Harry suspected he was showing a level of favoritism in carrying Hermione back while levitating Daphne, but that was the least of his concerns. Even when Cedric died, and all because he had been in Voldemort's way, he did not think he had ever been so crushed. Ernie caught him on his way back as he put the witches in their tent, without a clue about what else to do with him, probably in the middle of some update.

"What happened?" he asked almost immediately.

"Get me away from here," he said.

"Why?"

"That's an order."

He felt himself being apparated away. Where was he going? Did it matter? He had not specified a location, nor had he said a reason, defaulting instead to the chain of command. He did not think Ernie wanted to hear that he need to be away before he feared he would do something else detrimental, if for no other reason than because he did not want to look at the latest casualties.

"Well, once again, I was the highest ranking officer on the scene."

"Hermione is the same rank as you."

"We would have to get someone highly skilled in Legilimency to yell at her over it."

"Tell me what happened. We have about twenty minutes."

"It was an experimental... it was just a way of reaching Daphne so that we could get her to stop fighting us, and then... we'd have her back. I could help break through her defenses, but then Hermione just disappeared on me. I couldn't maintain the connection; it was like she just wasn't there. The only thing I got from her is something about the Room of Requirement, and then nothing."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

"They would have been able to meet in a memory they shared. People don't know this, but to use Legilimency, you have to know a bit about your target. There are technically different approaches that use the target's memory, the target's current thoughts, or the target's beliefs, predictions, fears..." He shook his head. "That all doesn't matter. Hermione was trying to breach through a shared memory from when they were both in the DA, in the room."

"Maybe seeing the room would help," Ernie said. "Maybe that would give you a clue of what to do."

"It would have been set up like it was when we were using it to practice." He took a deep breath. "Do you know anything about what Daphne would have done in fifth year? I never even knew she was using an assumed name."

Ernie looked down a moment, and then back up.

"Perhaps it's time to repeat something that was said in confidence, then. Susan told me that she knew who Daphne and Blaise were the whole time. It's possible that Hermione did as well, and she never told you. In my younger days, I had something of a distrustful streak with Slytherins, and it might have been the same for you."

"That's possible." He took a deep breath. Most likely, the first casualty had not known of any of the other features of the room. Since she had been invited, he could fairly presume that she had never heard of the place and did not really know how it worked. He took another breath. There was not a chance of all that much changing, even if what he wanted to try succeeded. "I need to put them through the Vanishing Cabinet."

"I can help you with that only if you do no more than that," Ernie said after a moment. "The truth is, we are under attack. The recruits picked up... critical early warning signs-"

"Is it Divination?"

"If I may, the case they made was rather good."

"Fine. There's nothing more that I can do for them anyway."

Harry allowed himself to be apparated back, even though he could have done it himself. He knew he was off his game, and it was disturbing that his subordinate thought that the situation was so desperate that it would not be better to have him sit it out, but in his lack of trust in his own judgement at the moment, he could only reach out to the others and trust theirs, and they were saying that they wanted him with them.

"Don't mention this to the others," he said.

"I would not dream of it."

Susan was staring at a circular map on a table across from Ron, who looked like he had not been sleeping. It was almost like a wizard's chessboard, only he could be quite certain that the moving pieces represented real units, at least to the best predictions of someone using Divination. It was strange; he had not seen anything like it before.

"They only cover this in the last two years," the witch explained. "The limitation of this form is that it shows multiple possible futures, but the real one is effectively guaranteed to be among them."

"How many?"

"It depends on how far out it is. Say you want to see one minute of time, a hundred yards around your position, and that minute is about twenty in the future." She sighed. "That means you'll be watching twenty different possibilities, and, well, the more you expand your view, the more you have to examine. You could potentially narrow it down before the event actually happens, I guess, but that has its limitations. It's good for short-term modeling of different situations and I've heard of Quidditch teams in certain countries using it."

"I see," he said. "What are we thinking?"

"It's the Death Eaters. Real ones. They'll come in and put up anti-apparation jinxes and then kill as many of us as they can."

"How did they find us?" He shook his head. "Can't we just leave before that?"

"We don't have another place lined up," Ron continued. Likely, he had already checked with someone else. "If we go back to an old one, and they know it, somehow, they can keep using the same approach to ambush us."

The problem with not having a new place lined up was that even if someone knew of a spot where they could all hide, he or she was the only one who could get there without being taken there first. To add a place to the list, everyone who could apparate had to be taken there and that was after the place had been scanned for traps. It was ridiculous, really. The idea that they were being attacked in the place to which they had retreated was something they had never considered.

"I'm not going to pick a strategy," he said after a moment. "I'll leave that to you two. What I want to know is how they found us. Could they have used this same method?"

Susan exchanged a look with Ron, who only waved his hands vaguely while drawing up plans, then she looked back.

"I wasn't one of the 'Divination girls', exactly, but I'm pretty sure that there's no other field of study that they could be using for this. Somehow, because we've been hiding from them so well, they've turned to the only thing that can help them find you." She sighed. "It's the old problem. The other side has magic too. It's not as if they just immediately invalidate whatever we're doing, but for everything you might want to do, there's some way of doing it, probably, if you look into it for long enough. I'm sure that's what happened; Voldemort would have only had to give the order and someone would have hit the books."

"It's a dark variant," Ron said after a moment. "Don't ask me how I know; it's a gut instinct."

"I don't blame you," Harry said. Knowing a handful of Death Eaters, he would not be surprised if the first thing they tried was something dark, but with no actual evidence, he had nothing to do with the idea. "I'll help get everyone ready. I'm sorry for being absent until now."

It was the worst part of the war, the fact that he could not simply check out of it when it got overwhelming. There was nothing that he could do, actually, nothing except win it, and that was almost out of the question. How in the hell could he make his units concealed from Divination without knowing how it worked in the first place? Was there even anything to understand? If Voldemort considered it so important...

"Harry, we need you over here," Neville said, practically dragging him over to an argument. Michael was apparently butting heads with the recruits who were insisting on taking flight when he had not cleared them.

"I know we all want to be cavalier with our injuries, but he outranks you," he said almost immediately, even though he had lost track of all the times he had blown off Madam Pomfrey's concerns. "I shouldn't have to be summoned for something like this. I don't care if there's three of you saying something and one of him saying something else. That's not how ranks work. Tell the others, because we're not having this discussion again. You'll be cleaning up after everyone for three weeks while barred from any engagements."

No one said anything back to him. Even though he was agreeing with him, the Healer did not seemed enthused by the whole thing. Silently, he figured that Ron would probably realize that he wanted something to do in the plan, so he went back out to hear his assignment while not really listening to Neville thanking him. Could no one just let him feel bad about his failures sometimes?

"You're back," Susan obviated as soon as he returned to the map. "We only have a minute before we have to respond- the Death Eaters are probably landing sooner than any of our models-"

"Tell me where I'm going."

"You're forming a wall with the recruits and a few minor rankers," Ron said. "Don't focus on killing anyone, just keeping them from making any progress. They'll blast through a rock wall with a reductor or something similar- that's when you hit them. They won't be able to dodge."

He went off without needing to hear about anyone else's responsibilities, though he was sure that his friend would make sure to have someone come around back and hit the enemy from behind. The Death Eaters were particularly dangerous because they were not able to retreat just from a few deaths; if they did, Voldemort would kill even more of them. It was unlikely that the group could kill so many of them that they had no choice but to flee, taking their chances that their master would not eliminate the remainder of his servants. The hope that remained to them was in killing their leadership and causing a general disarray. They had no way of stopping the enemy from using their Dark Marks, but Harry was certain without having to check that someone was getting the Order on the case, almost certainly Neville and Ernie, now that the two of them had escaped his sight.

"Kirke!" he called out, getting the Sergeant from the line. "I'm next to you."

"It's an honor, I suppose. Not using your cloak?"

"I left it with Ron. We're making it hard for them to please their master. They'll call him as soon as they see me, probably, but if they take their eyes off anyone else, they'll pay for it with their lives."

"That's too much of a risk," Westenberg advised. "It's better to force them to keep looking for you-"

"If they can't see me, they can justify using whatever they want, like Fiendfyre. There's probably at least a few of them that know it. If I were hiding somewhere, invisible, and someone killed me, he might think he'll have a chance of explaining himself to Voldemort. I have to be visible for this or we'll lose the position almost instantly."

"If you think that the risk is worth it, then I suppose-"

The curses came almost entirely without warning; it was only for the detection charms that they responded in time, hitting everyone that passed through, though it was hard to tell how much damage they were doing; not everyone was using killing curses, but there were reasons for that. When they brought down someone who was still alive, there was a chance that the others would try to help a comerade, and themselves get taken down in the process. Perhaps it was an ambitious suggestion with the Death Eaters, but there was little else that they could do. He found himself next to Ginny, predicting the flight path of anyone who was on a broomstick and succeeding in bringing one down with a killing curse, prompting a look of surprise. It was an impressed look, fortunately- she had not wanted him to stay pure or anything bizarre like that.

It was strange; as they fought, he could only think that the whole thing was coming without any warning, and it only frightened him more, almost enough to forget about Hermione and Daphne. As many times as they had been attacked without being notified in advance, it was so much worse; had he been in a film that the Dursleys were watching on a telecast, he would have expected the music to change, but it seemed the enemy had been clever enough to come after them when their concerns were elsewhere, when they were still trying to protect the fictional Eleazar Higgen, whom the Prophet had only just announced was responsible for some bizarre scheme involving selling children to goblins.

"Killing curses!" he shouted. They had passed the point of critical mass where they could take two men out of the battle by wounding or stunning, and more than that, the enemy was surprising them by reviving their own units from the other side of the rock wall that they were struggling to maintain. Most likely, Ron's company had not succeeded in its mission; perhaps they had seen through it. The Death Eaters had been smart to come on broomsticks; it was easily the best way of dodging killing curses. Right as Westenberg was telling him that the hammer was not going to hit the anvil any time soon, not if it had not already, he was mounting his own broomstick.

"I know. I'm getting closer to them with the maneuverability to dodge. They're going to target everyone else with wave-kill, so spread out." Wave-kill was just what they had taken to calling particularly dangerous spells that worked on a large area. "I'm not going to be responsible for everyone dying here; you're taking point on the ground."

"You would still- take off already, damn you."

Harry had never felt more alive than when ducking under a killing curse in the air, avoiding it by a hair's breadth, though because he had barely ever done that, perhaps it was a new record. Countless times had he dodged spells with members of the DA, on the ground, in the air, with limbs restrained, blinded, and even while carrying someone and not a second of it was wasted- while flying he knew that Susan's air shield was twice as effective, and he was careful not to put himself in the path of another spell. From the ground his allies were firing upward, and they were hitting targets, but again not able to use the lethal spells they wanted, and resorted to hitting stunned foes on the way down.

Time seemed to stop.

It was only then that he became certain that time actually did stop, at least for everyone except the man carrying the strange pocket watch, silver rather than gold. He flew in Harry's direction while holding it out proudly. Was it someone he recognized?

"Do you know what this is, Potter?" he asked. "You should be honored; I can only use this so many times before it burns out entirely, and I only managed to steal a prototype from the Time Room decades ago, hiding it, of course, before I was arrested. They never managed to make another one, not after old Danae Smitty died."

Harry could intuit that she was also the creator of the Time Turner, most likely, and not required to write anything down. He could not, however, do anything about that. At the sound of the tiniest click, time started to move again, and he found himself disarmed.

"Don't try anything," the Death Eater ordered. "We're in position to kill more of the others. Your little friends trying to attack us from behind were anticipated and countered. The Dark Lord is there himself. We thought you would have been over there."

Even compared to the graveyard, he had never been more afraid in his life. The dark wizard before him was basically saying that the entire unit was dead. Voldemort would not have had any reason to keep them alive. He smiled without any need to say 'it seems you understand'.

"What remains for you to decide is how many more will die. I'm not the leader here, so I suppose I can't guarantee their survival, but I can guarantee their deaths. The most I can do is allow them to escape, and I am reasonably sure that my master will think that's acceptable as long as we have you."

"Why haven't you stunned me?" he asked quietly. It was easy to keep his face resolute; somehow his panic was keeping him from processing anything else.

"I honestly forgot the incantation after all these years. I was in Azkaban, you know."

"That tracks," Harry said after a moment. "Why are you doing all this for Voldemort? We've killed so many of your comerades, and for what? So he can continue to sacrifice you? He only went there to get you out when he needed you, and that was several months after he came back to life."

"At this point, I don't have a choice," he said. "The Dark Mark allows my master to require my soul of me at any time at all. Before that, well, I think you know that this system doesn't work. We've allowed the weak, terrible bloodlines to rule us and it's only brought ruin."

"It doesn't have anything to do with their bloodlines-"

"Oh, that's not why we've been declining in numbers ever since the Highland Gamps founded this 'Ministry of Magic'? That's not why we've been teaching kids that it's possible for muggles to give birth to our sort?"

"Some of my friends are like that."

"Could've been adopted. Could've been switched out. Could've been the products of adultery, I'm sad to say. Wouldn't wish that on anyone."

They said nothing as they hovered in the air. Harry had suspected there was some reason they kept using the term 'mudblood', but he had never bothered to look into it. Even if they believed in a basis for it, he did not agree with them. It seemed unlikely that his friend had been misled about how she had been born, or that she had been the only one.

"Does that justify killing them?" he asked. "You see them as human enough to not want to tell them of their parentage."

"It wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if we were informed about it. They wouldn't be able to fool us with tricks like that again. Regrettably, though, there would be resistance, and we would have to be ready for that."

"I don't believe that's the case for all of you. You'll never convince me that Bellatrix or even the others were concerned citizens. Pettigrew was just a coward, and he still is."

"That much is true. You don't always get to pick your coworkers, though. They're not the best part of the job. An aggressive boss isn't the worst, though; there are points in his favor." He looked over his shoulder. "It's strange, though; I always thought that timeliness was one of them. As willing as we all were to wait for him, he never once made us wait long, to the terror of some of the younger members."

"Maybe he's found something else to do."

"No, that's quite impossible. On the way here, it seemed his only concern was you."

"Interesting," he said, getting a thought out of nowhere. "Have you ever heard of Polyjuice Potion?"