Closing Ranks
The next morning, being Thursday the fourth of September, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville had defense Against the Dark Arts after breakfast, which was after their early morning run and dueling practice. While Ginny and Luna joined them on their run and participated in the dueling drills, Mark only ran three laps around the castle grounds and practiced spells with Tonks while the others did battle in the quidditch pitch. Mark was actually progressing quite rapidly for someone his age. There was always the danger of pushing him beyond his limits and damaging his magical core, however, so it was a delicate balancing act they were playing, with Mark's knowledge and approval, by encouraging his magical growth without either asking or letting him do more than he was capable of. Harry had almost panicked when Mark had collapsed on the train in London but Mark seemed to be doing fine and Madam Pomfrey had assured him that she could not find anything wrong with Mark either physically or magically.
When they walked into Defense Against the Dark Arts after breakfast that morning the room, for all intents and purposes, seemed empty. After everyone was seated there was silence for several seconds as they waited for one of the professors to arrive. As the silence dragged on Harry grew suspicious and reached out with his ethereal abilities to get a sense of what was going on. As he scanned the room he discovered that all four professors were standing in the four corners of the room under disillusionment charms. Whispering softly, he said, "Ron, Hermione, Neville! They're in the corners. Disillusionment charms. NOW!"
As the four junior members of the Order of the Phoenix vanished and rolled out of their seat the rest of the students in the classroom threw up shields and assumed defensive postures. Moments later Alastor, then Kingsley then Remus and Tonks dropped their disillusionment charms. "Very good," Moody growled. "I don't know how you figured it out, Potter," he said, his magical eye pinned on Harry, who was crouching behind the teacher's desk, "but you were right. If it had gone on much longer we would have sprung our trap."
Pointing his wand at Harry he said, "You can drop your disillusionment charm and return to your seat, Potter." His electric blue eye darted from Harry to Neville then Ron and Hermione, who were standing back to back off to one side. "You too, Longbottom. Weasley, Granger."
When, after Ron, Hermione and Neville had dropped their disillusionment charms and returned to their seats, Harry hadn't moved Moody walked over and casually shot a stinging hex at his bum. When it passed through his body Moody's eyebrows shot up. Dropping into a fighting stance he began cautiously scanning the room with both eyes while slowly backing into a corner. It took him almost two minutes to find Harry and even then it was little more than a feint outline in the shadows behind Kingsley.
Without warning Alastor fired a stunner at Kingsley. Kingsley dropped and rolled to the side. Harry teleported to the other side of the room and dropped his disillusionment charm, suddenly appearing standing beside Susan Bones. Susan screamed and everyone turned in her direction,
"Very good, professor," Harry said. Then, grinning, looked over at Remus and said, "Never let it be said that Professor Moody is unprankable."
Moody scowled. "Alright, Potter. You got me. Now, how'd you do it?"
As calmly walked down towards the front of the room and then over to his seat he smiled apologetically and said, "How familiar are you with residual energies, Professor?"
Moody growled. "You are referring to the energies associated with residual hauntings as in haunted battlefields, I presume," Alastor bit out.
Harry nodded. "Exactly. What you shot that stinging hex at was a residual. I was there for a few seconds, long enough to establish the energy field, but after that I moved to the darkest corner of the room and reinforced my disillusionment charm." What Harry didn't tell them was that he had a lot of help from Hogwarts and that he had been training for situations like this since the middle of August.
Moody grumbled under his breath for several seconds while Remus snickered behind his hand. Kingsley looked bemused. Tonks, like Remus, looked on the verge of laughing out loud. "Alright, Potter. You've found a way around my magical eye. Just don't get used to it."
When Harry reached his desk he smiled softly. "Constant vigilance, sir."
As he sat down Remus and Tonks both lost it and bust out laughing. Moments later Kingsley's booming laughter joined theirs. Some of the students wanted to laugh but Moody's glare stopped them without much effort. Harry smiled innocently up at his fellow professor and shrugged his shoulders. Moody just scowled and stumped over to the teachers' desk grumbling something about flippant, arrogant show-offs.
When the commotion had died down Moody slammed the palms of both hands down on his desk with such force that many people's wands jumped off their desks and landed on the floor. He had everyone's attention. "Good," he said through a twisted smile. "Now that I've got your attention we can begin."
Stepping back from the desk he began pacing back and forth across the front of the room. "Each and every one of you," he began, "could probably pass portions of the Official Auror Examinations if you were to take them tomorrow. You are all seasoned warriors, more seasoned than most aurors. This past summer you attended Weasley and Longbottom's presentations on Battle Tactics and Procedures. Starting next week these nightly meetings will resume for everyone in fifth year and above. In here you are going to be tested so that we can determine your strengths as well as your weaknesses. In your laboratory classes you will be assigned to teams based upon your abilities. Next month the emphasis in your evening classes will change. You will still be learning your enemy's tactics and how to defend against them but you will also be learning how to defend an assigned position."
It had been decided in their last Order meeting before the end of Summer Training that the students would be trained to fight and defend their positions without telling them that they were training for an actual battle. Those defending Diagon Alley were to be trained to defend several positions so that they could change positions as needed or cover for a team that had been injured, killed or otherwise incapacitated.
It had been further decided that since Ron and Neville were in charge of designing the defenses for the Ministry of Magic, Saint Mongo's, Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, and had a more complete understanding of the death eaters' capabilities than anyone else, the defense teachers would deposit their memories of the examinations in Albus' penseive for Ron and Neville's review. In other words, Ron and Neville would be forming the teams based on their understandings of the death eaters' capabilities and what it would take to defend against and, ultimately, defeat them. The adults were, in essence, serving as little more than advisors while letting a select few students – namely Harry, Ron, Neville, Hermione, Ginny and Luna – run the war.
Over the course of the next several weeks defensive teams were formed and reformed as personalities clashed and abilities were tested and retested under a variety of circumstances. By the end of September all of the fifth- sixth- and seventh-year students had been divided into twenty-one teams of five. Each team would have four designated fighters and one designated healer but they were all being trained to fight both defensive and offensive battles and basic first aide. Five teams were being trained to defend each of the four main targets while Harry's team, which consisted of himself, Neville, Ginny, Luna and Terry Boot, was training to defend Hogwarts itself. When all of the teams were solidified, Ron and Neville went through the first- through fourth-year students to determine which of them were skilled enough to stay and fight and which would be evacuated to the Chamber of Secrets. The heads of the four houses did their parts by determining which students would be in charge of the younger students during the battle. The weekly meetings of Professor Slughorn's Slug Club became the unofficial training ground for these future prefects.
As September turned to October the Wood Elves, High Elves, House Elves and Aurors started training with the students. It was at this point that many of the teams began to realize that they were being trained for an actual battle. Some of the students grew nervous at the thought but all of them applied themselves even more diligently to their studies as well as to their training. Some subjects, such as Ancient Runes, Astronomy, Divination, History of Magic and Muggle Studies suffered because of it but the teachers understood why and tried to tailor their lessons to their students' needs. Even Professor Binns, while not the most flexible teacher at Hogwarts, began lecturing on the battle tactics used in wars past. The teacher who had the hardest time adjusting to the new atmosphere was Professor Trelawney because no one wanted to her predictions of doom and gloom. Her students, even Lavender and Parvati, abandoned her in favor of Firenze who was teaching a much more practical form of divination, which included chess for the younger students.
At midnight on the first of October, after making sure Tom was asleep, Harry went down to his lab in the Chamber of Secrets and, after placing the most powerful silencing charms he could on the room, destroyed the last of the five original horcruxes. Tom was clinging to life now with less than half his soul remaining on the Earth plain, and that being divided into three parts, the part in Harry, the part in Tom and the part in Nagini. This time, however, Harry felt a twinge within himself, almost as if that part of Tom's soul that had attached itself to him had recognized the death of a part of itself.
When Harry checked in on the parasite the next morning Tom was ripping up the floorboards in the Gaunt cabin in a panic. When he couldn't find the ring he flew into a rage, storming into Little Hangleton and cursing anyone who couldn't tell him who had been up to the cabin since the end of June. Harry grimaced every time someone died because he had never wanted this to happen but, perhaps unfortunately, war was not pretty and civilian casualties, even in a war like this, were inevitable. Fortunately Mark had been discrete enough in his activities that no one had suspected him of going to the cabin and their presence in Little Hangleton had been so brief and so long ago that no one seemed to remember that they had even been there.
After either killing or seriously injuring fifteen innocent muggles, effectively blowing his cover, Tom stormed back up to Riddle Manor and brooded over the loss of his second horcrux. Lucius' death served him right for getting his diary – his first horcrux – destroyed; but did they know about the others?
As he sat brooding, alone in what had once been the manor's library, he came to the conclusion that Dumbledore would have most likely come to the conclusion that he had created multiple horcruxes. And, given the old man's reasoning abilities, it was not at all hard for him to imagine that the old goat had figured out where the ring had been hidden. But what of the others, were they safe or had they been destroyed as well? He knew the Lestrange brothers were loyal but there was still the possibility that someone had broken in their vault and stolen the goblet. He would have to have them check on its status. He didn't know what Black had done with the locket and he doubted and one would even think to look at Hogwarts, let alone in the Room of Requirement, for Ravenclaw's lost diadem so he still felt somewhat secure; but the loss of the ring was disturbing.
That afternoon Harry teleported directly into Ragnok's office, essentially blasting through all of Gringotts' wards without setting any of them off. Politely clearing his throat he said, "I don't mean to upset you, sir but this is kind of an emergency."
Ragnok looked up, startled. "Mr. Potter! How did you get in here?"
Harry shrugged his shoulders. He couldn't really explain it so he went with his standard answer. "Trade secret, I'm afraid, I only use it when I absolutely have to and I give you my word that I will not use it against you at any time."
Ragnok nodded. "Very well. Now is this emergency you speak of?"
Harry sighed and sat down across from Ragnok. "Tom knows that the ring is missing and I think he suspects that it may have been destroyed. He is going to ask one of the Lestrange brothers to check their vault to make sure the goblet is still there. I thought you ought to know."
Ragnok nodded. "Thank you, Harry, but the goblet has already been replaced by a goblin-made replica. We made it after consulting with the queen of the faeries." Pausing briefly, he said, "You do know, Harry, that the events you have set into motion have done more to improve interspecies cooperation in the magical world than anything your ministry has done in the past five hundred years."
A quick grin flashed across Harry's face before he bowed his head. "I just hope it's worth it, sir."
Ragnok tried to smile reassuringly. "I wouldn't worry about that if I was you, Harry. You concentrate on getting rid of Tom Riddle, let the politicians and diplomats worry about the improving relations."
Rubbing his eyes tiredly Harry nodded his head and stood up. "Thank you, sir, I will. I've studied politics and diplomacy but I'm afraid it may have all fallen on deaf ears. I am a man of action, you see, and …"
Ragnok laughed a deep, gravely laugh and smiled up at Harry. "Don't worry about it Harry. You get yourself back to school and let me worry about the Lestrange brothers."
Harry nodded. "Thanks," he said and was gone.
While quidditch tryouts had been held on the sixth of September and the primary and reserve teams had been announced on the eighth there had been very few real practices because Victor and Madam Hooch were taking every opportunity to train anyone who could fly (including first-, second-, third- and fourth-year students) in the fine art of aerial combat. The younger students weren't being taught to fight but were being taught how to create distractions and how to out fly their opponents to get out of harm's way. While the younger students who showed promise were being provided Nimbus 2000 or 2001 racing brooms, all of the older students, especially those who had proven themselves in combat, were being outfitted with the new Electra 5000 Battle Series brooms. Fred and George offered to pay for the brooms but the broom companies refused. Even though a very few people outside of the death eater ranks actually knew about the planned attacks it almost seemed as though they were somehow subconsciously broadcasting the need to prepare to anyone willing to listen. It also seemed that just about everyone who had cowered in fear during the first war was either openly or quietly joining the cause.