In first year, and probably for a few years after that, Dumbledore had been mostly telling the truth when he alleged he could see through invisibility cloaks. Perhaps he could not actually see through them, or at least not the one that belonged to Harry, but he had not been as sneaky or clever as he thought he was as a fledgling wizard who had so far only evaded unfair punishments from the Dursleys, who were not that committed to living out their cruel intentions; generally, if he could make it even slightly not worth the effort, they would back out. Once, a teacher claimed that he had not been doing his schoolwork, probably not because of Dudley- he never would have been clever enough for that- and after the wife disappeared from the lecture, he figured he had as good of a chance as he was going to get.
"Uncle Vernon, you could check my work, every single day, and you could study the material, you know, to make sure it was correct, and then I could hand it over to Aunt Petunia to give it a second set of eyes," he had said, watching the cogs turn in the mind of the middle-aged muggle. "-or, you could not do all that and just say that you don't believe that I haven't been doing my work because you've checked in on me here and there."
The fact that it worked made the whole thing almost funny.
Harry crept into the base without making a sound. Perhaps he had been tricked once, but he was not entirely compromised, not as long as his cloak worked. He knew that it was real, and he knew that no one should be able to see him or detect him in any way. The only downside to using his firebolt, which could fly effectively silently, was that it was hard to be certain it was covered by the cloak all the way- it was good enough at a range, but sneaking through the base would prove more challenging.
"It's something of a crisis, actually," McGonagall's voice was saying. "Young Harry disappeared after hearing something about Ron. It's possible that he's been kidnapped. Miss Greengrass says that she can't quite get through to him." His mental shields were up all the way, so that fit, but it was strange that they were looking for him. How could he be sure that what he was seeing was real if he only had the cloak? Of course, they could not see him, but that was what he expected at least.
So far, it seemed like there was no evidence of an infiltration. Something had to have happened, and yet, he had no idea precisely what. It would leave him feeling rather silly if he found out that he just thought he heard something out of a lack of sleep and there was never any danger, but he could not afford to assume something like that. The facility was on alert, as expected. How could he prove, though, that he was seeing something he was not expecting to see, but still something that was not absurd, which he would have to assume was the vision wigging out and failing to rectify itself. With all his visions so far, he recognized that they were not normal dreams, but the simple fact that he could not recognize what he was seeing as a dream did not mean that it was not one; he would not put it past Voldemort to have disappeared from public view only because he was working on a more subtle method of mental infiltration.
"A prolonged absence is simply not an option. The DA has taken the Horcrux that we found for them to destroy, hidden it with the rest of their collection, and there's been no progress on the issue since then," Lupin said, throwing up his hands. "We've allowed them to have a lot of autonomy, but if we don't know what they're doing, we can't justify-"
"That's what autonomy is, as it happens," Blaise said, materializing, probably through a door like everyone else, along with Susan. "To be autonomous is to not have to justify your continued autonomy. Or were we simply on a trial run?"
"Many of you have shown wisdom beyond a mere seventeen years," McGonagall prefaced. "At the same time, a single mistake could cost us the entire war. Who is it that you believe prevented a robbery of Gringotts? Who is it that protected the waterways from being cursed, shielding countless merpeople-"
"I- we know that you have been active, and we haven't been monitoring everything that you've done-" the young witch started back.
"Precisely," Lupin interrupted. "You haven't been looking into what we've done because you've trusted us. You haven't ever not trusted us."
"Why can't you do the same for us?" Blaise said.
"Trust is a two way street, but not like that, and you know it," his old Defense teacher said. "You're just speaking deceitfully like you do with those you've interrogated. My point is that we have a fair, reasonable standard of trustworthiness and due to a long series of missteps, your group, despite its successes, does not meet it. As a result, we've been keeping track of everything you've been doing on top of all of our other responsibilities. If you had accepted a more limited role in this conflict-"
"We never would have accomplished anything," Susan said after a moment, shaking her head. Out of all the senior staff, she was probably the most inclined to authority, but she seemed to have divorced herself from what the school and its faculty had conceived as leadership and order. Harry imagined that she was mostly unrecognizable from the student that they had taught once, and at least in some way, they all were. "We're going to keep butting heads as long as we're working together," she said after a moment. "Many of us have adopted the same moral compass that the Order has, and for that reason, we're asking you to trust that at least our hearts are in the right place. Practically speaking, we've come back from worse than this."
"I am afraid that we can no longer simply hope that you are right about that," McGonagall said. "Unless Mr. Potter reappears, the Order has no choice but to separate itself from and disavow your organization. It appears that your only interest or specialty is in destruction. Is it simply the dark magic? Is it-"
"I never touched it," the young witch objected. "If anything, I only cast a few dark curses to test them against shields. Maybe if you understood the properties of dark magic better, you wouldn't just assume that-"
It was obviously more complicated than either of them were making it out to be, but Harry was moving on. He was tempted to intervene on behalf of the DA, but it was not as if he could not patch things over if he turned out to be awake instead of dreaming. How could he be certain, though? Was there any way to tell? Voldemort's abilities were limited- if not, he would have won the war already. As long as there was only so much he could do, he could find out more about what was going on by testing the limits of the world around him.
Overhearing a secret conversation between Luna and Michael, neither in the Hospital Wing, he used Legilimency and found himself shut out.
"Harry?" the witch asked. "Or was it Daphne?"
"Is there someone there?" the Healer asked. "We have a right to discuss things in private"
Quietly, he supposed they were right, and as soon as he could confirm it was not some sort of trick, he would have to apologize. He knew he had never previously thought about the two of them talking without a work-related reason, but it was not as if the Horcrux in his own mind could not have come up with it. The soul fragment had to be fighting for its life. What could he do about it, though, except dying? Could he threaten it with a dementor, as he had only jokingly suggested? It seemed unlikely that he could persuade a wraith to only eat part of a soul... and yet, if it ate the whole thing, what could a fragment do about that? As far as he had seen, they could only exert some form of dark influence to try to claw themselves to a position of safety, but he was reasonably certain that anything they tried against one of Azkaban's guard would be futile.
An explosion went off somewhere in the distance and he snapped his fingers. He was almost convinced that the Horcrux was trying to get him to lose his train of thought, but as he might have expected, it was hard to verify anything when the problem was on the inside. More and more, it seemed like there was nothing he could do. In all his experiences being trapped in his own mind, he at least knew what the problem was and could try and go about fixing it. What was there that could get inside of his mind, or his soul, to help? It seemed impossible to trust his friends in the current situation.
"Harry, where are you?!" someone called out. It was hard to distinguish the voice. Could he just hold out longer and see if the enemy started to get desperate?
The choice was taken away from him when someone tripped over him, and he narrowly avoided a stunner. Fleeing to the outside again, he tried to summon his broom, but someone else got it. His vision went black when someone hit him with a blind stunner right as he got the cloak back over him.
He woke up not long after, not optimistic that all his questions would be answered to his satisfaction, but Lupin and Susan were staring down at him, each apparently not trusting the other.
"Is there something you want to tell us?" his old teacher asked.
"I... there might be someone in my head. I was trying to determine the extent of it-"
"Tell me everything. That's the only way we're going to get to the bottom of this."
"Even now the enemy could be trying to lull me into a false sense of-"
"Harry, do you know what you do in this sort of situation?" his subordinate asked, annoyed. "You ask the Phoenix. That's what you do. It sounds ridiculous, but it's the only thing that you can do-"
"How would I know that-"
"You'll know."
He was not going to get another answer. The idea that Voldemort was somehow behind that very suggestion was ridiculous, but he still had no idea what was going on; he still had to find the mole, he still had to figure out how he had been tricked. Closing his eyes again, he concentrated on his mental shielding. The Phoenix was there, always, and it was always reaching out, but softly, rather like how he and his friends would communicate with each other; the connection was always much stronger when it was established from both sides than it was when one side forced its way through. Countless wizards had dismissed the vague sensation as nothing more than universal noise, tuning in and hearing nothing like with a random radio signal from the great beyond. In truth, even when someone tried to listen without dismissing it, the result still sounded like indistinct thoughts and feelings.
YOUR EYES HAVE BEEN SHUT.
Harry tried searching for some explanation, but he was only forced to be fully awake again. Thankfully, it was really Lupin and Susan over him, but he felt another presence. It was like his scar was working again. He pushed past the others and sprinted over to where Neville was lying, grabbing him by the hand and causing him to wake up, screaming.
"What's going on?" the teacher asked a moment later. "Harry, is this you?"
"Yeah... it just wasn't Neville. I don't know how, but he was possessed by a shade. He never would have agreed to it... and Voldemort's not meant to be able to appear as a shade, not since he came back to life..."
"Let's hear it out of him, then," Ginny said. She looked betrayed."What happened? Why have you been pretending to have a bad case of dragon pox this whole time?"
"I really thought I had it," he said, looking hurt. It was even more convincing, and perhaps that came down to practice. "I was working with Ron on a surveying mission... at some point, we were ambushed, and I went down... I thought it was a dream at some point, and I drifted in and out of semi-consciousness... I feel like I'm finally fully awake now."
"Harry, how were you able to grab him and just drive him out?" Lupin asked. "You had said that Voldemort was no longer suscept-"
"That's true," he said. "That's only because of his body, though. It was literally built out of my blood. With a piece of me, he could get past my mother's protection. Without that, the rule is unchanged. The enemy intelligence must have found Ron and Neville and they summoned their master to them. No two wizards would have stood a chance against him, not unless one of them was Dumbledore." He shook his head. Most likely, his first ever friend had been taken captive or killed. Since there had been no notice, the prospect was grim.
"What's the advantage of this, then?" Susan asked. "It seems like the most he could do was put Neville out of commission."
"Physically, that's all that was going on. Hermione's tested him and he's good enough to keep Voldemort out at a range. If he knew that there was a dark wizard in his head, he would have asked us for help. All he could do was keep him unconscious, or not entirely conscious... and then used him as a way of getting closer to us. I don't know if it makes it easier for him to use Legilimency, like... some kind of wireless, I guess, but even if that didn't work, he could use Neville's memories, while he's completely unaware, to gain intel."
"Does he know that we die if we betray the cause?" the young wizard in question asked. It looked like a lot was coming back to him at once.
"No idea," Harry said, shaking his head. "None of us have died like that so far... not to my knowledge. Hannah and Ernie were both killed in battle." Susan looked to the floor. "Is there something else?"
"It wasn't much of a battle," she managed after a moment. "Before the Order showed up, we tried to lead the Death Eaters in different directions-"
"Don't say anything more," Neville said. "I don't want to hear it."
As requested, no one said anything. The fact that the curse was apparently working was supposed to be heartening, but the idea that one of his friends had been tortured in an attempt to get information out, and either had a moment of weakness and tried to betray him, or died under the Imperius in an attempt to force the information out was hard to swallow. He preferred to believe that it was the latter, or that at least his friend chose to die rather than endure torture longer, and the fact that it happened probably made the enemy wonder what was going on; they would not have been able to determine if it was the equivalent of a suicide pill or a punishment for a lack of loyalty, or something entirely unintentional. Could the time that it slowed them down have saved a single life?
"It's possible that by going through Ron's head he found out about the curse... or he revealed it as a way of saying that torture was pointless, and to go ahead and kill him instead." He frowned. It was sadly quite easy to see his first friend facing down certain death like that; he thought of the time that he put himself between Sirius and Hermione, injured, and convinced that the man was a murderer. "However he got that information, he had to think of a way around it. He had to think of a way that Neville wouldn't be aware that he was being used as a listening device or a radio repeater or something like that."
"I'm not a hundred percent sure what either of those things are," Susan confessed. "But if there are muggle tricks like that, have we considered that the enemy might be using them?"
"They would have gone haywire," Lupin said, shaking his head. "It's hard to know the exact distinction, because I only have a clue from muggle born students trying to bring toys to Hogwarts, but I think when they started with microprocessors, or really anything that packs a lot of electronic signals into a few square inches, certain ambient magic and protection charms just fry it by default. I think you could go low-tech and use telegraphs and old wireless radios, but it just doesn't present any particular advantage and I don't think the Death Eaters would have been caught dead with them, even if they were losing." He frowned as he looked over to Neville, and then back. "What they've done here is certainly more in their wheelhouse. It's dark magic."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked. "I know Voldemort can- I never read anything about-"
"I did research on the subject," his former teacher explained. "I did more research than I care to admit; more than ever would have been required to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. At some point, I found that most of the texts I was reading about astral projection, as it's come to be called in certain circles, were written by old Ferris Mulciber. He's as dead as they come, but I don't believe his son's been killed yet."
"Was it a common thing for them to take after their parents' field of study?" Susan asked after a moment. "I never heard about that."
"Many of them were pale imitations of the previous generation; others were the opposite. In this case, it's somewhere in the middle. Severus told us that the old man was all theory and he never actually did anything; he couldn't be persuaded to get out of the library and do more than the most basic experiments to confirm what he was writing; he was like one of those insufferable geniuses in school who never explain their reasoning, even when it's important or leave behind comprehensible notes. His son grew up with a fascination for the practical side of things and basically functioned as a test subject for everything his dear father had written and was compeltely broken-hearted when he found himself alone."
"It's hard to imagine one of their sort loving anyone," Susan said after no one else said anything.
"It's not that hard," Neville said after a moment. "They're all about protecting their own. Even someone who's just... I don't know, a savage, or someone with a twisted mind, loves people back. They don't have to, but they're capable." He shrugged. "It's only when you can open your heart to someone who doesn't love you, someone who hates you, that you've really changed to anything worthwhile. It's easy to lose sight of that, though."
No one said anything for a moment as he got out of bed, dragon pox apparently real, though probably induced to reduce the suspicion on him and probably those who wanted to be around him. They did not even caution him about needing his rest. Wait, where was Ginny? Had she not been looking over him?
"I need a sit rep," he said, looking at the one witch in the room. "Where is everyone?"
"Everyone who isn't still out looking for you is searching the place for a mole. At this point I can't tell if they'll be relieved or more concerned. Well, I guess I can't really say how that will go, but at least everyone who spoke of disavowing us is-"
"That may not go the way you think," Lupin said, interrupting. "I can't speak for everyone, but at this point, the most likely conclusion is that we'll need to see stricter discipline of your subordinates... or we'll have no choice."