"Well, Miss Potter?" Snape said as he opened the door to his office. "Inside."

She obediently entered on his heels, taking the chair she'd taken a lifetime ago. He took his own place behind his desk and studied her from across the barrier. "The Headmaster informs me that the mutt told you that you were to study Occlumancy with me."

"That is what Sirius indicated," Bronach said blandly, leaving out the various uncomplimentary things her godfather had muttered until she reminded him that she wouldn't tolerate his old grudge. "As such, I had several days to determine what books on Occlumancy the Black library possesses." And offer them to my partners. She was fairly certain that the pendents she'd made each of them as bonding gifts were stronger than any Legilimans attack, but it was still worth attempting Occlumancy lessons with them. When she had time.

"Then I will not waste either of our valuable time with trivial explanations," Snape said briskly. "Your little…demonstration…last term shows that you know the basics. Legilimans."

She had a moment to smile, and then sunk into the depths of her mind.

"What is this place?" Snape asked suspiciously, glancing around at his surroundings.

"This is the ruined city of Dolindîr," Bronach said, perching on a bit of stone that was a popular resting spot for those observing the archery range. "By the time I came to it, it was called Esteldín, and it was a bastion of hope against the darkness."

He eyed her warily, still glancing around. Bronach wanted to roll her eyes. She'd refrained from populating the courtyard with the Rangers and refugees of her memory, just to prevent any mishaps caused by a spy's paranoia. "You are familiar with Occlumancy, I see."

"No thanks to you," she told him bluntly. "I assume that the headmaster has not reported what I made known to members of the Order this summer upon my arrival in Grimmauld Place?"

"No he has not," Snape looked frustrated.

"Time travel," Bronach said, jumping to the relevant part. "I believe myself to be a bit over two hundred years old by now."

He scowled. "Impossible."

"Magic," she teased, unable to help herself.

"And the Telcontars?" Snape glared at her. "What are you going to tell me about them? That they're also two hundred years old?"

"Aragorn, yes," she smiled. "Arwen is nearly three thousand years old."

"Absolutely impossible," he said flatly. "No wizard or witch has ever achieved such."

"Then it is a good thing Aragorn is not a wizard, and Arwen is not a witch," Bronach shrugged. "And it is a good thing for you that they have decided to allow you into our confidences."

"What an honor," the professor drawled sourly. "Truly, I am flattered."

"I know about the vow you made to the Headmaster," Bronach told him. "I know about your childhood friendship with my mother, I know about the incident after your Defense OWL, I know that you carried the prophecy to Riddle, and I know that you told the Headmaster that Riddle had chosen me as the subject of the prophecy."

Snape paled slightly.

"At this point in time, I have had two hundred years to come to terms with my incredibly complicated feelings about you," she returned to bluntness, not wanted to sugarcoat anything. "You were, effectively, a wizarding Nazi until the cause threatened the one person you gave a damn about, and the Headmaster used that to manipulate you into dancing to his tune."

"And now you use it to manipulate me into doing your bidding," Snape said curtly, his shoulders tense.

"Not particularly," she said with a shrug. "I am capable of managing my own protection, and Riddle will be dead for good by the start of summer. What I am offering you is liberty."

"Nobody offers true liberty," he snapped. "Just the illusion of it."

"You did not swear service to the Headmaster, but protection to me," Bronach laid it out for him, wondering if he was smart enough to follow the breadcrumbs. "The Headmaster leverages it to position you as his spy in Riddle's camp, in the name of my protection. I will ensure Riddle, and his Death Eaters, are no longer a problem. My protection is in my own hands; I dismiss you. Do with that what you will."

"You speak as if it is as simple as that," he hissed, raking a hand through his hair. "That you can just speak the words, and it will be done?"

"Your vow created a binding between us, one that has likely driven you subconsciously to act in my protection." She and Hermione had tossed theories around until they settled on this as the most likely, which she'd verified over the summer while she was setting her mindscape to rights with the increased sensitivity to magic that she'd developed in Arda. "It is passive, unless I am in danger, and it then activates to direct you to where it seems most effective for you to act. For instance, I suspect that it would have directed your gaze to my cursed broom during the first match of the 1991 Quidditch Cup."

He scowled darkly at her, clearly unhappy with the revelation. She didn't particularly care about his delicate sensibilities, given his general disregard for hers, and those of the non-Slytherin students. "Regardless, by the time I release you, the binding will be gone."

"By the time you release me?" he scoffed, glancing around. "I entered of my own free will."

"And you won't be exiting until I'm finished," she replied calmly. "Now, are you going to sit down, or are you comfortable standing for the entire conversation?"

Reluctantly, he sat down on a nearby chunk of fallen stone that made a particularly good gathering point for patrols, so it hadn't been moved until the restoration of Esteldín. Bronach settled herself a bit more comfortably and waited him out.

"You mentioned a conversation?" he said, affecting an air of boredom.

"This is the chance to ask all the questions you've been sitting on," she told him. "Ask away."

"You said you were over two centuries old," Snape said slowly. "What-?"

"The war ended on the second of May, nineteen ninety eight," she told him, guessing at what he wanted to ask. "Please, only ask about your own fate if you are prepared to know. If you react badly I will be taking the knowledge back."

He thought about that for a long moment, and then nodded. "I wish to know."

"You committed an act that solidified your position in Riddle's circle while simultaneously burning all bridges with the Order. While Riddle controlled the Ministry and the school, you were at the very least permissive of atrocities conducted against the student population if not participatory based on the accounts of those who were present. During the final conflict, you were killed by Nagini for something you actually hadn't done." She eyed his reaction and decided he could stand a bit of needling. "Your name was cleared posthumously, and I believe they decided on an Order of Merlin, Third Class, though it was rather controversial."

As she had suspected, the dour man scowled at news of the award. In a way, that had been part of the reason Bronach had agreed with it, even while Ginny was furious with her over what the redhead had considered condoning his cruelty. They'd stopped speaking for almost a year, and their relationship hadn't really been the same after that.

"And you?" he asked, clearly diverting from his own fate. "What happened in the next two hundred years?"

"Well, a bit over twenty years after Riddle's war ends, the Ministry decides I'm his heir apparent or something," she shrugged, picking illusionary dirt out from under her fingernails. "I never found out who started it, but I strongly suspect dear Dolores. A small army of aurors arrived at my residence as I was attempting to depart it for good, and in the ensuing fight…well, it's unclear what happened, but whatever the combination of spellfire and an activating portkey did, it's not something I've ever been able to replicate."

"And you ended up here?" Snape gestured at their surroundings. "Esteldín?"

"Not for years," she said fondly. "I arrived in a treacherous bit of mountains north of here, and found my way to a people called the Trév Gállorg. They took me in for a while, taught me all of the basic lifeskills we no longer learn from the cradle, and I came into contact with a company of Rangers that disobeyed orders to stay out of Angmar, where my people lived. After the company was killed, and the survivors lost to us, I behaved in a very Gryffindor manner and woke up here."

"This is not anywhere we can reach, is it?" the professor said suspiciously. "Ancient history?"

"Different dimension, I'm fairly certain," Bronach said with a shrug. "Anyway, I was in and out of Esteldín for quite some time, going where I was most needed, until I was rather infamous and they sent me south to lie low for a while. It worked, until those Gryffindor tendencies reared their head, and I tacked myself onto a desperate gamble regardless of anyone else's opinions on it. That's how I met Aragorn, and indirectly Arwen."

He eyed her warily, as if he was considering stunning her and taking her to Madame Pomfrey's. "And who are they, truly?"

"Aragorn Elessar of the House of Telcontar, King of the Reunited Kingdom and Second of His Name," Bronach couldn't help but feel the old burst of pride as she listed off his titles. "And his Queen Arwen Undomiel, daughter of Elrond Peredhel."

"How does a misplaced Gryffindor end up spending time with royalty?" Snape asked, clearly skeptical. "And how does royalty end up teaching schoolchildren?"

"Well, he wasn't king when I met him in the taproom of the inn," Bronach shrugged, feeling a bit cheeky. "Though she was queen when I officially met her. And as for your second question, you'd have to ask Remus, because it was a surprise to me as well."

"Your level of familiarity with both of them suggests that you were not merely a subject," he snapped. "Answer the question."

She rolled her eyes. "As a spy that survived nearly to the end of the second war, I would think you'd be a bit more patient," Bronach sighed. "I don't get to have nearly as much fun now that I'm retired; dealing with you is sometimes the highlight of my day."

Now he was eying her like she was something scraped off the bottom of Hagrid's shoe. "You. A spy."

"And very good at it too," she nodded. "Managed to foil several assassination plots, even if one was unwittingly provoked by me, spearheaded the flow of valuable information from behind enemy lines in two wars, ripped down and cleansed several bastions of foul magic…it was quite the eventful century before things started settling down and leaving me with the mundane court dramas."

Snape looked as if he wanted to wake up. Bronach privately admitted that his reaction was the primary motivator behind her proposal to let him into some level of their confidences.

"For the moment, let us assume that I believe this asinine story," he said slowly. "That still explains nothing about your impossible time scale."

"Arwen was born to Celebrian, daughter of Galadriel of the House of Finarfin and Celeborn of Doriath, and Elrond Peredhel, son of Elwing of Doriath and Eärendil of Gondolin. That makes her approximately…" Bronach thought for a moment, "nineteen percent human."

The wariness did not abate. "What is the other eighty-one percent?"

"Well, she's seventy-eight percent eldar, but if you break that down a bit, she's mostly Sindar, with the rest split between Vanyar and Noldor," Bronach said contemplatively. "And you can break the Sindar portion into Doriath and Teleri if you really want to get that specific. Honestly, it's a wonder that she is such a well-adjusted person, given all the family drama in her bloodlines."

"What is the other three percent?"

"Oh that?" Bronach shrugged. "Maiar. But it's dilute enough that it's not particularly noticeable to the average person."

She couldn't help but grin, seeing how absolutely lost he was. Evil, perhaps, but she owed him for six years of hell and a year of assuming he'd murdered the Headmaster in cold blood.

Also the plunge in a frozen pond.

"In this dimension, there are more races than simply humans," she said, finally taking pity on him. "The Ainur, the Valar, sang the world into song, and the Maiar served them. Of the races that came to populate the world, the eldar, the elves, awoke first, and were called from the land of their birth to Valinor. Depending on when they came, and if they came at all, you get the Vanyar, the Noldor, the Teleri, the Sindar, the Silven, those that dwelt in Doriath…it is all very complicated and rooted in ancient history. Next to awake, at least according to the eldar, were the dwarrow, and even the dwarrow do not contradict this, as much as they loathe it. After the dwarrow…it is hard to say, but perhaps the Ents? Their history was rarely recorded. But generally, the next accepted race to appear were the edain, or men."

"Were interracial marriages particularly common?" Snape said, looking poleaxed as he processed the information. "Particularly with the Maiar?"

"Oh absolutely not," Bronach laughed. "Only Melian the Maia chose to bear a child with the King of Doriath, who lingered in the Outer Lands for love of her, and Luthien was…well, she reshaped the world. Her child, Dior, was less obvious about it, but the granddaughter of Luthien, Elwing married Eärendil, the son of the human Tuor and the eldar princess of Gondolin, Idril. They changed the fate of the world with their actions, though it broke apart their family."

"Arwen's father," Snape said slowly. "Elrond Peredhel."

"Peredhel translates to half-elven," she supplied. "He chose to be eldar, when the opportunity was offered, but his twin brother Elros chose edain and became the King of Numenor, or Westernesse as it was sometimes called. Aragorn is descended from that line through many, many generations."

"That sounds…less complicated than wizarding family history," the professor muttered, looking as if he wanted to back out now, but Bronach wasn't finished. This was entirely useless information, given that none of it mattered here, and she reveled in dumping it into his lap for him to sort out later.

"Oh hardly," she said airily. "Now, Celebrian, Arwen's mother, is the daughter of Galadriel of the House of Finarfin, and Celeborn, who is a relative of Thingol's. But the brother of Thingol is the father of the mother of Galadriel…it is a marvel that eldar genetics are less susceptible to inbreeding, though there wasn't a particularly broad choice of partners for several generations. Relations aside, the cousins of Galadriel through her father participated in the kinslaying that murdered many of the people her mother came from, let alone the attack on Doriath after Dior ascended to the throne. That was complicated."

"Please." Snape said shortly. "Stop."

"And I didn't even have to pull out the heart-fathers of Elrond," Bronach pouted. "You never would have lasted a day in Hobbiton."

"I don't want to know," he muttered, letting his face fall into his hands. "Truly."

"Either way, I served the King and Queen, and they honor me with their assistance now," Bronach said truthfully. "I do not know where I would be without them."

She was fairly certain that Snape muttered something uncomplimentary, and rolled her eyes. "Unless you have more questions, I can show you around, since I need a bit more time to untangle the binding."

"Anything but family histories for people who do not exist," Snape ordered, and stood up. "You called this place Esteldín?"

"Last bastion of the dunedain in the North Downs," she said, rising to look around the courtyard. "Strategically placed to intercept any army moving through the Ram Dúath into the Downs towards Annúminas or Fornost, and able to send word if the army veered east, towards Rhudaur."

"It looks destroyed," he said, glancing around. "Not a fortress."

"Apparently, Dolindîr was sacked before Fornost fell," Bronach shrugged, running her hand over the old Arnorian star in the wall next to her. It had a large, weather-worn gouge in the stonework, likely a result of combat. "The survivors, led by the chieftain since Arvedui fell and took Arthedain with him, retreated here to hide and regroup. They used it as a refuge for over two thousand years before Aragorn claimed the Sceptre of Annúminas, and with it the kingdom." With a shift, she altered their surroundings, recalling how Esteldín had looked during her last visit. "It was a proper duchy when I left." The stonework was new or repaired, all three courtyards bustling with activity…

Snape flinched as an ambiguous guardsman walked by, carrying the hefty spear that was part of his uniform. "You mentioned Annúminas, and Fornost?"

"Fornost Erain," she said, calling forth the memory of the Fields of Fornost as they had been when she'd faked her death during the Third Age. "Or as the hobbits called it, the King's Norbury. It fell in nineteen seventy-four, Third Age. Nobody dared linger for long, as the land was haunted by those that died here, and the sorcery that sacked it."

The fields were particularly eerie, and she saw Snape shudder at the effect. Good. A twist, and they were standing in the market during the Fourth Age. "It was reclaimed, though I put a good year into cleansing it. I learned a lot from the attempt though, which made everything else go easier once that I knew what I was doing."

"Fascinating," Snape drawled, glancing at the stalls and the wares on offer. "It looks fairly medieval."

"It was," she sighed. "I missed modern plumbing."

Deciding he'd seen enough, she changed the scene, gripping his elbow as he wobbled at the sudden change of location. "Behold," she gestured with her free arm. "Annúminas, capital of Arnor."

"You couldn't have picked a better place to view it from?" he complained, glaring at the stone head he stood atop.

"High King's Crossing holds the best view of the city," Bronach released his elbow. "And you are in my mindscape, so you won't fall unless I let you, and if you do you won't suffer damage."

Obligingly though, she changed to the throne room in Ost Elendil. Snape gazed around, expression blank as she drank her fill of the familiar surroundings.

"This is quite a lot of glass for a medieval society," he said, gesturing to the windows that filled the north and south walls.

"The sands of the river that flows out of the lake are quite valuable for glassmaking," Bronach said absently, making her way up to the thrones, recalling how she'd stand in the shadows while one or both of her partners held court here. "It was quite a lucrative industry for the kingdom, and made trade with Gondor viable."

"You have shown me all of these places," he said, turning to look at her as she stood at the foot of the thrones. "But where did you call home?"

"We are most certainly not there yet Snape," she told him, rolling her eyes. "Now, the binding is dissolved, you are a free man once more, and I will see you on Wednesday for Remedial Potions."

Because Bronach was over two centuries old and in control of her reactions, she didn't incinerate the Daily Prophet she held.

"Uh, Harry?" Ron said, edging away from her. "You're sparking a bit, mate."

"Wicked," Ginny said, leaning forward. "How did you manage to do that?"

"Harry stop please," Hermione tried tugging the paper out of her hand. "Harry, Umbridge is going to see."

Taking a deep breath through her nose and letting it out through her mouth, Bronach surrendered her copy of the paper to Hermione. She knew well enough what it said.

Ten familiar faces stared up at her from the various copies of the Prophet up and down the house tables. Students discussed the escape in whispered tones, glancing up at the staff table, where the staff was also discussing the escape. Snape was particularly thin-lipped, occasionally glancing between her and her partners, as if attempting to figure out what she had known.

The answer was, of course, all of it. She'd even gone so far as to read the scant report the Auror department had filed on the affair, once she had the authority to do so. Which was why she'd been harassing Amelia Bones, Rufus Scrimgeour, and anyone else at the Ministry who she thought might listen to her via post, trying to get them to up security at the very least. She'd been doing so for months.

Clearly, they'd chosen to ignore her, or were blocked from acting by the rest of the spineless cowards in the Wizengamot.

"Right," Hermione said, staring down at the ten familiar faces depicted on the front page. "This is…not good."

"Absolutely not good," Bronach muttered, recalling the word Mudblood carved into Hermione's arms, the sound of her screaming, piercing even despite the distance between the dungeon and the drawing room. "Tremendously not good. But something that can be dealt with." After all, she didn't need the Cruciatus to make Bellatrix feel pain. Not anymore.

"Mate, you're honestly starting to scare me a little," Ron told her seriously. "I mean, that's the kind of face that suggests you're plotting a murder."

"Would not be the first one," she said absently, glancing at her half-empty plate and deciding she'd eaten enough. Then she realized that her dining companions had gone silent.

"That's not really something that you should be saying out loud," Hermione said, chewing on her lip in distress. "Even if it's not true."

It is. "Sorry guys," Bronach said, standing up. "I am afraid that I have lost my appetite. Sorry to ruin your breakfast."

She left, finding the Entrance Hall empty of all other students. Stepping into a hidden passage, Bronach allowed herself to massage her temples in frustration. "You are not among spies and Rangers anymore," she muttered to herself, hoping saying the words out loud would cement them in her mind. "You cannot just be flippant about that."

"You are still able to be flippant about something?" Aragorn said, and she turned to see him entering the passage. "I saw the paper. Are you well?"

"Was I ever?" she asked rhetorically, letting her head thunk back against the wallstones. "Clearly the Ministry continues to be incompetent, which likely means something given our holiday revelations, I now have to move forward what I had hoped were contingency plans because of that incompetence, and to top it off, I made a comment about murdering people that absolutely freaked out Ron, Hermione, and Ginny."

"Ah," he winced. "Yes, there is a shocking distance from death among your peers, isn't there?"

"Most of them will never kill anything in their lives, beyond plants," she closed her eyes. "A few of them may kill a chicken or something. I'm sure there is at least one criminal among the group, statistically, so someone is probably going to manage murder, but compared to me…?" Bronach felt like baring her teeth, but she didn't. It was only Aragorn, the person who would likely understand the most. "My hands are dripping with blood."

"Daervunn did not know, but I picked the lock on his files and read all your reports," Aragorn said, and she heard him lean against the wall. "And I continued to do so, until we left. Assuming you left nothing out, any of your reported kills were justifiable, necessary."

"Oh, the ones in your name always were," she opened her eyes and watched his face carefully for a reaction. "I went off script once."

"Ah," he said quietly after a moment. "I had wondered, when the report on Tûr Morva came."

"Regretting me?" she asked, ready to push off from the wall and leave him there, not wanting to see the emotions she feared on his face. "Sorry I did not tell you until now, sorry I dragged you both along here on false pretenses."

"You think I did not want to, when Daervunn and the others explained what had happened there?" Aragorn's laugh was mirthless. "But I did nothing, only because I did not wish to fight another war. I was glad when the report came in, and told Daervunn that if he ever discovered that one of mine was responsible, I did not want to know, and I would pardon them if it became a necessity."

She froze, staring at him. "What?"

"The few reports from the survivors spoke of a figure robed entirely in black who told them that only the guilty would die, but Tûr Morva would not be habitable until the weregild owed was paid. From what I gather, many of them felt it was only right, and quietly relocated without complaint, much as many had in the days immediately following the war. Only those who were bound there by some obligation stayed, and your work freed them of that."

"All this time you suspected, and you never asked?" Bronach whispered.

"If you had wanted us to know, you would have said so," he said simply. "And it wasn't as if we had no inkling of what you did in the destruction of Carn Dum. That was far greater than Tûr Morva, if the reports were accurate."

He reached out and drew her close, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "We knew who you were when you asked," Aragorn whispered in Sindarin. "Do you think any less of me, knowing that I routed Umbar twice in my lifetime? That I led the Rhun campaign from the front, or the Harad campaign? I am no stranger to war, or to death, and you have the capacity and the intent to limit unnecessary bloodshed. And you have always done so. The Falcon Clan elders in Tûr Morva would have threatened us, had they been given the chance. You simply followed the oldest laws we had: blood for blood."

"Blood for blood," Bronach echoed, and then pulled away. "Classes will start soon, and we'd best be in a less compromising position."

He smiled, and left the passage the way he entered, leaving her to make her way up to the Divination classroom alone.

"You are unsettled today," Trelawney said, as Bronach settled onto her poof the next day. "And fate lies heavy upon your shoulders."

"For once in my life, I would prefer it to choose the shoulders of someone else," Bronach grumbled, taking out her dream diary. "I think I know what I have been dreaming of."

She offered the professor the book, but Trelawney gently pressed Bronach's fingers around it, refusing to take it.

"I too have seen much," the professor said gently, patting her hand. "The time has not yet come that you will have to make a decision, but it draws ever nearer."

"What if I do not want to make a decision?" Bronach asked rhetorically, tucking her journal away. They were reviewing divination using entrails, though only on a theoretical basis, given the general aversion most of the class had. There weren't many more methods left to cover before their exams, but the professor had promised extra time to review and practice in whatever time they had to spare.

"You can choose that path," Trelawney said softly, her eyes looking misty behind her glasses, "but I do not think that you will. It is not in your nature."

"Ugh," Bronach groaned, letting her head fall into her hands. "Being responsible is exhausting."

Trelawney laughed, and then her smile slipped. Bronach straightened. "What is it?"

"You will find out soon enough," the woman said after a long moment. "The High Inquisitor has no patience for those with the proper Sight."

"She put you on probation," Bronach deduced with a scowl. "I assume she will be inspecting your lessons?"

"That is what the notice informing me indicated," Trelawney said sharply, tossing her head with a disdainful sniff. "As if the Inner Eye could See upon command!"

"There is scrying," Bronach felt compelled to point out. "Or reading tea leaves."

Trelawney made a disgusted sound. "You know as well as I do, at least now, that tea leaves only speak when they have a mind to; the rest is human interpretation, like seeing pictures in clouds. And scrying tells only what is unless one has the gift for it and there is something you must see."

"And your talents are not in scrying," Bronach sighed, hearing the sounds of approaching students. "I never cared much for the subtleties until I gained my gift, but the the way the course is structured is misleading at best."

"Until the Divination curriculum is rewritten, my art will not be given the respect it deserves," Trelawney hissed before turning in a whirl of shawls to disappear into the shadows before the first student arrived.

All through the lesson, Bronach was only paying half attention, her mind instead wondering how much she'd overlooked in her first go-round. Trelawney, she was coming to find, wasn't half as bad at the subject as Bronach had believed, hampered more by the ministry-mandated curriculum than by her Gift or lack thereof. She was, certainly, an unenthusiastic and vastly uneducated in the mechanics of effective teaching, but on an individual basis, Bronach was finding Trelawney reasonably helpful in managing the surges of Galadriel's gift.

"You seem distracted," Hermione asked at lunch. "Is everything okay?"

"Well, there's ten Death Eaters who've broken out of Azkaban, I don't think everything's okay," Ron said, rolling his eyes at her.

"It is not that," Bronach said, poking at her lunch, not really feeling hungry. She thought her period might be coming; the last time she'd felt this bloated and sluggish her cycle had started a day or two later. "There is something…well, I was doing some research over the holidays, and I do not like the conclusions I am drawing."

Ron and Hermione stared at her, and then Ron shook his head. "Absolutely mental," he muttered. "You're really starting to take after Hermione, aren't you? Research over the holidays."

"That is what the holidays are for, are they not?" Bronach said, affecting her best deadpan expression. Ron's look of horror distracted her enough to make her smile.