Neville had his first question.

"How can anything be any worse than blood purism?" someone asked. In truth, he had not been looking, because he was scanning the crowd for active threats, but if he had to guess, the question came from a younger person.

"I'm glad you asked," he said. "You're correct in the sense that nothing's worse, because there's nothing worse than anything else that's wrong," he said. "That's to say, everything wrong is ultimately the same. Let's have a little story to explain that." Thus far, it seemed enough people were interested that even those who wore angry or concerned expressions would at least hear him out. "Suppose there are three wizards who decide to kill someone. They're going to attack him from a ways off, so three wands increases the chance that the target dies enough to where it's relevant to the plan. Day of, only two show up, but they shrug and go ahead with it. One misses, the other hits. The third stayed home for no reason other than he figured two would be enough and he needn't get caught over it. Can anyone tell me which of these is morally superior to the others?"

There was a moment of consideration for some, but others had an answer to the question immediately.

"It's certainly not the person who killed the target."

"Oh? Accuracy makes him an awful person? We should teach kids in school not to cast spells accurately? What if it wasn't even skill, but luck?"

This was something for the crowd to consider, and perhaps the more important point of the two, that there was no moral difference made by the consequence. He could have said anything to that effect; he could have even said that the one who missed hit a curved shield which bounced the spell back at the target and the one who aimed properly hit a shield that reflected the spell away harmlessly.

"Perhaps the third, then," someone else said. "Perhaps the third is better, since he decided not to violate the law."

"He decided not to violate the law out of fear of punishment," Neville explained. "Many of us, at least at times, have been no better. If you will for a moment consider any time you might have had some fantasy of revenge- no point in raising your hands over it. Laws are not bad things, but they cannot make the difference between right and wrong. Consider the first two again. Can there ever be a time when the two get the same punishment before the law?"

Some said 'of course', others said 'no, never'. He had not known exactly what to expect.

"There cannot, because if different crimes carried the same punishment, there would be no reason to commit one and not the other. If murder and attempted murder earned the perpetrator the same amount of suffering, he would make sure to get it right every time. There are other reasons, as I shall explain, if able, that no practical system could ever be fair, if by fair we mean punishing people based on what they deserve."

"Go on, then." He figured it could have been a supporter, which would have been nice, but even those who might support him might only be interested in somehow getting rid of Voldemort. If so, he could only think they were mystified to find him in some lesser-known village in England giving a speech on the nature of good and evil.

"The three wizards in the example are all the same because they are all guilty of hatred; they all desired that someone else would die. That's the basic problem with their actions. That's what makes any action wrong. It's got nothing to do with what actually happens." He looked around the crowd. "If you really look into it, you'll realize a lot of the way we think about moral things doesn't make any sense whatsoever. What difference does it make who the victim of a crime is?"

As expected, he got a range of responses, not that he thought there were any valid ones. He supposed that there was really only an emotional difference when something terrible happened to an old person versus a little child, though one could be argued to be more beneficial than the other, depending on what the objective was. That was the problem with trying to base everything on consequences; the value of each consequence was subjective. Various thought experiments could be broken down into action against inaction, but which outcome was more desirable? At least in real life, it was not always obvious to anyone of any moral philosophy.

"There is no difference," he said. "It doesn't take a different kind of person at all. Does it take a different kind of person to perform a simple act of kindness for a child as opposed to an old person? Suppose neither one is likely to remember very long, and they are equally unlikely to reward you. It doesn't really make a difference, does it?" He looked around. "If there's anyone out there who'd go one way or another, it's probably got something to do with where you stand. Maybe you just had a kid yourself, or maybe you look at an old person and see a lost parent- very much human reasons, I'm sure. Are they good reasons? Maybe it's just how you're feeling at the time. Is that a good reason?"

He did not know how to accurately gauge how well his message was being received. Though it seemed no one had tried to attack him yet, there was substantial murmuring. If they try to take me alive, they're not going to take any chances with it. The first thing is to cut off my escape.

"If I don't get anything else across this evening, I want you all to know this. If you ever want to do the right thing in some situation, what matters is what's in your heart. I'm not saying act on impulse. I'm saying that before you do something, think about why you're doing it. That's it. Don't try to tell yourself something. You'll know. That's something I've realized; you can't really fool yourself if you don't want to be fooled." He looked around. "Looks like most of you are old enough to remember Hogwarts. When I was there, people had all sorts of reasons why they thought I was doing something or not doing something. The other Hufflepuffs acted like it was a fact that I was a blood purist because I wasn't supporting them. The Slytherins were just about as convinced that I was an enemy because I wasn't with them. Can anyone tell me how I was an enemy to both of them at the same time, when both of them said the old line about 'the enemy of my enemy' and all that?"

Once again, he had asked a question for which he expected there was no satisfactory response. The reasoning that the two factions back at school was purely self-serving; it was rhetoric, not an argument based on a consistent system of values or any desire to do the right thing. The entire point was just to get 'the talking part' done before the fighting could start. That was the end goal and the whole driving vision; it was not just a necessary step; he legitimately thought there were many of them who just wanted blood to spray and bones to crunch.

"Excuse me." It was a challenge from the audience.

"Yes?"

"I suppose, we're meant to let the consequences be damned and do whatever feels right?"

"We cannot get very far if people put words in my mouth," he said. "I said nothing about what feels right; there are objective standards for what is and is not right, as explained by the Phoenix Script; probably banned reading material here, but there's naught I can do about that. You're listening to yourself to know why you're doing things; that's it. The thing about consequences isn't that you need to worry about the ones you can reasonably predict. That's what an intention is. It's a consequence you can reasonably predict, and if you chose it, then it's desirable to you in some way, more so than the other possible consequences. What's lying? Is it saying something that turns out to be wrong, or saying something you think is wrong?"

"I think I get it," someone said from the crowd. Elsewhere it looked like the magical law enforcement in the area was having to come up with plans for how to deal with the situation. They no longer carried wands for the most part, since no one else did, and they could not use people's marks to move them out of the way so that they could take a high-value target hostage.

"Get what?"

"Well, if you said you were the Minister, and unbeknownst to you, you'd actually just been chosen for the position, you'd still be lying. It's still an act of dishonesty. I get true information being valuable. I'd say it is." He seemed to think for a moment. "Can't be blamed if you just said the wrong thing, though, s'long as you were trying to help."

"Where it gets tricky is when people convince themselves of things that have no basis in reality. Then, they tell themselves that it's real or they at least think it's real, but you just have to look around to see all kinds of people convinced of various things that can't work together. If you're taking care to really think things through, and you always care about what's true, and not just what works, you should be able to at least tell when you're doing it."

He realized he was telling them to do something that was complicated, and yet mystifyingly simple at the same time. There was no long list of rules; there was a single command to do the right thing, and if they knew the rule about doing unto others, then they at least knew to consider what other people might want in the same way they might consider what they want. What was difficult about it was putting active effort into thinking about what would be the right thing, but perhaps it would get easier with practice.

Unfortunately, the time for teaching had come to an end. Luna warned him of an impending trap, wards around the village being activated, though she managed to shut down two or three of them by putting an Auror under the Imperius. Chances are, that only draws their attention more. They've been using dark magic wards for ages now.

Running to her, they pretended to be caught by her minion and in a moment they were both away. Looking around, it seemed that the red-robed witch had decided to take them to the North. He watched for a moment as his travelling companion was giving more orders without saying anything.

"I can create a hole in the warding, and I can come with you if you like it."

"Stay here," he said. "It's better if they know we weren't really caught." He thought better of it. Nothing I said would have been wrong if we were. "No, never mind that. I need you to tell everyone that we're dead. You can make fake bodies, right?"

"Yes. There was a period we might have had to stage a werewolf massacre, but it never came up. Departmental resources were thin at the time and our memories of the technique were never erased."

"Good show," he said, patting her on the back. "Don't worry, we'll be back sooner or later and we'll try to get the new regime to go easy on you when all this comes out. Hope they don't do anything to you in the meantime; can't see why they'd make it a priority."

The three of them made their way to the sea where the Auror was making a hole in the warding; they guessed she had some training in warding, or perhaps it was yet another false flag attack that never had to happen. He wondered for a moment what kind of things they would uncover if they ever did take over their home country again. How many secret cruelties were planned and budgeted, but not carried out yet? How many had been binned solely because the need for subtlety had passed? So flippantly he had promised to reverse her punishment, or even just show mercy, when really he had no way of guaranteeing that she would still be alive, and it was not as if she was helping them because she wanted to help. Was he only making such a promise because he was in a good mood? I guess I'm still subject to that.

"You'll get a trial, at least. If you'd like, you can leave a note and say everything we told you to say, and then get out and hide somewhere. We're giving you the choice between that or going back and telling them what you did, which will definitely get you interrogated, and then they'll find out you got mind controlled, and they'll blame you for that." He supposed he did not know their exact policy. "Well, they might. I don't like your odds is my point."

"I think she got the message, Neville," Luna said without a trace of sarcasm. She smiled.

In mere moments they were away again.

"You know how you leave and then you think of all sorts of things you should have said?"

"I try to say whatever happens to come to mind, then I have no regrets."

"What about when you say something you shouldn't have?"

"Well, then I apologize. I find people sometimes accept those apologies. By contrast, they never seem to accept it when you apologize for not saying something."

"Huh," he said after a moment, wondering how often it came up. Then again, he supposed there was nothing wrong with it. He supposed she was only trying to be nice, while not dancing around the truth. She was direct as a Gryffindor in that regard. That's something I wasn't. When I was trying to be direct, well, I wasn't good at it. He had been concerned that if people had all started shouting at him, that he would lose his nerve, but it seemed he had picked up some moral courage, though he was not sure when. That was, however, how it generally worked with developmental things, changes that did not happen overnight. Maybe it's like that with changing people's minds, too.

They apparated away, but something unexpected happened. Even with all that he had read on Hermione's developing theories, the only thing that he could imagine was that in the space between apparating and disapparating, when two places were one, there was some disagreement with the warding below their feet, carried with them as it was. An anti-apparation jinx was small and efficient; any part of it would prevent the two locations from linking so that even those who could break the process halfway through would not be able to take advantage of it and get off early. Has to be something else. Odd coincidence where both the wards underfoot line up and have an unexpected effect.

The fateful crack, he knew, was the sound of the two locations separating, and going back to where they were outside of the reality of the wizard using the spell, if it could be called that. Perhaps there was no incantation, but it functioned as a spell, or rather, a free-form conjuration. Functionally, it was similar to a portkey, and oddly enough what Ron described about going into the spirit world and then coming out in an entirely different place. Luna seemed similarly unconcerned with their situation, and more about what the theory might have to say on the subject. Well, it can't be two of us.

It appeared they had landed in the middle of a distinctly European garden. He had not done a lot of traveling on the continent himself, but he had told that they were distinct from the American variety in that they were walled and one had to go into them in order to appreciate their beauty. The whole atmosphere was peaceful, not ostentatious, and pleasant.

"Luna, where are we?" he asked, looking around. She did not look up from the notes she was reading.

"I'm not sure." She seemed less than perturbed. "Why? Can we not simply apparate out?"

"I'm starting to think not. Maintain a low profile." She followed him to the garden gate, still reading. "Lower." She scowled and put the book away.

"If someone asks me why I would wander into a garden without any reading material, I shall have you to thank for that."

"I'll bear that in mind."

They went through the gate, which was not even charmed, and they were on the streets of Paris.

"I've been here before. It was a long time ago."

"When?"

"It doesn't matter anymore." Even as he said it, he supposed it would have been more honest to just say that he had no wish to talk about it. He had never felt so terrible about himself, the world, and everything else. It was like there was a massive shift in fate itself, like there was no more life or hope. "Let's see what this place even is. Maybe we're here for a reason."

As they walked around to the front, he knew it was a presumption that bordered on ridiculousness. In his head he could almost certainly identify the reason why they had ended up in France; they were aiming for East Africa, leaving from the North, and if you put the three points on a circle under Sirius, then exiting the rotation in between the casting time and the effect time would have put him anywhere from the North Sea to some island in the Mediterranean where he would hardly mind retiring at any point. The door opened as soon as they came to it and there was a hurried looking young wizard just behind.

"Are you the strategists from London?"

Of course.

It was Luna's voice in his mind, and yet from the expression on the wizard's face it seemed he heard it as well, and he ran off as if to go fetch someone else. Neville could hardly believe what was happening. It was almost certain that they had stumbled upon a meeting of the leaders heading up strategy for the coalition, most likely in the French West, and yet, they had to be meeting somewhere, and Paris was the obvious choice. With the dark marks on everyone relevant all the way down to the Hit Wizards, or whatever the local equivalent was, they had the same false trust of other people posing as public officials that allowed Voldemort to take over in the first place. Well, that's one thing they can put it. It's also the fact that they're basically being required not to care about who's in charge of them.

"I am most pleased to see you." It was a witch with excellent, if unexpected English. With a mere look he recognized her; he knew precisely where he had seen her before and disguised a moment of panic as firm concentration. Everything he knew about mental shields was out the window; he hoped with everything that he had in him that she did not know his face. In the same instant, though, the strength that had been painfully built with every fearful encounter taught him that he could not afford to be a shrinking first-year, not when that would be a dead giveaway for who he had been, and the only thing that occurred to him was to do precisely the opposite of what she expected.

"What in the fuck do you think you have been doing?" he asked, staring intently into her eyes and not raising, but lowering his voice. Her pupils dilated.

"Excuse me, sir; it's right this way to the war room."

Who is that?

Though she could not be heard inside his mind, Luna had reserved her question for when the witch had gone ahead of them. Neville let out a puff of air through his nose in lieu of a sigh of relief, silently thanking Malfoy for critiquing him on his expressions years ago.

It's someone who is not pushing me or anyone else around ever again. Dumbledore promised it, and I'm keeping it.