After breakfast, Jane and Thomas sat at the dining room table in silence for ten minutes. Jane felt this was awkward, but Thomas didn't seem to notice too much—he was too engrossed in his copy of The Daily Prophet, which Jane was only now realising was dated from the previous week.

"I have a question," she said.

Thomas looked up. "Ask away," he said. "I've only got the rest of my life."

"How exactly do you plan on getting around the trace?" she asked. "I mean, it's illegal for me to use magic outside of school."

Thomas picked up his wand and pointed it at the centre of Jane's forehead. He tapped it twice, and an almost transparent blue field went around her.

"Like that," he said. "The spell will make your magic untraceable for the time being, but there's limits to the spell. Usually it'll last for a couple of months or so, but that's based on how much an ordinary person will be using magic and the kinds of spells they'd be using.

"Because of the stuff I'll be teaching you, it'll only last a few weeks. Some of it's pretty advanced, and would give some of the most powerful sorcerers alive difficulty. I've been working on something that'll make the spell last longer—it'll be a bracelet, you see; it'll be subtle enough that most people won't notice it. But until then, I guess I'll have to renew the spell every few weeks."

Thomas paused for a moment and breathed in. "Alright, your next question is going to be if I know who my next target is going to be. The answer is yes, potentially; but I have to make some preparations first."

"Preperations?"

"Yeah. I found this abandoned manor in Scotland. We'll be going there today. But once they're there, I'm going to teach you how to make a wolfsbane potion. Do you know what that is?"

"It's used to make the effects of lycanthropy less severe," Jane said. "It's considered to be a difficult potion to make properly, because of how aconite can be poisonous in large doses."

"Exactly," Thomas said, nodding. "Spoken like a true Ravenclaw. Scotland happens to be one of the few places where wolfsbane grows in abundance, so sometimes you'll see werewolves moving there if they happen to have the skills needed to brew the potion but not necessarily the money to buy the ingredients."

"So the one you want to pick up is a werewolf," she said.

"There's two of them," he said, raising two fingers. "A pair of twins: a boy and a girl. Nineteen years old. They went to Hogwarts briefly, but they felt that they'd have been unwelcome after they were bitten shortly before their sixth year started.

"Quite tragic, really. They weren't particularly gifted when it came to magic, but they were incredibly gifted when it came to potions and herbology."

"I'm not horrible at herbology."

"No, you might not be. But if what I've heard about these two is correct, you'll feel like you are in comparison."

"So how do you know all this?"

"I've dedicated my life to fighting dark magic in ways that Aurors can't. What I've found is that the common people are often well equipped to fight dark magic in its earliest stages, should they be given the proper training beforehand.

"Don't take this as disrespect towards Hogwarts, Jane. Plenty of fine witches and wizards have walked out of there. But ever since Voldemort cursed the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, you've had a revolving door of teachers that simply didn't have the time to train anyone for the task at hand.

"I can do that. Perhaps after this war is done and Voldemort is defeated, I can teach at Hogwarts for a time. But we can't defeat Voldemort right now—first, we must escape him."

Thomas stood up. "Come on Jane, I'll take you to the manor."

"But what about clothes?"

"Don't worry about clothes. We can get some from the village this afternoon. There's a fairly large wizarding population in the area we're going, so a large chunk of what we're doing will go unnoticed."

Jane followed Thomas outside. On the front lawn sat two broomsticks. Both of them were fairly recent models, she saw; the kind that traveled fast.

"Have you ever flown before?"

"Yeah. They give us lessons in our first year of Hogwarts."

"So not much."

She shook her head.

"It's okay; just follow me and you'll be safe."

The flight to the manor was largely uneventful. Most of the trip was overcast, so there wasn't ever much of a clear sight of what was happening on the ground; but there was always the constant sense that something evil was afoot.

As the two landed, Jane was taken by the sight of the manor. It was one of the largest places she'd ever seen in person, except for Hogwarts and a few shopping centres in the Muggle world.

The manor was built of dark brown bricks. On each of the side walls were climbing roses that had long since died, but standing there, Jane knew they must have been quite beautiful in their day. A couple of the windows on the third floor were broken, but the curtains on the inside of them seemed to be largely undamaged.

Jane looked around. The lands around seemed to stretch out for almost forever, with the exception of a village that had a couple of buildings on a hill a few miles away.

"It'll need a bit of fixing up," Thomas said.

"Pardon me?" Jane said.

"The manor," the American said. "It'll need a little bit of fixing up."

"It looks lovely," she said.

"It looks lovely," Thomas said in agreement. "But it needs some protection spells. I can teach them to you as I'm doing them; you'll need to know how to cast them. And we'll need to do some repairs on the greenhouse; but that shouldn't take too long. And I do suppose those windows will need to be fixed, and the roses replaced."

The American wizard looked down at Jane's fingers. "Your fingernails are different."

"Pardon me?"

"Your fingernails. They're a different colour."

Jane looked down. Her fingernails were black now.

"Oh yeah," she said. "Sorry—I'm a Metamorphmagus. Sometimes my fingernails change colours."

"And everything else about you, no doubt," Thomas said. "Flitwick did say that you had these abilities, but I never did think I'd get to see them so soon." He paused for a minute. "Are you sure you're a Muggle-born?"

"Not really," Jane admitted. "I never knew my father."

"Dead?"

"Possibly. I never met him. Mum said he abandoned us."

Thomas nodded. "Alright," he said. "Come inside. I'll show you your room and then we can get you some clothes."