Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Prized

Chapter Thirty-Four - The Outside World

Bill packed his things away for the day, then sat and stared at the picture that had graced his desk at the Gringotts branch on Diagon Alley for years. It was a picture of his family, all together for once, that they'd taken in Egypt. Everyone looked so happy together, especially his parents. Merlin, he'd looked so young…

He felt older than he was, now. Now that Ginny's hand had fallen off the clock, and Ron's hand had never once switched over to mortal peril…

It was telling. Bill didn't like to think about what it meant; none of their family wanted to acknowledge it. That the fact that he'd been in Hogwarts during the assault, but hadn't been in danger… it meant that he'd been in on the assault.

The thought hurt, so Bill shoved away from it, packing it away like he'd packed away his notebook and quill. He stood up, waving goodbye to his fellow curse breakers, making polite conversation on his way out. None of them knew that Ginny was dead; Bill hadn't seen the point in telling them.

She was dead. His parents were broken hearted. What more could he say about it? Their empty words of condolence would be just that, empty.

And he didn't know how much of that he could take. Because he was angry, of course he was. He wanted nothing more than to go after the one who'd killed her, who could only be a Death Eater. He didn't know which one, didn't know if it had been Ron himself, but he knew it had been one, and he was…

It didn't matter.

"Heading out someplace important?" Rocktip asked as he joined Bill on his way out of the bank. The goblin was a grim, quiet little thing, but Bill had noticed recently that he'd taken to asking him more questions than he'd once done.

The goblins were asking all of their human employees a lot of questions, probably hoping to weed out disloyalty before it became a problem. As annoying as it was, Bill supposed he couldn't really be too frustrated by it. They were all under contract, after all.

"I have a date," he said neutrally. "She's waiting for me at The Silver Dragon." The elite restaurant wasn't one that he would normally spring for, but Fleur was worth it, and she was used to the finer things in life.

Bill wasn't sure how he felt about that part of her, but he loved the rest, so he supposed he'd learn to deal with it.

Rocktip let out a low laugh, the sound like stones rubbing against one another. "Sounds like a good time. Better not keep her waiting for too long." He turned away just before Bill hit the door, not even bothering to be subtle about it.

The mood in Diagon Alley was darker than it had once been. Everyone was quieter, and people tended to look two or three times at others, as though trying to figure out if they were hiding a Dark Mark under their sleeves. Everyone was waiting for Voldemort to make his next move, now that he'd apparently consolidated power around Hogwarts, but so far… so far he'd done nothing.

It was making everyone nervous. There was a curfew in effect now, and it probably wouldn't go away until the war was over. If it ever was.

Bill shoved that thought away as well, and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The war would end, and good would triumph. It would likely mean that he'd lose a brother on top of the sister he'd already lost, but the war would end.

It had to.

He gave his name to the waiter at The Silver Dragon, and the waiter nodded, smiled, and immediately led him back to the table he'd reserved almost three months ago. Fleur was already there, waiting, and stood to greet him with a smile and a kiss pressed to his cheek.

He tried to return the expression, but he knew it wasn't quite up to his normal amount of cheer. When they sat, he confessed before she could ask, "Ginny's hand fell off the clock two nights ago."

Fleur let out a small gasp, her hand flying up to cover her mouth. Immediately, she wrapped her other hand around his and squeezed tightly. "I'm so sorry to hear that," she breathed. She pulled his hand to her lips and pressed a soft kiss there. "We could have postponed, Bill. I would not have minded."

Bill shook his head. "I thought about it," he admitted. "But I wanted to see you, and postponing wouldn't have really helped anything."

Her face lit up in a soft smile. "I will do my best to comfort you," she murmured. "How are your parents taking it?"

"Not well," he admitted. "I don't think Mum has stopped crying since it happened, and Father's just been… quiet. I think that they were still hoping that she'd come home safely, even though she didn't get released with the rest of the Hogwarts children." The ones who weren't the children of Death Eaters, anyway.

Fleur squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know this must be hard on all of you. She was your baby sister, and I know that you loved her very much."

"I did," Bill agreed. "But, unlike them, I sort of suspected that it wasn't going to go well. Unlike Ron, whose hand never touched mortal peril, hers was there the entire time she stayed at Hogwarts. And the Dark Lord isn't known for showing mercy to those who cross him."

She was silent for a long moment. "What are you going to do now?" she asked finally.

"What do you mean?" Bill frowned at her. "We're going to have a funeral, of course, but other than that…"

Fleur shook her head. "I mean, are you going to involve yourself further in the war?" Her hand tightened spasmodically on his as she asked the question. "I would worry for you, but I would respect—"

"I can't," Bill interrupted. "My contract with Gringotts demands neutrality in the face of human conflicts, unless Gringotts itself chooses a side. Then, and only then, am I allowed to intervene on Gringotts' behalf."

The look of relief on Fleur's face was almost painful, but before Bill could address it, their sommelier came by to see what they might be interested in drinking that night, derailing the conversation. Bill couldn't help but be glad for the distraction.

ooOOooOOoo

"Let's discuss Hogwarts."

Rufus fought back a groan and the urge to slap himself on the forehead. It was a topic brought up at every meeting, how appalling it was that Hogwarts had been taken and how horrifying it was that they weren't trying to take it back, but his advisors refused to understand that they simply didn't have the manpower needed to take on Voldemort while he had embedded himself in the fortress that was Hogwarts.

That was especially true if he'd successfully found the wardstone, and there was no one to report whether he had or not. No spy could penetrate the castle, and no one that went in was coming back out.

Hogwarts was, to put it plainly, a nightmare.

"There's nothing to discuss," he said tiredly, for what felt like the thousandth time. "We can't get in to take the school back, and even if we could, it would be a bloody fight. We'd likely lose most, if not all of our men, and we cannot afford to undertake something like that. Not when we have no way of guaranteeing the fall of the Dark Lord."

Pius Thicknesse, who was not his choice to lead the DMLE but was at least a choice, glared at him. "So what do you plan to do, Rufus? Just sit around and wait for He Who Must Not Be Named to attack us on his own terms, so that he can take the Ministry as well?"

Rufus didn't dare say out loud that Voldemort probably already had the Ministry. He didn't want to think it. But none of his advisors, none of his department heads, they didn't know what he knew about the prophecy.

There was only one person who could defeat the Dark Lord, and nobody even knew if the Potter boy was still alive. And if he was, whether he was in any kind of shape to actually defeat Voldemort.

The answer, as little as Rufus wanted to think about it, was probably not. He was probably dead, or if he was alive, was likely in such a state as to make combat impossible. He couldn't imagine that Voldemort would let the boy live when he was the only one who could bring about his downfall. And without him…

Without him, they might as well just surrender, so that as many people could be saved as possible.

Rufus hated feeling defeated, but at this point, there wasn't much else for him to feel. Victory felt like it was more and more out of his reach with every passing day.

He realized that the table had gone silent, that everyone was looking to him, and decided that the time had come to propose the only solution he had available to him. Better to put the idea in their heads now, rather than to wait and spring it on them when the time finally came. "I think we're going to have to surrender."

His words had the force of a Killing Curse behind them, and the room reacted exactly as he'd suspected. There was anger, explosive and violent, and denial, and confusion, sometimes all at once from some people.

Once the room had quieted, Rufus continued with, "There's nothing we can do to get him out of Hogwarts. Not while he's holed up there with all of his Death Eaters. And while he's there, you can bet that he's doing everything he can to consolidate his forces. We already couldn't take a stand against him when he was operating from the shadows, moving more carefully. What makes any of you think that we can fight him now that he's moved into the open and is blatantly recruiting?"

Because he was recruiting. Witches and Wizards were joining his cause, even if none of them could officially take the Dark Mark yet. He heard them in the streets, talking about how maybe Voldemort had the right idea about Muggles and Muggleborns, and knew it was only a matter of time before their own people turned against them.

People were like sheep. They would follow any strong leader, and Voldemort was turning out to be the stronger leader, a fact which broke Rufus' heart.

"We can't just roll over," Thicknesse said from his seat. He looked Rufus in the eye, his face grim. "We can't just roll over and say that we surrender. That would be… it would be the way to get ensure that our people are broken. If they see us surrender, they might never stand up for themselves again. They might never try to take the world back from the Dark Lord. Even if we don't stand a chance of defeating him, we should still stand and fight. So that our people see that resistance is possible, so that they know that, in time, they too can resist."

Rufus felt something like hope blossom in his chest for the first time since the Dark Lord had taken Hogwarts. It wasn't a hope for their generation, true, but it was a hope for a future generation, who might look back and see them as heroes who inspire a rebellion.

It was a tough, grim little hope, but it was a hope, and that was more than he'd had before. He nodded, and then they got down to the business of planning what this final stand might look like.

ooOOooOOoo

Much like after James and Lily had died, after Sirius had gone to prison and Remus had disappeared, the table felt empty. This time, Moody didn't think that it would ever fill again.

The war was taking them, one by one. Molly and Arthur were still there, but they'd gone quiet and grim after the loss of their only daughter, and the betrayal of their youngest son. The twins were there, but even they'd lost the joy that had once lit their lives. Augusta had joined them, determined to get revenge on the Dark Lord who took her grandson from her.

But they'd lost more than they'd gained, that night when they'd gone desperately to Hogwarts to try and save the school. It had been a disaster from the start. They'd been in Diagon Alley, and had moved as soon as they'd received word from Albus that the school was the real target, but they hadn't been fast enough.

They hadn't really managed to save anyone, and the school had been taken in spite of the losses they'd sustained.

It had been a rout.

The war was winding down, and the time of the Order was coming to the end. Moody had once thought that he might live to see an actual peace, a time when Voldemort was truly gone, but he was starting to realize that he would never see it.

If the world ever saw peace, it would be because Voldemort controlled all of it. The thought was horrifying, but there it was.

"Our next fight will probably be our last," he admitted, his voice grim and dark. He got no surprise from the few remaining Order members. They all knew that the end was coming, that it would probably take them all with it.

"So we make them pay for every inch," one of the twins said. "When the time comes. We take out ten times as many of them as they do of us."

"We do what we can, and what we can't, we leave for generations after us," the other twin said.

"If there are any," Molly said, her voice bitter with loss. "If they don't decide that their best option is making a deal with that monster, so that they can live comfortably, so that they can see their sisters die—"

"Molly," Arthur whispered, and pulled his wife close. He hugged her, and she closed her eyes.

Moody ached for them both. The betrayal of a child… He'd never had any of his own, but he could imagine the pain that it would cause.

"We'll make them bleed for it, when they finally do make their move," Augusta said. She thumped her umbrella against the floor, the sound sharp and staccato. "If we're going out, we do it with a bang."

It was all they had left to do.

Moody had wanted to see peace in his lifetime, but he thought that dying to see it eventually might be a fairly decent second option.