Setup was much simpler than Hermione imagined. The stage they constructed was made from old drink crates from The Yard, loosely transfigured together on the top. The stage was only about two feet tall, but that was all they'd need, really, Hermione figured. She'd be flying most of the time anyway.

They set up the materials for a bonfire on the stage, Blaise and Hermione laying careful fire-containment charms down around it.

"Our stage is also wooden," Blaise pointed out to Harry, who was watching quizzically. "We want the fire to burn, but not too much."

"Oh," Harry said, realizing. "…yeah, good idea."

And that was pretty much it. All that was left was for Hermione to hide in the woods for the rest of the evening and wait for her cue.

They should have done her makeup and hair later in the day, Hermione realized with mild dismay. She could have mingled and helped recruit people, and then gotten dressed and ready like an hour before the event, not hours beforehand. She usually prided herself on being ready for things early, but this time, she'd doomed herself to lurk abut in the woods.

She sighed. Lessons for next time, she supposed.

While the others went off to meet and circulate at the Yard, Hermione entertained herself by climbing trees the muggle way, her mind mulling on verbiage and figuring out how best to phrase things to her audience. She didn't really know how best to express what she wanted to say. Some of her audience would be hedges, sure, but Tracey and Pansy had made it sound like there were a fair number of people who were coming that weren't hedges, but traditional witches and wizards who were curious what the Valkyrie had to offer. Adults – full-grown witches and wizards in their own right. How could she appeal to them, as well as appeal to the hedges? And at the same time?

Hermione sighed, mentally composing her recruitment speech as she swung from a low tree branch, the sun started to set through the trees.

While Hermione was glad there was time enough to come up with a speech of sorts, there was also plenty of time for self-doubt to creep in. She felt like a kid dressing up like a hero from a movie. What if everyone laughed at her? What was she even supposed to say to them, anyway? And what if walking through fire wasn't impressive to the hedgewitches? What if it was considered rude and insensitive? The hedges had lost a lot more people to fire than wizards had.

She shuddered. That had been an eye-opening lesson to learn.

The historical witch burnings were drastically underplayed in the Hogwarts textbooks, and almost dismissed as a silly, inconsequential activity done by scared muggles. A History of Magic cited the Flame-Freezing Charm as how witches and wizards had escaped, and when Hannah Abbott had pointed this out to Lockhart one day when he'd offhandedly referenced the witch burnings as 'a genocide', Lockhart's eyes had gleamed, and they'd had their first-ever practical magic lesson in history.

The task was simple: each student was given a candle, and each was told to cast the Flame-Freezing charm on the fire so they could hold their hand in the flame without getting burned. Most had approached the task with incredulity, but they were fast disillusioned with the gravity of the task.

First, the Flame-Freezing charm was a fiddly piece of magic, with a long incantation and very precise wand movements to get it to work. Secondly, it was an active, continuous charm. While you might be able to cast it for a moment, the next moment when the fire changed, the charm would vanish. You had to continuously feed the charm your magic in order for it to work. And for most wizards, that was very hard to do.

Hermione had been treated to a lesson of watching her classmates gradually exhaust themselves over candles, casting and sweating and yelping as they yanked their hands from their flames. If traditional wizards struggled to cast a charm over a flame this size, Hermione had realized, casting and maintaining it over an entire bonfire would require Dumbledore-levels of magical strength and control. Old Man Hobbs had basically told her as much, back when she and Clover had needed bonfires to transport silver wards throughout the tenancies - he'd told her people used to keep Floo powder in a sachet in their pocket, in case the muggles came calling, so they could escape without being burned alive.

It'd been a memorable lesson; Lockhart encouraging them as they'd all tried, an odd gleam in his eye as everyone failed over and over again. Hermione had been the only one to succeed, earning 10 points for Slytherin, while all the others had only come away with burns.

But now, that history seemed very real. People had been burned to death, and their history had been erased by wizards wanting to downplay the strength of muggles throughout history. Hermione was sure it would make her standing in fire impressive, but would it be callously insensitive? Would it make her seem like she didn't care about their pain at all, like she was flaunting her abilities before them?

At least the witch burnings had been long enough ago that no one was likely to have lost a relative, she thought. Hermione did her best to push her doubts out of her mind.

The sun meandered down the horizon, taking its sweet time. Mentally composing the recruitment speech only went so far as entertainment. Hermione felt like she had a mental list of bullet points to hit

(• I am the Valkyrie
• I destroyed the dementors
• Dumbledore and Voldemort don't care about you
• I care and will give you magic)

but she hadn't the slightest idea how to naturally transition from one point to the next in a way that wouldn't be stilted and choppy. She found herself unexpectedly resenting the fact that Hogwarts didn't require the presentations in front of the class she'd always loathed at muggle school - at least there she'd gotten some practice at public speaking, even if it'd only been to tell a bunch of eight year olds how her plant had died when she'd watered it with Orangina.

Maybe rhetoric lessons would be something to invest in for the future, Hermione mused. Power wasn't everything.

As it grew darker, the forest grew very dark. It was the night of the new moon, after all, and though the starlight was pretty, it didn't exactly provide much in the way of actual light. Hermione found herself muttering to herself in annoyance as she carefully made her way back towards the stage through the forest. She hid behind a tree behind the stage to watch and listen. She wasn't quite sure what her cue would be – they hadn't discussed something specific ahead of time.

Though she couldn't see much, Hermione could hear people talking and rustling. She was too far to make out what they were saying, but she could at least tell that there was some sort of crowd. And even a small crowd was a something, she mused - even Jesus had begun preaching to only twelve, before eventually growing his following enough to be preaching to massive crowds from mountains.

Everyone had to start somewhere.

Hermione wasn't sure what time it was when two figures finally took the stage, both clad in black robes. They lit small torches along the side of the stage one by one, ceremonially, before reaching the front of the stage and facing the audience, taking up positions on either side of the unlit bonfire. The crowd hushed.

"Many of you are here for different reasons." Hermione recognized Blaise's voice immediately, no matter how much he tried to lower it to be mysterious. "Some have come because you are curious. Some have come from boredom. But some have come because you seek a different way, a new way, and you sense this might be the beginning of that path."

"We want to see the Valkyrie!" someone interrupted loudly from the crowd, and there was a chorus of support for the heckler.

Blaise stopped talking, holding a hand up while the crowd grew silent. He lit the fire on top of the stage with his wand, coaxing it into a massive fire that crackled loudly, though the stage didn't burn.

"Then see her you shall," he pronounced.

Hermione took a deep breath, set her expression, and quietly crept onto the stage in the dark.

"Sonorus," she whispered, tapping her throat with her wand as she coaxed her fire elemental to the front of her magic and felt it flare to life, protecting her from the flames.

As she walked through the fire and emerged on the other side unharmed, the crowd broke into hushed murmurs and whispers. Hermione looked around at them all, judging, the fire still uncomfortably close and crackling at her back. Someone had put small torches on sticks up around the crowd, but there was still not much light to see at all.

Which was probably for the better, really. She wanted them to be intimidated and impressed, not recognize her right away.

"I am the Valkyrie," she proclaimed, voice booming out over the crowd, and with a wave of air and fire magic, she lifted herself into the air, wings of fire blossoming behind her. The crowd gasped, and Hermione found herself abruptly struggling to maintain a constant height of hovering with her air magic as well as the wings of fire. It'd been much easier at Azkaban when she'd been so distracted it'd become instinctual; now, in the moment, her nervousness was making it hard to relax and let her elementals take over and take care of things.

She really should have practiced this more beforehand, she despaired.

"You may have heard of a growing conflict," Hermione announced, not wanting to avoid the obvious. "You have heard of a Dark path, you have heard of a Light path, and you may have considered taking no path – just staying in place and letting others fight around you. Today, I am here to offer you a new path – not Dark, nor Light, but the place of shadows in between."

"I offer you the path of Magic," she declared, looking at them all squarely, projecting as much intensity and gravity into the word as she could.

Below her, she became aware that Harry and Blaise had quietly removed the bonfire from the stage. Now, they both held a singular torch, one on either side of the stage, and Hermione found herself grateful, slowly descending to land on the stage once more, though she kept her wings of fire burning brightly behind her.

"Lord Voldemort wants to take over magical Britain," she said, and the crowd reacted visibly at the name. "He wants to eliminate all Muggle-borns and become truly immortal. He promises his followers power and change." She paused, tilting her head slightly. "And yet… what real power or change does he give?"

"Lord Voldemort teaches Dark magic to his closest followers," she said strongly, walking to one side of the stage, braids dangling and swinging as she did. "Dark magic is dangerous, difficult. If you are not careful, it will consume you. There is a reason many Death Eaters were destroyed by their own spells or went insane. And change… what real change does 'kill all Muggle-borns' offer most people? How will it improve lives?"

"Albus Dumbledore would have you resist," she said, walking to the other side of the stage, and there were soft boos within the crowd. "He would urge you all to resist and fight against Dark magic, to keep Lord Voldemort from gaining power within the Ministry of Magic. But what tools does Dumbledore offer you?" She looked out over the crowd. "He teaches you nothing new. He does not help ward your homes. He does not help you protect yourself. He offers you a sense of purpose, a feeling like you are helping, but nothing more."

She moved back to the middle of the stage, pausing to slowly regard the crowd.

"I do not care what the Ministry is doing," she announced loudly. "The Ministry seeks to preserve itself. It is an ancient, crumbling institution, and it only functions when it serves the people, not just the people with power. I care about Magic."

"You are all magical," Hermione declared, bending over and looking at them more closely. "You all have magic as your birthright, running through your veins. I care about people with magic learning and using it to their fullest potential. I care about everyone having the freedom to learn magic, regardless of where in society they were born. And I care about what is right, not what is Light, what is Dark, or what the Ministry says."

"I destroyed the dementors," Hermione said, leaping into the air over the crowd dramatically. There was a gasp, and Hermione focused on hovering steadily, her fire wings still burning behind her. "It was not easy. It was not what the Ministry wanted. It was not Light magic that I used. But they were foul, Dark creatures, and I destroyed them because it was the right thing to do."

She landed on the stage again and whipped out her wand.

"Malignis Fiendfyre!"

A massive dragon of flame erupted from her wand, flying overtop of the crowd as it roared, and there were several screams. Hermione sent the dragon spiraling around above them.

"I serve Magic!" she announced loudly, her voice carrying over the crowd. "Follow me, and I will teach you magic. I will teach you to ward your homes. I will teach you to protect yourselves. I will teach you to travel in the veins of the earth. Together, we will work toward a future that serves all magical people, not just those who clutch the reins of institutional power."

With a jerk of her wand, the dragon disappeared in a wisp of ash, and Hermione looked out among them.

"We can all sense it," she said, lowering her voice. "The old conflict is coming once more. Last time, the damage to the magical world was immense." She looked out over them all. "This time, there is a new path, between the Light and the Dark. This is the path of Magic – that path in the shadows, the blurred line in between."

"Join me, and I will teach you," she continued. "Join me, and I will protect you. Join me, and I will help you. Join me, and we will help each other accomplish things once thought impossible. Join me—" she paused dramatically "—And together, we can recreate the world."

There was a roar from the crowd – an approving roar, Hermione hoped – and some cheering near the back. Hermione glanced at Blaise, who nodded, and she stepped back. Hermione hadn't planned an exit, to her detriment, so she just let the fire wings go and stepped backwards on the platform slowly, vanishing back into the dark. She nearly tripped off the back of the stage, walking backwards as she was, but her air elemental caught her, and she managed to glide to the ground.

Pansy was waiting for her, hiding behind a tree.

"That wasn't half bad," she said, handing Hermione a black silk robe and grabbing her hair. "I would have tried a little more actual content instead of grandstanding, but who knows with these people. They probably wouldn't have been able to follow along if it wasn't so simple."

"The hedgewitches aren't stupid," Hermione protested, as Pansy rapidly unbraided her hair. "They're just uneducated. There's a difference. And—ow!—it was supposed to be a mysterious appearance that happened to be vaguely persuasive, not a full-on campaign speech."

Pansy scoffed.

"With this sort of thing, I wonder if there's a difference," she said, pulling fake hair out of Hermione's second braid as she went. "The Dark Lord probably recruited via evil campaign speech. I can't imagine there was another way to do it, right?"

"I have no idea," Hermione said, annoyed. "How would I know how the Death Eaters recruited?"

Pansy ignored her. "Some of them joined up right after school, though. So he had to have people on the inside spreading his word, I imagine. Moles in the Slytherin common room, perhaps. There!"

Pansy pulled the last of the fake hair from Hermione's head, and Hermione gratefully shook her head back and forth as fast as she could, her curls springing back to life.

"What's the plan now?" Hermione asked, pulling on the black silk robe. "Do we just go out there and talk to people? Try to convince them?"

"Do you have a better idea?" Pansy asked pointedly, pulling up her own hood.

"No," Hermione admitted. "Let's go."

As they emerged from the forest now, clad and hidden in black silk robes like the others, Hermione saw that there were full-on bonfires around the moor now, huddles of people around each one, talking. Some people seemed to be going back and forth into The Yard, and Hermione imagined Aurican would be happy with the unexpected late-night business. There were maybe two dozen people, Hermione estimated, spread in groups around different fires. She hadn't had a large crowd, but at least it had been a crowd, which was something.

Not really knowing what else to do, she drifted around, listening in to different groups.

"—give us magic," a familiar voice was saying. "We've been able to ward off werewolves because of her."

"She keeps her word," another voice said. "And about following magic – she's New Blood – she's got a direct connection to magic itself—"

Hermione winced as she went on. It made sense that her different roles would begin to blend together, but she was a bit antsy about people making the connection to her real-life identity so soon. It was good with the hedges as a recruitment method, but she didn't want word to travel back to Dumbledore or Snape somehow.

She walked further back, where there was a group of larger people, huddled together.

"—the people in Azkaban," someone was saying. "That's something the Dark Lord always talked about – freeing his people from the prison – but even he never took on the dementors."

"Just because he didn't doesn't mean he couldn't," a woman snapped.

"Yeah, but does it matter?" someone else challenged. "The Valkyrie decided something was unacceptable, and she went and bloody well handled it, didn't she?"

"I don't know if she's on par with the Dark Lord, but she's gotta be close, right?" a man pointed out. "She can fly unaided, she can control Fiendfyre, and she's already got the Ministry in a tizzy. And she's offering to teach us. The Dark Lord never did do much teaching, I heard."

"What does she get out of it, though?" someone else wanted to know. "I don't trust it."

"She gets more magically competent people," a woman said, shrugging. "She serves Magic. She probably just wants to make everyone better at magic itself."

"She gets her own army," someone else corrected dryly. "She just has a better chance of not getting her soldiers killed."

"You think she'd have people fight?" a new voice asked fearfully.

"I think she'd have people go on missions eventually, if war really does break out," the dry voice said. "But she's already promised to teach people how to travel through the earth to escape – I reckon that's how she got to Azkaban herself – and she seems much more intent on the 'be effective and get out' strategy."

"So… we'd have a bunch of us Apparate to one place, lay down a ton of spell fire, steal the magical target or whatever, and then all just vanish again?" someone theorized.

"Who knows?" someone else said. "But it's worth looking into more at the least, right? And if it turns out there are grisly obligations in there, we turn and walk away."

"The Dark Lord didn't let people just walk away," one person said darkly.

"Yeah, well, she's not the Dark Lord, is she? That's kind of the point—"

She walked on, letting their chatter fade. There was one person on the edge of the clearing, barely visible by the light, a familiar silhouette. She walked over and stood beside them for a long moment, not saying anything for a while.

"Interesting speech, wasn't it," the person commented.

Hermione fought to keep a smile from her lips.

"Very," she agreed. "I was especially intrigued by how cool and awesome she was."

The figure snorted and turned to her, pulling down its hood to reveal Theo, and Hermione grinned.

"People are going to figure out who you are," Theo warned her. "The more people know… the less likely people are going to believe it's all just a rumor."

"Let them." Hermione shrugged, faking a carelessness she didn't feel. "Voldemort didn't hide. Dumbledore didn't hide."

"They're adults," Theo said, exasperated. "You aren't."

"Maybe I'm just a magical prodigy," Hermione quipped. She looked up at Theo, meeting his eyes for a moment, growing serious. "Don't you want another way, Theo? A way to protect yourself and learn magic without swearing allegiance to a power-hungry megalomaniac?"

"And this isn't that? That remains to be seen." Theo gave her a pointed look, and Hermione grinned sheepishly.

"At least I'm the least likely to become a megalomaniac?" she offered. "Given the other sides pretty much already are…"

"You think Dumbledore's a power-hungry megalomaniac?"

"Do you not?" Hermione blinked. "He's Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, he's Headmaster at Hogwarts, he's consulted directly by the Minister all the time for things… even if he's not power-hungry, he's certainly got a lot of institutional power already."

Theo mulled that over.

"Alright, yeah," he said abruptly. He looked down at her. "I'm in. But I'm going to read over the allegiance oath very carefully."

Hermione grinned. "I wouldn't want it any other way."