"We're not liberating the prisoners, and that's final," Harry said, ending a debate about the aftermath of the last mission. Not all of them had gone well, but few had left such a bad taste in his mouth. "They made their choice and joined what they thought was the Death Eaters, probably."

"That just fundamentally makes no sense," Ginny said. "Why would they join the losing side?"

That question provoked an awkward pause and a lot of looking around. It was true that the enemy had lost a fair few units, but whether or not they were losing was a question of victory conditions. As long as both sides wanted either Harry or Voldemort to win the duel that they would have to have, then the battle had not even begun. There was also effectively no way for them to rebuild the way they wanted, not unless they became a revolutionary army and did away with the continuity of the regime, and even then they had a long battle ahead of them. The task of a dictator was primarily keeping a small amount of people around him happy to keep them from breaking off and rebelling.

None of the likely futures felt like winning, but perhaps she was right about the Death Eaters losing. They might not be as concerned about bending the island to their will, but even in the best case scenario for them, assuming their support base went right back to them after the war, they would be trying much harder to do the same thing, and they would be facing a mass exodus at the same time. There was no way that those targeted by their regime were just going to sit around and die, if that was what they had planned, so killing random insurgents and closing the country was their only option, and then internationally it would be obvious that they were looking at a failed state. It was unlikely that other countries would intervene, because there was nothing in it for them unless they could take over, and even then very little, but the ideology represented would not look terribly attractive to anyone else.

"Why did we join our side?" he asked after a moment. "None of us should have thought we had a chance. I know when I was going over this with all of you, we were up against it, and we still are, because they're still trying to kill us off to save their position-"

"That's why we should strike now," Michael said after a moment. "We haven't attacked the Ministry in months. They've just been getting stronger, the Death Eaters have been getting weaker, and we've stayed about the same."

It was a sentiment contrary to what had only recently been decided. After extensive debates, mostly reiterations of what everyone had said before, and a vote, the DA had settled on a moderate policy. They were going to get all the facts in order and force the system to convict itself of wrongdoing. Ron and Susan probably would not have won if they had voted a few months ago; it probably would have been inconclusive had it not been for the large, outspoken popular disapproval of the current government. The Quibbler and other emerging publications, some with better journalistic standards, if not the same principles, had done work in informing everyone of the reality of the situation, offering large amounts of gold for anyone who could explain how Voldemort had not returned.

On that front, Ginny's statement deserved a little more credit. There had been a tipping point where it seemed like the majority of people were at least not completely opposed to the idea, and the random attacks against the DA's supporters, who had taken to their neighbors with copies of opposition news, or raised a problem at work when refusing to accept the official position, or in one case, shouted obscenities at a public official in a loo while blind drunk and then crawled out of a window, had for the most part stopped. It was first physically safe, then financially, and then socially to take the position that went against what the experts consulted by the Prophet had decided- it most likely helped that the paper had lost a lot of money.

According to Luna, they had initially blamed the downturn on Rita Skeeter, sabotaging the message by her positive, if still controversial, portrayal of Harry. Some of the old guard reporters surprised them by supporting her, though, arguing that she never once said anything good about him, only refrained from criticizing him for a moment and put some amount of his exact words in print. There was no interest in painting him in a better light; she wanted a teenage heartthrob and for some reason he was willing to give her that in exchange for being remotely fair. For a few weeks, the paper tried to avoid printing anything controversial, an attempt to get an idea of where the public was, and that was venomously criticized by what seemed like everyone with a magic quill. The fact that they were trying to gauge what kind of picture to paint was a signed confession they had no concern for the truth, and there were already calls to have the editors killed. No one needed to be Binn's favorite to see what was going on.

"We'll take over the country without destroying it," he said after a moment. "That was what we decided. Attacking them sabotages what we've been trying to do."

"They could be planning a strike against anyone. They're desperate. You don't want to be remembered as not taking action when-"

"This is something we decided as a group," Susan said, annoyed.

"I think we all know that whatever Harry says goes, though," Blaise said. "Sorry. I didn't mean to step over the fence, there; I just decided that the truth was a little more important."

"Thank you," he said. "If it's true, then, that I cast the deciding vote, then don't argue with me about this any more. Unless the Aurors are doing something, and we have to stop them, then we're not sacrificing our position just to even out the numbers. We'll be taking over the same system that manages their payroll. The only reason they have to get desperate before that is if we start showing our hand. There are some members of the loud minority who are basically saying that the only way to move forward is to torture the truth out of existing officials, and they're acting like we support that, and it's just the quiet part that we're not saying out loud."

"We're not disarming ourselves," Ron said after a moment. "We're not making our position any worse. There just isn't a way for the Ministry to turn this around, and if somehow, a small amount of them try something, it's better if we act like we didn't see it coming, because then it'll look like we forced them into it."

"What does it matter how it looks?" Ginny asked. "What did it matter a few months ago when they were all attacking us? All that this has proven is that if you're winning, everyone agrees with you."

"We don't intend to rule by force and take up people's wands," Susan said. "We'll run the whole thing with complete transparency." There was a note of resignation in her voice, and he remembered their earlier conversation. "There will be times, though, that we'll need to be extra careful, and it's because you're right about a subset of the population. We've already seen that when you have the opportunity to make the case yourself, the truth has a chance of winning out, but we really don't want to enable the violent fanatics. They don't even care about the reasons that we killed those people; they just think that they're on the right side and they want to be first onto the lifeboat."

"Well, fortunately for them, we're not in charge of making sure everyone gets their due in the end," Harry said after a moment. "They'll face that, but not now."

It was hard to have anything but contempt for those who saw a conflict as nothing more than an outlet for their violent fantasies. It was not important to them who was right, just who won, and before long there would be a new conflict, because the desire for blood would never be sated. While it was a shame, though, there was nothing precluding his own following from taking that approach. Apparently, even if he said that he did not want violence to take place in his name, there was a good chance that many of them were actually enemies, acting so abysmally as friends that there was basically no other explanation. Taking recruits was going to be harder, if that ever became necessary again; even the same kind of contract would probably not filter out those who wanted to ruin them badly enough; some of them would even still take the chance after hearing about the curse. Taking a deep breath, he decided to be grateful that they were at least concerning themselves with what happened next, suggesting he was not alone in his confidence that they had a chance of winning, and even better, surviving long enough to have some influence over where things went next.

"We're not politicians," Michael said after a moment. "We're a resistance group. Isn't that what we've been saying the whole time? It's not our responsibility to sort out who gets into what position; we're just here to fight. We're meant to be the sword of justice."

"Wielded by whom?" Luna asked. It was the first time she had chimed in to such a discussion, but her usual silence was not for a lack of care. The whole group all turned to look at her. "I have decided that I believe in the phoenix, and that we should use the text as a guide, and if we're doing that, then we're not attacking anyone without a good reason for it. Attacking a unit just because its numbers have not decreased recently is a lack of faith."

"A lack of-" Blaise shook his head. "We have to live in reality. We can't simply act like something else is going to come and save us-"

"If we had acted like that, we never would have taken arms," Ron said, interrupting. "Doing nothing isn't really faith; it's just telling yourself everything is going to be all right without doing anything that requires strength or courage. Anyone can die in a hole. I personally guarantee you anyone who does nothing is just someone who's accepted death while hoping for something better, but not really worried about it either way."

No one had anything to say back to that. They were still divided on how they were basing their beliefs on what sounded a lot like a religion, even if they already dealt with magic and prophecies and forces beyond their control as far back as when they were in Hogwarts. It was a little more personal for Harry, he had supposed. The method that his mother used to protect him had not been dark, but light, in a way that defied the definition that dark magic was simply undiscovered or poorly understood. The protective blood wards had been unambiguously, literally placed on his very skin with love. It was only because she intensely loved him that she was able to perform the ancient magic.

"As with everything else, I don't expect everyone else to just believe what Dumbledore and I believe," he said after a moment. "Expecting someone to believe something doesn't make sense, after all. What you believe is more about what's been shown to you than the kind of person you are; it's not really a choice either." He looked over at his old friend. "What we're really after is more like courage. We know that it took a lot to join us in the first place, but from there, it didn't take as much. Fighting when it's your only option is still something not everyone can do, but if you've come that far... you'll have other problems with continuing before you start having problems with the danger. This is one of those other kinds of problems."

"We're not saying that anyone is lacking in the ability to face danger," Susan clarified. "There are other things that we might not have prepared ourselves to face. If you all think that I'm perfectly happy with the results of the last few discussions, that couldn't be further from the truth. This was close to what I wanted, but I believe whether or not it's going to work remains to be seen, and I've discussed this with others before today." She looked over at their leader and he nodded. "It's taking a lot not to form a secret coalition as a backup plan, and perhaps even that would be a waste of time, but the point is that I'm choosing to trust the group and its decision. It's what I expected out of everyone else when we entered into a debate, and then a vote."

There was another pause. Technically, they really should have been getting to work on their next mission plan, but they had all expected that the vote would not be the end of things. They could not, of course, determine the truth by election, but they could decide what they were going to do, and in some sense that was more challenging. What would it take, though, another argument? Was there one where they could come to a conclusion, and not just have it come down to a question of values, or perhaps the ability to predict what might happen at the end of a long series of events? It was not as if they could all be right.

"We're getting off topic," Ginny said after a moment. "That's partially my fault. I just think that they would have been helpful, especially against a theoretically unguarded Azakaban. They would at least be able to tell us how to get in without being noticed." She sighed. "Anyway, if we can at least agree on this plan, then we should have everything we need to rescue the boring people."

That was how the argument started. The current government had put away several people on the grounds of being dangerous to the public, and none were actual criminals; the Hit Wizards mostly did good work and they would not have been left so long. Rescuing them would not really be a blow against the Ministry, but it would be a point in their own favor; they had long since claimed to be on the side of doing the right thing, and there was no good reason to have as many people as there were in a maximum security facility- technically, though, the security was probably lower since Voldemort had broken into the place once and he had rescued his friends on another occasion, but with the kinds of prisoners they had, there was no reason to have too much in place to keep them locked up. They were not terribly skilled in combat themselves, and probably no one was coming to rescue them.

He had not been proud of it, at any point, but they heard about the arrests from time to time, and had as other groups judged that the detainees were just not worth busting out. They had most likely been held in a few different facilities before it was decided that Azakaban was ready, and more importantly, that the dementors were hungry, and likely to rebel on just the paltry fw that they had. They already had a plan to invade and rescue the prisoners, but there was another question he had to raise before they could proceed.

"Should we exterminate the dementors?" he asked.

"Can we?" Neville asked after a moment. "I always thought it was impossible. I thought that they could get hungrier and hungrier, but never die. They don't breed; only things with at least the creature designation breed."

"Well, that means that their existence doesn't rely on the existence of other dementors," Susan said. "There's a theory that they simply grow like mold wherever there's loss and decay. I would be all for starving them to death, but that doesn't mean we'll be rid of them. I'm surprised there aren't more now."

"They can't come from nothing," Blaise said. "Even if it's magical, there must be some process that's creating them. That said, though, I can't see how it wouldn't slow them down if we killed them. There's no way it's a hydra where it grows back more heads than you cut off. If we destroyed the current population of Azkaban, then the world would have somewhat less of them, for a short time at least. That's the most likely conclusion; out of all the ways that this could go down."

"At the very least, then, this will teach us something about them," he decided after a moment, having been more concerned with whether or not he was about to find out that they were once people, or had some redeeming qualities. Perhaps they could have picked that up through his tone had he been stuck with his earlier, less detached, polished way of speaking. He took a deep breath, deciding that if there was any merit to contemplating the change in his expression and relationships, there was no time for it. There was another point to established. "It will also give us the chance to build a new base of operations, something that Voldemort would never expect, even if he thinks of some way of getting through our defenses, and I'm sure he's hard at work with that."

"Yeah, there's a reason for that, mate," Ron said almost immediately, shaking his head. "If we're trying to do away with the dark magic, what's going there going to accomplish?" He held out a hand, gesturing around him. "Did we forget we've got a base? I mean, technically, it's the Order's, and technically, you could be right about it not being perfectly unassailable, but how could that possibly be worth what we're facing there?" He looked around. "When you pulled a Harry Potter and rescued almost everyone, that was when they had only recently gotten us there- you acted so quickly on information that they didn't have any way to guess you'd have and struck them right where they least expected it. As we've just gone over, the Ministry is just as powerful as it was and at the very least, they're not going to make the same mistake again. If there is anyone that they value at all, it's going to be guarded, better than before. We can't all slip past the dementor's notice under the cloak."

"Ginny. What we discussed-"

"Expecto Patronum."

A beautiful, silver horse sprang forth from her wand and filled up the rest of the space in the room, practically. She dispelled it almost immediately. It was not extremely impressive, not surrounded by people who could cast the same spell, and

"We are trying to do away with the dark magic, and only the light can do that," he continued after a moment. He found himself genuinely proud of his friend for overcoming the difficulty that she had when casting the spell before, and attributed it mostly to a lack of confidence, a lack of sense of self-worth, more than a lack of ability. It was said that the ability was rare among Death Eaters, most likely because in their case there was no need- after a year of coercing information out of people as a resistance force, they had learned that the dementors effectively stepped aside when a host of dark wizards arrived. Hermione had read that the island and its tower had belonged at one point to a dark wizard named Ekrizdis, so perhaps that had something to do with it. Even if that were true, though, it seemed ridiculous to darken enough of his units to get the wraiths to work with them.

"It's a rare thing to have so many people together who can cast the Patronus Charm," he said after a moment. "I'm sure the human guards were all required to learn it, but I think we know that the corporeal forms are more effective; they're better in a fight because they don't have to be directed, like you've seen people move their wands to propel the silver mist. We're turning that island into a prison for the dementors."