Hannah was good enough at focusing on the task at hand in that she had probably killed more people in the last few minutes than she had in the rest of her life, depending on how she counted what she did to the Ministry school, but her mind could not help but wander. She noticed that Ron was fighting her on what seemed like everything, and she wondered if she had to keep opposing him, or if it would be better if she just went along with it sometimes. It had not been that long ago that Terry explained the logic of having a leader and how they could not simply question orders in real time, but Ron was never actually appointed leader, and she also had a different relationship with him.

As she knocked people out of the sky, it occurred to her that she never really wanted to be in charge of him or anything, but she felt like she at least had to be equals with him. It was not as if she thought he was vastly more mature and capable; if anything it felt like a relationship of mutual dependence and it seemed off for him to just be giving her orders. I'll put up with it while we're in combat, but unless we actually decide that he'll be some kind of leader for what's left of the group, then he can't simply tell me what to do in any given context.

Satisfied with her decision, she could return to the crisis that was currently developing.

The fliers, whoever they actually were, had noticed they were being taken out, and in greater numbers than they could afford to lose. They could try returning the brooms to the victims as they were losing them, but that would only keep them all in the same place while their own broomsticks were frozen. The whole force would be stalled and unable to reach the objective. As a result, they had no real option except to kill their attackers, and their first target was going to be the boats in the water, as she realized about when one of them exploded.

"Ron, there are too many of them!" she screamed.

"I know that! We're moving again!"

It was easy enough to trust in his presence of mind and she could only think that it was because she ran through the situation in her own head. If I trust him blindly it's going to start looking like I don't have a reason to trust him, and if he ever makes a mistake-

As they joined hands and apparated again, this time she had no idea where they were going, only that wherever it was, there was probably going to be more fighting to do, and she would certainly have no time to think about who she was, who Ron was, or what their relationship was. I know I feel for him, isn't that enough? Can't we just understand each other all the time as long as we... love each other?

It was supposed to be kind of like the strategic decisions, how if she thought about it for a moment, everything would make sense and she would understand. The reason I don't do that most of the time is because I just can't spare the brain cells. Sometimes it's not just that there's no time to argue about it; there's no time to think about it. We don't need two leaders.

"Andromeda, do you agree with Ron being a de facto leader?" she asked, coming up with a way to make it sound like a natural sort of question as soon as they reached their destination, apparently the roof of a taller building in a normal city. Belmopan was no London by any stretch of the imagination, but there were a few tall buildings to where they could not be seen from the ground.

"I admit I have trouble taking orders from a minor. Thus far I have been interpreting them more as suggestions in that I would refuse if he thought of something that sounded idiotic. I suppose, though, our organization, despite the name, has never been one where we have commanding officers who give orders, so the fact that you three are minors is not the only factor."

"Merlin, I'm doing my best," he muttered as he scanned the horizon. "I took us here to see if the Death Eaters are tossing out Secrecy. Someone here would've noticed something." He looked over to Luna.

"I can't sense a disturbance," she said with her eyes closed. Either she scanned his mind to keep up with the plan or she's clever enough to figure it out.

"Are there any wizards in disguise?"

"Plenty."

"Put out a message. I know they're just regular people who probably don't want to deal with it, but the Death Eaters are trying to take over Belize. They're not going to be living here unobtrusively and providing a public service, they're going to be doing the exact same thing they did in Burma. People still have wands here; as long as they can cast some basic spells they can help."

"I remember the children you were tasked with protecting knew a few basic spells each."

"Well, yeah, but we couldn't get them to fight if we were putting them at any kind of risk," Ron said. "When it got to a point where we really couldn't protect them, we moved them out."

"Oh, because they're minors?"

"No- are you saying that we shouldn't be fighting either?" he argued. "If I had my way we'd let the older ones do something, but I don't. I had a job to do."

There was a moment of tension.

"If you can't work with us, you might be better off working with someone else," Hannah suggested. "I know you're um- forty something, and we're all tiny babies to you, but-"

"Hannah," Luna chastised. "You should never remind an old lady of her age." She looked back and forth between them. "Besides, we should learn to work together," she said. "It was something Hermione told me."

She recalled that their friend had once been put on a team with Andromeda's daughter, Diggle, and some dobber whose name she could not recall off the top of her head. To say there was a bit of a generation gap was an understatement; none of them were in the same generation if she understood it correctly. Well, none of them would have attended Hogwarts at the same time and that's basically the same thing.

More than anything else, though, more than the practical goal of learning to work with other people, which she admitted was probably more difficult for the one married parent of the group, there was the more nebulous concept that Luna had raised earlier. Something was wrong. The four of them had to stay together. Is this some old Hogwarts thing that's still working somehow?

Or is it that the school was built around something else?

"There's no evidence the Death Eaters have been here," Ron said as soon as it seemed they were done checking. "They're still keeping up with Secrecy."

"Is anyone rallying to our cause?" Hannah asked, not a trace of optimism allowed in her voice.

"I can't tell. I'd like to give it time-"

"-but we don't have any." Well, would you look at that, we're finishing each other's sentences. "We should go. I don't know where, but we need to rejoin the fight."

Technically, she knew that victory or defeat would probably not be determined by four wands. The losers were almost always at a deficit of more than four, but even dying in battle would serve the ends of the Order. There are worse ways to go, I guess. If I can use that curse that Lupin showed me before he-

Emotions always picked the worst times to catch up with her.

When they apparated again, they were in a hole in the wards near the base. She could think about how Hermione was protecting them from beyond the grave again, but that would only make things worse. Ron was optimistic about finding some sort of target.

"Now that they're here, we were supposed to regroup," he said. "They'll notice the distortion in the spells they're casing unless there's some kind of barrier detection charm, then they'll notice it even faster."

"We're here to stop them from noticing?"

"I reckon they've got some kind of mental link, so it won't stop them from noticing, but we'll have to kill them as soon as they get here. Luna, can you-"

"I can do some things," she said. "I'll be okay."

Hannah knew that the younger witch had been studying for much of the last two years, unlike her, because she really only learned how to apparate and a handful of other spells. Learning an entirely new branch of magic seemed out of reach. I wish we could have grown up in different times. Hermione used to go on about how magic used to be more academic in the sense that kids would first learn the general theory and have a rich understanding by graduation; it wasn't a cert factory.

Taking it to mean they were splitting up, she went to the western part of the circular base once she managed to pass through the wards, noticing that the sun was on its way down for the night. Where she was guarding was forested; one would not have known the ward boundary was even there just by looking. Ron would be going to the north, Luna to the south where they thought it was least likely anyone would attack, and Andromeda would be watching the east. Since they were just outside shouting distance, they would have to maintain a mental link in order to communicate.

Have you seen anything yet?

Heard something. Reckon it's a wild animal. Yeah. Beast detection checked out.

She remembered the time that they were defending the old Black in Africa the previous year, how they had encountered wizards with picture wards of various magical creatures on their bodies, which made her wonder whether they would be caught by human detection or bestial variety. It occurred to her that she could look in a mirror as far as that was concerned.

Hey, Ron, have you ever hit me with a beast detection charm?

Hannah, I don't need a damn charm to tell me what you are.

No, I want to know what the charm does, and I had an idea of using myself as a reference point. You know where I am so I should get picked up.

Fine. There was a pause. It's responding to you.

That's interesting. If I count as a beast, it must be that a werewolf is a separate species; I'm not just a human with a curse. She had read a few different theories on the subject, mostly with tears in her eyes.

It also means that we need to watch out for werewolves as well. The beast detection charm doesn't mean it's just a wild animal.

It was not the exact same thing as hearing his voice, but if anything it communicated even more emotion, so it was not hard for her to pick up the gratitude and a moderate amount of shame for not having thought about it. It crossed her mind that she had not heard of a great number of werewolves serving the Death Eaters, since the Order's efforts to halt recruitment seemed mostly successful; it was the one sort of silver lining they had about their efforts.

Hannah had the idea that the basic point of trying to drive their own recruitment up while driving the enemy's down was not so they could directly fight the enemy, even though they had known they would probably have to do that soon, and now they were, but so the Order would look more viable. It had been said a thousand times that the only reason that non-purists ever joined the servants of Voldemort was because it looked like they were the only way of getting rid of the Ministry, and the fact that the Order was providing a moral alternative was not enough. Closing the gap in recruitment would have an effect that would build upon itself, as it became more and more viable to back the horse whose owner was not using steroids.

Unfortunately, because the actions the Ministry took against them were never publicized; if they appeared in the Prophet or its equivalents at all, it was only to say that 'a blood purist adjacent group' was targeted by the authorities, the average witch or wizard probably had no idea that Crouch's government and the Order were enemies in any meaningful sense. Consequently, the Death Eaters claimed to their own recruiting audience that the Order was just controlled opposition, something international magical governments had created as a way of slurping up their recruitment. She had agreed with her friends that they really needed to take some direct action against the Ministry to prove they were enemies, even if it would convince the people back home that they were blood purists or something, but it was not so easily done as said.

Well, after we get slaughtered here, they'll still think we're controlled opposition, but they won't think we're blood purists, or so we would hope.

The first threat to approach was not a local, unless he had been living in New Mississippi, but whether he was a neighbor or not, he was an enemy. She used the ward boundary to her advantage and attempted a killing curse, which missed because he was quick, but the spells he tried were useless against an unknown barrier. Before he could finish the incantation for a lethal blow she hit him in the neck with a cutter and then an explosive hex while he was sputtering blood. Somehow it felt like the word 'confringo' was going to have a bad taste in her mouth from then on.

A witch came next. She might have been a local; she might just have been someone disgruntled with the presence of the Order. Because she seemed to have witnessed the previous attempt, she was aware of the ward border and reached out with something like Legilimency. It could only be described as feeling different than what she had felt before.

"Avada kedavra!" she managed after wearily weathering the bizarre mental barrage. Hannah would have preferred to take down some local witch getting mixed up in the conflict non-lethally, but that was a luxury they could only afford when she had a place to put her captive and time to put her there and some way of guaranteeing it was not an elaborate trap by the enemy. She would have preferred not to assume the witch even was an enemy, but here there was no time for talking. Well, you got what you wanted in those days, Macmillan- wherever you are. It's kill or be killed now.

The dead woman's face was frozen in a look of shock.

It felt like, more than anything else, what was keeping her sane and mostly on the right track was being driven out by her very soul. It felt like the same soul was filthy at the core, and that it was only now showing that. Does everyone go through this? Did the Death Eaters?

Strangely, she found it hard to feel sorry for them. Perhaps, like the witch she had just killed, many of them were misled or on the wrong side or actually had some remotely justifiable motivation floating around in there. None of it mattered. As long as she was hanging onto the Plank of Carneades, she would have to fight for it, and whatever came her way, even if it only looked like a threat, would have to fight for it as well.

"Expelliarmus."

The spell seemed to have come from nowhere. Somehow it went through the ward boundary, and her wand was on the ground a matter of feet in front of her. There was a marked Death Eater standing just beyond. He was not wearing a shirt for some reason she could not identify, since he seemed to be covered in cuts and his skin was burned.

"You're younger than I am," she said. "How are you marked?"

"It's not real," he responded. "How do you know about the mark?"

"We have people whose family members were Death Eaters working for us. Why would you put a fake mark on yourself? Do you think Voldemort would just assume he'd already gotten you?"

"You dare speak his name-" He picked up her wand, still holding his own on her. "Who are you?"

"You must not know. I'm Hannah Abbott, and apparently all of you are under orders to take me alive."

"You're lying."

"I suppose I might be, but then we're at an impasse. You can't kill me from over there, but you can't just leave, can you? I propose you return my wand and I step out of the ward barrier."

"Fine. You were weak enough to lose it once, so you'll lose it again."

It was more a matter of my being absent-minded. It won't happen again.

He threw her wand several yards to his right and she walked closer to it before exiting the ward barrier and picking it up, rolling immediately to dodge something that looked lethal. She spat out a stunner, trusting it to do the job, but it was blocked and probably would have missed anyways. Annoyed that the young wizard started using fire because she had ducked behind a tree, she hit the trunk of a tree next to him with the strongest cutter she could manage, and it fell, forcing him to throw himself out of the way. Seizing the opportunity, she jutted her wand out from behind the tree and cast a Reductor Curse on the fallen tree, sending splinters in all directions.

The bloody corpse indicated the job was done, and she sighed and put out the fire that her enemy had set. There were now three bodies in the general vicinity, and she had buried the first two without thinking about it, but as she buried the third, it occurred to her that no one who knew the people she had killed would be informed of their deaths. It had been a convention in recent wars, at least among normal people, to return the body to loved ones and have a military funeral, though the way that issue would be handled in this war would be positively ancient.

It was bothering her more than it should logically, with all the killing she had already done; perhaps it was because she had used dark magic, perhaps it was because she had been up close, that she could see the light leave their eyes or perhaps it was nothing more than the fact that she felt like she was starting to get used to it. The Death Eater she had only just killed was probably just a minion, and probably from somewhere in Belize, or some other former colony, since his accent was not quite right.

Hannah, are you all right?

It was good that he was concerned about her, she decided.

Yes. I had a spot of trouble earlier, but I dealt with it.

Well, if something happens again, let me know. I can step outside the ward barrier and apparate to you because I know where you are.

He was right; she should have asked him for help, though she could not have known whether or not he had been dealing with anything himself. A few years ago he would never have told her, but she could not be sure any longer. It was something they needed to discuss before they died, whenever that was going to be.

Hey, Ron?

Yeah?

I don't care if anyone else is listening. In the last half hour, I just killed three people and buried them in the ground. It made me think about a lot.

Hannah-

If I die, I don't want the last thing between us to be a pointless argument.

I know. I don't want that either. We're all just tired and stressed.

Though neither of them wished to say it, or even let it get to their surface thoughts, Hannah was quite sure they were both thinking of a way to deal with fatigue and stress at the same time. Night was falling after all, and even if the battle continued, they would have to sleep.