There was no sense in accompanying Ron to King's Cross, least of all when there was another mission planned. Luna had heard of a potential attack on her family home, which was apparently not that far from where the Weasleys lived. Certain members insisted that the wiser course of action would be to defend it, and keep the production going, but it would work just as well to move locations and report on the destruction of the family home, which was sure to be publicly blamed on Sirius Black, though that was a foolish move. The Quibbler had, months prior, released a story stating that there was no evidence supporting the popular perception that his beloved godfather was a murderer, or a traitor, and that he had never been tried. The Prophet probably never kept track of what the other publications were putting out, exactly, and for that reason would not twig that they would be naming someone without any evidence or a conceivable motive.

"How exactly do they just lie?" Hannah asked as she waited in line for the floo. At least partially, she had grown up in the muggle world, as he understood it.

"People don't pay attention," Harry answered. "You can say that it's how they cite opinions to avoid actually saying things themselves, or they have someone in government who can get them out of having legal action, or any other thing, but none of that would matter if people cared to pay attention, and even if all of that were reversed, it wouldn't matter as long as people don't."

"Certain cycles have been observed throughout history," Hermione said. "A discerning, incredulous general public only pays for newspapers that stick to the facts. Newspapers like that gradually make the public think that they're always telling the truth, and they stop checking things. With that kind of customer base, they find they can tell whatever mad lies they please, and sooner or later, probably among the younger generation, there arises a growing distrust that can only be won over with facts and consistency."

"Did she rehearse that?" Hannah asked right after she went through the floo in front of them.

"No idea, honestly."

For his own part, he went outside and apparated as close as he could get to the Burrow, aware that he would be in sight of where they were going, even if Luna was starting to put up magical protections. Mrs. Weasley caught him outside in the bright sunlight, which was something of a surprise; he thought she used the floo for everything.

"Oh, how do you do, Harry?" she asked as if she expected to see him. "I was just coming back from a walk to the neighbors." Were all her neighbors so close that she could walk there? Was it expected for ruralites to make such visits?

"Oh, I was just... I was going over to see the Lovegoods. They're..."

"Ginny told me, dear. Oh, and the Order knows. It's as if I spend half my time in Grimmauld Place these days, even with an empty nest."

It was one of the strangest injustices of the war that such a happy homemaker who brought all of her children up with the same tough love had to spend her time going through her old school things to find protection charms to hedge in the property. How she was at the moment, in his view, limited as it was, represented what she wanted to be, when she was taking a break. Was she taking any chance she could to get back to that? Did he even know enough to say?

"We're all grateful, Mrs. Weasley," he said. "I can't wait until I can come back for a proper visit."

Xenophilius Lovegood, as he was told, was not a member of the Order, not officially, but what he had done for Harry and the cause had become impossible to ignore by friend and foe alike. He had been offered membership purely for his own protection, and he turned it down for the strangest of reasons that Mad-Eye had not seen the need to specify. As he approached the tall, narrow house he caught sight of Terry, who seemed to be already hard at work with Hermione and Luna. Ernie was talking to the man of the house, and having trouble with it.

"You're Mr. Potter himself, then," the eccentric wizard said as he approached. "You'll forgive me if it's strange that so many have tried to speak on your behalf when you were on your way here yourself. Why is it that I should relocate my operation?"

"Well, we'd prefer it because there's less risk involved and an attack on your former home will be just as newsworthy as an attack on your current home. It might also tell us if there's a mole somewhere in our operation, though we're already reasonably sure no one knows where you're going." He looked around as if he would see any secret, magically advanced mechanism of detecting what was going on. It was perhaps more accurate to include that possibility, but if there really was an unseen listener around, he would have preferred if the enemy thought he believed it could only be a mole.

"Will there be any effort to save my home from being destroyed?" he asked. "The memories alone are of incalculable value."

"We're going to kill as many of them as we can," Ginny said, joining them. Given her practice schedule over the last week especially, he was not say he was surprised.

"While taking hostages alive is the preference over killing them, rest assured that no force will be spared against those who would harm the reputation of The Quibbler. Perhaps this event will be remembered as the moment the war truly began, or the moment it came to the general public," Ernie speculated. "Perish the thought that any victory will be allowed in the form of forcing you to retreat; the war has been full of retreats so far, but if I have learned one thing of tactics, it is that the manner in which a retreat is used is infinitely more important than the fact of the retreat itself."

"In the event, then, that I lose my home, how may I be compensated?"

"You'll have to get it out of the Death Eaters after the war," Ginny said. She was containing it well, but having interacted with her the past several months, he could tell that she was more than a little annoyed. That happened with progressively increasing frequency, and it was having an effect on the others too. From where he stood, it seemed like the only one who was acting like he hardly even noticed any change was Terry, though he did not outright deny that the repeated use of dark magic was having an effect.

"It is rather inarguable that we have been putting out as many killing curses in a day as the Death Eaters might in a week of productive activity. However, the very thing that separates productivity from idle practice is the target, and I believe that its absence is not negligible in the testing of our ability to perform the curse, he had said recently. "Equally, I find it likely that whatever change that may have begun in us will begin in earnest when we have our first kill. You can expect to see something similar in yourself."

He had said no more to anyone on team dark magic since then. At the moment, he figured he could best help Ernie by getting Ginny out of there before she could hit their host with a bat-bogey hex after she loudly reminded him that the Order had already arranged a new base of operations for him at no cost whatsoever. The two of them went to the ward border.

"I'm not denying that the dark magic had this effect," she said. "I just- we'll work around it. There's nothing else to do." For her, it was a strangely defeated sentiment, especially while still wearing an annoyed expression.

"Ginny, I tried to use the connection between me and Voldemort for intel and it almost got all my friends killed."

"Are you telling me I should never have started? It's too late now, so you're just-"

"You were cautioned about this when you started. I'm saying that if you ever want to stop, you still have that option, but it's probably going to be harder and harder the more you go on. No one who was working with you ever said that this wouldn't happen, the whole argument was that being able to use dark curses in combat was absolutely necessary. You don't have to say anything, but didn't you think to yourself that we'd be sorry the rest of us didn't start learning it earlier?"

She responded with an open-mouthed stare that turned away from him.

"You haven't proven me wrong, Harry," she said after a moment. "If our entire group is wiped out because we can't project enough force, because we can't get through their basic shield charms-" He smiled and when it stopped her he realized she must have been watching his expression.

"You're starting to sound like Ron. Are you taking over for him?"

"Someone has to." She turned and stormed off. It was reasonable for her to be frustrated by the doom scenario she was using as an argument being the very thing she was trying to avoid. He looked back to see that Ernie's light touch had won out, and he had never seen a more grateful expression than on the young wizard's face as the older one went back in the house, presumably to grab a few things to be apparated away, as they could not risk taking him somewhere on the Floo Network.

"There might be many nuts I can crack, but there are some that remain beyond me," he confessed. "On every occasion that I have spoken to Miss Weasley she has proven that my expectations of her have been woefully insufficient."

"Really?" he asked.

"Perhaps as a fellow Gryffindor, the differences are less obvious. I have at least since the inception of the DA counted you as one of the reasonable sort."

"Thanks," he said, clapping the Hufflepuff on the back. "I have at least since around then considered you to be a helpful friend."

He let Ernie work out the implications of whatever he just said when he went to find Blaise and Daphne, who were going through the letters they had stolen. Basically, at the moment, they had no idea whether the Ministry would be attacking directly or outsourcing the injustice to the Death Eaters, and by consequence, the two of them had gone to an old meeting place in Hogsmeade for Malfoy's gang. It was not terribly secure, and apparently they knew about the place the entire time because Nott had dropped hints about it, trying to get one or both of them to join.

"Have you found anything good?"

"The information is all old, but it does hint about planned attacks," Blaise said without looking up. "To think, he knew about a 'something' in the Department of Mysteries, but he doesn't know when they're going after it or how they're going to get it."

Harry had not told most of the DA about that except that there had been a failed raid with no deaths. The Order showed up, the Death Eaters showed up, but without him there, nothing was going to happen and the enemy was quick to retreat. Most likely, Voldemort himself really was there, however he was allowed in, used the mental connection to sense his presence. Did it feel the same on the other end? Since first year, whenever his scar hurt, it was a vague feeling of danger. What did his parents' killer feel, opportunity? Did it matter that he lacked a scar?

"So, what you're saying is that there's nothing about a raid on the Lovegoods," Daphne said.

"Exactly. This is after the article covering Harry's account of the resurrection of the Dark Lord, so any plans would have already been in the works."

"They're still acting cautiously," he figured. "They figure that if they can get the Ministry to take care of it without any direct involvement from them, it's better than sending the Lestranges and burning down every house in the surrounding area." Something about that sentence gave them pause. "Did you ever interact with them?"

"No," Blaise said. "I only knew about them from secondhand sources. My parents were never involved in the war, on either side." He squinted. "At least, that's assuming that I'm correct about my real father." He shrugged. "Daphne has heard more."

"Parkinson made an ill-conceived recruitment bid towards the end of last year," she said after a moment. "I wouldn't normally think much of it, but everyone else was going, so if you'll believe it, there were about twenty girls in the Three Broomsticks of all places, and she basically confessed that the Death Eaters were behind the attack on Azkaban, and suffice to say, the Dark Lord was an equal opportunity employer. I imagine she thought she was being subtle, but for me at least, it was painful to watch."

He had not given his old school rivals much thought in the last few weeks, but he wondered how he ever counted them as a problem. Malfoy's only real plan to get back at him was terribly ill-conceived and landed him in trouble; his only real victory was goading him and Fred into attacking him on the Quidditch pitch. To his moderate shame, he had to admit it worked perfectly. The Hermione Granger of a very different world, his first thought was always to turn to authority, and when he leaned into that well enough, it worked. Really, it was not that he and his gang lacked drive, most likely, it was that they lacked real stakes and prior experience. For better or worse, every time he and his friends had fought for their lives, they came out stronger on the other side, and most other students never had anything like that.

"We'll assume it's the Ministry, then," he said after a moment of thought. "Thanks. I didn't think they'd be writing coded letters with Umbridge on their side."

"It never hurts to be careful," Blaise said. "That said, it avails them nothing. There's a simple charm for encryption, but another that undoes it just as easily. It's as much of a formality as the locks on the doors." Harry was aware; he and his friends were opening locked doors since first year. If something was supposed to be secure, it needed more than an old mechanical lock.

"File in with the others once you're sure you have everything. Those of us who have more experience with Ministry employees and their families will have the most insight here." From time to time, he had humored them and allowed them to take a more independent role in training and drilling, more like a cat than a dog, he supposed, but it made sense to at least see if they would respond to a direct order. Daphne gave him a look, but she went with her friend without a word of complaint.

In the last few months he had discovered he was something of a coordinator more than whatever he was before. He supposed he was not exactly teaching anything new, or rather, he was allowing different people to assume a sort of leading role, and he was learning as much as he was teaching; he had never known about hiding in the woods or anything like that, except from personal experience. If he could do better as a coordinator, though, than any of his enemies, then he knew he would at least be able to have that over them. More and more he was thinking that Ron was right about numbers making the biggest difference, and his ability to use those numbers would make the biggest difference after that. It was not, of course, all a matter of being nice and making everyone feel valued, but so far he had not suffered any disciplinary problems.

One thing that annoyed him was the fact that it seemed all he could do was ask someone to research something or practice it and he would then have to just hope it got done without his monitoring the situation. He would try to put himself in the other person's shoes, of course, and it was obvious that he would not like having to give a by-the-minute update on where he was with some task, but really it seemed more likely that the solution was something else; he needed someone else who was not overburdened with other tasks to be another sort of coordinator, if by whatever other name. He wiped the sweat off his brow as he went to see Luna and Hermione, finding he was learning a lot about how hard leadership was, only there was really no one to teach him, or even sympathize.

"How is it?" he asked. "Can we at least know when they're here?" The Ravenclaw was still laying down charms.

"Well, we should know it," his old friend said. "Have you apparated the editor out of here yet?"

"Not yet. He needs to get a few things together." One of the things that the detractors to their plan, like Terry and Ginny, had said that made him think was that even if they allowed the Lovegood home to be destroyed, it would be a symbolic victory for the enemy. He did not see it the same way, but it did mean, most likely, that the assailants would probably not verify that Xenophilius was there to be killed. If that was the case, there was no reason for them to use the human revealing charm on their approach.

"Well, we're almost done here, but we'll leave the Anti-Apparation Jinx for last."

"Thanks. I hate putting this all on you; I wish I knew more about it myself."

"You can't do everything, Harry," Luna said. She took no particular pains to make sure the sentence was phrased or sounded polite and friendly, but he knew from past experience that she generally respected him. It was not as if she could destroy that with just a few words.

"I know. I just... wish I could."

Helping the owner vacate his house, he apparated the both of them to a random muggle settlement only about fifty miles away. Looking around, the land did not look all that different, and there was probably a similar sort of agricultural community, but he could avoid that if he felt like it, and he would be well advised, considering there were those who would still seek his life.

"I know it seems like a poor way to repay you for helping us, but I hope the move isn't too bad, sir," he said, showing the older wizard inside.

"I serve only the truth. I live to report it."

Harry thought for a moment.

"I promised your daughter that I wouldn't press you on it, but do you believe in all those creatures?"

"Of course."

"Why do you believe in them?"

"Countless people have seen them. There's no way of disproving it, is there?"

"Sir, there wasn't a way of disproving the idea of me putting my own name into the Goblet of Fire. I more or less accepted that some people wouldn't believe me. Would you have printed that in your magazine, though, that I put my name into the Goblet, just because there was no way of disproving it?" He sighed a bit. "I think you and your daughter are both respectable, if a bit odd. I'd put it more politely, but there isn't much time."

"What do you mean to say, then? I suppose it's not every day I have someone give an opinion article on the editor himself."

"I'm not going to tell you any of those creatures aren't real. I'll be honest, I don't know. I genuinely don't know. I just don't think you do either, and you should only report what you know. A good friend told me that whenever you know something, you can always say how you know it."

He left without another word, not sure if he really accomplished anything. If not, though, there was no need to feel put out, because he was about to accomplish a lot, assuming the attack was still going to happen as planned.