Luna was facing mental exhaustion after hours of being a second mind for Neville. He could shield himself decently, but not against the kind of people around them. She had never been good with people; she had never been good at responding to their expressions or even making the right one herself, at least not at the right time. There was a time that she seriously thought that Legilimency would provide a way around all that. Having heard of the strange city in Africa where everyone used the mind arts at all times, and there were no mental barriers between anyone, she had thought the place a paradise, for a time. Visiting on a break in her Order duties, she quickly realized that she had just as much to hide as everyone else, if not more. She left almost immediately. It was pointless, it was hypocritical to remain there with her mental shields up.

In years past she had thought that a lot of people's problems came down to pride, how they viewed themselves. Half-blood. Anti-blood purist. Dark wizard. She had heard countless descriptors and had observed the pains that everyone took to uphold them, to convince themselves and everyone else that they mattered, that they fit their own narrative. Perhaps she had been right about some things. Perhaps more honesty could improve things. At the same time, she had first hand experience with uncontrollably vomiting her every thought, and it was not an experience she wanted to repeat. She wanted to be respected. If everyone knew every petty, stupid, or selfish thought that ever crossed her mind, that was impossible. It seemed unlikely that the inhabitants of the strange village just never had those thoughts. No, if she knew anything about people in general, what was more likely was that it would all just be tolerated. Everyone is like that. There is no reason for shame.

"Excuse me, sir and madam, we are about to take a brief recess; if it pleases you; there is Breath of Ys in the salon."

"Thank you," she said, turning around and resolving to get back to her thoughts when time permitted. The meetings, thus far, had gone well, given that neither of them had any guile or trickery in their minds. Not for the first time, she wished there could have been a Slytherin in their corner.

Basically, there were two things that everyone in the summit who actually knew anything had to avoid. One was Voldemort being in control of the coalition, and the other was that before long, the war would be over. Those two things did not seem contradictory in and of themselves, but because they had wed themselves to two absolutes rather than one, she had some way of putting them in a logical trap, something she actually understood. The basic trick to that was asking how they would handle Voldemort; if they dismissed him as something they could handle after the Order was vanquished, then they had to have some reason why he was not a greater threat to them. Would the war last longer if they went after one or the other first? Which would surrender if the other were defeated?

The logical puzzle that she constructed had the main speakers frustrated and foreign delegates from recently incorporated countries who were less in-the-know confused. They wanted to know what mercy the Dark Lord had ever shown to those who had declared themselves his enemies; no one could deny that the struggle for Central America had taken place. The denial was subtler, as she understood it. It rarely took the form of being shown some historical event and denying that it ever happened; for the most part, it was a slight change in the circumstances or the details that made the event serve an appropriate narrative. It was the omission of relevant details and the inclusion of unreliable witness testimony. There were countless 'muggleborn eyewitnesses' who made ridiculous claims about the battles, but they did not deny that it was a conflict between Death Eaters and the Order.

"What are we doing here?" she asked Neville. Even reading his thoughts had not thus far revealed any answer to her. "What is our goal?"

"I'm just trying to see if we can do anything from here that we couldn't do on the battlefield. I'm also hiding in plain sight. According to the reports they went over, there have already been multiple accounts of my demise."

That much was correct. The coalition believed him to be dead and the fact that it happened more than once was not suspicious; it only looked like the organization was creating fakes after losing the real one. Part of the reason for having more than one faked death was to ensure that the report would reach them, else it might have turned out that they killed too many of the invaders for any of them to come back with the news. Perhaps there were those who would say she was not one to judge, but in her opinion, deciding that he was dead was the most reasonable conclusion for them to draw. Faking his being alive was more likely than faking his death, and with all the body doubles, something was definitely being faked.

"If anything, we should have expected their morale to crash," an American delegate had said. She had not thought the country had gone one way or another, but apparently it was beginning to split. Individuals and groups were going in all directions and fighting, else staying behind to defend from whatever fallout would result. "They place all their hopes on this one child of prophecy, so when he dies, shouldn't they just give up?"

"Apparently, he's not the Phoenix yet," she remembered Neville responding. "There's also an alternate. At the same time, though, we should expect some drop in morale."

Luna had never thought she would see the day, but he had better social skills than someone. She really should have guessed that she would be the point of reference, though.

When the talks resumed, there were updates about the battles, but she could hardly focus on the details presented; she had to keep everyone else from getting into Neville's head. While so occupied, she would have to trust him to take it in and respond, while trusting their other friends to make sure that it was all good news. Fortunately, it seemed no one directed anything other than the most basic of questions at her, though that was probably because her partner kept stepping in. Really, for some of them, it was probably a wonder why she was even there.

"We need forces from elsewhere to proceed," one delegate said. "It is time to stop getting around the issue; the only way that we can crush the enemy and carry on as an authoritative entity is if we end things as quickly as possible. It's pointless to speculate further on how they're holding on."

It was true that they had done plenty of that; it had been floated that the Order had its own mark, but the spies had discovered nothing like that. That in itself was a source of frustration; the newspapers in support of the coalition had gone ahead with the articles and were annoyed to find that there was no evidence to post, and once again they relied on pre-selected experts. The summit had theorized that the enemy was bolstering its ranks with local dark wizard groups, which was not far from the truth; they had never insisted that they stop practicing dark magic, only that if they ever did, it was for a good reason. What surprised her, though, and what Neville had decided to back, counterfactually, was that there was dissent in the ranks. The witch across from him, whom he seemed to have recognized at the door, looked rather startled at the idea, but said nothing.

Briefly looking through her partner's memories whenever she had the chance, Luna had discovered who exactly she was. Calling herself Ebony, she had installed herself in Hufflepuff for years, even when no Inspection was meant to be going on, and essentially corrupted the House virtues into anti-blood purism. It was challenging to nail down her motives; even when she seemed rattled her mental shields were impeccable. She could hope that Neville, who had some unfortunate experience with her in the past, would be unrecognizable to her as long as he did not break character, but there was nothing that they could do to change his outward appearance now that she had seen him. He had grown substantially and lost weight, or rather, it appeared that he lost weight, because he had a healthier, stronger-looking figure, but it might be that he was actually heavier than he was in first year; she did not weigh him at the time. He definitely had less fat, that was sure enough. There were things, however, that would not change about him, and that was what worried her, when she allowed her mind to be distracted.

"Your intel on the Order has been invaluable, Toad," the American delegate said. "I found it suspect that you knew so much about them, but I suppose they really do allow anyone who asks and appears to be interested in joining to know their plans." When he said plans, it was closer to 'aspirations', but that was, for the most part, correct. "I presume that you had to establish a relationship with some high-ranking member."

"I have such a relationship, yes," he said, avoiding directly lying for some reason. "If you were to open the floo, I could actually connect us with their primary base, but the reserve forces would march in here and make short work of us." It was close to the truth that they could probably kill everyone in the room if they had the right people join them, but the real reason that they would not be doing that was because there would be no point. As long as everyone was being manipulated hand and foot by Voldemort, killing them had no purpose. There were other strategists that could take their places, what with the vast population of the coalition worldwide, and their deaths would only represent a small setback. For the purposes of the Phoenix, the most they could really accomplish was to confuse and obfuscate the offensive strategy as much as possible; they would use rather than destroy the command structure they had discovered.

Carefully scanning the room as soon as she had a spare moment, Luna identified the primary connection to Voldemort; a wizard from Eastern Europe who called himself Lysenko, though that was not his real name. It was a bit of a tale how he ended up at a coalition strategy meeting after being a student at Durmstrang, but he was attracted to power, nothing more, and he would be willing to advance their goals even if it meant regularly meeting his Dark Lord to ensure that he was acting the part of a perfectly loyal spy. Though skilled in dark magic, he was not an old guard Death Eater and had always opposed blood purism, and was thus unlikely to be suspected of anything.

"It is better to put to bed any supposition that the Order marks their own men," Neville said a moment after she sent him a thought. "They've actually been telling anyone who will listen that the marks, ultimately, are controlled by Lord Voldemort, though perhaps some chain of command exists such that ground forces can be managed by someone who can see what's going on."

"It's an incredibly unfortunate rumor that we are puppets of his," another delegate said, not one who had any idea about their situation. "It's one we're unable to disprove. It appears that no one believes that we really defeated him in Georgia, where he was hiding, and that opposing blood purism would not hinder his aims as long as he controlled the entire world, if through us."

"They've managed to come up with an explanation that allows them to assert that Voldemort is in control of the coalition, that when Crouch temporarily went missing, he was actually put under the Imperius or replaced by someone else and only after that started introducing the marks. He had quite a bit of momentum, but he was not the undisputed leader of the entire coalition, and the Department fixed that for him. Have you ever wondered who controls the French Minister's mark?"

If it sounded like an impressive, on-the-spot analysis, Luna was almost certain that it was copied directly from Hermione.

"The French Department of Mysteries, of course," someone said.

"Right, but most people don't know that. They see something like that and they start to buy into the theories that the whole point of taking the chain of command underground, where no one can see it, is because Voldemort already has all his people down there."

"That's impossible."

"Well, sure, but what difference does it make if you can't show people who's pulling on whose strings?" he asked. "Do you know for a fact that the witch or wizard controlling the French Minister is really from their Department? If you know it, is there anything that you could say that would convince anyone else?"

"Don't tell me you believe this yourself," Lysenko said. Luna quickly reminded Neville that he was one of the ones who properly knew what was going on and he thanked her.

"Delegate, this is a private meeting, not shouting in the streets. There is no imminent risk of the populace being swayed to an unfortunate perspective. We are quite free to entertain a perspective you might find distasteful." He sighed as though he had said it before. "The fact of the matter is, there is a simple way to prove that the Order has been lying the entire time, or at least that everything they said about us was nothing more than a groundless theory. All we need to do is reject Voldemort. If there are any within our numbers that support him in secret, we'll have to execute them privately, but if we declare that even if he is alive somewhere, the Dark Lord is now our enemy, then he can't possibly be controlling us. I'll start. I, Codename Toad, reject Voldemort and if anyone at this table is supporting him, I'll execute him right here."

Perhaps to sell it, he held up his arm with the illusory mark he had only just applied. Luna did a quick scan around the room and just from what she could tell, everyone was at least momentarily buying into the idea that the mark was real.

"I declare," Lysenko started back. "-that if anyone at this summit or anywhere else in the coalition is found to be supporting Voldemort, I shall personally execute him or her." Slumping forward, the light left his eyes as if he had been hit with a killing curse. What had actually happened was the witch across from him overloaded his circuitry, as it were. Wanting of Hermione's skill with memory charms, she volunteered to take him out of the room, but was denied the opportunity, complicating things. As long as he would only be in a state of sleep for a moment, even witches and wizards who were frankly more like political strategists who had never seen someone die before, would figure it out, requiring her to redouble her efforts, at least for the moment.

The trick, however, seemed to have the intended effect in that everyone was in stunned silence. There was not a single self-assured expression.

"I can honestly say that I don't support Voldemort, and I might not like killing people, but I definitely will kill anyone who does. His unwitting servants might be convinced to stop; but if they can't be, they're really no better than the other sort. Some of them, we might meet on the battlefield, and we'll have to kill them. If we meet them in this room, though, there might be something else we can do about it. What do you say we go around?"

"Sir, Lysenko had to have been deceived. He never failed to reprimand other delegates in the special council for sympathetic thoughts toward remaining neutral. Before that-"

"How was he deceived?" Luna asked. "Who came up to him and put his mark on him?"

She resumed control over the mind of the unconscious wizard. It was a challenge to keep it from working in any way, but if she persevered, she could keep burning oxygen while actively keeping his epiglottis from moving by overwhelming him with suggestions of food, which worked better than expected. It was the strangest way she had ever heard of anyone dying, except possibly Aeschalus, whose bald head was probably mistaken by an eagle for a rock, hence the dropped tortoise. Ignoring for the moment, the developments in the conversation, she hoped that something worthwhile had happened in her enemy's life at least once, but it seemed doubtful. Being from Durmstrang, he might have encountered Evan or possibly Malfoy, but she was almost certain he had never had a positive influence on either of them.

"I realize, Toad, that I cannot be certain that the witch or wizard who marked me was not himself or herself marked by a Death Eater, or Voldemort himself for that matter, but there's no end to it when you spool it out like that. Any one of us could be the same as Lysenko."

"We could see."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, we could do a quick test to see if you're the same."

"That's precisely-" another wizard interrupted, before thinking on it more. "-that's precisely why we're so concerned about using such a means of testing ourselves. Who marked you?"

"My father's friend," he lied. "Couldn't tell you who marked him."

"Logically, then, some of us are safe," Luna said before raising her own hand and making the same vow.

"Logically, yes, we just don't know which ones- I'm not quite sure why you know that you're safe-"

"We come from the same division," she handwaved before returning to her Legilimency. Lysenko would not be waking up, but they still had to keep the wool over the eyes of the rest of them. There were enough witches and wizards in the room to where it was effectively impossible for her and Neville to try to manipulate them with the Imperius Curse; it was all she could do to to keep monitoring them. If one started to ask unhelpful questions, though, she could at least think of some helpful questions to cast back.

"What should we do about this?" the American delegate from before asked. "I have to admit I can't stand not doing anything."

"Well, I swore that I would kill all of Voldemort's servants, whether they knew they were serving him or not, so frankly I don't see why we can't go around the room-" Neville started to say, knowing he would be interrupted.

"Wait a moment, think of it this way. What if our marks require us to be completely committed to the destruction of blood purism?" another delegate asked. "What if it's simply that if we're to distract ourselves by going after an unrelated target-"

"Unrelated? How is the wizard who marked all the Death Eaters unrelated to blood purism? He's their powerhouse when I look at them charitably and he's got them all in his pocket on any other day."

Tensions were running high. In a calmer circumstance, in which death was not imminent, perhaps someone would have been able to think through what had happened. Perhaps someone would wonder whether or not the two marks that had survived the test were really authentic in the first place. That, however, was not to be. Luna was not looking at the delegate next to her, but she did have her wand out, which always made things more interesting.

"This isn't helping; throwing around accusations-" The American delegate was more than simply annoyed. "There are only two wands in this room that are safe at the moment. I am sure they are not the only ones, but clearly no one else is willing to take the risk- for the time being, we need to follow their direction."

"Thank you," Neville said. "If you find yourself marked by a dark wizard, the only thing you can do is kill him. It worked with Anthony Goldstein, as far as I understand it, and it'll work with Voldemort if we can find him. Fortunately, we've got a lead. He's coming after this little bastard named Evan."