For disclaimers, warnings and pairing notifications, see Chapter 1.

Author Note:Well as promised, this chapter sees the introduction of several new story arcs. I hope no one minds particularly that I'm not sticking rigidly to the canon ships. Sadly I didn't do my research properly previously, and so only found out after putting Hannah with Justin that she should have been dating Neville! Since their relationship was already established a couple of chapters ago, I had to do some rethinking. I hope my choices of who to put with whom meet with everyone's approval. I'm open to suggestions if anyone wants to see a ship that I haven't established already, for example if you really want to see Draco get a girlfriend, or Luna get a boyfriend. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy...


It was a good day to be Neville Longbottom, or at least it was a good day by the standards of the current times. As a pureblood but a known supporter of the Light side in the war that had brought Voldemort to power, he stood in a strange limbo, both loved and hated by Voldemort's government. His pureblood status meant that Voldemort, who envisioned a society where purebloods were the only kind of magic-wielding human and ruled supreme over all other magical creatures, could ill-afford to get rid of him, for reasons of eugenics if nothing else. There were simply too few pureblood families left out there for the Dark Lord to terminate any without risking all the rest to inbreeding and degeneration. Thus he retained his life, and to a large extent his freedom. He knew that he was on a watch list, that Sentinels frequently followed him and that his accounts and business dealings were carefully scrutinised by Voldemort's lackeys. These things he could deal with, however, and it was not all bad. He retained his wealth, his ancestral home of Longbottom Hall. He had friends, many of whom shared his feelings towards Voldemort's regime, and best of all he had his fiancée. Quite how the gorgeous, talented and incredibly intelligent Susan Bones had ended up engaged to him he was still not entirely sure. She would, after all, undoubtedly have a line a mile long of applicants if she ever decided to throw him over and seek a new boyfriend, and many of them would probably be far richer, far smarter and far better looking than he himself was. He supposed that the marriage laws that Voldemort had enacted forbidding the marriage of purebloods to anyone with fewer than three pureblood grandparents might have had something to do with it. Mostly though he decided that not questioning a good thing, and doing everything in his power to hold on to that good thing was probably the wisest course of action.

That was, in fact, how he had passed most of the afternoon and how he would spend the rest of the evening. He had taken Susan out shopping, first in Diagon Alley for those things which one could only get there, such as robes, and then out into Oxford Street for the rest of her clothes and shoes. Considering the exchange rate of pounds to the Galleon, in spite of the fact that Susan had bought far more Muggle outfits than she had wizarding ones the trip into Diagon Alley was by far the more expensive of the two. Then he had treated her to an early dinner in a restaurant in the West End. On their way back to the Apparition point a large billboard on the side of one of the theatres there had caught her eye. Now she was upstairs, hurriedly changing into one of the several stunning dresses she had bought that afternoon so that they could Apparate back to London in time to sit down to The Phantom of the Opera. All in all it was definitely one of his more upmarket dates, normally they just hung out wherever the mood took them, but on the first month anniversary of their engagement he felt that something special had been in order. The dreamy look on Susan's face as she had gone upstairs to change told him that he was doing well so far.

He glanced at the desk in his study, taking things in. Sometimes he enjoyed the history, the tradition that surrounded this old place. Generations of Longbottoms had lived in this house, conducted their business from this study. It made him feel small to know that standing in this room he was in the spiritual company of all his forebears. His musings were cut short by the flash of fire that appeared above said desk, a signal he had not seen in a long while now. Moving around the desk, he saw that one of the drawers, the only one with a magical seal on it, had changed. Where before smooth polished wood might mislead the casual observer into thinking that this was just a solid part of the desk, there was now a raised golden design, a design of a bird with its wings spread in flight. It had been his own idea, implemented for him on the antique desk by Dumbledore himself. Taking his wand out he tapped the design and spoke the agreed password, which caused the drawer to slide outwards smoothly, silently. Within was a piece of parchment, which Neville picked out. He checked the sender's rune, Justin. He had not heard from Justin in a long while now, he had been starting to get a little worried. He turned the parchment over and read the message.

His reaction was slightly mixed as he considered the implications of the message. Something was definitely afoot, and if it involved the entire Order then it was big. To Neville only one thing could be that big, they were going to fight again, they were going to start a rebellion. On the one hand he was glad that not all hope was lost, that there were still people out there who felt the same way as him about Voldemort and his regime and that they were still willing to do something about it. On the other hand, however, starting up the war meant new battles, risking his life and the lives of his friends again. Not that he was a coward, not for nothing, it turned out, had he been sorted into Gryffindor, but he was not stupid. They had already lost to Voldemort once, they would need to plan carefully, think out every contingency, and most of all they would need some kind of edge for this rebellion to be successful, otherwise there was no point. He would go to the meeting, Justin would have his support, but he would be damned if he was going to be part of some half-baked revolution. They would do it properly or they wouldn't do it at all.

For the second time that evening his musings were interrupted, this time by the clearing of a decidedly female voice from the direction of the door. Neville turned to face the door, and stopped dead. It was moments like this when he wondered why on Earth Susan even bothered with him. She was wearing an elegant black dress, which, although modestly cut in the neckline, was an exact enough fit to show off her curves to very good effect. The skirt of the dress reached down far enough that, had it not been for the inch-high heels of her shoes, it would have been brushing the ground and the spaghetti straps that held it up left most of her tanned shoulders bare. Rather than her usual thick braid, her hair was cascading down her back like a silky auburn waterfall. Her eyes sparkled brightly, and she had a pleased smile hovering on the corners of her mouth. In short, she looked like a goddess newly descended from whatever celestial plane might exist.

"See something you like, Mr Longbottom?"

Neville's jaw worked soundlessly for a moment or two before he could answer coherently.

"Why yes, Miss Bones, I believe I do," he said, trying not to sound too breathless.

"Shall we go then?" she asked.

He shook his head and handed her the parchment.

"Read this first."

She took the parchment from him, her eyebrows raising up at the phoenix symbol that appeared to be burned into it. It took her less than twenty seconds to read the message.

"You're going?" she knew him too well.

"Yes," he told her, "If Justin thinks we can do this…well he was always a good planning man. He wouldn't call us together just to reminisce. This must be something big, and I'd want to be part of it."

"Of course you would, and I'll be coming with you."

That surprised him. Susan had never been part of the Order, like her mother she was with the Light, but preferred to remain outside the Order itself.

"Are you sure?" he asked, "You've never been interested in Order stuff before."

"Nev, there's no way I'm letting you go off to war without me, not after a year of dating and a month of engagement. We're in this together now. Besides, if this is as big as you suspect then you're going to need every wand that you can get."

"Okay then."

Susan looked at him suspiciously.

"You're not going to argue? Not going to try and tell me to stay home where it's safe?"

Neville tried to look innocent, for that was exactly what he had been contemplating but had decided against.

"Would it have worked?" he asked her in return, then continued without waiting for her answer, "There didn't seem any point in wasting my breath. Besides you're a talented witch, Sue, and you got top marks in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Just let me watch your back when we go out on missions, ok? That's all I ask."

"Oh Nev," she kissed him soundly, "I love you, you know."

"I hope so," he replied, "I love you too."

"Shall we go, then?"

"Yes," Neville replied, offering her his arm, which she took. Then they walked together down the drive of the manor house to the Apparition point, Apparated to a secluded alley next to the car park in Orange Street and from there made their way to Her Majesty's Theatre.

It was definitely a good day to be Neville Longbottom.


For Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, it was not quite such a good day. In contrast to Neville, he was working, even though his shift was technically long over, members of the Auror Department never really went totally off-duty. In his case, as one of the commanders in the division, a rank he had earned less than three months ago thanks to a major raid on one of the few remaining hideouts of the Order of the Phoenix. Of course he had neglected to mention in his report of the raid the part where he had in fact warned Order members to get out almost twenty hours in advance. They had stormed an empty building, but the ample, and totally phoney, evidence they had gathered on the Order's operations thanks to his 'tip-off' was an apparent enough coup to kick him up the rank scale by one notch. Now he was sat in the cubicle that served as his office, staring in frustration at the piles of parchment that summed up his current case.

This particular case had been open for nearly eight months now, and the trail was getting very cold indeed. Last July, on the 31st, person or persons unknown had attacked Azkaban prison, blown a massive hole in the wall of the prison, killed two guards and then apparently done absolutely nothing. All prisoners were accounted for, no irregularities had been detected in the protections surrounding the prison and a hallway-by-hallway search of the fortress had revealed nothing that had not been there before. He had no knowledge of any Order missions to Azkaban lately, and the one spell residue they had picked up had been a total unknown, never recorded anywhere before. The only thing they did know was the spell that had been used to destroy the wall section, that had been the one spell-residue still strong enough to be picked out. But it was no help, the spell was a reasonably common, albeit staggeringly powerful in this case, classed Dark under the old laws of the Ministry, but not actually associated with a Dark Art, so it was semi-legal. Draco was well and truly stumped by all of this. Who would break into a prison to do absolutely nothing? More to the point who had the kind of power level exhibited by the massive hole that the spell had left? Draco could only think of two or three answers to the second question, and none whatsoever to the first. As a spy he institutionally hated mysteries like this. His position for years had relied on him knowing more than almost anyone else, on being one step ahead of counter-intelligence attempts, now he was up against something or someone that he knew nothing about. He did not know if they were friend or foe, human or not, and most of all he had no idea whether this was a one off or just the first strike of many.

His dark musings were interrupted when his ring, the heir's ring to the House of Malfoy suddenly grew hot against his finger. It was a signal he recognised all too well. Almost glad for the distraction, he stood up from his desk, leaving things exactly as they were so that he could come back to his investigation in exactly the same place come morning, not that he was hopeful that anything new would present itself to him in the light of a new day. He walked briskly over to the bank of lifts, stepped into one and pressed the button for the Atrium. The lift took off at once and bore him swiftly to the uppermost floor of the Ministry of Magic complex. Once there he Apparated out, re-appearing at an Apparition point just a few miles away, in a dark alley beside a rather non-descript block of flats that rose five stories high. He pulled out a key and let himself in the front door, climbing the stairs to his relatively comfortably appointed apartment and letting himself in with a second key. He shut the door firmly behind him, completing the circle of his wards again, and then raised a few extra privacy wards around the whole apartment. He walked over to the room that was both his bedroom and his study.

Stashed under the bed (slightly clichéd, perhaps but there were few other hiding places in his apartment for an object of this size) was his old school trunk. It now contained all he had in the world to remember his mother by, her wedding dress, two other dresses that she had favoured, one to wear at home and one to wear out, a small vial of her favourite perfume, her engagement and wedding rings in a small velvet box and a simple necklace of silver with three sapphires, his own birthstone, set in it that he had given her for Christmas less than a month before her death. These were all that he had been able to surreptitiously rescue for the pile of stuff that his bastard father had planned to auction off, as if twenty-seven years of marriage meant nothing to him. He would never forgive his father for that any more than he would forgive Voldemort for torturing his mother to death in front of his very eyes.

Aside from these items, there were two other objects in the trunk. One was a leather bound book, on whose every page were stuck photographs of his mother, some of her on her own, and some of her with him. Many, if not most of these photos showed damage where Draco had excised his father from those pictures, but his mother still looked out, dignified and regal from every photo, with the exception of the ones that included himself as a baby. In those she glowed, just as all new mothers do in the presence of their children. The second item, however, was the one that now interested him. On the outside it looked like a simple jewellery box, and that was indeed how it had begun life, in the possession of his mother. Now it was something more however. He had warded it himself, with the strongest wards he could cast, Blood Wards tied to himself that protected the contents. Then after that he had taken it to Gringotts and paid the Goblins a stupidly large amount of money to have it warded further with preservation and security wards of the most powerful kinds. In short, probably no one except the Dark Lord and himself could open this box, and if Voldemort himself ever came looking through his personal belongings then it would mean that his life was probably already either over or no longer worth living so that hardly mattered. He unlatched the box and lifted the lid, then took out the parchment within. Emblazoned with the symbol of the Phoenix and a sender's rune, it was a general message to all members of the Order. He read the message, its one worded command sparking hope within him. It had been too long since there was a general meeting of the Order. For Finch-Fletchley to be calling one now could only mean something big was going on. Maybe this was it, maybe they were finally going to get their act together and start a full-blown rebellion. A smile grew on his face as he took out his wand, memorising the date and time on the message as he did so, and incinerated the parchment before Vanishing the ashes.

Suddenly Draco Malfoy's day was looking a lot better than it had before.


Cedric Diggory Apparated home from Flourish and Blotts, where he worked as a counter clerk, to find his wife, Cho, already waiting for him. It was to be expected since he was late. The shop had received some additional stock mere minutes before closing time, and he and his colleagues had been forced to process it and then get it on the shelves before clocking off for the night. He kissed his wife of eighteen months and doffed his cloak and outer robe before following her into the kitchen of the cosy two-bedroom apartment that they shared. It was a tradition they had established within days of their wedding, since they both liked to cook, and were both good at it, they always cooked dinner together. Indeed the few occasions that they had invited friends over and cooked for them had been laden with recommendations that the couple open their own restaurant on Diagon Alley, which would instantly put Fortescue's and the Leaky Cauldron out of business as places to eat.

Less than ten minutes after they had begun, however, there was a single chime from the clock that hung on the wall above the fireplace in the living room. It was not like a regular chime, however. It went on too long for that, and it quavered oddly before dying away. At the same moment, on the counter by the door to the kitchen, the diamond of Cho's engagement ring flashed brightly, impossibly brightly for it to be glare from the apartment lights. They were both signals, signals that husband and wife knew too well, although neither had been used in some time now. Cedric knew that, had he been wearing his wedding ring, which was currently sat on the countertop next to Cho's engagement and wedding rings he would have felt it heat up very briefly. Husband and wife looked at each other very briefly, before rushing to the bedroom together. They each had a drop-box for messages from the Order, but only Cedric kept his at their home. Cho stored hers elsewhere, so that if they were ever in danger of being compromised, they could destroy one drop-box and still remain in contact with the Order. Opening it, they found Justin's summons within.

There was no need for discussion or communication between the two. They both knew that they would answer the call. Although they had not fared too badly so far under Voldemort's regime, they had plenty of friends who had lost everything. The majority of Order members, with the exception of the ennobled houses like Longbottom and Bones, had lost almost everything to Voldemort's reparations exactions. The Macmillans, the Prewetts, the McGonagalls, the Abbots, and the Quirkes had all been virtually impoverished by this. Moreover their Muggle-born friends had suffered atrociously thanks to new laws that prevented them from getting decent jobs. Totally unqualified in the Muggle world and unable to earn a living wage in the wizarding one, many of them had been reduced to living on the streets or to virtual, or even actual slavery to pure-blood families, depending on whether they fell in with sympathetic masters and mistresses or cruel ones. There was no question that, if not for themselves, then for everyone they knew, they would do everything in their power to see Voldemort and his pureblood mania gone, and at least something approaching equality restored to wizarding society once more.


Seamus Finnegan was just walking out of the café where he worked in Belfast. Going Muggle was not the easiest thing to do even for a half-blood wizard, but it had been the only financially feasible thing to do in the wake of the second war with Voldemort. The reparations he had been forced to pay out for the fact that his family had sided with the Order of the Phoenix had cost him virtually everything. After the sale of his house, the auctioning off of most of his possessions and the calling in of all the family debts, he had been left with a bare thousand galleons to his name, with which he had to support himself, his sister and his mother. The discovery of the pounds to galleons exchange rate had eased his despair over the financial considerations. Seventy five thousand pounds was enough to buy them a smallish two bedroom house in Whitehead, just a few miles away from Belfast itself, and to set up a small investment fund that just about provided the three of them with enough to live on. He and his sister were sharing a room again, something they had not done since he was six, and they had to be very careful, but between the investments and the supplementary income from his job in the café they were surviving. Magic helped, of course, for both he and his mother had kept their wands, once magical always magical. Repairing charms extended the life of clothes by a considerable degree, although they never got restored quite as well as they started, warming charms cut down on central-heating bills, conjured fires supplemented electric lights. Aguamenti meant that they could get a better deal on the water bill by being metered. In all, the little things in magic were just about all that stood between him and his family and being thrown out on the streets. He had never really paid that much attention to Flitwick when the tiny Charms professor had taken them through Charms like these, just taken the requisite notes and achieved the required proficiency in casting. Now his cleaning charm would cause a tabletop to sparkle, his repairing charm would put virtually anything back together and his skills in household charms were above and beyond Outstanding.

His sister, however, was going to Muggle school, mainly because it was free for her to do so, and learning magic only a very little bit on the side from his old books. They would not buy her, her first wand, she would always use either his or his mother's, she would never see Hogwarts in all its glory, she would never understand Seamus' enthusiasm for Quidditch because she would never see it played. It was the little things that they missed from full immersion in the magical world. Also the modes of dress and speech. Clothes had been the one major expenditure that they had had to make in setting up their new life, aside from the house of course, and even after more than two years, Seamus still caught himself wondering where his outer robe was, or reaching for the hooded cloak as he walked out the door to go to work. He also had to remember that Merlin was not a common exclamation word, nor were there any implications behind cracks about one's mother amongst local teens and young adults. A buzzing in his pocket drew him out of his somewhat maudlin introspections. He reached in and pulled out a small mirror. This was the one indulgence they allowed themselves, because the licence to own enchanted objects cost a pretty Sickle to obtain, but it was much cheaper in the long run than say a mobile phone. Voice only rather than a full image had reduced that cost slightly, and it also had the added advantage that he could pretend that it was a phone, thereby reducing looks of suspicion from passers-by. He placed the rectangular mirror to his ear.

"Yes?"

"Seamus," the voice of his mother sounded in his ear, "You'd better come home quickly today. There's a message waiting for you, I think it's from the Order."

"I'll be right there, mum, I was just walking out as you called."

"I'll see you in a bit then son."

"Bye, mum."

The connection ended and the mirror returned to its usual reflective self, and he slid it back into his pocket. Looking around quickly, he ducked into a nearby alleyway and Disapparated with a soft pop that did not carry very far.


Luna Lovegood, being a talented Seeress, needed no signal to know that a message was on its way to her from the Order of the Phoenix. She had already foreseen its arrival, and was awaiting it with eagerness. There were only seventeen possible messages that she could get, and they were all favourable. There was a one in five chance that the meeting concerned a last ditch rebellion, which in itself had a one in three chance of destroying Voldemort. By far the best probability however, was on the idea that Harry Potter either had been or was about to be liberated from Azkaban prison. Much would depend on the date and time that the meeting had been set for, as well as the identity of the sender. She grimly accepted that their chances of failure were still better than even, and even if Harry had been released, the road ahead was going to be a long and dangerous one. There were so many decision forks that needed to be made the right way in order for them to have a chance at winning that it made her mind spin sometimes, but she needed to keep faith, to trust in the greater plan.

At last, in a flash of fire, the expected parchment materialised in mid-air and drifted gently towards her desk, but she snatched it before it could touch the polished wooden surface. Her fingers trembling in anticipation, she checked the sender rune. Justin Finch-Fletchley. That eliminated an entire slew of possibilities from her visions, and suddenly she could breath easier than she had in three years. One of the worst fates had been avoided. That left only three hundred possibilities that mankind would essentially be destroyed, and about eight hundred thousand more where Muggles were wiped out entirely, of course those were the absolute worst-case scenarios. It was much more likely that Voldemort would simply enslave all Muggles to his will. Nevertheless the possibilities for Voldemort's downfall had just opened up a little wider than they had been before. She turned over the message and read the time and date set for the meeting. Her smile faltered only very slightly. It was not the worst possible choice, but there would have been better ones. Again branches of the decision tree that she could see fell away, some good and some bad. The road ahead was going to be long and dark, but there was a good chance of light at the end of the tunnel. The next important step would be to see who answered the call. Having the right people present at that first meeting could mean the difference between success and failure, between life and death, for them all.


The appointed time for the first general meeting of the Order of the Phoenix in far too long was set for Friday evening, at 7:30. Fifteen minutes ahead of time, Justin and Hannah Apparated from her London flat to the headquarters of the Order. Headquarters was actually a heavily warded terraced house in Primrose Hill, Birmingham. The location was chosen by Dumbledore for its centrality back in the first war. Officially the house was owned by one Charity Prewett, an entirely real and very close friend of Dumbledore's grandfather, so she had all the necessary paperwork in legal terms. A check of her birth certificate would have revealed that the lady was now a little over two and a half centuries old, but since the taxes and bills on the house were paid on time and in full, Muggle authorities had never had a reason to check small details like that. In the wizarding world, however, it was well known that Charity Prewett was long dead and buried, and the Ministry had simply assumed that since there was no further record of a magical person living at that address that the property had passed into Muggle hands. Thus, ignored by Magical and Muggle governments alike, the house was the perfect place to meet for a clandestine group that knew of its existence.

The door opened to Justin's unlocking charm, a deceptively simple method of entrance. He had in fact been magically scanned by a number of wards. Had he not been on the approved list of entrants, the simple charm would have resulted in a nasty and rather gristly death for him. Since he was on the approved list, however, he entered without incident and moved to the living room, which was the habitual meeting place of the Order. Like most wizarding houses this one was magically expanded, far larger on the inside than it appeared to be on the outside. The living room could quite happily accommodate chairs for thirty to forty people, depending on how friendly people were willing to get. Justin flicked hi wand, summoning twenty chairs from the sides of the room and arranging them into two semi-circular rows facing the large coffee table that stood at one end of the room, then he set another chair behind the table for himself, clearly establishing his position as leader of the gathering. If he were honest he would be impressed if three quarters of that number turned up. He had received no replies, but that was to be expected. Thos who wanted to would come, those who did not, would not. Then Hannah sat in one of the 'audience' chairs, and Justin took his place in the 'leader' chair.

Fifteen minutes later, the first click of the door opening heralded the next arrival, and ten seconds later Draco Malfoy walked in, nodding cordially to Justin before taking the chair next to Hannah. More clicks heralded more arrivals, and within five minutes they were joined by Neville Longbottom, Susan Bones, Seamus Finnegan, Luna Lovegood, Daphne Greengrass, Blaise Zabini, Orla Quirke, Cedric and Cho Diggory, Oliver and Alicia Wood and the dirty and dishevelled figure of Colin Creevey. Justin looked around at the expectant faces. He was glad of every arrival, but in particular the presence of Draco Malfoy meant that they would have all the intelligence they would need. Greengrass, Zabini and Longbottom were impressive fighters, not to mention their financial backing would be invaluable. The others were above average fighters, but Justin was somewhat dismayed that none of the truly exceptional duellists had elected to return, in particular Nymphadora Tonks and Katie Bell, one an Auror, the other a Gringotts Cursebreaker were members he had hoped to see again. Perhaps they had simply not been able to get away for today. He would have to contact them both personally. In the meantime, he would work with what he had.

"Good evening, everyone, I'm glad you could all make it. To be honest this is about as good a turnout as I was expecting for a first meeting. I'll dispense with the pleasantries, other than to welcome Susan to the fold. I'm guessing that Neville is the reason you're here Sue?"

"Yes, Justin, although I was for you before, you know. It's just that it would have looked bad for Auntie if I'd gone rogue with the Order instead of supporting her at the Ministry."

"We know, Sue, but all the same it's good to have you with us now."

Justin looked around at the assembled group, making sure to catch each person's eye before starting in on his prepared speech.

"I think it's time," he told them, "to start getting active again. We've been quiet long enough. Voldemort's had it easy for the last couple of years, he probably thinks he's won. We should start showing him that the Light may have been dimmed, but it hasn't gone out yet."

"Fine words, Finch-Fletchley," Malfoy said calmly, "Inspiring, but you expect the fifteen of us to start a rebellion against the Dark Lord alone? That's beyond crazy."

"And letting him stay secure in power isn't, Drake?" Justin countered, "Every day that he has no problems is a day closer to his goal of ultimate domination of Britain, and once he has that, we could all end up dead or worse. If he can secure his hold on Britain on the Muggle side as well it'll be a catastrophe. You know that. I'm not saying we do this alone, but someone needs to do something, and we've got the means and the will to do it."

"Obviously we all agree," Neville chimed in, giving Malfoy a quelling look, "Or we wouldn't be here. But what's your plan, Justin? You must have some kind of idea, or you wouldn't have sent that message. Let's hear it."

Justin spent the next twenty minutes outlining his ideas for the group. In theory it was a simple plan, but those were always the best kind. They would recruit and train a fighting force, and essentially do to Voldemort exactly what he had done himself, attack and capture the key locations of Wizarding Britain one at a time. Of course there were a lot more stages to it than that. They would have to work to destabilise Voldemort's regime while they were still building up their forces, otherwise by the time they were ready to act it would be far too late. They would need to build up networks of support to ensure that they could hold their gains. Most of all they needed to find some way to kill the greatest Dark Wizard of the modern age. Justin had added that one in there to throw them off of any possible clue they might have for Harry's return. The question of Voldemort would remain an open one until Harry was ready to come out into the open, but he did not want to spread that news around until Harry was back with them and ready to do what he needed to do. It was a general plan, to be sure, but it was a plan that was workable, that had potential, and it was enough to make the fifteen of them sit up and think.

As it turned out, they spent almost an hour and a half sitting there, tossing around ideas, names of potential recruits, strategies and so forth. Draco promised to re-activate as many of his information-miners both the people and the various ingenious magical 'bugs' that he had planted over the years. Daphne was an 'in' into providing additional information thanks to her work in the Advanced Magical Research Department (formerly known as the Department of Mysteries), which gave her clearances exceeded only by members of the Inner Circle of the Death Eaters when it came to information, so long as she could provide good cause why she needed to know, and she also promised a few interesting inventions that had not, and now would never find their way into the Dark Lord's arsenal. Colin was enthusiastic about sounding out the few Muggle-Borns that continued to survive on the edges of wizarding society, mostly by crime or begging. He seemed sure that most or all of them would leap at a chance to harm the government that had essentially driven them to destitution. He was not sure how the Muggle-Borns who had indentured themselves as servants to Pureblood families to survive could be reached, but promised to try and work on the problem. There was little that the others could do beyond sound out close friends and former Order members to try and get their numbers up, but what they could do they would. All in all Justin considered the meeting a success, they had brought together a core group with influential connections and motivation. He was not going to start talking about the After-War party just yet, but it was a good start. They parted ways, leaving singly or by couples as appropriate. Justin and Hannah remained, sat together in a large arm-chair, she enjoying a good cuddle with her boyfriend, he already mentally composing the account he was going to have to give to Harry in the near future.


So, what's the verdict? Review and let me know!

IMPORTANT AUTHOR NOTE 28/4/8: This story is now undergoing a rewrite, in response to some serious criticisms made today which have drawn together fallacies that have been pointed out to me before, but which I was hoping to rectify in future chapters. It's now clear to me that the problems present in this story are too large to be solved by a little glossing over in future chapters, so I'm going to be taking a long hard look at what I've got, make much more definite plans about where I want this story to go (I admit that I've been coasting rather a lot, for example I never wrote down a coherent history of events during Harry's incarceration, which if I had would have indicated a lot of the problems to me before I even got started, but no longer, from here on out careful planning is the name of the game), and rectify inconsistencies that have been pointed out to me before, but were really shoved in my face today. I hope you'll bear with me as I do this (I'm more than a little afraid of losing my 43 faithful followers), but I promise if you hang in here with me, I'll do my best to do this asap and then hopefully this story will be even better than before. I'll conclude this notice by publicly thanking BJH and MDR, the reviewers who so forcefully opened my eyes, mostly because it would have been all too easy for them to simply post flames telling me this was crap, but instead were thoughtful and helpful enough to actually point out specific flaws and offer advice on how to fix them.