"Order," the Minister called out, not heeded. It was only after a long series of objections and loud questions that he regained control of things. No one had seen that the loyal supporter who had chosen to host the Dark Lord, and apparently no one had guessed it either. The thing that still confused him, of course, was that he had not guessed it. His normal dreams, that were not related to his worst enemy trying to trick him, were products of his own subconscious. If he feared something, he found he could not escape it, and in many cases he would even get closer to it, and that was because it was on his mind, whether he wanted it there or not. Dreams were basically just experiences that he generated as he went, rather like a Quick Quotes Quill that would take simple statements and turn them into a whole florid narrative.

"I apologize for the confusion," the voice of Severus Snape said. Had he ever apologized in his life?

"The wizard we summoned for this trial as the defendant is Tom Riddle. This is, of course, pointless if you are not the same person."

"I used that name at one time. When it seemed that I had died, I was reduced to a shade. In order to appear in this dignified courtroom, I had to borrow the flesh of a servant of mine. I can assure you that I can answer any question that will satisfy you."

"Who can verify this?" Fudge asked. "What guarantee can we have about this?"

"I can," Harry said. "We can use Priori Incantatem, assuming he has his wand. That wand will only respond well to him if it is his authentic wand, that chose him, or one he might have won somewhere, not one that would have been handed to him for the express purpose of impersonating his master. I happen to know that he killed a muggle not far from his house recently, and before that his most recent murder was that of my parents. Even in some circumstance where the spell could be faked, like conjuring a grey ghost-looking thing, I doubt that it could communicate me in the same way that the shades of my parents could when I last saw them."

"When you last saw them?" Umbridge asked. "Are you implying that you have some previous encounter with-"

"I did, and the next sequence will prove it. How else could I tell you about this now? Did anyone else know?" He looked around. It seemed unlikely that the Lord Voldemort had killed Cedric in the current timeline, even if it was built out of his own guilt and mistakes. Could he simply manifest that by believing it? It seemed unlikely that the trap would be so easily escaped. Though he never knew how much time was passing in dreams, he was almost certain he had hit a record already, and something other than just wishing that he could wake up was in order to get him out of it.

"The defendant is directed to produce his wand."

The identity verification process went about as expected. Harry knew that some of his memories, even from his earlier dreams, would have been overwritten, and no longer useful, but he had a hunch that he was somehow still right about the death of the muggle following that of his parents, and sure enough, it was established both that Harry was a usable witness, and the defendant was in the courtroom. Some of the spectators tried to leave, but they were barred.

"I'm sure that this is a measure scarier for many of you now that you know you are in the room with a mass murderer. It is no longer all academic to you. At the same time, this has been a closed trial from the beginning, and that will not change now," an official said. He might have been something like a bailiff, but it seemed he was not well-known. The audience settled, for the moment, and the official looked to the Minister.

"Begin opening arguments."

"Finally," Harry muttered. "I can figure out what's going on here."

Parkinson was not at all sandbagging when he started explaining how it was absurd that the trial even needed to happen, but certainly a good thing to bring everything to light. It was not considered an optimal situation when the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had to take someone out on the street, of course; usually they even had to figure out whether or not it was justified before they could do anything else, but it was decidedly suspicious that a powerful dark wizard would come quietly, turning himself in after his resurrection from his apparent death. The prosecutor then warned everyone that there was almost certainly something going on, and that he definitely had something planned.

"Oh, I always have something planned," the voice of Severus Snape said."What remains to be seen is whether or not you will like it. His fists clenched in his lap. Could Harry have hit him if he had not been required to hand over his wand? He doubted it would be so simple. Attacking would most likely only result in wasted time, and that was probably part of the plan. Voldemort was not so stupid as to fail to consider such an obvious strategy for getting rid of him, like having someone else smuggle his wand in for him- almost certainly he would be countered, somehow, and removed as a witness.

"If I'm here," he muttered quietly to himself while something else was going on in the background. "It's part of Dumbledore's plan in some way... even if he's on the back foot and didn't have much time to get things in order, he could have made it harder for me to be found..."

"Harry, are you talking to someone?" Hermione whispered. "What's going on here? I thought you weren't attending this."

"Did I say that?" he asked. "That was before I traveled back here."

There was a real chance that he could screw everything up. He had no way of knowing what his Headmaster's play was, if he had one, and what his other self might have heard about whether or not he should even attend the trial, or what he should do there. The only thing he really had going for him was the fact that he might have cleared up some of Voldemort's backup plans unexpectedly, at least based on how easy it was, relative to how easy it should have been. There was no way he was trusting them in the first place, not unless his experiences had changed him, and that seemed doubtful. More than anything else, his worst enemy seemed to be completely unwilling to allow anything else to change him; he never seemed to take advice from anyone who was not a total sycophant and he would not accept favors he would have to repay. The idea of depending on his followers to bring him back to life was unbearable; he gave Wormtail precisely no credit in the graveyard; the whole focus of his speech was on his triumphant return.

"The defense would only like to say that even in the event that the man you see before you is possessed by a dark wizard, he has only done so to trap him inside of his own mortal coil. Unless Professor Snape dies, his master cannot leave; such is the nature of possession. If this court were to proceed with the Kiss that has been proposed for the contents, the container would be unjustly destroyed at the same time. My teacher did not, at any point, volunteer to have his soul eaten-"

"We cannot allow him to run wild," the Minister said.

"Counsel was not done with his opening argument," Parkinson said. "At the same time, though, let us not waste time. This court has no interest in the academic nature of this case. There is no concern about setting precedent or courtroom procedure. I shall allow anyone in this room to disagree with me."

The room was silent. Harry wanted a quick resolution as well, and as long as the Ministry had all the authority, it would not matter if Dumbledore disagreed with their decision. When he thought about it himself, he wondered how innocent Snape had been in the first place. He was a Death Eater and must have done something in order to convince the others that he was one of them, and it seemed unlikely that he had only ever worked with them to be a double agent. Even if he had been totally innocent, could they not sacrifice one person for the benefit of everyone else? Had that not been the argument he had used something close to a year earlier, when he announced that betrayal of the group would mean instant death? Was it any different to kill someone rather than sucking out his soul? What was the just reward for a man who died under those circumstances?

"I suppose it would move things along if I were to be the first to admit that Lord Voldemort is by no means a usual, everyday defendant. That, however, makes no difference to the rights of his host. If you are determined to destroy them both at the same time, then I need not have it explained to me that I am in no position to stop you. Severus Snape, however, is as entitled to a defense as everyone else."

Harry's fist clenched. It suddenly felt unfair that after all that had happened to him, he was having to sit there as his Headmaster defended a particularly loathsome teacher. Even while confessing that the only reason for him to be spared was simply because he was human, and it seemed impossible to disagree with that, he wanted at least some acknowledgement that the man did not deserve the treatment to which he might be technically entitled. The arguments began around him, but he could hardly pay attention. Instead, his friend tried to get through to him again.

"What are we doing here?" she asked at a whisper. "Why would you want to be a witness on this case."

"I'm here to kill him. I don't know of anything else I can do."

"You can't just take out your wand-"

"I know," he muttered back. "I'll have to be cleverer about it."

Taking a bottle of water, he put it under the table and started to magically manipulate the concentrations of a few of the potion ingredients he kept on hand- he was not sure why another version of himself had access to them; perhaps he was just exerting some amount of control over the dream. The witch next to him realized he was making a poison only moments in, and he shushed her when she objected.

"He's a teacher," she said.

"That's the Hermione I remember. It's almost nostalgic." He levitated in the last of the ingredients and used a fire charm to get it the way he wanted. "Don't worry about it. I'm just looking for a way of forcing a fight."

"How do you know that it's not exactly what he wands?"

"The mental connection I have is the only thing he can really use against me. I'll have to get creative."

The makeshift potion that he was brewing was not deadly, and it was not likely to have any unintended consequences, which was why it was so commonly used for educational purposes. He was reasonably certain, actually, but if there were bombs that were available to create a problem for a powerful dark wizard, he would have found out about them sooner.

"What the hell are you brewing?" she asked quietly.

"It's a cure for boils, technically, but there was this one time that Neville cocked it up- the horned slugs were already dead because he forgot to feed them."

"Oh, no, that doesn't leave any time for the dried nettles to-"

"Yes, I know; they burn up and you end up with a solution that just makes a lot of smoke."

"Why, though?" she asked.

"Things aren't moving quickly enough." He took a breath. "I wish I could take Dumbledore's side on this, but I think that he's only behaving like this because he's expected to behave like this. He's not really the voice for my conscious. Apart from where he's referenced the text, I don't think I agree with everything he says anyway."

"So, you're..."

"I'm speeding things up. There's no way that the moral of this story is that I should just suddenly start doing the opposite of what I've been doing-" He paused, looking back at her. "-even if it is, there's no way that's going to wake me up any better, and I have to get back to the others. Even you can't reach me in here."

He was aware that he was not talking to some manifestation of his conscious; if he were, he wondered if he could even see it without being overwhelmed; it was even more certain that he was not talking to any true version of his friend, just what he thought she was like at a certain point. He was annoyed at how some version of himself had been so compliant, but then, perhaps that was the point; perhaps he was supposed to be annoyed, and perhaps that was another trick of whatever seemed to be generating the dreams.

"Black smoke!" someone called out. "He's trying something! Send in the Dementors!"

If his Headmaster had some way of saving Snape, it was not worth the time he would have to invest, and he knew another way of getting out of there. In happier news, the dreams only had one year left to use, and at least that was a straightforward one, and when he was done with that, there was a chance that he would have cleared the challenge entirely. It seemed that like the diary, there was only so much that the Horcurx in his own soul could throw at him, and he would still have to deal with it somehow, but not before he destroyed the others, and their creator.

The room went cold. It was chilling how quickly things devolved into chaos, even when that was how he planned it. Dumbledore looked straight at him and he could only look away. It was as if the vision was trying its absolute hardest to make him doubt himself and all he could do was remind himself that he had to get back to his friends. In only a moment, as had happened all other times, he was returned to them and threw himself out of bed into the middle of what looked like a planning meeting.

"Nice of you to rejoin us," Blaise said. He looked around and there were only three other people there.

"I... what's happened whilst I was out?"

"We had to take care of something with out you. As long as Ron is truly of equal rank, we supposed it would not be a problem."

"It's not. I trust him with my life." He took a breath. "What was the mission?"

"It wasn't really a mission; we had an audit from the Order. They basically wanted to see if we were recruiting any dark wizards."

"We allowed this?"

"Ron decided that there was basically no risk. He said that even if they found something, we were a separate organization and had the right to recruit as we would. It's hard to fault him for taking that position. The teachers weren't pleased with it."

It was unclear whether it was stranger for Susan to view them as teachers or for them to view her as part of a rogue student group, still, after a year or so. Technically, they had resumed their teaching duties, at least to some extent, but it was not as if they were teaching her, or any of the others. It was unreasonable to expect an adult not to see himself or herself as above a minor, though, and some of them were still minors, even if their recruits were almost all adults.

"Did they find anything?"

"Well, no more than what we expected. We discontinued our dark magic training, but there were still some lower ranks who had used a few killing curses before. Without the excuse that there was no other choice, we had a bit of a spat as to whether or not we should keep them on. Ron and many others said it would be hypocritical to let them go after we taught them and they helped us. I'm sure some of us didn't want the morality police to win." Blaise shrugged. "Anyway, there were others who thought it was hypocritical for us to keep them on after we adopted a doctrinal basis for our actions." He frowned; it was the most emotion he had shown in a while. "I suppose it at least says something good about us that we would adopt a moral standard that did not align with what we were already doing."

"I... well, that's no worse than it could have been," Harry said almost uselessly. He took a deep breath. "Was there any resolution, or did it just leave off with the Order being peeved with us and nothing else happening?"

"I suppose I wish I could say that it was more productive," Susan said after a moment. "Ginny is taking care of Neville right now after he came down with dragon pox."

"That's unfortunate," he said after thinking on it. "It's almost refreshing, though, that we still have normal problems. With three in the hospital wing right now, though, we'll have to be careful going forward. Have we heard anything about the Death Eaters? Don't tell me we're no closer to getting Rookwood."

"I won't tell you, then," Blaise said. "They've realized that they're only going to win the long game. We made a few good decisions early on, and we mostly kept making good decisions, and they're taking us more seriously now. I would imagine they think that we must have had some insurmountable advantage from the beginning, and the only reason they scored against us was because they caught us unawares once."

"It's more like the opposite, of course," Susan said. "Not that they need to know that. We're sort of advancing our plans for after we're done with Voldemort, even though some would say that's counting our dragons-"

"No," he said. "It's not. It's what we should be doing. If anything is going to force a fight with them, it's undoing everything that his followers have done. Malfoy and Yaxley have resources, but it's helped them that they've had their master in their corner; everyone in the Ministry who has known about his return, but was too afraid or overconfident to do anything about it, were easily manipulated." Perhaps there were enough of them that if the resurrection had been acknowledged from the beginning, the Dark Lord would have had control over the institution overnight, but that did not seem likely. Their numbers had probably already been small, and with the apparent threat diminishing, they were probably getting smaller still.

"Don't tell me it's basically back to the way it was before," Luna said, groaning. "It's been hard to cover this in the Quibbler. Daddy says that there's really nothing we can do about it; a lot of the people who said that we were liars from the beginning are holding on now, because the fight's died down. They keep on insisting that there would have been more attacks on muggles if Voldemort truly came back to life, and that it must have been a handful of his followers with some kind of trick up their sleeves."

"That's disappointing," Harry said, mostly containing his reaction. "I assume Michael is taking care of something important in the hospital wing?"

"Of course," Blaise said. "Why, were we finally going to do something about your dreams?"

"No; it's not really his area of expertise. I was hoping that we would have a battle medic on hand, but if not, we'll just have to do this carefully- again."

"What, pray, are we doing? Please tell me we're not walking into an ambush."

"There's only a small chance of that. They might expect us to try this, but it's only one of a few different things they could expect. We'll need the others, though. We'll need everyone we have on hand. We're going to get some conclusive evidence while it isn't guarded."