Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. All is Jo's.

Author's Note: Thanks, as always, to Yolanda, who irons out my rough spots. And thanks to my reviewers, who stick around even when I go way too long between updates.

TSS

Chapter 16 – Uncommon Bonds

Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys somehow managed not spend every free moment between Sunday's meeting and Tuesday's lesson speculating about what Professor Lively would be teaching them. However, in between attending Quidditch practise (Harry and the Weasleys), finishing homework (everyone), getting yet another round of detentions (the twins), reading three books outside those assigned (Hermione), "bickering like an old married couple" (Ron and Hermione, as described by Fred, who received a nasty Jelly-Legs Jinx for his pains), and a few minor activities like eating and sleeping, they did wonder. Lively hadn't given them much to go on, though; she had asked only that they arrive at her classroom promptly at the end of dinner. "No books necessary; just your wands," she had said. So when the six students arrived at the Defense classroom on Tuesday evening, it was with very little idea of what they'd be doing.

They found Krum and Professor Lively examining an oddly-shaped wooden object that, after a moment, Harry recognised as a blank artist's palette. Krum and Lively looked up and greeted the students with, respectively, a nod and a smile.

"Temporary Portkey," Lively explained, gesturing toward the palette. "It's just taking us to the Great Hall; that's the only place in the castle that's large enough for our activities tonight. I'd have had you meet me there, but I didn't want to attract attention. Anyway, everyone gather 'round my desk and get a finger on the palette." The students obeyed, and, about twenty seconds later, they landed in the Great Hall, Professor Lively and Krum on their feet and the students in a heap.

"Portkey work is on the list of things to practise later," the professor teased as she watched her charges attempt to get back on their feet. "For today, though, we'll be working on getting you familiar with the Bond. Now, I should warn you right away that I'm probably not the ideal person to teach this lesson. I'm a new Order member, too, so the Bond is as new for me as it is for you. However, some of the spells that I learned in MG training have similar effects, and I think the techniques that we used to learn to handle those spells should work for the Bond.

"The first step to learning to control the Bond is learning to be aware of your fellow Order members. Eventually, I want you to be aware of all the other members at all times. However, that takes a good deal of practise, and we'll need to work up to it. Today, we'll focus on being aware of a few other members, all of whom are fairly nearby. The first activity for tonight is a bit like hide and seek. You'll all be blindfolded, and I'll cast a Selective Silencing Charm so that you'll be able to hear Mr. Krum and me, and we'll be able to hear you, but you and your fellow students won't be able to hear each other. Then, Mr. Krum and I will place you in different spots around the room. Once we have you positioned the way we want you, I'll ask one of you to find a particular other student and pass my palette off to that person. Since you can't see or hear, you'll have only your Bond with that person to help you. Oh, and we'll Levitate the tables and benches out of the way so you won't run into them. Are there any questions?"

There were none, so Lively set the students to Levitating the furniture out of the way. Once they were finished, Lively cast the Silencing Charm while Krum conjured five blindfolds. After all of the students were blindfolded, Harry felt a hand on his arm guiding him to a particular spot in the Hall. "Here, Professor Lively?" Krum's voice enquired.

"Yes, just there." At Lively's confirmation, Krum moved away, presumably to place another student in the right spot. A few moments later, Lively's voice, right beside Harry, broke the silence again.

"Now, you're all in position. Harry, take this," she said, placing the palette in Harry's hands, "and give it to Hermione."

Harry nodded. He stood for a moment, trying to use the Bond to sense Hermione's presence. There she was; if he was standing at the Ravenclaw table (and he thought he was), then she was down at the far end of the Hufflepuff table. Not far. Harry stepped off in what he thought was Hermione's direction. After he had gone about ten steps, though, he trod on something that felt suspiciously like a shoe. "Sorry," he said with a sympathetic wince.

"Remember, Harry, that your fellow students can't hear you," Professor Lively reminded him. "If you want to tell the person you just tripped over that you're sorry, you'll have to find another way to do it."

Right, then, Harry thought. If they were doing Bond work, he reckoned he'd have to use the Bond. He thought about the strands of light that had connected all of the Order members to one another at the Binding, and he tried to visualise the strands that connected him to Hermione and the Weasley children. As he called the mental image to mind, the threads seemed to change lengths. The one connecting him to Ron seemed very short, as though there wasn't much distance between the two of them. So that was Ron, Harry said to himself. He concentrated on that Bond, and he mentally reached out along it to Ron. Yes, that was Ron; his toe hurt where Harry had stepped on it. Harry pushed a little harder at the Bond, trying to will a message of apology along the Bond to Ron. In a few moments, he sensed a bit of amusement from Ron, a feeling that his apology had been received and accepted. Although no words had passed between them, Harry knew that he and Ron had understood one another perfectly.

Harry also knew that he couldn't just concentrate on finding Hermione; if he wanted to avoid squashing more Weasley toes, he'd have to know where all of his fellow students were. This time, as he slowly made his way toward Hermione, he kept the picture of the connecting strands in his head, and he paid attention to the way they shifted. George is very close by—just to the left, I think, so better step this way—and Fred is over there where the Slytherin table ought to be, and, really, they aren't hard to tell apart at all when you're using the Bond instead of looking at them. By keeping careful track of his five friends, Harry finally made it to Hermione's side without bumping into anyone else. As he reached out a hand to pass the palette to Hermione, he felt a triumphant grin raise the corners of his mouth. He'd done it.

"Excellent work, Harry," Professor Lively said. "Now, you stay there in Hermione's spot, and, Hermione, you find George."

Harry felt Hermione's sleeve brush past, marking her departure, and he tried to keep picturing the connecting strands, watching as the strand between himself and Hermione grew longer as she moved across the room. She found George without apparent difficulty, and Professor Lively moved the lesson along, instructing George to find Ginny. After all the junior members had taken a turn at finding one of their fellows, Professor Lively and Viktor repositioned them all at new spots in the room. Then, Lively gave them instructions for the next part of their lesson.

"This is a bit trickier," she said. "Last time, the person doing the searching was the only one moving; everyone else was staying still. This time, you're all going to be moving at the same time, so you'll have to take extra care to keep from running into each other. This time, I'll put you in pairs, and then you will all, at the same time, attempt to find the other half of your pair."

Professor Lively cast a Duplicating Spell on her palette, creating two copies of it. She handed the palettes to Harry, Fred, and Ginny, who were to pass them off to Ron, Hermione, and George.

It occurred to Harry, as he picked his way through the maze of his friends to pass his palette off to Ron, how silly they would all look to an observer. Six blindfolded teenagers, stumbling around a room full of levitating furniture and trying not to trip on one another—they must have looked ridiculous. However, the activity seemed to be doing its job. All of the junior Order members found their partners successfully (and without crashing into one another). When Lively re-paired them with different people, Harry felt the Bond becoming more natural. By the time he was paired with Fred, his fifth and final partner, he hardly had to concentrate at all: Finding Fred by using the Bond was as easy as finding Fred by looking at him or listening to him.

Professor Lively removed the Silencing Charm and the blindfolds. Once Harry's eyes had adjusted to the light, he could see his friends looking as pleased as he felt. The Bond was working for them, too.

"Good work, everyone," Lively said. "Excellent, in fact. You're catching on very quickly. Let's head back to my classroom to wrap up."

A Portkey trip sent them back to the Defense room, where they picked themselves off the floor and then sat down to listen to the professor. "That was a very promising start," she said. "Now you know a bit of what it feels like to use the Bond with a particular purpose in mind.

"Our purpose tonight, though, was a relatively easy one. You were in close proximity to one another, and you were only concerned with a handful of other Order members. Eventually, I want to you to be able to know where all of your fellow Order members are, whether they're in the room with you or a thousand miles away. To be able to do that will take time and practise. To that end, I have some homework for you. Every night this week, before you go to sleep, check in on your fellow Order members. Use the skills that you learned tonight to make contact with each Order member, and get some idea of where they are in relation to you. It shouldn't take long, and it should get to be pretty easy, but it's important. Any questions?"

"I can think of some Order members who won't much like being checked in on," Fred opined.

"It is my hope that everyone in the Order has enough maturity to realise how important it is for all of you to become familiar with the Bond." Fred and George each raised a sceptical eyebrow, and Harry didn't have to use the Bond to know that both were doubting that "maturity" and "Snape" were concepts that belonged in the same sentence. Harry tended to agree with that doubt, but he kept his sceptical expressions to himself.

Lively shot the twins a brief look that instructed them to let the matter drop. She then continued, "Although you should be safe here at Hogwarts, we know that our security has, in the past, been breached. If that were to happen again and one of you were taken, your best chance for survival could hinge on your ability to control the Bond."

The students were quiet for a moment, considering the gravity of Professor Lively's warning. Ron, sounding uncertain, broke the silence to ask, "What about times when we can't control it? Like the time Professor Dumbledore was talking about, when Professor Lupin got Stunned before he had time to use the Bond. That time, it worked anyway."

Lively nodded. "And you're wondering why you need to learn to control it if it works anyway. A good question. Basically, you need to learn because we don't know precisely how the Bond works. It may be that the Bond works automatically, by itself, in which case practise and work are a bit beside the point. However, it may be that the Bond calls on each wizard's store of knowledge and skills, in which case wizards tied together by the Bond would be well served by increasing their store of knowledge and skills. Remus Lupin, for instance, is extremely skilled at Defence. It's quite possible that the Bond was drawing on his abilities in that area even when the conscious part of his mind wasn't functioning. Does that make sense?"

At the students' nods, she continued, "And, of course, there are the times when you will want to use the Bond consciously; for those, some previous practise will prove very helpful." Smiling at them all, she concluded, "So go practise. Every day. And be prepared for Mr. Krum to put your skills to the test next week. Now, you'd better get back to your Common Room; it's getting late."

She opened the door to usher them out; the students each gave a start of surprise when confronted by Mad-Eye Moody, who was standing just outside the door, his magical trunk by his side. "Good timing, Lively," he said in his usual gruff way. "I was just about to knock. Brought you those Dark detectors you wanted to show your sixth-years." Without waiting for an invitation, Moody stumped in, levitating the trunk behind him, and closed the door. He pointed his wand at the door and then waved in a complicated pattern, muttering incantations under his breath. The door glowed blue, then red, then silver. "Nice Anti-Eavesdropping Charms. Glad to see somebody learned something in Auror training. I did bring you some Dark detectors to show your sixth-years, but they're mostly window dressing. The important thing I brought is that Crouch boy."

"Where is he?" Professor Lively asked, looking about as if she expected Moody to whisk away an invisibility cloak. She looked in the direction of Moody's gesture and burst out with, "Godric's paintbrush, Moody! Even if he hasn't got a soul, the CAMMPs would have your eyes if they knew you were hauling the boy around in a trunk!"

Moody defended his method of transportation as "poetic justice, Lively. Little hell-spawn kept me locked in that trunk for nine whole months, and what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the griffin. Besides, it was the best way to get him here without arousing suspicion. Never know who'll be watching when I come calling at Hogwarts, and the CAMMPs are the least of my concerns. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

Professor Lively rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Indeed. Well, let's get that trunk to my private quarters. Goodnight, all." She sketched an abstracted wave at Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys and motioned for Moody to follow her.

Viktor Krum, at Lively's elbow, said something to her too low for Harry to hear. When she nodded, he joined the students. "It is getting late," he said. "I vill valk vith you back to your Common Room." He fell into step behind the group. As they made their way back toward Gryffindor Tower, Harry asked Ron what "camps" were.

"It's C-A-M-M-P. Stands for Committee Against the Mistreatment of Magical Prisoners," Ron replied. "Bleeding-heart fringe group that feels sorry for all the poor, mistreated Death Eaters rotting in Azkaban where they belong."

"That's completely unfair, Ron," Hermione interrupted. "They just think that everyone who's accused of a crime is entitled to basic civil rights. If people had actually listened to the CAMMPs last time instead of slinging mud at them, innocent people like Sirius wouldn't have gotten locked up without a trial, and…."

Hermione appeared to be building up to a SPEW-worthy rant, but Krum interrupted quietly. "There vos a branch of their group in Russia in the last vor, and the government ordered that they be executed as traitors. Some of the vons who got avay settled in Bulgaria. Von of them lives in my village. He is a good man."

"Why Bulgaria?" Hermione asked, successfully distracted. "They don't share a border."

Krum smiled ruefully. "Because it vos as far avay as they could go vith home-made emergency Portkeys. Also, they knew that the Bulgarian government vos in too much disorder to care about them. After the last vor, it vos … very bad. I cannot remember much of it, but I know that many people vere hungry, and many people had no homes and no jobs. The political beliefs of a few Russian refugees did not matter so much to people who vere trying to rebuild their villages and their lives. So long as they vere villing to help vith the rebuilding efforts and they did not eat more than their share of food, they vere velcome." He shrugged. Then, with a gesture toward the portrait of the Fat Lady, he said, "And on that cheerful note, I must bid you a good evening. I vill see you in class on Thursday." He nodded politely and then strode away in the direction of the dungeons.

Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys gave the password and climbed through the portrait hole. Fred and George immediately made a beeline for Lee Jordan, while Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny headed for an empty table a little removed from the others. When they sat, Ginny, apparently still thinking about Krum's words, said, "It was bad everywhere in the last war, wasn't it? Not just here in Britain, but…." She trailed off.

"…Everywhere," Harry finished. In his head, he added, And now it's starting again, but the thought was too gloomy to say aloud. But, as he worked on his deadly dull History of Magic essay, his mind continued to wander back to Krum's description of hungry people and broken villages. Not again, he thought. Not this time. This time, the Order had formed early. They were ready to fight, and they had plans and strategies. Since they knew what it had been like before, it wouldn't be unexpected this time. So maybe, just maybe, they could keep it from being that way again.