His first meeting with McGonagall was tense to say the least. It was not as if they were not aware the Order knew what they were doing, but not all of the members approved. It was only when they needed something that there was any contact between them.

"Severus may have no regard for your safety, but he does not speak for all of us. It has not been easy to keep everyone on the same page in the absence of our leader, but the directives that he left for us to use in his absence were clear." The tension lessened for a moment, if only in his mind. Was there some reason she was not using Dumbledore's name?

"Professor, we only wanted to-"

"You wanted to expand your recruitment efforts, Miss Granger. I am aware. A general strike from the school would most likely force the enemy to advance his plans, and without-"

Hermione looked annoyed. It had been Ron, after all, who saw their training ground as a complete replacement for going to Hogwarts, while she saw it as only supplementary learning. At her insistence, they had come to request a way in and out of the school to make a quick exit in the event that the teachers and as many students as they could get out needed to strike.

"I mean, that settles it," he said. "It looks like we can't go back."

"Whatever do you mean, Mr. Potter?" The Transfiguration teacher's expression was decidedly guarded.

"If we go back, we'll be submitting to some other authority, and we'll be trapped like rats. Ron's right."

"We must go back, though," Hermione said. He knew there was something on the tip of her tongue and she was pleading with their other friend.

"Mate... I'm going to be honest; there is a reason to go back, but I don't think it's worth it." He sighed. "It's not worth all of us dying. I was going to send one or two people to take care of it... but it'll have to be people who can die there."

It was not as if the reality of their situation had not hit him. Openly talking about sacrificing people, however, was not something that had happened yet. Even McGonagall seemed surprised.

"Ron, I can't... help you with that decision unless you tell me what the hell they're doing."

"We can't afford to lose you or Hermione." He sighed, shaking his head. "I suggested it. I should be willing to do it myself. If you're still the Headmistress until some official ceremony, I need you to let me into the office during the feast, when no one would notice."

"I cannot reveal what you would be doing there, but simultaneously, I don't think you would die in the process. This may be our last chance to get away with this sort of thing-"

"I know," Ron said. "It's only a small part of what we need to do, though. If I'm successful, the chances of someone else finding out are too high. If they find out, it's over. They'll know what we're doing. We can't afford that."

"Are you implying you're going to kill yourself after this mission is over?" Harry asked.

"It's important enough. I can't ask someone else to do it. I can't give away what we're trying to do." He was sitting in front of McGonagall as they all were, but he threw his hands up. "It all fits. Hermione thinks we should all go, because it's our last chance to get away with something like this, but I think that's already past, and that all of us going means that we all die. Don't pick me or her. I need you to pick what makes sense."

He was trapped. Only a moment ago, he was agreeing with Ron because he was similarly convinced that Hogwarts was a death trap, but he had thought that would mean that none of them would go, that none of them would die. Could he really just sacrifice his first friend like that? Was there any justifiable reason, something that did not relate to his being attached, that he could use someone else, as unfair as that was?

"You'd have to tell me what you were doing for me to know if it's important enough. I don't know that you're the only one qualified."

"I'm not. I'm not even close to being the only one qualified. I don't really want to get into it, but we have a few people who could do the job; I just assigned it to myself now that we've come to a decision about who's going. Not going to lie, Mate, it was a lot easier to come up with the plan when it was just some faceless person doing it. I don't reckon I ever used the term 'suicide' in my head."

"The Order," McGonagall started back. "-has only tolerated your ventures in... training yourselves, as you call it, as long as you are not in danger. With all this talk of self-sacrifice, which is counter to our general policy, we may have no choice but to dissolve your group."

"With respect, that's not possible," Harry said. When had his manner of speaking become more formal? Had he imitated the way some of his people were talking to him, or was it just the same incentives at work? "Anyone who betrays the group dies. If you somehow forced us to break our allegiance to the group, we would all die. We know that if we get caught and interrogated, we only die at the end of that, so the curse will only speed up the process. If Ron's right about the school being a death trap, going there is suicide; it's just a matter of when. The Ministry's going to want answers about what the rest of us are doing if we're not there, and they'll surround him as soon as possible. I'm not saying I agree with the whole plan, but-"

"There's another way," Hermione said. "We should use the Imperius Curse."

"Miss Granger-"

"Professor, we are discussing sending someone to his or her certain death; I should think we are past the point of-"

"Would it have ever come to this if it were not one of you three?" the teacher pressed. She shook her head. "The Death Eater codes were a mistake. In a moment of panic, the people of this island allowed their government to use whatever means they pleased against their enemies, and Professor Umbridge was simply a long-overdue ramification. Countless raids were carried out in the homes of regular people only tangentially connected with Lord Voldemort. There were first years from the muggle world who could hardly tell the difference between the Aurors and their enemies."

"I don't think we'll lose sight of our moral superiority, Professor," Ron said after a moment. He was not truly as respectful as his present company, but he could be polite when the situation demanded.

"That is precisely what I fear, Mr. Weasley. Dark magic has always had an allure to it that has attracted people with even the noblest of intentions. The blood purists of Slytherin's tradition might have had self-serving reasons for advancing the narrative that their bloodlines are the strongest and that muggles and their bloodlines present a dangerous, corrupting force, but they would be shocked to find out what their great grandchildren have become. Many of them realize, at this point, that their master is a half-blood who has never once cared what will happen to the world as a whole, or even the magical part of it, but there are many who still have ways of telling themselves that they are in the right."

"We need an objective standard," Harry said. "I'm sick of all this operational policy and compromise. We need a way of knowing we're in the right that's absolutely foolproof, and can tell us what we can and can't do against our enemies."

"That, Mr. Potter, would help, but even then it may not be enough. You may remember Headmaster Dumbledore making reference to moral principle many a time, and I can assure you he did not simply make it up himself. As academically challenging as that sounds, the orientation of one's own moral compass is simply doing whatever pleases the most with extra steps, or rather, a single extra step." She paused. "As it may reduce the friction between the Order and your unofficial group, bound in a mad suicide pact as you are, I am prepared to allow you copies of the book he was reading."

"Is it some kind of secret?" Hermione asked.

"There is only one copy, to my knowledge. He was always careful with it, as if he could not simply mend pages, and as if they would tear if he turned them without the utmost respect. I know not if its contents are secret, but I have my doubts that they are commonly known."

It was easy to see the reason in what she was saying, but even before that, there had been times where he had even thought their Headmaster was mad. He had never once asked himself where the old warlock got his ideas, because to him it had always seemed perfectly futile; there was no point in wondering. The succeeding years had proven that Dumbledore was perfectly sane and still the kindly old man he had always trusted, but there was more to him. Though he knew before even meeting the man that he had defeated the dark wizard Grindelwald, none of that was real until he saw how seriously he took the threat of Voldemort.

"We'll take a look, thank you. I can't guarantee we'll use it to guide all of our decisions, but it might help us understand how he made his," Hermione said after giving it some thought. "I'm sure you've already tried to figure out where he would go at a time like this."

"As you surmise, Miss Granger, it is not so simple to find a wizard of his abilities who does not want to be found. I can only suspect that he believes if he made it possible at all for us to find him, it would be all too easy for the enemy to find him as well. With the Death Eaters not able to operate in public, not while they want their master's return to remain an open secret, it stands to reason that they are searching for him rather than immediately going after soft targets."

Harry was equally at a loss as to how Dumbledore was spending his time; it was not that he could come up with nothing; if anything there were too many possible explanations. He took the book gratefully, though he had no idea how he would make time for it amid his busy schedule. It almost felt frivolous. More than anything else, he almost wanted to reject it, but the old man seemed so singular that the chance to find out the method to his madness was too appealing. As old as he was, there was no way he could have had a hand in the book himself; even the cover made reference to ancient times.

As they left the room, perhaps no closer than they had been to making a decision, the three of them took a collective sigh. Even when they were not in the school where McGonagall was Deputy Headmistress, for however long, she still had an incredible presence and it was difficult to deal with her. At the same time, he noticed it was more like a breath held in than quaking and avoiding eye contact, which, ashamed as he was to admit it, was how he responded to getting chewed out in second year when two of them managed to crash a car into the Whomping Willow. Was it just that they were in a better position than before? Had he become stronger somehow?

"You never told me it was going to be you," Hermione said as soon as they were outside.

"Well, better just me than all of us," Ron said, sighing. "I don't want to die either. I just don't think that the Imperius would work like that-"

"We should ask Ginny," Harry suggested. Though he suspected his friends were keeping details from him because they did not want them getting fed to Voldemort, he could not help but try to figure it out, and if they were to explain any part of their plan to a third party, he had a chance of picking up a few additional details in the process. "She has to have studied the curse by now. It's got to be the most useful out of the three."

"I've heard it's hard to perform and it's even harder to perform well, but yeah why not, let's ask my sister if it's viable for this mission," he said, sighing. Did he suspect that his friends were trying to involve a family member in the hopes that she would object to the alternative? Was he just not amenable to asking her for help with something?

They took the floo from Grimmauld Place, the Anti-Apparation jinx preventing him from practicing his apparation. Their destination was the only place they could realistically have reason to go. It was like their whole world was reduced to places where they could get away with not looking out for the authorities and dark wizards. Though they were not yet at a point where they were likely to just going to get tossed down a hole by the first law enforcement agent who crossed their paths, the fact of the matter was, they were still building an army and the more evidence the enemy had to suggest that, the more likely it was going to be used against the families of their members. In a recent conversation, Ron and Hermione had basically told him why no one had explored those options yet.

"Well, they're not always the ones written down anywhere, but there're always some sort of rules in place," Ron had said. It was in the middle of their strategy meeting, so no one else was around. "If they just went around killing people who weren't attacking them, even the worst of the fence sitters would probably start doing something; maybe not fighting, but they'd try to get out or stop going to work. When people don't know what the rules are, they don't know how to stay on the right side of them."

"That's basically how nonmagical politics works in Jamaica," Hermione said. "When one party wins, they go and bulldoze the neighborhoods that voted for the other side, but they don't kill people outright. Human traffickers and arms dealers are the devils that they know, and they operate by a system of rules as well. It's less predictable than a fair government concerned with the law, but it's predictable enough for their purposes." She sighed. "People like to think, sometimes, that the other side will always play by the rules, and they're proven wrong all the time, but it's also wrong to assume that the rules are just a formality in every stage of the conflict. It's not just for moral reasons that I've been opposed to thoughtlessly escalating."

"The papers play an enormous role," Ron said, getting out a morning edition of the Prophet. "They can just choose not to report it if the Ministry throws a few political opponents in Azkaban on jumped up charges. I don't remember any investigation into the evidence against Sirius Black, not that I needed any convincing on that front."

"We were children." The witch levitated a nearby book over as she spoke. "By rights we still are, but we've decided not to care about that."

It was not that this was all new to Harry; he was aware from years of living with the Dursleys that the most insufferable part of tyrants was the bizarre records they kept. It was a rare thing that they made him apologize for something that was ultimately Dudley's fault, because for the most part they really did not care; they had no fear of him using the information against them. Had that been why it had been such a newly painful experience when Umbridge had him cut words onto the back of his hand?

His friends were right. Even though the relationship between him and his relatives had been one sided for years, they did noticeably back off when he started doing magic. The rules changed for the most part, but he had been wise to have obeyed the new rules rather than push for more right away; they might have had something else up their sleeves like kicking him out of the house. It was hard to say how he would have responded to that with his skills and resources at fourteen; they were not substantially better than what he had at thirteen when he elected to do a runner.

"That was why some of us were objecting to Marietta's punishment, then," he said after a moment. "They didn't want to live in a world where permanently scarring someone's face is an acceptable punishment."

"Well, yes, and it's not really certain that it was because they intended to be traitors themselves," Hermione said. "They might have thought that we would start at ripping fingernails out if they said the wrong thing. Objecting is a way of finding out what the rules are, or at least making us consider making them if we haven't thought of them already."

"What are the rules, then?" he had asked.

There was a pause.

"Well, I suppose I can get back to you on that."

In the present, they were returning to the Longbottom estate, where Terry was finishing up with the list of rules, exactly as Hermione had apparently asked him. It was no trouble, in his words. Harry looked around to see that no one else was inside at the present, and he doubted the dark magic team was meeting. If anyone was working on anything, it was Neville, who had taken over some of the drills outside.

"I was just thinking about this," he said as he walked over. "Is it finished?" There were a few lines written on the roll of parchment.

"I had thought it would be no trouble, but I have found it is a great deal more trouble than I had thought possible," he said, resting his temple on the heel of his hand. "I have excluded the simple fact that we may not betray the group itself; that can be taken as a given, as we shall die if we attempt it." It seemed Ron and Hermione were also scanning the lines, in the small amount of time that took.

"Well, we're going to be able to tell you a few things that might help," he said after there were no suggestions, showing him the book. Why was he doing it? Was he just thinking it was a neat little coincidence that he was looking for rules and some rules just seemed to fall into his lap from none other than Dumbledore? It was a challenge to appreciate him at times, but it was not as if they had anyone else. Perhaps it was an ironic joke at the time, and perhaps that was as close as a bunch of young people could get to genuine admiration, but they had named the original group after him and whatever secret plot that he obviously never had.

In the incredibly unlikely event that he had planned it, though, Harry quickly supposed that it would all be the same, because he had done absolutely nothing to make them help; he convinced them, without even trying, that the way he ran the school was better. The old headmaster would have richly deserved the services of his students rising to his aid when the rest of the world failed to recognize his wisdom and he would not personally feel even the slightest bit silly if it ever came out that Dumbledore had been counting on it; how else could he have character if no one could count on him?

All told, though, he would prefer to eventually hear which way it had been, unless it was a little of both or some other mad thing.