore, Voldemort and Snape. You really did get this feeling of knowing everything when you could tap into the memories of those around you!

It gave a feeling of being powerful, of being... superior.

Sensing how deep a pit that was, after all Dumbledore had fallen into it, the kids did not exactly know what to do about it. For now, they really needed the information, but the lure of the power it offered was almost certainly addictive and habit forming, as they couldn't name a person who had it they'd like to turn out as.

Then again, they only knew those three.

But, turning that around, no one else they'd encountered had a protected mind. So, given how they'd all been told Occlumency and Legilimency were obscure and not well known arts, it was entirely possible that there really weren't all that many who knew them.

However this was far from their only topic of conversation. They had discussions ranging far afield, and were already talking about future needs.

"Ravenclaw isn't a bad choice. You'd hardly even notice the nargles." Anastasia/Luna offered.

Yes, they were discussing what House Harry should enter at Hogwarts.

Electra/Ginny's opinion was next. "Well, if Harry is going to be saving Dumbledore's life, maybe he should do it by befriending Draco, and perhaps Snape, and that might require him to enter the House of the snake lord. It has the most unexplored options."

There was a moment of silence before Daphne/Hermione disagreed.

"I would like to point out one thing: Dumbledore has done all that anyone could reasonably do, and THEN some, to earn Snape's loyalty. The fact remains that he does not have it." Her tone was very prim, indicating she was upset and trying to hide it.

"I would submit to you the possibility that Snape's loyalty cannot be gained by acts of kindness or mercy toward him, generosity or proffered friendship. And, if it can't be had from those true sources, he has no loyalty worth having? Recall that, in that book Harry got, there was evidence Snape (while still a student) was practically following in Tom Riddle's EXACT footsteps? Why, I mean, he had the name he was prepared to be a Dark Lord under (Half Blood Prince), and his own crew of minions and cronies? Both of those facts got confirmed by other sources. So there is a very real possibility that, if Voldemort had not already been on the scene, we'd all be dealing with the Dark Lord Severus?

"I most humbly suggest that the effort required to befriend Snape and/or Draco would be far greater than what would be required to destroy them. And, to be their friend, you would have to become like them to such an extent that you could not really oppose Voldemort any longer - because you would be like him, having emulated those who follow him until you are no longer distinguishable from them.

"People like other people who are already like themselves. If you smoke it's real easy to get along with other smokers. If you drink you have something in common with other drinkers. If you like sports, anyone else who likes them (and your team) is closer to being a friend than people you may have known for years.

"To get along with Pureblood bigots, Death Eater spawn and so on, requires you to emulate them and loudly espouse those same views. They actively reject everyone else, even if you're born into the very same family.

"So, to bond to Draco or Snape successfully would require such a change of self to get them to like you that you would not draw them to the Light. You could only doom yourself to darkness. Besides, there are those who already WERE their friends, and later regretted joining the DEs and tried to leave. The fact that Regulus Black and others like him DIED says quite plainly that you cannot expect a Snape or Malfoy to follow you into the Light as you change toward it, even if they were your friends. Regulus was Lucius' brother-in-law and every bit as Pureblooded as he, while strong hints are laid that Dark members of the Black family are old friends of Snape and Malfoy both.

"You COULDN'T get closer to them than that. It's impossible. Regulus' breeding was impeccable, and his views mirrored theirs precisely, on every detail we know of! They went to school together, lived in similar households (an environment Snape later emulated for his own home), and as near as we can tell embraced everything about each other's principles, even going so far as to join an illegal Dark Army together and fight alongside each other.

"There is no way Harry could even come close to that type of bond - a bond which did not save Regulus from death, potentially at the hands of those very 'friends' he felt bonded to. Harry is a Halfblood, born to heroes of the Light and thus suspect. He is the son of Snape's worst enemy, something that Snivellus NEVER forgives him for! And Harry is godson to a noted 'white sheep' of the Black family, one who betrayed the darkness early on to become a Gryffindor - and whose brother Regulus ALSO 'went light' after joining the DEs, and had to be destroyed by his fellows lest he betray them.

"Harry, even if he joined the DEs personally, would never be free of suspicion from them. He has close ties to too many people who were either Light or left the Dark to become Light. They'd never stop keeping an eye on him or suspecting his eventual betrayal. There is no amount of evil he could do to convince them he was evil enough.

"Yes, I've been talking of stuff that occurred to Lucius, and Draco was too young to take place in that conflict, but he acted the same during the Second Rise. With the way he idolizes his father he's practically his clone. What Lucius didn't do, Draco won't. Actually it's worse, in that Lucius is a clever man, a plotter and a schemer, always weighing advantages and planning for contingencies, while Draco is a blind follower.

"I most humbly suggest that you could never be certain of Draco or Snape's friendship, even if you had it. While, on the other hand, it would be far easier to destroy them both, put them in Azkaban (or turn them to stone - even better) and get rid of them. THEN you could be certain they would not kill Dumbledore.

"And concerning turning them both to stone. Okay, if you want to redeem them. Fine, go ahead and try. But NOT when Voldemort is around for them to follow or look up to! He is too much of a lead weight, drawing them both down into darkness, and neither will ever really consider another course while he is around. (Why do we know this? Because they didn't).

"Anyway, if you want to turn them Light then get them out of the way for awhile until after you've dealt with Voldemort! And the easiest way to do that is by ambushing them with a certain King of Serpents Salazar so kindly hid out in the basement for just such an occasion! Set them up so they see it in a mirror first, then drag both of their bodies down into the Chamber and forget about them until Voldemort is gone. Stone does not age, eat or sleep, and can't easily get out of it's containment. They are trapped until you release them. As far as the wizarding world is concerned, they have merely disappeared. LOTS of people are disappearing during this war!

"Or, as an alternative, turn only Snape to stone. While he is at Hogwarts Draco has a DE role model to train him in the ways of evil. Actually, all of Slytherin was turning more than slightly evil under the Potion Master's tutelage. Turn off the source of that corruption before you try to clean out the rest.

"Also, taking Snape out early (like the first night) gives us another real bonus in that Dumbledore would be forced to get us another Professor to do the teaching! Regardless of anything ever said about his supposed skill at making potions, we all have ENDLESS evidence of how rotten Snivellus is at TEACHING them!

"So, if you get someone, ANYONE else teaching the subject (Sirius is a good choice) then you would have a greater crop of potion-skilled students graduating. That means more of those careers requiring a Potion grade, including: Healers and Aurors. Now you CAN'T tell me that you don't need more of those if you're about to go to war! You need as many as you can get, and even those are not nearly enough!"

Hermione calmed her ranting emotions and took a moment to center herself before resuming her diatribe over their link. "You could destroy Snape and be certain of it. But you could never befriend him and be. Dumbledore was sure he had Snape's loyalty, and Dumbledore was wrong. Dead wrong. And he only learned the truth in the worst possible way and at the worst possible moment. You do NOT want to make that same gamble and find you are mistaken in that same way. And, if Snape was going to betray you, that's the way he'd arrange to do it!

"So much effort would be necessary to save Dumbledore's life by befriending Snape and Draco, all to an uncertain end, that to my mind it would be pointless. That's going about it the wrong way, too. It's wasteful, like burning $100 bills in a fireplace to keep warm. The value of one of them would be enough to buy firewood for most of the winter, and the warmth produced by a stack of them burning isn't nearly as good as one wooden log would be. You could, in a single well-planned evening, remove both Snape and Draco from being a threat, either dead or statues or caught in such a compromising position that neither could stay at Hogwarts. On the other hand, befriending either one would take, at minimum, years of devoted effort that stands a better chance of destroying you than converting either of them.

"And, if you failed at destroying them, you could try over again. If you were wrong about being their friend that would probably be the last mistake you'd ever make. And there are so MANY ways to remove them!

"Trick Draco into casting an illegal spell, then get him caught doing it and expelled! Convince his mother that the brat does need to get sent to Durmstrang after all! Send him out on a wild goose chase to get him out of the castle, then Obliviate his memories and have a muggle couple adopt him! (this could be even more hilarious if he later recovered after, say, about a year), let him get bitten by a werewolf and expose his condition to the school (it worked for Snape getting Remus removed from his teaching post), or throw him off of the Hogwarts train before he even gets there! Fling that brat headfirst out a window while passing over a bridge, or something! He'll be so busy healing up that he'll miss the Sorting and probably have to attend another school!

"Turn he and Snape into stone. Cover them with plaster and put them out in some muggle's garden as statuary!

"Then you have the wonderful benefit of having saved all that time. Instead of spending years of your life trying to buddy-up to someone you could never trust to be as loyal to you as you are to them, you could be helping to build up the skills of those you already knew you could depend on!

"Harry ran the DA! Let's start it over again on our first year! Make it an official club with teacher sanctioning! Quirrel isn't any prize, nor are most of the DADA teachers any better. So if the school won't do it, let's teach ourselves! For that matter, start our own Potions club so our housemates get some decent instruction - show them how and why to do things instead of writing a recipe on a board they could've read out of any book, then leering over them making snide remarks. So long as you weren't being actively dreadful an hour-long Potions club would be ten times better than Snape's classes ever were, and between the other Hermione and us former ghosts you've got enough Potions talent to be giving out really great instruction!

"Heck, a Potions club would be so MUCH superior at teaching that subject I suspect that 95 percent of the students in Snape's classes could stop attending lessons with him altogether and their grades could only IMPROVE!

"In fact, I see them as doing EXACTLY that! I'd bet my last cookie you could even get Fred and George Weasley to run club sessions for some upper grades, too. Not that you'd really need them, of course, but the extra participation would mean the teaching isn't all on you and your closest friends. Besides, their mom would probably be pleased as punch at seeing them do something so responsible for once! (even if they did use the opportunity to mix prank items)

"Actually, consider this: Confide in those twins that the Prefect powers their older brother Percy has could be greatly abused toward the purpose of committing pranks! Show them the benefits of Polyjuice that first year and give them some of their brother's hair! Zap Percy with some sort of sleep potion and steal his badge, then let them commit mischief with it while they look exactly like him! Humiliate Percy, keep him out of the Head Boy slot, and you'd never see him get so high-ranking a job at the Ministry that the DEs recruit him this time around!

"Oh, and as long as you're essentially firing two teachers by not taking their course and teaching yourself their subjects, make it three and do a History club as well.

"Do everything the muggle reenacting companies do. Dress up, tell stories, act in period for a certain time. Hire stage actors to perform a few plays depicting the events you are supposed to be studying. Harry has LOADS of money, there's no reason we couldn't make History one of the funnest subjects at Hogwarts by holding feasts where everyone dresses up, even commissioning folks to write plays on subjects that don't already have them!

"Heck, even reading your book quietly in a corner is going to be better than letting Binns bore us to sleep, his dry monotone convincing everyone that there is nothing about his topic worth knowing!

"If you've ever been to a Renaissance Fair you know how much fun those can be. Even if you've only ever dressed up for a costume party or Halloween you know this is enjoyable. Get some life in that subject and you'll have all seven years of Hogwarts students dropping out on Binns entirely to attend our school club! Heck, some staff would probably attend too!

"And while we're on the subject get to those electives early. Go out and see what Professor Kettleburn has to say about Magical Creatures before he retires just as we were about to take his subject. Attend some advance classes under your invisibility cloak so you can see what he has to say on that topic's upper years as well.

"Headmaster Dumbledore has a regrettable tendency to hire people who are extremely qualified at their subject but have no teaching ability. Hagrid unfortunately falls among those, as do Snape and Binns. Go out and pick up something new before Kettleburn leaves school. Then drop in on courses on all of the other electives as well.

"That reminds me, you need a Muggle Club as well to go with your Defense, Potions and History clubs. Why? Because wizards don't know the first thing about them, and those classes don't help at all!

"So, you get yourself a club where you carefully dress everyone in appropriate muggle clothes and go out to a muggle movie, all together in a group where each child has his own carefully measured supply of muggle cash to buy their ticket and a treat, and you chaperone with adults watching over them every step of the way. My original parents would be great at this, and doing 'teaching help' like this from time to time they'd also get a real benefit by being allowed to see their daughter's school. Other muggleborn students' parents could also be tapped for this, I'm sure.

"Vary those events. Have picnics out on the grass of some muggle park and just watch the ordinary muggles at play. Have this club take a bus, a plane, a boat and a train among ordinary muggles, dressed to blend among them by those who got raised by some. They'd learn more in half an hour of observation than in years of sermons about 'Lektricky'. Send them out in malls with a budget and tell them to go shopping, have them visit arcades and just watch over the shoulders of experienced players for a while before they use their supply of tokens.

"Invite everyone at Hogwarts to join this club, then entice them with all of the outings you'll be having! Ordinary students get a Hogsmead weekend once every other month, if they are third years or higher, so offer to get them out of the castle more often and you'll have attendance soar through the roof! You'll have record signups among the youngest two years who don't have any other way of getting off the grounds every once in a while.

"You'll even get some Slytherins on that pretext, and if there's a better way to convince them that muggles are something other than a target on the other end of your wand I don't know what it is."

After a brief moment of silence, Anastasia/Luna broke in, "So, you haven't any preference as to what House Harry should join?"

Electra/Ginny giggled.

Daphne blinked in relief. "Well, if he is to be the youngest seeker in two centuries again he'd really better be in Gryffindor, hadn't he?"

"He could be the youngest beater in four if he joined Hufflepuff," Anastasia/Luna reminded. "And Ravenclaw's keeper retired the year before I joined, and they still hadn't replaced him."

"Wouldn't he rather be a chaser?" Ginny questioned.

"No, he's already caught us."

End Part Five