She approached the hut carefully. By all accounts, they were dealing with smugglers of stolen goods that got nicked from an import firm warehouse two weeks ago. Smugglers won’t like being caught, so they were considered dangerous. Not truly dangerous, not like that dark alley at night, but dangerous enough for her to test herself in her new job as an Auror.

The babies were over a year old now and were no longer nursing, and Lyra had their breasts magically repaired to their earlier, pre-pregnancy condition. They were smaller, and she was kind of miffed about that because Viktor liked them bigger, but smaller ones were more practical, she told herself. And currently, practical was important.

This should be no different from sneaking into a chicken coop and stealing eggs on a muggle farm, she thought, and I did that before. Only the chickens had wands and reasons to use them. The hut was magically protected against remote viewing, so she couldn’t see what’s waiting for her inside. It was also protected against apparition, but she wouldn’t want to do that in the first place; too risky if you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. Slow and steady wins the race, said the turtle. Hermione smiled.

Non-verbal Alohomora dealt with the lock. It was dark inside, but she had a bad feeling. Hidden humans, more than one. More than three.

“Expelliaramus. Petrificus Totalus.” Two spells hit her and her wand flew away. She couldn’t move, not even her eyes, as she fell to the floor. It was an ambush.

“Jared, look what we caught”, a sneering, filthy figure addressed another. “We got ourselves a pureblood”, he laughed.

“Pure muggle-born delicacy, just for us”, a witch with messy black hair and patched up worn robe replied.

“And the blonde freak holding her leash is nowhere to be found, regrettably”, the third one added in a mocking tone, as lights and sounds of heavenly bells started appearing from what looked like cracks in space.

And then the space itself fragmented where they stood, tore them apart and then sucked them into a swirl and back out again, in liquid form.

The body-bind curse vanished, and Hermione stood straight, and dusted off her robes. “I need immediate assistance, and it’s not going to be pretty”, she tapped her wrist and spoke into the red circle. “I know, you told me so, but I think I will need to puke”, she closed her eyes and covered her nose and mouth with the cloth of her robe. “Where’s my wand? Oh, here. Eek”. She noticed, as she picked up her prop, that it’s covered in blood and other things, and then she actually threw up.

…

“Now you know how I learned not to play with space. I did that to a cow. I threw up all afternoon and couldn’t eat for the next day”, Lyra rubbed her sister’s shoulders as the Auror team cleaned up the mess.

“I will never be as precise and elegant as you”, Hermione hunched slightly. “I used the thing that came easiest, which was to touch magic, feel their presence in it, and just…”

“Shred and crush”, Lyra finished the sentence for her. “I know. Time is harder, but we’ll work on it more”, she nodded.

“I just killed four people and I feel nothing wrong about it. What’s wrong with me?”, Hermione stuttered in shock.

“There’s nothing wrong with you. From what I can see, the deeper layers of the world assisted you and that means they approve. You would only feel wrongness if you used your free will to tear at the magic against the feeling of rightness, and in this case, you killed four horrible people. Another dark cell adjacent to the Voldemort regime, by all accounts. They used petty crime to finance themselves, and that deceived us into thinking it’s all they were”.

“Let’s go home, I need a shower”.