by Skysaber

OoOoO

After their previous adventures going back to get their muggle records was almost a non-issue, so dull as to be boring. Three girls showed up (all Hermione at age twelve or so) accompanied by their 'mother' (another Hermione, this time a clone who had taken much more aging potion, so was approximately thirty), and practically did all of the work themselves.

The Department of Muggle Relations had certain boiler plate patterns for developing muggle identities, and what they produced was flat and uninteresting. But still they took weeks to do it, as they puzzled over which of their standard patterns to use.

Hermione cut through that by having and knowing exactly what she wanted, and no sooner did she realize that the purebloods in charge of the department had absolutely no idea what they were doing (which took approximately ten seconds, just after the first one asked if she wanted to be Chinese with the name Barney Rubble), she confounded them to let her work directly with the muggleborn employees who actually got all the work done.

Hermione had already decided that Confundus was her single most useful spell ever.

Anyway, working directly with the muggleborns in the department, and her records in hand just waiting to be copied to the stacks of official documents in the department archives (all on the right paper and of the right ink, pressed by the same plates as the muggle government used, so they could not be detected as forgeries. Clearly *somebody* in that department had been thinking clearly, or at least one of the purebloods gave an order to 'do it right' then let the muggleborns figure out how to make authentic documents), it had all been over in twenty minutes, or at least the office side of things. The department even had their own pensieve for viewing memories they had to add to people.

Apparently it was ridiculously easy to fake memories. You just daydream up something, extract and watch it as if it were a memory, then with practice refine that. And, well, Hermione hadn't had to imagine up a thing. She'd just recalled her actual memories of interacting with teachers and so on, then had the muggle relations workers go implant those. Considering that she knew all of the people she'd interacted with, and thus whose memories needed changes, and to what degree, the department had never had a simpler job. The only quirk was to have three of her in those memories, but considering what material the overworked department employees usually had to make do with, that was simple as pie.

So now the Granger triplets had what were as near as anyone could tell completely authentic muggle backgrounds up until the day they'd left muggle education to start Hogwarts. And that included Hermione Tina Granger's background from birth to her current age, seeming every bit as authentic as her sisters. The department even added her to all of the photos as they went about adding extra bed and bathrooms to the Granger home, giving each of the girls her own room, suitably decorated of course.

Seeing as how Hermione's parents had been in their early thirties when they'd had her, it made no notice at all for them to suddenly have what were legally twelve year old triplets. People's memories of them were just backtracked to include them having their first kids at school instead of after successfully settling down at their practice.

The girls had agonized about it a bit, but seeing the excellent quality of the work done by the department's muggleborn employees, in the end had decided that it was better for all involved to give their parents the memories of their children growing up to twelve, along with all of those vacations and things together, including celebrating their wonderful grades. So twelve years of moderately happy childhoods, complete with pictures and mementos around the house, this time for three girls, had gotten crammed into their minds and home.

They added a whole new shelf to the Grange library, this one filled to capacity with photo albums holding a vast variety of pictures capturing life and vacations. They had elected not to include some bad memories, such as a real blow up between their parents about one (not their dad actually, but their mom) wanting to go on a nude beach in France, that had simmered all summer and pretty much ruined that year's vacation. And they'd also decided that it was okay to include some things they had not gone on, such as the trips through the American Gold Country they'd always planned to do, but never gotten around to.

The mementos of this new past filled every shelf and closet, and they had an awesome collection of Christmas ornamentation.

They all had several different cowgirl outfits (except for daddy Granger, who had cowboy stuff to wear), Viking paraphernalia from a trip to Sweden they'd never actually taken in the original timeline because the family had gotten too sick to vacation that year, and outfits and art and photos of them all together around the world filled the household.

One of Ann's favorites was a wide angle picture with all of them in a row, each wearing an "I'm With Stupid" T-shirt and an arrow pointing from one girl to another on up to dad, also wearing the same T-shirt so it pointed at the Donald Duck he was standing next to with one arm around the costumed park worker so the whole line of stupids pointed to him.

Jane's favorite was a photo of all of the Granger girls wearing shirts proclaiming them, "99% Angel - nobody's perfect," and other, similar shots of them wearing things like it, like the full lineup of Granger girls in, "Cutest Girl in the World" shirts.

You wouldn't think it of Jane, but she treasured the mementos of happy times, knowing the darkness of all that had gone on ahead of them in the timeline.

Tina laughed until she cried over the photo of Ann, at her actual non-potion age, wearing an "I'm too sexy for my diaper" shirt.

Even friends of the family had gotten included in the new memories. Everyone now thought the Grangers simply had an eleven year gap between their first set of triplets, and having their younger brother.

It was all authentic, in a way, just premature.

Or so it would have been, save for the fact that, after fulfilling all of the Hermiones' plans, one of the workers, the team lead actually (a halfblood, child of halfbloods, all raised in magical households. "Why does it seem so predictable that in the wizarding world it's always the most ignorant person in charge?" Tina whispered discretely aside to Ann. They would have confounded the man, save for the fact that he'd spent the entire time lounging around in the back giving orders that his employees wisely ignored) blurted, "That's it? You know we get a budget for this sort of thing. You three get three times the regular amount on account o' there's three of ya, and you 'aven't even spent any of it yet."

"Really?" One of the Hermiones returned. "What about all of the pictures and things?"

"Them what's all come under the 'deescretiation-airy funds', ain't none of it what comes out of your account. C'mon, there's gotta be something more for us to do? Oh, and before I forget," the man reached under his dinner jacket and evening gown combination to produce what looked like three small cellophane bags of different colored hard candies, each tied with its own ribbon. "'Ere ya go, three muggle acclimation kits."

Knowing better than to assume they were just hard candies, all of the girls crowded around. "What does it do?" Hermione Jane asked, as they accepted those presented.

"Oh, simple!" the man declared. "These here are to prepare yous for muggle life. This one ere, ya take it an you gots yer muggle edi-ka-shun up ta whens ya would ha been starten 'Ogwarts, Geographical stuff and the like. This one over ere give ya the vital ability ta cook and prepare reindeer and walrus from when you muggle types is followin the herds come winter. An this one teaches ya how ta play those vital muggle instruments o' accordion and alpenhorn, while this last one lets ya know 'ow ta eedentify muggle plants an whotnot. It's terribly useful, the lot 'o 'em! Ya take these, an ya can pass fer a muggle anywhere ya like! Why, I took 'em myself an not one o' them muggles looks twice at me!"

The man posed proudly in his white dinner jacket, sequined purple evening gown, and a handbag made from the stuffed head of a pig. A live duck had been tied by its feet to his belt, and the fact that his feet were wrapped in torn plastic bags completed the ensemble.

~No, I'm sure either they couldn't stop staring, or they didn't want to meet your eyes for fear you'd approach,~ the girls all thought together. Tina now held her bag at arm's length and scowled at it, thinking if this man got his education from this thing she wanted no part in it.

But it was Jane who asked the vital question. "Do you mean you can teach skills just by eating candies?" Her eyes shone, because if true that opened up vast possibilities.

"Nah! Just these." The guy waved a hand dismissively. "They're all based on language lozenges, candies ya can suck on ta learn how ta speak Chinese-like. They've been around fer hundreds o years, but these 'er new. Some guy whot learned 'ow ta make new forms 'o them lozenge thingies came up wit 'em fifty years er so ago. E's the only one whot's done it even since the language lozenges wuz invented, ya see? Anyhow he came up wit these thinking ta make adaptation ta muggle life easier, an we been usin 'em ever since."

"So is this guy still around?" Tina pounced on the concept.

Again more dismissive hand waving. "Nah! He died near fifty years ago, back during Grindelwald's reign. Shame it is. There are still a few bumps he coulda helped us smooth over in the whole muggle relations business."

The live duck that had been tied to his belt flapped its wings in another attempt to escape.

Ann and Tina met gazes, thinking together as clearly as words, ~Why is it that everything of worth in the wizarding world is old, and was outdated to start with?~

Jane was still pouncing on this concept. "How often do you have to take these to keep the skills? Are there any others, like from a deluxe set?"

The man scratched the side of his neck. "Don't worry about them runnin out. Taken 'em once, lasts forever. As fer others? Weeell, we gots one or two more 'o dem, but we don't use 'em often, see? Cause there ain't much cause ta use em in de muggle world."

"What are they?" All three girls pounced.

"Well there's skiing, but last I 'eard muggles don't do that no more since they got roads, an ice skatin, that used ta be a good one for pairing up with the walrus huntin one, only they do all that now from them helly-coppers, I hear tell. We got this here unlabeled cooking one, but no one I knows taken that one, so I don't know what dish it does. Then we 'ave bowling ball stacking, but again you'll be too busy hunting walrus ta worry about that. Then we gots lapidary, whatever that is, but that's all!"

"We'll take them all!" Jane blurted out, eagerly supported by nodding from the rest, even Tina. Hermione had always wanted to ice skate, but had been terrible at sport.

"Alright," the man signed a form and sent off a laborer for the extra candies, shaking his head as if they were not right in the head. "Don't take more an one a week or they mix wit odd effects. But ya still gotta give me boys something ta spend the money on, otherwise the boss-types will suspect we've nipped off wit it."

"So what kind of things can we ask for?" Ann inquired on behalf of herself and her sisters.

The halfblood team lead started quoting, "All squibs what get sent off ta de muggle world can expect o' the Ministry o' Magic a complete muggle background, one home wit suitable decorations and furnishings, one vehicle and one job wit gainful repudiations, like."

Ann couldn't tolerate the accent any more. "Don't you mean 'remuneration?'"

"Yeah, that."

She gestured to the Granger family home around them. "But doesn't this count?"

The man shook his head. "Nah, this is like extra. Ya got muggle relations here anyway, so dey don't count, right?"

Jane lunged ahead to grab Ann and put her hand over her mouth, smiling brightly to the team lead. "No, of course they don't. Say, for my job do you think I could be a hotel owner? There's a nice one by the airport called The Hilton."

And so that was how the Granger family acquired the corner lot next to their home (currently empty) on which the Granger domicile got greatly expanded, the garden done and the house 'suitably decorated' (under the excuse their dad was a rock-hound) with scads of geodes, agates and citrines, malachite, amethyst, onyx and jade, both freestanding natural forms and ones carved into useful appointments and furnishings.

They even had fossils, including one rather big one, a triceritops skull mounted over the fireplace, along with a picture of their dad with a hunting rifle with a smoking barrel, standing wearing hunting gear with one foot on the head of a dead triceritops.

That was something of a private Granger joke, but the Ministry workers did it.

In and among the marble floors and rose quartz columns (yes, they got a little ridiculous), they also included nice carved wood furniture for their mom, because they *did* have a little brother, and another sibling on the way, so some areas of the house had to be baby-proofed, and the other areas had to be able to be sealed off so little hands didn't break hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of rock collection.

Worth. No telling how the Ministry got it, as they obviously didn't value it at anywhere close to its muggle market price. But Hermione simply knew what to ask for, and the halfblood in charge of the group doing the work didn't know when to say 'no'. So they got a great deal more out of their starting setup than the Ministry perhaps intended, but the regulations had been set to prevent those being thrust out of the magical world from having too much magic around their newly muggle households, so the restrictions were on magical belongings, not on having a country residence with a private plane, a vacation cabin up in Scotland, or a Rolls Royce sedan in the driveway and a nice private yacht in a nearby marina.

For the vehicles the Muggle Relations crew whet to pick up a newly wrecked vehicle of the type requested, then restored it using magic - something all the Hermiones resolved to learn how to do.

About the only mistake that was made was none of the girls had properly explained they had a live-in nanny, so the Ministry workers wrote her into everything as their older sister. So now the Grangers had a bit of a scandalous past, as far as anyone knew, since Clara, the eldest at eighteen, must have been born when their mother was sixteen.

A nasty mistake to make, to put a blotch such as that on an innocent couple's reputations, but not one worth calling the Ministry back in, as who knew what kind of gross errors they'd produce trying to undo this one?

It frankly wasn't worth the risk.

And at the end of it all, Hermione hadn't had to Obliviate anyone after all. Well, except for the Ministry employees, because she didn't dare let the purebloods know who and what she was. And anything the Ministry knew, the purebloods could find out.

Then, sooner than you'd think, it was time to get ready to start school. Once again, for Ann this was almost a non-issue. They'd gone to Cheltenham Ladies College before, and it was a known set of hurdles to face.

Jane, on the other hand, had an entirely different set of problems.

"Have you got everything?"

"Yes," Jane replied, both tired and reassured by her sisters' nagging.

"Do you have your wand?"

"Which one?"

"Both of them, silly."

"Yes."

The triplets had made a trip to Diagon Alley earlier, using the same pattern of three girls (at eleven this time) and one clone acting as mother at thirty.

Having permission from their nanny (even though she didn't know she'd given it) to leave the Malfoy estate, they didn't need to leave all of their clones there all of the time. They did so most of the time to allay suspicions, but could draw them out for projects such as this.

Anyway, they did a full day of Hogwarts shopping just to cover their tracks so Ollivander did not get suspicious over if they were old enough to have wands or not. Three more little girls with their mother, all laden with packages of robes, cauldrons and Hogwarts texts just blended in to the pre-school shopping season.

Jane had watched for an opportunity and skipped in first, a full three minutes ahead of her sisters, so had gotten their original vine wood with dragon heartstring wand for herself. However, the same wand suited them all so perfectly that Ollivander had eventually smiled and excused himself, asking them to come back in an hour, and by that time (which they had used to purchase all other six years of Hogwarts texts, along with a vast supply of potion ingredients) had produced two identical copies of the original wand - better than sister wands, as they not only shared cores from the same dragon, but vine wood off of the same tree.

After leaving, the three girls had then delicately placed their vine wood wands in boxes and packed them at the bottom of their trunks, where they would stay for the next seven years, waiting for the Ministry tracking charms placed on sale to wear off.

Then Tina had taken them all back to the Malfoy mansion, where she'd discovered the cupboard where all the wands of former family members had been stored over the ages, and they had a go looking through those.

The Malfoy wands did not suit them as well, and there was still a fear of drawing squads of Ministry officials if they used them away from the heavily warded Malfoy home as they did not really know how the Ministry tracked that sort of thing, but it was good to have a wand not tied directly to them in cases of emergency, just in case, for when they had to cast something they had not yet mastered wandlessly.

Besides, wanded spells felt more powerful, more focused, and longer ranged.

"Got your armor on?" Ann continued the interrogation, obviously concerned.

"Yes," Jane agreed, listing it off, "Ankle to throat to wrist tights of acromantula silk. Where did we get acromantula silk, anyway? It's not sold in any stores. They eat any wizards who try and collect the stuff."

"I've got some glass spiders I transfigured in the Forbidden Forest collecting gobs of it," Tina returned the answer gladly, unintentionally reminding the other two that in a pureblood household any amount of wand magic was ignored by the underage restriction monitors, and the dark family had retained many spare wands left over by past Malfoys.

"How much?"

"Only about a hundred and twenty two thousand miles of it, at last count." Tina mentioned offhandedly. "That place has a stupidly large number of giant spiders, and they all spin webs. So we haven't even really had to disturb them to collect the unused ones."

"Oh." Both Tina's sisters blinked. "Well, that has to be useful."

"It is, now on to your armor count. Have you got your teddy on?"

"Yes," Jane replied, testing the feel of it by rubbing her arms against her sides. "And I won't ask you who you had to kill to get armor quality dragonhide in this country." The war meant demand for that material was simply unbelievable.

"I didn't have to kill anyone, the Malfoys have a stock of it in their basement," Tina helped straighten up Jane's collar on her shirt. It had to look normal over two levels of armor. Both the lighter silk and heavier dragon leather had been laden with so many impervious charms and protective enchantments she might as well have been wearing a full Nuclear, Biological and Chemical survival suit on under a set of Turkish plate mail, except all together it was about as encumbering as a gymnast's leotard, and easily hidden under her uniform.

It had cost a fortune, but they had a couple fortunes, and they did not want to risk Jane's life.

Tina frankly had an eye on acquiring a matching set for herself, as even if it had no other benefit it would still help her feel safer around the Malfoy household, and somebody had to keep their clones moving and active. She'd found the tracer spells they'd use to locate lost infants, and hadn't figured out any good or reliable counters for them yet.

"Boots?"

"Yes."

"Gloves?"

"Yes."

"That's two more layers of silk and dragonhide. Now the only thing unprotected is your head and neck." Ann carefully examined her sister's outfit, making sure she was presentable.

"Can't be helped," Jane sighed, wishing she had those covered as well. "Wearing a helmet would draw more attention than the protection would be worth, I'm sure."

"We'll have to develop some magical makeup for face armor. It won't be much protection, I'm sure, but even a little bit could help substantially in the right circumstances," Ann mused thoughtfully, adding the project to her pile. "And we are in the makeup business, after all."

Tina offered another measure of protection, however, presenting her sister a potion.

"What's this?" Jane wrinkled her nose at the bubbling multicolor concoction.

Tina's smile never faltered. "It's a venom immunization potion, fifth year difficulty but fairly obscure, so it's not taught at Hogwarts or anywhere else I'm aware of. The only people who use it in the magical world are Magical Beast Handlers. Well, the ones in venomous specialties, anyway."

"So what's it do?" Ann poked over her shoulder to look.

Tina shrugged, then began to lecture, "Exactly what it says, provides immunity to a specific toxin or venom. You have to have a sample of the poison you want to become immune to to charge it with, a bit like polyjuice in that. Now there are two versions, a regular one that lasts about a month, only nobody uses that one anymore because it's been available as an everlasting elixir for simply ages."

Jane accepted the concoction dubiously. "Alright, what am I becoming immune to?"

Once again Tina shrugged. "Oh, the usual spread to start with, they have a fairly generic blend they give to all of the Magical Beast Handlers in their apprenticeship. But to that I've added alcohol, tobacco, basilisk venom, and all the street drugs I could find."

"What are you doing with street drugs?" Ann boggled. "Where did you even get them?"

"You'd be surprised what pushers are willing to give young girls as free samples, and they give even more after being confounded. I've got all the main ones included, and I'll expect you to expand our protection as much as you can by getting doses of the obscure ones at St Trinian's, for us to add to our cocktail of immunity serums to make it truly comprehensive."

"Does it even work on drugs?"

"Yes. I double checked that on mom's medical textbooks, the ones she had as a med student before she switched to dentistry because it was easier. All drugs are poisons. So if it comes out of a pharmacy or off the street, we can be immune to it."

"Tobacco?"

"Nothing is more infamous about St Trinian's than the image of cigar smoking eleven year old girls. I don't want you picking up any bad habits, or lung cancer by association, and the main active ingredient, nicotine, is not only a poison but an extremely deadly one. The doses are normally so small though that it gives a buzz instead of you keeling over dead."

"But why alcohol?"

"Haven't you paid any attention to those stories of the sort of things people get young ladies drunk for? If you don't want to be taken advantage of, you'd better be grateful! You can't be on your guard all of the time, and at a place like St Trinian's I'd expect the punch to be spiked with hard liquor as a matter of course."

"Ok. I see your reasons, and agree with them."

"We'll all be taking the potion, of course."

"What?!?" Ann's hair stood on end.

"I need this. Purebloods are every bit as prone to getting girls drunk and taking advantage of them as any common lowborn thug. Alcohol tolerance is as important as breeding among some of their circles, and I'm certainly not going to spend half of each day drunk as a lord getting it the normal way. I have books to read. Besides: Princess Bride, Iocane powder."

"Oh? Oh!" Ann got it. The reference was to one of their favorite movies, where the hero pirate outwits the nasty kidnapper, and the key advantage was the bad guy didn't know the good guy was immune to the poison.

Now that it was pointed out, that was the sort of advantage they could use, especially if the immunity potion was obscure, so most people wouldn't know of it to be on guard against someone who'd made use of it. But it was, like so many measures, something you had to prepare ahead of time or it would be useless.

And Ann wasn't fond of the idea of being taken advantage of while drunk, either. That was something Ron had tried on more than one occasion. But thankfully always failed due to the fact that he couldn't resist drinking himself, and did so in large quantities, just like he ate anything, and would always start talking when he got in his cups, so slurred out his plans.

Seeing him was proof in the pudding that drunkenness was not a privilege, it was a weakness. But Tina was already off and talking again.

"Now at a place like St Trinians I'd expect them to have drugs we haven't prepared you for. So assuming that to be the case, I asked around the house elves, and they eventually got around to pointing me in the right direction. It turns out the wizarding world has a wide variety of hangover cures and sobriety charms - the purebloods drink like fish, go figure. Anyway, some of the more powerful ones work on more toxins than you'd think, and the real upper echelon spells are effective against anything that might give a high, so if you need to regain your wits from something, these will do it. Here, I've copied them all down on this sheet, cross-referenced for ease of use. You'll want to be able to cast them stoned out of your gourd, just in case, so well, err, work until you can cast them in your sleep."

"If these work so well why are we taking the trouble with the immunity potion?"

"Because the hangover cures only relieve the effects of a drug or poison. They won't stop it from doing damage, only eliminate the symptoms they have, like dizziness, hallucinations, nausea, pain, and the like. There are outright medical cures that can purge your system of foreign compounds, but those take a while, are miserable, and aren't at all subtle: shivering fits, fever, chills, technicolor sweat, and so on. However if you need to detox or break an addiction, or whatever, well, we'll have practiced the spells until we're ready to help you."

"Thanks, I'll practice them myself, just in case."

"You won't need to use them on us, that I can guarantee you."

"Do try and stay clean, won't you?" Ann pleaded.

"I promise I'll try." Jane replied dryly, rolling her eyes. Did her sister really think she wanted to mess herself up so badly she might not ever get her mind right again? Sheesh! They could remove the chemicals. The mental effects? She wasn't so sure, and was going to be watching everything like a hawk! And that was already considering eating breakfast and dinner at home, and taking lunch in a magically protected pail!

"Uh, Tina? Where did you get basilisk venom?" the reassured Ann inquired.

"Oh? That. I'm raising one as a project on the Malfoy estate. The paintings think it's simply marvelous that I'm following the family pattern and all that."

"Ugh, sorry I asked."

"Yes, but you did. So you deserved your answer."

"Where did you learn how to raise a basilisk?" Jane wanted to know.

"In the same book that had the recipe for the venom immunity potion, of course." Tina returned smoothly. "It only taught the potion as a needed precaution for the snake's care."

"What about you, Tina?" Ann asked, noting her sister's lack of a uniform and wondering about it. "Are you coming to Cheltenham Ladies College with me? I know there had to be a reason you wanted your records produced as well."

"Actually, no. I'm going to the United States to prepare a fallback position in case we can no longer stay in the UK. I found a nice Christian private secondary school in California, and I thought I'd like a chance to bask in the sun while you two are freezing your bits off up here."

"That's cruel," Ann and Jane both scowled.

Tina tossed them a smile. "Oh well. Besides, I felt I'd earned it, keeping the Malfoys off our collective backs for two weeks. That alone was equal to the stress of two years of Potions under Snape. So I deserve a reward."

Now Jane was concerned, and voiced it, "What is going to keep them off our backs during the school year?"

Tina slipped into scholar mode, and began to explain, "It's very simple. They still think we are just under a year old, which is not a very demanding age to be at. The behavior of our clones does not have to be all that complex at this stage, just eat, sleep and play with the puppies. The elves can take care of all the washing and dressing and so on. And so long as I stop in every so often, say every couple of weeks, it should be plenty. My compulsion charms are certainly up to having them emulate that much. Besides, I'm going to school on the west coast of America, and I'm going to have evenings free. That's ten time zones apart, so when I get out of classes in the afternoon there it's early morning here. So I can pop back in to check in on breakfast and make sure things are going well."

Both her sisters blinked. "I didn't know magical travel could go that distance."

Tina blushed, then admitted. "Well, it can't. I'm still working on that part. A big part of the draw is the distance, actually. It places us out of range of casual attacks, and the American magical society is very different from our own. That's something I was counting on to help protect us, seeing as how our worst threat, the Death Eaters, can't blend in there as they do here, and they don't have the Ministerial support to strike with impunity."

"Hmm," the preteen paused in thought. "Maybe there is some way of checking up on those spells remotely?"

Ann sighed and rolled her eyes. "Well, I suppose Jane and I could check in on occasion for you. I'll take odd weekends, Jane can have evens."

"Thank you!" Tina gave both of them a great big hug. "It shouldn't be too hard. Like I said before, the behavior of one-year olds is not demanding, and it's not like either adult Malfoy pays them any attention, and on that fact, I have an announcement to make."

Both her sisters turned to stare attentively at Hermione Tina, who preened. "I was able to cobble together enough facts from various sources in their library to enchant the wands, beds and bathrooms of Lucius and Narcissa to maintain compulsion and confundus charms on them. Then I compelled them to ignore us, even more than they already do, and made it so when they think of anything related to us girls they'll be confounded to urgently think of something else instead. I set their dark artifact collection as the default. Anyway, they always ought to be near one of those things, to maintain/reassert the beguilement."

Jane tilted her head curiously. "Why dark artifacts?"

Tina shrugged. "You can't confuse someone into not thinking of something. You have to make him think of something else instead. Our main defense is really the compulsion, the confusion is merely the backup. And I set it that way because in some ways it doesn't matter how many means they *could* use to find us if they never think to try."

Tina tossed her hair proudly. "Both of these work better as they are just reinforcing their natural inclinations. They already ignore us. Actually, while I don't intend to push it as a slip up could be disastrous, the compulsions should only grow with age. So by the time we are twenty we could hopefully strip naked and run around the house holding muggle rock concerts in the foyer, and they'd still choose to ignore us. But again, that's an ideal. I hope we never have any excuse to test if they'd really ignore us to that degree."

Ann blinked. "Anything else?"

Jane blushed. "Uh, I actually suggested one."

Tina rounded on her sister. "You mean you didn't tell Ann?"

"It just never came up," Jane squirmed helplessly, afraid to admit she'd become distracted by some of those wonderful books Tina had brought by.

"Tell me what?" Ann became curious.

Tina rolled her eyes. "It's only just one of the most brilliant moves in this war."

Jane blushed at the praise. "I got the idea from watching a WWII film on TV."

"What is it?" Ann pressed, resolved to look into this a bit.

Tina huffed, hands on hips that, at twelve, still weren't much. They were all undeveloped stick figures hoping to blossom soon. "Hitler waged genocidal war on people he didn't like, just like the purebloods. But he had prison camps. Jane's idea was that if the purebloods didn't kill people right away they could be rescued later, after Voldy's fall. So she asked and I agreed to add beguilements to the Malfoys so they think they urgently need prisoners, and to keep it secret. That way hopefully some portion of those who died in this war won't, as whenever Lucius gets the urge to kill someone, he'll prefer to capture them instead."

"What's to stop him from raping them?" Ann demanded with a scowl.

Tina giggled. "Well, I did add spells to his Dung Eater outfits to attract hostile magic to his crotch area. But that was all I could get away with on that front, and even then I had to call it a harmless prank or the elves wouldn't let me. Sorry."

"Anyway," Jane added, now rising in defense of her own idea. "I was thinking we could free any prisoners from cells under Malfoy Manor on a semi-regular basis, and confound Lucius and his wife to think they'd executed whoever was down there 'for good reasons', so they don't question why their cells continually empty."

"It's just an application of the same dodge the Dung Eaters are using," Tina explained. "You catch me, but I escape to fight again, sort of deal. We're thinking it should really hold down some of the casualties of this war, as Lucius goes on most of the raids."

Ann did some thinking about this. "I still don't like it. Their treatment of captives is brutal, and often torture can be worse than death. Look at what happened to the Longbottoms."

Jane popped up to exclaim. "How about this? Go charm him to think he is taking slaves for sale during the upcoming pureblood utopia, and to avoid any unnecessary damage as that would destroy the resale value." Seeing Ann's expression darken, she quickly amended, "Look, I know it's revolting and wrong, but what about their side isn't? At least this way that's an explanation he could take at face value and not question much. Compulsions don't work very well on subjects who are always wondering why they are doing something."

Tina popped up to her feet. "I have enough time to go do that before sending you both off to school. Then I can check it again before heading off to America."

Ann popped up herself, volunteering, "I'll go let our real parents realize that with us going off to school they'll need someone to look after little Romeo during the day."

OoOoO

James watched in satisfaction as a raiding party of Dung Eaters electrocuted to death in two inches of standing water.

The reformed Order had nabbed one of the men on that list of Death Eaters off the street of Diagon Alley earlier that day and questioned him under Veritaserum, and he'd known about this raid, giving them just enough time to truly prepare.

~Or perhaps over-prepare,~ James thought as he saw the concrete chimeras tear into the helplessly thrashing Dung Eaters. ~After all, at this rate they'll never get to the traps we put on the house.~

Still, they'd been given some absolutely brilliant concepts to work off of. And one of the best facts was the guardian statues cared not one bit about the electricity, so could attack groups of Dung Eaters while they were in the power-line-fed pools of water.

~Hmm, forget about the traps on the house, at this rate they'll be dead even before we get to flood the area with poison gas.~

Razor-edged bat wings flexed, sending two decapitated heads flying.

~Heck, at this rate the wizards waiting in ambush aren't even going to get a chance to fire off a shot!~

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

I'd just like to thank everyone for their wonderful support. and yes, having cancer sucks, but it's quite a thrill to see tumors that grew explosively just as quickly go away. I love this new treatment.