Sirius: 24

Remus: 37

Threesome: 4

A/N: I'd just like to say I had this done last night, but my computer thought it'd be funny to just keep randomly shutting down.

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Dumbledore's Office

"What the hell is going on!?"

"Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley – please sit down," Dumbledore's voice was strained to the point of anger. His usually calm demeanor was gone, and the twinkle in his eyes was long erased. None of the three sat down.

"They can't just take her—"

Dumbledore sighed. "I'm afraid they can. Fudge knew it would only make the situation between the Ministry and Hogwarts worse, but he was able to and he did so."

"She's not in...Azkaban, is she?" Harry's voice dropped, remembering Sirius' accounts of the Dementor guarded prison.

"No, no," Dumbledore shook his head. "She will be taken to a holding cell in the Ministry of Magic building until her trial."

"Trial?" Ron looked sickly pale and his fingers clutching the chair back were chalk white.

Dumbledore sat down in his seat; an agedness that people never saw making his movements slow and stiff. He nodded his head. "Tomorrow."

Harry exploded. "Tomorrow?! That's too soon! How could we possibly come up with a defense in that amount of time?"

Dumbledore was looking at his folded hands as if they held all the answers; the universe's secrets hidden in each wrinkle. "We can't," he answered solemnly. "That is the point."

He closed his eyes as his student screamed in frustration. He heard splintering wood and the falling of heavy objects, before he opened them again.

"It's not FAIR!" Harry shouted. The remains of Dumbledore's chair lay in a heap beneath the pile of books that had been knocked from one of the room's numerous bookshelves. Harry was storming all over the room in a rage, tearing the office apart in painful frustration, and Dumbledore did nothing, letting the younger man vent the same emotions he felt.

"Miss Granger knew this possibility when she began—" he started.

"No!" Ron shouted. "She wasn't like that. She was smart and good. Hermione would have never done any of these things until you asked her to!"

Dumbledore looked at the boy, his hands still gripping painfully to the chair in which he refused to sit and tears of anger and frustration hovering at the corners of his eyes, then lowered his gaze, unable to look his student in the eye.

"SHE TRUSTED YOU!" Ron yelled until his throat was raw and his chair knocked out of the way. He slammed his hands on Dumbledore's desk and did what no other student had done before. He leaned right over the old wizard, with the tears coming down his face, and screamed at him. "She believed in you – she would have done anything for you. AND YOU BETRAYED HER!"

In the following silence, Dumbledore stared down through his half-moon spectacles at his hands. They gave him no answers. Just the hands of an old, old man.

"I know," was all he could say.

"No," Ron choked. Shaking his head desperately he stumbled away from the desk as if it had suddenly grown fangs. "Don't you dare say that now."

Dumbledore passed a hand over his face and tried to unstick his tongue long enough to answer. He took a slow breath to keep it from shaking. "The risk was always there...but Hermione was so gifted; I was thinking only of how much good could be done. I never thought—"

"SHUT UP!" Harry's hands were balled in fists and he was looking at his headmaster as if he were something alien and disgusting. He'd never hated his professor as much as he did now. And it was frightening. "Shut up, shut up!"

Dumbledore fell into silence.

"This is all your fault!" Harry was crying now too, but he didn't care. He was too lost and angry to care.

Dumbledore took all their accusations without a word. They were entirely true. Hermione had trusted him, and he had missed the smaller picture in hoping for the large. The war had blinded him, and he had lost sight of his own morals and beliefs. He let them yell because he was too angry at himself to find a reason for them to not.

"Did Hermione do or say anything that might have been a clue she knew this was coming?"

It was the first time Dumbledore had used her name.

This in itself seemed to take the fight out of the two boys, and their anger visibly deflated leaving them painfully defeated and disheartened.

"She'd been doing a lot of work this past week," Ron offered. "But that's nothing out of the ordinary."

"That morning we found her on the couch," Harry said hoarsely. "She was shouting about someone 'coming'."

Ron shook his head angrily. "I thought she was just having a nightmare."

"Hogsmeade." Harry was leaning against the fireplace, the dancing flames reflecting in the curve of his glasses. "She was acting odd that day," he said with a popping from the fire.

"That was the day they came," Dumbledore recounted aloud. His heart felt heavy and his forehead fell against his steepled fingers. "She knew."

Plaster cracked as Ron punched the wall. "Why didn't she say anything?" he hissed in vexation.

"She didn't want us involved," Harry growled, before Dumbledore could even formulate a plausible reason. "Damnit, Hermione." He hit the mantel with enough force to make it shake.

"Harry!" Ron's voice was suddenly frantic. "Harry! The box!"

Harry's mouth went dry.

"Box?" Dumbledore got to his feet.

"Before they took her," Ron was talking too fast. "She said something about a box under her bed. Said it was everything she was working on for the Order."

"We have to go get it!" Harry exclaimed.

Dumbledore nodded. "You must hurry. Retrieve it before the Ministry finds it."

Ron was already out the door. Harry stopped half-way onto the staircase with his hand on the frame. He looked back at his Headmaster and his eyes were cold. "If Hermione goes to Azkaban, sir...I'll never forgive you."

The door slammed shut behind him and Dumbledore sank back down into his chair. He whistled for Fawkes and the phoenix flew off his perch and alighted beside the wizard, nuzzling his beak against his face as he sensed his master's disheartenment. Stroking the silky feathers fondly, Dumbledore could not bring himself to smile at his avian friend.

"Gather the Order," he instructed, and Fawkes nipped at his ear to show his understanding. With a soft screech he took to the air and soared out the window and out of sight.

--

--

Two hours later, the Order had assembled at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, the story had been told, and Molly Weasley was in tears.

"She's only a child, Albus!" She sobbed, blowing her nose in an already tear-soaked handkerchief that had seen far better days. "They're probably torturing her, or worse!"

"Now, now, Molly," Her husband was saying. "No one's torturing anyone. She hasn't done anything that can be proven yet, and even if she had, nothing she's done would warrant such treatment."

Arthur's words calmed the hysterical woman and Dumbledore thought it best not to correct him.

"What's the plan?" Tonks broke in. She was anxiously hopping from one foot to the other and she was unconsciously switching the shades of blue in her hair. "There is a plan right?"

"I've got one of my men in with her right now," Shacklebolt said in his deep voice. "He'll keep anything bad from happening until the trial tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, tomorrow..." Molly collapsed into one of the many chairs shoved around the dining table. "Can't we have more time?"

Moody banged his wooden leg against the floor and hobbled about the table in a disjointed form of pacing. "That lily-livered coward," he barked, magical eye rolling. "He's going to use the lass as an example."

"Poor Hermione," Tonks whispered.

"I told you, Albus," Molly sniffed, from the table behind him. He turned to face her. "I told you she was just a child – she shouldn't have gotten involved!"

Dumbledore turned to Moody. "Alastor, can you find out how much the Ministry knows?"

"Warrant so," he grumbled and disappeared with a POP!

"Mundungus, you go too." The lump of rags at the table stirred to life, and Mundungus Fletcher lifted a bleary head in recognition before he too disapparated.

Molly was still sniffling loudly into her wadded kerchief, and her husband had left her alone, thinking it best to pull the conversation as far away from her as possible. Arthur motioned the rest of the Order to follow him into the adjoining room. He blocked off his wife's loud sobs with a soft closing of the door.

"Albus, Molly is right. We don't have enough time," Arthur said in a low voice, as if his spouse could still hear him through the heavy wood door.

"Emmeline and Hestia have already tried to extend the trial date, but the Wizengamot has refused to see them," Dumbledore informed them.

"But you're Chief Warlock, aintcha?" Tonks piped up.

Dumbledore shook his head. "The auror guard that took Miss Granger this evening passed on a note from the Minister. My position has my suspended until the completion of her trial."

"Bullocks," Elphias Doge cursed. "Fudge really wants this done, doesn't he?"

Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "It does not bode well for Miss Granger."

"But we're gonna get her out, right?" Tonks' bright accent was hesitant. "Dumbledore?"

"We'll do all we can, Nymphadora." The situation was too grave for her to complain over the use of her first name.

"How are the students handling this?" Bill asked. He'd come in from Gringotts when he'd heard Hermione was the subject of the unscheduled meeting.

"They're all understandably confused," Dumbledore said. "I'll have to make an announcement this evening. Severus and Minerva are keeping things in order until my return."

"And her mates?" Tonks pressed. "Harry and the others?"

Dumbledore was without an answer.

--

--

"Harry!" Lily cried as the portrait slammed open.

The Marauders converged on them, but Harry pushed them all out of his way, running to the door hidden beneath the girl's dormitory staircase. "Polaris!" The door cracked open and he shoved it back, Ron on the others hot on his heels.

"Help me move the bed!" He shouted, and James instantly took a spot on the opposite side of Hermione's queen tapestry bed.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" The look-a-likes called simultaneously.

The bed levitated high enough into the air that the posts' decorative tops grazed the vaulted ceiling. Ron was on his belly, crawling underneath the gauzy bed skirt, and kicking up a fine layer of dust. It looked as if it hadn't been disturbed in months and Ron feared that there wasn't a trapdoor after all. He slid his hands all across the floorboards searching for a crack or a bump, or any sign of the secret compartment.

"Harry, I can't find it," he coughed through the dust.

There was the sound of wood on wood and when he glanced around, he found the furniture of Hermione's room to be dancing across the floor. Lily and Remus were directing them all to the far corner, giving James and Harry enough room to set the bed down against the far wall.

Ron sat up and used the better lighting to scan the floor for the trapdoor. Harry dropped down beside him, and copied his earlier actions by running his hands over the rectangle of space Hermione's bed had covered.

Nothing.

"God damnit!" Harry cursed slamming his fists against the floor.

There was an odd thunk!

No one breathed.

Sirius stamped his foot. Thud. He moved it closer to Harry and slammed it down again. Thud. Harry drew back on his heels and the long-haired Marauder slammed his shoe down hard.

Thunk!

"Bombarda!" Remus shouted.

The boards beside Harry exploded in a spray of splinters that made Sirius shield his face. Ron was immediately reaching into the hole and with a twist of his arm he punched upwards and a square section of floor jumped out of place in front of Harry, who dug it out with his fingers and flung it back on its hinges.

Nestled in a perfectly carved square hole, was a spotless white cube no longer than a thumb on each side.

"Bloody hell," James whispered. "It's really here."

Harry was still holding it in his hand when Ron reached out to touch the small cube. The second they were both in contact with it, it flickered white and the top of it disappeared. From within the small container an unbelievable whirlwind exploded outwards, and when it was finished the cube closed again.

Hermione's room was filled with stacks upon stacks of parchments, bookshelves filled to the brim with ancient texts, a giant cedar chest, rare-looking items, boxes loaded with corked potions, and a dangerous assortment of muggle weaponry.

They all stared around the transformed room in disbelief and the cube tumbled from Harry's shocked fingers.

"Gods, Hermione," he whispered. "What were you involved in?"