Ch. 22 — Wolf in the Fold
Sirius was still laughing as they walked onto the Requirement's bridge. Moony stared Uranus, the asteroids, and the space station outside the bridge's wide encircling window. His stunned expression had Padfoot doubled-over and laughing so hard he had to sit on the deck before he fell down.
"How?" Remus asked, spreading his arms wide. "How is this possible?" He was almost at the window, feasting his eyes on the view. The planet was easy enough to recognize, he had seen the exact same view, less the space station and asteroids, in the moving painting in the Enterprise shop.
He turned to stare at Harry and Hermione, who were also laughing — just not quite as hard as the dog.
Hermione said, firmly, "Muggle magic." They had known approximately when Remus would realize the prank, and had set their alarms so they would be prepared. It wasn't much of an issue, as it was just after six in the morning, only a little bit before the time they usually got up in the castle, which was usually seven.
The explanation that followed saw the wolf-man sitting on one of the pillows piled in front of the window, and shaking his head in shock. He would dismiss it all as a fantasy created by this Room of Requirement Hermione had mentioned, except he knew of no magic powerful enough to prevent the wolf from changing at sundown with a full-moon. Not to mention providing what he was seeing. Plus, he had been told, while magic can do many extraordinary things, it can't invent things that no one had ever made or seen. The comm-links the "crew" all used, and the hoverboards they had shown him, did not come from anything in the muggle or magical worlds.
The hoverboards would have been all over the news stations!
Plus, he now knew how much time had passed since Padfoot had used reenervate on him, that pushed him well past the time for him to turn during the full-moon. It had to be true. Merlin! His own sense of time indicated he had been awake far longer than it would have taken for sundown and moonrise!
"It took us a while to accept this was real, too," Hermione said consolingly. "We were coming here for months before we realized the truth. Magic had created a door to a real spaceship, floating in real space."
Harry, beside the two, stared out the window. "The problems we see on Earth seem just so petty when this," he waved his arm at the planet and stars out the window, "is just waiting for us." He looked at Lupin. "Do you understand?"
"I'm getting there," Remus rasped, staring out the window.
Harry smiled and looked over to Lee, who had just come to the bridge and now sat at one of the consoles. "Lee? Could you show Remus what I mean? How about ten bars?"
Remus jolted and looked up at Harry in shock.
"Aye, aye, Captain!" Lee said with a sloppy salute. He slid a couple of control stones on his console and tapped a few other places with his fingers. A moment later there was a soft flash of light and a pyramid of ten gold bars appeared on the deck beside the werewolf.
"You want a hundred?" Harry asked, humour lacing his voice, as Remus stared gobsmacked at the fortune so casually placed in front of him. "We have about a ten-thousand tonnes of it." He nodded at the three mountain-sized shapes outside the windows. "We all have access to this. Just be sure you take the gold to the muggles. The Goblins are rather annoyed with us for upsetting the balance of gold in the wizarding world." He glanced at girl beside him, then back to Remus. "Hermione tells me we could dump a tonne of gold a day into the muggle market without anyone even noticing what we were doing. After all, they mine, what, two-and-a-half thousand tonnes a year?" He looked questioningly at Hermione.
She shrugged, "Global average is between two-and-a-half and three thousand tonnes per year."
Remus was still staring at the ten bars of gold that represented several years' wages for him — and more than many weres earned in a decade of hard labour.
"Money just isn't important to us, anymore, we can do whatever we want. And most of us want space." Harry looked back out the window. "It's so . . . peaceful, here." He smiled contentedly, more to himself than anyone else.
He looked back at Remus. "We can do whatever we want. Marietta and Cho —" He nodded over at the two girls at their consoles. "— are having fun figuring out how to pilot this ship. Zach is sussing out the navigational charts, and several others are working at the interstellar charts for the next stage of our exploration. Lee and Hermione are our chief Engineers and Scientists. Neville and several others are setting up greenhouses for rare magical plants. We have no restrictions, no one says we can or can't do anything, and we have the resources, the lack of which would normally prevent people from doing whatever they want. You name it, you can do it, we have the resources you'll need. As long as what you do doesn't hurt anyone, you have free reign. Just stay safe, that's all I ask."
"Several people are busy working at recreating things they saw in movies. Alicia came up with the tricorder." Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out the book-like object. "This does everything you would ever need in an office."
"It's the ultimate time-management system and communication system, with built-in typewriter, dictionary, encyclopaedia, artist tablet, camera, video recorder and playback, . . . everything!" Hermione said enthusiastically, looking at her own tablet possessively.
"You know those light swords in Star Wars?" Harry asked the bemused werewolf, "There's a team of four working on those right now." He frowned. "Don't know if they are possible, but, hey, if that's what they want to research, I'm not gonna say no." He waved his hand in front of him as if he held one of the light swords, and smiled. "It would be ace if they could do it, right?"
Although it was a rhetorical question, most of the people on the bridge nodded.
"Remus?" Harry said.
Still flummoxed over everything, the wizard looked up.
"If you think any of the werewolves might be interested in a job in space, tell them to stop by the video shop 'Return to Tomorrow' in London and speak with the manager about a job. We need people to take care of the greenhouses and to watch over other projects that we don't have enough personnel to do right now."
Remus slowly nodded. He doubted anyone would do that, their Alpha would be the one to make first contact. All the Alphas knew Remus, so they would approach him. Either in person or by owl.
"While we might not have anything immediately available, we'll certainly be able to provide a place on the ship, here at Uranus, for anyone who wants. We can easily do it over the full-moon, or they can just move in to the space-station and spend their time seeing all the movies they haven't been able to afford! Or doing whatever it is they wanted to do with their lives!" He waved at the small pyramid beside Remus. "It's not like it'll cost us anything! All we ask is that they give an oath not to betray us, but that's minor, I'm sure you'll agree."
Remus nodded dazedly. For the werewolves, this ship changed everything. No werewolf — well, except maybe Fenrir — would be opposed to skipping transformation every month. Especially the children.
They watched as the werewolf slowly realized all that the ship, and what it represented, promised for the future for the cursed werewolves.
After a few minutes, Jordan said, "Captain?"
Harry turned and looked at him.
"The second test ship is ready and in position."
Harry shrugged. "Hermione?" he said, and watched as she sat at a nearby console.
"Yes," she said after moving a few controls. "Everything looks ready. The test ship is in place and currently orbiting under power with the hydrogen converter-generator. The fusion reactor appears ready to go." She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow.
He looked at the two, and the rest of the crew on the bridge. "Give it a go, then," he said, and nodded.
Lee moved a control stone. "Initiating fusion reactor start-up. Protective shield-fields stable. Pressure building. Fuel flow starting. Reaction beginning. Fuel flow stable. Power generation coming online. Power generation stable, fuel flow stable. Fusion Reactor stable." He looked over at Harry and grinned, then back to the console. "Initiating auxiliary controls. Shutting down hydrogen converter-generator to run on batteries. Integrating auxiliary controls, . . . and . . . and . . ." He looked up frowning at the planet below them, then back at the console. "And it's gone."
Harry blinked.
"Running recorded sequences," Hermione said, steadily. She frowned and leaned closer to her console. "I'm mirroring this to your console, Lee. Rerunning recorded sequences."
"Run it at a tenth speed," Lee said.
"Rerunning at one-tenth speed . . . oh!"
"Re-run it at a hundreth speed, the last quarter-second," Lee said.
"I'm not feeling too confident in helium-three, here," Harry said dryly.
After a few moments silence of staring intently at their monitors, almost at the same time, they both struck their foreheads with their palms.
"Light-speed," Hermione said quietly, dispiritedly. She sighed and leaned forward on her hands, on the console-edges.
"Yep," said Lee, shaking his head wryly and sighing.
Sirius and Remus were looking back and forth between them, puzzled at what they were talking about.
"This one was our fault, again," Hermione said. She sighed. "Uranus is thirty-one thousand miles in diameter, we're about a thousand miles farther out, and the test-ship was another thousand. That makes thirty-three thousand miles. Light moves at one hundred, eighty-six thousand miles per second." She looked at Harry. "That mean it takes almost four-tenths of a second for a signal from the test ship to reach us, our controls to respond, and then for the return signal to reach the test ship. By the time our control system sees a problem on the test-ship, it's already too late to fix it. So, an issue so minor we wouldn't notice, normally, goes wildly out of control because it wasn't automatically adjusted in the normal less-than-a-hundredth of a second."
Harry nodded. That made complete sense. "So, we need to put the routine that controls the switch-over entirely on the test-ship, and just give the go-order from here, right?"
The other two nodded. "According to the library system," Lee said dryly, "this should all go perfectly. It's just us who keep bolloxing it up."
Harry sighed and rubbed his scar. "Build another test ship. Actual testing will have to wait until Sunday night, when we get back to Hogwarts." He stood a moment, staring at the soothing colours of the giant planet. "Build several. I won't okay this until it works perfectly, repeatedly."
He raised his eyebrows, tilted his head forward slightly, and stared at Lee. The other boy nodded, "Aye, Aye, Captain," he said quietly, straightening and giving a crisp salute.
"Sirius," Harry said, turning to face the man and clapping his hands together, "What say we give Moony, here, a complete tour. Show him what we've been up to?" He grinned. "Maybe we can get Luna to give us a demonstration of her fighting techniques? Maybe get him fitted for a suit and armour?"
He turned to Lee and Hermione, who were still fussing over their monitors. "There's a challenge for you and the twins, guys, a suit that can handle an animagus change!"
Sirius perked up his ears at hearing that, and slowly began to grin.
Harry knew he was, no-doubt, thinking of all the mischief he could get into with such a flexible suit. The thought of Sirius, as a grim, riding a hoverboard almost made him shudder.
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Gus's Galaxy Grill was a runaway success in London, proper. As soon as they had enough muggle-borns trained in how their restaurant worked, the next one they opened would be a Ten Forward beside Dublin's magical district. After that, it would be either The Mos Eisley Cantina or Chalmun's Cantina, in Paris or Crashdown Café in New York. They were kind of shying away from New York at the moment because of the much stricter attitude the MACUSA had towards mixing muggles and magicals in the same business. That is, they didn't!
Naturally, none of that considered the Enterprise stores they were planning to open in Ireland and on the continent.
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The Weasleys had been spending their time split between Grimmauld Place and The Burrow. Their father, now that he had mostly recovered from his terrible experience, had been fascinated at the new muggle gadgets that had taken over at the Black residence. The Ministry had told him to stay home on leave to "recover" and that he needn't hurry to return. His replacement was working out just fine.
With their new-found wealth, the twins had no problem providing any short-fall from the Ministry's less-than-adequate sick-pay.
Sirius and Hermione had bought him a video-tape machine just for him to disassemble while watching one that was still working. He had spent several days just taking it apart and then using reparo to reassemble it. Molly had spent most of her free time just sitting with her husband, not murmuring a single complaint about his obsession with muggle items.
Occasionally, she would hug him and not let go for several minutes. He took it all in good humour. So did the rest of the family. They had discovered that you never know what you have until it's gone. For them, they had managed to get it back, and they weren't about to take that for granted, anymore.
The twins, Ron, and Ginny had stayed home with him while the ship was at Uranus over the full-moon in order to keep him distracted about where everyone else had gone. Not that they had minded that "chore."
The absentees returning with big smiles, and a very stunned-looking Remus, had brought smiles to the Weasleys in the know, too. They knew just what the goal of the trip on the ship had been, and his expression told them all it had been an unqualified success.
That evening, after a wonderful dinner at The Burrow, the twins dragged Harry and Hermione into the orchard and cast a privacy spell. They grinned widely. "We've got very good news for you."
"Colin mentioned something a few weeks ago," said Gred.
"He said the muggle military uses these things called drones to spy on their enemies."
"Like we've been using the comm-stones to spy on the Death Eaters."
"But, he said they can fly!"
"So, we worked a bit with Lee, and we made a flying comm-stone!"
"We've explored all their hideouts, now, thanks to the comm-stone drones."
"We can't find them, most are unplottable."
"But the comm-stones still work perfectly while in them."
"Which lets us portkey new ones into the locations."
"We managed to locate Ollivander and Fortescue in one of them!"
"We can be in and out in seconds."
"And leave them a big surprise."
"The building they are in only has Death Eaters in it!"
It took Harry a moment of looking back and forth between the two to realize they were waiting for his response. "It only has Death Eaters?" asked Harry reflectively.
The twins nodded.
"I imagine apparition is right out . . .," he mused, rubbing his scar. It hurt, as usual.
They nodded again. "But they don't have anti-portkey barriers up," Gred said.
"And the images we have are more than good enough for portkeys."
Harry slowly started to smile. "Can your . . . drones carry other things?"
The twins looked at each other. "I suppose we could fix them to do that. . .," the way Forge's voice trailed off indicated their curiosity.
"Simple. Sneak in a drone with several portkeys and just drop them on the prisoners. That way nobody is at risk."
The twins looked surprised, and disappointed.
"Oh. Oh! OH!" Hermione said, and started bouncing in place, her hair exaggerating her actions. "A drone with multiple portkeys that take Death Eaters directly to the brig!"
Other things besides her hair were bouncing, too, which Harry found distracting.
"But they'd just apparate right out!" objected Forge. "If the ship is close enough for us to portkey them to it, then it's close enough for their emergency portkeys to escape from it."
"Not if we stun them as they arrive and then move them to the space station to join the others we left in the brig, there," she said.
"And if we do it when they're alone or asleep, no one will ever realize what's happening," Gred said, getting excited
"They'll just assume the wizard is out doing something somewhere!" Forge said.
"And when their friends and family can't find them in a day or so. . .."
The twins exchanged big grins, "Snake-face will think they deserted him!"
"Brilliant!" said Forge as he grabbed Hermione's hands and began to bounce around in a circle.
Harry found himself watching Hermione bounce and not Forge.
"We can rescue Ollivander and Fortescue tonight, and clean out the mansion, too," said Gred.
"No need to be fancy, we'll just make the drone a portkey, land it on them, and give the activation phrase."
"And with the ship so close, we can do it right from there."
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It was Saturday morning, the day before the train to Hogwarts on Sunday, that Harry woke to a tremendous splitting headache. He was in his room at 12 Grimmauld Place, and he had had a nightmarish vision of Tom ranting at several Death Eaters that his prisoners had escaped, and that he would have to abandon their headquarters because it was obviously compromised. He was also shouting imprecations and promises of what he would do to the Malfoys, when he caught them, for betraying him and allowing this to happen. He swore it would take weeks for them die.
After downing a headache potion, Harry headed down to the kitchen.
When he arrived, he saw why Tom had been enraged. Both Ollivander and Fortescue were tucking into their plates with an approving Madam Pomfrey watching them. While they looked emaciated, they also looked healthy, which was probably due to her healing spells and the potions she had, no doubt, brought with her. At the other end of the table, the Headmaster looked extremely disappointed at what Sirius was saying. Hermione was watching with an amused and slightly incredulous expression, her head swivelling back and forth as if she were at a tennis match.
"Albus, I can't tell you how I did this. I told you already that I swore an oath not to tell anyone not already in the know anything about how this happened. Continuing to ask me simply will not change that answer."
"But Sirius," Dumbledore said in a reasonable tone, "you're a member of the Order of the Phoenix, surely that means you can tell me."
Sirius sighed exasperatedly, "Albus, I can't. Just being in the Order is not enough. Fifteen years ago, we had spy, how do you know we don't today?"
"I trust everyone in the Order, none would tell Voldemort of our plans," the old wizard said confidently.
"And that's what you said fifteen years ago, and it ended with the Harry's parents dead and me in Azkaban for thirteen years. So . . . no."
The Headmaster sighed dramatically, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders and Sirius had just increased it. A childishly obvious attempt at guilting the only surviving Black Family wizard into capitulating, Harry realized.
Harry dismissed the theatrics at the end of the table and dug into his own excellent breakfast. The twins would give him and Hermione a blow-by-blow account later, he knew.
Which they did, when they came over just before lunch, and well after the Headmaster had returned to Hogwarts.
"It really wasn't that difficult, Captain," Gred said.
"We had one of the drones send us a picture of their cell in the basement of the house they were in."
"Then, once we had them out, we used a portkey to send a dozen more portkey-drones into the house itself. . .."
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"Has anyone noticed?" Fred said looking up from his console at George.
"Nope, the other comm-links show nobody moving in our direction."
"Tech-cloaks still working?"
"Perfectly," said George, looking through the displays on his console. He could see only the system-generated outline of the other drone. A quick spin of the drone and he located his target. A moment later, the tiny drone settled onto the wizard's neck, just below his ear.
"Mr. Ollivander, Garrick," Fred said, the ship making it sound like Sirius' voice. "Wake up, come on, wake up," he hissed urgently, "wakie, wakie!" He had to repeat himself two more times before the wizard groggily began to move.
"Listen, I'm going to portkey you out of here. Don't panic! Okay? Do you understand?"
A faint moan, then, "Yes," came from the man.
"Portkey One Activate," Fred ordered. A moment later he heard his twin echo him, from where he had been talking to Fortescue.
"Portkey Two Activate."
An instant later, Sirius' voice came over the links. "Both men are here. Over and out."
The two grinned at each other. Sirius would cast a few healing spells, then notify Madam Pomfrey that she had two patients at Grimmauld Place.
George rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Now for the Death Eaters!" His following laugh was positively evil. Fred nodded approvingly. They had spent several hours perfecting that laugh. They planned to market it as a candy, "Evil Monologue Laugh, Number One," starting next week. They were still working on the details for Evil Laugh Numbers Two and Three.
They started in the farthest, least travelled section of the mansion.
Five minutes later, the flock of drones was in a three-by-six formation, following the leader. They stayed right up almost against the ceiling. None of the Death Eaters would look up, right? Besides, they were all in tech-cloaks.
They stopped at the first door and a drone dropped to the floor and scooted through the gap underneath it to explore the room. While Fred was exploring one room, George took the next. The second room had a sleeping wizard.
"Found one," called George, gleefully. "Room . . . one."
Fred moved to the first of the five temporary, closet-sized rooms that took up the rest of the room they were in. He put the tip of his wand into a small hole in the door. "Ready" he called.
A second later, there was a loud — thump! — as the horizontal wizard was unceremoniously dumped upright in the closet.
"Stupefy!" cried Fred. "Stupefy!"
George looked at him.
Fred shrugged. "Just being sure."
George nodded.
Fred opened the door and summoned any wands, then portkeys. He bared the prisoner's arm to check for the Dark Mark. His nightshirt was insufficient for the brig, so Fred ordered the replicator to remove it and replace it with appropriate prisoner robes pulled from its library, in Gryffindor colours, of course. Then he transfigured the Death Eater into a marble and placed it in the box just outside the row of closets.
He'd been practicing that spell since the attack at Susan's home.
Then they moved the drones on to the next room.
Most of the rooms were occupied with a sleeping wizard or witch, sometimes more than one. In each case they repeated what they had done to the first. That the drones stuck to the target on landing on them prevented any misfires.
They had several Invigoration Potions on hand in case they were needed.
Once they came upon a patrolling Death Eater, and five in a room playing poker. The single Death Eater was too shaken by the sudden portkey to be a problem and was quickly sorted. The five playing poker the twins would have to simply wait out. That required a change of plans. Instead of only waiting, however, they left five drones in the room while they continued their sweep of the rest of the building.
Finally, one of the poker players left for the loo. They hit him as soon as he finished, but before he could leave. The others waited a while, then grumbled about revenge at his leaving the game without warning as they restarted their game. Then, when the next time one went to the loo, he had company to make sure he returned.
That was perfect for the twins. As soon as the two left the room, the twins attached and activated the portkey-drones on the two still at the table, then ran to the respective closets. They cast the stupefy spells while the drones' passengers were still disoriented about being unable to see anything in the dark spaces, and the fact that they were constricted in their movements.
When the other two returned, it was to an empty room. And the twins repeated their tactic.
It took a little finagling, but they managed to remove the galleons and cards from the table so there would be no clues as to what had just happened.
When they found Voldemort, they were seriously upset. Did they dare? They knew they could get him to the ship with the portkey, but then what? There was no way they would be capable of handling him.
"Too bad Hermione hasn't given us one of the exploding batteries," Fred said sourly.
"If we did have one, I'd say set it off," George said.
"But we don't, and I don't think we should chance it. He's a powerful wizard."
They continued their search through the building for easier targets.
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The two exchanged grins. "So, we managed to get thirteen Death Eaters."
"They're all at the station at Uranus, now."
"The best part is, it was Malfoy's mansion!" exclaimed Forge.
"We managed to get Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange, Mulciber, and Lucius and Draco Malfoy!"
"We've captured all the Azkaban escapees except Bellatrix Lestrange."
"Either she wasn't there last night."
"Or she must have been at one of the other safe houses."
"Or maybe on a mission."
Forge looked gleeful. "And Draco is a marked Death Eater, now!"
"Mrs. Malfoy isn't, though."
"We almost left her behind."
"But decided that it would be better having His Snakiness wake to an empty mansion."
Hermione looked relieved to hear that. "She isn't what I would call completely innocent, but then again, we don't know that she is actually guilty of any crimes. In which case," she said slowly, "leaving her behind to a sure death isn't something I would have been comfortable with you doing." She paused. "Thanks for getting her out of there."
The two redheads nodded. "Yeah, that's how we figured it, too."
Harry silently agreed with them, nodding that he, too, was relieved the witch had escaped harm.
Harry shook his head. "I suspected Draco would take the mark, but it's still a surprise it's so early. And if Draco did it, it's quite possible Crabbe and Goyle did, too. We'll need to keep an eye on them." He took a deep breath. "In any event, brilliant job, mates! Based on my headache," he rubbed his scar, "you've certainly managed to upset Tom."
"Sorry about that," the twins chorused, and gave him massive grins.
"How many safe houses do they have?" Harry continued on doggedly, mentally stomping on his unreasonable irritation at the twins' antics.
"Twenty-one," said Forge.
"If you can manage to do this in a couple of other places," Harry mused, "He'll be convinced his organization is filled with traitors, and he'll waste time trying to root them out." Harry grinned. "And we'll be substantially reducing his forces at no risk to our own."
The twins grinned back.
"And once you're positive that the Malfoy Mansion has been abandoned, remove it from Tom's list of places he can access. Put up anti-apparition and anti-portkey charms, maybe a notice-me-not. Perhaps you should search it for the Malfoys' vault key, too. I'm sure he won't miss it. If anyone will ignore our warnings on the ship, it's him! But be careful of traps! If you can't do it safely, forget about the place. We can always hire a curse-breaker, later. After everything else has been sorted."
The twins looked at each other a moment.
"How about we put up the anti-portkey and anti-apparition spells tomorrow? That way, anyone who has permission to access the mansion can't sneak in and use it as a safehouse in the meantime?"
"Plus, we could set the apparition spells to automatically splinch anyone trying to get in."
"If nothing else, it would send them to St. Mungo's and be an inconvenience. It would also tell us who had run into our spells."
That seemed a fair way to deal with the criminals.
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It was after curfew in Hogwarts, Sunday night. Harry stood at the head of the large room that they were using for this meeting — the bridge was starting to get too crowded. Harry looked around the room at the students gathered there. That they trusted him was remarkable, he thought. That they looked to him as Captain of the ship was astounding. "Welcome back to Hogwarts, and the D.S.F.S. Requirement, everyone!" The forty-one crewmembers cheered as he grinned at them.
"I don't know what the coming year is going to be like, in Hogwarts, but like last year, anyone who wants to commute to and from the ship to their dorms is more than welcome to sleep on-board." He stopped and grinned at them. "That's what I plan to do." There were several chuckles from his audience. "Do try to attend the classes, and make appearances in your Common Rooms. We don't want anyone getting suspicious of where we're spending all our time. Maybe seek out some of the younger years and see if they might be interested in joining us. All the First-Year muggle-borns were visited on the train by the twins as fast as we identified them — which wasn't difficult." There were a few more smiles and chuckles. "Their families now have panic-watches, thanks to the crew who've graduated, if they didn't already.
"The current crop of fifth years need a bit of help in catching up in D.A.D.A., so I'll be continuing the classes on that in the castle. Help with transfigurations and charms wouldn't be rejected, either, I'm sure, if any of you want to volunteer.
"There will be a few changes, this year. First, several muggle-borns are working from the Enterprise shop in Hogsmeade to build a tunnel to just outside the wall that marks the edge of Hogwarts' grounds. We'll put a large underground room there as a meeting room. It'll also make a good room for training. We'll also keep a Vanishing Cabinet there with its mate on the ship.
"At the same time, I need a few volunteers to figure out how we can make a few "secret" passages branch from existing secret passages to that same meeting room. Naturally, there will be three such new passages, each branching from a secret passage close to the respective Common Room. That way we don't have to all rely on the hunch-back witch to sneak out of Hogwarts. Check in with Hermione if you're interested."
Most of the crew were surprised to hear that you could sneak out of Hogwarts that way.
"The reason for doing this is so we aren't solely dependent on the Room of Requirement for our connection to the ship while it's in orbit over the Isles. It's also for those who can disapparate. They can use that meeting room, which is outside Hogwarts anti-apparition charm, to go to the Requirement. It also will reduce the likelihood of drawing attention to the large number of students disappearing and appearing on the seventh floor."
There were more than a few nods in agreement.
"And the second reason is responsible for the first. From now on, access to the ship via the Room of Requirement is going on a schedule." There were more than a few groans from the crewmembers.
"I know, I know," he said placatingly. "The Room is a much more convenient access point. However, the house-elves have been grumbling, and the last thing we want to do is inconvenience the house-elves. That could result in cutting us all off completely from using the Room to access the Requirement until we finish those tunnels."
The students who hadn't yet mastered apparition uneasily shifted from foot-to-foot at that thought.
"Yeah," Harry said, "I agree. Fortunately, they seem to like to access the Room late at night, when we usually don't actually need the door to the ship. This will mean posting someone to open the door before curfew ends in the mornings. Because we have six prefects among our number, however, I don't think that will be a difficult task." He glanced at Hermione, Ron, Padma, Anthony, Hannah, and Ernie, and grinned as they grinned back.
"So, vary your routines to access the ship. Dobby and Winky are happy to help, as long as everyone doesn't try to call them at the same time, although if two or three of you could travel together, that would be a big help.
"The meeting room is also where we will be holding apparition classes this year for all sixth-year students, starting next Saturday in the afternoon. If the tunnels aren't finished, Cho, Katy, and Marietta will provide side-alongs, as well as Dobby and Winky. A schedule will be available through your tricorders. There will also be two Healers there all day in the likely event of someone splinching. Also, anyone who wants to learn healing spells or getting into that field can discuss things with them. They are both certified from St. Mungos, but lost their jobs last year because of pure-blood pressure."
He grinned again, "Although I think that pressure has been dropping lately, and should drop even more in the coming weeks and months as the number of active Death Eaters is reduced by the . . . aurors."
There was a bit more laughter. Everyone knew just who was really removing Death Eaters from action.
By Hermione's estimate, almost half of the "dark" oriented pure-blood families now had underage children as their official Family Head, with regents who didn't want to do anything that might come back to haunt them later. Or endanger their lives right now!
At least three families were considered "extinct" in the direct line — no male children — and the main-branch witches were waiting to see which one of the several apparent-heirs in cadet-branches reached their majority alive, first.
According to the twins, it was becoming more and more difficult for Tom to entice followers into his Death Eater ranks.
"Third, thank you — not," he grinned wryly and shook his head, "for the extra-credit parchments on topics we can explore, things we can do, and other suggestions for the D.S.F." He grinned again to show he was kidding. "I will be reading them carefully, some of them look quite interesting, truthfully." He looked around.
"For those of you who might not yet know, we have discovered that being at Uranus over the full-moon prevents werewolves from changing. I have made the offer to all werewolves to move to the Uranus Station is they wish to avoid changing on the night of a full-moon. This can be a permanent move, as-in they can set-up housekeeping there, or only for the full-moon period. There are no strings attached to this offer. If you know of anyone who might be interested in this, tell them to stop by the video shop 'Return to Tomorrow' in London. They will need to select a werewolf movie, and then ask to speak with the manager about a job."
"I think that's it." He glanced at Hermione and Lee to see if they had anything to add. They didn't. "The door to Hogwarts will disappear in about," he said as he looked at his watch, "thirty minutes. Anyone who wants to return to the castle, without being side-alonged or using the Dobby-Winky Express, has until then."
He looked around the room, again.
"I guess that's all, then. Dismissed!"
He expected a large number would prefer to spend the night on the ship.
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