Hermione hadn’t yet finished cataloguing the differences between Professor McGonagall’s willing reverse Animagus transformation, Silver’s male-female transformation, Hailey’s male-female transformation, and Peter’s forced reverse Animagus transformation, when the conversation had already shifted from greetings to Peter claiming Sirius had come to kill him.
It hadn’t even stopped there- the conversation shifted with such a blinding pace that by the time she was finished cataloguing her observations for later research, Rita Skeeter had already made Sirius stare by using Hailey’s ‘its a word’ statement to correct Peter’s ‘He-who-must-not-be-named’.
Finally, she caught herself up to the conversation in time for Lupin to voice a little problem.
“I must admit, Peter,” Lupin said. “I’m having difficulty understanding why an innocent man would want to spend twelve years as a rat.”
“Innocent, and scared!” Peter squealed. His voice was squeaky, to match his ratty appearance and his diminutive height; he was even shorter than Silver!
“Guilty,” Sadarina corrected him. “Guilty, and scared.”
They then proceeded to argue about exactly who was Voldemort’s spy. It seemed really silly to Hermione, since Peter was a terrible liar- his body language practically screamed that it had been him.
Finally, Peter started ambling around the room to the various people, pleading with each person in turn. He started with Sirius, who kicked out at him- then to Lupin, who rebuffed him verbally.
His next choice was Ron- who threw him a good couple feet when he shoved him off of himself. “I let you sleep in my bed?” he asked, revolted.
Then he came to Hermione, and grabbed at the hem of her robes. “Sweet gi-!”
She kicked him right in the face, without waiting for him to finish talking. “Get off!” she barked.
She watched, half-horrified, and half-gratified, as he went flying backwards. He crashed to the floor and slid another couple feet before coming to a stop most of the way across the room from her.
“You have… strong friends,” Sirius observed, looking between Peter and Hailey with an expression of curiosity on his face.
Hailey snorted. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” she smiled.
Lupin laughed. “Right, yes, this is only half of them, isn’t it?”
Peter approached Hailey next. “You look just like your mother,” he said.
Lupin looked put out at the comment, and Sirius scowled- but Hailey merely looked unimpressed. She seized the front of his robes, and hoisted him into the air with one hand, up to eye level. “And you look like the man that got her killed,” she stated.
Hermione didn’t miss Sadarina reaching over to pluck a wand from his back pocket.
Hailey then tossed him down.
So he tried sucking up to Sadarina. He didn’t have anything really all that convincing to say, but her calm, unwavering regard didn’t change in the slightest. She waited for him to finish, before uttering only a single word.
“Guilty,” she declared.
Peter looked around the room… and finally ambled towards Snape to try sucking up to him. Hermione had to cover her mouth to keep herself from laughing- and she noticed she wasn’t the only one. Sirius was actually snickering into his hand.
As for Professor Snape, he didn’t say anything, only glared dangerously back down at Peter. His eyes also flicked upwards for a second, to where Sadarina still had his wand.
Finally, he went after Rita, in the corner.
Rita stared at him like he was a particularly confused boggart. “What do you expect me to do? Write a smear column about you?”
Peter looked around the room, staring from face to face.
Then first Lupin, then Peter, turned sharply to look at the door. Peter ambled towards it.
“No you-!” Sirius began.
Then Morning Sun stepped suddenly in through the door, slamming it open right into Peter’s face. “You know, Hailey,” she said, leaning against it so Peter was pinned behind it. “We agreed to have the next major adventure as a group, didn’t we?”
“Well, you’re here now,” Hailey smiled, as Ginny and Ariel followed Morning in, with Silversong and Diamond Tiara holding hands behind them.
Peter wiggled out from behind the door, then ambled over to Morning, glancing sideways at the now open door- but Morning held out her hand and flicked her wrist at him. She didn’t touch him, nor even look at him, but he was still thrown bodily away from her as if he had been struck by a charging bull.
“We’ve been listening in the other room,” Silver said amusedly. “We tailed Professor Lupin in, under Morning’s cloak.” She chuckled. “Thought we’d join the fun.” She sighed. “So are we hauling him to the Castle or does Sadarina feel like giving him a kiss here?”
“A kiss?” Hermione asked, confused.
Sadarina, meanwhile, raised her eyebrows, looking contemplatively at Peter. She gazed at him, where he was stunned, in a crumpled heap by the wall, for a couple seconds, then tilted her head and looked at Snape. “You didn’t happen to bring any veritaserum, did you?”
Snape blinked in surprise. “No,” he answered. “I left it in the Castle. Besides, it’s illegal in… most circumstances.”
Sadarina smiled- but it was that odd sort of smile that suggested she knew something nobody else did. “Something tells me it will be legal by the time we reach the Castle,” she told him.
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
When Amelia woke up, it was to the strangest experience she’d ever had… No, she’d had yet. She hadn’t even come to full wakefulness yet when she felt a multitude of other… consciousnesses in her head, yet also not in her head. Telepathically linked, perhaps? But it didn’t feel like that. It felt more like she was in a room full of people- and not just anyone, either. Friendly people, who only wanted to help- none of them familiar… yet all of them familiar, in a way.
“What happened?” she asked, into that ‘room’.
Her question was met by a flow of confusion- then one of them spoke up suddenly. The voice was somewhat vague, like it didn’t know what to sound like. “Oh, you’re Amelia, right?”
She nodded- or at least, whatever the mental equivalent was. She was certain the message was delivered accurately- though how she knew that, she didn’t know.
That same one nodded. “Right, yes. Sadarina turned you… a month back, was it?”
“A month and three days, Sadrilaina,” another supplied.
“Yes,” the first- Sadrilaina- nodded again. “She said she was saving your life, I guess?”
Suddenly, a third chimed in. Her voice was clearly defined, and sounded motherly, but it also sounded young- an odd combination. “Amelia? You’re awake?”
“Uh, yes?” she answered. She bit back the urge to ask what was going on.
“Good. I’m Sadarina; you should be in the Hogwarts infirmary right now. That curse was…” She sighed. “We’ve found Black, but he’s innocent.”
She was momentarily overwhelmed by the sudden image the girl sent her. It was more than an image- much more like a snapshot of sensory information. Sadarina was in what looked like a run-down house, alongside two Professors, Sirius, several students, and Rita Skeeter… plus one man she recognized instantly as Peter Pettigrew, though that might’ve been because her snapshot included the identities of the people around her.
She performed the mental equivalent of staring for about two seconds. “Alright,” she muttered. Peter was apparently about as guilty as they got. “Think we can bring them in for interrogation?”
“Probably,” Sadarina muttered. “At least up to the Castle. I don’t think we can hold Peter all the way back to the Ministry; he’s an animagus.”
She glanced back at the snapshot- yes, he was an Animagus… a rat, specifically. That would tend to be difficult to hold in a Ministry cell. “Alright,” she muttered, thinking quickly. “Do they have any truth potions here?”
There was a pause.
“Professor Snape keeps his veritaserum in the Castle.”
She laughed. Veritaserum was perhaps the most regulated truth potion in existence- but it was also her personal favorite when it came to interrogations. This ‘Sadarina’ clearly knew her far better than she did in return. “I will authorize it, then, as the Head of the DMLE,” she said. “I’ll see you when you get here?”
Sadarina seemed suddenly concerned. “Don’t push yourself too hard too soon,” she warned her. “That curse won’t have fallen off entirely just yet.”
“I’m going to kill Yaxley,” she answered, reminded of the curse that had put her in that predicament in the first place. She then responded to Sadarina’s wordless curiosity by doing her best to replicate that snapshot thing from her memory- and realizing that it came naturally.
Sadarina laughed- though it felt like she was laughing at Yaxley. “Would you like some help with that?” she asked- and Amelia got the distinct idea she was thinking about ‘kissing’ Yaxley… with a very specific one of the seven different techniques the Ministry unknowingly lumped together under the heading of the Dementor’s Kiss.
The one that would completely destroy his mind and identity, and birth a new dementor from him, as a clean slate.
Dementor? Huh. She didn’t feel like a dementor, and Sadarina was short in her little snapshot. She could deal with that later.
But she still chuckled at her eagerness to slaughter him, even though her memory hadn’t included empathic senses like Sadarina’s had. “I should be able to handle him myself, thank you.”
Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge was, to put it nicely, really, really stressed out.
Of course, the reason wasn’t clear to anyone- but the thing was, so much stuff had been exploding in his face over the last three years he hadn’t had much of any time to rest at all. First, there had been the sudden explosion of strange-haired students entering the Leaky Cauldron. It had taken well over half the total staff of the Ministry of Magic conscripted to Obliviation duty, alongside some twenty or thirty national muggle governments- Britain, France, Germany, Canada, China, Russia, the USA (whatever that stood for), and quite a few others he couldn’t remember- and several dozen muggle corporations to contain the news.
But they’d done it. The Leaky Cauldron had made national news… for only a single night. With muggle technology being what it was, it wasn’t possible to fully quell the sudden spike in muggle awareness- especially when he considered just how many muggle governments had been involved, and just how many orders and grants they’d been forced to make. Apparently, someplace called ‘Google’ had been a major part of the muggle effort to contain the news. The Statute of Secrecy would break down sometime- everyone knew that, at least in his office- but just smashing it to bits wasn’t a good way to do it.
But of course, that wasn’t the only thing the Foreigners’ appearance had exploded. The rest of the Ministry staff that could be spared from other tasks had been tasked with keeping the true numbers of new students Hogwarts had admitted secret from wizardkind- it’d cause an uproar if it got out, and that was the very last thing they’d needed. Fortunately, Professor Dumbledore had recognized his challenges- he was fairly sure Dumbledore was one of very few people that knew exactly what he faced day in and day out- and had encouraged the Student Instructor Program, when the Foreigners suggested it.
During the formation of that program, both he and Dumbledore had expected it to be a major hassle for Dumbledore to deal with, possibly an even bigger struggle… but it hadn’t been. It had been a blessing in disguise, as the Foreigners revealed an uncanny level of knowledge of various matters. As a result, the sudden rise in average grades for Hogwarts graduates made the news- but, very carefully, the exact number of students didn’t.
Then Rita Skeeter got wind of it, and traveled to Hogwarts. By the time anyone knew about it, it was far too late to stop her- so all they could hope to do was lay down the law when she got back to the Daily Prophet with a story. Yet, they hadn’t needed to. On her first day at the school, she’d crossed paths with the Student Instructor Program Management Team… which had brought her down to Earth with blinding speed and even offered her an opportunity. When she got back to the editors, she told them the S.I.P.M.T had been appalled at their numbers only being a vague rumor- but they’d communicated the challenge.
Rita’s visit had then been another blessing in disguise; the Foreigners had given her not a restriction, but an opportunity, that she was intent to seize with both hands. As such, her stories also didn’t name any specific numbers, but did imply progressively larger numbers of students; she was helping prepare the public for the big reveal.
Rita had, of course, also acquired the first concrete numbers for Fudge- and there were more than anybody had thought. Then of course, as the muggle governments carefully started injecting ideas of wizards into the general public, preparing them for the big reveal, Sirius Black had escaped. That had been a… fun media event, for both the magical Ministry and the muggle Ministry- and it had threatened to break the news early, and in disastrous style.
Then Hailey had gone and made the world’s most powerful Patronus, and commented blithely about having met Black. Rita- and all his media teams- had seized on that with groundbreaking speed and, while keeping Hailey anonymous, had used it to help distract the public from Black’s escape and prevent an uproar.
Then Amelia’s injury, however that happened. Without her, it was getting rapidly harder and harder to keep the rowdier members of the wizarding public in line. Especially considering the strange glow that had invaded all of Britain. The aurors were fairly sure it was a Patronus… and the Muggle Minister had approached him with a photo from orbit, showing the entire continent to be shrouded in the glow, apparently centered somewhere in Britain, and asking what it was.
Then Rita’s report had come in, dubbing Hailey the ‘Goddess of Patroni’. The girl was already known as the Goddess of Reports and Duels, though, so that had been an easy spin. It had been even easier to spin her friend, Sadarina, who had used the stupidly-bright Patronus to save Amelia, as some kind of angel- and start planting ideas that deities were starting to appear because of the numbers of students. The fact that the girl had been ‘resurrected’ from a Dementor on Hailey’s first crazy Patronus had been carefully spun into oblivion. It rather helped that the name of the ‘resurrected dementor’ had never appeared.
Finally, he’d called at the Castle to speak to Dumbledore about plans for the summer and following year, pertaining to the Dementor guards- right on time for Black to walk in the great oak front doors, partnered with Professor Snape, the man he’d killed, a transformed werewolf that had evidently taken the Wolfsbane Potion, and pretty close to a dozen of Hailey’s apparently unstoppable friends- including the girl herself.
Then Rita had appeared in a bright flash of crimson flames, alongside a fifth-year student with phoenix-like hair, and told him the Records Department had been unable to dig up Black’s trial record.
Seconds after that, while he was arguing with Peter’s obvious lies and trying to get the truth out of him, Professor Snape reappeared with a bottle of veritaserum- and Amelia, awake at last and smiling like she’d already won despite leaning heavily on the doorjamb, had appeared in the other staircase to authorize its use on Peter.
In the end, Sirius was a free man, pending the trial he’d never gotten in a few months- but with the new, veritaserum-sourced evidence, he was certain to get off. Peter had told them everything, even displayed the Dark Mark on his arm, then little Sadarina had handed him Voldemort’s wand, which she’d taken from Peter’s back pocket. Fudge had warned a very stunned Sirius Black against going out in public for a while, just in case he ran into someone that hadn’t heard the news. Peter, meanwhile, had received the Dementor’s Kiss before he left, from a dementor that, curiously, wasn’t draining its surroundings to abject sadness. Sadarina and Amelia had worn matching expressions of extreme amusement as they watched.
He sighed as he returned to his office in the busy, ‘closed’ Ministry. How much longer would it be before he could spend so much as a full hour a week with his wife once again?
It certainly looked like the mystery Foreigners were going to hold the answer- and according to Rita, they were also trying to “gently” reveal their true origins to wizardkind, through her.