Luna had made a rather hard decision, or rather, she helped. She had brought up sending out marked members of the coalition to go around, not wearing uniforms, not making targets of themselves, and just search in generally less explored places in the world, since they did not know that the Lord Voldemort was in Africa. Essentially, anyone who did not want to be found would kill the agent of the coalition, and as soon as the holder of his mark knew he was gone, they would know something had happened, and they would have a place to start. It was a plan of blatant sacrifice. She wanted to take it back as soon as she brought it up.
Somehow, it was easy to refrain from showing mercy in live combat against the wands sworn in service of whatever master ranked above them. No, that was excessive. It was not just in live combat; that was something with which she found herself frightfully familiar; she could kill those in possession of their fates, or rather, she would not bother to check. She was comfortable using them as minions in live combat. There was a chance of survival, after all; there was a chance their cursed existences could go on; she was not ordering them to be murdered.
A tear came to her eyes as the deliberations went on around her. She focused on her mental shielding, having broken into the minds of everyone in the room. It was as if she was strolling up and down a corridor of prisoners trying to avoid meeting her eyes. There was no way, at this point, that they did not suspect what she was doing to them. It was not a coincidence that if they felt her presence, they only felt it when she was not speaking. At the same time, all she could do was keep it up as she tried to work out how she could have the moral courage to carry out what they were about to do.
"Luna?"
"Yes?" she asked, getting up as the only man who knew who she really was led her out of the room. It seemed there was a break in the discussions.
"Everything's in order. You were right; the only way we can search everywhere in the world is if we use everyone we have. We don't want them to get killed by our own units; we don't want them to get killed for any reason other than because they found something they weren't meant to find. Some of the delegates have been on the floo with other government offices in the world-"
"Neville, I know their lives are forfeit, and that's what we've always been saying-"
"I don't like it either," he said. "I've always put freedom above life, and that's been the Order's doctrine, but I don't like the fact that only some of them are getting freed from control by the mark, and the rest are dying in the process. Die before they could ever enjoy the freedom, they will." He paused. "That makes it no worse than anything we ever asked of our friends."
"I can't help but to compare the marks with what happened to Hannah," she said after a moment. "She... from what everyone tells me, she figured out how to take control of herself while in her beast form, and she..." Luna's head was hanging. "I can't even say it."
"She died," Neville said after a moment. "We do not know that she sacrificed herself, but there is a chance that because she was standing in the way, she prevented a killing curse from hitting anyone else." He held up a book. "Hermione wrote about it in the margins."
"It's hard to say who had greater freedom," she said, grateful that no one else was listening to them. "Hannah could control herself, most of the time, but the wands of the coalition could die at any time. I never even realized that we would know when they died, no matter where they were."
It was a challenge to explain precisely how she could think of an idea without ever having realized it was possible; she knew that was not how some of her friends thought, but that was the truth as well as she knew it. Perhaps that was what made the idea so easy to suggest, and then so difficult to accept. A firm hand lit upon her shoulder and it moved her heart more than she ever thought it would. What was the feeling that came over her?
"We might as well see it through," she said, her uncertainty overcome.
Lotte of the Nærøyfjord was quite possibly the highest up on the tree of marking out of anyone they could summon, having been marked by Crouch himself, and in so doing essentially appointed to marking countless others, circling back around to those who came up with the idea. Lately, even while being drowned in news and opinions directing her to more fervent support for the coalition, she had grown listless and disillusioned, and the primary reason was the inexcusable failure to defeat Voldemort. The special council that introduced the marks had sworn to her that the only reason for such a drastic measure was that they were going to keep the enemy from doing it to them first, and it would no longer be necessary once they had taken care of him, which would be soon. As much as she hated to admit that it was so simple, but basically no one had ever lied to her before. She was aware that dishonesty existed, but neither her family, nor her friends growing up, nor her local government, nor the academics in her life had ever lied, not as far as she knew. Having matured in a high-trust society, she was the perfect candidate for a task that needed someone exceedingly trusting, and someone who would expect absolute confidence out of everyone else.
"How much of this is her fault?" Luna asked as she watched the older witch sitting there with a wand on her arm.
"She got tricked, but if she knew the truth, she wouldn't have gotten tricked," Neville said at some length. "I'm sure she'll be using this as a chance to redeem herself."
The witch stared silently at the mark for a few minutes announced that of those they had commanded, essentially, to go looking for Voldemort, only one had died so far, and according to the wizard who marked her, she had been sent to California. Luna frowned slightly. There was a chance that their enemy had taken up residence there, but given the conflict in Magical America, she could easily see one of their agents getting killed for an unrelated reason, so, technically, for nothing. Her frown deepened.
"Are we checking that one?" she asked. "It could be anything."
"If we sent someone, it could be anything," he said after a moment. "We didn't tell them where exactly to search because we don't have anything, but we have to wait for everyone to come back alive or not," he said. "They're under orders to cast diagnostic spells in every direction. If the search yields no results, so if we only find what we're expecting to find, then we have that agent search somewhere else. With the amount of wands the coalition has in total..."
"We should have our answer within a matter of hours," she said. There was time, then, that had to be passed, as the two of them walked off on their own again. It seemed the delegates were just as inclined to their own secret conversations."Do you believe in any unusual creatures?"
"I don't know," he said after a moment. "If this is ever over, I'd be thrilled to go looking for them with you."
There it was again, the promise of the future. Was that why they were doing everything? Did Hermione still want to learn more, to learn just things that interested her, and not just study out of combat necessity? Did Ron still want to play for the Cannons, or, failing that, at least watch their games? It was a sad thought that struck her all of a sudden that he had not touched a broom in years, to her knowledge anyway. The past few years had passed the same way the past few hours were passing. It was a series of fights for their lives broken up by waiting at a crawl, hiding somewhere and in their restlessness starting to miss the excitement that came with battle. After long enough of planning, only to have their hopes dashed by the enemy, it was hard to see how they were even making progress, and there were those who would just want to fight, just to kill someone or something.
"I want to do something," she said, being honest with him. "I know we are doing something now, but..." She shook her head. "We are destroying the governments of all these countries that were manipulated into joining the coalition, which is almost all of them... what will be left after all this?"
"Well, we've got something to do now," he said after looking back into the other room, where there were loud voices all of a sudden. "We're off to Mongolia."
"I've never been there before. They say the Yorbachi Steppe Howler lives out there."
She knew; it did not have to be explained to her, that they were going because there was some serious chance that Voldemort or some other dark wizard had taken up residence, that someone had died without threatening anyone or giving any sign that it was an official search. The mountain where they had landed after a series of chain apparations that took them out to the exact location was surrounded by an apparently featureless plain, at least from where she was standing. It was a breathtaking view, but she already had her wand out casting diagnostic spells. There was never any time to look around.
"I did think about it," Neville said as they walked, casting the same charms in different directions. He stopped at what seemed like a ward boundary; they were grateful that Hermione had taught them the weaknesses of her own specialty. "It's hard to give any kind of answer that satisfies people. Do you think that we shouldn't sacrifice people like this?"
The question put her on the spot as she used Legilimency to feel out for any active threats. She knew that sacrifice was a component of war, and they had already talked about that, but did it make a difference if they were just sacrificing their friends versus sacrificing government agents from foreign countries? Emotionally, she knew that one was always going to be easier than the other, even if fewer people would end up having a problem with it. No one else saw Ron, for example, as someone important to the future of the world, but then there were also those who would consider her a morally compromised agent if she were willing to sacrifice a friend, no matter how she explained it. That was, of course, the futility of trying to follow the standards set by the crowds, the average person, and the capricious heart.
"It's not Voldemort. I feel like I could actually get through this," her partner said after a moment. She was inclined to agree; there was neither a suspicious vacuum, nor were there shields, nor were there active minds free for her perusal. "Anyone holed up here doesn't want to be found, and for now they'll get their wish."
"Will the coalition not take action against one threat while dealing with another?" she asked. "Can we leave this many problems for the future to figure out, while we sacrifice progressively more of its ability to solve them?" She sighed, not expecting him to be able to answer it. It could be argued that killing the enemy was worth it, but were they becoming the coalition?
"We're not ignoring it," he said. "It's just a matter of when we go after it. We'll have to add this site of interest to a list when we get back."
Luna was aware that there were going to be some decisions that were difficult even when they made the right one. She knew, as well, that there were going to be times when it felt like they were doing the wrong thing, even when they had done the best they could under the circumstances. As skilled as she was with rationalizing it, though, she wanted to require more of herself, more of the Order, the better to ensure that the problem really was solved later, like they promised.
When they did return to the continent, the witch who was in command of the marks had more suggestions, including one in East Africa. It was a part of the region that the two of them had never really explored before, and it automatically seemed likely just because that was where everyone seemed to be at the moment. Convincing the other strategists that they needed to move their forces out of the Americas to back up what they had in the south, they suggested a forcible search of the area following every spell to prevent escape having already been done.
"The Americas?" a delegate asked. "We're stretched thin over there... come to think of it, we're stretched thin even here."
"Let us allow Europe to take care of European problems in the future," Luna said. "At the moment, we have no recruits from Afica, so go we must ourselves, if there is any hope that-
"Fine," someone else said. "You're approved, you're clear, but you'll have to get visual before you get to send the barn. I don't think your enemy wants you to see him and then disappear on you, and that's why you have to move quickly and quietly. We're not wasting lives on an irrelevant target."
All at once she wanted to laugh at herself. An irrelevant target? Was there such a thing, as she had only just worried? She had thought she was doing the future a disservice, and perhaps she was, but if there were a few agents she had been forced to sacrifice, the entire coalition had been a meat grinder before that. Most likely, the entity itself and its high-ranking members wanted to avoid the same kind of mistake they had with the assault on Durmstrang, or rather, the same kind of embarrassment. It was rather like having a moral crisis without realizing that the very reason she was even struggling was because she cared about such things in the first place. At the same time, the Order did not make it a policy just to be better than someone else; there were static moral standards to which they had to adhere.
Luna went with Neville to Ethiopia. If she would tire or sicken of chain apparation, she could not afford to have that happen just yet, and given the choice, she would really prefer that it take place after everything was finished, but hopefully before such a time as she got to go to Mongolia and all the other countries she visited because she wanted to go there. All of a sudden she had a thought that the worst fate that could await her was surviving through the war in failure, and not being able to do anything. There were countless ways that it could happen; she could be cursed, she could contract magical ailments, and she could have her spirit broken, as simple as that was, and as much as she wanted to deny it.
"Where is this place?" she asked, looking around in all directions. Without the benefit of the guard of coalition agents for which they had hoped, they would be relying on the same diagnostic spells that they were using before, and as if to spite them, they were getting the same absence of responses, but this time it was more disconcerting.
"We're in the northeast, not far away from Eritrea. If you're noticing that it's hot, basically the magic is... I don't exactly know, it's hard to describe what's going on here." He was looking in Hermione's notes, something she had studied extensively herself, whenever she had the chance, whenever there was an update. "It's like someone did some experiments with the astronomical effects that bind us to earth."
It was not an alien concept to her; when they apparated, the reason there was no risk of appearing in some place where the planet no longer occupied the moment they arrived was because their understand of their own position seemed to be superimposed onto their spells. It was in the sense that the caster believed he was oriented that the destination was determined; there had even been experiments where people managed to apparate while upside down and were still able to reach their destinations. The connection to earth had been one of the reasons that the Time Turner Project was initially shelved, though that was likely to be a pretext.
"Accio wand," Luna incanted. Though she had no definite reason to suspect that a wand would come flying toward her, it was usually a safe bet; if someone had left his or hers unattended, she could gain an idea of where they were going. Unfortunately, they were looking for a secret base with only one guard, namely, Voldemort, and there was no way he had not made his wand impossible to summon. It was a simple magical protection that was the boilerplate in dueling circuits starting in the early twentieth century, only coming with a drawback for those who could use wandless magic.
The fateful crack of apparation rang out and they looked around more intently, unable to determine the point of origin of the sound. The strange desert that surrounded them seemed to rest in a depression, creating an echo. Thermal pools of various colors rippled when the sound rang out. The heat was starting to get to her.
"We should go for backup, but we don't have anything yet," Neville said. "We need at least something that-"
A dark curse seemed to come out of nowhere. Several more followed quickly. She wondered for a split second if what they were seeing counted as something, or if they could just press for backup, but a greater concern occurred to her almost immediately; their escape could already be cut off.
Fortunately, with a passing instant, she was proven incorrect. All at once she was on the summit of a mountain. Having apparated countless times, all she could say about it was that it felt faster, somehow. Perhaps there was room to gain in skill with it.
"Are you quite all right?" Neville asked her.
"Yes, I... I am only a bit lost in thought."
"More than normal?" he asked, his lips cracking into a smile.
"Yes, quite... I thought about how the standard for casting a shield charm in school is only getting it mostly working, while a perfect cast gives you an outstanding. It's not just the shield charm, though, and it's not just what's covered by our public tests. It's also apparation. People stop learning once they have a basically functional understanding of it, and then they cheat for the rest of their lives. Daddy once said that he always appears a few inches to the left of where he really means to land, and so all he did was make sure to aim just for the right." She paused. "He really only ever used it to get to the publishers office, so I'm not sure whether it mattered how far he was going."
"That's really helpful, Luna, thanks," he said, turning back to the book, this time writing in it. "I don't want to get into it right now, but-"
"Of course- where exactly are we?"
"This is the summit of Kilimanjaro. I thought you'd recognize the place."
"I... I don't know, it looks different up here now," she said. In truth, she had not really paid attention to the landscape the first time, though she was guilty of doing that a lot, and from what she learned from Hannah and Hermione and Ron, she was not the only one. It was as if no one had time to stop and smell the roses, or whatever manner of flower would grow in East Africa.
The dearth of sightseeing almost directly, almost compulsively brought with it a desire to correct itself, when things were different. As always, she reminded the stray thought from another layer of her mind that she had to make things different first. The part that seemed to govern memory told her that usually worked.