Disclaimer- If I was JKR, I wouldn't be sitting around reading different versions of my own awesome plotline!

Harry glared at the book in front of him as though the poor thing had done him some personal offense. It had been a trying day, what with Malfoy swaggering all over the place during Potions due to his (exaggerated) arm injury and the bloody boggart that Lupin had taught them about that day. And to add to that, he'd just had to have found out today that Sirius freaking Black had betrayed his parents. Why the hell hadn't anyone told him? And more importantly, why hadn't he asked?

Harry took off his glasses and rested his forehead against his hand, his eyes closed. The firelight flickered and danced, casting an eerie orange glow on his too-pale face. His eyes snapped open, watching the shadows as they moved behind the flames, contrasting and balancing the light. His brows furrowed as he remembered one of the science lessons at primary school. "Light only travels in straight lines," his teacher had said. "That's the reason shadows are formed, you see. They cannot bend around the objects in their path. So that part is left in darkness. Now, can anyone tell me why it is important that light can't bend?"

Harry remembered being the one who answered the question. "Because if it were possible for light to bend, the sun would shine the whole day through. Meaning, there would be no night and no darkness. Nowhere to get away from the light. It would be like the Earth was a giant disco ball. Too hot, too bright and too chaotic to live in. The darkness and shadows balance it out". He was nine at the time. Not old enough to know where that answer really came out from. Or what it really meant. He had just spoken out of his imagination, picturing how it would be if it were impossible to have a place to hide, or imagining his cupboard was full of light all the time. The thought made him cringe. Ugh.

But now as he thought about it... the philosophy behind it seemed to describe the previous war perfectly, and seemed to support Ron's 'three-way chess game' theory. Light and dark... meaning there had to be something in between, and without that something helping one or the other of them, both sides would be at a stalemate. Grey.

The idea made him pause and look towards the direction of the boys' dorm. He shut his book and got up. It was time to wake Ron up. Never mind the fact that it was midnight.

Ron paused in the middle of his "why the bloody hell did you wake me up" rant to consider what Harry had told him. Then, almost automatically, his hands moved towards his bag, dragging out a bundle of crumpled parchment, bound together roughly to form a sort of ragged notebook, his orange ink bottle and a quill, and opened up the book. Harry could see several diagrams and untidy notes next to them before Ron flipped to an empty page. He drew a wand with the tip glowing in one corner, something vaguely resembling a stone in front of it and then coloured the area beyond the stone to represent the darkness. Then he stopped, his quill hovering unsurely over the area in between. He frowned.

"Hypothetically speaking, the win sort of depends on which side the 'grey' side helps out. Though technically, if they joined a side they wouldn't be 'grey' now, would they?" Ron stopped to chew the edge of his quill and seemed to consider his words carefully before speaking again. "Which means they'd have to either fight on their own, which is suicide, or they'd have to work with the side they choose instead of follow them. But then-"he stopped when he saw the blank look on the raven-haired boy's face. He sighed and said, "Look mate, just go to bed. You look beat. I'll try to figure out which is which and tell you in the morning, ok?"

Harry stifled a yawn and nodded, before bidding the redhead goodnight and going upstairs. It had been a trying day.

Ron frowned at the notebook in his hands. The pictures he'd drawn were still there. "It's like a twisted chess game... a three way one". The words he'd spoken a few days ago echoed through his mind. Except... there weren't just three sides.

He'd fitted every strategy, every theory he could think of to fit the diagram in front of him. He knew that his parents had fought Voldemort's followers, Death Eaters, as they called themselves, along with others all belonging to a group led by Dumbledore. What was it called again? Phoenix?

Hermione was going through all the books she could find on the history of the war as the only thing Binns spoke about was goblin rebellions. But from what she had told him, it appeared as though the... Phoenix group... which wasn't as secret as it was said to be... didn't actually manage to do much. In fact, Hermione had said that it was probably overrated- whatever that meant- because the books were all written by the 'Light Side'. She said that to really come to a conclusion about the sides of the war, she would need to find some data from the 'Dark Side'. This would obviously be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Not that he had said that to her, of course.

'If I was a third person during the war,' Ron wondered, 'What would I think of the Dumbledore group?'

He would probably laugh. The only thing the group seemed to do while fighting was shooting off stunners and body-binds. He wouldn't say use the unforgivables, but really? That was a war against people like Malfoy and Macnair, who sure as hell wouldn't care about 'second bloody chances'. And in any war, you kill, or be killed. The group was good as information gatherers and spies, but not more.

But then the ministry didn't do anything at all did they? All they did was throw death eaters into Azkaban when they knew the dementors were on Voldemort's side. And several other death eaters went free! 'Like Lucius Malfoy,' he thought bitingly.

So the theory that fit, was that the object was the ministry, which the light, or the phoenix group, couldn't 'bend around', so the darkness went scot free. 'But what about the grey? If this is light and dark, then where is grey?'

Hermione gritted her teeth as she once again gazed at the notebook she held in her hand, illuminated by the light of her wand. The scarlet curtains of her four- poster were all closed around and she had added a silencing charm as well as a notice-me-not for good measure. She had spent the last few hours tossing and turning, and then gave it up as a lost cause. So she did the only thing she could do to occupy her time. She took out the notebook Harry had given her.

There were a lot of things that were confusing her and that she simply couldn't understand. Whatever research she had done on these confusing topics simply confused her more. It appeared as though the line between 'light' and 'dark', once so clear had blurred nearly into non-existence. The questions she had asked herself that day replayed over and over, confusing her and motivating her. Why hasn't Dumbledore done anything? He has so much influence and power, surely he could do something? Then she remembered how she had gathered old news reports and books from the restricted section using Harry's invisibility cloak. That brought her mother's words to mind '... history is written by the victor'. Except, who was it that had won that Halloween night? It was disturbingly clear that if Harry hadn't somehow defeated Voldemort by the deflected Killing Curse, the war would waged on, and no one would have stopped it. They could have... but they didn't. But why?

The answer came to her, in the form of another quote, this time by her father, 'If you aren't part of the solution, you're a part of the problem... you have to be the change'.

No one really bothered did they? The Ministry just sat back on its backside and denied everything, while Dumbledore fought, but stuck too much to tickling charms and binding spells. No action. 'Dumbledore believes too much in people. He goes on about second chances and people finding out their wrongs and sins themselves, but people just aren't like that. Not most of them. You have to make them acknowledge that they aren't right, that's the first step towards redemption. You can't sit back and wait for others to take action because they won't. You have to give them a motivation. I know that if I hadn't found the book, things would be very different. I wouldn't be researching so hard, for one.

She cast a tempus charm and frowned. 5 am. Might as well be up. She wasn't getting any sleep anyhow. She put her robes on, slipped on the Time-Turner, picked up her books, and crept out of the dormitory.

"Are you sure about this, Ronald?" asked Hermione, looking at him piercingly.

Ron cringed a little but held his ground as he replied, "Yes, Hermione. There's nothing else that fits".

It was 6:30 in the morning and Harry had come down yawning to see him and Hermione in a furious debate, or discussion. He had just stood there for a minute or two before announcing his presence, making them both jump violently.

"Blimey, mate, how'd you do that?" asked Ron, sounding as though he was torn between annoyance and admiration. The question, however, brought Harry up short.

"I dunno really," he shrugged as he sat down next to them at the small table in front of the dying fire. "I think I've always been able to do that though. Blend in that is".

Hermione frowned at that, but then her attention was drawn to the books in front of her. She sighed. "We're just so confused".

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Confused about what?"

Ron gestured vaguely at the notebook he had been drawing in that night. "See, mate, what we're thinking is that if there is a 'light' side and a 'dark side', there's got to be something in between". He looked at his friend to see if he was following so far. He was. "And so, if you look at them like colours, as black and white, the colour in the middle would be-"

"Grey," Harry acknowledged, nodding. He was impressed.

"The thing is who is the grey?" cried Hermione, letting out her frustration and pulling at the ends of her curly hair. Harry mentally thanked the silencing charms around them. "Dumbledore is just so good that he can't understand that most people can't and don't change without some motivation, something to fight for. Not everyone wants to fight in a war and not get anything in return. He keeps people out of prison without even a warning! Second chances, he says! That's just going to make them think they can get away with anything!"

"Like Lucius Malfoy," put in Ron, scowling. "And the Order basically fought with stunners! Stunners, Harry! All the Death Eaters had to do was revive them and get on with the fight! I think that's why my uncles Gideon and Fabian died!"

Harry was silent for a minute. Then he spoke, slowly, his brows furrowed as if thinking hard. "People keep saying that Dumbledore is the leader of light and so he can't do anything wrong. But Dumbledore isn't bloody doing anything! And then everything about light and dark... it doesn't make sense does it? It depends on the way you use magic; Wingardium Leviosa is supposed to be a light spell, but Ron managed to knock out a troll with it! That doesn't make it evil does it? And in those memories, we all saw the four founders using 'dark' spells, but they were saving people's lives with them! Ron, Hermione, this isn't a fight between good and evil. For many people, maybe. But to me, it's like the main problem, the cause of all this is prejudice!"

Ron and Hermione gaped at him, eyes as wide as dinner plates. Then Hermione let out an excited squeak and dragged Ron's notebook towards her. "That's it! Don't you see? Remember what Percy said. About freedom! This object in between the wand and the... murkiness is prejudice. The murkiness is Voldemort, the death eaters and the blood purists, and the glowing wand represents the people trying to fight them. But no one can reach beyond the prejudice... no one is actually fighting it. Except-"she frowned suddenly. "The grey".

That was apparently it for Ron. "The grey? Who is the damn grey? The neutral families? Greengrass and Zabini, perhaps? If not, then who?"

Harry was about to open his mouth when suddenly Hermione burst out softly, "Of course!"

She could hear her father's voice in her head for the second time that day. You have to be the change... if you aren't part of the solution; you're part of the problem. "It's got to be us. There's no other way. We know roughly what's going on- we can do this. We just need to tell the rest of your family Ron".

Ron muttered something shocked under his breath while Harry suddenly looked up and said," I'm emancipated, meaning I'm considered a legal adult now. I can perform magic and no one would know. The magic detectors- it's called the Trace, apparently- can't detect magic in a magical household, or a heavily warded place, like Hogwarts or Potter manor. If you can get the floo connected to your house, Hermione, then-"

"Bloody Hell!" said Ron. "We've got a lot to do now, haven't we? And no time!"

A wicked glint suddenly appeared in Hermione's eye. "Actually," she said, holding up a golden chain with a small hourglass on it, "We do".

Ooh! Looks like someone's getting naughty! There will be an interlude or two in the next chapter, one of which will be very surprising... so get ready! But until then, please review!