Dean had admitted at some point he was relatively sure he had not grown at all since first year. No one would have noticed second or third year, and somehow he stayed out of the way often enough the last year to where no one bothered with him, and from time to time he drank a potion to make himself appear larger. He was also relatively sure that Snape had administered Unicorn's Blood, which the theory said forcibly bound his soul to his body, turning him effectively into a more intelligent Inferius. He would remain the same for the rest of his life, if it could be called that.

"Have you and Parvati... sorry," he finished weakly. "I prob'ly shouldn't-"

"It's fine. No. I've been trying to get rid of her, actually. I can't quite put into words how much better off she is without me."

"I would've thought she'd already left." No need to kick him while he's down. "Sorry-"

"It's fine. You can't offend a walking corpse. If you want to know what the past year and a half have been like, it's all 'but I love you' and 'I have no particular need for you to grow up, or be a human'. I've tried to send her off to find her sister in India, but she saw through that one; she has an even better idea than I do of how that would be a needle in a haystack, and it didn't take long for her to figure that was why I sent her."

"Well, just break up with her."

"She said no! I said I hated her and we were done, but she already knew why I was ending things and she refused."

"She can do that?"

"She thinks she can. That's usually enough." Ron nodded his head back and forth, considering it a moment. He had paid more attention to Dean and Parvati in the past few days since returning to the Black property than he likely had in their four years at Hogwarts. It was a pathetic sight, and to say he did not envy the young man across from him was an understatement. Can't really feel for the witch.

He was sure, on the rare occasion he thought about it, that Hannah probably felt bad about not being human any longer, but she was human most of the time, which was good enough for him. I'm pretty sure I'm not just lying to myself to make her feel better. Does she feel like she's good enough? He had not the foggiest clue about how to ask her that without making the problem, if it was a problem, worse than it was. Asking Hermione seemed like the wrong move. Ever since they had decided they needed to wait for some sort of response from Bulstrode, it seemed like there was a witch-only discussion every other minute. Reckon it's no worse than Dean and I talking, but if I told her I thought Hannah might have some sort of problem with the way she saw herself, she'd repeat it back word for word.

On his last summer at home, his mother apparently recognized an expression he had not realized he was wearing as he sat on the bottom step. She told him that if he had witch problems, asking another might seem smart, but only if it was something he wanted the rest of the school to know. He responded with an annoyed look, and she told him that was just the way it worked and it was better to get used to the idea.

The Ravenclaw had been more interested in exactly how his condition worked, though she kept tripping over polite ways to phrase questions, and found herself only rewarded with snide remarks. Eventually Ron threatened to hex her if she did not ask the question normally and Dean if he did not give her a straight answer. Parvati had a hand on her wand, but it seemed everyone allowed it. Probably couldn't take him in a duel anyway.

"How is the Unicorn blood keeping you alive?" she asked. "If you prefer to be considered alive, of course-"

"Well, think about how Quirrell was using it a few years ago. He was trying to keep Voldemort's soul attached to him, but he already had a soul. You can't normally keep two whole souls in one body-"

"Wait, two whole souls?" Hannah asked. This conversation taking right after they came back from the Bulstrode property, Parvati and her boyfriend were still looking at her weirdly. "Is there any way you could have a part of a soul-"

"Yes, in the course of our research into this phenomenon, we discovered a very rare if not entirely fictional-"

"There's some merit to the idea," the Gryffindor witch argued. "I happen to think this is what Dumbledore meant by-"

"More to the point, Quirrell was trying to do the impossible. Containing two souls in their entirety will almost certainly result in one defeating the other, and if nothing else, he needed a binding agent. The blood of a perfectly innocent creature like the unicorn is a blessing in and of itself, but the curse for taking it is inescapable. How do you think it could save you from the brink of death if your skull had been nearly pulverized by a flung piece of masonry?"

Hermione's eyes widened.

"Oh, no..."

"I'm afraid it was exactly that. Properly, medically, I would have died there, but as long as my soul was bound to my corpse, by some definitions, I could be said to still live." He glared at Parvati before continuing as if expecting her to interrupt. "I suspect the Headmaster did not want me to be treated badly by the other students, but he also might have been interested to see what would happen. I am unable to fault him for preserving my life as I can make no argument as to why I would have preferred being dead, nor was it any direct decision of his, though the academic nature of my case could not be ignored as a motivation." To Ron, it sounded like he had rehearsed that, or at least it was something he had gone over with his girlfriend to the point where they could talk about it neutrally.

"Well... there's no fixing it, is there?" Hannah asked with a hope he had not expected of her. "I would think you would have looked through everything..."

"We did. We even looked into horcruxes, and even though I still have a soul to split, I really only could have made one when I was properly alive. Do you know how soul rending works?" She shook her head. Not like anyone else does.

"The short version is that your body's natural connection to your soul is nearly unshakable. You would have to fracture your soul countless times before it started to shake, and then it could quite literally fall apart, but only as you died." Dean sighed. "There is very little research supporting this, and this is all theoretical, but if I were to break off a piece of my soul, which hangs onto my body as if by a thread, I would almost certainly die. Because of the damage that's already been done, I've had to limit my use of dark magic."

Hermione seemed to understand that point better than anyone else. Ron remembered that she and Terry had been working on a generalized theory of magic. He was not quite sure what they were on about, but that was how it was going to have to be. His skill set had nothing to do with that kind of Ravenclaw bollocks. If anything, he was going to learn a few more tricks once he could apparate with multiple people at once, and if he did not die before then, he might move on to the mind arts. Hannah could shield herself, he knew, but no one else apart from Luna had any idea about it.

He had set Harper and Macmillan to reconnaissance, and they accepted the task with as much apprehension as eagerness to get out of there. They could be kept abreast of each other's developments by the mental link, which helped tremendously, though he had asked Lovegood if she could refrain from picking around too much. Thus far neither of them had shown any sign of returning to their previous allegiances. Most of the adults were out most of the day, though they at least told him what their plans were. Quietly, he reckoned he had either proved he was thinking far enough ahead to take care of himself, or that he was simply rebellious enough to take matters into his own hands if not sufficiently rewarded with information. Part of that was due to his upbringing, he supposed.

None of his brothers or his late sister had ever cause to view the Ministry as an illegitimate institution, if anything, it was the opposite, but their father was forthcoming with stories of his workplace. They were aware of most of the problems from a young age, and all but Percy had grown at least a little cynical about the thought of solving them. I'd always wondered how he'd gotten sorted into Gryffindor.

It was something he had realized was a problem with him. He was not very good at figuring that sort of thing out himself; mostly it came from the problems he bounced off other people. Mafalda had lived in Belfast most of her life and was no stranger to issues of sovereignty, at least as much as children discussed those kinds of things, but she viewed every government as the fault of whoever was governed. He found that out while complaining about the Prophet being at the behest of the Ministry, which was corrupt, though that almost went without saying. When she objected he remembered saying that there was no voting the people of the land could do to counteract the Department, though her expression suggested she did not have voting in mind.

"Ron, I need you for a moment," Hermione said, interrupting his thinking. "It's about the fourth-years." She shut the door behind her.

"Yeah? Luna can prob'ly still-"

"It's fine. I would be able to detect her if she were listening." She continued as though she did not notice his expression. "I think one of them might be playing both sides."

"Yeah, we've been over that. I've asked her not to snoop around in their heads too much, but they were both against us a while back, and there's been the odd sign here and there. We ended up having to search them, but I made her search for only the most specific things. I'm not sure she gets why people don't like it when she pokes around, but she was willing to go along with it." He thought for a moment. "Did you see something?"

"Ron, it's Luna," she whispered. "She's been asking the strangest questions of Hannah lately... not the kind of strange you expect. It's things about being a werewolf... she shouldn't know that, because Hannah's good enough at Occlumency to keep her out, and no one else would have said anything." She looked around a moment. "We told her not to bring it up, but..."

"D'you reckon she's working with one of the others?" he asked, keeping his voice low. "Might be she didn't really ask Harper about his loyalties, or she just didn't tell me."

"Well, without her having checked their minds and reliably reported the results, we can't entirely rule it out." She looked around. "Did you trust her because she's a witch?"

"No-" he started back, annoyed. Hermione leaned back slightly.

"I mean, it happens, I know, I wouldn't have blamed you if you had, because even when I was in primary school my teachers used to look straight to the boys if there were ever a disciplinary-" She sighed. "I just want to know what your reasoning was for trusting her. I shouldn't have started by suggesting something... silly." He shrugged.

" 's fine. Her family actually lives pretty close to where I- well, where I used to live. We knew each other growing up, but we didn't see each other much. Bein' honest, I prob'ly just believed everything my brothers and everyone else said about her. Pretty recently, though, we went to her house with her dad, and if she wanted to spring a trap on us, that would've been the time."

"Did you get along with girls when you were a kid?" he asked. The question seemed to surprise her. "I mean, I might not have any right to be asking-"

"Well, not really. We were never interested in the same things, as you might imagine, and whenever I talked to someone, it would be a boy. Generally, and this is not meant to be insulting or limiting to-" She must have noticed his expression. Noticed it before I did. "It was not as if the boys were all into academics, because especially at that age it seemed most of them were into football, but there would always be one or two who were at the top of the class. The girls were almost all in the middle, and then there would be a few boys below them. I'm not sure why this is, but it's consistent with my experience so far."

"Maybe 'cause you were always at the top of the class, the other girls didn't ever get to know you," he said, thinking of Luna. From what few personal questions he had ever asked Terry, it was the same with him. Apparently he spent 'far too long' in his own words thinking he was too smart for everyone else, which was why he never learned basic social skills and barely made any friends when he did come to Hogwarts. She grew up in a magical community, though. It was just a few of us, but... well, maybe being weird counts for double when everyone else is the same.

Hermione declined to entertain his supposition.

"I'll trust your judgement on her," she decided. She said something under her breath.

"What?"

"It's nothing."

"Well, I heard something." No sense in prying up her secrets. Can't ask her not to snoop around in my head if I badger her about every little thing. "Reckon it's not important, though."

The witch left the room. Ron was really starting to hate the revolving series of discussions that always seemed to exclude more people than they included, but it could not be helped if they did not all trust each other. Trust was something they would have to build over time.

Harper and Macmillan came back after dark, around the time Hermione was explaining the plan to McGonagall, which had been an interesting experience to say the least. It was odd at first how she did not react as they told her what all they had done, but he guessed they should not have expected she would have them follow school rules when going after Bulstrode's wife, though a brief look of concern ran across her face. Prob'ly because we're pretty sure she's been living under the Imperius for years.

Leading the two of them off to where he had last seen Lovegood, they found themselves before a draped painting. Moving the curtain proved ill-advised.

"BLOOD TRAITORS! CURSED FILTH WANDERING ABOUT IN OUR ANCESTRAL HOME, THEIR PUTRID MAGIC-"

Luna waved it closed.

"Sirius said that she's his mother."

"Less than pleasant, I should say," the Hufflepuff wizard muttered. Something about the phrase 'blood traitor' seemed to bother him. "I saw a handful of German wizards."

"Where?" Harper asked, impatient. I thought I'd be asking the questions.

"They were in the muggle part of the city, where the scarcely have I been before. I believe it was Piccadilly."

"They're here about the decision, then," Ron reasoned, having heard more about it than he had ever needed. "Crouch prob'ly didn't even stop to think about it going both ways." Hope they dig something up and make trouble for him. A leader, however, was not permitted to hope.

"Most likely, they would be here to verify the claim that there are no longer Death Eaters in Britain," the Slytherin said. "It will take more than one team to search the whole island in an appreciable amount of time- but now is our chance to be away."

"Should we be surprised?" Macmillan asked. "Truly, I have no idea, not an inkling resides within my mind. Fleeing before being mistaken for a dark wizard."

"Any among our numbers could be so mistaken," Harper continued, eyes glowering. "Of course, the muggles have a saying; a leper changes not his spots merely by crossing the road-"

"We could say the same about you," Ron said. "He's got no right to suspect you, you've got no right to suspect him. I reckon you're right about leaving, but we'll have to get the whole damn Order out and set up somewhere else." Luna smiled briefly and he decided to interpret it to mean that she approved of his intervention in their argument. Either that, or it's because she's on board with leaving. He truly had not wanted to flee, but it seemed there was really nothing to be gained except getting as many people as they could to make the trip with them. "The place to start is the Irish school. Well, before that, we can pick up the Quibbler readers."

"Is the warding nearly complete?" the Hufflepuff asked. "I had wondered if there remained a glimmer of hope for resistance."

"Much to your disappointment, to be sure, there is none," Harper insisted. "Perhaps they have their reasons, but we can do nothing for those content to rest in their bindings." Even as someone else said it, Ron still felt like they were unfairly characterizing the people of the island, but there was no other way around it, and more than anything else, it was the sales and readership of the Prophet. The price was still about what people expected for premium news at the beginning of the year, but then it went up- it was a response to the amount that people were buying it. The demand market is paying more than ever for absolute lies.

"Where are we going, then?" Luna asked. We can't expect the whole damn Order to just go with us wherever we want to go.

"We'll get McGonagall in on the discussion. She's got to have some idea about where we can go. I know it'd be best to find some place people are ready to fight." He thought of how the Death Eaters had supposedly been spreading throughout Europe, planting seeds, though their plans were ill-fated. Even if they could drum up support among national governments and rouse the rabble, they would just be arrested as terrorists in a matter of days.

In the other room it looked like their old Transfiguration teacher was invested in the discussion she was having with Hermione. Hannah was paying attention and taking notes for some reason. Ron almost felt bad for interrupting.

"We need to move forward with our plans for evacuation," Harper announced, doing it for him. Can't let him keep that up. "We thought it best to include everyone present in the discussion." Somehow he managed to make it sound snide.

"I should think, Mr. Harper, it is about time to have that discussion. From everything Miss Granger has said, China would be the ideal choice. We could expect to be almost entirely shielded from both our old enemies and various magical governments. All the better, the Xian, I understand, function as a defensive force that could serve as a bulwark against even the most powerful dark wizards."

It seemed it was decided, just like that.

"So..." he trailed off.

"Yet I must disagree." She turned to Hermione. "Perhaps you have more experience with the region than I. Perhaps you are right on most counts, and China could serve as a base of operations where national interests would not molest us." There was a pause. "I have more experience than you with the Dark Lord Voldemort, and no one who intends to deal with him on this side of the planet or any other will take the slightest chances with him. The intelligence our combined minds represent would dwarf what you showed them, and if they made the mistake of causing problems for him without that information once, they will not make it a second time."