"Another one of these cases?" Blaise asked. "Are we insane?"
"We're putting something else before our safety, so I suppose, if that's what your rule is," Harry said. They had brought him along to help get everyone out, though this time, they were only going with the four of them; it was a way of raising less of an alarm and it allowed the more experienced members to drill and teach the recruits. Not all of their operations were going to be as successful as Rabastan's death, and they were going to lose numbers; that was effectively guaranteed.
"Safety is not an end-all-be-all," he continued as he followed the three marshals through the sewer. Their clients were waiting for them at an intersection, and it would not be long before they met up; they had reached out through Azariah, who had been an old friend of the plaintiff. "You know this already. If I were truly a coward, I never would have followed you. I simply prefer to know that a venture is worth the risk."
None of them immediately attacked him for his critique of their sense of justice. They had known, after all, that there were those talking behind their backs, and it was nice to find out the identity of one in a way that put none of them at risk. It was only to be expected that one of their detractors would have had an issue with their ideals.
"From a purely practical perspective," Hermione started. "We are indebting more people to our cause. Those we help, those we grant writs, will not necessarily have to be sold on our ideology, because their lands and businesses will be guaranteed by the name of our organization." She took a deep breath. "For another reason, imagine if we fought the system without knowing how a system was meant to function? If we succeeded, what would we erect in its place?"
"I don't reckon we owe you an explanation that isn't ideological," Ron muttered. He was still upset after just hearing about his father getting cursed and having to be magically treated. Apparently, someone was starting to suspect that the Order was holed up in Sirius Black's old family home.
"Really, I don't know how they didn't guess it before," Harry had said the previous day when he heard. "They know he's not with them; they know he was loyal to my father, so why didn't they think that he might be using the house?"
"They might have known the whole time," Daphne said, shrugging. "I would not be surprised if their double agent told them right away, to earn himself some credit before they guessed it. From the sound of it, the Order was relying on no one else being able to get in, not the secrecy of the location. It sounds like all that's really changed is that the Dark Lord has made them aware that he knows by nonlethally attacking one of their lookouts.
"What's his play, though?" Ron asked. "What's the point? If he had kept it concealed-"
"Snape would have told them," Harry said. "They both know he's handing out inconsequential details to both sides. Voldemort might not have believed that Dumbledore would just trust him not to reveal any of the Order's secrets, but he would probably think he had the same kind of arrogance, believing he could do more with a small amount of information. If a double agent ever reveals something big, you should probably start to think something's up."
There was a short pause, but it was excused as they reached their clients. Both elderly witches, it seemed one had brought reading material, a German copy of the Phoenix Script. He cast a few detection charms along with the others before deciding they were safe for the moment.
"I never thought I would see the rebirth of parochial institution at the hand of the Chosen One," the lady with the book said. "Pleased to meet, you, Gladys Hefflebaum at your service."
"You would be the plaintiff, then," Ron said as she shook Harry's hand. "What about you?"
"My name is Selina Sapworthy." She took a deep breath. "I should hope that there will be no accounting for those familiar with your ways."
"Of course not," Hermione said. "We're just trying to get down to business. We would never have met you in a place like this if we did not have people looking for us."
"Then we understand each other. We would not have wanted to meet you at all if it were not urgent. I need to sell the rights to the Divination text Xylomancy, which you may have used in your curriculum, and it is now being claimed that I never wrote it, even in part."
"That is not my claim; my claim is that my earlier work, was completely copied, and then you got the contract to publish it. For years I have implored you to part with even a fraction of the royalties for my original work-"
"I have never heard of your work precisely because it was never published-"
"Order," Harry said after a moment. "We might as well address how exactly the plaintiff believes the work is copied."
"Let the evidence speak for itself," she said, producing a book and a manuscript and handing them both to Ron, who raised his eyebrows for a moment before Hermione took them and started to leaf through. "I am aware that coincidental similarities exist, and I would not be the first to claim this sort of thing. Selina, here, happens to be an old yearmate of mine, who was caught multiple times cheating off my revisions. Armando Dippet, Heaven help him, had records- one moment-" She produced yet another stack of papers, which Harry took.
"Your claim, then, is that your notes, from back when you were a student, inspired this book?" Ron asked after a moment. He looked back at his sort-of girlfriend and she was working quickly, but had barely started going over the similarities.
"In my final year I worked long hours and produced original research for the Divination department. I wanted nothing more than to understand these prophecies."
"Okay, let's ask the defendant about that. Do you deny ever having copied off the plaintiff?"
"No. Pointless dishonesty is beneath me. There were a few times that I skirted the school rules, but after I was caught for it, I never did it again. The teachers considered mine a severe case and forbade me from extracurricular activity and I was effectively in permanent detention. I had no idea that she was doing original research and I decided that the only way to salvage my academic career was to focus more on my own."
"Is that why you cheated in the first place?" Hermione asked, not looking up from the manuscript and the book.
"I had better things to do than the standard coursework. Rule-followers would never understand as much, but I simply outsourced what was unimportant to those who happened to be near me."
"I'm not much of a rule follower, but cheating on tests is only going to hurt those around you," Ron said after a moment. He had joked, years earlier, about copying off their mutual friend, but Harry had never taken that seriously. His marks were generally good, and not all for natural talent. "You devalued the scores of the other students. Were you spending so much time in the library focusing on one thing that you didn't have time for anything else?"
"Precisely." She took a breath. "I have come to regret my mistakes, as a matter of principle, but simultaneously, I was not using my free time for anything else, and I never would have finished the writing had I not spent the time in detention."
"Your argument, then, is that you spent so much time there that you couldn't have been getting anything from the plaintiff."
"You three must have been in detention at one point," Gladys said, becoming somewhat cross. "You know that unless you were in detention with a particularly strict teacher, you could leave for academic purposes. All she would have had to do was say that she was going up to the Divination classroom for a word with our teacher. It is not as if she was in prison."
"I don't think there's any circumstance where she could prove that she did not copy off you," Hermione said, again not looking up. "Your work is indeed similar, but it is not strange, if you contend that what you have written here is the truth, for two resources to agree with each other. Even in just the first few chapters I'm finding material in the book that I'm not seeing in the manuscript." She sighed. "Like you, the defendant also learned about the subject from existing books, though I can't imagine what those might have been in your day. It is precisely because her resource builds on that understanding, though, that she does not owe royalties to the authors of her schoolbooks. Unless you included something like a paper town..."
"I could not have known without knowing what that is."
"A paper town is a trick of cartographers. It is a fake town with a fake, but believable name, and placed somewhere randomly so that no one knows where to look for it. The point is to check for it on the maps of other cartographers, because if it were there, it would mean they were simply copying instead of doing their own research."
"Would that work, though?" Ron asked. "If you said there was a fake town somewhere, there would have to be a fair amount of people who would live right next to that general area, or maybe they just pass through it, and they would know that it wasn't really there."
"You would be surprised. For the most part, regular people do not look for errors on maps. It's not like the existence of paper towns are a closely guarded secret, but the people in that area would have to buy the maps and then determine that the town was not there. Frequently, people do not realize where the borders of certain municipalities are. In the American city of Las Vegas, there are actually two other towns that make up what people commonly believe the city to be, and people sometimes get caught out violating some local ordinance because they did not know where they actually were."
They would have been annoyed at what sounded like random trivia from Hermione years earlier, but they could see that it was perfectly relevant; there were no spells that would help a witch or wizard out of the situation that seemed to plague the muggles. Harry even felt like he could better understand her earlier complaint, because out of all the spells there were to conceal the truth, there were some that could undo a specific concealment, but none that could take something false and turn it true. Technically, Veritaserum only forced the subject to say what he or she believed to be true, because if there were any spell or potion, invented by a witch or wizard, that knew the truth all on its own, then there would be no point at all in magical research.
"It sounds like you don't have anything like that," he said after a moment. "I don't blame you, since someone might have had a problem with a false detail in the book, and if you explained that it was to trap forgers to the publisher, it's possible that idea would just be rejected because he or she could very well be helping someone who was already a forger, just a cleverer one. In any event, since we can't use anything like that to verify that one work copied the other, and we don't know that it was possible for the defendant to have copied your work. If everything in your work is true and accurate, then it's like we said, and it's not strange that you would have written the same thing."
That was the core of the problem with the plaintiff's case. She had no way of establishing that the defendant had to have copied from her, or even that it was likely. The real reason that Hermione had asked about paper towns, most likely, because he had some idea that her mind worked like that, was to confirm that any similarities between the two resources were completely coincidental. After all, it was not entirely out of the question that somewhere in there, with all the thousands of words, there would be a three or four word phrase used in the book exactly the same way as in the manuscript. No one said anything as everyone seemed to draw the same conclusion. The case was over, and that meant the witch who had been nice to them would be disappointed.
"We're sorry we couldn't have given you any other result," Ron said. "It just wouldn't have been..."
"It wouldn't have been fair, right." She took a deep breath. "For the record, I did come expecting a fair result."
"Couldn't you try to sell your own book, then?" Blaise asked out of nowhere. "If it's so different, and we've determined that you didn't copy off her, then why not just sell this one?"
"Divination was not my best subject, but I think he might be right," their book expert said, looking over it. "There are several chapters that are nowhere covered in the published resource. I could see why a teacher would request the use of this book, perhaps for the third or fourth year level. We cannot offer any guarantees, but..."
"No, it's plenty," she said. "I only consulted with one publisher before now and they said that they needed some kind of writ to show that it was not copied, but perhaps another-"
"We'll give you that writ," Harry said. "If they have a problem with it, they'll come to us."
The case was thus completed. It seemed that they did not have any problem with anyone noticing that they were there, but then, perhaps it was better to arrange a court in a sewer. They had researched both of the litigants in advance and neither of them seemed to be connected to anyone dangerous, but they knew it was only a matter of time before someone was paid off or threatened. Would it be better if they sent out a magical contract in advance, something that asked each party to respect the results and relitigate only if there was a new cause of action?
When they apparated back, which was a substantially less desperate situation than when they left, they found that the place was burned and no one was there- almost certainly, their friends had fled in a hurry. It was tempting to audibly ask what had happened, of course, but they had prepared for it. Technically, they just needed to go to the next place; each of them had memorized a list of places where they would go if they thought there was a leak, or if they had decided that enough time had elapsed to where it was probable that someone would discover them. They joined hands again and warped once more.
"There's no one here," Ron said immediately, giving in to the temptation. It was true; it looked like the area of wilderness was untouched. "If the last place was attacked, and this place isn't where they went, then they must have been taken somewhere."
"I find it hard to argue with that," Hermione whispered after a few detection spells to confirm they were not simply on the other side of the protective charms. "Their bodies would have been processed even if they were killed, but no one would have thought to clean the blood off the ground, not in a natural setting, so we would still see some people would have died there. Both sides would have suffered some losses if our side had no choice but to stand and fight and-"
"That's enough; you're just going on again," he said. "We need to know what to do now. There wasn't a dark mark in the sky, so this was a Ministry attack. We've killed more of their men anyway. That means this is bait so that we go wherever they're being held."
"Where would they be held, then?" Blaise asked, sighing. "I certainly share your desire for more productive dialogue, but I don't entirely know where to start with this."
"Where else would they take a bunch of kids but back to school?" Harry asked after a moment. He had no evidence, of course, but he had a hunch that it was one of his occasional good ideas; realistically, could he have used them all up? "They wouldn't want a show by taking everyone through Diagon Alley. They know that the public hasn't been told that we're all insurgents yet; they just want us off the board so they can decide what to do with us later."
"This was our mistake," Hermione said. "We should not have been totally silent. We should have been card-carrying Eleazar Higgen supporters. Direct actions against us would have looked worse to the public-"
"That's only if the public finds out," Ron said, annoyed again. "They won't find out, not until the Ministry's decided what to say about it. Hiding was better than having a public base somewhere, because they could've kept sending bands of criminals after it. We're going to Hogwarts."
"I really appreciate how you're being decisive, but what is there to suggest that they were taken there?" she asked, her voice shaking.
"What choice do we have?!" he asked. "What other idea do we have? It's the best place that they could have gone; that makes it the most likely; they're not trying to trick us; they're trying to draw us out."
"They would have left a note, then," Blaise said. "I didn't see one, and it would have been burned in that fire. I think we caught them in the middle of the cleanup process. It's not exactly professional to leave a few small fires burning. They're going to send someone back."
"Then we should go back and get him first."
It seemed like Hermione was willing to relent on that one. Even though she had written procedures for the DA getting annihilated, and in many of those circumstances, the survivors were meant to carry on the struggle alone, the enemy would get too much valuable information out of their friends. For a moment Harry thought she was going to suggest going public, but it seemed like she could at least agree to torture the enemy cleanup crew for information, and then decide what to do from there. Was it so hard to go against him when he got set on something? Had that not been how all their lives were spared once?
They warped back and took position, leaving Blaise and Ron to go off and get the recruits. It was impossible, after all, to predict exactly how many enemies they would be facing and the only good way they had of countering that was to bring more numbers themselves. In the moment he had before the other wizard returned, he whispered an apology. There was only one good way to surprise the enemy with their numbers, and it took a few moments of preparation.
"I'm sorry we're not listening."
"I... I thought I could handle these kinds of situations, but I honestly don't know what to do. It's one thing to come up with a procedure that requires mental fortitude... like abandoning all our friends to die... I should have known it would be another thing when that day comes." She surprised him by grabbing his shoulder. "I've known for years, Harry, that you were... destined for greater things than Ron or myself, perhaps subconsciously, and I've always hoped that I could at the very least help you." He could not have said how he should respond if he had a thousand years to think about it, whether to thank her for her trust or say that he felt honored beyond what he ever believed he deserved. "Don't make the same mistake, please... I don't know how else we can destroy Voldemort, but don't... if you're going to die then don't screw it up. I need you to be better at heroics than I am... again."
