Ron had everything ready, and he had announced the plan to the rest of the group. The three of them were standing on the manor's back porch, looking out over the grounds.

"So... you're going back... alone, and you're going to die there?"

"If it's anything like Hermione thinks, I'll be able to escape," he said. "I'm not so optimistic. I wish I could tell you all what it was, but I can't. It's not because there's one of you I don't trust; it's because you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

They had not told anyone that Harry had a mental connection with Voldemort. Though the members of the new DA were bound to loyalty until death, the three of them fundamentally had no way of guessing how everyone would react to the information, and there were holes in their own understanding of it. If they said anything about it, it would only sound like they were lying, coming up with a weird story to cover up something more believable. It was frustrating for him more than anyone else, he was sure, but he could tell from their expressions that they were not happy with the fact they were being left out of the plan, though it was pointless if he revealed he was in the same position.

"Ron, I can't allow this. I've always thought of you as a friend," Neville said. "I don't care if you tell me what the plan is or not. Just tell me that there's an escape route."

"I've asked Professor McGonagall to provide him with a portkey," Hermione said after a moment. "She told me that while she was Headmistress, the magic of the school allowed her to create portkeys that went in and out of it, and she was quick to take advantage of the opportunity. They never expire, so he'll be able to use it any time."

"What's most important is that I don't use it too soon," Ron said, his expression not having improved. Did he suspect that he would never get a chance to escape? Did he believe that the incoming administration would be clever enough to change the locks, as it were, to prevent the use of already created portkeys? "This is the last chance we have to do anything inside of the school. I've accepted dying, but obviously it's better if I live."

It was a wonder if the solemnity with which he spoke meant anything to everyone listening. He had said that if he died, that would be the last wake up call anyone needed to effect that they were in a real war. Did they not already believe that, though? For what other reason had they been training?

"What you will do well to remember is that there are more resources to extract from within the school than just yourself," Hermione practically whispered. It sounded like a discussion that they had had a few times already. "You don't have an excuse to be so self-defeating or whatever it is."

No one said anything right away. It was true that they had sprung the plan on everyone else. Some of them probably still had thought that they were going to Hogwarts themselves, and the three of them had only just explained that it would not be possible.

"Why you?" Blaise said. "If there was anyone who wouldn't leave Potter behind, and I hope that you do not delight in this too greatly, I would think it would be you. Wouldn't I be the better choice?"

"That's not the narrative we're trying to get people to believe," Ron said, having thought a moment. "If someone asks where everyone else is, I'm not going to say anything. I'm not trying to convince anyone that I turned on Harry." He took a breath. "That brings me to the other part of why I can't ask anyone else to do this. No one is going to believe that I'm not up to something. I'm going to be watched every breath I take and the only way of getting this done is to act quickly. I have to get it done before they stop me, and I'm hoping that portkey gets me out of there, but if it doesn't, I die."

It was obvious to him at least that his friend was accounting for the chance that he failed or got caught in the process, and then someone tried to get him to betray the DA, which would kill him. At that point, the curse would turn into a mercy, giving him a way out of what he would otherwise endure, and they had already certified that a rescue when the enemy was already on guard would be even more difficult than a general infiltration. Though Hermione had insisted on avoiding that choice with the Imperius, Ginny had told her that was not possible, and the others on the dark magic team agreed.

"Basically, there are two components," she had said. "There's your skill with the curse and the strength of your will and there's only so much one can make up for the other. People who are under the curse- if they aren't still fighting it- have a listless, detached look about them. It's easily recognized. There's also only so much you can get them to do by themselves before they need more instruction. You can try to plan everything out in advance, but just imagine trying to do that for yourself when you don't know exactly where you're going or what you're doing. One of the hardest things is getting through crowds without drawing attention to yourself."

It was with that they were at a point with no other options. Harry still did not know the reason that they contacted McGonagall at all, before they even knew about the portkeys. The point of contention for her had been the fact that if the school was not, in fact, a death trap, then none of them would be getting anything out of it, and it would be common knowledge that his gang had divorced itself from society. Ron would have a lonely term probably find himself targeted by the students who had taken positions at odds with his own, but those were all nice problems to have in his estimation.

"There's one thing I can't figure out," Hannah said after a moment in which everyone seemed to consider the implications of the plan. "How are Voldemort's minions going to train their kids by sending them to learn nothing at Hogwarts?"

"It's more complicated than just that," Daphne said. "There are only a handful of students currently enrolled who have any relation to active Death Eaters." She took a deep breath. "Not all of them are convinced of the cause themselves." What was so strange about saying that? Was there something significant to it that he was missing?

"It's in the enemy's best interest to keep acting like nothing's wrong," Hermione said. "Even though they probably don't enjoy working with someone who will probably be just like Umbridge, if they were to remove their children from school, it would be a signed confession that they needed to be trained in combat skills, not just study the theory. The fact that we're doing this means that Harry's not just looking for attention."

Out of all the things he had considered over the last few days, that had not been one of them. He had only been desperate to try to think of some way that his friend could live, and at the end when it seemed that all they could do was hope the initial circumstances were better than he estimated, and trust in him to get out of there. The fact, however, that he had taken a step that probably no one who just wanted attention would have taken, had a chance of changing things for the average person. He was not exactly banking on a general uprising, but the responses that had been considered possible started to seem more likely.

"What are the rest of us doing, then?" Michael asked. "Is it more of the same?"

"There are many important things we have not covered," Ernie said after a moment. "I should hope that we continue with our combat training, as it were, but too much more of the same will avail us progressively less as time goes by. Let us hope that if we have enemies of our age, they shall be confined to the castle indefinitely."

"That's a decent idea," Terry said. "If we were to prevent their escape in response to our own never having shown up, we could gain an entire year of training on them."

"You're assuming too much," Ron said. "We have to fight their parents, not just them. It'd be nice if we all lined up generation by generation, but I don't think the Death Eaters would be that fussed to kill most of our parents first. My brothers say there are real Ministry employees who can't cast a shield charm. Damn wonder Umbridge didn't think practical skills would be necessary."

No one had a response to that. The Weasleys were probably more capable than most, having to do most things around the house by waving their own wands, and having had to maintain order in a house where magic was permitted at all times as a means of practicing. As far as everyone else went, though, he would be pleasantly surprised to find anyone who had not basically stopped using magic. The way his friends explained it, minimizing the use of the wand was like optimizing the route to work. It was not that people were doing it consciously; it was no different than any other inconvenience or risk that no one actively wanted. As a result, the general population was probably pretty nonplussed when they heard that the new educational program was effectively gutting the use of wands; they probably ranged from totally indifferent to thinking that the kids could stand to get used to the idea.

"Every plan we make will include you," Harry said. He knew Hermione could hear him just as well. "Don't even think about making us write all that out again a second time."

"Don't be sitting around while I'm at school," Ron said. "There's plenty that you can be doing while I'm there. I'll get it done as soon as I can, but don't just wait for me to get back."

Doing exactly that had crossed his mind. Even if his friend did not get captured, there was a circumstance where he was running because the portkey failed and it would help him to have an extraction. Having been preoccupied with the plan, he had not practiced Apparation, but it was all Harry could do; it gave him an excuse to wholly focus himself on one thing and not think about the chance that he was going to lose his friend, who had come to him once when he was practicing, ruining his plans.

"You're getting good at that," he said.

"I've been trying to go further, but if I really use it in combat, I need to be able to go faster," he said. "Did you have something you wanted to say without Hermione around?"

"Yeah." He looked down a moment. "Ginny really likes you. I know you two talk sometimes."

"I didn't have any idea. I thought she'd be embarrassed if she hadn't gotten over me."

"Well, she didn't really know who you were a few years ago, so you were prob'ly right to not think much of it then. Don't ask me why, but somehow she likes you even though she knows you better."

"Oh, come off it. I'll bet my broomstick it's because you've been singing my praises for years."

He laughed. It was a rare expression. If it had not been clear enough that his friend was asking him to take care of his younger sister if he died, he could see it in the way the laughter faded from his face. It was not totally out of left field, exactly, but it was probably hard for him to have envisioned such a conversation taking place before.

"I'll look after her," he said. "I can't promise that she won't come to harm... I can't promise that about anyone. Do you want me to say she'll have special treatment?"

"No. I... it sounds daft even saying any of this. She'd never forgive me for it if she knew. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest, mate. I just want you to be there for her. It makes a difference, that it's you."

"I promise," he said. It was easy, the way they switched from joking around to perfect sincerity. "You've said you can't promise to come back alive, but I want you to know we need you."

That was the last either of the two of them about the matter had said before putting up a united front against everyone else who disagreed with it. No one liked it, but then, neither of them liked it, and for that reason there was at least a decent chance that the enemy would not expect it. The only Weasley to go to Hogwarts for several years, Ron would probably have something of a lonely trip, taking the floo to the Leaky Cauldron, then walking to the train station and trying not to be spotted at any point before getting to the school at the earliest. Would he feel like he was finally out of the shadow of his elder brothers? Would that be what he wanted?

"There's another announcement before we get into our training exercises," Hermione said, bringing him back to the present with everyone else. Harry had not seen this coming, but he supposed it was fair. Daphne joined them on the back porch.

"There was an offer for my father to join the Death Eaters, but before he could so much as write a return letter, another arrived to rescind the first. It is a rather obvious trick to get him to think that some suddenly acquired detail was enough to get them to reject him, to get him curious, and he told me that it was a way of testing the waters. As I have been missing from certain social gatherings this summer holiday, perhaps they already suspect that I have been up to something else."

"The rest of us aren't expected anywhere," Michael said. "My parents aren't involved with anyone."

"That might be true, but they wouldn't think that a Slytherin would be doing something all by herself," Ron said. Hermione gave him a look. "What? That wasn't really an insult. They take pride in it. Don't ask me why."

"There are more of us who have disappeared off the face of the earth than just Daphne," Hannah said. "You three might not have had any other friends before all this, but some of us had to make sacrifices to be here. I'm not saying you're not making a sacrifice now, just expressing my annoyance that we were never once thanked for acceding to your unbelievable demands for no reason other than that it was the right thing to do."

"You'll be thanking us by the end of this," Harry said, not really criticizing her for complaining. "We knew that our absence wouldn't go completely unnoticed. The point wasn't that people wouldn't ever think something was up, just to keep them from having anything to use to go after us publicly. Most likely, they'll have some idea where we are, and take a wild guess at what we're doing."

"Are you saying this was all part of the plan?" Daphne asked, not loudly enough for anyone on the grass to hear her. It would be a wonder, though, if no one could discern what she was saying from her expression. "You wanted them to come after us?"

"When they come here, they won't be coming in force. They don't know enough about what we're doing, so they'll come with only enough wands to scout the place out. There's no reason they would think that we were expecting them."

"It's still a risk," Hermione said, having been consulted. "It's just better for us to capture a few of their minions and start getting information out of them before we move to a different base. Lady Longbottom has been kind enough to let us make use of her family's extensive property and this might have been the best place to train in the beginning, but going forward, more of us will know how to apparate and we'll be able to move around more. There's a point where we have to stop going back home and stick with each other, and it's coming soon, unfortunately."

"What are you going to do about your parents?" he asked, realizing he had never wondered about that. He would not be too fussed if someone tried to get information out of the Dursleys, quickly realizing they were not that valuable as hostages, but enough of his friends had feelings for their guardians, and enough of them were useless in a fight. If it were solely a matter of having a theoretical understanding of magic, quite a few of the magical parents would be joining them rather than kept in the dark, but things like unit tactics and information security were never taught at Hogwarts in the first place; they did not even have the skills to forget them.

"Well, I don't know the False Memory Charm well enough to send them off to some other country under assumed names." She sighed. "What I really need to do is steel myself and accept that this is how wars work. There's no spell for that, unfortunately. I've looked."

"Hermione, you can't just stop being a caring person," Ron said after a moment.

"Can't I? It seems I have no other choice."

They went straight into an exercise after that. Despite how much they had already done, there was still a lot of ground to cover. Whenever he introduced new terms or new concepts, he tried to have it happen in the middle of an exercise so that everyone would remember the application. The more studious types among them thought they needed to be doing more written work, but everyone else insisted that practice would work better for them, even though it was not exactly a vote. One such repeatedly outvoted witch was hardly paying attention to those she was supposed to be grading on their performance.

"There's going to be disagreements between us sometimes," he said, sitting down next to her. It was probably the hardest part of being the leader of the DA, the fact that he could not afford to storm off and wait for someone else to admit defeat. "I'm grateful for all the times you've told me when I was wrong."

"Should I be grateful for this?" she asked. She looked back at the others, who were acting like they had no idea there was a conflict in the top brass. "I just... if you look at what you two are basically asking me to do, it's give up on one of you without hardening my heart, at all. I can't believe I'm saying that, but I wonder if you'll understand unless I'm so direct."

"It's not easy for me either," he said. "He's been my best mate since forever. I can't even think about losing him."

"Then the reality just hasn't set in," she said, shaking her head. "That's how he's convinced you to go along with this mad... Harry, I think because you've seen Voldemort, and because you feel his presence inside your head, you think you always know how bad it is. I can't convince you that this plan doesn't make sense, strategically, because it does. I just... I'm not looking forward to seeing what it does to you when you lose Ron."

She got up and walked off, not putting on a front for the others. He could tell her that he had seen Cedric die, but she could tell him it was not the same. The little battle between them could only be decided by their first friend, and that depended on how determined he was to come back alive.