Spider - Woman.

The Muggleborn Institute.

" Dean Thomas?" Jessica looked her old schoolmate up and down, she couldn't understand what was happening. How could anyone aside from another witch or wizard stun another? But how could Dean Thomas be involved?

Thomas had been one of her brothers cronies, but he wasn't as close to Mark as Granger and Weasley had been. What was he doing here? Where was she? Unlike other members of her brother's inner circle, some like Finnegan and Thomas had been a mystery, their motives were unclear because Mark and the others had been complete jerks. Granger for instance, many in Jessica's old house hated her, but had to admit she had intelligience, unlike the others.

Thomas smiled down at her as she tried to get up. " Here," he said, moving forwards to help pull her up. " Let me help you."

Jessica tried to pull away, but she was too weak. She let Thomas help her, he picked her up gently. Jessica felt like a china doll, delicate, in Thomas's arms, as the wizard pushed her into a wheelchair. As soon as she grew comfortable, she felt something prick her neck.

Jessica whipped her heard round, glaring at wizard who was holding a syringe. " What the hell did you do?"

" I just injected you with a drug, or a potion, depending on your point of view, into your system," Dean replied, unphased by the fury in Jessica's eyes. If he was honest with himself, Dean was glad Jessica was still recovering from the coma spell. He'd witnessed first hand occasions where Jessica had the power to beat anyone to death in duels at Hogwarts. It wasn't something he'd ever wanted, and he'd done his best to steer clear of her.

Jessica's Ravenclaw intelligence aside, she was a powerful witch, and a dangerous opponent. People like Hermione Granger and Mark Potter, the former was now in therapy, with technicians and doctors working hard to remove the conditioning done on her mind, and the latter was now out of sight of the magical public, but those two had often tried Jessica's patience and temper.

Dean had no intention of letting that happen now.

" The potion will help your body recover, but you must give it time." Dean carried on, wheeling a seething Jessica out of the door carefully. She didn't like being seen as the damsel in distress.

" So, where am I?"

Dean chuckled, sobering quickly when he saw the patient look on Jessica's face. " I'd better explain. In the reign of Queen Victoria, a powerful wizard, a muggleborn, was disheatened by the way the magical world treated him just as he was disappointed with the lack of work he received because of the purebloods dominating the scene."

Jessica nodded in understanding. The pureblood supremacists had made it unbearably hard for muggle borns, even those of noted high power and intellect to find decent work, and they placed unfair laws in various lines of work. It was easy for a muggle born to become an auror, maybe a lower order auror, and even a healer - St. Mungo's was always on the lookout for powerful Hogwarts graduates to recruit, even those who had had no real ambition to become a Healer, but muggleborns were a minority compared to purebloods.

Some muggle borns, like Lily Potter, had been lucky enough to marry purebloods, giving birth to powerful and genetically stable children. Jessica had read some books on genetics, and she'd come to the conclusion using the number of squibs rising each day, magical kind would die out if the magical world did not grow up.

Jessica could understand the wizard's sadness Dean Thomas was describing, but she still couldn't work out what he'd done that was so significant, although she guessed he had something to do with this place.

" I've seen the pureblood laws," Jessica said grimly, " but I don't see what all that's gotta do with me. More to the point, what the fuck happened with Granger?"

Thomas smiled sadly, " Still don't like her, huh?" He asked rhetorically, before she could say anything he carried on, " Let me finish. This wizard, finding no work in either the muggle or wizarding world, he'd come from a rich family, but they'd turned their backs on him for being a wizard." Thomas lowered his voice, " They'd even threatened to burn him at the stake."

Jessica flinched involuntarily. Stake burnings were a taboo in the magical world, and it was seen as the ultimate reason and excuse why muggles were seen as barbarians. It had been rare for muggles to burn witches or wizards, but on the few times they'd actually caught one instead of the poor bastards they'd accused either out of jealousy for something, or a personal grudge, the wizard or witch would use the flame freezing charm before disapparating harmlessly away.

Unharmed they might be, but the stories told to magical governments, rudimentary as they were at the time, had hardened their hearts and views about muggles, and that was where Dark Lords came in. There were many reasons why Dark Lords appeared over the years; power lust, anger, hatred, loathing of muggles, who the magical world simply ignored and lost touch with, to a desire to do good, and were seen as monsters because of their radical views.

No matter what, the word stake was considered the worst taboo and reminder of how dangerous fearful muggles were.

" What did he do?" Jessica asked, wishing Dean would simply get to the point of this whole thing. She wanted to get out. She could use her metapowers to escape, but she was too interested for her own good.

Dean sighed, " He set up a society with like minded muggle borns, finding sympathisers, using money he inherited from his family when he set up a fire in their house -"

" He killed his own family?" Jessica's opinion of this guy was plummeting fast.

" Come on, Jessica," Dean said patiently, " do you really think he could've done it some other way? Besides, he was forced into it, he was desperate for finds to build his dream."

" What dream?"

" He wanted to combine both muggle and wizarding science, using muggle borns recruited by his agents to spy and monitor the magical world." Dean replied. " I was recruited at the age of twelve. If it'd happened at the age of 11 then I wouldn't have had a taste of the magical world, I might have left for all they knew. These people watch every muggle born in the country, and they spy on them and their families."

" Why do they spy on the families?" For Jessica, this was getting worse and worse. It was like Dumbledore and his order all over again.

Dean knew what she was thinking, and hastened to push that idea away. " You're wrong, Jessica," he whispered quietly. " The Institute is nothing like Dumbledore's order of the phoenix. Dumbledore doesn't care about his students, even you have to admit that. He ignores those students unlucky enough to live inside orphanages, are abused at home, mentally and physically beaten by their parents for being something they can't understand. The Institute was designed to be a safe haven for muggle borns, where we can make a living helping ordinary people, finding cures for diseases, and working out how magic works."

Jessica nodded, she could see the sense now. A few questions still lurked in her mind, though.

" What happened to Granger?"

Dean sighed. " Because we track down muggle borns from the moment they're born, we watch them at school, monitor their accidental magic. When Hermione was born, we jumped for joy. She had a power and intellect that we believed would help us, but she had a problem; Hermione became a pushover when it came to authority figures. It didn't look good, when she went to Hogwarts, our agents there watched and reported to us she worshipped the ground Dumbledore walked on. Not a good sign. I was recruited myself to be a spy on wonder boy."

" So," Jessica whispered after a moment, " you didn't care about Mark, or his fame?"

Dean snickered. " No, of course not. I had a few questions of my own, like why a Dark Lord would be defeated by a baby of all things? Or like why Dumbledore believed so strongly in something that pathetic?"

Dean looked at her, then he pushed the wheelchair out of the room. " The Muggleborn Institute is staffed by a thousand muggle borns, mostly Hogwarts students who couldn't find decent work. Sometimes we're recruited after our first year, sometimes not because then they can see for themselves the magical world doesn't offer people like us a decent future like we were promised. We have access to remedial education facilities, meaning we can finally find work. We also donate to charities from time to time, annonymously of course, and we spy on magical and muggle governments.

" The Institute's primary goals are to keep watch over muggle borns, make sure they're safe, their families are not abusive because they're different, and magic can be researched from other avenues."

" You still haven't hold me what happened to Granger."

Dean nodded, even though Jessica couldn't see it. " We're not sure, don't ask me why. I only know that a group in the Ministry wanted to develop a means of policing muggles and muggleborns, possibly to ensure their own power. Our reports are a bit hazy on the why, all we know is that Hermione was worked over with legilimency and potions. They brainwashed her, now we have to work out how to break it. It'll take time, but we're hopeful it's made Hermione of the dangers of the magical world."

" So you fight the magical world?" Jessica asked. " Why did you sit back when it came to Voldemort?" To his credit Thomas didn't flinch like other wizards at the name.

" Believe it or not, we didn't," Dean retorted, for the first time real anger seeped into his voice at her presumption. " We often fought him. Our intell is better than Dumbledore's, and we were able to drive off the Death eaters although none of us fought Voldemort face to face. We stopped the Death eaters from killing too many muggles, some of them our own families."

" I'm sorry." Jessica replied, contrite. " Did you have plans for fighting him?"

" We had blood samples of nearly every Death eater, even finding that blood is tainted by their dark marks." Dean replied.

Jessica had studied enough muggle science to guess what Dean was talking about. " A virus. You created a virus to kill Death eaters?"

Dean nodded. " Yeah. But we didn't deploy it because we wanted to wait and see if Mark Potter was the one, although many of us disagreed."

" Why are you telling me all this?"

" Because I want you to join us." Dean replied seriously. " A half blooded witch is hard to come by, espeically a metawitch. Oh yes," Dean added, enjoying Jessica's shock. " We know you're a metawitch. How else could you do what you did effortlessly? Even magic as powerful as Merlin's wouldn't have been able to make such an effect."

Jessica considered. Finally she had to ask, " What're the catches?"

Dean sighed. Why did they always have to ask that?

" By joining us, there's more scope for your talents here than anywhere else. You can do things with us where you can't anywhere else." Dean looked away. " There's no catch. We're working above, with, and below both muggle and wizarding law. You can do whatever you want, research work, combat work, anything. Anytime."

Jessica looked away. Researching magic, with muggle technology? And more, she could do it with people who could help her. She'd always wanted to study magic differently from other people.

" I'll join." Jessica agreed.