2

Harry stared at the incredible sight of this young woman, clad in a costume straight out of one of the American comic books, who was standing there glaring at them through intimidating yellow lenses set into an insect-themed mask, a mass of curly black hair surrounding her head and upper torso. Insects buzzed angrily around her, the ceiling of the chamber was literally seething with them too, and he could hear all manner of things he didn't want to think about moving and chittering in the darkness around the edges of the room. That was bad enough, as was the apparent fact she was controlling every last one of them somehow, presumably through a form of magic he'd never even heard of.

The much worse thing was the enormous insectoid head that was a backdrop to her tall slender form, filling the entire end of the Veil room with a construct he could swear was looking at them hungrily. Even without anything approaching a human face, he could feel the intent behind the flames that made it up. Around the edges it flickered and twisted, the light casting the room into sharp relief, but the main part of it was entirely steady and looked nearly solid even though he could see deep into it. Fiendfyre, from what Sirius had told him and Hermione had found in a couple of books, didn't do that. It was vicious and bloody nearly uncontrollable, to the point that even Dumbledore would be excessively cautious with the stuff.

But this girl, and he was sure she wasn't much older than he was, somehow had taken control of it to the point she was wearing some as a bloody bracelet! How the hell she wasn't screaming in agony as her arm burned to the bone he didn't have the faintest idea, but the overall effect was profoundly disturbing to the point of being terrifying. As was the completely flat emotionless way she spoke, sounding like someone who would have zero compunction to doing unto them what she'd done unto every single Death Eater in the room.

Which was mercilessly wipe them out. Shooting several without as far as he'd seen missing once, even from behind cover, then setting more insects than he'd ever in his life wished to encounter in one place on them, then finishing the job by immolating the remainder. There was nothing left of Malfoy, Bellatrix, or the others beyond a fine layer of ash.

If it wasn't for the fact that she'd certainly saved Hermione from taking a spell to the face, apparently wasn't actually intent on killing him and his friends, and that he was damn sure they couldn't take her anyway, he'd be running about now. Also, of course, she and her bloody flame demon or whatever the hell it was happened to be between them and the door…

Which was a touch upsetting. They were trapped in here with her until she decided otherwise. He was pretty sure apparating out, even if he and his friends could do it, was blocked by the Ministry defenses.

Harry rather felt, now he had caught his breath after all the running around and avoiding death by the skin of his teeth, that tonight had not really been at all something he'd enjoyed in any way at all. None of his friends would disagree with that either he suspected. Hermione had barely escaped dangerous spells twice now, whatever that purple one had been that had nearly got her a while back, and the green one, which going by the color hadn't been an avada kedavra at least, but he didn't know what it was. Ginny was limping badly, Neville looked exhausted, and Luna was literally trembling from exertion. How all of them had survived intact so far he had no idea other than blind luck.

He'd take that in lieu of anything else but he was still kicking himself for dragging his friends into this complete mess. Although they'd somewhat insisted, so there was that.

Looking around, he saw everyone else was clearly feeling as frazzled and bewildered, and yes, terrified, as he was. The adults, Kingsley, Sirius, Lupin, and Moody, along with Tonks who sort of qualified, were gaping at Skitter with various expressions of complete disbelief. Sirius was the one who'd started to shout at the girl when she'd reached out for the fiendfyre, only to gurgle into silence as it obediently just poured a small fraction of itself into her hand like it was a liquid. Somehow not instantly setting her ablaze. His eyes had bulged out at the sight and his wand had drooped as if he was about to pass out. The others weren't much better. Moody had both his real eye and his magical one fixated on the girl, Kingley's mouth was hanging open, Professor Lupin was just staring in disbelief, and Tonks was standing, hair limp and brown indicating her shock, next to him.

He felt someone needed to answer their savior, or whatever the fuck she really was, before she became irked. Harry got the impression that Skitter irked was bad news. And there was a lot of evidence to support that supposition all around them, mostly floating on the air as a fine dust…

As he opened his mouth to reply, Hermione beat him to it.

"Where is home?" she asked, her voice betraying her nervousness but not wavering, which made him proud of his friend. He wasn't entirely certain he'd be able to do as well at the moment.

"Brockton Bay, in the United States of America," Skitter replied evenly. "We're in the UK right now, aren't we?"

"Yes." Hermione nodded. "I've never heard of Brockton Bay though. Where is it in the US?"

"About eighty miles north of Boston, on the coast. It's a large port city on a river. Or was."

His friend frowned, looking like she was trying to recall something. She'd probably memorized an atlas, knowing her. "Around Portland?" she hazarded after a moment. "I don't recognize the name, but that's roughly the right area."

"Portland?" Skitter queried, sounding puzzled. "Never heard of that place."

She and Hermione stared at each other for some seconds, even as everyone else watched in nervous bafflement.

"It's about eighty miles north of Boston, on the east coast of the US, on a river," Hermione finally said somewhat slowly. She didn't take her eyes off Skitter. The strange girl stared back, and the giant wasp's head made of fire behind her, or whatever it was, seemed to be doing likewise. Which was… horrifying.

Eventually, Skitter slowly asked, "When was the last Endbringer attack?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Endbringer? What's that?"

"Fuck."

Skitter bowed her head, looking at the ground. Harry could swear he heard over the subdued crackling sound from the fiery head a deep sigh. Raised it again she looked right at Hermione, who had an expression that implied she'd realized something bizarre.

"What's the date?" Skitter asked in the tones of someone who knew the answer wasn't going to be one she liked.

"June eighteenth, nineteen ninety six," Hermione promptly responded with a look of fascination, also containing a certain amount of satisfaction that she was right about something. He knew it well, because she usually was right about things.

"Balls." Skitter looked around the room, then back over her shoulder at her floating head of insectoid doom. "Well, that's a fucking pain in the ass."

"I'm afraid that getting home might be a little more difficult than ideal," Hermione said after a moment. "Leaving aside the problem we don't know how you got here to begin with." Skitter sighed again. Taking a step forward, and putting her wand away as if she'd only just realized she was still holding it, Hermione then asked, "What year was it on your world?"

The other girl looked at her with her head slightly tilted as if she was evaluating his friend carefully. "Two thousand and eleven. May seventh."

Harry froze in shock, and he heard gasps from the others. She was a time traveler? He didn't think it was possible to go back in time that far, according to what Dumbledore had told Hermione about Time Turners. Then the rest of the conversation sank in.

She was from a completely different world!

Bloody hell! That was… even with magic that was weird.

Hermione just nodded, as if she'd been expecting something like that. "That does present something of a problem," she said with deep understatement.

"Yeah, I'll bet it does," Skitter grumbled. "Fucking Tinkers. When I figure out who needs to get all the bees, they're going to get all the bees."

Harry didn't get the impression she was joking. He shuddered slightly even while he wondered at what she meant by tinker. It clearly meant something that probably wasn't what the word conjured up in his imagination.

"You're from the future?" Ron asked with confusion. Then his eyes lit up. "Do you know the quidditch scores for the next few years then?"

Skitter looked at him, then back to Hermione, who had her hand over her eyes. "Honestly, Ron, that's what you ask?" she said with resignation.

"It's a perfectly sensible question!" Ron protested. For some reason Luna started giggling from where she was leaning on Neville, by the looks of it both of them propping each other up. Sirius was looking at Lupin, both of them appearing very puzzled, while Kingsley was inspecting Skitter with wary caution. Moody was just listening closely, his face blank, even though Harry got the impression he was having trouble believing any of this. Which was fair enough, he was having trouble too, but then Skitter did have a giant flaming head hanging behind her, so he was quite inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. It only seemed prudent.

"We need to talk to Dumbledore," Tonks said into the silence.

"Who's Dumbledore?" Skitter asked, still looking at Hermione as if the two were somehow communing without words. His friend had a look on her face that meant she was thinking very hard.

"The most powerful wizard in the world," Ginny replied before Tonks could, as she limped over to one of the steps surrounding the Veil dais and sat down, apparently past the point of caring about being ready to defend herself now that it seemed the chances of instant death had receded somewhat.

"Wizard?" Skitter emoted skepticism. "You guys really are going all in on that magic thing aren't you?"

He got the impression she might have a problem with the concept of magic, which was strange considering what she was doing and had done. What else other than magic could it possibly be?

"Of course we are, what else do you think all this is other than magic?" Tonks asked, sounding confused. "Your magic isn't something I've ever seen or heard of but it's obviously extremely powerful…"

"I don't have magic," Skitter replied, finally looking away from Hermione towards the older woman, even as Hermione's face showed even greater interest. "I'm a Parahuman."

"What is… a Parahuman?" Moody asked, speaking for the first time. Harry noted that his wand, while not pointing at Skitter, wasn't quite not pointing at her either. The old man's paranoia was certainly prodding him very hard right now, he assumed. Which was fair enough under the circumstances.

He just didn't think it would actually help.

At the back of his mind he was wondering what would happen if someone did manage to take Skitter down by surprise, as unlikely as that seemed right now. Because if it was only her doing whatever she was doing that kept the fiendfyre contained, if she stopped doing it…

That seemed like something that would end very badly and painfully rather rapidly, in his opinion.

"Don't tell me, you don't have Parahumans here either?" Skitter asked, looking back to Hermione who shook her head mutely. "Of course you don't. But you have magic. Wonderful. That makes so much sense." She muttered under her breath for a moment, sounding annoyed even through the worryingly emotionless tone of voice. Her complete stillness except when she deliberately moved was almost worse than the voice, actually. Combined with the threat right behind her, the overall effect was something Harry was going to have nightmares about for quite a while regardless of how all this worked out.

"Parahumans are people with special powers," she explained after a moment. "All sorts of things. I guess it's kind of like magic if you haven't seen it before. But it isn't. We've got some people who think they've got magic but they're pretty much all nuts as far as I know."

"Why the costume?" Harry had to ask. She looked down at herself, then up at him.

"It's… complicated. Let's just say it's part of our culture for now." Looking around at them, she shook her head. "Fuck it. I just want to go home, I didn't have any plans to end up on another world fighting magical terrorists. I've got enough problems with non-magical assholes already." Turning to Hermione, she asked, "This Dumbledore of yours… You think he can figure out how to send me back?"

Hermione appeared conflicted. "I honestly don't know, but he's the most likely one to be able to work out what happened, I think," she replied after a moment. "Or at least he might know who to talk to who could work it out. Maybe the Department of Mysteries?" She looked around then back to Skitter. "Or what's left of it."

"Fine. Let's go find him." Skitter shrugged. "I guess we're off to see the wizard."

"The wonderful wizard of Oz," Luna suddenly sang, before laughing. Hermione and Skitter both looked at her, then at each other.

"She does that sometimes," Hermione explained, while Harry grinned to himself. "You get used to it."

"...OK," Skitter replied a little dubiously. Then she looked upwards at the ceiling for a moment. "Huh. This Dumbledore of yours… Old guy, beard down to his knees, bad taste in robes? That sure sounds like the kind of wizard I'm expecting."

"That does sound like him, yes," Hermione nodded, looking curious.

"Well, he's having a big fight in a huge room above us, with some other guy without a nose," Skitter replied.

"You know who!" Ginny gasped.

"No, I don't. Who?" Skitter said, staring at her.

"You know who. That's who."

"I don't know who…"

Before this could turn into a Monty Python skit, Harry interrupted. "He calls himself Voldemort, although his real name is Tom Riddle. He's the arsehole who leads the Death Eaters. And started the First Wizarding War. Now he wants to start the second one."

"Voldemort?" Skitter appeared dubious. "Why did she think I knew who that was?" She pointed at Ginny.

"Most wizards are terrified of saying his name for various reasons," Hermione explained. "So they call him you know who."

"That's stupid," Skitter replied after thinking it over. "It only works if you do know who. And I didn't know who, so calling him… Jesus, why am I discussing Edgy McEdgelord's tryhard name? Let's just go kill him too, then talk to your wizard guru."

Harry pointed past her at the giant insect flame head which was watching them all. He wasn't going to mention how Voldemort apparently couldn't die, because he wasn't sure that for Skitter that actually mattered. And if he was honest with himself, he was looking forward to seeing what happened…

"What about that?" he asked.

She turned around. Moody raised his wand a little. "Try it and I'll sting you to death," Skitter said completely casually, without looking around.

He lowered it again, his face thoughtful.

Putting her hand out, the terrifying girl did… something.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Taylor was severely suppressing the knowledge that the damned portal or whatever it had been had not only transported her a long way, it had managed to move her between worlds and apparently through time too. She wondered how closely the future of this world would match the past of her own, for a moment or two. If it was fairly close that could be useful should it not prove possible to send her back.

She pushed the emotional response of the thought of never seeing her friends, or her dad, again, out into the swarm. Most of it went into the fiendfyre, which seemed to absorb it cheerfully and almost relish it.

Right now, she couldn't afford to second guess herself, or have some sort of emotional breakdown over the situation she was in. She needed to make sure she was safe, without any more of these Death Eater fuckwits around to cause problems, because they seemed to not only be even more repellent than the E88 back home, but more prepared to immediately resort to lethal force.

Fair enough, it wasn't like she couldn't respond in kind. And the mood she was in right now, she was almost looking forward to a bit of preemptive revenge. After all, it was one of these assholes who'd brought her here in the first place, albeit accidentally by what the Hermione girl had told her. At least he hadn't had long to bask in his success, should he have wanted to.

She rather felt he would have preferred to have her not turn up because she'd completely derailed their plans. Which gave her a sort of cold satisfaction if nothing else.

Taylor was very aware that when she let herself feel emotions properly again she was going to be both extremely angry and very upset. But that could wait until it was safe to be Taylor again, rather than Skitter. Skitter did what needed to be done. It was the only way to be sure.

Gazing into the fiery depths of her new friend, she absently warned the man with the weird fake eye against doing something stupid, then ignored him and the rest even though part of her was watching them from innumerable viewpoints. Her ability to sense through her insects had expanded incredibly in the last twenty minutes or so, possibly due to sheer stress, although she suspected that something about this 'magical' world had given her power a sort of supercharged boost. She could almost swear she could feel it giggling in excitement as it kept on finding new interesting things to take control of. By now she was sensing the entire building through literally millions of tiny minds, all of them acting as extensions of her will so instinctively it was something she didn't even have to think about.

Then there was the fire. Which wasn't fire at all, it was instead a vast, vast swarm of teeny tiny little creatures that seemed to be made out of energy rather than anything more normal, all of them acting as one. Before she'd taken control and stopped it, they were somehow reproducing at a frightening rate as they burned everything they touched, which made her suspect they were somehow converting all that stuff into more of themselves somehow. Fires needed fuel and oxygen, but this fyre ate everything. Anything it touched was fuel.

She also had a shrewd suspicion that it went after magic too, if what she was feeling in the background through the strange senses it had were real. Trying to extend herself into that channel of information gave her a headache instantly, which vanished as quickly as it had come when she pulled back a little, having received some peculiar flashes of… something very unusual.

Even so, she felt that with some practice she'd be able to deal with it. Again, something for later.

"Now, how to deal with you," she murmured almost under her breath, examining with her eyes and all her power-granted senses. The fyre had happily done what she told it to do as far as not burning her, and splitting off a tiny chunk of the main mass which was currently contentedly wrapped around her arm. For some reason she got the impression that the stuff was happy to have her so deeply embedded into what passed for a mind in it. A mind made up out of literally trillions of miniscule something-or-others that were just waiting to be told what to do.

Experimentally, she ordered it to compact itself down to a smaller size, although 'ordering' wasn't really very accurate. It was so much a part of her via her powers that she basically just willed it to do what she wanted, with as little effort as wiggling her fingers.

And it obeyed. The twenty-plus foot wide hornet's head made of burning magical fyre immediately shrank in all directions, getting brighter at the same time, within a couple of seconds becoming something only a couple of feet across and glowing as brightly as the sun. Oddly, she found that she could look directly at it even though behind her all the other people had slammed their hands over their eyes and turned away.

She made it diminish in brightness, the immediate result being the brilliant white light dimming to a soft yellow glow like an old fashioned tungsten bulb. Taylor smiled under her mask, pleased. "You're so eager to please, aren't you?" she whispered to the fyre, holding out her hand and letting the now roughly spherical mass elongate into a ribbon of light which crawled over the offered digits and up her arm, encasing it in a pleasant warmth. "That'll be handy in winter," she murmured in satisfaction, wondering what Lisa would think. Letting the fyre flow up her arm and across her chest, she formed it into a sort of jacket, inspecting the result through the eyes of some of the more interesting creatures she had sitting high up in the ceiling. She wasn't sure what they were, they felt almost like vicious little humanoids with insect attributes, but they had incredible eyesight which was unexpectedly simple to use.

Satisfied that she'd contained the living flames, and feeling nicely warm, she turned around again and looked at Potter and his friends with her own eyes. All of them were giving her wide-eyed looks that made her feel somewhat amused.

"Right, that's sorted out. Let's see about Mr No-nose, shall we?" she said calmly. She was watching the fight upstairs, which at the moment was mostly two idiots posturing at each other and shooting random weird effects around the place, which kind of annoyed her since it was obvious neither one of them was really fighting. They were showing off for the public, since there were quite a few other people up there watching.

"Amateurs," she sighed, heading towards the door. The others followed her, looking at each other as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing or doing. Hermione was watching her closely, with a look she recognized as someone trying to work out an interesting problem. It was weirdly reminiscent of Lisa, making Taylor homesick.

She wondered what would result from Hermione and her friend meeting…

The blonde girl who'd come out with the Wizard of Oz reference, which had nearly made Taylor burst out laughing despite herself, was also examining her curiously, while looking around every now and then at the other creatures she was controlling. For some reason she was smiling slightly. Taylor had sent a lot of the swarm on ahead, since it would take a little while to get it through all the various spaces under floors and in walls and ceilings all the way up to the top level, but a significant fraction was coming with them. A dark tide flowed behind the small group, covering the walls and ceiling and making the ones at the back, the man called Sirius and his gray haired friend, look somewhat worried. They kept glancing around and twitching a little…

Outside the room she'd appeared in was a large circular one with blue-flamed candles in sconces mounted on the walls, the overall theme being gloss black. Black marble floor, black walls, black doors, the whole room looked like a goth's happy place to her. As soon as the door behind them closed, the room began spinning, which made her look around and shake her head. Wizards really liked their theater by the looks of it. They had a lot of similarities with Parahumans in that respect. When the room stopped rotating, she just headed for the exit. It wasn't like she didn't know exactly which door led out, after all. She had so many creatures spread throughout the entire building now she knew where everything was.

None of the people following said anything, although Hermione and Potter looked at each other and shrugged. Outside the spinny room in the main corridor, it was totally deserted although several alarms were still sounding, making it pretty loud. Taylor just ignored it all and aimed for the elevators some way down the hall. Arriving, she inspected the gold latticework of the gate, which looked like something from a period movie, raised an eyebrow, then pressed the button next to it. Lots of clanking sounds came from above and she wondered why, if they had actual magic, they couldn't work out how to make an elevator that was a little more up to date and quieter. It wasn't like it was complicated technology.

Eventually the car came into view and stopped at floor level. The gate opened with a rattle, making her wince. It sounded like it was in desperate need of oil. Everyone piled into the elevator and Sirius, at the back, prodded the button on the panel for the next floor up, which for some warped reason was apparently the entrance area. Moments later the gate had clashed shut again in a way that OSHA probably wouldn't have approved of back home and the thing jolted into action, ascending the shaft with even more rattling and grinding sounds. While it was going up, Taylor was making sure she had a decently overwhelming force of everything dangerous in the room above them where Dumbledore and the idiot were still showing off, several more of the dark robed Death Eaters fighting around the edges of the fracas with more of the supposed good guys.

She noticed that the terrorists weren't stinting with what appeared to be lethal force, but the defenders seemed to be going out of their way to use 'spells' that appeared to be non-lethal, since the insects she had on everyone present could tell the fallen attackers were mostly only unconscious. And their compatriots were able to wake them back up again and get them back in the fight with minimal effort, whereas at least two of the defenders certainly weren't going to rise again. By the looks of it that pair had been dead since the fight downstairs, but she decided enough was enough and even as the elevator slowed, she dropped the entire ceiling-worth of insects and whatever else she had up there right on top of the attacking force.

"Atrium," a clear female voice announced as the elevator car stopped and the gate rattled open. Somehow it was apparently blocking external sounds despite not being a solid surface, because the moment it opened the sound of screams and chaos almost deafened them all.

Taylor stepped out of the elevator and looked around, smiling grimly at the sight of seven more Death Eaters rolling around on the ground buried in things that were doing their damndest to sting them even unto death. And doing a pretty good job of that...

Dumbledore was standing staring at the sight with an expression of complete shock. His choice of robes showed he either hadn't got the faintest idea about color coordination, or possibly knew it intimately and deliberated dressed in the most god-awful manner possible just to blind people. All his people were gaping as well, fixated on the screaming terrorists, and hadn't yet noticed the new arrivals.

Potter was smirking as he watched the sight, apparently finding it cathartic, while Hermione seemed interested as much as anything although she winced a little at some of the louder screams. The old guy with the funny eye had a grim smile of satisfaction, and when she looked back at him, he nodded to her in the manner of someone who was pleased with what was happening. She assumed he had a history with these crazy bastards.

"Dumbledore! What's happening?" one of the people between them and the fight shouted over the noise, sounding worried and confused,

"I don't know," the elderly wizard replied, raising his voice to be heard. "I've never seen so many… what are those?" He peered closer. "I have no idea what half those creatures are, to be honest. Nor why they're attacking the Death Eaters and not us."

Taylor was about to interject herself into the conversation but before she could, the carpet of insects and god knows what else over Mr No-Nose suddenly erupted in blue fire, killing a vast number of her critters and blasting the rest away. He stood up, bleeding and tattered, with his robes torn and a wild look of utter rage in his red eyes. "Dumbledore!" he howled. "This is your doing! You dare to try a trick like this on me?"

Aiming his wand he screamed something she couldn't make out, his voice ragged, and a blast of red light shot out of it towards the old wizard. Dumbledore flicked his wand and the incoming spell rebounded off some sort of energy shield that briefly flickered into existence between them. "This is not my doing, Tom," he replied.

"No, it's mine," Taylor said, deciding now was a good time to shut all this crap down. She'd had a very trying hour or so and was not in a good mood. Her pet fyre seemed to hug her chest, making her feel warm for a moment and slightly relaxing her as she pushed her emotions into it.

Everyone in the entire room spun around to stare at her, aside from the terrorists now lying nice and still under a seething blanket of creepy-crawlies.

"Who are you?," the tall pale man demanded in fury. He was favoring one leg, and his wand arm was shaking slightly. The amount of venom in him should have killed him by now, she thought with interest, considering how quickly the others had succumbed to what seemed to be some pretty potent toxins, but he was still ticking. Magic? Or just a stronger constitution? He reminded her of a Case-53, in some ways, and clearly wasn't completely standard-issue human. Perhaps that came along with poison resistance…

"I'm Skitter. And I'd suggest that surrendering right the fuck now is a really good idea unless you want to end up like your friends," she replied calmly, making everyone look at her with weird expressions, including him. "Or I can deal with you like I did them. Your choice, I don't much care one way or the other."

Dumbledore was inspecting her with wide eyes, which widened even more a moment later as he seemed to realize what he was looking at on her torso. He paled dramatically and stepped back. The other guy was glaring at her and didn't notice. "You dare interrupt me?" he hissed. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

"I've met your type before," she responded with a shrug. "I'm not impressed."

His gaze narrowed and he whipped his wand at her with a cry of "Crucio!" The jet of magical energy moved considerably faster than she'd expected based on what she'd seen so far from these crazy wizards, taking her by surprise even though she'd expected some sort of response, and before she could quite duck far enough, hit her on the thigh just under where her fyre-jacket went down to.

She looked down at her leg, then up at the man now watching her as if he'd expected something to happen. "Ow," she said into the sudden total silence. "That stings."

It had hurt more than she let on, but it was nowhere near what Bakuda's pain bomb had done. Her personal pain scale, which had always been on the high side, had been rather significantly recalibrated thanks to that. This she'd rate at about a six out of ten.

As he recovered from the shock of apparently believing something more dramatic should happen, she added somewhat happily, "My turn."

"You don't even have a wa…" he got as far as saying before she pointed at him and released her pet fyre. A ribbon of writhing flame, radiating heat that glazed the floor under it even as it had no effect on her at all, whipped out far too rapidly for any human reflex to even begin to avoid, hitting him directly in the middle of the chest. Screams arose from most of the observers aside from those behind her, several of whom gasped but in a way that suggested they'd pretty much assumed something like this would happen.

She withdrew the fyre back onto her body and watched as Tom Riddle looked down at the orange-edged hole that had replaced most of his torso, before she snapped her fingers. Lisa was right, reputation was key in this sort of thing, and if you were going to make an impression, presentation was everything. The traces of fiendfyre left on his body flared up instantly and totally consumed it before it could even begin to topple over, a flash of light and hellish sound leaving only ash that drifted to the floor.

Holding out her hand she pulled the new fyre back to herself where it flowed up her arm to join the rest, then turned to Dumbledore who was looking at her as if he'd seen his doom coming for him. "Hi," she said cheerfully. "Now that's over, can we talk? These guys think you might be able to help with a bit of a problem I've got." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at Hermione and the others, who were looking between where Riddle had stood and her alternately. Potter was grinning like a lunatic and Hermione seemed grimly amused.

Dumbledore swallowed hard, then excruciatingly slowly put his wand away, before smiling in a strained manner. "I'm at your disposal my dear," he replied with a somewhat shaky voice.

Now they were getting somewhere. With any luck this guy could figure it out and she could get home soon. This place was insane in her view.