James tore the book away from Lily, glaring down at this with hands clenched so tight the book was in danger of ripping. He was too busy picturing Umbridge's neck to notice.

"I say this is a good thing," Sirius said in such a deadly calm voice, Harry got chills. "Bring along a couple of dementors even, she needs some long overdue payback you never rightly got!"

Harry was rubbing the faint white mark on his hand with a look of pure loathing, he had a bad feeling about what Sirius said. Even if he no longer feared Dementors, he still didn't savor any time around them anymore than Umbridge.

"Come on Prongs, no need to sit around dreading it," Remus gently called to him to get his attention, he was still breathing heavily with suppressed rage. The combination of all she'd done to Harry had been sadly overlooked because of what had been going on with Sirius at the time, now it all seemed to be dumped back on him at once for yet another thing she'd done to his son. "Let's get a move on, I'm sure Harry will finally have this problem nipped in the bud."

"Set her up for something and get her sent to Azkaban, nick the locket along the way, I'm sure the three of them will handle it well," Lily agreed in almost a breezy voice. She still kept her arm protectively over Harry while any mention of this was happening.

James still paced for a few moments before taking a seat by Sirius. He was still angry at Remus, but acknowledged for now to look to other things going on.

James finally paused at just how strange this opening was. It wasn't the first time the books had taken an out of Harry's life directly, but it had been awhile since it had pulled away to commentate like this. Merlin, the only other time had been in Harry's first Quidditch game.

He looked around at the others to find his friends shrugging without much care for this, Lily eager to continue and find out just what exactly was going on, and a dawning look slowly coloring Harry as his mind filled in the skipped time.

"Those are, Death Eaters right?" Remus confirmed. "For some reason we're hearing of the Muggle's watching them watching the house?"

"That's what I'm going with," Sirius agreed. "Not sure what this bit about occasionally seeing something is though, that shouldn't be possible when you can apparate and dissapearte from the steps without being seen."

"Maybe they saw a stray cat and are excited to go petting it before it vanishes," Lily giggled.

Harry sighed, a truly odd feeling seizing him of realizing the date would forever pass without significance to him again after this. He'd already had his last train ride.

"Oh," they muttered in understanding.

"I didn't even think of using the Cloak to disapparate under," James congratulated. "I thought you were still disillusioning yourself."

"You only ever really used it at school," Lily acknowledged this laps, all the boys looked rather miffed it had never occurred to them.

James still grumbled for a moment what a good idea it was before continuing.

"That happens every time!" Lily protested, not bothering to repress a disgusted shiver.

"Yeah," Harry sighed, he couldn't claim to ever get used to it no matter how many times it happened.

Sirius went cross-eyed at the very idea. Even when he'd been living there he wouldn't have described the place so pleasantly in his most fevered dream, let alone that old elf.

"That sounds sweet," Lily offered, as clearly the boys were still rather hung up on the place being so miserable to the idea of Sirius no matter how it was described.

"Made all the difference really," Harry readily agreed, actually smiling at the memory of it all slowly starting to feel accepting, more than it ever had when the Order had been there. Kreacher had really gone above and beyond anything Harry ever would have thought possible.

He eyed his godfather with hope, but for now remained content he wasn't harboring a murderous face anymore, though he wasn't sure this confusion of such a thing being possible was better. It was too sad for Harry to see this really hadn't ever occurred to him, and even now seemed beyond him. Still, he refused to believe Sirius couldn't change his ways.

James opened his mouth with a belligerent expression in place for that elf telling Harry what to do, but then closed it slowly and forced himself to second guess, and consider Kreacher was just doing his job like any elf would. He gave a side glance at Sirius who was clearly chewing on his tongue and these same thoughts.

"Over what?" Remus asked eagerly.

"Yeah, what's taken you nearly a month to plan?" Sirius asked in confusion. "You ambush that nasty toad in a dark alley and mug her for the only thing she's ever been worth."

Harry gave him a very confused look, even being distracted from the news he'd been about to deliver. "We could hardly do that, she apparated to and from work and didn't exactly have many social calls we could kidnap her near. Not to mention we didn't know where her home was," he said with with a bit of relief, imagining the nightmare that place would be.

"But," James began protesting in confusion, "then how did you plan..." he stopped, and his eyes nearly fell onto his glasses in surprise.

"Oh Harry, you're not," Lily whispered.

"Breaking into the Ministry of all places?" Remus asked him like he was planning a trip to mars.

"Again," Sirius finished with a horrified expression.

Harry flinched as he knew what they were all suddenly associating this with, and tried to hurry forward without his own worries about this plan being mixed in with his feelings. "Just, hear us out, and this news! You are going to want to hear it," he finished with an even more fearsome expression. James did not at all turn back to the book with any kind of agreement.

"No," James rebuked the words from his own mouth. "No! No, no, I, no!"

"Excuse me, I need to help Dumbledore roll in his grave," Sirius groaned, still feeling the urge to leave all this nonsense behind and pretend he'd never heard any such thing.

Lily bit down painfully on her lip. It's not as if she'd imagined Snape sitting around drinking tea now that he'd besmirched Hogwarts, but she hadn't thought he'd go back either!

"This isn't real!" Remus still tried in vain to protest. "There must be some limit to this, madness!"

"I wanted him dead when he was just a bloody teacher there!" James whispered in horror. "What the hell else can he do?"

He didn't want to keep going for the answer, but eventually realized he was supposed to.

"But, but-" Sirius still tried in vain. "He, can't be at the school anymore! The, DADA curse-"

"Stopped him being the teacher again," Lily agreed with numb lips. "Clearly it's not going to have an effect on him still being in the school."

"Voldemort can't even make a bloody curse right!" James looked near tears he was so frustrated with this turn of events.

"Please tell me she discovered a way to make all our problems vanish in the safe confines of that kitchen?" Remus asked of no one.

"More likely at this point she just realized another problem," Sirius was fighting back the urge to listen to all this with his fingers in his ears.

"They won't have a choice," James whispered to no one. "If they leave, more Death Eaters will just take their place. Someone's got to stay and be a voice of reason for those kids."

'If they don't get killed doing it next,' Sirius couldn't help the thought springing to mind. He almost did start screaming at that. How did it always manage to get worse?

"Not all of them," Remus pleaded in a tiny little voice, still remembering one other not accounted for. Merlin help their souls if Fenrir Greyback went anywhere near that school, again.

Sirius fought back the urge to snap he'd punch those teeth out for acting in a good mood during this! He had to take a deep breath and wonder what Regulus would have thought of this, and almost smiled as he remembered his little brother learning to whistle from the elf. It didn't make him feel better about not punching, Kreacher, but it was a start to making him think twice about it.

"Oh, there's a bright side!" Lily said bitterly, Harry feeling rather disturbed his usually optimistic mother clearly didn't mean that. He looked out the window to gauge the time and saw it wasn't even dusk yet, he felt like he had ages to go and this was still getting worse.

"I didn't know he could cook," Sirius muttered with a squidged up expression at the thought.

"Did you eat your mothers cooking?" Remus asked in surprise, "or just assume it all materialized at your whim?"

"More like I thought everything there was poisoned and starved!" He snapped back rather than admitting he'd never questioned such a thing.

Remus raised his hands in surrender, knowing better than to antagonize Sirius over anything in that house.

"That's what was on my mind," James said with a straight face.

"Nah, you'd be more original I hope!" Sirius blustered, clearly still irked over the cooking issue. "You'd be stuffed in a trunk obviously!"

"No, Hermione's purse," Remus reminded with a snicker.

"I still wish you were," Lily sighed. Even the ghastly idea of what that school would be like that year, she'd still rather hear of her son attending lessons and fighting back against Death Eaters like a normal student! This horcrux hunt was only getting worse the more she heard of it, and it was already mad from the beginning.

"A unique experience I'm still jealous of," James sighed but forced a grin anyways, refusing to allow everything to be doom and gloom.

"They can do both at once, I have faith in their reformed DA already," Lily said with genuine brightness again. Those three had already proven they were more than capable of being there when Harry couldn't last year, the trend would hold in her sons steed.

"Well I guess that's what happens when-" Lily suddenly spluttered off as if her tongue had been pulled out.

The others looked to her in concern before she just shook her head and sighed, "it's nothing, just, on top of everything I realized Harry never got his Apparition license. He's doing it illegally."

"Ah," James muttered, agreeing this wasn't the highest of concern, but it didn't help any.

"Why didn't you just follow her?" Remus asked.

"Soup," Harry reminded, smacking his lips in appreciation. Only Lily laughed, the boys were still dumbfounded Harry dared eat the elf's cooking.

"Oh," Sirius muttered in understanding. "Good call!" He instantly congratulated.

"That old picture of Phineas Negilus," Lily agreed, "he'd be able to snoop about the house and tell Snape you were there."

"Surprised he hasn't already," James said waspishly. "Though I doubt he'll ever be in that office long enough to get cozy, that school will have him running mad the first day."

"I wish I could forget about it," Sirius huffed. That stupid thing would be going spare with happiness about another Slytherin headmaster! Then he recalled old Nigellus' reaction to hearing of his death, and he hesitated saying more, as apparently the old painting wasn't entirely all he said.

"A perfect reason to return to school as any," James scowled. "Nick that, and be sure to leave a gift for him in that office."

"First Umbridge, now him, how are all these arse holes managing to keep their hands on whatever you need," Lily demanded.

"Thankfully they won't have time to before we disembowel them," Remus offered. It was small condolence, they had no idea how much they'd have to hear of all this before Harry caught up with where his memories were.

"Which only proves that someone went in and took his portrait," James tried to agree happily.

"That's, fair," Sirius sighed with disappointment, thinking he'd have liked Harry to have back up on this, whatever mad plan this was. They still hadn't heard details, and Harry was clearly wanting them to before they said more.

"Can't blame the man," James groaned, he felt like he hadn't gone five minutes without feeling that in a fortnight now.

"Didn't Arthur say he usually Apparated to work?" Lily recalled his eventful visit on the underground. "It's just more common really," she finished with a grimace. She hadn't been trying to defend Umbridge of all people!

"He was probably seeing Ginny off the train and came in from there," Harry offered this change.

"Does what matter- oh," James suddenly blinked in understanding. "Would you ruddy tell us the whole plan already? Who's going in disguised as Magical Maintenance?"

Harry sighed, but relented the book didn't seem like it was going to give details so explained it to them as thoroughly as he could.

Nobody looked particularly happy when he was done.

"I would have thought you'd learned from your stint in sneaking into the Slytherin common room," Sirius sighed. "How do you manage to have the same flaws five years later?"

Harry looked insulted. "We put a lot of thought into this, planned it all out for a month!"

"We've planned out pranks in five minutes and three months in advance," James shrugged. "Never expect them to go according to plan, and yours is already riddled with them from the start."

Harry was frustrated they couldn't give him a little more credit and watched mutinously as his dad read out the way it went down, hoping his son hadn't somehow gotten here from Azkaban.

"I don't know why she's so surprised," Remus tried to snicker at Hermione in all this, always an easy fall back. "She's watched him do homework for six years, she knows how he's not key on details."

"Just because he's in my house doesn't mean he's suddenly me," Sirius sniffed. Harry snickered in surprise all over again at what everyone else found to be a tiresome joke.

"You announce this after you've found a gaping hole in this already riddled plan?" James asked him. "What if next week Ron remembers some other detail?!"

Harry had no response for that, surprised they didn't better understand his need to take action.

"That's a good point," Remus sighed, "all this could still be for nothing!"

"That didn't make me feel better," Lily grumbled.

"I still say gungho for this, they'll still manage to get some payback to Umbridge no matter what the end results," Sirius shrugged.

"You're the reason my son's like this," James told him flatly.

"Don't you blame this all on me!" Sirius pouted. "You'd be saying the same thing if Harry wasn't wanted by them!"

"But he is!" James protested. "Can't they just, go checking on some other locations for other Horcruxes and circle back to this one?"

"We haven't a clue where any of the others are," Harry reminded. "May as well focus on this one, feels like we've already started hunting it and should finish what Dumbledore couldn't," Harry said with determination, not wanting to admit the date and that headline had set a nasty reminder in him, a sense of justice he needed to right.

James sighed again, but stopped arguing the point.

"I can't see that making much of a difference to her," Lily tisked.

Lily blinked in surprise before they all gave a small giggle to this, ignoring Sirius' stupid 'redhead like redhead' joke.

"Rude," Remus sniffed on Ron's behalf.

"Ah, well, there's my answer anyways," Lily grumbled.

"Informative," James agreed with that part.

"Five points to Gryffindor!" Sirius cheered, ignoring their looks. "What? It wouldn't be right for someone not to say it."

"Give us some credit we tried to plan for this?" Harry wheedled.

James relented at that, smiling at his son and agreeing, "you did think ahead, I just wish you'd thought more."

"My ears doth deceive me!" Sirius rolled his eyes for James letting his 'daddy mode,' keep him hostage. "Live a little Prongs, Harry lives through it!"

James shuffled uneasily in place and didn't want to admit all the horrible scenarios flashing through his mind of what his son had lived through before getting sent here. Torture at the hands of Umbridge, again, and time in Azkaban were at the top of the list.

Lily burst out laughing in surprise. "As if you two would make it in the front door without her."

"Hey!" Harry protested.

"Sorry Harry, and to Ron, you two can't deny she'd never go for that," James shrugged.

"I don't know," Sirius mock rubbed his jaw. "Does she still freeze under pressure? None of you are very good liars on the spot."

Harry grumbled about how he'd like to see all of them try this.

"Yes, yes, all three of you are gallant heroic idiots who should be safe at home," Remus rolled his eyes. "Since none of you are going to stay home, can't we skip this bit?"

"Had to try," Harry shrugged.

Harry winced again for some reason he couldn't explain to himself, the others all worrying at this increasing habit of his when he never had before. What had he left behind?

"She'll believe that as soon as you magically summon all the Horcruxes to you," Lily snorted, fighting back her own shot of worry. She wished this would stop happening to him, why was it Voldemort could so easily slip right back into her sons mind and make everything so much worse!

Sirius looked as if he suddenly needed glasses, he was squinting so painfully at the book like he was forcing himself to see something. Memories of Kreacher acting like this towards Regulus were hammering around in his head as he tried to force himself to acknowledge why the house-elf was suddenly acting like this instead of being disgusted he was.

James couldn't help but stop there with a crude snort at the idea. Of all the things to get him, Voldemort knocking had really thrown him off.

There was no one who could have been on the other side of that door that wouldn't have hurt, James knew his stomach would have plummeted with the pain and acceptance of her death the moment it was anyone but this Gregorovitch.

James would have thought it would be easy to look away from that horror, but it did him no better to see his son struggling to breathe, remembering again all the souls who had been cast aside just because they'd been in Voldemort's way. His shaking hand was pressed painfully to his forehead, only his mother murmuring words of comfort by his side was keeping away the cry of pain having to relive all this caused him. So he made himself keep going no matter what came next, anything to help him get through this like he couldn't have the first time.

"A sight to behold I'm sure," Sirius said without any hint of a joke.

"Running a bath, obviously, what else do you do in there," James grumbled.

"That's fair," Remus nodded.

Harry leaned into his mum while watching his dad. No matter how many times he had to hear that, it never felt any better.

"Then he should have ruddy taught him rather than relying on some Death Eater scum!" Sirius howled, he was so sick of Hermione throwing that around without offering a solution.

"You can't claim that as a benefit when you have no use for the information," Remus disagreed. "What purpose do you get out of knowing he just murdered that family and that he's after Gregorovitch?"

"It's better than worrying he's going to pop up right next to us any second," Harry furiously insisted, now quite glad Professor Lupin didn't stick around if he wasn't going to be any more helpful than his friends about this.

"Wrong thing to say!" James snarled in protest. Was that really what she'd been thinking all this time? Or was her mouth just running away with her again as she continued to try and argue against Harry. He didn't think his son should be doing this either anymore, but he wasn't going to lob that kind of idiocies at him!

Lily shook her head and gave her son a reproachful look, but held her tongue. Hermione needed to hear that she should think before she spoke, but she still wished her son wouldn't start yelling at her for this slip of tongue either.

Harry crossed his arms and waited defiantly for someone to tell him otherwise, but none of them did. They all clearly disagreed, each of them held an expression of fear and weariness for all the horrible ways this could go, but to his relief he didn't have to defend himself again. They were respecting how he was handling this.

"I certainly haven't come up with any other reasons," Sirius sighed with agreement, while Harry found himself distracted and muttering there was still more.

"Has Hermione ever tried to take credit for work she didn't do?" Lily evasively countered. They all would have readily believed it was Harry's ability to have done this if they hadn't heard it for themselves, now they just had no answer at all.

"Merlin's pants, is this whole chapter going to be you and Hermione arguing about this?" Sirius groaned. "I'd rather hear of your suicidal mission breaking into the Ministry!"

"Wish granted," Remus said with a small laugh. Sirius didn't look particularly pleased anyways.

"At least we all agree on that," James sighed, though he had not one second to think it would do her any good. He'd have thought she'd learned by now how stubborn he was. In fact, had she ever convinced Harry of anything he didn't want to hear until well after the fact?

Sirius muttered something about poison in that three course meal, but for once not as if he really meant it, he just had no idea what else to say about this consistent anomaly.

"It's all going to go to hell after the first step, so I really don't know why you bothered," Remus snorted.

Harry scowled again for their lack of confidence in this plan, trying to mutter he'd show them, but there wasn't anything in him that really promised it would go well.

Sirius blinked in surprise at that for a moment before smiling brightly. At least his haven could do his pup some good while he continued to stay there.

"I'm starting to really wonder if that's how Ron thinks you're supposed to greet people in the morning," Lily snorted.

"I imagine the twins told him that regularly, so maybe," James shrugged.

"It would only be the second day of term!" Remus mock protested.

"And the teacher's already won't shut up about N.E.W.T.'s," Sirius sighed with remembrance, finishing by telling Harry, "honestly, I'm a bit jealous you're missing out. You got nothing on that OWL year in comparison, even adding in Umbridge!"

His exaggeration was appreciated, as Harry needed the laugh.

Sirius worked his jaw furiously for a moment before finally forcing out, "that's nice!" He dithered for a moment like he wanted to say something else but gave up and waved James on.

"Do I have to stop doing that to?" The sarcasm burst out of him before he could stop himself, while Lily and Harry rolled their eyes at him. He had managed to say it almost like a joke that time at least.

"All that planning was clearly good use," James snorted.

"A great start at least," Sirius applauded.

"It's the other bits I can't figure out how you looked right past," James snorted.

Harry scowled at them again.

"There's one of my problems already," Lily muttered in concern. "None of you bothered to learn any of this before impersonating them!"

"We could hardly interrogate them any time before this!" Harry insisted.

"I still don't see why you wouldn't try to take on Arthur, Kingsley and Tonks, at least you know them!" Sirius offered.

"And get them implicated in stealing from Umbridge?" Harry protested.

"If your plan went accordingly, they wouldn't have anyways," Remus shrugged. "If it all goes belly up, then you'll be discovered and no more harm to them than these other people you're implicating."

Harry groaned at them all to sod off.

"I've never heard of that color," Sirius said blankly.

"It's a light purple," James offered.

"Why would you pick someone who looks like Malfoy?" James snickered.

"So, her acting skills haven't improved," Lily sighed.

"You try making that look natural," Harry protested. "We didn't even know how friendly they really were. And don't say we should have found another way," he protested as all three boys opened their mouths.

They each closed them with their own protests of some better option, Sirius unable to stop himself muttering about force-feeding it to him.

"I'm actually wondering if they might recognize this?" Remus muttered so Harry wouldn't snap again. "How many people have those Skivving Snackboxes been used on by now? Someone who didn't know it was a prank would show up there and they'd find a trend."

"Don't let the twins hear you saying that, their product relies on the unwitting," Sirius said.

"Credit to him for dedication," James muttered. Was he getting a promotion that day or something?

Lily kept to herself the notion it was far more dangerous this way, if even one person double checked where that man was supposed to be and happened to notice he was two places at once, the jig was up before it started. There really was no blanket solution to all of this though, she acquitted.

They were starting to get a bad feeling about this. Just what had Harry and his friends interrupted him doing? Was he possibly not even going to work that day but doing something else in London?

"Would you look at that, labeling your clothes does come in handy!" James clapped his hand to his forehead. "I owe mum an apology!"

"How much Polyjuice Potion did Hermione bring?" Lily muttered in concern. "You're not using up the time as well as you could, should have just done all of this under the cloak somehow."

Harry again muttered how clever they all were thinking of all this from their nice comfy living room. He'd love to go through their life and point out all the ridiculous things they'd come up with.

"Oh, so, nothing like yourself then?" Sirius smirked while James pouted and Harry shot him an even nastier look.

They all got a small laugh out of that at least.

"Oh the irony!" Sirius pressed his hands together in mock thankfulness.

Lily opened, then closed her mouth with a completely put out expression. "I am not, ever, climbing into a toilet, for any bloody reason! Who, what, is someone making fun of Moaning Myrtle? I don't-"

"Lily Flower," James calmly interrupted, "you can go to work how ever you like next week."

She deflated with a calm, "right," but still looked very put off by this. None of them could blame her. If this was the employee entrance, what had they done to the visitor center?

"Again, nothing unusual for you Harry," Sirius smirked.

Harry just sighed rather than respond, the rumbling of unease really wasn't leaving him the longer he thought of this.

"At least Dudley wasn't involved this time," James huffed.

Lily's face grew even more uneasy at further changes being made on the inside, not that she was really surprised. She'd never been particularly fond of the old foolish statue, but this wasn't a very good replacement.

"Now I know I can do that just fine without a giant body," James sniffed before Sirius could repeat his joke.

"Yes Prongs, whatever you say," Sirius mock patted him on the head as his friend swiped at his fingers.

Remus was snickering like they would have expected, but he still pressed his mouth together rather than add on like they would have thought.

"No, he never learned how to flush a toilet, common problem with lads apparently," Remus muttered while his friends snickered.

The boys laughed even harder and Lily gave a light giggle even if she'd missed the first joke. Harry's face still remained grim and uncertain, his mind caught on this place in a very bad way. Not quite as heavy as when he'd last been in here, but certainly nothing good.

"The thrones?" Lily asked in surprise. "It could be worse, I'd have thought it would be much more crude actually," she sighed. While blatant, it wasn't the worst design. Seemed someone was still showing restraint.

James was white as a ghost by the time he'd realized what he was describing, then he had to fight the urge to be sick. Ever the artist, he could vividly picture every disgusting detail of this thing and the amount of time that would go into carving every crude line. He was now fighting back the urge to blast it all to smithereens.

Sirius' face was akin to Grimmwauld place being described for the first time again. This was disgusting to the extreme, but not unlike something he'd find in his house. Now it was on display for the rest of the world, and he'd love nothing more than to chuck it in a rubbish pile next.

There was not one passive face for this description, it was like the embodiment of everything they hated in Voldemort's reign.

"She has far more restraint than me," Lily whispered, her tone making it clear she was fighting back the urge to set the whole building on fire for housing such a thing.

"How many were up there again?" Sirius muttered as he tried to tick them off on his fingers, some of the details had faded a bit when Snape had done the deed. "Fenrir, those two Carrows, the one that got killed shooting all those curses around-"

"He was never up there," Harry corrected. "This was that one with the twisted face who got us in the café."

"Oh, right," he agreed, realizing his mistake.

"It really speaks volumes no one's bothering with masks anymore," Remus said in disgust. "Everyone's probably gone around getting that Dark Mark tattoo now just to fit in!" He sounded half hysterical.

"All the easier to snuff out the traitors when they fall this time," James said grimly.

"For the first time, I suddenly understand why Molly wanted the twins to work there," Sirius said devilishly. "Except my only wish is it's acid rain."

Lily kept to herself it could genuinely be some mishap by the Magical Maintenance, but also knew of a MacMillan in that office now who would be more than happy to do this to a Death Eater.

All five of them muttered something exceptionally crude as realization struck them.

Lily turned and smacked Harry. "This is why you don't kidnap random people!"

"We didn't kidnap this one!" Harry protested as he shrunk away from her, the guilt flooding him far more than anything being done to Yaxley's office.

"I must applaud more of this irony though," Sirius sighed while eyeing the book with true worry. "Ron would take the persona of someone's wife getting interrogated."

"This poor family," James whispered, now clinging to the idea they'd smuggle this woman out of there with them before this was all done and any other person being forced through this abomination of the law.

"He's busy vomiting his guts out," Remus groaned while Harry shrunk back in even further shame. He really hadn't meant to cause this! Yet he couldn't imagine how else things would have been made better just picking another person from Magical Maintenance. There was no easy solution.

"I'll marry your face to that statues arse," Sirius promised.

"As if anyone would attend your funeral, let alone marry you," Lily sneered.

"Moody's rolling in his grave," Remus shivered in disgust.

No one had pretended for a second this farce of weeding out Muggleborns and half-bloods was in any way fair, but now blackmail and threats were just prominently displayed for all to hear! How were riots not breaking out in this forsaken place?!

"Oh shit!" Lily nearly startled out of her seat. "Harry James, tell me you did not accidentally impersonate a Death Eater!"

Harry had nothing to say to that, his face scrunched up with disgust. It could be of some use, sure, but at this cost? Didn't feel worth it right now.

"An easy mistake to make," Sirius still tried to giggle at this, but it was lost anyways. James didn't even seem to hear him, he seemed unable to separate in his mind what his wife would be going through same as these people. He couldn't stand the idea, no matter what jokes Sirius tried to distract him with.

"Hermione should go instead!" Lily said at once. "Not to diss Ron, but-"

"She'd have a better chance at this, yeah," Harry agreed. "I should have split off and let those two catch up," he muttered, then grimaced as he already admitted their plan had been shot just like everyone had predicated.

"This is the worst test ever in his life and it's being sprung on him like this," Sirius groaned.

"I'd pay to have Hermione whisper the answers in my ear," Remus agreed.

It spoke volumes of the situation they were in Remus gave a mild flinch as compared to the last time this place had been named. For once though it wasn't even at the reminder of his time in there, it was for the next generations. Mind flicking back to Tonks and the baby she was carrying, how she'd likely be there in a very short time signing over a piece of paper to forever mark that child. He still couldn't understand how his friends thought this could ever be made better by his involvement.

"I don't even want to know!" Lily protested. Her mind didn't listen to her, forming the answer of who exactly Harry was impersonating.

"She just had to realize this after the fact!" Lily groaned. "When's that girl ever second guessed herself?"

Harry just sighed in agreement as his stomach continued rolling into itself with more stress.

James cursed and slammed the book shut so hard he nearly lost a finger in it.

"Shouldn't this be considered a good thing?" Sirius tried to halfheartedly ask. "Now you're in the elevator with her, stun the other three right quick and be done with this mess instead."

Harry flattened his hair with nerves, his eyes deep in his past. No answer coming to mind to fix this without it all getting worse.

HPHPHPHPHPHPHP

I take extreme prejudice the book ended dramatically on Umbridge, twice! She deserves no such thing!

Anyways, does anyone have any idea what the plan was actually supposed to be?

1. Sneak into the Ministry as three completely random people without doing any backup checks on them except they all apparate at the same place at approximately the same time.

2. Walk right down to Umbridge's office, set up a distraction, then spend whatever precious time we have left to look for the Horcrux, which Harry admits in the next chapter is very likely not even there!

3. ?

3a. If anything goes out of plan above, ?

This is the exact same problem as what they went through back in CoS! Either JK's still treating them as kids with poor planning, or she's really bad at planning heists.