Chapter 12
"We lost four men in the last raid. They caught us in an ambush just as we apparated in." Moody reported grimly. August had rolled in, and the Order and the Ministry had made only marginal progress. Having analyzed the first war against Voldemort, Harry knew that if Voldemort hadn't disappeared when he attacked him, he would have been victorious.
"We are at a major disadvantage. We know where his forces are, and we can respond immediately, but the fact remains we have less men, less training and less resources." Harry commented.
"I beg your pardon? Are you suggesting Death Eaters are better trained then Aurors?" This was a tactical meeting, so all the active core members were gathered. They were the only ones who knew what Harry was, and it was they who coordinated the various Order cells as well as recruitment. In fact, the Order now had close to three hundred men along with the four hundred Aurors and Magical Law enforcement. Totally, they had about six hundred against Voldemort's four hundred.
"Aurors are trained to subdue, not kill. The fact remains, if we don't change our tactics, we will fail." Harry's grim tone echoed through the suddenly silent room.
"What do you suggest?" Moody asked. He knew Harry had something planned.
"We need to counter the Death Eaters in a way they won't expect. All I need is a hundred men, preferably with some experience in the Muggle world. Give me two, three weeks and they'll be ready to take care of the Death Eaters effectively." Harry explained with a grin.
"Harry, the Order are not soldiers. You cannot expect them…" Dumbledore offered his protests once again, but this time, he and everyone else fell silent at the sight of a knife, buried deeply in the table, right between his fingers. In fact, it had effectively nailed said hand down, preventing him from moving.
"I will say this only once. I respect your power and wisdom, as well as you yourself as a person. But, I have the most military experience here, not you, and if you ever try to interfere in my plans again, I will kill you." Harry's tone remained calm as he stood up and pulled the knife out of the table.
"As I was saying, select one hundred men and have them gather here in three days." Harry pointed at a location on the map. It showed an area somewhere in Wales.
"Why there?" Moody frowned.
"You'll see. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some shopping to do." With that, he stood back up and walked out of the room.
"What the hell are we doing here? I thought we were supposed to be training." One of the Order members protested as he saw Moody pass by.
"We're waiting for your instructor. It won't be long now." With that, Moody hobbled away before the man could say anything further.
It wasn't long before the crowd could hear a slowly approaching rumble, and more then one jumped on his feet, wand in hand. To their surprise, the source of the sound was three large Muggle trucks along with a jeep. The Muggleborn in the crowd recognized the military tarps and markings, which only added to their confusion.
Moody and Shacklebolt watched in curious awe as Harry Potter got out of the jeep, talked with the drivers of the trucks a bit, then, to the surprise of the Aurors, the men saluted him, and after Harry returned the salute, the three drivers got into the jeep and drove away.
"What the bloody hell, Potter?" Moody growled.
"Compliments of her Majesty's Army, Moody. Please tell the Minister to mention to the PM we borrowed some equipment from the army." Harry grinned widely.
"You borrowed what exactly, and how did you manage it? I know for a fact that getting military equipment is not easy." Shacklebolt asked with a frown.
"Give me some credit, Kingsley, I am a trained infiltrator after all. I had the right forms, the right orders and the right papers. Now, let me show you what good old Saint Nick brought you kiddies for Christmas." With a grin, he moved to the trucks, pointing to each as he spoke. "Weapons and explosives, ammunition, uniforms and auxiliary equipment."
While the two Aurors were busy picking their jaws from the ground, Harry used a Sonorus charm to address the other Order members.
"Excuse me everyone, sorry to have kept you waiting, but we are now ready to begin your training. First, unload everything from the trucks, but before you do, I will ask you to surrender your wands."
This was met with shouts of outrage from all over the crowd.
"You mean we can't use magic? I thought we were here to learn how to fight." One man was the most vocal.
"You are here to learn how to win a fight. Tell me, what is the maximal distance that you can hit a man reliably with a spell?" Harry asked.
"About thirty feet." The man's tone held pride at the fact.
"Pretty impressive." Harry grinned and went to the boot of one of the trucks and returned with a handgun in his left hand and a rifle in his right.
"This is a Browning handgun. A trained user can hit a target from a hundred to a hundred-fifty feet." With that, Harry aimed the gun at a rock that was about a hundred feet from him and fired. The bang startled more than one person, and the mark that the gun made in the rock was startlingly obvious to the assembled wizards and witches.
"This is the SA80 rifle. A trained user can hit a target at over a thousand feet." Seeing the disbelieving faces in the crowd, Harry aimed the rifle at a small tree over a thousand feet away and fired three shots which easily tore off the top branches of the tree.
"Each of you will be given a Browning pistol and trained in its use, as for the rest of weapons, you will first be divided into squads of ten where some will be using the SA80, while others will be using different weapons. And lastly, ten of you will be trained for sniper rifles. Now, hand over your wands to Moody and Shacklebolt and start unloading the trucks. You will find tents and bed rolls in that truck. I want a camp set up by nightfall." Harry explained, but after a minute, nobody had moved yet. With an annoyed expression, Harry fired a shot in the air which shook the group out of their stupor.
"Get to it before I shoot you. You will set up the camp in two hours or you will not get any food." Harry shouted.
"You can't do that." One woman grumbled as she and her friend carried several bed rolls to the clearing.
"You are here because you felt that the Death Eaters are wrong, and you wanted to stop them. Am I wrong?" Harry's voice was almost a growl as he bore down on the woman, who had shrunk down and was shivering a bit.
"No sir." She managed to stammer out.
"Then you will follow my instructions to the letter, and I promise you, once you're done here, it is the Death Eaters who will be afraid." Harry grinned widely. "Now, carry on."
The trucks were unloaded and the camp set up with over thirty minutes to spare, and while the crowd was resting and eating dinner, Harry spent time going through the camp, talking with each individual, trying to determine their role in the platoons.
Harry had also spent some time discussing certain equipment requirements with Sirius, who recruited Remus, Hermione and the Weasley twins in the creative process and together, they managed to provide Harry with what he needed. Combined with some Lantrisi spells, Harry had everything he needed for his little army.
The first few days were the hardest since Harry had to carefully explain how to correctly use the weapons they were going to use, as well as going over the safety instructions several times until he was sure everyone understood them. The next obstacle was getting the rather lazy wizards and witches into a proper physical shape. It was not nearly as rigorous as what the Muggle army demanded, but there was still a lot of complaints and glares aimed at Harry.
"How are they coming up?" Moody asked as they sat, observing the various teams training across the clearing. The two weeks of intense training showed in the groups, and for the first time in many years, Moody felt like they had a chance in this war.
"We'll be able to field the snipers out tomorrow. I suggest putting two pairs each on an eight hour rotation in both Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, with a pair standing by as a reserve. That way, if the Death Eaters try anything, they'll get a real surprise." Harry grinned. He had replaced the bullets in the sniper rounds with kershin metal instead of lead. Kershin was a complex alloy that while very difficult to produce, especially on Earth, didn't require any extraterrestrial materials. It was basically metallic impact explosive. A hit in the head or torso guaranteed very messy results, since a single bullet had the explosive force of one stick of TNT.
"And the rest of the teams?" Moody asked.
"They'll be ready by the end of the week." Harry replied. Each team was divided into three parts. Two squads with four men each, and a pair consisting of a medic and communications and observation specialist. The latter also served as the CO of the team. Sirius had used parts of the enchantments present on special mirrors he and Harry's father used during their school days to design something like magical radios. Each teammate had a short necklace and an earring which served as a mouth and ear piece. Also, they made maps, linked with their large one that allowed their teams to monitor, in real time every person in the engagement zone.
The two squads were all armed with Brownings, two grenades each, three SA80's and one of them was carrying a Minimi light machinegun. Also, the teams managed to enchant the weapons, eliminating recoil, reducing their weight and silencing them. With this equipment and their training, Death Eaters would find themselves badly surprised during their next raid.
Their opportunity came during the last week of August. While Harry was busy training the Phoenix Army, as they now called themselves, the rest of the Order and the Ministry were fighting a losing battle against the Death Eaters, with innocent Muggles usually caught in the crossfire.
"Muggle filth. You should be happy we're cleaning your taint from this world." One Death Eater sneered at the cowering family before him. The fear on their faces was the sweetest part for him. Just as he raised his wand to kill the Muggles, his head suddenly exploded like a dropped ripe melon and he collapsed on the ground to the shock of the two men that were standing with him. They didn't have time to react as they too were gunned down.
The Muggle family watched in relief as a man wearing a British army uniform stepped inside, gun still held aimed before him as he scanned the house.
"Area clear. I have four survivors here." The man spoke once he was sure that there was no more danger.
"Proceed to the house two doors down. We have three more targets confirmed there." A faint voice could be heard coming from his ear.
"Understood. Connors out." The soldier turned to leave.
"Wait. What's going on here?" The man of the house asked, wondering what the hell was going on.
"Your town is under terrorist attack, sir. Remain indoors, a relief team will arrive as soon as the threat has been neutralized." With that, Connors walked out, ready to gun down more Death Eaters. 'This is for you, Andrea.'
Unprepared for the sudden and brutal counterattack, only one Death Eater managed to get out.
"We were ambushed." The man managed to groan out to his comrades before the two rounds in his chest finished their job and finally killed the man.
Voldemort was in an uproar at this catastrophic failure, and ordered more attacks to compensate, but to his growing horror, all the attacks were stopped with the Death Eaters suffering heavy casualties every time. It didn't take long to learn the reason behind these failures. The Phoenix Army had gone public, and while for the most part, reactions were mixed, a lot of people approved on the active role the Army had taken in the war.
Faced with this unexpected opposition, Voldemort and his servants went to ground, and while this emboldened his enemies, Harry warned them against attacks on Voldemort at this time.
"It is still too soon to launch counterattacks. His bases have too many men and protections. We'd just be throwing away good men and women." Harry replied firmly at the requests for attacks. In the meantime, the Phoenix Army took on protective detail for several important magical locations, like the Ministry, St. Mungo's and Hogwarts.
Following the wake of this, Harry's return to Hogwarts was a rather calm event. True, most people stayed clear of him, since the rumors of his actions in the Department of Mysteries, as well as rumors passed from those with relatives in the Army painted a rather intimidating picture of him.
"Harry, I've been meaning to ask you something. I know you're a lot older then us, so, what I wanted to know was have you ever been with a girl?" Ron asked nervously. While Harry didn't interact much with him, over the summer they had at least started to talk from time to time, most often over a game of chess, and while Ron had yet to win a game, he did not give up on hope.
"Yes. What exactly do you want to know? Techniques, positions, or something else?" Harry grinned as Ron started to blush a deep scarlet.
"Something like that, yeah." Ron stammered, trying to phrase his questions while considering Hermione and Ginny who were also sitting with them.
"How many girls have you been with, then?" Ginny joined in the discussion.
"Counting one-night-stands, and junior officers pushing for promotion, eight-hundred-seventy-six different girls." At this, everyone was staring slack-jawed at him.
"I am not worthy." Ron fell on his knees as he bowed in reverence.
"It's hardly impressive. I know men and women who've had thousands of partners." Harry grinned as he managed to shock them again.
"Lantrisi are pretty hedonistic, aren't they?" Hermione commented.
"Some more then others. Eternity weighs heavily, Hermione. We each find our own way of handling it." Harry shrugged. "I'll be happy to give you some tips later Ron."
The start of the year went on with little excitement for the Hogwarts students as Voldemort laid low, trying to figure out how the hell the Phoenix Army was responding to his attacks so quickly, and also he needed a way to counter the advantage of the Army's weapons.
This all changed during the first Hogsmeade weekend. The weather was horrible, the snowfall was heavy, and it was very close to a blizzard. Just as Harry and his group of friends were about to enter the Three Broomsticks, Harry and Hermione both tensed and warily turned around, scanning the area.
Moments later, out of the blanket of snow obscuring their view, two figures began to emerge. One of them was tall, while the other only reached to the waist of the first.
"Sophia." Harry whispered in shock as the most beautiful woman they had ever seen stopped before them.
"Daroth." The woman smiled lightly at his shocked expression.
"What are you doing here?" He asked once the surprise passed.
"I just wanted to introduce my son to his father." She grinned widely as she pushed the boy standing next to her forward. While his face had the sharp, predatory lines of the Deathhand line, his hair was a lot messier, and his eyes shone a brilliant, emerald green.
Harry did what any man would do in such a situation. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he promptly fainted.
AN/ Hope you liked it. Things are about to heat up as we slowly move further and further away from cannon. Hopefully, I'll manage to get another chapter out this week. Until then, have fun