Plans and Action

Would you be willing to sneak me in the castle?" Hermione asked Regulus. He swallowed and looked at his sister-in-law. If anything happened to her, Sirius would kill him. Then Lucius and Severus would take turns pounding his remains into red dust. Unless James Potter managed to beat them to it. She raised an eyebrow at him and he sighed.

"Yes, domina," Regulus finally said with obvious reluctance. Hermione tossed her wild curls over her shoulder.

"It will be fine, Regulus. A bit of complex magic, and you may or may be expelled if we're caught, but I think we'll be able to manage it," Hermione said soothingly.

"Domina, that is not quite as comforting as you perceive it to be," Severus observed dryly.

"What do you suppose he will do when his spell stops working?" Lucius asked coolly, already running scenarios through his head. Hermione smiled slightly.

"He will want to check, of course, but that's where he'll run into problems. He won't have ready access to Hogwarts. Dumbledore won't allow him here again. I believe the headmaster understands now who exactly Tom Riddle is, and he won't risk having him anywhere near Hogwarts. He may attempt to send someone in to check. It may or may not be one of you or the others. If it is, feel free to show him my magical signature. No one will recognize it. I kept a very low profile in school, and the sort of people who are trained to recognize the differences in magical signatures don't know me," Hermione said firmly. The milites nodded reluctantly. They hated plans that put her at risk because they perceived her Seer ability as their secret weapon.

"This summer we will acquire the ring, and the other Horcruxes and I will approach Dumbledore," Lucius reminded her. She nodded.

"Remember, Lucius. You must give him the diary. No other Horcrux can be allowed in his hands. If he questions you, you may give him your very best snooty Malfoy face and inform him that we don't trust him around some of them considering his past behavior," Hermione told Lucius, again.

The milites hated this part with a passion. Whenever they had meetings, Hermione usually went over future projects and made sure that they had all the information they needed to continue the mission without her. Regulus had to physically and mentally restrain himself when he would rather jump up and scream at her. She wasn't going to die on them because they wouldn't let her. They sat through it and nodded at all the appropriate places. Severus tuned her out for the most part. Regulus hadn't gotten close enough to the older man that he could tell when Sev was no longer listening. Unfortunately for Severus, so could his blood-sister. She smacked him on the arm.

"Look, Sev, I'm not planning on dying, and I don't See it either, but remember I See probabilities. There's always random chance. Let us just say that I know exactly what can happen if a key player dies without passing along key information. That's not going to happen with us. All three of you know our major plans and how we plan to implement them. If anything happens to any of the four of us, we'll need to consider expanding the ring of information out. I want each of you to consider someone to replace you. We'll need to make sure that of your choices although all of them have received my mark," Hermione was muttering to herself when she got to the last bit, thinking about possible double crosses.

"Do you ever stop planning and thinking?" Severus teased her lightly. Hermione blinked at him in surprise, as though he had asked her if she ever stopped breathing. Regulus snickered.

"You would have been such a good Slytherin. I think you would have ruled our House with an iron glove. We would have won the House Cup every year, and most likely every Quidditch match," he teased his sister-in-law. She smirked at him.

"You would have, if you'd had me," she agreed. She looked around at them. "Are we done? Right, Regulus, I'll meet you in three nights near the Whomping Willow."

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Do you feel that your destruction of the copying charms will stop the attacks?" Griselda Marchbanks demanded. Hermione shook her head.

"Not really, we're dealing with a perverted excuse for a human being that thrives on pain and death. I imagine he'll alter his attacks because he won't have access to the muggleborns anymore. He was already attacking the purebloods who were defying him. I imagine that that will continue," Hermione said flatly. Griselda nodded.

"I agree," she said in her gravelly voice. She turned to the rest of the women present at this meeting and looked at them. "Does anyone disagree?"

All those present shook their head mutely. They had seen with their own eyes the things that these so-called Death Eaters were capable of, and they didn't put anything passed their leader.

"What's next on the agenda," Griselda asked, looking down the table at Hyacinth Fenwick. Mrs. Fenwick grabbed her notes and flipped through them carefully.

"The magical orphans from the attacks," she replied, glancing up from her papers.

"Ah, yes," Mrs. Bones said firmly. "Our committee has determined that there are twenty magical orphans from bungled, or failed attacks on families. These children are all listed as muggleborn. In two instances, we discovered that there was a squib grandmother or grandfather in the line and approached the child's wizarding relations. In both cases, the wizarding family had had difficulty continuing their line and they were thrilled to take the children and formally adopt them."

"The other eighteen may very well have squibs further back in the line," pointed out Augusta Longbottom.

"The problem is that some of them might come from families that have completely died out," observed Mrs. McKinnon dryly. The other women nodded. "We'll need to formalize what we already have in place."

"I think if we formed a board, and each of our families contributed a modest amount, we could purchase a house and hire staff to help us run it," Mrs. Bones said thoughtfully. The other women agreed readily to this.

"We might bond some house elves to the orphanage to help the staff," Hermione said mildly. The other women looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. "House elves love children, and taking care of a whole house full of them would be considered right up there with being bonded to Hogwarts."

"Very good, see to it," Griselda informed the women present who nodded. "I'll contact Gringott's and have them open an account for the orphanage. The Marchbanks family will make the first donation. When you contact Gringott's, just tell them it's for the…er…what should we call it?"

"Well, the Ladies' Aide Society Home for Familially-Challenged Children seems to be a bit of a mouthful," Hermione drawled, earning her rolled eyes and wry smiles.

"These children have seen so much," Mrs. Bones said sadly, wringing her hands. "We've had to move them from safe house to safe house. What if we called it: Forever Home?"

"I love it," Mrs. Fenwick said encouragingly. "It reinforces the idea that they have come home, that they have a place of their own."

"We're going to need a big house," Mrs. McKinnon pointed out sadly. "By the time we're done, we'll probably have more orphans."

"Unfortunately, you are most likely right," Griselda Marchbanks agreed.

The rest of the meeting continued swiftly with plans in place to protect and secure targeted pureblood and halfblood families. Every single member of the Ladies' Aide Society had already warded their homes as securely as they dared without drawing unwanted attention. They even had a Wards Committee that sporadically checked all the houses under the protection of the Ladies' Aide Society to determine if any of them had been breached or damaged. They were still ostensibly working to help St. Mungo's Hospital, and the hospital had been appreciative of everything that they had done. Their work had been directly responsible for funding several long needed improvements.

The healers and mediwitches all approved of the Ladies' Aide Society, and praised their efforts loudly. Hermione listened with half an ear. Everything seemed to be proceeding well, just as she had hoped. If anything were to happen to her, she had every confidence that both of her groups would be able to carry on the work they had chosen.

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HG/HP/HB

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"Hermione?" Sirius called as he entered the house, pulling off his Auror robes. He bounded up the stairs to their bedroom, his robes over his arm. "Kitten?"

"In here, Sirius," he heard her voice faintly, and automatically turned in the direction of her voice.

Hermione was in their bedroom, standing in her closet frowning. Her wild curls tumbled down her back, stopping in the middle of her back. Silk stocking covered her legs, her black garter belt holding them in place. Her feet were encased in black sling back heels that made him think naughty things. It didn't help at all that that was all his kitten was wearing. He moved forward and slid his arms around her waist, his lips automatically going to the juncture of her neck and shoulder.

"What are you doing, kitten?" He asked between kisses. She leaned back against his chest and sighed.

"Family dinner tonight," she reminded him gently and turned in his arms to kiss him back. The feel of her tongue dancing with his made his body tighten in pleasant ways. Her small hands unbuttoning his shirt, and her fingers sliding over his skin, made him shiver in anticipation. Hermione was watching him with those eyes of hers and he felt himself get so hard he ached. He pulled her against him and kissed her deeply, pressing himself against her. His naughty kitten rubbed herself against him and moaned in need.

"How much time?" He asked as she unbuckled his pants.

"Enough," she panted at him.

He divested himself of his clothes and Hermione flew at him, wrapping her arms and legs around him. He stumbled slightly, until he braced them against the back wall of her closet. Hermione's legs tightened around him as he slid slowly inside of her.

"Merlin, kitten," he panted. "So tight, every time."

"Nnngh!" Was the only response that Hermione was capable of making at the time.

It was fast and dirty, shagging Hermione against the wall of her closet with her silk-clad legs wrapped around him. He pounded into her and she filled his ears with a never ending litany of moans, gasps, and mewls of encouragement. He was rather proud of the fact that she seemed incapable of human speech at the moment. Her nails raked down his back and she bit his shoulder, which he took to mean that he needed to stroke deeper and faster within her. She was so tight, so wet, so warm that it was incredibly hard for him to concentrate. He wanted nothing more than to lose control inside her. She was clutching him and babbling in his ear in a language he'd never heard before and doubted existed. She stiffened around him and then began to come apart, her eyes unfocused and her lips open in a soundless 'o' of pleasure. He kissed her swiftly and let go of everything else. The two of them slid down the wall of her closet in a haze of ecstasy and he cuddled her against his chest on the floor.

"Are we late?" He asked after several minutes. She looked up at him, her lips swollen and bruised and smirked.

"A bit," she said dryly.

"Your father's going to glare at me again isn't he?" Sirius asked with a long-suffering sigh.

"It is entirely possible that Daddy will spend most of dinner imagining horrible accidents happening to the lower half of your body," Hermione agreed.

"Fine, let's go take a shower," Sirius suggested. Hermione frowned.

"Separate showers or we'll never get there and James will help Daddy," Hermione said firmly. Sirius reluctantly agreed. Personally, he felt that shared showers were one of the rights and privileges of marriage, but he knew she was right.

"Let's go, then," he muttered with a slight pout.

"You're insatiable," Hermione laughed and headed towards one of the other bathroom.