A Wand for Skitter



A Wand for Skitter is a 121-chapter Worm/Harry Potter Crossover fanfic written by "ShayneT" between February 2019 and February 2020.

''' WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead for both Worm and this story. Beware. '''

After defeating Scion, Taylor Hebert is killed -- and promptly wakes up in the body of a murdered 11-year-old child laying at the side of the cooling corpses of her parents. She quickly confirms that she's more than twenty years in the past by her personal calendar, in the Great Britain of an Earth that has never heard of parahumans. She's alone, with no family, no resources, and worse, she's lost her power to control insects.

At first Taylor has to rely entirely on her wits (and resources looted from her host body's family) to survive, but within a few days her insect control starts coming back and before the week is out she is found by Severus Snape when he hand-delivers her Hogwarts letter to the culvert in which she has set up a crude home. In that time, her investigations into her family's murders have led her to discover the Wizarding World on her own. She's even found Diagon Alley and has acquired two wands... but the opportunity to learn more in "the safest place in Britain" is a powerful temptation, and she accepts the invitation.

After she's sorted into Slytherin, though, her first night proves Hogwarts isn't nearly as safe as she'd hoped, and her dedication to survival and discovering who is targeting Muggleborn children returns to the fore. Taylor quickly becomes a figure of terror to the Death Eaters and even some of her classmates but despite this gains an ever-growing number of friends, allies and acquaintances even as multiple attempts are made on her life. And as the magical recreation of her power begins to exceed what she possessed in Earth Bet, she becomes a figure whom more and more of Hogwarts' student body begins to regard as their leader -- and it all inevitably leads to monumental changes to first Hogwarts and then the Wizarding World as a whole.

This is an engrossing, well-written story where the addition of Taylor to the story of Harry Potter is not so much For Want of a Nail as For Want of a Hardware Store, with Taylor becoming the only Muggleborn in Slytherin as well as Most Dangerous Preteen in Wizarding Britain -- and number two on Voldemort's list of enemies, right after Dumbledore. It is constructed such that one need not be familiar at all with Worm to enjoy the story; one will learn enough from context to fill in almost every hole. It does suffer from a persistent collection of typos and word choice errors, but they are (mostly) ignorable.

It has been generally well received, even getting good reviews and ratings on non-fanfic sites like Goodreads.com.

A Wand for Skitter can be found on Fanfiction.net here, and on Spacebattles.com split across two threads (Part 1, Part 2).

"I smiled up at her slightly. "Thank you. You could have done something terrible, like having me dust the restricted section in the library." She stared at me for a moment, and then gave a startled laugh. "You'll have to wait for a naive replacement of Mr. Travers before you get one of those. There's not a professor in this school who would be that foolish." I shrugged. "It was worth a try." I'd known she wouldn't go for it, but since she'd been this decent to me after I'd threatened to murder her students, I'd thought it would be worth a laugh."
 * Accentuate the Negative: Taylor, especially early in the story, is swamped in negative emotions and is constantly on the lookout for attacks, betrayal and generally getting screwed over by Finagle's Law.  Combined with her experiences in her first life, it's no surprise it takes a while for her to get out of the habit of always looking for the bad in life first.  (She never stops looking, at least before the epilogue, but she does lighten up eventually.)
 * Accidentally Accurate: Taylor frames Dolores Umbridge as a Death Eater collaborator .  She is surprised when it turns out Umbridge actually was a collaborator, and had left behind documents revealing everything she did and for whom as revenge from the grave should she be betrayed.
 * Aliens in Cardiff: Possibly as a Shout-Out to the trope namer,  initially appears in Cardiff during the events of the first epilogue.
 * All Girls Like Unicorns: Getting a chance to see and touch unicorns in the Forbidden Forest causes one of the first cracks in Taylor's dour demeanor, opening her up to the wonder the Wizarding world has to offer as well as the dangers.
 * All of Them: Taylor's response to Hermione in chapter 119 when she asks how many bugs Taylor can control.
 * Alternate Realm Boon: Taylor gains magic when she is unexpectedly reincarnated into the body of an eleven-year-old muggleborn girl. Using it to recreate her bug control power and combining it with several years' experience as both a superhero and a supervillain, she becomes known as "The Terror" to Death Eaters before she's out of her first year at Hogwarts.
 * Alternate Timeline: The Harry Potter universe that this story takes place in is already an Alternate Universe to the canon Potter timeline before Taylor arrives in it.  The key events of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone seem to have already happened the year before Harry's (and Taylor's) first year at Hogwarts, with the Weasley Twins apparently taking the Trio's place -- and responsible for outright destroying the infamous third-floor corridor.  Voldemort has also recently regained his body, probably as a result of this.  Death Eaters are murdering Muggleborns and their parents before they receive their Hogwarts letters thanks to a mole in Hogwarts -- at least one canon character, Justin Finch-Fletchley, is noted as having died in this manner, and Taylor's "host body" is one such as well.
 * Subsequent years don't necessarily follow the patterns of the early books; there is no equivalent to the canon second year, for example, although Harry and Taylor do encounter the basilisk (and turn it into something of an ally) over Christmas of their first year. And after the end of third year, canon's nowhere within sight at all.
 * Ambiguously Gay: Taylor perceives Edmund, an older Hufflepuff, this way, especially after he uses the Room of Requirement to create Ponyville.
 * American Accents: Taylor retains hers after her incarnation into Millie Scrivener's body; it's distinctive enough that a few people are able to identify her as coming from somewhere near Boston.
 * Animal Talk: Taylor eventually learns to speak Parseltongue -- albeit very badly, with a heavy accent and a limited vocabulary.
 * Thinking about Parseltongue leads her to wonder about the linguistic abilities of other animals, but she finds no evidence that any other animal languages exist.
 * Artistic License Gun Safety: Averted with Taylor's demonstration of firearms to the aurors.  At every step she emphasizes the dangers of carelessness and simple accidents.
 * Artistic License Potioneering: In-universe -- Taylor in her first weeks at Hogwarts misses the detail that the standard vial of a potion contains six doses, and in the process of retaliating against at a student who attacked her she accidentally exposes him to thirty-six times the amount of a boil-creating concoction than she had intended.  It was concentrated enough to cause boils in his lungs from breathing in the fumes.
 * Asshole Victim: Dolores Umbridge.  Taylor.
 * Asskicking Equals Authority: Pretty much how Taylor ends up in charge of an organization of mostly (but not exclusively) Muggleborn students numbering almost a quarter of Hogwarts' enrollment, by the end of her second year.
 * Ax Crazy: Taylor's image, at least early on, incorporates no small amount of this.  Initially it's accidental, a result of the unexpected violence of her first actions.  Later she plays into it in part for the intimidation value.
 * Bad Boss: Voldemort, who instead of dealing with her himself sends dozens of his men directly into the nuclear-powered wood chipper that is tweenaged Taylor Hebert even after it's obvious that doing so is a death sentence for those sent.  His casual willingness to sacrifice Barty Crouch Jr. for no real advantage is directly responsible for his defeat.
 * The Bait: Taylor, or Taylor and Harry together, several times.  Almost always with their knowledge, fortunately.
 * Be Careful What You Wish For: Voldemort wanted to live forever.  Taylor arranges.
 * Bee-Bee Gun: Weaponizing all varieties of flying and stinging insects is just one of the tactics Taylor uses that the Death Eaters are not ready to counter.
 * Black Comedy: A lot of Taylor's humor at first, until she spends the summer after her first year with Remus Lupin and friends she's made at Hogwarts.
 * Briar Patching: Taylor tries this on McGonagall when assigned detention with her in chapter 30:


 * Bug-Out:
 * At the start of her second year, Taylor acknowledges the need to be prepared for a possible emergency exit from Hogwarts, and begins assembling a "bug-out bag" in the Chamber of Secrets.
 * At the climax, Taylor arranges an emergency evacuation of all the drugged aurors and Hogwarts staff by the expedient of having all the Hogwarts house-elves take them to St. Mungo's.
 * Bully Hunter: Thanks to her personal history, Taylor no longer tolerates bullying on any scale, be it of herself or others, and will seek to punish the bullies.  Sometimes to excess.  The fact she never acts preemptively, but only strikes after or during the bullying, is the only thing that saves her from a lot of trouble she doesn't need.
 * Chekhov's Gun:
 * The army of boggarts Taylor accidentally inspires come in terribly handy.
 * The frequent mention of missing seers.
 * A Child Shall Lead Them: Taylor.  By the end of her second year at Hogwarts, she's in charge of an organization that numbers about a quarter of the entire student body, has the ear of the Minister of Magic, has received an Order of Merlin First Class, and is actively planning for a world without Voldemort.  Speaking of whom, it's mentioned several times that she's accomplished more and runs a larger group after two years than he did after six.
 * Children Forced to Kill: Subverted with Taylor, who has the body of a child, but is a battle-hardened veteran and a former supervillain already responsible for an unspecified number of deaths before she was incarnated into the Harry Potter world.
 * Cool Chair: When Voldemort finally comes face-to-face with her at the climax of the story, Taylor is sitting in the middle of Hogwarts' great hall on a (conjured) throne made of human skulls.
 * Crazy Prepared: Taylor appears this way to everyone else, especially when she does things like mention she has at least a dozen plans for dealing with immortal opponents.
 * Creepy Child: Taylor clearly comes off this way to Snape and McGonagall in her first year; even some of the other children perceive her this way.  She even deliberately plays it up when it's useful.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death: Taylor tends to avoid these, preferring clean kills, but she made an exception for Dolores Umbridge, whom she.
 * She also accidentally almost imposed one on Geoffrey Avery through exposing him to an overdose of boil-causing potion in retaliation for a letter boobytrapped with bubotuber pus in her first week at Hogwarts.
 * Dark and Troubled Past: Snape and Dumbledore immediately realize that Taylor's not had the happiest life, even given that they believe her parents were murdered in front of her by Death Eaters and that she herself was tortured by them. This is true of course, just not in the way they think, and Taylor has no compunctions about playing it up (and sharing just enough true details from her first life to support it).
 * Deadpan Snarker: Taylor has her moments, such as when meeting Mme. Maxime.
 * For all that it gets very little dialogue, the basilisk has its moments as well.
 * Death by Fanfic: A goodly number of characters die who didn't in the original books -- Justin Finch-Fletchley, Argus Flich, Cornelius Fudge, Dolores Umbridge, quite a few Death Eaters, ...
 * Determinator: Taylor.
 * Disability Immunity: Boggarts aren't living things, and thus can't be killed.
 * Distant Finale: The final segment of the story is set five billion years in the future, when.
 * Distracted by the Sexy: Hermione has this effect on boys at the Yule Ball in third year, and causes at least one minor accident.
 * Do Wrong Right/Stating the Simple Solution: Taylor is constantly analyzing and criticizing how Voldemort has gone about his campaign against the Wizarding World, pointing out the inanities and stupidities in his methods and strategy.  She almost always follows it up with "if it were me, I would have done...", laying out an alternative which would have been far more successful or effective based on her experience as both a supervillain and a superhero.
 * The Dreaded: Taylor, to the Death Eaters and their allies, who call her "The Terror".  Made worse by the fact that except for one case where one Death Eater actually sees her kill another with a knife (on top of the Hogwarts Express), they have no idea how she's been killing so many of them.  Death Eaters basically encounter her and die.
 * The fact that her boggart is so horrific that it inspires the formation of dozens more boggarts from the other students' subsequent terror and nightmares -- boggarts with her face which still can be found haunting Hogwarts years later -- doesn't do much to help her reputation in school, either.
 * Eldritch Abomination: At one point Taylor describes herself as one wearing Millie Scrivener's body.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: This is how Taylor views most of the Wizarding world.
 * Evil Gloating: In, Taylor admits that she had been a villain, and notes that the important part of being a villain is averting this trope until your plan is safely done, when you can finally indulge in it.
 * Exact Eavesdropping: Thanks to her insects, Taylor is able to listen in on conversations anywhere in her continuously-expanding area of effect and hear them perfectly.
 * Fake Real Turn: Amusingly, the fake wargame that Taylor and the members of the Crucible come up with to disguise their training and planning in strategy and tactics becomes popular with other students.  Taylor speculates it's because the Wizarding world is starved for entertainment.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: Taylor tells Mad-Eye Moody that she knows counters for immortal opponents, and she characterizes them as this.

""After all, I'm not really a little girl. I might have lied about being human... maybe just a little.""
 * Finger in the Mail: At the beginning of her second year, Taylor finds an unfamiliar box in among her belongings in her trunk.  After checking it for curses and spells, Professor Snape opens it to reveal, thanks to the Death Eaters.
 * Fired Teacher: Dumbledore is ousted from Hogwarts at the end of Taylor and Harry's first year.
 * Flipping the Bird: Pansy Parkinson goes through the trouble of learning the American version just for Taylor.
 * For Want of a Nail: Definitely in play, but exactly what the "nail" was is impossible to determine.  Taylor's presence in the Wizarding world is a nail, but not the nail, as it was already a divergent timeline when she entered it (see Alternate Timeline, above).  There is absolutely no in-story information to explain how and why the basic events of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone took place a year earlier than in canon, with the Weasley Twins instead of Harry, Ron and Hermione assaulting the stone's gauntlet of traps and protections.
 * Giving Radio to the Romans: Taylor is responsible for several "innovations" given to the Wizarding world, including squad-level (and other) tactics, team-based research, a magical version of containment foam and teaching Protectorate Master/Stranger protocols to the Ministry of Magic so it has a more robust defense against the Imperius, polyjuice and other means of controlling or impersonating people and infiltrating secure facilities.
 * Giving Them the Strip: When the troll attacks the students in the Forbidden Forest and Taylor attacks it with a transfigured bowie knife, it grabs her robes -- and she slides right out of them.
 * Groin Attack: Technically.  Taylor kills a troll attacking a group of students in the Forbidden Forest by making use of the disparity in heights and running between its legs and slicing open its femoral arteries with a bowie knife transfigured from a stick.  The boys with her explicitly describe what she did as "stabbing it in the stones".
 * HAD to Be Sharp: Taylor explains several times to various persons that the reason Muggles Do It Better in many ways is they make up for their lack of magic with a surfeit of creativity to accomplish the same as (or better than) Wizards have in at first pure survival and later general quality of life.
 * Hanlon's Razor: In discussing the events that led up to Karkaroff being sent to Hogwarts for the Tri-Wizard Competition, Taylor advises Hermione, "Not everything is the result of a plot. Sometimes it's just plain incompetence."
 * Heroic Resolve: Taylor, although she doesn't exactly see it that way.  She just refuses to give up or admit defeat
 * Hidden in Plain Sight:
 * Taylor and the Crucible members hide their strategy/tactics training in plain sight by disguising it as a home-brew wargame, using Wizarding Chess pieces on boards modeled on Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, the Ministry and other places of interest.
 * Voldemort's main base is inside the Ministry, occupying a floor erased from human memory and all records by a magical misfire during research by the Unspeakables. As it happened, if you were on that level when it disappeared, you remembered it -- and at least one of the Ministry staff who was so lucky was also one of Voldemort's moles.
 * Hidden Weapons: Taylor always has a knife on her somewhere (and if she doesn't, she can transfigure one instantly), and she worries about how easy it is for enemies to hide a wand (or an entire team of Death Eaters).  She also attends the Yule Ball in third year with a second wand employed as a hair stick (as does Hermione), wearing a gown with slits for easy access to her primary wand and a knife.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard:
 * Cassius Worthington, who attempted to kill Taylor during the first meeting of the dueling club, ended up instead becoming the victim of his own planned attack.
 * Taylor is almost killed by a bomb she set in the Shrieking Shack to catch a group of Death Eaters. Without magical healing, if she had even survived she would have been paralyzed for life.
 * Hold Your Hippogriffs: We hear an auror call a task "a wild nargle hunt".
 * Hollywood Tactics: Probably the best way to quantify what Taylor thinks of Wizarding combat.
 * Honest John's Dealership: Invoked by the Weasley Twins the first time they meet Taylor and note how carefully she answers potentially incriminating questions; they ask her if she's planning on opening a used-broom dealership when she's older.
 * Humanoid Abomination:
 * Taylor sometimes characterizes herself as one. She takes it one step further as a psychological attack when facing Voldemort at the end:


 * The Trolley Witch on the Hogwarts Express. Whatever she is, it isn't just a witch.

""Constant vigilance is my middle name," I said. "Taylor constant vigilance Hebert.""
 * I Can't Dance: Taylor at the Yule Ball, as she very clearly warns Fred, her date.  She ends up stepping on his toes a lot.
 * Idiosyncratic Chapter Naming: Except for "Chapter 1", "Hogwarts express", "Christmas Day" and the Interludes, each chapter name is a single word, although a couple are repeated and have "2" appended to them.  The words are relevant to the chapter contents, although not always obviously so.
 * Important Haircut: Dumbledore's change in focus and methods after he is forced out of Hogwarts is accompanied by him cutting his hair and beard short, changing his look dramatically; as described he resembles how he appears in the Fantastic Beasts films.
 * Improvised Weapon: Taylor is very good at repurposing prank items into weapons.  And when she learns several older Slytherin boys are planning to attack her during her first night at Hogwarts, she waits for them with, among other preparations, an improvised blackjack made with a handful of Galleons inside several layers of socks.
 * After her first lesson in Transfiguration -- turning a match into a needle -- she immediately extrapolates what she learned into turning sticks into knives.
 * Much later, she transfigures spider webs into razor wire.
 * Inner Monologue: Taylor's first-person narration is presented as being, at least in part, this.
 * Intergenerational Friendship: After he serves as her host/bodyguard the summer after her first year at Hogwarts, Taylor establishes a close friendship with Remus Lupin.
 * Just a Kid: Voldemort and the Death Eaters tend to view Taylor this way despite the damage she's done to their cause (mainly because Voldemort thinks she has a backer who's really the one responsible).  The ones who learn otherwise don't survive long enough to share their discovery.
 * Knife Nut: Taylor gives this impression during her first year because it's the easiest weapon for her to get her hands on (and later, transfigure) and use until she gets better at magic.  (It's not exactly inaccurate -- the very first weapon she acquires is a Swiss Army knife she loots from her "parents"' home.)  That she kills a troll early in her first year by cutting its femoral arteries with a bowie knife transfigured from a stick just cements the perception.
 * Leave No Survivors/Leave No Witnesses: Taylor's rule when fighting Death Eaters, because she knows her advantages against them will only last as long as her actual abilities remain a mystery to Voldemort and his remaining followers.  She also takes care that her allies never see her doing anything more exotic than knifing an opponent.
 * When Peter Pettigrew threatens to reveal those secrets of hers that he's discovered while roaming the castle in rat form, Taylor kills him (gruesomely) after letting the aurors take him away.
 * Les Collaborateurs: Umbridge and her undersecretary are working with (or for, depending on who you ask) Voldemort.
 * Little Miss Badass: Taylor, from day one.  Literally -- her first night in Hogwarts she savagely beats three older boys who had intended on assaulting her for the "crime" of being a Muggleborn in Slytherin.
 * Living Forever Is Awesome: In the epilogue, set five billion years in the future, we learn that Muggle science unlocked immortality in the middle of the 21st century.  It's implied that every human is now immortal -- including Taylor Hebert and other persons who were born in the 20th century -- and that it led to a Golden Age for humanity, Wizard and Muggle alike, that's still going on.
 * Living Ship: In the final epilogue,  catches a glimpse in Taylor's message of what Humanity uses as starships -- giant insects (of course), genetically and magically engineered as interstellar craft.
 * Loophole Abuse: Taylor is given to listening to solemn pronouncements of Wizarding Truth, such as "Dementors cannot be harmed by magic", and then thinking things like, "Has anyone ever tried beating one to death with a club?"  She becomes very adept at deftly stepping around cultural blindspots by identifying and subverting the inherent assumptions in much Wizarding belief.
 * When starting on the process to become animagi, Hermione and Taylor figure out there's no reason you can't use a sticking charm on the mandrake leaf you have to keep in your mouth for a month. Sirius Black, amazingly, says that seems like cheating.
 * Loss of Identity: During her first few days in Millie Scrivener's body, Taylor spends some time wondering if she's "really" Taylor, or Millie suffering a delusion that she was once a superhero/villain from another universe, or Millie overwritten by Taylor's memories.  Although about the time she regains control over insects, it stops being a major concern, she never entirely stops worrying about all the other possibilities.  Her subsequent demonstrations of hypercompetence in various fields -- far beyond anything a delusional child could accomplish by making things up -- is proof that she either is actually who she thinks she is or has all of Taylor's memories; they're also obvious flags to other people that there's a lot more to Taylor than she's revealed so far.
 * Magitek: According to Mad-Eye Moody, Grindlewald worked with Muggle weapons designers to create weapons more powerful than either magic or tech could create alone.  But because of the possibility of a Lensman Arms Race (and nightmare scenarios involving enchanted nuclear weapons), magitek is, if not actually illegal, strongly discouraged.
 * The Man Behind the Man: Voldemort believes one exists behind Taylor -- possibly Dumbledore -- and this backer is actually responsible for her successes.  This is at least one reason why he ignores her for so long.
 * Meaningful Name: Taylor lampshades the improbable appropriateness of Remus Lupin's name (she initially assumes it has to be an alias) by calling him "Wolfie McWolf-face" before she meets him.
 * Metaphor Is My Middle Name: As Taylor says to Mad-Eye Moody in chapter 103:

"If this school was the safest place in the Wizarding world, then the other places had to be deathtraps. I'd already seen moving staircases, and if OSHA had any sway in Britain, or the Wizarding world, the whole place would have been shut down before it even started."
 * Metaphorically True: Taylor's occasional explanations of what she can do, and how, are usually figuratively true without being literal or detailed.
 * The Mole:
 * Taylor overhears one Death Eater tell another that there is someone on the Hogwarts staff that is giving them names of incoming Muggleborn students.
 * Taylor also hears them mention how they have people in the Muggle police departments who will cover up magical crimes.
 * Voldemort had any number in the Ministry before Taylor gave the Master/Stranger protocols to Amelia Bones. One of them was the only staff member who could remember the "lost" level in the Ministry.
 * Mr. Exposition: Lucius Malfoy's Inner Monologue plays this role in the chapter before the assault on Hogwarts.
 * Muggles Do It Better: At one point, Taylor discusses this with McGonagall, pointing out that the law of large numbers means it's inevitable that the Muggles will surpass the Wizarding world -- outnumbering the wizards by 6000 to 1 means they're going to have 6000 geniuses for every one the Wizards spawn, and will progress accordingly.
 * Mundane Utility: The use of magic to repair/refurbish wrecked cars for subsequent sale or scrapping for parts, suggested by Taylor to Remus as a way to support himself, and later used to finance the Crucible.
 * Mushroom Samba: One of the immediate side effects of the mandrake leaf employed in the process of becoming an animagus.
 * My Instincts Are Showing: Averted by Rita Skeeter, who manages to clamp down on the terrified "predator!" reactions of her insect form's nature around Taylor.  However, it drives her to investigate exactly who Taylor is, and eventually seems to result in her becoming a bit irrational about Taylor.
 * My Faction Doth Protest Too Much: The traditionalists' claims that they have nothing to do with the Muggle world at all.  Taylor learns from eavesdropping on a pair of aurors that, given how many of them live in and around Muggle towns, if they were as isolated from and ignorant of Muggle culture as they insist they are, they would be responsible for far more violations of the Statute of Secrecy than actually occur.  Ironically, they actually cause a few by deliberately not dressing like Muggles.
 * Specifically disproven with the Malfoys, who turn out to be the landlords for a large number of Muggle farmers, who provide a great deal of the Wizarding World's food.
 * Mythology Gag:
 * Taylor declares Harry to be the "Heir of Slytherin" so he has the authority to command the basilisk, and justified it with the baroque interconnections of Wizarding genealogy.
 * At the Yule Ball, Fred Weasley tells Taylor, who is his date, "It's not like I'm going to sit on the sidelines and ignore you all night. Only an idiot would do that."
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: "The Terror" -- the name the Death Eaters give Taylor before she's twelve.
 * Nice Hat:
 * The headgear produced by the crackers at Taylor's first Christmas at Hogwarts.
 * Taylor notes that the beret she got from the cracker she used to maim a Death Eater not long after is a "nice hat". Despite (or maybe because of) the bloodstain on it.
 * Some months later, when she's about to go to France for the summer, she asks Lupin if she can get a beret there for Hermione, who admired the one from Christmas.
 * No OSHA Compliance: Taylor is not impressed when told Hogwarts is the safest place in the Wizarding world:

""If I am your chief employee, what does that make me?" He was silent before saying, "My strong right hand?" I grinned, and he grinned back at me, although he seemed uncertain. "Pay me," I said. "What?" "It's got to be real," I said, "Or it won't work.""
 * Noble Bigot: Professor Travers.  He is very obviously prejudiced against Muggles and Muggleborns, but unlike other characters doesn't let it affect his ability to teach, nor does it creep into his course material.
 * Nothing Is Scarier: A major component to Taylor being "The Terror" to Death Eaters and their allies is no one knows how she's able to do what she does. Death Eaters attack this pre-teen girl, and they die.  Even if they outnumber her twelve to one.
 * Older Than They Look: When she arrives in the Wizarding World, Taylor is an 18-year-old mind in an 11-year-old body.  And an 18-year-old who has been through hell and back then murdered, at that.
 * One-Dollar Retainer: Taylor arranging to be Harry's "strong right hand" just before the final confrontation with Voldemort:


 * Harry ends up paying her with a slightly sticky chocolate frog card. Tonks, who witnesses this exchange, correctly identifies it as Harry paying Taylor to murder Voldemort.

""Even you can't face Voldemort," she said. "He's almost as good as Dumbledore." "I can't beat him in a fair fight," I said. I looked at Harry. "But what's the first rule?" "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line?" he asked. I grinned. "Yeah, and for today I'm the Sicilian.""
 * One Steve Limit: Averted, between Millicent "Millie" Bulstrode and the original occupant of Taylor's body, Millie Scrivener.  The coincidence of names combined with lingering guilt may be one reason Taylor keeps calling Millicent "Mildred" for a fair chunk of the story.
 * Orcus on His Throne: Voldemort.  Taylor comments several times that even though by age thirteen she has killed more Death Eaters faster than any other single individual in the Wizarding World, Voldemort himself seems more than a little reticent to go after her personally.  She actually mocks him for it when they finally come face-to-face at the end of the story.
 * Our Spirits Are Different: Boggarts are described as spiritual creatures that are not in any sense "alive" (and thus cannot be killed).  They are "born" from excess levels of fear in a magical environment and do not appear to be sapient (despite being able to mimic sapience).
 * Overly Narrow Superlative: Dumbledore describes a feast as "the best Halloween celebration since last year's."
 * Paint the Town Red: Taylor twice "decorates" Hogsmeade with the body parts of Death Eaters.  The first is intentional, as a psychological attack on Voldemort and his followers.  The second is an accident, caused by blowing up a group of them with an overpowered bomb.
 * Poke in the Third Eye: From inside a memory made twenty years into the future of a different universe entirely, the Simurgh is apparently able to detect Snape's presence, and stare at him no matter where in the memory he positions himself.
 * Pop Culture Isolation: After hearing a pair of aurors discussing purebloods' behavior in this regard, Taylor speculates that claiming this is practically required of the traditionalist faction in the Wizarding World, and reasons that given how they have to function around Muggles just to survive while maintaining the Statute of Secrecy, any claims that they know nothing about the Muggle world are likely to be Blatant Lies.
 * The Power of Hate: Taylor discovers a dark counterpart to the Patronus, fueled by hatred, when she realizes she has no happy memories sufficient to generate a proper Patronus.  It takes the form of a swarm of insects that can completely devour a target in minutes, leaving nothing but a skeleton behind.  It comes in handy a time or two.
 * Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
 * "I'm not alone. I've got me."
 * "Your name means flight from death. I am death."
 * Professional Killer: For his strike on Hogwarts at the climax of the story, Voldemort acquired and employed easily-deniable assets -- Norwegian, Bulgarian and Russian soldiers "off the books" -- to bolster his forces.
 * Propaganda Piece: A particularly vicious anti-Muggle/Muggleborn radio show that just happens to hit the airwaves as Umbridge's proposed anti-Muggleborn laws stall out in the Wizengamot.
 * Properly Paranoid: Taylor, from basically the first page. She knows that purebloods and Death Eaters are out to get her, even inside Hogwarts, and self-preservation is her primary motivation for virtually everything she does, from weaponizing joke items and failed potions to regaining her control over insects.  She's so bad that she is outright disturbed that someone could leave a stack of Christmas presents on her bed undetected.
 * Racist Grandparents: This trope plus the near two-century lifespans of wizardkind in this story is, as far as Taylor's concerned, the obvious reason that the Wizarding World is socially and technologically behind the Muggle world and is wracked with Fantastic Racism in almost every direction one looks.  People with antiquated and reactionary beliefs are able to stay in power for a century and a half or more, essentially dragging any progress to a slow crawl while having decades to instill their beliefs and politics into multiple younger generations.
 * Razor Floss: Taylor kills a group of Death Eaters pursuing her on brooms by forcing them to fly after her through a forest full of spider webs transfigured into razor wire.
 * Reality Ensues: Taylor's organization, the Crucible, is constantly in need of funds; no small amount of Taylor and her inner circle's attention is on matters of financing.
 * Resurrected for a Job: Taylor eventually comes to the conclusion that she was incarnated into Millie Scrivener's body by Millie herself, reaching out with accidental magic in the final moments of her life for someone, anyone, to avenge the torture and murder of her parents (and her own torture and impending death).
 * The Reveal: Late in the story Taylor reveals her true nature (and the identity of the body she's in) to Snape and Dumbledore.  They still don't entirely believe her until they see her memories of Earth Bet.
 * After the defeat of Voldemort, she immediately comes clean of all her secrets with her friends, which she had promised to do years before.
 * Rule Number One: Invoked by Taylor shortly before her confrontation with Voldemort near the end of the story:

""Have any of you considered changing sides?" the girl asked. "I've got an excellent dental plan....""
 * Sarcastic Confession: Taylor frequently indulges in this, especially early before anyone really has an idea what she's capable of.  (Although Snape has his suspicions, and is wise enough to accept most anything she says at face value.)
 * One good example is found in chapter 22 when, while discussing the rumors surrounding her with Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott, she says, "Maybe I'm really the undead revenant of a murdered girl out to get the people who went after my family?"
 * Secret Keeper: At some point before the end of third year, Hermione correctly deduces that Taylor can control bugs, but does not reveal this to anyone until after Voldemort is defeated.
 * Seers: Because of the constant feed of information she gets from her bugs, Taylor acquires the reputation of being a seer.  She encourages this misconception to keep the actual source of her information hidden (and protected from simple spells to repel or kill bugs).  Amusingly, Hermione deduces the source of her knowledge, but does not reveal her conclusions until after Voldemort is defeated.
 * Luna appears to have genuine seer abilities, at one point rattling off a speech that describes aspects of Taylor's previous life entirely too closely for Taylor's comfort. Months later she is able to detect the animagus forms Taylor and several others acquired over the summer between second and third year, and in the same conversation goes blank and announces, "Twenty years to the end of the world."
 * Voldemort's main base has a machine powered by the brains of dead seers, which the Death Eaters use to improve their chances during various attacks. However, Voldemort doesn't trust it where he himself is concerned, because he personally killed four of the seers whose brains are in it and despite being assured to the contrary suspects they might be influencing their forecasts to lead him into danger.
 * Self-Deprecation: Draco demonstrates he's acquired a self-deprecating sense of humor when chatting with Taylor at the Welcoming Feast for their third year.  Taylor is surprised.
 * Serial Killer: Taylor speculates that had he been a Muggle, Voldemort would have become one -- either that, or a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
 * Shrouded in Myth: Taylor becomes this before Halloween of her first year in Hogwarts, with all manner of rumors and speculations about her true nature or identity, and just what she's capable of.  Many of them involve her being an adult undercover at Hogwarts using polyjuice, including either a MACUSA agent or a Death Eater weeding out the insufficiently devoted.  Others speculate that she is a vampire, some other kind of creature in disguise, Grindlewald reincarnated or even Snape's illegitimate daughter.  As her insect control continues to grow and allows her to accomplish more, the myths grow correspondingly.
 * Side Bet: No money actually changes hands over it, but Draco and Taylor engage in a playful bet over what houses each new first-year will be Sorted into during the Welcoming Feast for their third year.
 * Signed Up for the Dental: When Taylor finally comes face-to-face with Voldemort and the remains of his inner circle, she taunts them, saying:

""You wouldn't really make a fire breathing chicken, would you?" Hermione asked. "Not a chicken, no," I said."
 * Sobriquet: The Death Eaters, their families, and their allies come to call Taylor "The Terror" before she is twelve years old.  She also picks up "The Demon Witch of Hogwarts" by Halloween of her first year, and "The Boggart Queen".
 * Sock It to Them: On her very first night at Hogwarts, Taylor severely beats several fifth-year boys (who had decided to attack her and drive her out of Slytherin) using an improvised blackjack made of several socks filled with a handful of galleons.
 * Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: Taylor sets up a bomb in the Shrieking Shack to catch a group of Death Eaters sent after her, and they stare dumbly at it, not realizing what it is.  (And it does a lot more damage than she expects.)
 * Spider Sense: With the information from all her bugs feeding to her at all times, Taylor gives the impression of possessing this.  (And, in a very literal way, it's true.)  She of course plays it up for all it's worth.
 * Squee: Taylor actually describes her (suppressed) reaction to seeing newly-hatched blast-ended skrewts as squeeing.
 * Stable Time Loop:
 * Once she gets her hands on over a dozen time turners during the raid on the Ministry to destroy the Trace, Taylor employs time loops to be places she couldn't otherwise be and accomplish tasks while having bullet-proof alibis.
 * Taylor's defeat of at the end of this story makes possible her total and complete victory over him at its start.
 * The Stations of the Canon: Averted.  First there's the matter of the Alternate Timeline, where the events of Philosopher's Stone all occur before Harry (and Taylor) arrive at Hogwarts.  But also, the focus is entirely on Taylor through the beginning of the story; she simply isn't there for all the early Stations which still remain... and then the perturbations to the plot she causes eliminate most of the rest.  However, some things, like the Tri-Wizard Tournament, still occur, just one year earlier.
 * The Stoic: Taylor gets in the habit of pushing her emotions into her bugs, leaving her better able to face disturbing and unnerving situations.  She's aware it's probably bad for her in the long run.
 * The Strategist: Taylor.  And the Tactician, as well -- both gained by long and bloody experience.  After looking into how Voldemort went about trying to overthrow the Wizarding world, Taylor calls him an amateur after laying out a plan that would have worked instead.
 * Suspiciously Specific Denial: In the wake of learning that deliberate magical breeding of new species is possible (and unsuccessfully quizzing Hagrid about specifics):


 * Swiss Army Superpower: Taylor's "accidental magic" control over bugs, which she keeps exercising and expanding until it matches or exceeds what she could do with her shard back in Earth Bet.
 * Take Over the World: More than one adult suggests -- sometimes seriously -- that this is Taylor's ultimate goal. It's not, but if it's necessary for her safety she'll do it.  Otherwise it's too much work for too little reward.
 * Tampering with Food and Drink: On the day of the international tribunal held because of Karkaroff's death, Draught of the Living Death is slipped into the breakfast served to the aurors, Ministry officials and Hogwarts staff, as a prelude to the Death Eaters (and allies) staging a massacre.
 * Technically a Smile/The Un-Smile: Taylor does this deliberately to unsettle people, all the way up to Voldemort and his inner circle.
 * Technology Marches On: Invoked by Taylor.  Having come from over twenty years into the future relative to the current year, Taylor wonders just how Wizarding secrecy will survive the invention of the cell phone.
 * Terror Hero: Taylor, in case you haven't been paying attention.  However, her tactics aren't a choice among options, intended to erode Death Eater morale, but much more the only thing she can actually do upon her arrival in the Wizarding world.  She's effectively a Type 1 (The Cowl), but toward the end of the story, she's regarded as Type 5 by at least some of the Death Eaters.
 * There Are No Therapists: Snape uses almost these exact words while overseeing Taylor on her second trip to Diagon Alley.  She is not surprised.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Whether it's deliberate or not, this is definitely one of Taylor's trademarks.
 * Thrown Down a Well: After the end of her first year, Taylor is imprisoned in a fideliused cell in the Ministry of Magic for several days.  She takes advantage of this by using her bugs to explore as much of the Ministry as is in her range, spy on anyone who seems important, read numerous "secret" documents, inventory magical items and systems of interest, and generally familiarize herself with the place -- and in the process hanging numerous Chekhov's Guns and laying out Foreshadowing.
 * Time Travel: True time travel, instead of the limited variety permitted by time turners, is implied to have been mastered by the point when humanity left earth for the galaxy at large, based on Taylor's message to Voldemort in the final epilogue --.
 * Tom the Dark Lord: Until she learns the name he operates under, the only name Taylor has for Voldemort is "Tom", thanks to eavesdropping on a conversation between Snape and Dumbledore immediately after first arriving in Hogwarts.  She is spectacularly unimpressed with his name, and basically invokes this trope by name to mock him in her private thoughts.
 * Traintop Battle: Harry and Taylor get into one with Death Eaters who are trying to board the Hogwarts Express.  During it, Taylor stabs a Death Eater from behind with a bowie knife -- her only kill witnessed by anyone other than her victim(s).
 * Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Taylor, of course.  It's spotted immediately by Snape and Dumbledore, and later her friends note it (at one point Hermione even describes her as an adult in a child's body, and she's not the only one to do so).  Until she reveals her true nature to Dumbledore and Snape, they believe that it means she's a possible sociopath; it's only her absolute refusal to attack anyone who doesn't attack her first that reassures them that she's redeemable.
 * Tyrant Takes the Helm: Dolores Umbridge manages to get elected Minister of Magic after the Death Eaters assassinate Cornelius Fudge in Taylor's second year.
 * Underestimating Badassery: Taylor, from the outset.  No one seriously believes that an eleven-year-old can be as dangerous as she is, and her first few successful retaliations against attacks on her are written off as chance and accidents.  Even after she starts racking up a substantial Death Eater body count, her practice of leaving no survivors or witnesses makes it hard for Voldemort and his forces to believe she is actually responsible for their deaths... until it's too late.
 * Unfriendly Fire: After Voldemort's defeat, Moody makes a note to be careful about what he says about Taylor, since she saved nearly the entire auror corps, lest he get shot in the back.
 * Utility Belt: Taylor's fanny pack, which she has had enchanted with a space expansion charm (and a few other useful effects) during her first visit to Diagon Alley.  With a maximum capacity of 600 pounds, she keeps everything useful or valuable to her in it (as well as hordes of bugs as needed).  She tries to be subtle about it, but Hermione notices it and mentions it to Taylor early on.
 * Utility Magic: In her first couple years at Hogwarts, Taylor makes excellent use of simple spells in combat, and extrapolates her very first lesson in transfiguration -- turning matches into needles -- into a way of turning sticks into bowie knives.
 * We Have Reserves: Even though he doesn't believe Taylor is actually as capable as she really is, Voldemort is more than aware that someone is thoroughly and efficiently massacring every Death Eater who goes up against her.  Despite this, he still sends his forces after her (or allows them to go after her of their own accord).  While callous disregard for their lives certainly plays a part, there may also be a degree of ego involved -- Voldemort certainly couldn't bear to be seen taking a pre-teen seriously as a threat.  And ultimately, the casual sacrifice of Barty Crouch, Jr. against Taylor is what ends up causing his defeat.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?/Left Hanging: We never do find out who the Mole in Hogwarts was.  We just get speculation from Snape and Dumbledore.
 * Wizards Live Longer: Like many other fan writers, ShayneT exaggerates the already-long lifespan of Potter wizards; in this story they frequently reach the end of their second century due to the combined effects of their magical nature and Wizarding medicine.
 * Written by the Winners: Taylor is of the opinion that at least one "Dark Lord" or "Dark Lady" actually won their campaign, but because they were the winner -- and thus controlled the accounts written about the conflict -- were never described as such.  The very idea appalls the Wizards she mentions it to.
 * Xanatos Gambit: Voldemort tried to make one out of the attack on Hogwarts and the international tribunal at the climax of the story.  Unfortunately, he discounted Taylor as being simply the puppet of someone else behind the scenes.
 * You Killed My Father: Cassius Worthington's motivation for attempting to kill Taylor at the first meeting of the dueling club.
 * You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry: Taylor says this, word-for-word, when warning an older Slytherin student about crossing her, as they're trying to exit the Forbidden Forest.