AN: I suspect this is the chapter that most of my readerbase has been waiting for; we finally see Harry, Hermione, Lily, and the other Hogwartsians interacting.
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Hero Harry, Chapter 3.
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North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997.
The meeting was scheduled to begin at eleven AM, Harry arrived shortly after Six. Spain had ceded control of Puerto Rico to the United States of America in 1898, as part of the terms of the Treaty of Paris; and created an obtuse legal dilemma regarding the magical community of Peurto Rico. Unlike Cuba, which had never been intended to remain a US possession, and the Philipines, which had a rocky relationship with the USA ending in Independence after World War Two, Puerto Rico (and Guam) possessed magical communities which had never been subdued by Spanish Wizards, and thus did not recognize American authority.
Expansionist and colonialist policies had never been particularly popular in the USA, but whereas the great distances involved and limited technology of the times had allowed certain facets of the Federal Government and certain Flag Officers to pursue their own colonialist agendas, magical transportation and communication had not allowed such within the magical community. Thus, Puerto Rico's magical community had never accepted the implementation of the massive multi-layered warding scheme which protected the continental United States and Hawaii, and the policing of magical affairs remained under the purview of the local shaman, at least once the necromancers amongst them had been purged.
In 1997, this meant that while non-magical Puerto Rico functioned as a psuedo-state under American Law, magicals from the world 'round could come and go as they pleased, the shaman largely unconcerned with what they did, so long as they did not (noticeably) break muggle law. Effectively, this made Puerto Rico the magical smuggling and gray-contract nexus of the Americas, while Guam served a largely similar role in Oceania, South East Asia, and Japan, but there was very little in the way of violent crime in magical Puerto Rico. Explosions, gunshots, and dead bodies drew the attention of non-magical policemen, and that was bad for business, because the shaman knew that while the Department of Magical Affairs might prefer not to take the islands by force, if people started dying, and the full depth of smuggling was discovered, they would. And the nominal fees, and availability of certain substances important to shamanistic magic, that the smuggling brought, were not things the shaman wished to do without.
To Harry Potter, this meant that it was the least unsecure option available to meet with his friends and family, without American police or military showing up and trying to seize him, without removing those he was meeting with from the soil of the nation they had been granted asylum within. 'Least secure,' of course, was a far cry from secure, and Harry had spent a week setting up for the rendezvous before he had allowed the site to be used by Hermione and his mother the first time. Every time afterward that the site had been used, he had arrived a randomly-chosen number of hours early, and thoroughly investigated, then strengthened, the simple wards he had applied to the area.
Harry was no expert with Wards, he only knew a few simple schemes for detection, and one each for blocking Apparition, Floo, and Portkey travel. He was simply too paranoid to trust any except his mother or Hermione with the defenses, and neither had been available, so he had simply done the best he could by himself; he was no expert with Wards, but he knew a trick or two that had thus far proved universal to all other forms of magic that he had tested them with.
Still, he saw no point in taking unnecessary chances, thus the early arrival and reestablishment of security before the others would begin to arrive. Their 'convention center,' as Hannah Abbot had dubbed it during her first visit, was essentially a moderately large mountain chalet, built some time in the 1800's at the behest of a Spanish nobleman, with the notable oddity of a Sauna, something that was not at all normal either amongst the Spanish, or in the Carribean. After four hours of scouring the property for any sign of tampering or human presence, including overpowered dispells thrown at everything within the Wards, he judged the chalet to be acceptably secure, and summoned Dobby.
Within five minutes, Dobby had scoured the chalet of every particle of dust that had accumulated since his last visit, and ascertained that everything was suitably ordered. In another five minutes, lunch was in the oven, slow-cooking at a pace fit to be complete shortly after the others arrived, and the two settled themselves into the chalet's sun room for a few friendly competitive 'games'. Harry made a point of not playing games with Dobby in front of those he did not trust implicitly; too many things could simply be taken the wrong way.
First, they played the knife game; House Elves had an intrinsic grasp of a number of extremely useful branches of magic, one of them being controlling objects in a manner that was functionally telekinetic. Very few people, magical or none, would react well to watching what appeared to be a fourteen year old boy in a wheelchair attempt to evade two combat knives cutting through the air with no visible means of support, at the direction of a house elf. Those who knew something of Harry's abilities, would recognize that the knives, themselves, presented about as much a threat to Harry as a goldfish; dangerous if he were to choke on them, functionally irrelevant otherwise. To Hermione or Lily, it would have barely drawn a raised eyebrow; it was far from the most extreme training exercise he had put himself, or Dobby, through.
At five minutes to eleven, Harry called a halt to the latest 'game,' in which the two competed for telekinetic control of three rubber balls, each of a different size and mass, attempting to touch each other with one, without allowing themselves to be touched, and sent Dobby to light the chalet's fireplace. Their preparations essentially complete, Harry set himself near the fireplace, his wheelchair facing the fire, wand in hand as he prepared himself for the possibility that someone had been compromised, and he would find himself under attack, rather than in the company of those that he trusted.
Then the first person came through the Floo, and it was Hermione, and everything changed. The tension in Harry's chest eased, his paranoia faded from the forefront of his mind to a background hum, and his worries about her safety were laid to rest.
"Harry," Hermione said with a smile, shaking a bit of soot from her casual clothing before crossing the intervening space and seating herself sideways in his lap, taking his left hand in both of hers, "It's good to see you again. How are you?"
Harry leaned his head against her shoulder, and began to tremble slightly, his eyes closing almost involuntarily as the emotional whiplash of the lastest stint of his lonely sojourn in Europe ending hit.
"K-Killed eight A-aurors this week," He said thickly, tears and emotion beginning to exacerbate his stutter, "They w-were g-going for a l-little girl. W-wouldn't s-s-s-surr-rrend-d-der."
"Oh, Harry," Hermione said gently, sadly, resting her cheek against the top of Harry's head, then wrapping her arms around him, "I wish someone else would deal with this."
The others who had come to this meeting, sharply aware of the private moment happening so close to the Floo, quietly left the kitchen as soon as they arrived, leaving their leaders to each other's comfort and company. For long minutes, Hermione simply held Harry while he trembled and silent tears streamed down his face, his emotional walls still too strong for him to express his grief well. Hermione gently rubbed his back, subtly positioned herself so her hair fell in front of his face, and hummed nothing in particular near his ear, doing everything she could think of to help him feel her presence, to let him know that she was here, and he was not alone.
It was something that was painfully common for Hermione, when she met with Harry every month. The civil war in England was not kind to Harry, something that both worried and comforted Hermione. She was well aware that those who held massively greater amounts of power or authority over their peers very often became corrupt; Harry's continued intense emotional reaction to all the death he saw, not to mention brought himself, was a strong indicator that he wasn't succumbing to megalomania.
Then Lily came through the Floo, as usual she was the last to arrive, and immediately moved to join Hermione in embracing her son.
"Hello Harry," She said softly, "Let's get you somewhere more comfortable."
((()))
"Looked a bit worse than last time," Susan said a little bluntly, as they moved out onto the Chalet's veranda, "Somebody probably died again."
"Susan," Draco said, a hint of sharpness in his voice, "There's a war on. Of course someone died."
"I meant Harry probably had to kill someone again," Susan replied, somewhat defensively as an embarrassed flush edged onto her face, "Of course people are dying. I'm just glad Aunty isn't head of the DMLE anymore."
"Fair enough," Draco replied with a nod, before taking a seat on one of the wickerwork chairs on the veranda.
Neville, Hannah, Parvati, Luna, Daphne, and Blaise had also come this month, Ginny and Tracy had both decided to remain behind as they weren't entirely comfortable around Harry and Hermione lately. The others selected seats of their own, Hannah volunteering Neville's lap for herself, and by common consent, everybody spent a few moments enjoying scenery that was not utterly flat in every direction.
"Is Harry Potter Sir's friends being ready to be eating now?" Dobby asked, stepping out onto the Veranda to address the Hogwarts Exiles.
"I suppose," Neville said, shrugging slightly as he wrapped his arms around Hannah's waist, "What's for Lunch?"
"Meatyloaves and potatoes, Longarms Sir," Dobby replied, "Dobby will go fetch it now," then disappeared with a faint 'pop.'
"Blimey," Susan said, shaking her head, "It still creeps me out a little bit each time I see that elf, realizing just how big he is. For an elf."
"I can tell you," Malfoy said, "He certainly wasn't that large when he was bound to my father. Makes me wonder though, just how many of the Elves at Hogwarts were bound to the castle, and how many to Dumbledore, back before McGonagall took over?"
"You know," Daphne said, pausing for a moment as Dobby reappeared and handed her a plate with two thick slices of meatloaf and a baked potatoe aon it, "There's no definitive connection between Dobby's growth spurt, and Harry being an exceedingly powerful wizard."
"Entirely true, Miss Greengrass," Malfoy said, slipping into his 'exquisitely polite' tone of voice that almost always meant he was teasing, "However, there is very little else in the way of potential probable cause."
"That we're aware of," Daphne cautioned, "What else could it be?"
"Dobby," Luna asked as the robust House-elf appeared in front of her with another plate of food, "Do you know why you're half a foot bigger and more muscular than other House-elves?"
"Oh, certainly miss Loveygoods!" Dobby said excitedly, "It's because Harry Potter Sir's magicses was trying to make him grow, so Dobby did too!"
"What?!" Parvati burst out, "What do-"
Dobby disappeared again before she could ask her question.
"Best let him finish serving us lunch before you try to ask, Parv," Hannah said, "You'll just frustrate yourself otherwise."
Silence largely reigned amongst the Hogwarts exiles over the next few moments, more words being spent on thanking Dobby for their meal, than on anything else; once they had all been served, Dobby disappeared again, and, unfortunately, did not re-appear.
"Well," Draco said lazily before digging into his meatloaf, "One would suppose that he's gone to attend to the Potters."
"And Granger," Daphne added, "You know Lily and Harry will try to force her to overeat, considering her tendency to miss meals when nobody's keeping an eye on her during research."
"She's as much a Potter as a Granger at this point," Draco said with a negligent wave, "It's a good thing they'll have Lily and Dobby to cook for them, as last time I checked, neither of them were any good in the kitchen."
"And you would know about being good in the kitchen?" Blaise asked, raising an eyebrow, "Mister 'I grew up with servants to wait on my servants'?"
"How to cook myself?" Draco replied coolly, raising an eyebrow in return, "Heavens no. How to tell whether or not the cook is competent, of course. My mother would hardly have tolerated my not having a discerning palette."
"Boys," Parvati huffed, "You know, there's more to a relationship than who's cooking dinner."
"I think," Neville said, giving Hannah a squeeze, "That in Harry and Hermione's case, dinner will largely be the last thing on their minds. Which is why Draco brought up Lily and Dobby."
"Ehhh," Parvati said, slightly embarassed that she'd missed the whole point of the conversation, "Fair enough."
Conversation after this largely consisted of small talk, waiting for their host to finish his reunion with his mother and closest friend and join them.
((()))
"Thank you," Harry said quietly, as Lily wiped the tears from his face gently with a overly-fluffy towel.
"You're quite welcome Harry," Lily said with a gentle smile, "I've told you before, but I spent many years wanting to do this for you."
"I can understand why," Hermione said softly, giving Harry a comforting squeeze, "Do you want to talk about it in more detail?"
There positions had shifted; Hermione was now seated in one of the simple wooden chairs from the kitchen table, with Harry in her lap (he had caught up on some of his lost growth in the last few years, but she was still taller than him), while Lily puttered about the kitchen.
"Not really," Harry said, before catching a look from his mother, "A-apparently it isn't entirely voluntary though."
"I believe we've been over this before dear," Lily said as she loaded three plates down with dinner.
"'It's not h-healthy to isolate oneself,'" Harry said quietly.
Hermione and Lily both nodded, Hermione giving Harry another squeeze.
"V-very well then," Harry said, "I was having t-tea at Avery Whitaker's bakery..."
It took a fair bit of time for Harry to recount the tale, especially with Lily and Hermione taking turns pushing food on him, and he did so in a largely detached manner, but both of the young women knew him well enough to pick up on subtler emotional cues that even Harry couldn't completely suppress. By the time he reached the end of the firefight in front of the bookstore, they had already clued into the fact that something beyond the violence and death itself was bothering him.
"...And then I App-parated us all to one of m-my safehouses near London," Harry finished.
Hermione twitched slightly; side-along Apparition with more than one 'passenger' was supposedly impossible, but Hermione had long since learned that what books on magic from Europe said was 'impossible' was more accurately categorized as 'incredibly difficult' or 'has never been done before.' At this point, she had broken almost as many of the 'rules' of magic as Harry himself, but it still irked part of her when someone trampled all over 'facts.' Still, Harry had engaged in multi-person Apparition before, even with her and Lily as his 'passengers,' and more important things were at hand.
"There's something more that's bugging you," Lily said firmly, before taking a bite of potato and giving Harry an 'I'm your mother, you can't fool me' look.
"The young w-woman fr-from Whitak-ker's," Harry admittedly reluctantly looking away from his mother, "Her name was S-seras, and she was the g-girl I rescued from D-dudley nine years ago."
"Ah," Lily said, leaning back in her chair, "Her. How was she?"
"As-side from w-watching me k-kill, an A-auror team," Harry said roughly, a bit of an edge in his voice, "She was f-fine."
"Which means, not really fine at all," Lily said gently, reaching out to stroke her son's cheek gently, "She reacted poorly, and that hurt you, didn't it?"
"I d-don't know," Harry said flatly, "Sh-she was still pr-protective about me while I ex-explained things to them, but sh-she spoke with me again later that n-night," He paused for a moment, his voice beginning to thicken with emotion, "I was sh-shaking from the l-letdown, a-and s-she l-looked me in the eye."
Hermione set aside her plate and hugged Harry again; Lily reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder.
"What did she do?" Lily asked softly.
"She ran," Harry said, looking away, his face rigid as he tried to suppress any visible sign of the same he felt.
Lily sighed, and closed her eyes, before standing and leaning forward to awkwardly hug her son while he was still wrapped in Hermione's arms.
"If she had been frightened of you right after the fight," Lily said quietly, "That would have been somewhat understandable, death is ugly. But running from you when you were at a vulnerable moment..." Lily shook her head sharply, carefully controlling her anger, "That is even less excusable."
Harry just nodded silently.
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Minister's office, Ministry of Magic, London, March, 1997.
"Damn that Potter," Fudge snarled, "Damn him to hell."
The Minister's office was, unsurprisingly, an opulent affair. The walls were paneled with teak and mahogany, the floor was covered in lush crimson carpet, the Minister's desk was oak with gold trim, his chair was very nearly a throne carved of chestnut set with silver-trimmed purple upholstery. It further boasted a coffee table, couch, and chairs carved from dragonbone, and upholstered with dragonhide; a liquor cabinet with bottles dated from decades to centuries ago rested in one corner, and oak bookshelves inlaid with silver and semi-precious stones held an assortment of impressive (but rarely opened) tomes.
Fudge relished the grandiose luxury, unaware that in contrast, he looked like exactly the portly little man he was, though his subordinates hadn't been rude enough to tell him that before his fallout with Malfoy and subsequent hardening, or courageous enough to tell him since.
"I'm hardly inclined to disagree, Minister," Dolores Umbridge, Fudge's sycophant-in-chief said, "Alastor Moody's treason was bad enough, but at least we know he's doing it out of foolishly mislead ideals. Potter's pointless homicidal rampage must be stopped."
"And I would stop him," Antonin Dolohov, the current head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, said, "If you'd give me the budget and let me spend the manpower!"
"As much as it will strain our ability to fund other, vital projects," Fudge growled, "At this point, it is clear that in the long run, it will cost us more not to commit the necessary funds and manpower to stop Potter once and for all. Dolohov, you'll have your Dragonhide armor, and I'm authorizing up to half of the Auror force to be dedicated to tracking Potter down. Don't screw this up."
"I won't," Dolohov said sharply, then turned and swept out of Fudge's office, fairly bristling with furious energy.
"Umbridge," Fudge barked, "We will need to increase the output of the Acclimation Camps again."
"I will do what I can, Minister," Umbridge said, nodding in acquiescence, "But if mudblood acquisition slows after Dolohov reallocates personnel, it will be difficult."
"Use whatever means necessary," Fudge snarled, leaning forward in his chair to glare at the shorter woman, "We will need more gold to make up for the money lost on an increased Auror and Hitwizard budget."
"Understood, Minister," Umbridge said, nodding deeply to Fudge once more, before turning and leaving herself.
((()))
North of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, March, 1997.
"'lo there Harry," Neville called somewhat awkwardly around Hannah's latest attempt to hand-feed him, "You feeling better?"
Some things, men can almost always communicate intuitively, even men raised as socially blind as Harry Potter; Neville's embarrassment and desperate desire for someone to provide a distraction for Hannah was one of them. A quick glance, however, also revealed that Blaise and Draco, the other two resident males, had elected to enjoy the show, rather than intervene on Neville's behalf, and Harry decided that for now he would do likewise.
"Yes," He said shortly, summoning a pair of chairs for his mother and Hermione as they rolled him out onto the Veranda, "M-much."
"Well then," Susan said, a hint of eagerness in her voice, "Once we're finished with Lunch, let's show you what we've learned, hm?"
((()))
The chalet was set on a fairly respectable property, all the more so considering it had been warded for more than a century to subtly divert those not specifically seeking it from entering. For Harry and the others, the chalet's grounds were mostly irrelevant, save when it came time for training combat; then, the steadily depopulating forest surrounding the chalet, and intimate familiarity with it, became critical. This month, Harry had given them seven minutes to move into the forest and set themselves up before the first exercise, the only restriction being that they were not allowed to begin setting up Wards; any other preparation was fair game.
This time, with Susan present, but the Weasleys and Padma absent, they had decided to opt for an attempt at subterranean defense. Susan had learned a great deal about earth magic from her aunt, and like the others she had spent a great deal of time honing her skills, not to mention pushing her magical strength and endurance, since the battle at Hogwarts. She was one of the more powerful girls, but like most Witches amongst Hogwarts student body, before the battle she had tended more towards fine control rather than raw power, and fully submerging the group to a meaningful depth within sixish minutes was a daunting task for her.
Of course, facing Harry Potter in any kind of fight was a daunting task, period, and one of the first things they had all learned, was that if they were not constantly pushing themselves to their limits against him, defeat was a foregone conclusion. Because Harry would push himself, all of the time, and was already far more powerful and experienced than any of them, possibly all of them put together.
Harry started inside the Chalet, where he couldn't see them; the others started on the Veranda, and once Lily gave the 'start' signal, they sprinted off into the forest. 'Sprinting' into the thick underbrush was not something they would have been capable of a year ago, when they were still at Hogwarts; between the incline and the unsteady footing, they would have been more likely to break a leg than manage a quarter mile before exhausting themselves. Now though, they moved not only swiftly, but with little noise; a proper sprint could never be silent, but they could have been collectively mistaken for a large animal moving through the brush by someone who couldn't see them.
Just over thirty seconds into the forest, Neville raised a hand, silently signalling for them to stop; eight seconds later, Susan nodded sharply, indicating the location was suitable, and drew her wand, directing her magic into the earth beneath them. She began to murmur the verbal components of the spell, one of many magics passed down through the Bones family that was not a simple, 'fire and forget' spell, but an effect that was both sustained and guided, and each of the Hogwarts Veteran's feet began to sink into the ground. The first time they had done this, some of them had suffered from nerves, but none of them were truly claustrophobic, and painful learning from Harry, combined with deepening bonds of trust between them all, rendered the experience simply another oddity of magic, no different than Floo or Apparition.
"Twenty feet down," Neville whispered silently, "Put us right under one of the trees."
Susan nodded sharply, the response to her team leader's orders instinctive and requiring no part of her conscious mind. Slowly, but smoothly, they sank beneath the ground, all their breath patiently as they descended to the indicated depth, Luna greatly enjoying the odd sensation of 'sinking' through earth as though it were water, including its fluid caress across the surface of her skin. Once Susan's spacial awareness indicated they had reached the designated depth, she halted their progress, then used an overpowered basic 'vanishing' charm to clear some space for the rest of them to work their wands, then silently activating a lumos.
"Keep it as tight as possible this time," Neville, his face cast in long shadows from the modest light Susan's wand emitted, ordered quietly, the low voice most likely unnecessary, but a part of the psychology of stealth, "We've no need to learn that he can affect a larger area than we can try to protect once he pierces our shields all over again, and he might be more cautious if we're tightly packed, higher chance of serious injury."
'Serious injury' holding a very different meaning for Wizards when they had a highly skilled magical healer, such as Lily Potter, around to treat injuries.
The others nodded, and immediately set about compressing the earth around them, some of it soil, much of it stone, into a semi-spherical shell around themselves, compressing it for maximized strength. Susan began working Bones family magic on the sphere, strengthening it in ways the others didn't really understand, though Draco was beginning to suspect, and Daphne carved out a small array of runes in the floor of the semi-circle, then empowered them to cause a reaction which would convert Carbon Dioxide into breathable gasses.
"Remember to put as much strength into the base," Neville murmured, nodding towards the stone floor they were all crouched on, "He's just as likely to come up from below; more if he thinks we're getting sloppy with it again."
The next few minutes passed without any further verbal communication; a few hand signals were passed back and forth, but the lion's share of everyone's attention was centered around transforming their little stone igloo into as impenetrable a fortress as possible in the few minutes they had. Susan fortified the stone; Hannah and Blaise conjured titanium slabs and welded them onto the interior of the dome; Draco and Luna, the best at visualization in the group, applied themselves to transmuting the soil outside of their dome into a combination of more stone, and shaped charges designed to function like reactive armor; Neville, Parvati, and Daphne were inscribing focusing runes for purely magical shields at regular intervals on the interior of the dome.
Then a physically tangible pulse of magic washed over them, and they knew that the fight was on.
At first, nothing much changed; they all continued in their pre-selected activities; until Harry actually attacked, further strengthening of their defenses was really their best use of time. Only Draco's attention was redirected, and that was only barely noticeable; instead of further reinforcing the external shell, he had begun attempting to erect the Anti-apparition wards that were the first step to any plan they had been able to formulate to defeat Harry. All of them, however, began to call to mind the shared memory of their fallback point, chosen by Parvati after their last series of exercises, over one of the clearings Harry had created with a ludicrously overpowered cutting hex during that engagement. Then Susan, still attuned to the earth around their bunker, flinched.
"He's here," She whispered swiftly, pointing directly upwards.
Every member of the team except for Draco immediately dropped what they had been doing, and shielded the top of the dome, general purpose one-shield-fits-all defensive charms engineered to diminish, rather than ablate, whatever destructive effect passed through them.
Something massive slammed down onto their barriers, piercing each in turn, before shattering against the heavily-reinforced shell of their hastily-created bunker.
"Sir Isaac Newton," Blaise whispered quietly, "The deadliest son of a bitch on or off this world."
"Break now," Neville snapped, and every member of the team Apparated out instantly, abandoning their carefully-laid preparations without a second thought.
The appeared fifty feet above the ground; they had unshrunk brooms and mounted before they fell to thirty, and less than two seconds later Daphne had shifted onto Draco's broom, as the lightest amongst them while Ginny was gone. All of them began flying evasive, moving in patterns drilled for an hour every week day, and four hours on Saturdays, protecting the doubled-up broom while Malfoy restarted the Warding chant.
Seven seconds later, Harry appeared, Apparating in below and behind them, his first wordless spell in flight before they'd detected his silent arrival. It was far from the first time they had seen him Apparate silently though, and he'd used the ability against them more than enough that they had developed substantially sharper situational awareness; three shields intercepted the violet spell before it could reach their group.
Now that he had been spotted, however, Harry felt no need to remain silent, and began loosing the heavy-hitting spells, opening with a massive wave of flame that was multiples larger than necessary to engulf their entire formation.
"Break Three!" Neville snapped, and the entire formation Apparated out before the wave of flame reach them, scattering themselves across the Chalet's entire property.
Break Three was an order for total evasion; the Apparition didn't stop with the first jump, each member of the combat team dove into the woods, spiraled through the air, abandoned their brooms for the ground, Apparating and Disapparating whenever they felt that Harry might have managed to get the drop on them, something that they all knew from painful experience could happen at any time.
Harry intentionally broke one of his own primary rules in response 'stay mobile,' in order to follow another rule 'don't follow your foes' expectations,' and attempted to discern a pattern to their movements. None of them had realized yet, that he could sense the use of active magic, or the presence of particularly powerful magical entities, but their mad evasive pattern was an effective countermeasure to it nonetheless. There were too many magical signatures, moving too quickly over too large an area, for him to tell whether or not one of them had hunkered down to try to raise the Wards while the others distracted him.
So, he decided to change the game, and silently Apparated into the little hidey-hole they had spent their prep time creating, then immediately abandoned. He appeared directly in front of Draco Malfoy, who was hunkered down, attempting to raise said Wards. Both of them were surprised by the other's presence; both of them reacted immediately. Unlike Draco, Harry had not simply trained, but walked multiple battlefields, and his instincts and will to act were far more sharply honed than the Malfoy scion's; Draco fell to a stunner before he'd finished raising his wand.
Well, thought Harry, Looks like I wasn't the only one who though to return here to raise the Wards... now how should I play this?
After a moment's thought, he began to rapidly, loudly recite the psuedo-latin chant that served as part of the spell focus, a small part of his mind maintaining awareness of the continued evasions of his opponents on and above the surface. Ninety seconds later, the Wards were up, and the Apparition came to a screeching halt; he'd deliberately overpowered the wards, there would be no splinching, and maybe one of them would sense whose magic had powered the Wards, rather than simply notice that they had been raised.
Then, he began burrowing his way to the surface, barely needing to spare a thought for his magic, as the lion's share of his attention was devoted to figuring out how best to isolate his scattered foes one at a time, before they could regroup, without giving away his location. He rapidly formulated a brutally simple but effective plan.
For a moment, he considered that it might be too rough for a nonlethal exercise, but his mother's (frequent) past words about respecting the others choices about risking themselves echoed in his mind, and he grit his teeth, then set about it.
((()))
"That was unexpected," Lily murmured quietly from the Chalet's veranda, her metaphysical senses just as aware of the flavor of Harry's magic as her physical sense of taste was the lemonade she was drinking.
"I'll say," Hermione said, her nose wrinkling in distaste, "That much is a bit excessive, but he's probably trying to make a point, I suppose."
"Indeed," Lily said with a knowing smile, "My son does very little without a clear purpose in mind."
((()))
Hannah was just beginning to think they might actually have a chance at victory this time, when a massive force seized her violently, ripped her off her broom, and began dragging her back through the forest towards their attempted bunker. Part of her immediately fell into a panic, but hard-won reflexes kicked in as well, and she twisted around in place, turning to face her new course, and panic was immediately shattered by brutal pragmatism.
There was a tree in her way, a thick tropical thing as wide around as she was; with the speed she was moving at, it could very well kill her. There was no time for an incantation, scarcely enough time to point her wand, much less a proper motion, the need for the tree to simply be gone roared within her, combining with the half-thought of a blasting spell. Her magic blazed through her wand, and the tree shattered, exploding away from her in a hail of splinters.
She ignored the tropical shrapnel; none of it posed a threat to her, the intent of her magic had ensured that, she had no time for things not immediately relevant to survival.
Another tree.
"Bombarda!" She snarled; this time, with the time for an incantation, the blast was even more forceful, and the smaller tree ceased to exist in any way that she cared about. As she rocketed across the property, the upper length of it was falling behind her; her subconscious mind was peripherally aware of the fact, but as it was not germane to the issue of survival at hand, the functionally useless information was filtered out before it reached her conscious mind.
Another tree; another explosion, another, and another, then-Harry!
A wave of red magic, the same shade as a stunner swept towards her; she instinctively tried to dispel it, but lacked the power to overcome Harry's magic. The last thing she saw, tinted red through the wall of spell energy before it struck her, was the shorter Wizard turning away, already writing her off as a threat, and begin to cast his next spell.
"Accio Susa-"
Darkness.
((()))
"It's over," Lily said, once the last string of toppled trees came to an end, a small satisfied smile on her face, "Harry wins again."
"I'm as happy for him as you are," Hermione said, rolling her eyes without looking up from her latest book, "But you don't need to be so smug about it."
"My son, my right to be smug," Lily said with a sly air of superiority, "Once you marry him, you'll understand what I mean."
Hermione would have loved to have a snappy comeback to that, but was too busy blushing brilliant, flaming red.
((()))
"So," Harry said, the hint of a mile in his voice, "Who can tell me what they did wrong today?"
On the whole, it wasn't the most pleasant thing to wake up to, but Neville, Hannah, and the others were becoming accustomed to his abrupt methodology for debriefing them. They were in the chalet's sitting/living room, each of them having been moved to one of the comfortable couches or armchairs in the room before being roused. Lily and Hermione were also present, seated on a love seat; Lily was re-packing her healer's kit, Hermione was, unsurprisingly, reading.
"Been about thirty times more powerful?" Blaise said wryly, "I'm not really seeing much I could have done to slow you down once we split up."
"It's not what you could have done," Neville said, a hint of rebuke in his voice, "It's what we could have done. We didn't have any means in place for communicating once the Wards went up, and because of that, Harry was able to divide and conquer once they were."
"That was one thing that contributed to your defeat, yes," Harry said evenly, "What else can you tell me?"
"Probably shouldn't have left the Warder without any sort of protection," Draco grumbled, "He nailed me, hard."
"But I thought you got the Wards up?" Daphne said, curiosity mixing with confusion in her voice.
"I certainly didn't raise them," Draco said irritably, "So I assume it must have been Potter. Decided to pin us in place for a change?"
"Something like that," Harry said, "I decided to raise them myself, in order to pin you all down, just as Draco suggested; I decided to work from your own little hole in the ground, and that's where I caught Draco. Once I had taken him out and raised the Wards, I returned to the surface and started summoning each of you in succession; Neville and Daphne were the only ones who required more than a single stunner to subdue, and none of you took more than two."
"I guess you want us to be better at handling someone suddenly summoning us through the middle of a bunch of bloody trees then?" Hannah asked rather sharply.
"I was actually rather impressed with how you all handled being dragged through the forest," Harry said with a small smile, "I had originally considered not using the tactic, but decided I could chance you all failing to protect yourselves from injury; the results speak for themselves."
"Then what do you think we should have done?" Susan asked pointedly.
"That is the question to ask," Harry said, nodding respectfully to the Bones scion, "There's actually very little to criticize, I think, I'm simply years ahead of you in both developing my magical potential, and in training for high-intensity combat situations, and that's on top of the experience gap. You actually all moved well, coordinated well, and perhaps most importantly of all, you didn't hesitate."
"You wanted to see what we thought we had done wrong," Draco said quietly, "You were testing our confidence in ourselves and our abilities."
"Yes," Harry said, nodding sharply, "If your perception of my own abilities is that they're insurmountable, and warping your estimation of your own capabilities, that's a problem."
"How do we tell?" Daphne asked quietly, "Especially when we've never beaten you?"
"That's actually not that difficult," Harry said, his voice turning serious, "Just ask yourself if what you're attempting would be effective against someone else. The standards I set to allow you to accompany me are higher than those of any magical law enforcement or military branch in Europe; I simply expect you to perform to a higher standard, because I always expect to fight outnumbered, and even if you, and the others," He nodded vaguely northwards, "Join me, most likely our opponents will simply start sending larger squads," He took a deep breath, and met the eyes of everyone in the room, including Hermione and Lily, before continuing, "Unless we kill them all."
"There's only about seventy-five thousand magicals in Wizarding Britain in the first place," Susan said quietly, "How many have died in the fighting so far?"
"I don't think anyone has exact numbers," Harry said quietly, "But at least two thousand. It's the stupidest bloody civil war I've ever heard of. Most people wouldn't have realized it's started, if it weren't for Hogwarts closing down, and most of them seem determined to ignore the fact that their 'lawful government' ordered an attack on school children for not obeying laws dictating their sex lives."
Daphne shivered in her seat; Hermione moved around behind the chair, and hugged the pretty pureblood over the top of it.
"I think that's one thing we're all ready to slice off Fudge's nuts over," Neville said flatly, pulling Hannah from her seat beside him on the couch, into his lap for a good cuddle.
"As is anyone with enough sense to see what's happening, and act on it," Lily said, "There is a reason that Fudge is in power back in Britain, and it is largely due to most people's lack of care or concern about anything that isn't directly in front of them."
"With people like my father being among the few who care enough to involve themselves, and almost never with benign motives," Draco added quietly, turning to face Harry, "I don't suppose you've got any more hints as to what his game is?"
"No," Harry said, shaking his head, "He's extended another invitation for you to return however."
"Refused," Draco said flatly.
"I told him to expect as much," Harry said evenly, "But he did ask, and his conduct thus far has been above reproach, as best as can be seen."
"Believe me," Draco said with a scowl, "He's up to something, even if none of us have cottoned on to it yet."
"People can change," Lily cautioned, "You are living proof of this. It doesn't mean he has, but just remember, it isn't impossible."
"I know he changed after you defeated Voldemort," Draco said, his tone softening somewhat as he turned to face Lily, "But I don't believe he changed that much, nor do I believe that the Dark Mark was actually mind-affecting."
"I don't entirely buy it either," Lily said, "But unfortunately, there's no way to study them now, and even if we did track down what's left of Riddle, I supremely doubt he would be cooperative with any efforts to understand his works. At least with me."
"C-can't say that I disagree there," Harry said with a wry smile, "B-but we're g-getting off track. Th-there were a few particulars that should b-be brought up, s-such as Hannah, when I s-summoned you, I summoned you f-first because I knew you were more likely t-to try to revive someone else than try to t-take me alone. That actually made you m-more dangerous overall, b-but when you had your o-one chance at f-firing a spell at me, you w-were too defensive, you weren't going to b-be able to disp-spel my stunner, s-so you should have t-tried to at-tack, give your allies a better ch-chance. And as to..."
((()))
Later that night, after most everybody had either gone to bed, or split off to engage in their own pursuits, Harry and Hermione moved out onto the veranda alone, Lily keeping a de-facto watch for interlopers from the sunroom.
"I'm assuming," Hermione said as she pulled one of the veranda lounge-chairs up alongside Harry's wheelchair, "That since you went to speak with Lucius, you used magic to control your body again?"
Harry just nodded, looking away from Hermione.
"How long did you manage to maintain it this time?" Hermione asked.
"A-b-bout five minutes," Harry said, his voice rough with emotion, "Long enough."
Hermione moved up behind Harry and laid a hand on his shoulder, hesitating a moment before reaching forward to wrap him in a hug again.
"I'm making progress," Hermione said softly, "Not as quickly as I'd like, but I am making progress."
Harry nodded jerkily, his muscles tensing with frustration; the occasional slight palsied spasm raising his frustration all the more.
"I'm sorry," Hermione murmured, "I know this is difficult for you, but at least some of this, you need to learn to deal with not always being as in control as you'd like."
"Control of myself is all I have," Harry said harshly, hunching over forward, his entire body taut with repressed emotion, his instinctive magic overriding the damage to his body as his aggravation rose to critical mass, "If I can't hold on to it, I have nothing left."
"You've got me," Hermione said, tightening her hold on Harry's tense shoulders a little.
"That's..." Harry struggled for words, not sure of what to say, and Hermione could practically feel the confusion rolling off of him.
Silence reigned for long minutes, Harry trying to articulate the hunger that lay within his heart, Hermione deliberately ignoring the cramp starting up in her back due to her awkward posture.
"That's not the same kind of thing," Harry eventually said, "You a very good friend for me, but nobody is perfect. If I base my sense of self worth off of how you treat me, then what I am is entirely dependent on what you decide, and I'm not willing to believe that."
"But if you base your sense of self off of your self-control," Hermione said gently after a moment, "You're not perfect either; doesn't that still make your validity circumstantial too?"
A long moment of silence passed.
"I don't know," Harry eventually admitted.
((()))
AN: Part of me really doesn't like leaving a chapter end at this note, but this is very much a moment where the author needs to step away from what he would do in the situation, and let the characters be the characters.
The rest of this first meeting should finish next chapter, along with more detailed happenings with the Fudge administration. Also, while I got this chapter out at a pretty reasonable rate, no promises that it won't be another month before the next one. That's the limit I've set myself for how long I'll let this story wait for an update, but I do have other writing responsibilities. Such as my stories on Smashwords; go buy one, and feed the author, link's on my profile.