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“All right, skirmishers,” Harry said, pulling the attention of the quarter of the DA who’d been designated for that role. “I want you to watch closely. Your job is going to be a lot like this.”

He held up a Sickle.

“Our job is like money?” said Seamus. “Wicked!”

Harry laughed with everyone else, including Ron and Neenie, watching from a chair to one side, and Ginny, standing behind the line of skirmishers. “No, your job isn’t like money,” he said when the noise had died down a bit. “Your job is like what I’m going to do with the money. Watch.”

Closing one hand over the Sickle, he waggled the fingers of the other hand over it. “Hocus-pocus, alakazam, alakazoo! Sickle disappear!”

Several of the skirmishers started to snicker as Harry opened his hand and sighed in exaggerated disappointment at the Sickle still sitting on his palm. “Let me try that again,” he said, picking it up. “Hocus-pocus...” He made a deliberately clumsy job of palming the coin and let it drop to the floor, where it disappeared into the deep pile of the carpet the Room of Requirement had generated today. “Oops.” People were laughing openly now. “Let me just... get that...”

Harry snatched a glance behind the highly amused skirmishers as he fished around for the Sickle. Perfect. Just one more moment.

“Finally!” He stood up, grinning triumphantly, and flourished the Sickle. “Hocus-pocus, alakazam, Sickle disappear!” This time, when he opened his hands, both were empty. He thrust them out in front of him to demonstrate their emptiness.

The Sickle dropped out of his left sleeve.

The skirmishers lost all control and staggered about howling in laughter at the crestfallen expression on Harry’s face. “Where’s the trick, Potter?” Artemis Moon, who’d joined the DA at her sister’s instigation, managed to ask through her multiplying giggles.

Harry smiled innocently at her. “Trick? I wasn’t doing any trick.”

He flicked his right wrist. The Auror’s holster which had been one of his Christmas presents did its job, and his wand was in his hand and pointed at Artemis before she could blink.

She gaped for an instant, then fumbled in her pocket for her own wand. So did the rest of the skirmishers.

Every hand came up empty.

“I wasn’t doing any trick,” Harry repeated, saluting the group with his wand and letting it go, which would return it to the holster. “But my lovely partner was.” He flicked a hand at the back of the room.

The skirmishers turned as one.

Ginny beamed at them and held up two handfuls of wands. “You might want to consider some security,” she said. “I understand Fred and George do a very good line in alarm charms.”

“And probably paid you to say that,” Ron muttered.

“So?”

“The point is,” Harry said loudly, “that’s what you’re for, is making the Death Eaters look at you and see a bunch of incompetent kids. And no, I didn’t pick you for the job because I think you’re no good,” he added as he saw the looks of horror beginning. “I picked you because I think you are good. You’ve got probably the hardest job of any of the groups.”

“Since when is it hard to look bad?” said Hannah Abbott with a trace of bitterness in her voice.

“Since it’s got to be looking bad while actually being good,” Harry returned.

Some of the skirmishers stared at him. Others shook their heads in confusion.

“It’s a difficult concept,” said Ron patiently, Neenie giving the little series of snorts that were her laughter in cat form. “Called act-ing. You’re going to have to act like you don’t know one end of your wand from the other.”

“Unlike certain brothers of mine who really don’t,” Ginny murmured.

“Yeah, unlike—oi!”

Neenie raised one paw in Ron’s direction and hissed. Harry caught Ginny’s eye and let his lips part just a fraction to show his teeth. “Sibling rivalries aside, the Weasleys have it,” he said when he’d acknowledged her exasperated nod. “As they so often do. Two of the other groups don’t require a lot of fast wandwork, so that’s where I put all the people who’re not ready to duel. If you’re here, I think you’re good enough to make the Death Eaters think you’re bad.”

“And then what do we do?” asked Kevin Entwhistle. “Let them beat us?”

“No, you fight just hard enough to make them think they can,” said Ginny. “And then you let them chase you, which is why Ron is here, because he’s the expert on planning routes that don’t look planned. As far as the Death Eaters will know, they’re about to catch scared students who’re running aimlessly through the school hallways...”

“Until you get to where you’re running to.” Harry gave the skirmishers his best human imitation of Wolf’s ‘oh boy, dinner’ grin. “At which point, there will not be any more Death Eaters. At least, not any who’re awake. You’ll be working very closely with our fourth group...”


“What’s artillery?” was the question Neville was hearing the most as he made his way unnoticed through the last division of the DA, and he wasn’t unhappy with it.

If they don’t know what it is, they’re more likely to believe what I tell them.

Now as long as I can keep the Muggleborns from laughing at me when I show them what they’ll be fighting with.

As long as I can keep them from laughing at me, period.

Neville knew the official reasons Harry wanted him leading this division rather than Ron or Draco—Ron’s talents would serve better as an overall strategist and Draco’s extensive experience with sneak attacks made him a natural for training the Flying Squad—but he had a suspicion there was more to it than that.

But honestly, it doesn’t matter. He glanced to one side of the room, where Meghan was sitting on a cloth-covered heap of mysterious items. She caught him looking and grinned, and he had to smile back. They need to learn to fight, and I can teach them. The better they learn, the sooner I can go back to being just part of the Pride.

Besides, this was going to be fun.

He made a little beckoning motion with his hand. Meghan nodded, slid off her perch, and extracted the one item they’d prefilled. Her movement drew eyes, and whispering started almost immediately.

“What is that thing?”

“I know what it looks like.”

“I’ve seen those before.”

“But why would we have...”

Meghan held the sloshing thing against her chest like a Quaffle, then flung it towards Neville. For one heartstopping second, he thought he was going to bobble the catch, but then his fingers closed around it and he could take an instant to get it into its proper position before dropping the magic he’d been holding around himself.

“A good opening is crucial,” said Draco’s voice between his ears, as all eyes in the room focused on him. “Bore them first thing and they’ll never listen to you. You have to get their attention.”

Neville thought he’d done that rather well.

“This,” he said, exhibiting the item to the students in front of him, “is the reason you’re here. You’re going to learn to use these.”

“But that’s just a water gun!” protested a third year in the front row. “What good is it going to do in a fight?”

Neville pivoted to face the speaker and squeezed the trigger. Squirt.

“Oi!” the boy protested, pulling out his wand and waving it ineffectively at the large wet patch on the front of his robes.

“Could you have got your wand out in time to stop me doing that?” Neville asked. 

“No, but why should I care? It’s only water.”

“It’s only water,” Neville repeated. “But what if it wasn’t?” He gestured with the water gun to the group at large. “Look around you. See if you know any of the people you’re standing with.”

“We are all DA,” said Selena in a patient tone. “We’re going to know each other.”

“But if you weren’t DA, would you still know each other?” Neville wondered in the back of his mind if Harry ever felt like this, trying to get people to open their eyes and see what was right in front of them. “Is there anything a lot of you do well? A class you’re all good in?”

He took advantage of the resultant murmuring and looking around to tuck the water gun into the crook of his arm and sign to Meghan. Not very bright, are they?

You’re asking them to think new thoughts, she answered. The wizarding world is more about old thoughts, about doing things the way things have always been done. It’s going to take them some time to get the hang of it.

Neville nodded, thinking of his gran and her friends, the ones who thought ink and clothing in more colors than black were dangerously newfangled. I just hope they don’t take forever about it, he signed back. I don’t think I’m cut out for this leading thing.

Meghan giggled and signaled him to turn around, which he did. “Got something?” he asked Selena, who seemed to have been elected speaker for the group.

“Well, a lot of us do well in Potions,” Selena said uncertainly. “But I don’t see how...”

Neville shook the water gun, making it slosh. “What if it wasn’t water in here?” he said again. “What if it was something else?”

“Oh,” Selena said. And then, “Oh!”

Suddenly everyone was talking at once. Neville let them work off the first flush of their excitement and glanced over at Meghan again. She had a smug smile on her face, and her hands were up, all fingers extended, in the traditional referee’s sign for a successful shot on goal in Quidditch.

That’s right, score one for me. Or I should say for us, for the whole DA. If we can make this work—if we can come up with enough tricks the Death Eaters haven’t seen before, enough traps that will either drive them away or catch them and hold them—

He shooed the thought away. The time for big plans like that would come. Right now, his job was to start this part of the DA on their training and get them as ready as possible for the call.

Because the call will come. We’re going to have to fight.

The only question is when.

Neville squirted a little water into his hand and drank it. Here’s hoping “when” stays “not now” for as long as possible.


January became February, February turned into March, and Neville’s hope was sustained. Life at Hogwarts went on as ever, DA practice falling into the round of classes, Quidditch, and clubs as though it had always been there. Professor Longbottom attended random practices, and usually proclaimed herself impressed by the time they were over.

Hermione continued to improve, though there was a severe setback on her first full moon that neither she nor Ron would talk about. “We took care of it,” Ron said, with a set to his lips that discouraged even Ginny from asking more questions. Whatever “it” had been, though, the human Hermione was missing from classes for nearly a week, and Snape smirked at the cat on Ron’s lap as he marked her absent. Harry kept a firm grip on Ron’s arm during these episodes, and Neville held his foot ready to step on Draco’s, but both Hermione’s twin and her prospective mate contented themselves with glaring at their Potions professor in public and swearing at him in private.

Care of Magical Creatures classes resumed in the second week of February with a new professor, since Professor Grubbly-Plank apparently hadn’t cared to take on the position full-time. Professor Sylvanus Kettleburn II was a slender, nervous young man, as unlike Hagrid as could have been imagined except for their shared love of animals. At their February Den, the Pride agreed that given the missing two and a half limbs of the former Professor Kettleburn, who had held the position before Hagrid, the current Professor Kettleburn had plenty to be nervous about.

On discovering that Professor Kettleburn had quarters in the castle, Harry made a request of Professor McGonagall. Three days later, the DA met for the first time in what was officially called the Rubeus Hagrid Memorial Training Center, but was always referred to by the people who used it as Hagrid’s Place. Fang snapped at endless streams of water from the artillery’s guns, allowed medics to bandage his limbs over and over, forced fleeing skirmishers to dodge him as they would any other harmless obstacle, and barked his loudest to teach the Flying Squad to ignore distractions in their fighting zone.

The second Gryffindor Quidditch match, against Hufflepuff, would have gone much better if it had not happened to fall the day after one of Hermione’s bad nights. As it was, Angelina called a time-out after the third goal Ron let slip past him and conjured ropes tying him to his broom. “At least this way you won’t fall off and get yourself killed,” she said acidly in response to his half-awake protest. “Even if you might block the Quaffle on the way down.”

Harry caught the Snitch as quickly as he could manage, but the Hufflepuff Chasers had already taken full advantage of Ron’s tiredness and, as current slang would have it, “pulled an Ireland” on the Gryffindors. The term led Harry to wonder if, in catching the Snitch and bringing his team to within ten points of winning, he’d “pulled a Krum,” but he refrained from asking anyone that question in favor of finding ways to cheer up Hermione and Ron, who were both convinced it was their fault the team had lost (pushing them, fully clothed, into the Den’s bathtub at its “pool” size was eventually what did the trick). 

The official Defense classes grew steadily harder, both in practice and in theory. After a particular essay assignment in mid-March, Professor Longbottom went to see Professor McGonagall with a particular scroll. Shortly thereafter, Professor Dumbledore received visitors, and spent a great deal of their time in his office nodding.

A few weeks later, on the night of the first Friday in April, the Headmaster prepared himself for another set of visitors, then summoned Kady the house-elf and sent her to fetch them.

“Tell the Pride,” he said, “that it is time for their next task in the winning of the war.”

The panel beside his fireplace grated aside barely three minutes later.


“It’s part of one of Danger’s prophecies, sir,” said Harry, looking up from the scroll Dumbledore had given him. “The newest one she’s had, over the Christmas holidays.”

“So it is, Harry. Will you read the lines aloud so that everyone may hear them?”

Harry cleared his throat and began to read.

Your task is now to other ways,
To end a spell of ancient days.
A curse once on your best-loved gift
Should start your thoughts in proper drift,
For why had hawk to take it on?
What stopped the wolf in days agone?
But ere your thoughts can reach their peak,
The far-off Seeker must you seek.

“Can you make anything of it?” said Dumbledore, sitting back in his chair.

“We have a hawk and a wolf here,” said Ginny, pointing at Ron and Harry. “Is this about them?”

“In part, yes.”

“Something Ron took because Harry couldn’t,” said Neville. “Or no, took on. That sounds more like doing something, like a task or a job.”

“Who puts a curse on a gift, though?” said Ron. “And why would anyone love it if there was a curse on it?”

Hermione dry-washed her hands for a moment. “It’s Danger’s prophecy,” she said, staring at her fingers. “That means it’s her ‘best-loved gift.’ But Danger doesn’t love things, except her books, and I don’t think she could pick just one she loves best. That means the gift probably isn’t a thing at all. It could be a person’s name, like ‘pearl’ means Meghan or ‘warrior’ Harry.”

“But whose name means ‘gift’?” Meghan asked. “I don’t think any of ours do, and not Dadfoot’s or Mama Letha’s or Moony’s either, and those are all the people Danger really loves. Except her parents, but I don’t think this is about them.”

“It isn’t,” said Luna. “But it is about a person Mrs. Danger loves very, very much. A person who was not stolen, or inherited, or born, but given to her.”

All eyes turned to Draco, who went a shade of pink normally only seen in the bedrooms of young girls. Luna twined her hand around his and smiled at him, and he squeezed it gratefully. “All right, so it’s me,” he said, rubbing at his cheeks with his free hand. “And that means the curse is probably the globe back in third year—you had to take that, Ron, because it was meant for a pureblood.”

“Harry could do it if it happened again now,” Meghan chimed in. “You’re half-blood ever since you and Neenie were twins.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t happen again now,” Draco said, reaching over to tweak one of Meghan’s braids. “Waking up under that curse ranks as the single scariest moment of my life.”

Harry looked at the scroll in his hand again. “So that curse, and Ron taking it instead of me, is supposed to tell us what ‘spell of ancient days’ we have to undo,” he said, looking up at Dumbledore, the statement half a question.

Dumbledore nodded. “Meghan has also touched on the important factor,” he said. “The curse was specifically set to a pureblood male teen, was it not?”

“Best’s I remember,” said Draco.

“‘Male’ and ‘teenaged’ are simple enough to determine from the body of the individual.” Dumbledore looked from Draco to Ron with a smile. “But how did the curse know that its victim was pureblooded?”

Hermione shut her eyes. “Blood status in magic is like color on a house or a piece of furniture,” she said distantly, as though she were recalling something she had heard or read a long time ago. “You can tell what it is, but it doesn’t make any difference to strength or weakness.” Her eyes opened. “That’s what Letha said when it happened, anyway. I’ve never read anything that said she was wrong.”

“She was not wrong. Blood status is, indeed, magically discernible.” Dumbledore looked intently at the Pride. “What I am asking you is, why?”

“Why?” Neville repeated blankly.

“Yes. Why.” Dumbledore inspected his fingernails as he spoke. “Such an arbitrary human construction as blood status, which makes no difference to either the quality or the quantity of magic controlled by any particular individual—why should it be as easy to determine, if one knows the proper spell, as the color of that same individual’s eyes or hair?”

“It... shouldn’t,” said Hermione. “Should it?”

“It should not,” Dumbledore confirmed. “But most wizards who know that such a spell exists have a personal stake in its existence. Without it, how could they know with whom they can safely fraternize and whom they must shun? So they dismiss any thought that it should not exist, because in their world, not only should it exist, it must.”

“But it shouldn’t.” Draco chewed his lip for a moment before going on. “Which means someone must have created it.”

“Precisely.” Dumbledore smiled. “I do enjoy working with young people who can think.”

“And the prophecy says we have to end it,” said Meghan, indulging in a brief wriggle of excitement. “Because if Voldemort knows how to use it—”

The Pride shuddered collectively at the thought.

“He could just round people up and test them,” said Ron. “And toss anyone who didn’t pass into Azkaban.”

“If he let them live at all,” Ginny added. “Why should he? They’re useless to him.”

Harry coughed, drawing the Pride’s attention, and looked back at Dumbledore. “What do we need to do, sir?” he asked, placing his hand for a moment against his hip where his dagger rested, sure that Dumbledore would catch the allusion.

We’ve sworn ourselves to you, hands and wands—and lives, if it comes to that. If you think we’re the best people for the job, then we’ll do it the best we know how.

“To start with, you must listen.” Dumbledore stood up, came around his desk, and flicked his wand at the front of it. A blackboard materialized, already covered in writing. “I beg your pardon for inflicting something very like a class on you at the end of the week, but I believe this is one lesson you will want to learn.”

Hermione dug into Ron’s bag, sitting at her feet, and came up with parchment and quill. Ron retrieved his Charms text and laid it on her lap, and Draco uncapped a bottle of ink Luna handed him from her pocket and stuck it to the corner of the book with his wand. “Ready when you are, sir,” he said, sitting back.

His eyes twinkling, Dumbledore gestured to the board. “This,” he said, “is what I have been able to find out about the spell which governs the determination of blood status...”

Harry turned on the special sense in his brain which let him strip out the long words in his professors’ lectures and repeat them to himself in language which made sense to him. The spell was actually two spells, one very old and very complex which existed continuously like the wards around Hogwarts, and one simple and quick like an incantation in Charms class. It was the first spell which actually determined a person’s blood status, Dumbledore explained; the second spell just took a reading from the first one. If they could make the first spell stop working, then the second spell would be useless.

Like a braking charm on a broom that can’t fly.

The problem was finding a way to break the first spell. So many people believed it was important that it was very powerful. The only way to decrease its power was to do the opposite of what gave it the power in the first place.

“What, just get a load of people together and have them all say they don’t think blood matters?” said Ron.

Dumbledore smiled. “Almost, Mr. Weasley. Almost.”

A wave of his wand, and the blackboard cleared and filled with writing again. Hermione was scribbling furiously.

Ron’s idea was closer than he could have known. Dumbledore’s plan to break the spell involved between twenty and fifty people, of all three blood statuses, all swearing to be friendly towards one another and keeping their vow for—

“A year?” Harry said aloud in disbelief.

“Not so impossible a task as you seem to think, Harry,” Dumbledore said calmly. “They need not promise never to quarrel, only never to quarrel to the point of hatred. Teasing and rivalries are acceptable. Actively seeking to hurt someone else or publicly humiliate them are not.”

“That’s an awfully fine line, sir,” said Ginny, looking worried. “You could argue a lot of things either way.”

“A simple test may help.” Dumbledore seemed happy to have his ideas challenged; his voice was clear and his eyes brighter than usual. “If you could truly laugh, however grudgingly, at the action you are considering were it done to you yourself, then it is likely acceptable to do to another. I would suggest erring on the side of caution, of course, since different people can take different amounts of public scorn, but I find the rule a useful one.”

Hermione looked up from her scroll. “What else would they have to do, sir?” she asked. “Or be? Do they need to be young, like us?”

“Perhaps not young,” said Dumbledore. “But I would certainly prefer if it were Hogwarts students who undertook this task.”

“Why?” asked Luna. “Is the spell something to do with Hogwarts?”

“It is.” Dumbledore Vanished the blackboard. “As far as I can discern, the spell was cast from Hogwarts, and is anchored here. Those who have a valid tie to the school are therefore more likely to be able to destroy it.”

“And you’d like it best if the group had all four Houses involved,” said Harry as a piece fell into place in his mind. “Especially Slytherins. Right?”

Dumbledore chuckled. “Why, yes, Harry. However did you guess?”

“Sheer dumb luck, sir.”

Draco coughed a word into his hand. Luna patted him gently on the back.

“We could do it with the DA,” said Neville, who’d been counting on his fingers for a few moments. “If we pick people who can keep their mouths shut—that’s if this is supposed to be secret, sir?” Dumbledore nodded. “I thought so. We can have a look through the members and take the ones we think we can trust to stay polite to each other for a year.”

“A year,” Draco repeated musingly, removing Luna’s hand from his back but not releasing it. “Sir, does this year have to start and end at any particular time?”

“I do not believe so, Draco. Why do you ask?” Dumbledore sat down behind his desk again.

“There are times of the year which are related to good and bad magic,” said Luna before Draco could speak. “Voldemort attacked Harry’s family on Halloween because it’s a traditional time for bad magic, didn’t he?”

“He did.” Dumbledore’s eyes were grave. “One of the darkest nights of the year. Another is the thirtieth of April, Walpurgis Night—but I interrupted you, Miss Lovegood, do go on.”

“It’s quite all right, Professor. What I was going to say is, if we start and end our year on a day of light magic, won’t that give us extra strength for it?”

“Or make people think we have extra strength,” Draco added. “Which is almost as good.”

“It might well. What day did you have in mind?”

“I didn’t yet,” said Luna, turning to look at the Pride. “Does anyone have a suggestion?”

“If we’re going for light, I’d say Midsummer’s Day,” said Ginny. “The longest day of the year must be symbolic of something.”

“Getting no sleep?” Ron said, grinning. “Midsummer sounds good to me. We’re still here then, so we can start off the year and then have a couple months when we don’t see nearly anybody so we’re not tempted to fight with them.”

Draco seemed to be counting on his fingers now, Harry noticed, and the sum he came to made him look worried, even frightened.

He’s had enough free passes. The second we get out of here, he is telling us what’s going on.

“Why don’t we use May Day instead?” Luna suggested, pressing Draco’s hand gently. “That will give us two months to settle into the vows before we get to the holidays. If we have to keep them constantly for a whole year, we’re more likely to break them.”

She knows whatever this is too. If he won’t talk, we can probably get it out of her. Harry smiled to himself. She’s ticklish under her arms, isn’t she?

“Or how about this,” said Draco with a smile that made him look as though he’d never worried in his life. “We won’t be able to keep this totally secret, not with more than twenty people involved in it. Why don’t we put about some version of what we’re doing, not necessarily the true one but admit that we’re doing big magic that lasts a year and needs all these people, and say we’re starting it at Midsummer, but actually start it on May Day? If someone—if something bad happens during the year, well, that’s two months’ grace we wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Harry felt his inner Wolf prick up his ears. That narrows it down a bit. Between May Day and Midsummer of next year...

“The way your mind works never fails to delight me, Draco,” said Dumbledore. “As it happens, I planned to suggest that you celebrate the ancient festivals of light as well as our common modern holidays with your friends throughout the year. The more markers you have for the passing of time, the more fellowship you demonstrate towards one another, the less power the spell will have when it comes time to dismantle it completely. However, in order to truly counter the spell, we must strike against all its points. It was designed to make pureblood, half-blood, and Muggleborn witches and wizards uneasy around one another, uncomfortable spending time together, and unwilling to work side by side for a common cause.”

“What will we be working on, sir?” asked Hermione.

“On this.” Dumbledore unrolled a scroll and held it up. “Suggested, I believe, by one of your own classmates.”

Harry squinted at the feminine handwriting. “I think the most important thing we can do to help keep the war from being too bad...” he read aloud. “That’s the essay we did last month for Professor Longbottom.”

“It is.” Dumbledore passed the scroll to Harry, his long forefinger indicating a place about halfway down the exposed portion. “Can you read from there, Harry?”

Harry found his place. “If Death Eaters start acting on their beliefs, no Muggleborn witch or wizard will be safe,” he read. “Some of them are old enough and strong enough to fight back, but many are not. Also, most wizards and witches have Muggle friends or relatives that Death Eaters will attack to hurt them. I think there should be a place where people who are in danger and can’t fight can come to be safe, a hidden place and secret, a sanctuary.”

“Are we going to build that?” said Neville. “That sanctuary?”

“You and your yearmates, if I may so use the term.” Dumbledore sketched a few lines in the air with his wand, leaving behind glowing trails which formed a picture like a child’s drawing of a house. “You will, of course, have help, but the main force behind the project will be yours. If you accept it.”

“Of course we’ll accept it,” said Draco. “It’s the best idea I’ve heard in ages. Who wrote that essay, Harry?”

Harry unrolled the top of the scroll, which had loosely rerolled itself as scrolls did, and looked at the name.

Oh no. It would have to be her.

“I can’t make it out,” he fibbed. “Looks like they scribble when they sign their name, whoever they are.”

“Let me see, maybe I can read it.” Draco held out his hand.

“Does it really matter who thought it up?” Harry released the top of the scroll, letting it roll back up, and returned it quickly to Dumbledore. “What matters is that we’re doing it.”

And that you not have any more reasons to flirt with Amanda Smythe like you were doing all through the first half of term. She seems a perfectly nice girl, but she’s not Pride, and there’s something weird about her.

“You don’t have to get all upset about it. I was just asking...” Draco’s affronted look was suddenly replaced with the wickedest smile Harry had ever seen on his brother. Harry growled under his breath, a swearword in wolf language.

“Professor,” Draco said, turning to Dumbledore. “Would it be a good idea to have some really big reason to celebrate at the start and the end of the year?”

“Yes,” said Dumbledore, looking closely at Draco as though wondering what he was getting at. “I had assumed that the beginning and ending of the work on the Sanctuary would suffice.”

“But we can’t be sure we’ll be done in exactly a year, sir.” Butter, if placed in Draco’s mouth at the moment, would have turned into ice cream. “We could get delayed and go overtime, or we could finish early. Wouldn’t it be better to have something else good scheduled for next May Day, so that we’ll be sure?”

Dumbledore tapped his fingertips together. “What did you have in mind?”

Draco’s smile widened until it could only be called a grin. “I think Harry and Ginny should get married.”

What?

The shout came simultaneously from at least three people, including, Harry realized, himself.

“Are you mad?” Ginny demanded. “That’s more than three months before I turn sixteen! Mum’d never stand for it!”

“She might if there were some other reason,” Draco said. “Something like finishing the year.”

“She’ll probably say we just came up with the year to get married sooner!” Harry half-shouted, then remembered where he was and fought some calm back into his voice. “I can see what you’re getting at, Fox, but it isn’t worth the fight we’d have over it. We can come up with something else to finish the year. How about it?”

Draco looked away. “The year isn’t the only reason,” he said very quietly.

All right, that does it. “Sir, may we be excused?” Harry said to Dumbledore. “I think there are some things we need to straighten out.”

“Of course, Harry.” Dumbledore straightened some papers on his desk. “The particular celebration to commemorate the ending of the year can be determined at a later date. May I take it as agreed, though, that you will contact the people you wish involved and be ready to begin the year on this May Day?”

“Yes, sir,” said Harry after a quick glance around the Pride. “We’ll be ready.” To the Den, he signed over these words. We’ll talk there.

“Hermione, stay a moment?” Dumbledore requested as the Pride started towards the still-open tunnel to the Den. “I could use your help with one final detail.”

“Of course, sir.” Hermione pressed Ron’s hand. “You go on,” she whispered. “I’ll be all right.”

Draco, by the tunnel’s entrance, glanced over his shoulder at his twin with a look of such intense and mingled pride and sadness that Harry stepped back, missing Ginny’s toes by a fraction of an inch.

“Hey!”

“Sorry.” Harry moved out of the way, still watching his brother watch their sister. He’s glad that she’s getting better, but there’s more to it than that... is it related to whatever’s between next 1 May and 24 June?

He didn’t know, but he was going to find out.

No more excuses. No more “maybe later”s. This ends here and now.


Luna opened the door of the green bedroom and looked around. She’d seen it closing from the bathroom, so Draco had to be in here, but where?

If he’d thought, he could have run to the Quidditch pitch and got out onto the grounds. We’d have a much harder time finding him if he hid in the Forest as Snow Fox.

She sighed. Maybe he secretly wants to be found. He wants it to be over with. All the hiding, the sneaking, the lying...

The two months letting Amanda have her turn with Draco had been harder than Luna had expected. She hadn’t known she had so many possessive urges. It had been worrying to her at first—what if she’d been infested with Minie Mites?

But Daddy says it’s healthy of me to want Draco all to myself that way. It means I care a lot.

She glanced up at Alex’s portrait as a discreet cough sounded. A hand was poking around the edge of the otherwise empty frame, pointing towards the room’s large wardrobe. Luna coughed in return and started edging towards the wardrobe.

I don’t quite understand what I See when I Look at him together with her, though. It’s as if his being with her fits a pattern. A very old pattern, one that hasn’t been used in a long time, but a pattern. He feels it too, or he wouldn’t be so attracted to her.

But he loves me. He always has. She smiled a little. Too bad that doesn’t change that she loves him. And neither of us would be willing to share for good.

Sometimes, even for a Seer, the right way was hard to see.

Luna pulled open the wardrobe door. Draco glared at her and reached for its edge to shut it again.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Luna held onto it. “You need to come out of there.”

“Why?” His voice was hoarse, his face blotchy. He’d obviously been crying. “So I can tell them all—you know?”

“Yes.” She infused her voice with all the certainty she had on this topic, which was quite a lot. “It’s time they knew. They may be able to see a way around it we can’t. And even if not, you can’t keep going on like this alone.”

“What about you? You aren’t complaining.”

“I’ve told Daddy,” Luna said, thinking about that conversation. Her father had been intrigued, rather than scandalized, at the possibility of his daughter’s going off with a Death Eater, and had come up with several theories as to what could have been happening in that moment. “He had some interesting ideas. And I told Mrs. Danger when I first had the vision, and she told the rest of your parents, didn’t she?”

Draco sagged back against the wall of the wardrobe, his eyes shut. “I can’t do this, Starwing,” he said quietly. “I can’t go out there and throw this pain on all of them. They deserve better than that.”

“All of us deserve better than what we have.” Luna tucked a strand of hair tenderly behind Draco’s ear. “We’re good people. We shouldn’t have to fight a war. But we still do. And we’re crazier even than I am if we try to fight the worst of it alone.”

Draco opened one eye a slit to glare at her. “Do you know how much I hate it when you make sense?”

Luna smiled. “Yes.”

A deep, grumbling sigh, and Draco swung his legs out of the wardrobe and stood up. “All right,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “Let’s go tell them. Together.”

“Together.” Luna took the hand in hers and squeezed it.

Six pairs of eyes were immediately fixed on them as they stepped out of the green bedroom. Draco sank into a tailor’s seat on the padded floor, Luna dropping down beside him to sit on her hip. “You might remember Luna had a vision over the summer that scared her a lot,” he began.

“It was the one where I scratched Draco’s arm and flew out the window,” Luna added, to several nodding heads from the rest of the Pride.

“That vision is the reason I suggested we change over to May Day from Midsummer, and that you two get married to mark the ending of the year,” Draco said to Harry and Ginny. Luna could feel him gathering his courage, and willed her own into him. “Because I’d like to be there.”

“What does a vision have to do with you being there?” Harry asked in his most controlled voice.

“The vision...” Draco swallowed once. “The vision showed my grave. With the date I’m going to die. 5 June, 1997.”

Hermione’s gasp resounded in the silence of the Den like the smashing of a holy relic.

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Author Notes:

Well, now they know. And now you know what they’ll be up to for year 6! Coming soon: the Pride’s differing interpretations of the vision, why Dumbledore wanted Hermione to stay for a moment, and all about Horcruxes!