Ron rolled out of the way of a curse, but it turned out to just be a test to see if there were dark detectors around. Damn. Should've figured they'd be testing to see where we've got shields and stuff. Hannah helped him get back to his feet.

"We can't let them know we're onto them," she reminded him. "That was how we took care of the last group."

"I know."

Not an hour ago, the three of them had run into Luna, who had lost track of Macmillan, probably because he ran off looking for the rest of the adults. The blonde witch was looking for him with Legilimency, but what she found were a pair of dark wizards. Substantially outclassed, even with the element of surprise, she realized that her former companion had the right idea in the beginning, but by running from where the two of them had been told to hide, he might have drawn the attention of the enemy. Leaving behind some half-formed wards on random trees, she managed to get them to investigate the area whilst she herself worked on backing out of it, and, coincidentally, into the three of them. She acted like that had been on purpose, or perhaps simply fated.

"It seems time has drawn the four of us together again," she observed upon seeing them.

When they found the dark wizards, all of that was quickly forgotten.

Though there were only two of them, the Order could not afford casualties, and as a result Luna and Hannah were on defense, to put it in Quidditch terms. They were using different shields, but neither would have protected them against dark magic, since the regular blonde witch could not replicate dark shields after just seeing them in action once, and the platinum blonde witch had actually never seen them before. She did surprise everyone with a great proficiency in physical shields, though, and the complexity of the charms she was using rivaled Andromeda's, though she had only recently resumed actual fighting. What was most impressive, though were the enchantments she could just put onto not only physical shields, but their robes while they were moving. Ron felt himself moving faster and more fluidly, he felt spells coming before they arrived and as they put down the first dark wizard, they tried to get information out of the second.

"What's the plan?" he asked.

"You think they tell me the plan?" It was a regular Brit, probably someone driven off the island in the third wave of Crouch stepping up policy. "They don't tell me the plan because bellends like you are waiting to curse it out of me- go ahead, I don't have a bloody country anymore."

"We're not asking about your plan; we're asking about our plan," Ron said. "We want to know what they think we're doing."

"Why would I tell you that?" From the way his eyes moved between them, it almost seemed like he was trying to figure out what sort of joke he was missing. Wants to know what our angle is.

"What if we let you live?" Andromeda asked.

"Don't believe you. Doesn't matter."

"Avada Kedavra." Ron could be annoyed about the fact that the man they captured was non-cooperative, but he could hardly blame him. There was truly no point in divulging any of the Death Eaters' secrets, if he knew them; it was really only an irrational fear of death that could have helped, and it was simply not there. He and Hannah had taken to arguing about it in hushed tones.

"Irrational fear of death?" she asked. "How is being afraid of dying irrational?"

"We were going to kill him one way or another," he said. "He knows that. Everyone knows that. When there's nothing you can do about something, there's actually this sense of calm most of the time. I'm pretty sure that's what hit him right before he died."

"We could not have proved we were not going to kill him, perhaps-"

"We couldn't have done anything to even suggest he was going to live, he was going to die and he knew it." It seemed like neither Andromeda or Luna would weigh in, which was fine by him, since someone had to be focusing on the task at hand. "Even if we let him live, he'd have been hit in the back by one of his-"

"Okay, that wasn't the only thing where I disagreed, so you know. Everyone's supposed to be regarding the Order as this- I don't know- too perfect for this world union of innocent puppies or something; if we'd said that we were going to let him live-"

"They don't really believe that; we've already clarified our position on hostage exchanges. Honestly, Hannah, I really don't know how they've described us in what bit of propaganda to what target audience; they've sent some completely different message to every other audience. They're probably convincing the Ministry that we're the real blood purists or something, as if they need any more reason to kill us."

He could tell she was getting annoyed, and she really had a problem with the fact that the dark wizard had dismissed life as not being worth the living. In truth, he found it hard to argue against that position, though he had never thought too highly of suicides and it always seemed better to keep fighting if the other option was just being dead. The man had said he had lost his country, which was right; they had all lost their country; there was no other way of putting it when they were crawling through some sort of jungle or rain forest in Central America looking for some other bastard who had lost his country, lest he kill them first.

"Why was he even out here if he'd lost his country?" Hannah argued after a moment. "How is killing us going to get the country back?"

"Well, 's not really killing us much as it is winning the battle. Can't do that on his own, but he figured he wouldn't be alive to see it won if he didn't kill us." She looked like she had another challenge for him. "After that I don't have a damn clue, to be honest, and I don't really care."

He thought it was hardly reasonable to be expected to know every last internal motivation of some random dark wizard that they killed; really all he knew was from what he said and the two dark curses he managed to cast before getting disarmed by something Ron had hardly seen from Andromeda, who was quite capable of nonverbal spells. The fact that he was able to produce a killing curse against some minor he had never met before suggested he was capable of virtually unconditional hatred, and would be a suitable test subject for a ton of different experiments Hermione had wanted to try in her notes, though he had a hard time separating what she consciously wanted to do with what she just thought would be interesting. It seemed like there were some that she either considered unethical or were so wholly impractical they were written in there only as notes to remind herself to look up literature with similar experimental design.

When the human detection charm responded with nothing more than a feeling in his wand, he made sure that he was not just thinking it was there and checked again before raising a hand. It was well that they had the drop on the enemy, but they did not actually know whether or not the enemy had detected them. Luna was reaching out with Legilimency, he knew, but whether or not she could pick out a location depended on how the dark wizards were securing their minds, whether it was a simple wall or whether it was like they were not there. Ron did not understand it very well himself; really all he could do was prevent a direct attack and he basically had to see it coming. Whenever he asked Hannah for instructions, even though she knew how he generally learned, it was still hard for him to grasp it.

"Kinolewacha Hupata!"

He managed to get out of the way of the first few falling leaves without knowing why he should avoid them, but at least two of them actually cut across his skin before he could respond, managing to stun one of them as Andromeda used a dark curse taking the form of a blue-black haze against three of them, or so it appeared. They were Africans, probably displaced by the Order's relative luck on most of the continent. Hannah was saying something through the shields that she was moving to protect him, but he was not paying attention as he used a killing curse. A year ago he might have hoped it would never get easy. Well, maybe two years ago-

"Usichokoze Nyuki." A thick swarm of bees appeared, and it was basically impossible to shield against them, so Luna momentarily distracted them with a jet of flame as Andromeda put down one of the others. With one of their company already stunned, he guessed there was no particular need for mercy. He did not enjoy, however, hearing the stifled cry of the last one to go down, this time to a blast of wind from Hannah that left him covered in deep gashes.

"The first spell made all the leaves deadly sharp," she said. "I'm not super familiar with the language, but as soon as you got cut with those leaves, well, I pieced it together."

"The other one that was audible was more obvious," Andromeda said, healing herself from a curse that grazed her arm and made it vibrate. That looks like it didn't feel good. "I need to heal you so you don't get infected." He did not disagree with her, but he kept the human detection charms going in different directions while she sealed up his cuts. Both of the spells that I could hear were distracting. Did they have a wizard on their team who was just trying to distract the enemy?

He had an idea that the beast detection charm was just an unrelated animal that happened to be passing through the area, but it was disconcerting that the human detection was not telling him anything. It was making him want to move to a different area if they were currently far from any of their enemies, but there was still a chance someone could take them be surprise, especially if they were moving quickly.

"You're done. What's our next move?"

"Right," he said. It was still somewhat odd to have an adult receiving direction from him, but he guessed he had more combat experience in total. Fortunately, it was not as if having the weight of the responsibility was anything new. "We're going to join hands and apparate."

"Most of the country is protected by anti-apparation jinxes," Hannah reminded him. "We mostly did that ourselves to hedge out the possibility of invasion."

"There were some popular tourist sites we left untouched," he said, remembering something Hermione told him once. "Basically, we don't really want most people to know we were here, and it'd be suspicious if the country was completely locked down. Ever heard of the Great Blue Hole?"

"Is that some sort of-"

"It's a bit like the coral things out there; it's a marine sinkhole. Muggles love the place, but you mostly never see wizards out there."

"Are there muggles there now?" Andromeda asked. "It should not really be tourist season, not if I understand-"

"Well, what are we doing there?" Hannah asked. "Don't tell me there's some kind of sea monster lurking just under the surface-"

Everyone looked at her except Luna, who was looking at the sky for some reason.

"Do things feel different to you?" she asked.

"Lovegood?"

"Is there something that seems to be out of order?"

"Out of- Merlin, there isn't a damn thing that isn't out of order these days. If you've got a question, you've really got to tell me precisely what you're on-"

"It's something greater," she specified.

"What's greater than the whole damn world?"

He was swearing again. In the past few years he had sort of gotten over the freedom of not living at home that he had enjoyed at Hogwarts; it was actually to the point where he wanted nothing more than to hear his mother get annoyed over some naughty word he used. It was not just the weight of responsibility; there was a disconnect; every time he used to do something he was informed almost immediately of whether it was a good or bad decision, whether it was his mother magically swatting at him or his teachers writing notes on his work, most of which were about how his handwriting was illegible. In the present, he had people depending on him and it seemed like the system that existed to teach him how to be a good member of the family, a good student, and a good friend was for the most part deactivated.

It was not just that people expected him to be responsible without having to be routinely corrected, and he had done his best to live into that expectation, it was that his friends were actually too forgiving, at least if they were to replicate the experience he had growing up. His mother and father had never believed him to be a terrible child, but they were a lot less charitable whenever he tried to explain himself. Perhaps some of the change in the way he was treated was merited. Perhaps he was just missing a certain time in his life, even to where an unpleasant aspect of it started to seem nostalgic. Perhaps he would feel better about his failures if he experienced some amount of punishment for them.

There it was. His friends and really even the Order treated him fairly, and only blamed him for things when he had not done all he could to try and help the situation, whatever it was. That of course, had been all he had been doing for the past few years; it was exhausting. He had never wanted or needed to put remotely as much effort into anything, even things he enjoyed. Even if he had been handed a spot on the Cannons, he would have practiced, but there had to still be time to just hang out with his brothers or his friends or something. Kind of bollocks I never had any mates who liked joking around.

"Ron?" Hannah asked quietly. They had not moved much, nor had they apparated anywhere, mostly because they thought better of it. Even if he could demonstrate some kind of advantage to going to a marine sinkhole, like using it as cover while scouting the skies, there was something in the air, something other than the nameless sense of wrongness Luna had referenced. "Do you feel that too?"

"Yeah. Don't know what it is."

"It's a shield," Andromeda said. "We're on the inside of it, so the detection charms aren't being blocked, just distorted."

"This could be like the time Hagrid and I were hunting for Demiguises," Hannah ventured. "If they put shields around us, maybe-"

"They haven't stopped us from apparating," Ron said. "They're not trying to contain us."

"What if they just want us to think that?" Lovegood asked, tilting her head.

"That doesn't work most of the time; no one does it."

"You're talking like you know that for a fact," Hannah said. "They could be trying to trick us."

"Yeah, or they could be using the shields for some real purpose like blocking our spells."

They were at an impasse. Why is everyone arguing? Are we just all being difficult? At best the detection charms were unreliable, since the enemy seemed to be aware of their presence. He grabbed a hand behind him, finding it was Lovegood's.

"Retreat," he decided. "They see us and we don't see them. We apparate out."

It was a sound decision based on the best judgement they could make of the situation, but it left a question behind. If the enemy knew their location, why had they not attacked? They joined hands and threw themselves headlong into the first place that occurred to him and all at once they were on a muggle boat of some sort, as if apparation had some way of ensuring they ended up on mostly solid ground. Well, that or someone's been messing with the jinxes.

"Where are we?" Hannah asked. "Is this some kind of normal person's boat?"

"Yeah; should be enough to just stun them."

If he had expected some kind of moral panic about stunning muggles to ultimately protect the Statute, he did not hear it from anyone. Maybe that's the kind of thing Hermione would have said, though. It seemed all his friends liked to challenge the ethics of his decisions, but they did not all have the same beliefs, so he really wished they could take a turn questioning each other. Terry was good about that. Always had a way of stirring the pot.

The muggles were belowdecks, and each of them was stunned quickly without any apparent awareness of what was going on. It seemed Luna was modifying their memories to be on the safe side, but she might have also been checking them for nargles; it was a toss-up, really. He took the chance to cast a few detection charms and had the same result as Andromeda, who just shook her head.

"There's no active magic around here," he concluded aloud. "Anyone have a damn clue why we're here on this boat? Can't have been luck."

"It doesn't matter," Hannah said, pointing up from the upper deck. "Look."

He did look, and he beheld a veritable swarm of flying enemies above. He could be almost certain they were enemies because of how doubtful it was that someone would come to help them, and he knew the Order did not have such numbers. It crossed his mind that third parties could be favoring the Death Eaters if Malfoy had expended any effort to reach out to them while trying to set up the Golden Circle, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

"We know those are enemies, right?"

"It depends on how they handle this," he said. "Levicorpus." It was a spell that did not trace back to the caster, and it was basically lethal in the air, assuming the victim reacted badly enough. The other fliers ignored the wizard who lost his broom and started to fall, causing him to have to summon it back. Andromeda had surfaced from the lower deck and agreed with the proof of concept.

"There are several different spells that we could use here. What I recommend is the momentum arrest charm, which will keep the broomsticks from moving, even if someone tries to summon them. They would have to remove the effect in order to move the target again." Some vague memory from what Hermione had said about it corroborated and he agreed without contest.

"Arresto Momentum!" The effect was instant. A wizard was thrown forward off his broom and though he got his wand out, he failed to summon it on his way down. Hannah and Luna were already copying them, hitting other targets in the air. It was hard to hit the broomstick and nothing else, but the spell only accepted one target and even if they hit the rider instead of the mount, they were putting him in a bad situation to say the least. No one above them pinpointed their location; as he looked out over the deep blue water he noticed there were a few other boats out. What the hell is going on here?

Several of the wizards had already fallen to their deaths. He knew that Quidditch Pitches were often charmed so that players landing on them would not suffer lasting injury, but there was no way of doing that to the rest of the world; it would have been a massive Secrecy issue. Speaking of Secrecy issues- Even a cursory look around told him that there would be plenty of memory charms to cast if enemies were flying on broomsticks overhead, even if they were falling. The muggles on the other boats, if they were watching at all, had to be panicking at this point.

Not for the first time, he wished his father were there.