"We've got her," Aurora and Harry told Hermione and Ron late the next morning, after calling them to Arbrus Hill. Grimmauld Place was far too important to let her in on.

"My dad helped," Aurora said proudly. "Caught her with an Immobulus — see, Granger, I knew she'd be there!"

"Oh, yeah, we all know you're always right—"

"Ron..."

"Anyway, we figured we should bring her here, so. I think Rita knows that we know, and also that we are all more than willing to go the authorities with information about her. She's done a fair share of damage to the Ministry over the years, too, haven't you?" There was a fluttering of wings from inside the jar. "Don't be like that, Rita. I'm sure you would have gone straight to the press if you knew anything even half as scandalous about me, or Hermione, or Harry."

Quiet, and stillness. "So what do we do?" Harry asked. "Me and Aurora—"

"Aurora and I."

"Aurora and I," he continued, glaring at her, "were talking about what we could make Rita do for us. We thought obviously the press, but, there's still a limit to what the Prophet and stuff'll say."

"Oh, I know," Hermione said, with a grin, "but I've been thinking too. The greatest scoops sometimes come from the most unexpected place, and we have press connections too."

"We do?"

"Luna, of course."

Aurora stared at her. The girl, somehow, appeared to be serious. Merlin, they were in danger if she was thought to be bright.

"No one's going to listen to the Quibbler, Granger!"

"Some people will. And when they hear that nobody else would listen to Harry Potter, but the Quibbler had the story everybody's been clamouring for for months now, the Quibbler's saying what the Prophet doesn't want you to read, then they'll say, well, a broken clock's still right twice a day, isn't it? And it'll be out there."

"With a paper — no, a magazine — even less credible than Witch Weekly!"

Hermione went pink. "Do you think anybody else'll publish it? Do you think you've got any better connections?"

She did not, and it rankled. She had not curated her press connections nearly as well as she should have.

"They wrote that my father is a rock musician called Stubby Boardman."

"And Colin Creevey thought it was true," Harry pointed out. Aurora looked at him in disgust.

"I don't care what Colin Creevey's stupid enough to believe! Right, okay. I like where you're going with that, Granger, but we need more. Not just one article, not just one issue."

"I'm not giving any more than one interview."

"I didn't say you had to. No, we have to do more. Fudge has a stranglehold over the Prophet, and if we can't break that, we need to use another article. This interview could be a jumping off point, to establish Skeeter as opposition, exposing the truth. Even if you are set on the Quibbler — I suppose there's always a chance someone might try to pick it up." Even though she wanted to paint Skeeter as a liar, to undo everything she had said, and even though she wanted to burn her reputation to the ground, she was an asset right now. Revenge could wait, and maybe this could even be better. "Then we go after the regime itself. Dig up any dirt we can on Fudge, on Umbridge — she may hate you lot, but she's neutral on me, at least on the face of things, and I have connections in government who can find out more. MacMillan, Vaisey… And I mean I'm sure the Order Aurors can find some information Fudge doesn't want coming to light, between them. We go after Nott, Malfoy, Rosier, increase speculation on them and their affairs. We expose You-Know-Who's return through them, and then — then we can expose Fudge, too, by proxy, we show the government up for their complacency and all the problems they've allowed to arise over decades, again and again! Right? Someone needs to be opposition, and Skeeter loves nothing more than scandal. We can recreate her reputation. And," she added, "much as I hate to give her any more credibility, if she is stuck to our agenda, she can't hurt us. But we can use that to our advantage, politically."

Granger fixed her with a hard, suspicious look. "We can make her print retractions, but if she has a reputation as a hard-hitting analyst, more than just some scandalmonger in the margins of Witch Weekly, then she owes us for that, too." In the jar, the beetle flapped its wings urgently. "Everybody wins."

"What is our advantage," Granger asked, voice cold and doubtful of Aurora, "politically?"

"To strike back at the Conservatives and the Insular Alliance — and the Moderate government, to be honest. Show people the truth of the cruelty and complacency, make people angry about it! So something, anything, might change!"

"Change what?"

"I don't know yet — we can do something! We have to do something! Right?" She looked to Potter, for support, and after a moment he nodded. She breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Right," Granger said, pursing her lips. "We'll figure the details of that out, once we've secured this first deal. Yeah?" Aurora nodded. "Okay." Granger paused a moment, hesitant, then nodded to Harry, who brought out a modified camera, and started recording.

Then, Aurora leaned out of the shot, Granger showed the camera the jar, and whipped off the lid. As she did so, the enchantment her father had added for them the night before, to return Animagus Rita into her human form, did its work, and the beetle became a woman, with glitzy glasses and a still rather tremendous head of platinum blonde hair.

"Hello, Miss Skeeter," Hermione said with a smile. Harry stopped recording. "We'd like a chat. And I think you'll find what we have to say to be very, very interesting."

She was sent on her way fifteen minutes later, waved off by Aurora's father, at whom she threw a furious look. "I think she got the message," Hermione said, as they all watched her go from the window. "But what if she doesn't give us what we want?"

"She can't tell anyone, or she'd have to come clean about being an unregistered Animagi."

"Plus," Aurora's father put in, "she can't run. A certain someone in the Auror office already has her details — just in case she tried anything like Obliviating someone." He grinned at them. "Always good to have a backup. And who knows — the Order might find a use for a journalist, some day."

-*

There was not a single Skeeter article in the last week of the holidays, though she had replied to Hermione's letter about setting a date for the interview with Potter. It seemed she had been rattled appropriately by the situation. So long as she kept complying, Aurora was happy. She was dealt with, and wouldn't be publishing anything other than what they wanted her to for some time yet. Now, it was up to her to decide what angle she wanted Skeeter to look at, and who she wanted to tackle first.

In the aftermath of the Skeeter debacle, Aurora found the Weasley children and Hermione were all considerably warmer towards her. It was even, she dared to think, a comfortable, cheerful environment, for a while as the holidays came to a close.

She was fully living in Grimmauld Place for the last three days before they went back to Hogwarts, and it was there, while everybody else tackled inspection of the self-strangling curtains on the third floor, that she set about making her plans in the corner of the library, watching snow fall outside the window. Though Rita Skeeter could make a useful ally, Aurora did not intend to let her do all the work. If she was going to actively oppose the government and the Death Eaters, then she had to make her own choices about what she wanted to be put into the world. For now, she knew, she still could not openly aggravate Fudge — Umbridge was dangerous within the walls of Hogwarts — nor be too outspoken on the Death Eater threat, lest she risk their wrath or the discovery of the Order and her membership of it. She had more than merely herself to think about, too; she did not doubt that many might seek to use and hurt Elise to get to her.

Having a plan made her feel safe, like there was something to anchor and guide her, even if she didn't yet quite know her way or her destination. First, she would have to gather information, that much was obvious. Umbridge did not trust her, but she was sure she could find a way to someone that Umbridge did trust, especially in the Slytherin Common Room. Knowing what Umbridge and the Ministry's ultimate goal was within Hogwarts would make it that much easier to construct a narrative against them and their goal. She needed evidence. Then, she could expose Umbridge, and Fudge's complicity.

Second, to attack the root causes of the war the Ministry wanted to deny was on the horizon. It was becoming more and more clear to her that Voldemort and his supporters were not an anomaly, nor were they outliers, and that the Wizarding World as a whole was, more or less, willing to let the issues of blood purity go unquestioned. Even when the Death Eaters had resurfaced at the Quidditch Cup the year before, the outcry had been at the failure of security, not the blatant display of anti-Muggle sentiment. The media was too quiet. The supporters of the Dark Lord had been allowed within the Ministry for far too long, and those who implicitly endorsed his beliefs were even more rife.

It felt like more than merely this war was on the horizon. No one else seemed to want to discuss it, caught up in patrols and strategy and a desire to fight. But Aurora saw something more, the inevitability of it all, the ever-building pressure on the Wizarding World. She couldn't fight, not yet, not openly. But she had to do something, and she was in a position to change things, if she could only balance that with protecting the people she needed to.

Running her fingertips over the dried ink of the parchment she had jotted her plan — not very detailed, but at least existing — down on, Aurora sighed. Already the world seemed too big for her to deal with. But she had to tackle it one step, one day, at a time.

Above her, she could still hear the Weasleys and her father fighting with the curtains. With a sigh, she pulled up a book that she had taken recently from the stacks of the library: the personal writings, diary, and spellbook of Castella Black, her five-times great-grandmother. The pages were stiff and yellow. The date in the front read 1835; if Aurora remembered her family tree correct, that would have been Castella's late teens. She was already married by then, to her cousin, Dionysus Black. She had acquired Grimmauld Place for the family, specifically for her second son, Marius, filled every crevice with wards and spellwork even Dumbledore had marvelled at.

The book was full of spells and potion recipes and Castella's own notes on everything from herbology to arithmancy. Every time Aurora touched a page, the book seemed to grow in length, getting wider and thicker from the weight of memory, and of being remembered. Aurora toyed absently with the necklace she was wearing, drawn to it.

She flipped to the middle of the grimoire, where the pages were heavy from ink that spiralled across the page in looping, difficult handwriting. It got darker; there were spells to crush organs, to remove or to destroy souls, to render the victim unable to control their limbs. But there were others too; spells to make carnations bloom and stay alive without water or sun, one to keep a child's heartbeat going when their body failed to do the work itself, or to see the future and change another's memories. And then a spell, remarkably like the rituals she had attempted herself, to draw out the spectre of Death, and call a spirit to one's place.

It was so much more simple than what Aurora had expected. One simply had to draw a circle and a triangle, interlocked, marked out with salt, and place an object of value to the sought-after spirit, in the middle, between sulfur and mercury. Then there was an incantation, said as one traced the pattern of the salt with their wand.

Aurora still had the little block of cooled mercury Dumbledore had given her, and the sulfur powder, in her trunk upstairs. She wondered, briefly, what she could do with it, if there was so much more magical potential yet for her to unlock, that her headmaster would never let her. But she could not do that here. Still, she needed answers. And if Regulus' spirit still lingered somewhere, as Julius had implied… She did not know how to let that escape her.

-*

Snape came by before dinner the final evening of the holidays. The Weasleys were visiting their father again, and so Aurora, left alone, devoted her efforts to trying to listen in on the conversation between Snape, her father, and Harry, which was going on in the kitchen. Apparently, Potter was to receive Occlumency lessons to shield his mind from the Dark Lord. No one appeared too happy about this, by the sounds of it.

As she heard Snape's footsteps nearing the door, Aurora made to move back and make herself look busy. But then her father's voice said, "Wait a moment," and his footsteps stopped.

Snape's voice was still frustratingly low, but she could hear his sneering tone, and her father's reply.

"If I hear you're using these Occlumency lessons to give Harry a hard time, you'll have me to answer to."

"How touching," Snape sneered. "But surely you have noticed that Potter is very like his father?"

"Yes, I have in fact," said Aurora's father.

"Well then, you'll know he's so arrogant that criticism simply bounces off him," Snape said sleekly.

There was the sudden sound of a scraping chair and then Harry's voice yelling, "Sirius!"

Aurora tensed, hand shooting to the door handle.

"I've warned you, Snivellus. I don't care if Dumbledore thinks you've reformed, I know better. Tell me, how is Lucius Malfoy these days? I expect he's delighted his lapdog's working at Hogwarts, isn't he?"

Aurora's blood went cold. Her hand lingered in the door handle. Just as she was about to intervene, over Snape's muffled sneer and Harry's defiant cry to stop, she heard the front door open and the sound of chatter run lowly through the upstairs hallway.

"Are you calling me a coward?"

"Why, yes, I suppose I am."

"Harry — get-"

Aurora pushed the door open and hurried in, raising her voice to shout, "Dad!"

Her father stopped suddenly, his wand pointed at Snape and his face livid. Aurora's heart pounded. She didn't like the look on his face, ugly and vindictive as it was.

"The Weasleys are back," she said breathlessly, forcing a smile. "They sound in good spirits."

In other words, don't ruin the mood by murdering my teacher, please. Snape glared at her in return for her troubles.

"Monday evening, seven o'clock," he told Potter sneeringly, then one last scathing look around the room, he swept away.

There was a commotion in the hallway, and a second later the Weasleys returned, with Arthur in tow. Her father was still scowling, but straightened a chair and tried to look composed.

"What's been going on?" Arthur asked, still in his hospital pyjamas.

"Nothing, Arthur," Aurora's father said, short of breath. "Just a friendly little chat between two old school friends." From the look on both his and Potter's faces, it was far more than that. Potter even looked shocked. "So." Her father put on an extremely forced smile. "You're cured. That's great, Arthur. Really great news."

He left stiffly, after a brief explanation of what had happened from Molly, ostensibly to make dinner, but when Aurora ventured down to the kitchen a couple of minutes later, he was nowhere to be found. She had to call Kreacher to ask him where her father had gone, and the only reply she got was that he had gone upstairs and, according to Kreacher, stomped all over the place like 'a brat having a tantrum'.

With a sigh, she set off in search of him on the first and second floor and then, when she could not find him there, to his old bedroom on the very top floor, across from Regulus'.

Aurora paused outside the door to her father's current room. Perhaps he wouldn't want to see her or would turn her away. He seemed in an awful mood, and Aurora hated that, just like she hated Draco's moods and Arcturus's and her grandmother's, just like she was nervous around their volatility. But her father wouldn't act the same as them, she reminded herself. He wouldn't lash out at her like Draco might.

Tentative, Aurora held her hand up to knock on the door, but stopped herself. She didn't know what had happened and she knew that she wouldn't know how to help. Maybe, she thought, he would just want her to try. But maybe he wouldn't, maybe he would be annoyed that she tried.

That wouldn't make sense, she knew. He at least wouldn't be annoyed with her.

So she knocked on the door and held her breath. There was a faint rustling inside, and her father's voice called out, a very obvious annoyed tone, "Yes?"

Taken aback, suddenly nervous, Aurora took a moment to reply, "It's me. I just wanted to see if you're okay?"

Silence, for a moment. Then, he sighed. "I'm alright, sweetheart. Snape just got to me. You go back downstairs with the others and I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Are you sure?"

"Go," he said, voice a bit more clipped now. Aurora's heart sank. "I just need a moment to myself."

"Okay," she said in a small voice, stepping away. "If that's what you want."

There was a pause as she turned to leave, and her dad called out suddenly, "Love you."

She smiled softly to herself. "I know — I love you too."

He was noticeably tense at dinner, moody and brooding, even though he had Aurora and Remus on either side of him. She wanted to tell him that whatever Snape had said didn't matter, because Snape was an arsehole anyway and her dad would always be a hundred times the man that he was. When Remus went away to fetch pudding, Aurora's father said quietly to her, "I'm sorry if I was in a poor mood earlier. Snape has a habit of winding me up."

"Understandable," Aurora said lightly, "he is a git. But..." She chewed her lip. "Are you okay?"

"'Course." He forced a smile, one she knew all too well. "But I'll be glad to get out of here later. You don't have to worry about me."

She wanted to tell them that she already did, anyway, but she kept quiet, only managing a small smile. "I'm going to miss you when I'm at school," she told him, and he smiled.

"I'll miss you too, Aurora. But it won't be too long, and your exam term'll fly in. Besides." His gaze darted along to Harry, a few seats away. "I've something to give you anyway. Tomorrow. Little late Christmas present for the two of you."

She looked at him curiously, but he just winked. Remus sat back down, handing them bowls of ice cream and meringue.

The next morning, as Aurora and Harry were about to leave the house to head to Hogwarts on the Knight Bus with her father, Remus, and Dora, her father pulled the two of them aside, and presented them with a slim package wrapped in brown paper.

"What's this?" Aurora asked, frowning at him.

"Two-way mirror. Harry's dad and I used them to communicate when we were in separate detentions in Hogwarts. All you have to do is to say my name and you can reach me, and likewise. You'll have to learn how to share, I couldn't make another one, but you can both call me any time you want to, alright — anything you need. And Harry, let me know if Snape gives you any grief. Aurora… Anything you need. Both of you. Really, I should have given you this some time ago."

They glanced at each other, and nodded. Potter pocketed the mirror. "Thanks, Sirius. Are — d'you think you'll be alright here, when we go?"

"Oh, I'm going back to Arbrus Hill. I'll be fine. Got some work lined up for the Order, that'll keep me out of trouble. Or in it, which is likely more fun anyway." Aurora didn't like that thought, or the nervous energy she had been detecting inside of her father. His smile was strained, but he hugged them both tightly, ignoring Molly's demands that they all hurry up and get out the door.

"Honestly, it's a good thing you didn't get the train," she said, "or we'd be too late to catch it! Quickly, you three, everybody else is ready."

Her father grimaced momentarily, but it was so fleeting only Aurora noticed. She kept close to his shoulder, a tentative tactile gesture, as they went onto the bus and sat down near the back, observing Remus and Dora's conversation a few rows in front of them. Despite having morphed her face to resemble a sixty-year-old woman, Dora appeared to be attempting to flirt with Remus, which was one of the most distressing things Aurora had ever witnessed. Her father seemed to be trying to ignore it, pointedly engaging in conversation with Harry about the mundanities of Herbology — of all things — while his gaze strayed to the two of them every so often, expression unreadable.

Aurora just tried to read over her homework and forget what she was going back to, and what she was leaving behind.