Hermione Granger dropped her black cloth mask on the counter and glared at the dirty hotel room mirror as she tried to place the changes. Her hair was as wild as ever, she wasn't sure but somewhere along the way she thought that her eyes had lost the spark they used to have. She had taken a few recent pictures and compared them to older pictures but she couldn't see a difference in her eyes so she wasn't sure if it wasn't just her imagination. Her skin was a bit darker from her time outside but other than that she looked much the same as she had for the last several years. Not that she was expecting anything different but on some level she was still the same witch she had always been. The girl raised to do the right thing, the girl that tried to make her teachers happy, the girl that had been brought up to believe that the government would protect you. That the police were honorable and just. She snorted as she thought back over her life.

In every witch's life there comes a time when they realize that they're slightly unhinged. Was it when she found out that she was smarter than all her classmates, no... that was merely the truth. It wasn't even finding out that magic was real. She had noticed enough evidence of accidental magic before so that when McGonagall showed up she wasn't truly shocked. She had been so desperate for a friend that she hadn't even thought twice about Harry wanting to be her friend. Sure, she had read about how everyone knew his name and the whole boy who lived crap but she hadn't really understood how the wizarding world worked at that point. If she had she would have taken Harry and ran as far as she could. Worrying about getting expelled from Hogwarts more than dying should have been a clue that she wasn't all there. She should have ran to the librarian and told her about the fifty foot long snake with the ability to kill you with a stare once she had found the creature's description in the books. The fact that she hadn't should have been enough to convince her to question her sanity. Not screaming and running from a society that thought there was nothing wrong with obliviating a muggle every time a wizard did something stupid at a campground rather than just have the sports commission rent the whole campground and then rent the places out to people so that the muggles weren't involved was a bit suspect as well.

She sighed, "Letting the word muggle even slip into my usable vocabulary was a mistake." It was another symptom of the disease the wizarding world spread to the students with non magical parents. Still none of that would probably have created the supposed worst dark lady in a thousand years or more if it hadn't been for the ministry being even more stupid than normal. Her view on the ministry and wizards in general was shattered when the ministry despite clear evidence allowed Umbridge to get away with casting the pain curse on students. Even the fact that the ministry had stonewalled Buckbeak's case in her third year hadn't hit her so hard. She had delivered memories via a pensieve but they had ignored them. They had pushed aside their own rules and allowed a monster to get away scot-free. "All because I prove their lie about blood..." She knew it also had to do with being friends with Harry. He had been persona non grata around the ministry that year because Fudge hadn't wanted to admit that Voldemort was back. She thought over the battle in the ministry, how Sirius Black had died. She briefly wondered if things would have gotten so dark if the ministry or Hogwarts had gotten them to a counselor or cared enough to interview them rather than just sending them off with some medicine. She wasn't going to blame the ministry for her behavior but they played a part, she knew that but that didn't mean that she wasn't going to accept responsibility for her actions. Sixth year had been a horrible mistake, if she had just listened to Harry and dealt with Draco before he let a small army of death eaters into the castle then things might have gone better.

"If Dumbledore hadn't left such stupid instructions for Harry... things would have been better. Three children... running off to save the world." She smiled slightly as she remembered several of the long talks that she and Harry had had during the months they had been running around just trying to survive after the ministry fell. She scowled as she thought of Ron. That trip had been the birth of the Dark Lady Bloodwrath even if no one else had realized it. Things had gotten rather crazy during the trip and she had ended up sleeping with Harry... something Ron had never forgiven her for... never mind the fact that they hadn't actually been going out when she had slept with Harry. Ron had in a fit of rage and stupidity broken things off. In another world, in another life she might have just danced with Harry or maybe just cried her heart out over Ron's stupidity but in this life she had taken comfort in a friend's arms. Her daughter had been a knife in Ron's heart and ego ever since. Never mind the fact that she had two daughters by Ron... Rose had always been the name that got tossed in her face every time Ron had a bad day or wanted to excuse his bad behavior. "Never mind that we weren't together you bastard..." She hardly noticed when a burst of her magic cracked the mirror.

Their marriage had been a broken piece of crap from the start though she hadn't realized it for nearly ten years. It just goes to show that even smart people have issues with relationships. He had pretended to forgive her and married her mostly for the publicity to help his Quidditch career. It hadn't been until he had hit her on her daughter's tenth birthday that things had spiraled out of control. She had tossed him out of the house and told him to never come back. Sadly two weeks later she had learned that bribery and a famous Quidditch career got you more than a quiet spell research job in friends with influence. The fact that the muggle house had been in her name hadn't mattered as the ministry 'court' had awarded him the property in the divorce. She could have lived with that if he hadn't 'stolen' their girls by bribing the judge to ignore the children's wishes or the fact that he was a cheating bastard. He had admitted that he had been cheating on her for pretty much the whole ten years, welcome to the other double standard of the wizarding world. If it had been a girl cheating they would have thrown the book at her, it was apparently expected behavior for a wizard to have a couple of flings. He had apparently also bribed the judge enough that she lost Rose as well. The judge said that she was unstable after she had ranted at Ron in the courtroom and sent her to live with Harry.

She muttered, "At least Harry lets me see her." She didn't blame Harry as it hadn't been his call. Harry had tried to protest but he had lost his fortune to the goblins for breaking into the bank to destroy Voldemort's horcrux. Never mind that it was needed and that he had sworn by his magic that he hadn't stolen anything else. Apparently their greed for the Potter family fortune and a corrupt ministry had allowed the goblins to take all his gold. Why settle for a fine when you could take it all. Even that might not have mattered enough to dim the bright star that had been Harry Potter but Draco had proved once again that money talks. He had convinced a couple of pure blood buddies to help him buyout the Daily Prophet then run a smear campaign against Harry. Which had pretty much sent Harry into the Muggle world to get away from the crap which meant that he hadn't had the contacts to help her when she needed it. She didn't blame him but it had twisted the knife a bit more. The ministry didn't take muggle repair men seriously even if Harry made an insane amount of money by keeping his overhead low by doing the work himself with repairing spells to repair parts rather than replacing anything. Not that he was going to admit that as they had some rather moronic laws thanks to her ex-father in-law.

She glanced up as she felt her wards trip. "Right on time." She put her mask back on, pulled her white cloak up to cover her hair and walked out into the living room to wait for the aurors to come bursting in. It wasn't that they knew who she was behind the mask but her masked self had done enough to upset the ministry that she was wanted wherever she went in Britain. Still if they had known whose hotel they were breaking into they would have sent more than just two aurors or at least they would have if it hadn't been a set up by her 'friend' to deal with a couple of corrupt aurors. One of the advantages of having been part of the Order of the Phoenix and the golden trio was that she still had a couple of friends or at least people that benefited from her services. Not enough to help her keep her children but enough to let her fix their problems. She silently cast a shield and waited until the two aurors burst into the room. It was just as well that she had paid cash for the room and that it wasn't the type of place that wanted ID. She jabbed her wand at the aurors and blasted them with a stunning spell. She smiled behind her mask as they crumpled. She hit each of them again just to make sure that they were down then she waved her wand and dragged them into the hotel room. Another flick of her wand shut the door again. She pulled two photos out of her robe pocket and made sure that she had the right two people before she put the photos back in her pocket. "Not your lucky day Nott." She remembered several of the things he used to say about herself and Harry. "It would have been so much better without the houses... ah well such is life."

She flicked her wand at the downed aurors and ripped their clothes off with a spell of her own creation. She had almost gotten nabbed early in her crime spree by a portkey in an auror's pocket that was set to go off if anyone touched it. She conjured a stick and used it to sort through their shredded clothes until she found their Gringott's keys. She took note of which key belonged to which person then pocketed the keys. She walked over and grabbed a lock of Nott's hair and ripped it out. She pulled out a small bag and put the lock in then flicked her wand at the bag to label it with Nott's name. She took a lock of the other wizard's hair as well and put it in a separate bag. She vaguely remembered that this bastard had been one of the people that had bullied Luna while at school. "I miss my Luna..." Luna was yet another girl that hadn't made it out of the war. Well she had but then she had been the victim of foul play within a year of the end of the war. She had taken over the Quibbler for her father after the war. The sales had been outpacing the Daily Prophet. She didn't believe that Luna deing to muggers while walking home had nothing to do with Draco purchasing the Daily Prophet. The aurors had looked into it but they had quickly closed the case. They had also hired more Slytherins with the suddenly expanded budget. She blamed Snape for a whole generation of light side magical students hating potions because of his crappy teaching.

She sighed as she realized that she was wasting time. She pulled a potion bottle and a syringe out of her pocket then filled the syringe with the potion. She cast a silence spell on Nott as she really didn't need him screaming and disturbing the neighbors. "One part time turner dust, one part genius." Not that she could take all the credit as she had used a 'failed' potion the Weasley twins had created and then modified it. The original potion caused a creature's magic to pool in their stomach and do horrible and strange things to them for several minutes before their magic stabilized. One of the perks of spell research for the ministry had been access to books that the ministry of magic had forgotten that it had. A couple of a hundred copy spells and the better part of a year had been required to copy everything they had without alerting her co-workers that she was doing anything wrong. It had started off as simple curiosity then shifted into a way to avoid having to deal with Ron. Luckily her boss had liked her enough that she could work from home at least until the crap-storm with Ron blew up in her face and she had gotten fired. Luckily she hadn't kept most of her notes at the house otherwise there would have been some dead aurors when they confiscated the fake notes they had found in her study. Luckily she hadn't listened to Harry when he said that casting the fidelius charm on her real study was overkill.

Still the decade of research into magic had shown her more than she had ever dreamed of about how magic worked and how time worked. She blamed a comment Harry had made while drunk one night about wishing he could go back in time and change things. She had found a way but had never thought that she would use it because it was more than a little dark. Still, her damn curiosity had demanded that she run some animal tests and try to figure if the ancient scrolls were full of crap or not. She had found out that they weren't but the process had been so dark that she had encoded her research and secretly destroyed the original ministry books that had pointed out the path of dark magic. Then her nice peaceful life had blown up and she had realized that she could apply the same process she was testing on rats to humans. Ron's mistress had been her first test case. Not the last but she had enjoyed the process more than a scientist should.

She jabbed the syringe into Nott's heart and pushed the plunger down. She watched him twitch and convulse as the potion pulled his magic into his heart and the time dust stabilized the magic. She pulled a knife out then waited another thirteen seconds for most of his magic to finish rushing to his heart. She set the syringe down then put both hands on the hilt and stabbed the knife into Nott's chest and started cutting his still beating heart out of his chest. She was glad that she had spells holding him in place as the pain woke him up. She ignored the fact that he was trying and failing to scream as she showed him his still beating heart. "A little quirk of the process is that your body doesn't really even notice that you don't have a heart until you just drop dead in about ten minutes. See the whole idea was abandoned centuries ago because they couldn't keep someone alive long enough to eat enough of a person's magic to make it worth it." She wasn't going to mention that the Aztec's had used the ritual anyways trusting to scale to help their power reserves. "They have to be alive you see. The time dust fixes all of that... but never mind just watch and learn." She smiled as she brought his still beating heart to her lips then bit into it and started devouring his heart like candy as he watched with horror. It took a bit of practice to eat the raw flesh without gagging, not because the taste was so horrible, the potion helped with that but because you were eating a human heart and no matter how much they deserved it, it was still a bit weird. The other ritual she knew that could enhance a person's power wasn't a viable option for her as she was a muggle born plus that ritual was even darker than the one she used to steal power. She was just glad that neither of the rituals would work for Voldemort even if he had known them. The heart ritual required that your soul be whole otherwise the influx of magic would cause the person's magical core to explode. The other ritual required family which was something that Voldemort thankfully didn't have.

She frowned as her wards flickered signaling that they had just redirected someone trying to apparate into the building. She had wasted too much time and they had sent someone to check on their missing aurors. "Rats." She took a few precious seconds to finish her meal as she gathered up her supplies with her other hand. Once she was done with her meal she gestured to toward Nott's body and transfigured him into a stick. She picked up the stick and the other auror then apparated out.

Morgan had his wand raised as he carefully stepped around the door into the hotel room. He took a step to the right as the rookie went pale and nearly lost his lunch because of the large pool of blood that covered the center of the room. "Messy." They hardly ever found any bodies just blood. He was glad that it wasn't his job to figure out what the dark witch did with the bodies.


Tonks scowled as she looked at Harry, "I still think she's insane, I mean time travel... we'd get a life sentence just for that. Never mind the other stuff." Tonks's whole face turned a bright green.

Harry sighed, "You think I like it? It's monstrous, horrifying, in every sense of the word but what else can we do? You've seen the data, you know how the government is twisting everything, how dark it's getting. If we don't do something to fix it, we'll be dead or worse in a couple of years at most. I'm all for leaving this world behind." He knew that Hermione's method wasn't exactly time travel as it allowed you to go to the past without changing your past. So it was some strange combination of alternate reality creation and time travel all rolled into one. He tried not to think about it too much. He was fine with leaving this world to rot if that's what happened. The world had basically tossed him in front of Voldemort then complained when he had killed him.

"So am I but that doesn't mean I want to kill people to get there."

"If we want to survive the trip as anything more than faint memories, we need more power." There was also the fact that he had heard whispers from some friends about the ministry wanting to put him on trial for his actions during the war against Voldemort. He would pay a lot for the chance to go back in time and fix several of his mistakes. If it meant the chance to save his parents, Remus and Sirius then he would pay just about any price including the price that was required for Hermione's time travel method. He would also happily lie to Tonks about what was required to get everyone to the past. While she knew that Molly Weasley would die she didn't know the specifics, it was better that way.

"That doesn't mean I understand her research or believe that it will work..."

"I'm willing to try... even if I have to do some horrible things to get the power to survive the journey. You want Remus back right?"

Tonks color shifted to red. "That's low." She still blamed herself for not saving him during the battle of Hogwarts. Even though it had been ten years she still missed him. It wasn't easy being a single mother especially without her parents for help. Her parents had been killed before the war was over. Luckily her son had survived.

Harry sighed, "I know but I can't go there... I can't ask Ginny to do it. Even if she hates her mother, I don't want her to have to remember killing her."

Tonks sighed, "Fine... I wish there was a different way."

"Molly's death empowers her whole family, that's a lot of people and the bitch deserves it." At one time he had thought of Molly Weasley as almost a second mother then he had found out about her spiking Ginny's food with love potions. He had found out years later that she had been spiking her food with potions ever since he had stayed at the burrow the first time when she had cut his hair. Not that Ginny had needed it but still the fact remained that she had drugged her own daughter. That had destroyed any trust she had with him. The fact that she had spiked Hermione with a love potion for Ron the summer after sixth year had killed any lingering affection he held for Molly. "She put love potions in the food for years."

Tonks sighed, "I know but that doesn't mean we can prove it. We just have Ron's word on it which is good for shit."

"He was drunk and saying all sorts of things he shouldn't have been. It was after Hermione left but before I told him to go to hell... he meant it."

Tonks sighed, "Fine, I'll kidnap her and you can ask her." She knew that Harry was likely going to kill her but she could, if she really tried, convince herself that he was just going to talk to her, it helped her conscience slightly.

Harry smiled coldly, "See, that wasn't so hard."

Tonks scowled, "So, have you figured out how you're going to boost me?"

Harry smiled, "Draco Malfoy, he's your cousin, his mom also survived, so that's a double bonus, triple if he actually killed Luna."

Tonks nodded, "True, I'm not going to miss that side of the family."

Harry nodded, "True."

"Where do you want to meet once I have Molly stunned and tied up."

Harry considered, "Not here, if I can save my parents I plan to live many happy years here." He didn't want his parent's cabin marked with horrible memories.

"The warehouse?" She had rented a muggle storage compartment several weeks ago with cash while looking like Draco Malfoy. She had had to take three showers afterwards to feel less slimy but it had been worth it as it gave them a place to set their project up without it linking back to them in case things fell apart.

Harry nodded, "That works. Now if you'll excuse me I've got to read a bedtime story to Rose."

Tonks sighed as her face rippled and turned into Ron's face. "I'm not amused, you know that right?"

Harry nodded, "Yeah, just make sure you either blast the clock or catch her away from it." He was hoping that she blasted the clock so that the Weasley family didn't know she was dead.

"I know..." She apparated toward the burrow.


Hermione recorded Molly's confessions by pulling a copy of the memory out of her head. She carefully stored it in a vial for later use. She put the gag back in Molly's mouth as she really didn't want to hear more of the bitch's excuses. She yanked on it to make sure that it was plenty tight. She had used a couple of vials of truth serum to get all of her crimes recorded but it had been an hour well spent. At least her conscience was clear. She had been considering just slashing Molly's throat as a last kindness to the mother of Ginny but her confessed crimes had changed her mind. She would have to send Tonks a thank you card for delivering her already stripped and tied up in such a way as she could roast her over a fire with minimal work. She waited until Molly's eyes started to clear up which showed that she was slightly more lucid. She had already warded the place against sound and apparation so it wasn't like her screaming bloody murder through her gag was going to matter.

"You basically raped me, well, not you physically but Ron... you know that right?" She didn't bother waiting for a response as Molly's gag was both rather tight and magically silenced. "You hardly even saw anything wrong with the potions, your whole world has that problem. I remember Ron getting drugged by a love potion back in school... he sure as hell cared when it had happened to him. Here's the thing, I could have forgiven most of the stuff or at least not killed you for it but you tried to steal my daughters. That I can't allow. I had a friend track the crap with that whole thing on the ministry side. It took him weeks but eventually he found something... low and behold he found mister I'm so stupid I can't pronounce electricity despite working in the muggle department. I'll never understand how two terminally stupid people produced Bill, Charlie, Ginny and the twins. Ron was a bit more true to form, Percy still thinks the ministry pisses gold, so yeah you should feel honored that your death will mean something rather me tossing your rotting body in a ditch somewhere, not many get that chance." She pointed toward the large spiked pole that was suspended over the fire. "Normally when a muggle stuffs a sharpened stick up a girl's ass they die rather quickly. I only have old mundane accounts to go on. The Aztecs had other means to do this, sadly a lot of the actual ritual they used was lost. They were a crazy but fascinating people."

She smiled as Molly increased her frantic twitching. "I'm hoping that I can do better than that, several spells should stop the bleeding, a couple more should keep you alive as you're being roasted." She grinned maliciously, "The best part is that I'm going to cut you up after you're done roasting and feed you to your family. Ginny is planning this whole big family gathering to show support for her missing mother, mending fences and all of that... she'll of course provide the roast... that's you in case you didn't understand. Then in a couple of days once your magic has a chance to increase their magic, I'll kidnap your husband and do the same. Then, I'll do the same to Ron, maybe I'll toss Percy in there but he's more a product of his parents. Still, I'll enjoy Ron's screams." She took the pointed pole down and after casting a couple of spells on it inserted it up Molly's ass and pushed. It took her a couple of minutes and it was slightly lopsided with the spike coming out between her shoulder and neck rather than her mouth or something more central but this way she would live longer and the meat would boost her children's magic more. She grunted with the effort as she levitated Molly onto the rack and lit the fire that she would use to cook her ex-mother in law. "Damn I forgot to ask her if she wanted garlic or onions to go with..." She realized that asking would just get frantic screaming and begging so she decided to just use both and to enjoy the silence that the magical gag gave her. She pointed her wand at Molly and went through the spells required to make sure the meat was imbued with magic. Ginny would never forgive her if she roasted her mother and they didn't get anything out of it.


Harry hugged Ginny once she stepped out of the fireplace with their daughter. "How did it go?"

Ginny wiped her eyes of conjured tears, "Dad's still holding out hope that she's coming back, that the kidnappers will give a ransom, not that they actually could pay a ransom but still."

Raven hugged her mom and dad. "Can I go see how Rose is doing?"

Harry waved his second oldest daughter toward Rose's room. "Sure honey."

"Thanks dad." Raven ran toward her half sister's room.

"How did the girls take it?"

"They left with the twins and Jessica and Thea... they needed a bit of cheering up." Ginny waited until Raven was gone then whispered, "Fred and George didn't want to leave the girls alone with Ron. At least Raven made it through dinner without bawling too much."

He pulled his wand out and whispered a privacy spell just in case any of the children had snuck out to play spy. "How did she taste?"

"A bit like a mix of pork and venison... Hermione did an excellent job on the seasoning." Ginny chuckled a bit, "Apparently Lockhart had a use."

Harry frowned, "Huh?"

"Your arm and the deboning spell. Hermione worked out a spell for it."

"Ah... funny how things work out. Was Ron a pig?"

"Worse than usual... without his girlfriend and Hermione to cook for him... I think he was more worried about who would do the cooking than he was about mom being gone."

Harry sighed then said, "That sounds like the idiot..."

"You know you could have come, put in an appearance and supported your wife."

Harry shook his head, "Not really, I wouldn't have had a legit reason to not eat the meat and it's toxic to anyone that isn't fairly close family once the imbuement spell is cast. It's been a while since the Potter's had a Prewett in the family tree... maybe not long enough that I would die from eating it but I see no reason to take chances. Besides I don't want Rose anywhere near Ron after some of the things he said about her."

Ginny scowled, "Yeah, he's creepy..."

Harry sighed, "We can't pick our family, just who we marry."

Ginny smiled, "True, shall we go cause Rose and Raven some mental scaring?"

Harry glanced toward their bedroom, "I like that idea but I think Hermione is taking a nap in there."

Ginny laughed, "Score, way more likely to cause Rose mental scaring if she thinks we're having a threesome."

Harry rolled his eyes, "You're evil."

Ginny wasn't going to deny being a touch evil considering that she had just enjoyed eating part of her mother and was planning on doing the same to her father in a week then her brother after that.


Teddy looked at his mother curiously, "So what's for dinner?"

Tonks shrugged, "Harry dropped off some dragon steaks."

"Real dragon?"

Tonks rolled her eyes, "He said it was just for us, all special like. So maybe, let's eat then we can go play some video games." She wasn't looking forward to whatever hellish potion they had to drink to increase their magic enough to survive the trip back through time but at least she would have Remus back if everything worked right. Now if she could just figure out what to do with the next three weeks until they tested Hermione's crazy reality jumping ritual.

"Yummy."


"Why do we have to do this today?" Nymphadora whined.

Harry glanced at the Gringotts bank, "Because Draco has been missing for two days, if we wait much longer the goblins will get suspicious of anyone attempting to use his vault. Just be glad that you don't have to drink polyjuice."

Nymphadora smirked which looked a bit strange on Narcissa Malfoy's face, "No, pretending to be my aunt is bad enough."

Hermione scowled as she played with her blond locks, "Pretending to be the bitch that Ron was shagging is worse..."

Harry said, "Honestly, let's just get this done with." He was hoping that it went better than the last time they had tried this. With no official notice going out about Draco being presumed dead or missing he didn't see any reason to believe that it wouldn't be as easy to rip the Malfoys off as it had been to empty Nott's vault and the other idiot auror that Hermione had killed. He stalked into the bank as if he owned the place which summed up Draco's normal way of walking.

Tonks followed Harry into the bank which left Hermione to follow behind.

Harry stalked up to the first available teller and presented Draco's key, "Vault now."

The goblin looked the key over then gestured toward another goblin to take them to the vault. Harry waited until they got into the cart then he quickly pointed his wand at the goblin. "Imperius." The goblin's eyes lost focus. Harry smiled, "Take us to the Malfoy vault, avoid any security or traps while traveling there. This is nothing more than a routine withdraw."

The goblin started the cart and it zoomed along.

Hermione clutched the edge of the cart and watched as the tunnels flew past. "Not my favorite way to travel."

Harry was mildly surprised when the goblin stopped the cart after only a short time. "What?"

"We're here."

Harry chuckled as he realized that the Malfoy name wasn't that old after all or at least they didn't have an ancient vault. Compared to the Black family or the Lestranges or the Potters before the goblins had stolen everything from him. "Open the door and no tricks." Harry got out of the cart so that the goblin could move over to the vault door and open it.

Hermione smiled as the door opened, "Good... good." She pointed her wand at the goblin, "Stupefy." the goblin collapsed like a sack of rotten potatoes. "Start looting and I'll deal with this guy." She flicked her wand and levitated him into the vault so that she had a chance to work without anyone hearing the goblin's screams or cries for help.

Tonks concentrated on stuffing her expanded bags with gold while Hermione used truth serum to try to get as many goblin secrets out of the goblin as she could. She wasn't happy with the methods Hermione and Harry were using but she guessed it was better than torturing the goblin. Besides, if the goblins hadn't been so greedy they would have been fine. The problem was that it summed up their life, the goblins were greedy and the wizards were stupid for trusting their money to the goblins.

Harry used his wand and sweeping gestures to load the gold into his bags of holding. He took special care of the Malfoy family's stored library of dark arts books. It wasn't that he thought they would be all that useful but they were books and Hermione liked books. Most of the objects would get melted down and turned into bars for when they went back in time but still some of the stuff might be worth saving. He frowned as he tossed a particularly gaudy tiara into his bag. "Or not..."

Twenty minutes of questioning and half a vial of truth serum later and she had a fair number of goblin secrets and the location of where one of their smiths lived. Apparently the fact that he lived in Hogsmeade and passed as a wizard was an open joke between goblins. Well at least he would be easy to grab. Hermione reached into her pocket and pulled out her syringe and potion of fun. "Are we almost done looting?"

Harry smirked, "Yes, enough bags of holding and some ninja looting skills."

"I should never have introduced you to Dungeons and Dragons."

Harry snickered, "It's fun. Besides, it gives me great ideas for things to make."

Hermione filled her syringe then stabbed the goblin in the heart. "I've been looking forward to this but if you want the first goblin heart."

Harry shook his head, "No, you created the process... besides I want to know what it does to you before I try it. There are also plenty more goblins around if we go deeper. No real shortage, yet." He grinned as he remembered Hermione's plan to deal with the traitorous goblins. He wasn't sure if it was really needed as they couldn't say for sure one way or another what would happen to the world when they traveled back in time, it would either still there continue without them or it would vanish as they changed history so that it didn't exist. Her method provided everything worked correctly would protect them from vanishing but he wasn't sure what would really happen to the rest of the world. He chose to think that it kept going which was why he wanted Gringotts destroyed... well that and it would be fun to watch.

"True..." She started cutting the goblin's heart out.

Tonks winced as she heard Hermione start eating the goblin's heart. It took most of her concentration to not vomit as she continued looting. She wasn't happy about the fact that Harry or Hermione had to put her under a spell to be able to eat the hearts she needed to grow strong but she just couldn't force herself to eat them otherwise. She waited until Hermione had finished her grisly meal then turned to look at her, "We should probably leave we've been here a while."

Hermione smiled as she tossed the goblin's corpse into the vault. "True." She pulled out a large bag of explosive materials out of her expanded bag and tossed it with a flick of her wrist toward the back of the vault. She pointed at the sack with her wand. "Gemino."

Harry watched as the mix of explosive chemical bags kept duplicating. It was a bit scary what you could learn on the internet, it was even worse when you could duplicate things. They might not last very long but they would easily last the three hours that Hermione was planning on setting the timer for. He carefully pulled a balloon filled with pure oxygen out of his expanded pocket and started duplicating the balloon. They had placed a minor charm on the balloon so that it wouldn't break until it wore off. It wouldn't help against fire but it would keep the balloons from popping against the ceiling for at least an hour. It didn't really matter if some of them popped a bit early as they weren't planning on being around long enough to breathe in too much of the oxygen rich air.

Tonks stared at the ballons as she said, "A bit of knowledge and psychotic intent goes a long ways."

Harry smiled as he put his wand away. "They started it."

Tonk sighed, "Let's just get out of here."

Hermione grinned as she put her wand away and pulled out a wooden tube and couple of blow darts. "Time for phase two."

Harry handed her his invisibility cloak. "Good luck. You have three hours... or a bit less."

"I'll be out of here in two hours." Hermione wrapped Harry's cloak around her then set off.

Harry pulled out a broom, "Let's make this work."

Tonks shook her head, "I still think this is insane."

"But fun, we stick to the story then drop by the Daily Prophet and have them publish the story we want then we plant Draco's head in a couple of days." Honestly he almost had to thank Draco for setting things up so nicely, if he didn't own the paper this would have been a lot harder.

"Either way... I'll see you back at your cottage..."

"That works for me." Harry mounted his broom and took another drink from his potion flask. It wouldn't do to change back in the middle of Draco's glorious escape attempt. "That's nasty."


Harry tried hard to not smirk the next morning as he read the Daily Prophet about Draco's ordeal at the bank. Images of the bank on fire were next to pictures of Draco's supposed mistress which just happened to be pictures of Ron's mistress that Ginny had swiped from Ron during the family dinner. Their fake story about the goblins pushing Draco's mistress out of the cart to her death was on the front page right next to the fact that the bank had been leveled by an unknown spell or curse. Tearful pictures of Draco telling about how his long time mistress had died actually managed to almost make the man look like a decent human being. He blamed Tonks' impressive acting skills for that. Merlin knew that Draco himself couldn't have pulled it off. He had made a trip into town to pick up a paper because he wanted to know how well their plan had gone. He had also done a bit of shopping so that it didn't look too suspicious but it had been interesting to see a bunch of wizards worried about their money and if there was going to be a goblin war. He figured he would give it a day or two then put Draco's head on a pike and put it out in front of the destroyed bank. If that didn't spark the pureblood morons that ran the country to war then he wasn't sure what would.

Using polyjuice and hitting on Draco had been one of the low points of his life but getting to stuff Draco full of truth potion in order to find out if he had ordered Luna's death was well worth the slimy feeling hitting on Draco had left. The fact that Draco had ordered Luna's death gave him another couple of names to track down before he left the world to its own devices. He had enjoyed ramming a sharpened pole up Draco's ass way more than any heterosexual guy should. The fact that Hermione had then roasted him over a fire had helped his mood greatly. Knowing that some good came out of the idiot's death was just a bonus as far as he was concerned. He looked up as a naked Ginny walked into the kitchen, "Best morning I've had in a while."

"This moves up our time table a bit..."

Harry chuckled, "True... I want to hit the goblin smith in Hogsmeade before he goes underground. Is Hermione awake yet?" He had woken up and snuck out to make some breakfast.

Ginny shook her head, "She woke up enough to complain when I got out of bed but I handed her a pillow to snuggle and she went back to sleep. I think her body is still trying to process the thirty goblin hearts she ate."

Harry wasn't looking forward to eating his share of the goblin hearts but figured it was for a good cause. "When she first suggested portkey darts that activated on blood I thought she was joking but it's not a bad way to capture people or goblins. A couple of wards against apparation to keep them in... and a ward against outgoing portkeys and you have a decent cell."

Ginny laughed, "True... some type of stunning field would help even more but yeah... next time."

Harry shrugged, "It worked... a bit of fire to disguise the missing hearts and we can place the corpses around to make sure the war starts..."

Ginny sighed, "You're still bitter about your vault aren't you?"

"I'm mostly bitter about all of the personal photos and belongings they destroyed when they stole my coin..." He shrugged, "I'm working through it... mostly. We're planning to go back to before I lose my vault anyways so I'm trying to get past it."

Ginny decided that changing the subject might be for the best. "What's for breakfast anyways?"

"Rose and I get to try some Diricawl stew that Hermione cooked up... you and the other girls get leftover Molly meat tossed into your stew."

"Tasty... I'm guessing Hermione is using you as a tester for her idea to see if you can pick up their powers by eating their hearts."

Harry shrugged, "Yeah the stew is just so we don't waste the meat on the more edible creatures. As for the hearts, the test cases worked for rats and other animals so I figure we might as well try. Besides, Hermione said that it would be too hard keeping a phoenix in place to eat it, never mind the bad karma, almost as bad as eating a unicorn would be."

"No thanks on that one. The girls would never forgive me if they found out."

"True..." He smiled as he saw his ten year old daughter walk out of the hallway in just her favorite fuzzy pink pajama bottoms. "Hey munchkin, ready for some food?"

Rose yawned sleepily as she walked into the kitchen, "Sure, dad."

Ginny reached out and ruffled Rose's wild hair that she got from Harry and Hermione both, "Glad to see that you're awake."

"It's Sunday, it's before noon."

Ginny laughed, "If you hadn't stayed up so late gossiping with your sister then you wouldn't be so tired."

Rose asked, "How soon until we get Jessica and Thea back?"

Harry sighed, "I'm hoping that I can convince Ron to allow them to visit, baring that I'll work something out." He handed her a bowl of his Diricawl stew.

Rose walked over to the table to eat her stew.

Harry poured some of the stew into a second pan and added some of the Molly meat to it so that the rest of the family got more magic out of the meat. He would just have to make sure that Rose didn't eat any of the second stew.


Ron felt like he was losing it. His magic had been twitchy all day. Spells that he had thought he had down had been going wonky. The last week had been particularly horrible. Ever since he had read the article about his girl having been Draco's mistress. He wanted to vomit, he wanted to wipe his own memory. The fact that he had slept with someone that had slept with Draco disgusted him. Not to mention the quality of food had gone down hill since his mother had vanished. He tried to get the girls to cook but they were only six and seven but the best they could do was make sandwiches out of the meat left over from the feast.

He was glad that Ginny had shown some family support and provided the food otherwise he would have had to hire someone to cook and that would have been a waste of money. He briefly considered seeing if there were any muggle agencies that rented out live in maids. After all a couple of spells and he wouldn't have to pay her. Heck a couple more spells and she wouldn't think there was anything wrong with walking around the house naked. He sighed as he realized that he didn't know how to even find the number for a muggle maid service. "Jessica! I need you to call a maid service."

Jessica ran her hand through her hair briefly wishing that she had her half sister's wild hair or her cousins' wild red hair. "Fine." She finished in her head, "Asshole." She didn't like her father at all. He treated them like trophies to be shown off rather than kids. They had to dress up nice for all of dad's parties but the minute there wasn't someone to impress he was busy doing something, anything away from them. On the upside it meant that she had plenty of time to play computer games or do their school work, not that that mattered as the minute mom was out of the picture he had withdrawn them from what he called muggle school. The last couple of weeks had sucked without mom. She headed out to the living room where the phone was. She could smell the alcohol from across the room. "Yes?"

"Call a muggle maid service, we need a cute one."

Jessica tried not to sigh as she picked up the phone, made a show of looking through the phonebook and then dialed Aunt Ginny's and Uncle Harry's number.

"Hello?"

She recognized Harry's voice, "Hello, is this the Famous Night Maids Service?"

Harry frowned as he tried to figure out what his niece was saying, "Ah sure, we'll go with that for now."

"Ah good, daddy wanted me to call because we need a maid, we're running out of food and the house is a mess..." She wasn't sure what else she could tell Harry without making her dad suspicious.

"Ah, I'll send some twins to deal with the problem."

"Twins? That sounds wonderful. Thank you." Jessica hung up the phone. "All settled."

Ron liked the idea of twins but frowned as he realized that she hadn't told them how to find the house, "You didn't tell them who you were."

"The phone knows." She pointed to the caller ID box next to the phone. She was really happy that she took after mum and uncle Bill for smarts rather than her father.

"Oh right... how long until they get here?"

Jessica lied, "They said an hour." She hoped it didn't take that long for Uncle Harry to send Fred and George to come get her and Thea.


Fred and George weren't amused when they showed up to find a drunk Ron yelling at his daughters about learning to cook and how he was going to sell them for a new Firebolt because they couldn't cook. Fred looked over at George and Harry, "Yeah, he's cracked."

"Sadly..."

Harry took in the scene and felt rage boiling up his veins.

George shrugged, "True..."

Ron glared at the twins, "You're not the maids."

One of the twins might have made a joke about cleaning house or something but Harry's overpowered stunning charm blasted Ron off his feed and tossed him into the wall like a rag doll. "You get the girls, I'll pack their stuff."

Fred decided that making a joke wasn't in his best interest with the way that Harry was glaring at Ron. "Sounds good mate."

Harry waited until the twins left then he pulled out a coin and dropped it behind the couch. The coin wasn't really a coin, it was a complicated bit of spell work that would change back into a goblin corpse after two hours of not moving. He pulled a charmed candle that was set to light in five hours and set it on the table. He hustled to pack up the girls' stuff. He smiled as he passed the gas stove on the way toward the computer room. 'You really shouldn't have stolen Hermione's house, you idiot.'


Hermione sighed as she looked at where Ron was roasting over her fire pit. The original plan had been to roast Arthur first then Ron but the plan had changed when Ron had gotten drunk and lost it. Besides, as Harry had pointed out Arthur would suffer longer knowing that his wife and son were gone. That seemed even more fitting than killing him besides they didn't really see a point in waiting another two weeks before they finished their business and left the world to rot. Thus Ron would be the Weasley family's meal as they gathered to morn the 'tragic' goblin attack that had claimed his life. She had left the information gathering to Harry which was probably for the best considering how angry Harry looked about what Ron had told him under the influence of truth potion. She would probably have slit his throat and messed the ritual up out of anger. She wasn't sure how Harry hadn't cut him to pieces before her spells were in place to use his magic. He had taken pleasure ramming a sharpened stake up his old friend's ass despite Ron's frantic pleading. Considering that Ron was no better than a rapist she shouldn't have felt as guilty as she did about his death. Still there had been some good times before he went crazy. "Did he have a reason for going crazy?"

"Jealousy, maybe a bad reaction to the love potions his mother fed him or maybe carrying Slytherin's necklace around for so long warped him, hell if I know. I just know that he had designs on Rose...".

Hermione felt her throat close up a bit as she managed to ask a question that she needed an answer to but was afraid to ask, "Did he?"

"No, luckily but I'm glad he's dead."

"Are you going to kill Ginny if she has designs on our daughter?"

Harry shook his head, "Nah Rose loves her... he wasn't going to be gentle..." He glared at Ron. "I think he's just broken in the head."

Hermione sighed, "I blame Molly..."

Harry shrugged, "A little. Ginny isn't all there either but that could have been because of Voldemort's diary or maybe having her mother tell stories of the boy that lived for years..."

"True..."

"So how long until we can jump?"

Hermione considered, "Another week to finish off Ron's leftovers, during that we'll be spending a lot of gold on various magical creatures."

Harry snickered, "Fire crab soup or Diricrawl pot pies. How much more time dust do you have?"

"Enough to harvest a fair number of magical creatures and enough to get us back... but once we go back in time we'll need to say in one place long enough to make more. Mostly because the dust doesn't travel through time well... we have to use what we have to go back or lose it..."

Harry nodded, "So have we figured out who is jumping bodies and who is jumping back physically?"

Hermione nodded, "The children are obviously jumping back physically... The twins are going back mentally to get rid of their spell damage. They want to look the same again."

"I can't say I blame them for that. I'm planning to jump back mentally as well." He didn't really see the point in allowing a younger version to exist that would want to come after him because he was being evil.

"I think we all are, Bill wants to go back mentally so that the new contract he was forced to sign with the goblins isn't valid anymore."

Harry nodded, "Charlie wouldn't mind getting rid of a lifetime of burn damage."

Hermione rolled her eyes, "You would think he would be more careful..."

"Maybe the new Charlie will be." He shrugged, "Either way, it doesn't matter, he doesn't know about the horrible stuff we've had to do, just the possible time traveling bit so I don't see why we can't take him with us."

"True, so after we're done here do you want to go to the alley and buy some magical pets?"

Harry smiled slightly, "I'd take the girls but then they would be mortified when we had them for lunch."

She gave him a peck on the cheek. "Probably." She stared at the conjured flames and remembered some of the good times before things had gone weird with Ron and life.


Ginny fell over laughing as Harry turned into a silk top hat then back. "That's just hilarious..."

Harry scowled over at Ginny from where he was now sitting on the floor, "I'm still getting used to it..."

"I hope the rabbit stew tasted good."

"It could have used a touch less garlic but for the most part it was fine." While the actual power had come from the magical rabbit's heart he didn't see a reason to waste the meat considering there was nothing wrong with it.

Ginny sighed, "We'll get it right next time... Rose and Raven were very helpful pealing the garlic."

He lied slightly. "It was fine." There really had been too much garlic and he liked garlic.

"Good... we're going to have to exercise like crazy after the feasts we've been having."

Harry shrugged, "Well worth it but you're probably right. We've another few days left of meat from Ron, then we'll head out."

Ginny grinned, "I'm looking forward to it, so crime spree the night before we leave?"

Harry laughed then asked, "What are you thinking?" He knew that he would be robbing at least one grave before he left. He was happy that he had never told Ron what he had done with Dumbledore's wand. He wanted to retrieve that before he left. He also needed to dig up the resurrection stone from where he had hidden it after the fight with Voldemort.

Ginny considered for a couple of seconds, "There are a couple of jewelry stores and art museums that I wouldn't mind hitting if we're not coming back."

Harry pictured Hermione face when he mentioned robbing several bookstores and electronics stores. "That actually sounds like a good idea. I've got some ideas as well."

Ginny reached over and kissed Harry, "That's why I love you."


Hermione was rather amused at the ease with which she found the goblin smith and how bribable he was. She had expected to have to torture the secrets of goblin construction out of him but he had been rather helpful in showing her exactly how to craft several different goblin made items. He had even given her the memory of several dozen more for exorbitant sums. He had then laughed in her face and told her that it required goblin magic to make the smithing process work and that a goblin war party would be coming to kill her as he had signaled the alarm the minute she had asked about learning goblin smithing. She had smiled and left with him stuffed in a rat cage barely large enough to hold him. A couple of hours and a couple unforgivable spells later and she had a lot more of his memories than he had wanted to give up. Eating his heart for his power had been very satisfying.


Rose was trying to figure out if the whole world was going insane or just her folks. The last couple of weeks had been filled with all manner of strange dish that her mother wanted her and the rest of the children to eat as well as something that she was pretty sure was raw animal heart on a fairly continual basis. While the taste wasn't too bad it tingled a lot on the way down and left a warm feeling in her tummy. While she trusted her mother when she said it would make her stronger she was starting to wonder if it was a bit like vegetables that her mother said would make her stronger though she had noticed a few new abilities the last couple of days. She had found that she could turn invisible and teleport if she thought about being someplace else really hard. Jessica could conjure fire and Thea... well Thea could walk on walls. It was a rather neat ability that confused her parents.

None of the basic books said anything about those types of abilities being standard abilities for first year witches so maybe her mother was onto something. She was after all really smart. It was nice to have Jessica and Thea back with her even if she had to share her bedroom with them. A bunch of the adults had been stashing large boxes all around the cottage throughout the night. It made things a bit hard to get around some times but her mother said it was only for another day. She had been helping put away boxes all night. It was early morning and she should have been in bed but instead she was watching out her window as the adults cast a spell. It wasn't like any spell she knew of, most of the spells she knew of didn't cause the sky to turn funny colors or for the whole world to twist and spin around like a drunk top. Not that she really knew what a drunk top would look like but she imagined that it was like a top that continually wobbled, that's at least how everything felt for about a minute until things finally settled down. She was less than amused when everything came to a stop and all of the adults she could see out the window turned into balls of light and shot off into the sky away from the house. "Well crap..."


Harry Potter woke up with a groan as he looked around and found that he was back in his bedroom in his aunt's house. He rubbed his face and was relieved to find that he was clean shaven for the first time in years. So at least that part of the plan had worked. He glanced over at the calendar and realized that it was still two days before the order was scheduled to try to get him out of his aunt's house. He thought about the girls and winced. They weren't going to be happy about them not telling them about the whole time travel bit but a part of him hadn't thought that Hermione could pull it off. He hoped that all of his friends would be waking up in their old bodies again. He hoped with all of his might that his children were also okay. He briefly considered just apparating then realized that the corrupt ministry would be watching for that.

He glanced over and saw Hedwig. He had to take a minute to steady himself as he realized that she was still alive at this point in time. He had hoped that she would be but with everything else going on he hadn't let himself worry about it too much. He knew that the children were going to be ecstatic about having an owl around the house. He had never replaced his first pet after she had been cut down during his escape from number four.

He rolled out of bed and pulled on his clothes. He hated how badly his muggle clothes fit. He searched around until he found his vault key in his pants pocket. "This makes it so much easier." He grabbed his trunk and looked through it then realized that other than his photo album of his parents and his invisibility cloak there wasn't anything he actually needed to keep. He wanted to keep several things but he didn't need to keep anything. The way he figured it was that he had two days before the protections fell on number four, unless they were already gone because his soul was well over seventeen years old. Still, he knew the score and knew the plan and he also knew that the death eaters would be waiting for him to leave in two days. He grabbed a coat hanger and folded it up so that it fit into his pocket. "I might need this." He tossed his cloak around his shoulders then moved down to Dudley's room, he knocked softly on the door.

Dudley opened the door and looked at Harry in confusion because he could only see half of him, "What? What's going on... that's magic..."

"Yes, yes it is. The passive kind, I've got a great deal for you. If you help me get out of the house without being seen and I'll give you a gold coin and I'll send you some actual money in a couple of days."

Dudley grinned, "A gold coin?" His face fell as he realized that his cousin was probably just messing with him. He asked in disbelief, "You have gold?"

"Yes, my parents left me with a fair bit of wizarding money, one of the coins is gold. It's worth some cash at a pawn shop."

Dudley considered then decided that he saw no reason to tell his father about Harry's offer at least until he heard him out. His father hated magic but gold was gold right. "What do I need to do?"

"Let me grab my stuff and a couple of tools then open the door and walk out. Maybe with some bags in your hands or something to explain why you're leaving the door open."

Dudley figured that the recycling could be taken out, his mom would want Harry to do it but he could do it for a gold coin. He wasn't going to worry if Harry stole a couple of his dad's tools, it wasn't like he would miss them and if he did then he would just tell him the truth that Harry must have swiped them. "Sure... I'll do the recycling. There should be enough that leaving the door open won't look too strange." It was rather warm out but it was still early enough that it wasn't so hot that anyone would care about letting the heat in.

Harry smiled, "Excellent."


Luckily for Harry, Mad eye wasn't on guard duty when he carefully exited his aunt's house with Hedwig's cage under his cloak otherwise he would have gotten screamed at. He noticed that Mundungus Fletcher was on guard duty. If he didn't have to worry about the ministry issuing an alert if he used magic or if anything strange happened he would have killed the man where he lay sleeping in the shade. As it was he merely kept walking until he was a few blocks away. He glanced around the neighborhood until he spotted the house of one of the people that had sprayed him with water years ago because he was the Dursley's problem nephew. He really didn't understand people sometimes, after all if he was that bad why bring attention to yourself from the possibly insane kid.

He smiled as he looked at the man's older car. "So much easier." He walked over to the car and set Hegwig down on the grass then pulled the coat hanger out of his pocket and bent it until it looked to be the right shape. Half a minute of work saw the car unlocked. He wasn't the best at it but he had had to learn so that he could do it if there were non magicals around at the repair shop and he needed to get into a car. He was suddenly glad that he had put some time into the skill. He looked around to make sure no one was around to see the door open by itself before opening the door. He put Hedwig's cage in the passenger seat then carefully got in and started working on hotwiring the car. "So much easier with a bit of magic." It took him nearly five minutes to get the car started before he calmly drove the car away. He pulled his cloak off after a block as he didn't want someone seeing a car driving without a passenger. He knew vaguely where he was going by road but he wasn't all that worried. Worst case he would trust that Hermione would see to the girls as her body and soul were past the age where the trace would automatically fail. He wasn't willing to chance magic until he knew for sure that the trace was gone in two days.


Hermione smiled brightly as she found herself in a room that she hadn't seen for ten years. A couple of the remaining death eaters had destroyed it and her parents after the war. It had been one of the blows that had pushed her on her crazy path to get even with the world. She rolled out of bed and started gathering her stuff. She was going to need to get to Harry's house to check on the children before too long. She decided that they could wait until after she gave her parents a hug. She tossed on some clothes and headed down to say hello to her parents.


Tonks woke up next to Remus. "What a dream..."

Remus frowned as he looked at his wife curiously, "What are you talking about?"

"I had a crazy dream that I lived for ten years without you..."

Remus chuckled, "That would be a terrible dream Dora, it's early, go back to sleep..."

She smiled as she curled up next to Remus happy that the plan to go back in time worked, "All right..."


Kreacher sneered at Harry, "Nasty master returns."

Harry glared at Kreacher. It had only taken a couple of hours to get to number twelve. He hadn't been happy to see that Kreacher was still walking around free. Part of him wanted to tell Kreacher to beat himself to death but another part of him wanted to be able to have Hermione rip Kreacher's magic out and feed it to one of his daughters so that they could teleport and use other magic elf tricks. After watching Dobby blast Malfoy Senior back in second year he had a better appreciation for how much magic elves had compared to most wizards. Besides, he wasn't Dumbledore, maybe the world had given Kreacher a bad shake but he had helped get Sirius killed. "I want this place cleaned from top to bottom. Get to work now."

Kreacher didn't bother to say anything as he vanished in a pop to start cleaning.

"I hate that guy."

Hedwig gave a call that might have been a yes or it might have been a let me out of here.

Harry opened Hedwig's cage, "Let me find some paper then you can take a note to Hermione."

Hedwig preened.

Harry rolled his eyes as he walked off to get a piece of parchment to write a letter to Hermione. He wasn't sure what to say, he didn't want to say anything too illegal in a letter in case it got intercepted but at the same point, he didn't want to say too little either.


Rose put down the fire poker as she recognized the girl at the door from some of mom's old photos, "Mom?"

Hermione smiled, "Hey care bear."

"You're... you're young..." She let the poker fell through her fingers as she stared at her mom.

"Yeah, I left you a letter explaining..." Hermione thought that Rose's glare looked a lot like her glare when she looked in a mirror while having a particularly bad day. "Yeah, okay maybe that wasn't the best way to explain this."

Rose scowled, "I thought it was a joke at first but then I looked around the neighborhood and turned on the television, why?"

"Too much happened in the war... I wanted a clean start..."

Rose scowled, "You get to explain this to Raven, Jessica and Thea not to mention Megan and Loony."

"I'm not sure Megan is old enough to understand time anyways... but I'll explain it to the rest as soon as you let me in."

Rose remembered that she dropped the poker and picked it up with her toes and tossed it back into her hand, "Password?"

"Raspberry pumpkin belly."

"Okay, come in mum."

Hermione stepped over the threshold then blinked when she got a face full of what she assumed was her polyjuice counteragent. She was ninety percent sure that Rose did it just because she could and ten percent sure that she did it because it was in the protocols for what to do if someone was saying something weird. "You better run because I'm going to spank you for that." She smiled to let her daughter know that she was mostly joking.

Rose giggled as she ran for it.


Ginny stared at the twins, "So how does it feel to have both ears again?"

Fred smirked, "Wicked."

George shrugged, "We can't make bad jokes about it anymore but after ten years... they've gotten old, so that's fine."

Ginny chuckled, "Good... I don't suppose you want to help me pack?"

"Not staying?"

"I'll kill a couple of people if I stay."

Fred glanced toward Ron's room, "Gleefully even."

George shrugged, "I'll pack up our room."


Jessica giggled, "Aunty, you're shorter."

Ginny sighed, "By like an inch, did Hermione put you up to saying that?"

The seven year old giggled, "Maybe..."

Ginny rolled her eyes, "Figures..."

Hermione smiled as she walked into the living room, "Hey cutie, anyone else with you?"

Ginny nodded toward the outside, "The twins are reclaiming their stockpile of joke items from the shed."

Hermione chuckled, "If the other world isn't dust, people are going to be surprised that their joke shop vanished between one day and the next."

Ginny smirked, "Personally I'm just glad the shed didn't explode in transit."

Hermione grinned, "True, so are you doing anything for a couple of days?"

"Not really, why?"

"I'd like to organize the house a bit, build some more sheds and organize some of the stuff that we bought." She wasn't going to mention that she had stolen most of the stuff in front of the children.

Jessica made her funny face, "Yucky work."

Ginny sighed, "Rats, I should have expected this."

Hermione laughed. "It won't be that bad. Besides, it's your house... I'm just the guest."

Ginny shook her head, "My home is your home. Besides, Harry has been happier the last couple of weeks with you here than I've seen him in years and I've seen him decently happy."

Hermione smiled, "Thanks."

"Actually, if you want to check the wards I'll start organizing stuff..."

Hermione said, "Actually, I know that the fidelius charm is still working because I couldn't tell my parents where I was going other than in vague terms. Still it wouldn't hurt to check the rest of the wards." Besides, they had stuck so many things in the house in various places that it was going to take weeks to sort everything out.


Rose stared at the snowy owl as it flew in the window, "Pretty..."

"Hey Hedwig." Hermione walked over and picked up the note that was tied to Hedwig's foot.

"Dad's owl?" She had seen some of dad's old pictures of Hedwig.

"Yes." Hermione unrolled the scroll and read it over.

"No wonder he could never bring himself to replace her, anything important?"

"Not really... a bunch of double talk. He's hiding out at the old Black Family manor for two days, then he'll come back here once it's safe. He also wants me to send him some money."

Rose rolled her eyes, "How come you didn't jump back further?"

Hermione sighed, "I was worried about causing people to explode if we went too far back in one shot. I had enough time dust to get us here with a pinch to spare and it was a good place to stop for a while." She could have gone back a few more weeks but hadn't wanted to chance a chaotic battle just to try to save a dying old man when she could save him on the next jump backwards. "Well I could have gone back a few more weeks but not far enough to stop the battle at Hogwarts. I wanted to be as close to Harry's seventeenth birthday as possible."

Rose frowned, "You can make more time dust right?"

"Yeah, it will just take time." Breaking into the ministry and stealing time turners would speed the process up but she wasn't willing to risk it as they were heavily controlled items.

"How far back are you thinking of going?"

"Far enough back to save your grandparents. It will probably take a couple of jumps to get that far back."

Rose sighed then said, "I'm glad you brought the house back. Not having my computer would suck."

Hermione laughed then said, "I actually raided a computer store before we time traveled, I got a bunch of new and old games for you as well as a couple dozen computers." She had stolen a copy of all the interesting video games from the video game store. She had also stolen or bought as many flash drives as she could get her hands on. She had also copied everything she could find about various stock markets the world over for the last thirty years. She hoped that someone could use the data to invest some money when they jumped back to when Harry was a baby.

Rose smiled brightly, "You're the best mom."

Hermione reached out and ruffled her daughter's hair. "I know. I'm not exactly sure where they are in this mess, maybe if someone helped me clean it up..."

Rose laughed as the other shoe dropped, "Sure Mum, I can do that."


Harry was glad that Hermione had sent Hedwig back with a stack of pounds so that he could order takeout. It didn't really bother him that much that he had to walk to get the food from the nearest sandwich shop five blocks away. It wasn't like he wasn't used to walking around Godric's Hallow to think. Luckily his younger self wasn't in bad shape. Paying Quidditch and from running around trying not to die had helped keep him in decent shape. Still, he wasn't really looking forward to spending two days with a crazy house elf. He wasn't sure how much magic the house wards blocked but he really hoped that no one came looking for him until he could defend himself without getting into trouble in two days. He had told Kreacher to tell people that came here that they weren't welcome. He had also told him to stun Mundungus if he showed up. He really didn't like the fact that Mundungus had stolen from him. Sure Sirius hadn't cared all that much while he was alive but he had plans for the junk scattered around the manor. He didn't want some thief to steal it without so much as a by your leave. He had used a poker and carried the horcrux necklace up to the attic so that he could dispose of it once the trace broke. He didn't want someone coming and stealing the thing before he could deal with it.

A part of him didn't really care about destroying the horcruxes but the rest wanted Voldemort dead even if he was leaving the world and never coming back. It wasn't mercy for people, it was simple vengeance. The guy had ruined his life in a lot of ways, there was no reason to allow him to survive. The horcrux at Hogwarts wasn't a big deal to acquire. The snake could be killed much like anything else, the horcrux in Bella's vault wouldn't be the same problem as it was the last time around because he had a better plan this time. His plan was rather simple. He would kill the Lestranges and Bella then kill the next in line until someone was willing to sell the cup. He didn't think it would take more than a dozen or so deaths before it either defaulted to Andromeda or someone got smart. He took a bite of his sandwich and smiled as he started working on plans for what to do with the time that Hermione needed to make more time dust.


Rose giggled as she tossed herself at her dad as he walked through the door. "Daddy!"

Harry laughed as he swung her around. "Hey munchkin."

Hermione rolled her eyes as she watched the scene with amusement, "Sure... I get a potion in the face and Harry gets hugs. I see how it is."

Rose giggled, "Welcome back." She looked up at his eyes, "What took you so long?"

Harry shrugged, "I had to break a cursed item that I didn't want it around here. I needed to use a lot of magic to do it. I figured waiting two days for the trace to break wasn't the worst thing in the world." He looked around at the house that looked to be more organized than he had left it, "Besides, I didn't want to have to help organize stuff..." He held his hands up as Hermione playfully glared at him, "Relax, I'm only joking... mostly."

"Yeahm yeah." Hermione smiled as two giggling redheads ran into the room. Luna Potter was the older of the two girls at eight while Megan was four. They both had deep dark red hair unlike their mother, it was more like the pictures of Harry's mother. It was also as wild and untamable as Harry's despite being long enough that it touched their bottoms when it wasn't braided. Raven Potter walked in behind them at a more sedate pace.

Luna giggled as she launched herself at Harry.

Harry grinned as he grabbed her out of the air with his magic and floated her over so that he could give her a hug. "I missed you Loony."

"Me too."

Megan ran over and grabbed his leg in a death grip.

"Ah right..."

Rose snickered, "Well you're here now, so you can help Ginny and I unpack everything."

Harry frowned as he patted Megan on the head lightly until she let go of his leg. "I would have thought she would be stuck at the Burrow."

Hermione snorted, "She would have stabbed Ron..."

"True... Let's get this place put back together, we're going to be here for a couple of months at least..."

Hermione estimated that it would take at least that long to make enough dust to travel back to first year to grab the sorcerer's stone. Then they would have to stop and make enough to jump back another ten years to save Harry's family. Either that or they would have to make enough to jump back to fifth year to save Sirius then stay for long enough to make enough dust to jump back to first year from there. She would have to talk to Harry about what he thought. They also had to figure out a place to build that wasn't used ten years ago. The middle of the forest might work. She would be sorry to let the cabin stay when they made the final jump. Maybe they could move it into the woods or something or move it to an abandoned lot, it was something to check on before they went back for the final time. "I want to go see if I can destroy the horcrux at school before the ministry falls. We also need to send a lawyer after the ministry about Dumbledore's will. I don't want the ministry knowing where to find us if we can help it." She also wanted to loot the Room of Requirement of useful stuff.

Harry smiled as he used a touch of magic to levitate Loony over to the couch, "Go for it, I'll stay here and keep an eye on the children."

Rose grinned, "Good, Ginny is starting to scare me with her organization."

Hermione snickered, "It's just her way of coping with having way too much in the house. Say Harry, if you feel up to using a touch of magic to put up some storage buildings while I'm out, I'd be very grateful..."

"Fine, go run your errand." Harry set his invisibility cloak on the rack and headed over to start sorting through the boxes scattered around the living room.

"Thanks." Hermione stopped whatever else she was going to say as she suddenly realized that she had seen Harry's invisibility cloak in the bedroom that morning... which meant that duplicates of the hallows existed. They had thought it possible but hadn't been sure that it would work considering they weren't completely sure the hallows were normal magical items, apparently so. "Can I borrow one of your invisibility cloaks?"

Harry smiled as he realized what she meant by one of. "Sure I left my original one in the bedroom. Feel free to test it and see if it works."

Hermione headed toward the bedroom with a bounce to her step. Having two cloaks was going to make things a lot easier.

Rose grinned, "Being that I'm the oldest, can I have one of the cloaks when I go off to school? I mean if you have extra..."

Harry laughed, "We'll see how many we end up with but probably. It's a family tradition after all."

"Sweet!"

Harry didn't mention that she would probably have to share with her sisters. He figured he could share some of his more interesting ideas for the year when Hermione got back. He figured it was time to introduce Lady Bloodwrath to the wizarding world. They had the list of wizards and students that turned out to be death eaters or worse, he didn't see any problem with doing some house cleaning before they jumped back into the past again. He also needed to find Draco and kill him so that ownership of the death wand fell to him.


Hermione wasn't happy about robbing Dumbledore's grave for the death wand but she really didn't want Voldemort to get it. She had barely looked at his face while she grabbed the wand after moving the stone lid with magic. She wasn't happy about flying into the castle either in order to get to the room of requirement. Even years of practice hadn't made her more than mildly competent on a broom. She was however very good at the charm to expand her pockets so she didn't have a problem fitting the shrunken broom in her pocket. Harry's cloak kept any of the portraits from seeing her as she snuck through the halls which was a plus as she didn't want anyone seeing her mask yet, though better than her face. She felt a bit strange sneaking through the halls. She hadn't been back to Hogwarts for years. Coming back to rob the place seemed wrong but it wasn't like anyone really used the junk in the room of requirement anyways. She wondered why she felt bad about stealing a bunch of unused books from school when she really didn't have a problem with killing dark wizards and eating their hearts. She pushed the thought aside as another strange consequence of being raised by her lovable if short sighted parents. She briefly considered looting the library but figured there would be time for that later, plus there were probably separate wards on the library during summer.


Ginny smiled as Hermione came back in, "How did it go?"

"One more horcrux down, I got the wand and I got a bunch of stuff from the Room of Requirement so I'm calling my trip a success."

"Good." Ginny opened the next closest box that she wanted to sort to see what was in it. "It would have been more helpful if someone had labeled all of the boxes."

Hermione snorted then said, "I labeled the boxes that I packed. Anything to worry about while I was gone?"

Ginny shook her head, "Nah, we're still waiting on more time dust until we feed Raven Kreacher's heart."

"Point... I'll get started on that as soon as I can get my lap cleared of boxes."

Ginny chuckled as she realized that the box was gems and jewels from one of the high end jewelry stores that they had robbed before they jumped back in time. "I know where to put this." She held up a particularly pretty ruby necklace.

Hermione chuckled, "That would look good on you."

"Thanks."

"I'm going to go find a place for the stuff I grabbed." Hermione looked around at the scattered boxes, "This is going to take forever."


Harry smirked as the lawyer handed him the snitch that Dumbledore had left him and the book that he had left Hermione, "Thanks."

"No problem Mr. Potter. Would you like me to file a complaint about the time required?"

"Nah, you actually managed to get the items faster than I would have thought possible."

"Very well then, I do believe that concludes our business. If you ever need us again please call."

Harry watched the man leave the restaurant with amusement. It was amazing the difference in service you got when you had money and when you didn't. Harry waited until the man left before licking the snitch. The snitch split open to reveal a cavity in the middle. He reached in and grabbed the resurrection stone out of it. He looked it over once to make sure that it was what he thought it was then he put it in his pants pocket for safe keeping. He waved his wand over the snitch and was faintly surprised when he didn't find any tracking spells. He waved his wand over it again and sealed it up. He decided that he might as well keep it as a trophy of the first snitch that he caught. It was either that or he would give it to Rose for a gift, she loved Quidditch even more than he did. Worrying about gifts reminded him about gold which reminded him that his account at Gringotts would have to be cleaned out at some point. Probably within a couple of weeks if he wanted to get all of his coin out of there without the goblins or the death eaters stealing it. He placed that on the back burner until they had the house more organized. He thought about burning Malfoy manor down then realized that Mr. Ollivander would be there at this point in time, not that he really cared if the creepy old man that had sold him out to Dumbledore and Voldemort died but it would be nice to have the wand maker alive to owe him a favor later. He had an interest in wand making and figured that Ollivander might be able to help him learn the tricks of the trade. He sighed as he once again realized that he would have to sort through his house before any of his other plans could go ahead. He flagged a waitress down, "Check please..." If he wasted more time his wife would be annoyed and then she wouldn't do that thing with her tongue that he loved so much.


Bill Weasley tried not to laugh as Molly launched into another rant about Ginny running off for the summer and about how Harry was missing. Luckily he was far enough away that his mother didn't hear his snickering. He wasn't going to take it personally that Harry and Ginny weren't going to be there as they had other things to worry about. They had made it the last time so he wasn't going to blame them for not wanting to have to run and hide from a bunch of death eaters. He smirked slightly as his mother launched into a lecture to Ron about how he had already lost the deluminator that Dumbledore had left him. Bill tapped his pocket where said deluminator rested. No sense in leaving such a valuable and interesting item with Ron. He made his exit while she was distracted screaming at Ron about responsibility and finding a girl that could put up with him. 'No chance of that now.' He wanted to drop the deluminator off with Harry before Ron or his mom went snooping through his stuff.


It took Harry and his family a bunch of bags and a couple of trips to empty his vault of everything in it. Still he considered it well worth the time it took considering that he wanted to take the gold with him when he jumped back in time and the only way to do that was to have it at the cabin.


Harry stared at the calendar, "September first, the ministry has fallen, Hogwarts is starting and the dark idiots will be there..."

Ginny looked at Harry and Hermione, "Are you up for the next part?"

Harry sighed, "It can't be any worse than pretending to be Draco."

Hermione snorted, "Sure it is, you have to keep your cool around Snape, at least for several days."

Harry shrugged, "True, do we have enough of the time dust for the plan?"

"Yeah, as long as we're only planning to jump back to fifth year rather than all the way to first."

Harry shrugged, "I'm fine with that. We need to pick up Sirius anyways and fifteen isn't so young..." He wasn't sure what he was going to do for the jump back to first year, probably just go physically and let there be another duplicate Harry out there as going back to his eleven year old self didn't really appeal to him all that much.

Hermione glanced at Ginny, "You're okay staying here with the kids right?"

"Yeah, the place is warded, we have plenty of food, water, entertainment and teaching supplies, we'll be fine. Just don't take too long." The truth was that Ginny was looking forward to some quality time with Rose so she wasn't going to object much to Harry and Hermione dealing with the dark wizards while she got to relax and have fun.

"Thanks..."

Harry sighed, "We should leave so that we can make the switch and torture them for information before the children get off the train..."

Ginny smirked as her two best friends got up to leave, "Give them hell."


Alecto Carrow wasn't amused to find herself tied up in her own office looking at a girl with a blood covered black mask staring at her. The blood stained red leather and white cloak the girl was wearing sent shivers down her spine. The last thing she remembered was walking down the hall thinking about how much fun it was going to be to teach about how evil muggles were then nothing before waking up. "What do you want?"

Hermione laughed, "I've already dosed you with truth potion, I want to know everything about what Snape told you, your orders from Voldemort and all of that..."

Alecto found herself talking despite her best efforts much to her horror as she spilled secrets that Voldemort would kill her for over the next hour.


Harry took notes as Amycus spilled his guts under the effect of truth potion. He was actually looking forward to teaching a couple of classes before things went south. He suspected that Hermione would be disappointed when she had to stop teaching muggle studies. She had this whole witch burning lecture planned that while it painted muggles in a bad light also helped illustrate the need to understand muggles enough to blend in. He gave it a couple of days before they got called to task for not teaching exactly how they were supposed to teach. Still it would be fun, plus it gave him plenty of time to work on the school's wards. He wanted to make sure that he could keep undesirables out once people noticed that there was a problem at the school.


Neville Longbottom was a bit confused as he sat through the third muggle studies class that he had been subjected to. If he didn't know better he would actually call the professor a decent teacher. While she was teaching about all of the bad things muggles had done during their history it was still interesting and there were a number of lessons to be learned so he was hopeful. It was interesting to know that she was also fair for points, not that the points really mattered but she had cut a couple of Slytherins down verbally for being disrespectful of him, mostly based on the fact that he was the heir of an old noble house but it was a bit scary to hear someone from the dark side call him a great wizard. She wasn't by any stretch of the imagination nice but she seemed more competent than he would have expected for a couple of Death Eater plants. The same could be said for the other professor. He taught a scary number of curses but other than that and a tendency to practice some of them on Ron Weasley the guy seemed all right, it was more than a bit creepy. He knew that the image was a lie though as the professor had put one of the Slytherins on the rack for grabbing Luna's ass. His screams had kept everyone up last night. Which was rather impressive considering the amount of stone and the distance between the dorms. On the plus side everyone had gotten the message, leave the noble girls alone unless they wanted to entertain. He shivered as the teacher smiled at him on the way out. 'Damn creepy...'

Ron Weasley shivered as the teacher's smile at Neville turned into an icy glare, 'He's got it out for me...' He whispered, "I wish Harry had taken me with him on his trip..."

Neville whispered as they walked down the hall, "Have you heard anything from him?"

"No... you?"

"Just a letter from Hedwig that said to keep my head down and that they were working on the problem.'

Ron sighed, "I should have bolted when Ginny did..."

Neville nodded, "Yeah..."


Snape glared at Amycus, "Was there a reason you disturbed my sleep last night with the screaming?"

Harry looked around the staff lounge at the rest of the teachers then back at Snape, "I had expected you to have silence charms up, please excuse the annoyance but the man assaulted a pure blood girl, no reason to let that type of thing slide." He looked at McGonagall and smirked, "We need some standards after all." He looked back at Snape, "Don't worry Sir, next time it happens I'll use them as a teaching aid for my classes rather than bother your sleep."

McGonagall had to bite back an angry retort as she wasn't the deputy headmaster anymore. That position had been stolen by a corrupt ministry. She was just hoping to be able to mitigate some of the damage by staying as a teacher.

Snape nodded, "See that you do..." He felt uneasy around the Carrows for some reason. It could just be because he didn't understand what game they were playing, they were doing what the dark lord told them to do but they were doing it with more cunning than he would have given them credit for. While he was getting complaints from Madam Pomfrey about the number of students he sent to her office it was mostly people that hadn't held their shield or hadn't been paying attention when he gave out safety directions, it was a bit worse than last year's defense class but Dumbledore hadn't let him teach some of the more interesting dark spells so he figured it was well within tolerance so far which might be what bothered him, he wouldn't have expected that type of restraint. He stalked out of the lounge.

Harry was rather glad that Snape finally left. He took a drink of his flask. Another ten minutes and he would have had to kill a couple of people or at least Snape, not that it would have been a bad thing it would have just ruined Hermione's plan to deal with the current generation of trouble makers. He walked out with a smile on his face.

McGonagall frowned as she watched Amycus leave. "This can't end well..."

Flitwick sighed then said, "It's not as bad as I was expecting..."

"That's what worries me."


Hermione smiled as she interviewed another Slytherin girl. She wanted to interview them all at least once before she started her grand plan. Even if truth potions were an effective means of getting answers she was glad that Dumbledore hadn't allowed teachers to dose students while she was there. Still, it helped her refine her list of which students to save and which to get rid of. "If there was a switch that you could flip that would kill someone without anyone ever knowing about it would you rather kill Harry Potter or You Know Who?" She didn't like not using his name but it was currently under taboo so that type of thing could get her killed. She noticed that the girl was trying to resist the potion. "Which one?"

The girl trembled then finally blurted out, "The dark lord."

Hermione smiled as she marked the girl's name off the list of Slytherins to kill, "Excellent you just became my new helper."

The girl trembled, "What do I have to do?"

"Nothing much, I just need you to sign a piece of parchment that says your head will explode if you talk about what you've heard here today plus I'll need you to play messenger, it's an important job but if you don't want it, I'll find someone else. Of course I'll be rather annoyed if I have to find another..."

She gulped then quickly said, "I can play messenger."

"Good, good." She handed over a spelled paper for the girl to sign. It was charmed to alert her if the girl broke her word. "Now go back to your dorm and send, Tracey Davis here. She's next on the list."

The girl gulped as she fled.

Hermione took a sip of her flask so that she could keep the teacher's appearance.


Pansy was not enjoying defense class as much as she thought she would be, it was supposed to be a glorious thing with the dark lord in charge but without the muggleborn here, there was hardly anyone to torment. Even picking on the blood traitors wasn't allowed as they were still purebloods. It was maddening, it was frustrating and it was grossly unfair. She was more than a bit disheartened to find out that it wasn't just going to be a walk in the park. She clutched her letter to her folks in her hand. Maybe her father could have a talk with someone about the way things should be.


McGonagall stared at Amycus then back at Snape, "Some of the parents are complaining?" The sad fact of the matter was that the current staff were actually some of the best they had had in years. Even if you took into consideration the Carrow's rather draconian punishments for bad behavior.

Harry raised an eyebrow, "Oh? Do tell? A howler from the Weasleys because I'm being too harsh? A complaint from Malfoy because he's slacking off?"

Snape shook his head, "No... several of the old pure blood members are expressing concern that you aren't allowing enough dark spells."

Harry rolled his eyes, "They're dangerous spells. I have more scheduled for later in the quarter after I'm sure none of the little maggots are going to blow someone up accidentally..."

Hermione piped up with, "I have several people that don't want to learn about the dangers of muggles outpacing us. Perhaps we should let them practice curses on them, it would build morale in the rest of the students I think."

McGonagall despite the seriousness of things had to suppress a chuckle. She was fairly sure that the people that were complaining about the curses were the same people that were complaining about the muggle studies class.

Harry snickered, "I think you mean incentive sister."

"Ah yes... either way we'll deal with the problem."

Snape scowled, "I shall impress on the parents that their children are being lazy but that is not something most of them like hearing." He really didn't want to see the children hurt and this year hadn't been nearly as bad as he thought it would be.

Harry shrugged, "Easily dealt with Sir."

Snape couldn't quite shake the feeling that Amycus was sneering at him every time he said sir even if his face didn't show it. "You're the deputy in charge of discipline deal with it."

Harry smiled coldly, "Gladly." He looked at Hermione, "Let's go have some fun."

McGonagall stared as the two left. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Snape sighed, "Yes..."


Harry smirked as he finished casting his ward over the grounds. It only took a few seconds for the first owls to start leaving the castle. Within twenty seconds it was a flood as they suddenly found that they couldn't stand to remain at the school or even on the grounds. He didn't want more of the students complaining to parents about his teaching style after all. He wrapped his invisibility cloak around him and headed back to his office. He would hate for someone to see him and connect that he had anything to do with the owls leaving.


Ron scowled, "How come there is a sign up sheet for Slytherins to take a magical field trip to the dragon preserve to get outfitted with dragon hide, that's insane."

Neville rolled his eyes, "Keep your voice down Ron, despite the teachers being mostly fair, the school is still run by you know who. I suspect that they only want their loyal people to get armor. Tracey Davis is a Slytherin and she doesn't have an invite. There are a couple of Slytherins that don't and a couple of Ravenclaw sixth years have an invite."

"Pansy is crowing about her invite." Ron scowled, "I mean dragon hide..."

Neville sighed, "Just keep your head down Ron, the teachers don't seem to like you..."

"They're ex-Slytherins, they don't like anyone."

Neville wasn't going to argue that they didn't actually seem to have too many problems with the Gryffindors in general just Ron. Still he was just trying to keep his head down.


Hermione frowned as she walked into her office and found that Luna Lovegood was sitting on her desk. "Can I help you with something?"

Luna smiled slyly, "I just wanted to say hello."

Hermione rolled her eyes as she shut the door and cast a muffling charm on the door. "It's good to see you again."

"It's been a while hasn't it... years and years... curious that, not exactly what I expected but interesting."

Hermione stared at Luna, "How?"

Luna smiled, "It was Harry's fault, he summoned me with the resurrection stone before we went back. Quite clever really."

"He never mentioned it..."

"I'm not sure he thought it would work..."

"Still that doesn't explain what gave us away..."

"Amycus is way too good of a teacher then there was the whole bit about him disliking Ron. Plus I enchanted my glasses to see through polyjuice."

Hermione frowned, "You don't wear glasses..."

"I guess that would make enchanting them hard then..."

Hermione had forgotten how difficult it was dealing with Luna at times. "Okay... so?"

Luna rolled her eyes, "Harry mentioned it when he interviewed me over the guy grabbing my ass."

She sighed in relief, "Okay..."

Luna looked around the office, "Do you have a plan?"

"Yes or at least part of one. Harry needs to finish up the wards on the castle then some of our other teams will deal with a lot of the dark lord's people then Harry kills him... again."

Luna smiled, "If you need any help..."

Hermione grinned, "Sure, I've already cleared out the Room of Requirement, if you can talk to Neville and see how many people you can smuggle there over the weekend while we send most of the Slytherins to the dragon preserve then that would be a big help. I've also got some containers I need buried in the fields around Hogwarts."

"For the battle?"

"Yes, we know more or less where he's going to line up his forces and we've got a shield around the grounds so we might as well take advantage."

Luna smirked, "That's not a bad idea really, I had better get out of here before people start thinking you've gone soft."

Hermione took a drink of her flask, "Good plan."


Ginny had to hand it to Hermione for suggesting an auto stunning jail cell. It meant that it was a lot easier to drag the Death Eaters in training out one by one and stab them in the heart with a needle for the purpose of eating their magic. They had set up a tent deep in the heart of the forbidden forest. They planned to toss the corpses to the spiders and then destroy the tent. The 'company' that was offering the trip to the dragon preserve was a semi fake company created by non other than Tonks while looking like Narissa Malfoy. It had no real assets other than a rented room in one of Lucius Malfoy's buildings to give it a bit more of a tie in to the family. Sure most competent people would assume that it was a frame job but it had been her experience that most wizards were deeply stupid people. It felt like she was doing nothing but cutting out hearts then walking outside quickly and feeding them to her or Hermione's children or one of her brothers. It was rather grisly work and she was fairly sure the children would need some therapy if they ever figured out what they were eating but in the long run it would help build their magic up to crazy levels of power. She figured each of the girls could eat a couple hearts before they were full. Then they would come back tomorrow and do the same thing.


Harry smiled at Draco Malfoy as he reported to his office for his trip. He was glad that Draco had closed the door to his office so that he wouldn't have to. "I hear that the director asked for you specifically."

Draco smirked, "Finally realize just how important I am?" He frowned as he turned and noticed that Pansy Parkinson was standing in the corner quietly with a silver collar around her neck, "What's going on?"

"Granting a girl a last wish..." He quickly pointed his wand at Draco and blasted him with a stunner. He pulled a syringe out of his pocket and stabbed Draco in the heart. "You're an idiot Draco." He pulled his knife out of his pocket. He smiled at Pansy, "You wanted to learn dark magic..." He handed her the knife by the handle. "You or him..."

She gulped, "What do I do?"

"Cut out his heart and eat it. If you can't then I'll give him the same choice. I know which choice he'll choose." Harry cast a silence spell on Draco's mouth and a binding spell on his limbs so that he couldn't move after he dispelled the stunner. He wasn't surprised that Pansy wasted no time cutting Draco's heart out while he stared up at her in shocked horror at her betrayal. She had a bit more trouble eating it as he watched but she was frantic enough about the insane dark arts teacher that she managed with only a bit of fumbling.

Pansy was crying as she stared at Draco's as the life left his eyes. "Now what?"

"Now, we find a couple more friends for you to eat then we find someone that you don't mind shagging and we have them eat some hearts for power, then we have them knock you up. Blood is important you see, your child will be powerful then we're going to feed you to him or her and make a truly worthy dark lady or lord. I mean that's what you wanted right."

She sobbed, "No... please no... I don't want to die."

Harry shrugged, "Lots and lots of people said that about the dark lord, do you think he listened? Do you think that what he does is so great now?"

She shook her head.

"You know the best part of the control collars? They won't allow you to hurt yourself or your baby, you'll know every second of every day that you're raising the monster that will kill you but you'll have to do it and because of dark magic you'll do it happily, isn't that the type of dark arts you wanted to learn?"

Pansy shook her head, she didn't want to die. She had just wanted to be important and to be noticed. A stupid mentality when the school was controlled by monsters but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

"I bet profesor Snape would shag you, we might have to dye your hair red but I think we can manage that..." Harry rolled his eyes when Pansy fainted. "Good grief." He waved his wand and cleaned up Draco's blood. He transfigured Draco's body into a wooden box then tossed it into the fire that was roaring in the fireplace. "No sense in leaving evidence." He smirked as he pointed at the simple conjured collar and banished it. He had just finished moving Pansy over to the couch when his door opened. He smiled at Hermione then asked, "How's your list going?"

Hermione scowled as she took another drink of her flask. She was looking forward to not having to keep drinking polyjuice every hour. "A project?"

Harry shrugged, "I was seeing if I could scare her straight, I had her cut out Draco's heart and eat it, you should have seen how much Draco screamed."

Hermione chuckled, "You know, she's actually decent looking when she's unconscious... what are you going to do with her?"

"I think that I'll let her go back to Slytherin after we collect the rest of the non savable people, having her wonder when we're coming for her will be amusing."

Hermione sighed, "Part of me really wants to eat her heart but she'll do more good as a cautionary tale, I mean the 'princess' of Slytherin suddenly ranting against the dark arts is amusing."

Harry nodded, "We should probably go see about the rest of the Slytherins that the world doesn't need."


Rose giggled in-between licking the blood off Ginny's fingers, "Can I have another?"

Ginny smiled at Harry's daughter from behind her black cloth mask. She had blood all down her bare chest from her food. Her face was a mess of blood but she looked adorable in a twisted way. "Not right now, otherwise your tummy will probably explode. Give it a couple of hours and we'll see." The three dozen prisoners chained behind the silenced bars stared at the girls in horror. Sound went in but not out which meant that all of the screaming in the world didn't help. Even Voldemort didn't rip out people's hearts and eat them. Whoever these people were they were obviously unhinged.

Ginny turned and smiled at the people chained in their makeshift jail. The wards that kept the students from apparating out in blind panic were strong enough that they would have held Voldemort. "We should give them a last show, by then we'll probably be ready for lunch."

Rose looked up at Ginny, "What are you thinking?"

"Well you are rather dirty..."

Rose laughed as she slipped her pants off, "Pervert."

Ginny gestured with her wand and conjured a bar of soap then shot a stream of warm water out of the tip of the wand.

Rose took the soap from Ginny and worked on getting clean to the enjoyment/horror of the collected death eaters in training as they knew that they were going to die in a couple of hours.


Snape stared at McGonagall in surprise, "What?"

"Eighty percent of the Slytherins didn't come to class, did I miss some announcement or something?"

Snape spun and looked at Horace, "What is the meaning of this?"

Horace gulped, "Ah, they were on the fieldtrip but they should have been back by now."

Snape raised an eyebrow, "Field trip?"

Horace frowned, "Didn't the Carrows tell you?"

Amycus frowned as he and Alecto walked in. Harry didn't really want to still be there but they had to play their part for a little while longer. "Tell you what?"

"What's this about a fieldtrip?"

"Ah yes, a delightful man arranged it all to give the purebloods a trip to a dragon preserve and get them all outfitted with dragon hide leather, I thought you would be pleased."

Snape considered drawing his wand and cursing Amycus but held onto his anger. "Why aren't they back yet?"

Hermione frowned, "I'm not sure, there must have been a mix-up."

Harry started laughing at the look on Snape's face. "Fine, you caught us. We might have lied about a fieldtrip to get the death eaters in training out of the castle."

Snape stared at Harry, "What?"

Harry grinned as he raised his hand and conjured a ball of lightning then tossed it at Snape. "I'm afraid we're not who you think we are."

Hermione waved her wand, "Accio wands." She used her other hand to catch the rest of the professors wands. "No one move and no one dies."

Snape was having trouble moving his limbs luckily that had helped as he still had his wand but that was about the only bit of good news. "What did you do?"

Hermione shrugged, "A little bit of dark magic, pity that we don't actually work for your dark lord."

Harry smiled, "Lady Bloodwrath has a way better benefits package than Riddle."

Snape's eyes widened, "Who are you?"

"None of your concern Snape. Still, I should thank you for making it so easy to set up better wards."

Snape frowned, "What do you mean."

Hermione smirked, "Through a lot of trial and error we figured out a way to burn any Death Eaters to death if they enter the wards. We haven't actually activated them yet, but we're planning to in ten minutes."

Harry sneered at Snape, "I suggest you start running if you want to get off the grounds before you're dead. Protecto Morsmorde!"

Snape screamed as his dark mark started burning.

Hermione smirked, "Took me years to figure that ward out. It starts with agony then it gets worse."

Fear for his life gave Snape the strength to move his limbs as he lurched to his feet and ran for the window.

McGonagall stared at the two people that obviously weren't Death Eaters, "Who are you?"

Harry chuckled, "Let's just go with ex-students that don't appreciate Riddle thinking he owns the school."

Hermione shrugged, "We should probably prepare for him coming here."

Horace stared at the two people like he had never seen them before, "You're not the Carrows are you?"

"Nah, we stuffed them in a trunk the first day of class, we were afraid that the teaching standard would fall to an all time low with them teaching. Considering Snape and Binns, that's saying something."

McGonagall frowned, "What happened to the Slytherins that went on the field trip?"

Harry lied, "No idea, we contracted that out to some other followers of Lady Bloodwrath."

McGonagall raised an eyebrow, "That sounds ominous."

Harry shrugged, "On reflection it probably wasn't the smartest thing. Anyways we should be a bit more worried about the force Riddle is going to bring to bear on us."

Horace stared at Harry, "How do you know that name?"

"Tom Riddle, yeah, I'm not saying his other name as it's under taboo for some stupid reason."

Horace stared at Amycus or whoever was pretending to be Amycus. "It breaks protections and let's his people come for you..."

Harry shrugged, "We have some people working on that..."

Hermione chuckled then said, "It should be an interesting experiment."


Tonks didn't like that she was in a hole not far from a cliff. Her magical earmuffs meant that she couldn't hear anything other than her own thoughts. The upside was that she was a long ways from the beaten path. Several dozen muggle repelling charms around the area meant that no muggles would come within miles of her location. It was for the best considering what she was doing. "Voldemort!" She ducked down and waved the mandrakes she was holding by their leaves around while being careful to not knock her earmuffs off her head, not that it was remotely possible as they were stuck on with a charm so that she couldn't knock them off. She felt a bit silly waving the plants around when she couldn't really see or ear anything because of the hole that she was in and the earmuffs that kept the mandrake cries from instantly knocking her out or killing her. She planned to call out his name a couple of times then apparate to the next location with a hole and muggle repelling charms that she had set up and repeat her call to Voldemort. Sure, she might kill some people that were slightly innocent but the truly innocent had already quit or left the country. At least that was what she told herself.


McGonagall frowned, "What do you mean?"

Harry grinned, "I've got some friends running around with earmuffs and mandrake root screaming Riddle's other name. I figure the snatchers will get a nasty shock."

Horace winced, "That's barbaric."

Hermione glared at Slughorn, "Don't give me that crap. Barbaric is the fact that the country allowed Riddle to take over with less than a thousand marked followers. I mean seriously he's not that damn scary."

Harry sighed at the looks of fear on people's faces. "I don't think we're needed here..."

Hermione nodded, "True..."

Horace stared at the people wearing the Carrow's faces, "What do you expect us to do?"

"I expect you to fight, the students that are left should help. Send out the call to the parents of the students that are left. I expect Snape to have told Riddle that there is a problem at the school so I suspect that he'll be coming here soon. I'm going to go prepare some surprises for him."

Hermione chuckled as she set their wands on the table then walked out with Harry. They made a dash for the corner before the teachers figured out that they should probably chase them to figure out what the hell was going on.

Harry smiled as he disillusioned himself while Hermione did the same. "Time to let this crap wear off."

Hermione laughed, "It should soon. The sad part is that I was looking forward to grading the essays that I assigned over the weekend."

"I can't take you anywhere..."


Snape scowled as he recalled a letter he had received a couple of days ago. 'If and when Hogwarts is taken back, kill the snake and Voldemort will be mortal. LL' He hadn't placed much stock in it at the time but figured that reporting back that he had lost Hogwarts wasn't going to be good for his health either. He smirked as he realized what he had to do. He apparated to Diagon Alley and went to the post office where he wrote a letter to Malfoy explaining what happened and that he quit. He smirked as he pictured Malfoy having to explain that to Voldemort.


Raven groaned as she collapsed into the chair back at the cabin. "If I have to eat any more hearts for at least a month I'm going to vomit."

Rose snickered, "It's not that bad the magic makes it okay to eat and they're tasty."

"You're weird..." She giggled.

Rose laughed, "I know... So how long do you think it will take for dad to waste Riddle?"

Raven shrugged, "He's done it before. That was years ago too. I don't expect him to last that long, maybe a day or two depending."

"I say that dad will be back in a day or less."

"Two knuts."

"You're on."

Ginny peeked her head out of the hall after putting the rest of the girls down for their naps. "What are you betting on?"

Rose smirked, "How long it takes dad to ice Riddle."

"Ah, what's the bet?"

"I've got less than a day, Raven's got two days..."

Ginny figured that it would take Voldemort at least two days to move his forces into position. "I'll say more than two days."

"Deal."


Harry smirked as he approached the gates to Malfoy manor. "Should we do this the easy way or the fun way?"

Hermione sighed, "Let's just blast the gates apart and walk in, we know where we're going."

"Fine, disillusion?"

"Yeah, get the wand maker then get out."

Harry grinned as he cast a disillusionment charm on himself while Hermione cast one on herself. They raised their hands and unleashed a torrent of magic that ripped the wards apart and shredded the gate like tissue paper. He flicked and slashed his wand striking down any death eater that came to investigate the alert of the wards.

Hermione took the time while Harry was picking off death eaters to blast large bus sized holes into Malfoy manor. She would be the first to admit that she might have had an unreasonable level of dislike for the Malfoys but destroying their manor was somewhat cathartic. Though not as much as when she ripped Bellatrix's head off with a well placed slicing curse. She summoned her head to show to the goblins so that her vault would jump to the next person in line.

All told it took them about ten minutes to get in and out with Ollivander. They killed twenty death eaters in the attempt which wasn't too bad considering only one got away that they knew of. Still it wasn't either of the Lestrange brothers so Harry didn't care. He needed their heads to show the goblins.


Neville was rather relieved to see Harry Potter when he spotted him walking into the room of requirement, "Harry!"

Harry smiled at Neville, "How's it going?"

"We're holding up. Luna said that you would be around after you finished dealing with some stuff."

Harry looked over the gathered people, "Yeah, Hermione is dealing with some details, trying to destroy a cursed cup. Once she finishes we'll get to the main event."

"Good..."

Harry sighed then said, "Sorry, I know you wanted to but I had to kill Bellatrix..."

Neville stared at him, "What?"

"She was at Malfoy manor..."

"She's really... she's dead?"

"Yeah, I've got a picture even."

Neville smiled brightly, "That's great!"

"Yeah, so Voldemort is coming and he's going to bring a small army if you're interested in helping we could use the wands..."

Neville nodded, "We're with you..."

Harry smirked, "Good. I've got a plan."


Andromeda smirked as she looked over the contents of her sisters' vault. Even with as much corruption as there was because of the dark lord's ministry controlling things the goblins still kept their bank running as best they could. Which meant that when the last heirs had died for her sisters, she inherited their wealth. While she wasn't overly concerned about the wealth she was rather happy to see the cup that needed to be destroyed in order to make Voldemort mortal again. She walked over with a bag and grabbed the cup with the bag having been warned about the curse on it.


Neville stumbled and almost fell off the wall of the castle as Harry pushed a button on a muggle remote control. The entire hillside where Voldemort and his followers were ceased to exist as several hundred pounds of duplicated explosives went off at once. Luckily for their hearing the shield absorbed most of the sound and damage before failing, of course there was no real need of the shield anymore as there was no more army. "What the hell was that?"

Harry snickered, "Hermione tried to tell people, muggles are damn scary. In some ways the Carrows were right there should be a mandatory muggle studies class for first years that teaches purebloods about what muggles can do or at least how to blend in, ah well so much for Voldemort."

Neville stared at the destruction in horror, "They're gone..."

"I certainly hope so, it took a long time to plant that much explosive. I guess I didn't really need all the students to come out though it was a rather impressive demonstration about why we shouldn't make the muggles angry."

Neville could hardly take his eyes off the massive crater. "They can do that?"

"That and more easily."

"That's rather scary..."

"Yeah, it is."


The wizarding world as Harry had pretty much expected vilified him for killing so many upstanding yet brainwashed members of polite society with underhanded muggle tactics. He wasn't terribly worried about it though as most people were far more worried about the dark Lady Bloodwrath than they were Harry Potter. There was also the fact that his house was under a fidelius charm and he was the secret keeper so it wasn't like they could get him. Hermione was a bit sad that she couldn't finish out the year teaching but Ginny and her talked her out of trying because there was still the matter of the missing eighty percent of Slytherin that people wanted the Carrows to answer for. It was better that they never connected the dots between the Carrows and Harry and Hermione, if for no other reason than it would taint the memory of the people that remained. Not that that number was all that high. Neville and Luna would be joining them on their trip into the past, as would Remus, Andromeda and Sirius's ghost, now that they new they could drag ghosts into the past. They were planning to skip all the way back to first year so they could grab the sorcerer's stone and stock up on time dust for the second ten year push to save his parents. Several of them were going physically this time so there would be duplicates running around but as they didn't plan to make as many waves that wasn't as big a deal as it would have been this time. He thought that having another Ginny and Hermione around would be either interesting or scary as hell. He was slightly worried that that the twins might decide to go back physically now that they were whole as that would mean there would be four of them running around. Harry winced as he realized that.