Approaching the legendary defenses of the castle's grounds without a plan was suicide. Doing the same with some idea in mind about how best to go about it was slightly better than suicide. Up against it as they all were, the DA was grateful for any chance it could get. It was in that same spirit that the plan had been discussed mere hours earlier.

"Ron is not going to be fleeing to anywhere on the Floo network," he started. "It's too obvious and it's too easy for London to deploy units to those locations to wait for him. His best bet is getting as far from the castle as he can and getting back to us the long way- I should mention he basically went in with this idea that we were not going to help him at all, even once he got out of the castle; he's going to assume we've moved away from Lady Longbottom, but otherwise we're sitting around waiting for him to get back."

"Is that a bad idea?" Michael asked. "It's not that I don't want him back, but if he's got a plan to get back to us, aren't we just complicating things meeting him halfway?"

Harry momentarily searched for a respectful way to say that Ron did not really have a plan to get back to them, he had a part of a plan that was really just fighting insane odds for survival, because he had no way of knowing where to find the rest of them. He had left without a plan to get back, in short, because he struggled with a sense of self worth that would have been obvious to him the day they met if a kid raised by the Dursley family had terms for such a thing. Of course, whenever Ron was around, there was a lot more laughing and he had his own uses, even if he probably underestimated their value. It seemed like a foolish thing to count oneself as perfect out of the womb; he was sure that if anyone like that had come across him, it would have been Malfoy.

"We're intercepting him because he hasn't been trained to apparate. We can get him to a safe place the quickest. This will require that we use our notes to communicate over long distances, because at the moment, only two of us can apparate, and it will fall to us to get everyone else out of there, starting with the one running for his life."

They were taking a light team of six for that reason; there was only a limited value to each person and anyone they took would have to be extracted. While those searching for an escaped Hogwarts student were not exactly looking for them as well, it would not do to be seen, so that was another reason to keep their numbers down. The selection process was hard, but it left him with Ginny, Luna, Terry, Neville, Blaise, and himself.

He did not know the name of the forest where they were squatting, not so far from the school. Ron probably thought it most sensible to go straight north out of away from the castle, whether he was escaping on a broom for speed, or on foot to evade detection; there was rough terrain in the highlands and the northern reaches of Scotland spread out into uninhabited rocks and quiet nonmagical settlements where he could lose his pursuers if he kept his head about him. If he was still thinking that he had to do everything himself to get back, he would probably have stolen a book from the Hogwarts library to learn about portkeys or apparation, loath as he was to that mode of learning, and spend every spare minute reading it while staying unseen.

The team of six was dressed in muggle garb and each at least somewhat familiar with their protocol. He wished he could have taken Hermione, but she was still busy with the wounded and cursed, and it was probably unwise to have taken so much of the dark magic squad away from them, but he really needed someone who could apparate, so he had to have Blaise, and Ginny insisted on coming because she seemed to think that acting like she always looked after her brother meant that he had never done as much for her. Hannah had also grown up away from witches and wizards, but she was in no condition, so that left Terry, who knew enough about the nonmagical, though he had never specified whether that was from books or experience; there were times he seemed a converse Hermione, a pure blood who had researched the muggle world more than most of its natives, more successfully than Arthur Weasley, who seemed to focus on gadgets and the whimsy of it all.

"We're splitting into two teams for each of the towns in the area. If you get even a vague sense that he's over there, apparate over and tell us."

"We remember."

Harry was left with Luna and Neville. He had not known how well the other three interacted, but they were on an unofficial team of sorts, so at least if they had to put anyone down, they would be more than capable. All he could do at the moment was keep up with his own responsibilities.

"Strange," the witch observed. "I had thought that Michael cared for Ginny. Why did he not join her team?"

"Well, at the moment, he can't do much of anything."

"She's talking about before," Harry said. "I don't know. I thought he liked Cho at one point too. It doesn't really matter. Sooner or later, he'll settle on someone. He's not under orders to be straightforward."

The town could not have been smaller. He could only wonder if the residents liked it that way, but it certainly did not suit his tastes. It was somewhat strange, or perhaps perfectly normal and he had simply never asked anyone, but since striking out on his own, as it were, he had started to think more about what he liked, when he had grown up with this idea that it was perfectly irrelevant. Even though he did not have all that many friends early on at Hogwarts, he liked how he had everyone right around him, so for no reason other than that vaguely defined personal preference, living in a small town or village, magical or mundane, did not appeal to him.

"Harry."

He turned to see that Blaise had only just arrived.

"We found someone who might have seen him."

"Follow up on the lead; we'll keep looking here for another moment."

They were quick to go through everything around them and then move on, making sure they did not miss a real lead in the decreasingly likely event that the other team had picked up on a false one. When they arrived, they found an old man in a perfectly dry raincoat. Anyone with a wand could tell he was using some charm to keep the water off him; the raincoat deflected nothing more than suspicion, but in a quiet town, a wizard who lived by himself had more to fear from that.

"Looked just like your lass there," he said. "I swear I wasn't lying."

Already there had been some merit in taking Ginny; most likely, the witness had noticed her and asked if she knew anyone who had run through the area in a hurry. The obvious thing to do was to hold him captive somewhere, because they did not want to leave any record of having been in the area, and whatever entity was searching for their friend had a chance of finding him and getting the same information out of him, as well as descriptions of the six of them. At the same time, it seemed genuinely terrible to make a captive out of someone who was helping them out of the kindness of his heart. He would never again be trusted by the rest of the DA; even their families would not be safe from him the moment he found them inconvenient to the cause.

"We're going to have to ask you not to tell anyone else what you told us," he said after a moment. "If you can, it might be better to skip town entirely. There are some blighters looking for him and us."

"Aye. Tha's what I thought, more or less."

The wizard gave them a few more details and they apparated to a new position. Neither Harry nor Blaise was at a point where they could take more than one person, but it was still fast enough; far more so than flying. They were on a small island based on the direction that their informant told them, and how long it had been since the sighting. With it established that their target was not on the island, had he gone along the coast rather than crossing? Would he not be too visible at a range like that? Why had he left the small town in the first place?

"Keep moving. There are six of us and we're close, so we'll split up. Stay within shouting distance." He thought for another moment. "If you see him, call out my name, not his. It's common enough no one overhearing us will care."

No one asked what they would do if they could not find the target; it seemed they had all accepted that failure was not an option before coming on the mission. They had no way of signalling to him that they were not his enemies, so they would have to assume that he would either attack them or get further away, ironically enough putting himself in greater danger than simply remaining out there. What else was there to do, though? Should he have prearranged some discernible sound, like a bird call, and have used that as a sign that the cavalry was on its way?

"Harry."

It was not exactly a calling out, but it was loud enough for him to hear. Everyone converged on Neville's position and found that he was crouched in front of an arrow dug into the ground, probably with the tip of a wand. It pointed to the left of where they had been going. Everyone looked that direction, but he looked the other way.

"When people are followed, there's an observed tendency for them to go left. We're not sure why," Blaise said, throwing up his hands.

"He knows that," Ginny said, probably remembering his having said it at some point.

"Yeah, and he doesn't think that we're following him," Harry said, turning right. "Anyone he thinks is following him is an enemy."

A spell came out from between the trees a few minutes after turning. Thoughts raced through his mind, like how there was no reason for Ron to have stopped where he was, but that was all unimportant. They fanned out and closed in; Terry hit him with a stunner while he was trying to run for it and Luna levitated his unconscious form to keep him from hitting anything on the way down. Blaise took him back to the base, as planned, through Side-Along-Apparation, which they were just learning now did not require the other person to be conscious. Moments later he was back with the fateful crack while everyone else's head was on a swivel.

"Good work, team," Harry muttered. "We're causing a lot of noise here. Like we practiced, exit procedure."

He wished he could have already learned how to apparate silently, but that had been low on a long list of priorities. As he and Blaise were coming back for Ginny and Neville, the last two, they heard several cracks not far from their position. While it could have been curious locals, they had never been so lucky thus far. If it would serve as an explanation for the extra haste he used to apparate back, it would have been nice for it to count as an excuse as well.

Unfortunately, as he heard her screaming, he doubted she would have taken any kind of apology for the fact that they both splitched.

Bleeding and confused, he had a hard time even trying to fight off Ginny as she climbed on top of him and grabbed him by the throat, though she was stunned quickly by some other party. It looked like Michael was up and about again, somehow, as he learned as he passed out, the smallest modicum of optimism sustaining him. Was it enough that Hermione had managed to treat him, though? What had happened to Hannah?

It was probably a matter of hours before he woke up, his foot fortunately reattached. He was lying down on a conjured cot with trees directly overhead. The witch who had been on his mind what felt like a moment before was right there as if to answer his questions. As it turned out, though, she had questions.

"Do you feel anything unusual?"

"I've never splitched myself before."

"I know you're in pain, I just need to know if we fixed it properly," she said. "Could you put weight on your foot at all?"

"Sure," he said. It seemed wise to go along with everything the healer, or the closest they had to one, suggested. "What happened to Ginny?"

"She's fine, she just doesn't want to see you right now. Michael volunteered to move her across the camp."

"Oh," he said trying to put weight on his foot. As promised, it hurt, but it did not feel like anything was out of place, or like more damage was being done. "Well, I should've seen that coming. I was the one who splitched her."

"Well, sure, but I don't see why you're worried," she said, not waiting for him to explain his condition before walking off, stopping only once with a backward glance. "It's not worth it." Her bedside manner could use some work, he supposed, but she had fixed him up well and he was not inclined to begrudge her the stress responses. Nowhere near an expert in Occlumency, let alone Legilimency, he had no idea what was going on inside people's heads, but with Hannah, it was like she wanted him to know.

He found Ron in basically the center of the camp getting debriefed by three members. It was important, to be sure, that he knew what all had transpired on their end, but when were they going to learn what he had done? So far, he still had no idea what his mission had been. His mate's face lit up when their eyes met.

"Harry!" he called out. "You came to get me."

"Can't take all the credit. Your sister's-"

"She'll be fine," he said. "Fred 'n George've done worse."

"That's not better."

"No, it's not," he said, getting out a map. "Are these our next series of apparation points?"

"Yeah, I think so." He had not seen the map in a hot minute.

"Well, not anymore. We change our plans to see when they're getting information on us."

"There's no way anyone's betraying us."

"Yeah, what if someone did it unknowingly, though?" he asked. "What if someone got mentally taken over by a dark wizard? What if someone got killed and replaced?"

Harry had not intended for their first conversation to be one of the brass tacks of information security, but he was glad that Ron was back either way. It was possible that he felt like he was behind and needed to catch up with everyone else. Was there any point in telling him he was wrong about that? He could not say if they did not each have a genuine responsibility to be the best they could for the group, and he supposed a generous interpretation of what his friend was doing, was just that.

Hermione was in the middle of research; he understood that she had wanted to get back to it as soon as she was done with Michael and Hannah, but she had not said to him what specifically she wanted to read. When the two of them were done with their immediate concerns, they both went over to see her, if only to see how she would react to his triumphant return. Surprisingly enough, she did not react at all, instead asking them where she could find an inventory of all the things they had with them that no one could simply conjure or transfigure.

"I'm not sure," he confessed after a moment of wondering about her lack of a reaction. There was no way it was doing wonders for Ron's self image, though at the end of the day, she was not responsible for it. Would asking her later achieve anything? "I'll ask Susan. It seemed like she was keeping track of that."

They left without further ado, each seeing that it was strange for them to stand around. In fairness, he supposed he had asked a lot out of Hermione lately, what with her having to do something, and he still did not know what, for the two budding healers, and he might have added to her concerns by causing her patients to have to work straight after, but was that not how it went sometimes? Could she have still felt slighted by the fact that he needed to go to Snape for Occlumency training?"

Their tasks took them to separate places within the encampment. He really wished it could have been as nice as the tent that the Weasleys took to the World Cup, but that was only suitable for so many, even if it was bigger on the inside than out. As soon as everything was ready, he called for a general meeting of everyone they had on hand. There were some decisions to make that he could make by himself, but at least warranted the attention of the group.

"As promised, we're not abandoning recruitment. To that end, we'll be assigning Blaise and Ernie to the muggle part of London. There are plenty of places there where you can lose pursuers, and worst comes to worst, you can apparate out, but don't let on. We want to see how they try to catch us when they don't think we have a way out." He looked over to Ron. "I'd also like to announce your new unit tactics teacher. We had to change course just to pick him up out of the woods, so make sure that his time is well spent. He doesn't need anyone who doesn't really want to think about it."

"Ranks," Hermione reminded him at a whisper.

"Right. The last thing I want to bring up is meritocratic ranking. I'll get into the reasons why for anyone that curious. I need to know, though. Is there anyone opposed to it? Does any one have a reason why we shouldn't go through with it?" Sure enough, out of everyone there, there were no rebellious elements bearing torches or whatever else."

It seemed like there were a few people thinking about it for the first time. In fairness, it was actually something that he and his friends had brought up in secret discussions rather than something demanded by everyone else. If anyone had been envious because of the secret discussions, oddly enough, the idea of issuing ranks was probably the last thing he or she expected to have been ideated in them.

"How does it work? Do we all get a rank?" Neville asked.

"Yeah. Everyone here's been in battle with us except Ron, and he's been busy on another mission, so you all get a rank to show that. Recruits won't have ranks right away. We'll still be in charge, for the moment, but if we all die, someone has to take over for us, and that position should be filled by whoever has the highest rank. We don't want any kind of bloody schism to take place."

Harry had been on the fence about the idea initially, but as he spoke to everyone about it, it seemed to make more sense to him, once he tried to justify it to them, he found that their situation gave them reason enough to have a ranking system in place. The point about some combination of his friends dying, though, had not been in the secret discussions; he only thought of it himself, and only just as he was speaking. Was necessity the mother of invention? Were all ideas varying degrees of decent when he gave them a chance? Had something happened to where he was just more sympathetic to the idea?

By the approval of the proposal by the group, he supposed there was no point in wondering.