Susan had appointed herself as something of a constant guard. Harry wanted to tell her that she would not do much against Voldemort, but it seemed hard to get rid of her; she kept getting done with everything else he assigned her; it was as if she was trying to prove that if one wanted something enough, it was obtainable. Presently, the two of them were monitoring the Ministry official, Dirk Cresswell, they were supposed to meet in a week. It was odd that a whole week's time was requested, but it gave them the chance to do some surveillance first. They had taken the chance to catch up on a few things during the stakeout.

"Right before the battle started, Ernie told me that you knew who Daphne and Blaise were the whole time."

"I wouldn't imagine that you had time to watch everyone coming and going, but one time I followed them back out of interest. I didn't think anything of the fact that they went to the dungeons, not when I remembered that there have always been people interested in bloodlines and anyone changing the game in Slytherin. They didn't seem to be up to anything." She looked back from the Omniculars. "Why did he tell you that?"

"He told me that Hermione concealed it from me as well," he said, shaking his head. Ernie had volunteered to use Polyjuice Potion and pretend to be Harry on the other side of the battle, but it had not worked nearly as well as anyone had hoped. Officially, he was only there as a backup, a last-ditch effort to confuse the enemy, but Voldemort saw them coming, and probably saw through his disguise as well. That, of course, did not save him. "That was how we came up with the idea to try to treat her and Daphne's condition by putting them in the Room."

"I see... in order for them to have shared memories like you mentioned, she would have had to be aware of who 'Alice Tolipan' really was." Susan was back to looking at the target. So far, there was nothing suspicious. They learned that he was the head of the Goblin Liasion Office, and he was fluent in Gobbledegook. A few of their numbers might have been insulted that he was the one they picked for the job. "I suppose I can't blame him for saying anything."

"I'm aware that you told him that in confidence. No, I don't blame you for not telling me before." The bitterness in his voice was not directed at her.

Cresswell was having tea at a cafe; there was nothing out of the ordinary, and yet he was carrying a Sneakoscope in his sleeve like a backup wand. It was like he expected to be attacked at some point, and it gave them pause. He could have been asked to be perfectly normal in anticipation that they would send someone to watch him, but that was a bit far-fetched; they could have just as easily chosen to have the meeting right away; the DA had even implied that they wanted it done sooner rather than later.

"Well, the best we can do for him now is to not screw up what he started. He was one of the biggest proponents of repairing relations."

"Then don't screw this up," he said. "Do you want me to make that an order?"

"No. I want it to feel real."

The two of them jumped down from their perch, landing on a second-floor balcony that overlooked the cafe where their target had only just turned the other direction. Passing through the open window-door, they cast a few diagnostic charms. Everything they had found out so far suggested that their subject was a man in a precarious position; he had worked his way into the Ministry even when there were a lot of people who opposed him at every turn. It was hard to know how to look at him; he was making no secret of his positions on goblins and no one else made any secret that they did not like him for them.

"I found something, Dragon Marshal."

It took a matter of seconds for Susan to uncover a scroll. Sure enough, Cresswell had not brought his job description out for tea with him. He was being asked to detect if there were any abnormalities in the famous Harry Potter and determine if he could be put to better use. The whole thing was pretty transparent as far as either of them could tell, so it was a wonder why they gave the job to him apart from his reputation as something of a political outsider. The frankness suggested that the reputation was in name only.

"Institutions do that sort of thing all the time," his subordinate said after they apparated out of there, which was after they took another look around, finding nothing of particular value for their purposes. "It's a fake conflict. There's old money and new money, there's more and less authoritarian, there's people who only care about sticking it to goblins and mermen and whatever else- my parents have always said that whoever wins, nothing really changes, and the only difference is in the rhetoric they use, because your only other option is someone using different rhetoric."

"That's a disparaging perspective for a Ministry brat," he said. They were on a hill overlooking the base that had been decided as the apparation point. "Ron's obviously no different."

"I'm aware. For the record, I think quite a few people in government are doing real work, and Mr. Weasley is certainly one of them. The world would fall apart if muggles found out about us, and very little would change for the better. What I think is pointless is when everyday people try to interact with it when they really only have any idea about it from what the institution effectively puts out about itself."

"So, you're like Michael, then."

"It was hard not to agree with him, but I managed. Put it this way- out of any potential system, one where people are by their own initiative informed and make decisions for their own purposes is preferable, but one where they're all basically house elves is better than the one we've had so far. I'm in this with you as long as they can all prove they don't want to be house elves."

"I'll take that into consideration," he said, looking back at her out of the corner of his eye. It was easier than people without glasses probably thought. "Here's something you should take into account. Pretty much all those who've got some kind of problem with a system run by the people thinks they're better than the rest, and they always think they're going to be the ones running things when power goes into the hands of a few. Hermione said she doesn't know of anyone who wanted an oligarchy and didn't want to be a part of it. I've enjoyed working with you and I can respect a difference of opinion with respect. I'll remind you, though, that if you turn against us, you die."

"I know. This group, however, as you said, will only last as long as it's necessary. What you and the others seem to think is necessary is just defending ourselves, just putting together enough power to throw off their chains before they kill us, and maybe defeat Voldemort while we're at it. I'm not disparaging you for that, of course. If that's all you want, you can have it- but there's more than just Michael and myself who want more than that. It's quite popular among the recruits. You can imagine that quite a few of their numbers thought that joining early was a good way to secure a position... down the road."

"That doesn't surprise me," he muttered. He was already swimming in promises to take care of various families of deceased units. "Well, if you can make a case that your system would do a better job, you'll have to start by seeing if the Quibbler starts to gain in readership, as well as other publications. I would hope the wizarding public can do better than that, anyway." Still holding his wand, he raised it as he put it away in his jacket pocket. "You already know what could cause you to run afoul of our deal, so all I have left is this- if I find out you had a hand in shutting down alternative media, I'll kill you myself."

Harry walked ahead by himself. He liked Susan, and it was a sour way to end the conversation, but there was no avoiding it if it had come that far. It seemed unlikely anyone would have guessed that members of his organization would be plotting about what to do after the dust settled, when there was as of yet no telling where it would land. It had been a productive day, but he knew it was not over yet. Blaise met him as soon as he got to the base.

"We need to be thinking further ahead."

"How much further?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I know you only now returned from scouting the Ministry contact- we need to acquire magical artefacts and whatever else that might close the gap between us and the Death Eaters."

"It's an obvious move," he said. "It's a way of increasing the amount of force that we can put out without calling attention to ourselves at the same time." He took a breath. "Whatever there is to find out there, they've already found it. We can't spend time chasing down legends-"

"I'm not talking about legends; there are real-" He sighed. "-and it's not like the giants' blood either."

Some of the recruits seemed to think that various trophies from creatures would make all the difference in the world. It was true that they had magical properties, like unicorn hair and dragon heartstring, but not all the properties were relevant to combat. Frequently their properties were peculiar to the individual creature from which they were claimed and still others that actually boasted to have strong effects were unreliable. There was nothing that they were going to find that could block a killing curse and nothing that could present more of a threat, or if it did it would not replace a good library of spells.

"I'll give you one minute to make your case."

"We need something like what Rookwood had. We can't simply go on hoping that they won't pull out another artifact like that."

"He's still alive," Harry said. "-for all I know. He still has it, and he'll use it again. We need to avoid a direct-"

"Don't you see what the problem with that is? Voldemort has all he needs to kill you. The reason that thing wasn't with him was because he couldn't eliminate the chance that you were in the other group."

"You're not the first to think of that."

"If I'm not, then why do we still not have anything to counter that? Why are we still basically fucked if he uses that thing?"

"It's only a momentary pause, and it applies to his own allies as well."

"That's all he needs," Blaise said, throwing up his hands. "He could have stunned you."

"That's true. It wasn't what he was ordered to do. I'm not sure why he decided to just surround me rather than disarming me or stunning me." He shook his head. "This might have been false, but he told me that he'd actually forgotten how to cast certain spells. Voldemort's orders must have been vague enough, like 'bring me the target' and as long as he thought of some way of doing that, the details weren't important." Having heard virtually everyone's accounts, he had the sense that though Ernie's trick with Polyjuice Potion had fallen through, he sensed that his target was around there somewhere, just like Harry had sensed him with the scar, and he might have thought that when his servants were using the mark, they were requesting aid rather than announcing their victory.

"If you're saying you were saved by some amount of ambiguity in his orders-"

"I was. I don't have a problem with that, not for taking pride in my survival or anything like that. You're right to suggest that it's a problem if we're just going to hope that it turns out the same way, but you're not the first to bring this up. We are working on a solution, though."

"What's that?"

"I was conscious of time stopping when it stopped. Were you?"

"Of course."

"Most likely, so were Hermione and Daphne as well. There was nothing to prevent them from using Legilimency."

"Wait, then time didn't really stop at all."

"I don't know. Suppose it didn't," he said, putting his own hands up for a moment. "I think, though, that it's just not working as well as it could be. Most likely, Rookwood didn't really know how to craft it; he just got rid of it so that he could retrieve it later, and he knew how to use it. Most likely, only the creator really knew how it worked, and she died- he might have killed her himself, though he didn't take credit for it." He shook his head. "One of the things we missed and forgot back when we were younger was that there were investigations into former Death Eaters."

"I didn't miss it. My housemates were complaining about it all the time."

"Okay, well, I did, and several others in Gryffindor forgot about it as well. With the whole basilisk thing, I forgot that the whole reason Lucius Malfoy was trying to get rid of Tom Riddle's diary was because they were going to search his property and he thought it would be just the thing if it turned out that Arthur Weasley's daughter had a dark artefact on her." He shrugged. The man had disappeared, along with the rest of his family, as announced by the Quibbler. "Anyway, Rookwood probably foresaw that kind of thing when he chose to hide it rather than leaving it with a friend, and while they were looking into his actions, they reopened Danae Smitty's research after he discredited her, which was why there was some interest in testing out the Time Turners the following year."

"That was the reason you said that Hermione got ahold of one?" Blaise asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I took that sort of thing for granted at the time. I think the Death Eater investigations is part of why people dismissed the fact that there was an entire attack on the World Cup when their master was supposedly dead and gone forever. It was easy to make the case that they were just pushed back against a wall and decided to demonstrate why they weren't a trifling matter." He took a breath. As much as the average person deserved criticism for not realizing that Voldemort had returned after the attack on Azkaban, which they could not have considered possible, or else they would have done it earlier, it was easy to see how they got started thinking that Harry was just an attention-seeker. "Anyway, we're not likely to get any more powerful magical artefacts just handed to us like that."

"I'm not talking about a handout, and I'm not talking about something that we build ourselves. I'm saying that we need to go into the Ministry, probably the Department of Mysteries, and steal their remaining Time Turners. There's no way the Dark Lord has anyone working for him in there. They would have used them already."

Harry paused. He had been talked down from invading that very department once, but this time he could be quite certain that it was not a trap from the enemy. There had to be some limiting factor that kept the device from being viable, though, or else the Unspeakables would have used it to see for themselves whether or not Voldemort had returned. Even though Hermione had made the case that it really did not change anything about the past, it only gave you an opportunity to do what had already been done, or else would be done by someone else, it seemed obvious that they would work for seeing what had happened if you had missed your chance. Did they just not know enough from how she had used it in third year? Could she be their only test subject?

"I'm starting to wonder about that. In order to approve of this mission, I'm going to need some proof that the Time Turner would be viable for our purposes."

"We could use it to see where he hid his Horcruces."

"That's true, but we think that we already found them," Harry responded, sighing. He was including himself, of course. "Dumbledore revealed that he already found and destroyed one of them, and we've hidden the rest."

"We can see where he's hiding himself," he said. "We can spy on their old meetings."

"That's true. You're thinking what I was thinking. I need to know, then, if it's viable to steal it. If it is, then I approve."

It was a difficult decision. As he went to bed for the night, he could not think of anything that would be more heavily guarded than the Time Turner. Blaise seemed to think that there would be more than one, which was possible, but they had no evidence to suggest as much. It seemed useless to make more than one; the whole purpose of time travel was to manipulate the past- what was the point if someone else could go back and change whatever you did?

His dreams took him to the past, but not to Cedric's death, as had they so many times before. It was a random day in first year; he was sitting in a classroom doing his work, but nothing around him really stood out. It would be an easy dream to ignore if most of his dreams were normal and boring, but for him, that was something that stood out. Had it been because he was just thinking of time and going back? Of course it was worth it to steal the damn thing if there was really a way of doing it, if for no other reason than to prevent it from being used for evil, but what if he really could go back and change things?

"Mr. Riddle?"

He looked up to see Tom Riddle right next to him, answering some pointless question. For the first time, it was not one of his own memories, he just thought he was in first year because he was surrounded by kids about that age. The boy answered the question well and was commended for it with points to Slytherin. Could he really go back so far, before his own memories started? Could he at least see his parents?

Perhaps some sense of expecting disappointment, practiced from a young age, had told him that if he asked Hermione, she would tell him the most it could go back was about seven hours, but she had to have thought of that. There was no way that such a powerful instrument would have come with no warnings, no list of rules that she had to follow. Even back then, though, when she basically always followed the rules, she would have made an exception for anything so important. It must have been impossible to just go back a minute or so and catch Pettigrew.

Harry realized part of what was so strange was being so firmly conscious in a dream. All of a sudden, the young Tom Riddle was not next to him, but a younger version of himself, with Ron just next to him. Was it before they befriended Hermione? It was hard to tell the point of the dream, if there was one. After all, it was quite common for dreams to mean nothing, but he had become accustomed to some weird lesson that he had to ponder when he woke up. What was strange was that he was conscious all the way through it, and he did not seem to be waking up. The kids got up when class ended and left the room in an orderly fashion and he was trapped there with a strange memory that it used to be hard to get around the castle and they relied on Prefects and staying in groups for the most part.