Chapter 6

Thanks everyone for reviewing, blah blah blah, great effort, really appreciate it, more blahs, I know that you want me to just start the story. Let's go.

Spy's POV

From my unique viewpoint deep in the heart of the Dark Lord's stronghold, I could see absolutely everything that went on. The Death Eaters repeatedly peppering away at magical dummies, the variety and accuracy of their spellwork truly good enough to be one of You-Know-Who's finest. They could get a direct hit from fifty metres away, lop off limbs as if slicing through butter left in the sun, inflict horrible curses with the most casual flicks of their wands, a total lack of disregard for their victims shining through in abundance. All the time as they did it they laughed about what they were doing to the dummies, joking that they were mutilating mudbloods. And to think that I had once agreed with them about blood segregation, made those very same jokes. Just thinking about it left a sour taste on my tongue.

Separated from the Death Eaters were the werewolves, who slept by day and feasted by night. Fenrir Greyback was teaching them to be savage with no limits, building up their appetites for flesh enough that they desired it like he did even when not influenced by the full moon. They were disgusting creatures, no longer bearing any resemblance to the humans that they were supposed to be for most days a month. Greasy hair covered their faces and chests like fur on an animal, with great manes stretching from their scalps to the smalls of their backs. Sharper than a surgeon's knives were their teeth, gleaming dirtily as they opened their mouths to leer repulsively. Their eyes were bloodshot and haggard, always flickering around hungrily as if looking for another target. You could not have told that they were once normal humans like myself, regular people who had attended Hogwarts like me, been sorted into Slytherin like me.

Nobody suspected a thing. Unnoticed in the crowd of people just like me, I slithered around and observed the day to day happenings of the Dark Lord's stronghold. I was greeted in the corridors like a friend, and why should they have thought any different? Throughout my time at Hogwarts I had been just like they were then, persecuting muggle borns with a malicious pleasure, strutting around the corridors as if I'd owned the place and hoping for a day when You-Know-Who overthrew the ministry so that my great house could boast its authority as the most powerful. This, of course, didn't stop my heart from being a constant drum in my chest. Its pulse never seemed to drop to a normal level and the cold fist which enclosed it never let up; the fact that one slip could have betrayed my entire cover story was not lost on me. If anyone saw me sending my owls to my Order of the Phoenix contact every night long after dark, or if one of the cleverer Death Eaters got suspicious at me witnessing their training sessions... well, I was hardly in a secure position.

My task was almost done. After they had killed my best friend, I had sworn to do my best to bring the Dark Lord's side down and restore the old order. My Order contact assured me that the time was nearing, and that whoever won the upcoming battle, it would see the end of one of the sides. In fact, I had been given permission to leave my position if I so desired. Already, I had given the Order the entire layout of the stronghold, details of You-Know-Who's army, all the rumours that I had heard about his aims and everything else relevant that I had observed. Only one thing kept me there: my damned curiosity.

Every evening, Draco would leave to see a prisoner, the name of who was not allowed to be disclosed. It sounded to me that the Dark Lord had set the youngest Malfoy the task of committing atrocities on the poor soul who was kept in that cell, and my crippling curiosity demanded that I know who could be put under such high security, who could be so secret that Draco was not allowed to give me or anyone else any details about him or her. Nobody knew who this prisoner, nor that such a captive even existed. Whether it was the thought that this person's identity could have been important to the Order, or whether it was just my nosiness demanding that I find out, this was the only reason that I was still in that cursed castle and the sooner I found out, the sooner I could leave and try to forget all of the atrocities that I had witnessed.

Fleur's POV

The Burrow kitchen table had turned into the strategy table, with a number of senior members of the Order crammed around a detailed and hand drawn map which Kingsley had laid out. Me, Bill, Percy, Charlie, the Weasley parents and Minerva McGonagall listened carefully to what our leader proposed. It was unfortunate, I reflected, that we were all, apart from Kingsley, so inexperienced in matters such as this. Certainly, I felt out of my depth. Never had I planned for a battle before; I could duel very well, but strategy had never been something for which I had been relied on.

However much I hated to admit it, I knew that we perhaps needed Hermione and Ronald on the strategy team rather than someone like me. Despite their younger ages, they had already experienced more battle than I had and although I was confident that I would beat either of them in a duel, planning for a battle was not something that I was used to. Instead, though, it was me there and them outside with all of the other members practising and teaching about fighting.

"Our operation must be quick." Kingsley explained strategically and to the point, as ever. "Minerva will be dealing with the wards, but she will only be able to keep them down for a limited amount of time, am I right?"

"You are, Kingsley." McGonagall agreed. "You-Know-Who's wards and defences are powerful enough that if you try to walk through the boundaries without permission, you will instantly be incinerated. They are the second most powerful I've ever seen."

Bill, beside me, chipped in. "Which are the most powerful? Hogwarts?"

McGonagall nodded at my husband. "Correct, Mr Weasley, and it is because of my knowledge of the Hogwarts protection that I can keep You-Know-Who's down for some time. You will have only a short amount of time, though, because once he realises that the wards aren't working, he will put them back up again different to how they are now, and I will no longer be able to control them."

"About how long will we have?" Charlie asked, the frown on his face betraying the doubt that he had in the plan so far. I couldn't honestly have said that I disagreed with him.

"That depends." McGonagall replied. "As long as none of you are noticed and the alarm is not sounded, he will not know. The aim must be for everyone to get into position without being spotted. Once the alarm is sounded, I suspect that he will fight rather than think to put the wards back up but if he does, it will take him a few minutes."

Kingsley nodded gravely. "This is how it will work. We will be split into multiple groups and everyone shall approach from a different side. Some groups will attack the barracks, where we know that the Death Eaters are staying, some will keep watch for the werewolves, who should be out hunting, and one group, lead personally by me, will go to You-Know-Who's quarters. Hopefully, we should get to this point without being noticed."

For the first time, I doubtfully made my opinions clear. "I 'ave to say zhat zhis plan appears to 'inge on a lot of luck, Kingsley."

While I wanted to help, for me there was no sense in simply throwing ourselves at the enemy and hoping to win. Getting inside the castle without being noticed seemed like a mission impossible, and then we'd still have to take out all of the patrols quietly as well. If this miracle did occur, then still Kingsley's group would have to defeat the most powerful wizard on the planet. Even five to one, I didn't fancy their chances. There was also a great chance that he would simply put the wards back up as soon as he had the chance and if my knowledge of magical protection was correct, I was pretty sure that it was, then we would all be trapped inside his castle, under his mercy. This was a suicide mission.

Kingsley's eyes flickered over to me before he coolly answered, untroubled by my criticism. "I'm afraid that we have very little choice, Mrs Weasley."

Shuddering slightly at the use of my married name, a name which I desperately wanted to give up, I listened as he continued.

He said, "He gets only more powerful by the day so we cannot dither. Perhaps with time on our side we could come up with something better, but if we want to take him at his weakest then we must strike soon."

"'E will have all of zhe advantages, Kingsley!" I protested, glancing over to our fighters outside. Most of them still looked like kids, some just months past adulthood. Could we really send them to their deaths, letting them think that they actually had a chance to win? "You-Know-Who 'as more fighters, better fighters, 'is castle, zhe wards, zhe werewolves and most importantly, 'im."

Bill lay an awkward hand on my shoulder, putting up the pretence of being a reassuring husband in front of his mother; perhaps he was embarrassed that I was contradicting somebody with years more experience than myself, or maybe he was just tired of the sound of my voice.

Kingsley retorted, "I can assure you, Mrs Weasley, that he will always have these advantages and more to come in the future. We have to just overcome them. But of course, you are welcome to sit this one out if you so wish."

"Yeah," Bill agreed patronisingly, quick to pretend to be concerned about by well being. "Leave this one to the experienced fighters."

He probably hadn't meant for the words to come out like that, but still I growled at the idea of the children training outside being finer duellists than me. At Beuxbatons, I had won the school duelling competition in only my fifth year, and the fact that I had been selected for the Tri-Wizard Tournament only reflected my talents. Perhaps I hadn't given my best performance in that particular event, but I had been chosen because of my superiority over my fellow students at fighting and I would not have anyone forget that. For them to suggest that I stayed out of this one was to suggest that I didn't have it in me, that I wasn't brave or powerful enough. They could go to Hell.

"Of course I am going to fight, Beel." I snapped at him, for the first time displaying my animosity towards him. "Don't try to tell me zhat I'm not an 'experienced fighter'."

The table went silent for a moment, which was perhaps a tribute to how well Bill and I had kept up the impression of being a loving couple; nobody was used to any tension between us.

"What shall zhe groups be, zhen?" I broke the silence, realising my mistake. Mrs Weasley finding out about the problems in our relationship was simply not an option, not unless I wanted to have to have new ear drums fitted.

"Good question." Kingsley replied, happy to put any awkwardness behind us. "The Weasleys, except you, Bill, will all stay together and will lead the attack on the barracks."

"Why everyone else and not me?" Bill questioned concernedly.

"Molly wants to protect all of her children, but you might be needed for a special task. I'll talk about that later." Kingsley responded swiftly. "The next group will be made up of me and my aurors. We will go straight to You-Know-Who's quarters and attempt to battle him. The other two groups will be made up of young DA members, one led by Mr. Longbottom and the other by Miss Lovegood. Each of those teams will have an experienced older member to help them, and they will also attack the barracks."

"What about me and Beel?" I asked, not having heard our names included.

Kingsley's dark eyes ghosted over us. "You two and Hestia Jones will patrol the walls and watch out for the return of the werewolves. I thought that Bill might want to have this task for revenge against Greyback. As well as watching, you will be meeting with the spy and making sure that she gets out of there safely. We think that this attack could blow her cover."

"So she iz a female?" I noticed, picking out the 'she' and 'her' from his sentence. "Might it be 'elpful for us to know 'oo she iz?"

Kingsley shook his head sternly. "She will identify herself by saying a codeword, which is yet to be decided. When she arrives, one of you will immediately escort her back to the Burrow."

We all nodded, our roles decided, and pondered over the mechanics of the plan as our eyes flickered to watch our fighters, who trained hard outside as we thought. Would they be good enough to defeat You-Know-Who's army when the time came in two weeks? Could we really pull this off?

Harry's POV

After two weeks of excessive invasion into my privacy, Draco Malfoy knew my own head better than I did. As he learned more, tearing his way scornfully through my dearest memories of love and friendship, I forgot more as he disconnected and destroyed the retentions with gleeful joy. Great pleasure was derived from watching the intimate moments of my life: that first kiss under the mistletoe with Cho Chang, lazing around with a carefree abandon in the Summer at Hogwarts, the hugs which I didn't get enough of from Sirius. He defiled them all, putting the misery of his life under Voldemort's control to one side in his enjoyment.

Then, he would watch and re-watch the things that I would have preferred to forget. Beatings from the Dursleys, being locked in the tiny space of the cupboard under the stairs, Cedric Diggory's death at the hands of the traitor, Voldemort's return, Sirius falling backwards through the veil as he went to join my dad at last, Dumbledore's slow fall from the ascendancy of his greatness to the coldness of his marble tomb, the bodies of Fred and Remus and Tonks all lined up on the floor or the Great Hall. So much pain, so little joy. That was my life.

Possessing no energy to stop his rampage, I only guarded one secret from his probing of my deepest thoughts and mind. Securely under lock and key, behind the small brick wall of anything happy I could remember, was the secret of the tiny black stone in my pocket. I wasn't going to let him get his filthy hands on that, not on my life.

"Ewww! You kissed the female Weasel!" Malfoy jeered, pulling himself out of my mind like a rabbit emerging from its hole. He sounded like a toddler, something which I would have insulted him about if I'd had that amount of energy; my system was completely empty.

He continued, "Not a lot of happiness in your brain is there, Potter? Pretty bleak in there."

Disgusted by his very presence, my dry mouth tried to spit on the floor ahead of his feet. What I would have done for a glass of water...

The obvious pleasure that he was getting from my pain disgusted me. Already he and his master had brought me to unexplored territories of pain, new boundaries which I doubted anyone would ever experience again. My body was covered in angry scars from their anger; all had bled, for a time, but all had been closed up again so that I wouldn't bleed out. That didn't stop them from hurting like hell for every damned second of the day. Then there was the perpetual pain which lay under the skin, gnawing about at my insides like worms crawling around in the flesh. That was the long term effect of all of the cruciatus curses that had been cast on me.

Other than the muscle aches that I suffered from every time I that I moved and the bruises which coloured my skin an ugly purple from being knocked around a little too much, the other pain was all psychological. My brain was falling apart, memories dropping like apples from a tree and those which remained unable to connect with each other to form any flashbacks of great length. The emotion of compassion, once as strong as any inside me, dripped away like a leaky pipe. I found it hard to think anything positive, remember anything that might have made me that flashed around in my mind were the dreaded images of the tens of bodies sprawled on the floor of the Great Hall, all people who I could have saved, and the expression of surprise on Sirius' face as the fatal curse hit him, forcing him back through that whispering veil. It was like an eternal nightmare, one which I would never awake from.

"Speak when you're spoken to, Potter." Malfoy exclaimed, outraged at me lack of basic manners to my betters. Kicking me around like a pathetic rag doll, he laughed at my helplessness. There was nothing that I could do but let myself be humiliatingly kicked around, my limbs limply hanging at my sides. Somewhere around me, my glasses fell and quietly clanged as their dirty metal frames hit the stone floor. I made no effort to retrieve them; glasses or no glasses, I could see nothing in this darkness.

How was I still sane? How was I still even alive? My body and my psyche had gone through so much; how could they still function at all? Frank and Alice Longbottom, two better people than I could ever be, had succumbed to it eventually and yet somehow, every fibre in my body resisted. It was, in my opinion, most unfair. I had come to associate insanity with a kind of freedom, a liberation which I would have done absolutely anything to achieve.

Hermione's POV

"Keep your arm a little straighter, Neville." I gently reminded the clumsy Gryffindor as he tried to fire a body bind curse at Ron. He had, of course, improved his technique immeasurably since his first years at Hogwarts, when even he had described himself as 'almost a squib'. That had come about from Harry's training at the Dumbledore's Army sessions and now, although he still had the occasional problem or need for a tweak in the technical aspects of his magic, he could duel as well as anyone.

"Yeah, thanks." He blushed embarrassedly at his mistake. "Petrificus Totalus!"

Concentrating hard, he waved his wand in a quick key shape and the bright light erupted from the tip of his wand, flying through the air like a speeding muggle bullet and hitting Ron full on in the chest. Immediately, Ron's arms snapped to his sides and his legs sprang together before he swayed and collapsed to the floor, a frustrated look in his still moving eyes. He hated being used as a dummy, especially in his own back garden.

"Good job, Neville!" I grinned encouragingly before shuddering inwardly as I wondered whether my words could be construed as patronising. How Harry had managed to encourage everyone in such a way that he always seemed genuinely impressed, I would never know. Naturally, he had always been a really good teacher at defence against the dark arts, easily inspiring us as pupils to be passionate about fighting darkness and working wonders on our duelling skills. It annoyed me to think that I would never be as good as he had been, despite the fact that I had read and read up on it and he would have never had to turn a page.

As Neville revived and remobilised my boyfriend, I walked around the group and continued to give tips that I imagined Harry would have. It didn't feel right, usurping my late friend's position when I could never have been as good as he had been.

They were good, all of them far better than people of their age could have been expected to be. Wands waved like clockwork, spells were cast with barely a sound escaping from their casters' lips, blue shield charms absorbed the blows of powerful spells with an apparent ease. These people had been taught by some of the best teachers of this subject in the world, namely Remus and Harry, but also some of the worst. They had seen more action than most fully grown adults, witnessed the horrors of battle and some even the unparalleled experience of watching the spark of life leave a dear friend from childhood. They knew what was required of them, they knew how to fight and each and every one of them wanted more than anything to see the fall of the despised Dark Lord.

But would that be enough?

Another chapter done, another sigh of relief breathed. The time is now twenty six minutes past midnight, but it was worth it to complete this enjoyable piece of writing. Crunch time now, though. Next chapter we have got the bit battle, the invasion that everyone's been waiting for. Most importantly, though, we should have (finally) the meeting between Harry and Fleur. The pairing of this story will start.

I gave you a few clues about the spy this chapter by writing from her POV and telling you that she is indeed a female. I'd imagine that a few of you will work it out but no sweat if you don't, because she'll be revealed next time. Then I blabbed on for a while about Fleur's doubts in the plan, Harry's pain (blah blah) and Hermione's jealously that she's not as good as Harry was at teaching. Boring stuff, really, filler material. Oh well.

Comments are, of course, appreciated. It would be nice to see some fresh faces offer their contributions because I don't want to be purely reliant on the wonders who take the time to do so every single chapter: The Coruscant Veela, Slytherin66, Wolfman613, TangolikeOak.

Thank you everyone so much simply for reading and enjoying (hopefully!) my stories, and an even bigger thanks to those of you who have showed their interest by reviewing. You guys are the best. Expect to hear more from me around mid week.

See you next time!

Bye!

Au revoir

Sorry, that was pretentious.

Just a simple goodbye will do.

Charlie.