Harry estimated most of the others were as frustrated as he was that they had spent so much time on something that had not seemed necessary in the beginning, but it was, of course, necessary, to have guidelines about how they would treat each other, as well as the prisoners. He had hoped that Terry researching the Phoenix Script on the side would be enough for whenever something came up, but they did not have even the preliminary procedures in place for a justice system. Almost immediately after everyone looked at Parkinson, though, she sat up and abandoned her nonresponsive act, which Hermione did not even notice, facing the other way.
"-furthermore, even if I were to go further back in her memories, there is virtually no chance of finding anything relevant in there-" She found herself turned around by Ron. "-oh. If you were acting, exactly how was I unable to discern that on my first pass through your memories?"
"How can you be so calm about this?" Ginny demanded. "How can you treat this like it's just some puzzle to solve? She obviously tricked you, and then you expected us to believe what you learned from her-"
"There's no way her Occlumency was that strong," Harry said. He looked at the strangely triumphant expression on the captive's face and guessed that she was not exactly in a better position, but it was an expression she had to conceal the whole time. "You erased the planning phase. You left yourself no reminder."
"That's correct. The entire time, I had no idea that I was fooling everyone. I still do not remember using the memory charm on myself and until it was brought up, I was unable to think of it. All I knew was that I had a gap in my memory, and I assumed something happened."
Harry had heard of soldiers running out of ammo and charging the other trench with bayonets, but he was looking at an unprecedented kind of self-sacrifice. If he was to understand that the primary aspect of suffering in sexual assault was the humiliation, she had willingly inflicted it on herself with no holds barred; she truly believed that someone had done something and then erased her memory, and she did it all to strike a blow at their general unity. Everyone around looked shocked; even those who had suspected her of faking it had thought that even if she was willing to be pitied, she had to at least be laughing at them when their backs were turned.
Most likely, she practiced what she needed to do by cutting out tiny slices of memory and then going forward and backward of them. It was precise work, he understood, and nothing could be neglected, and he had not thought it possible on the self or without a wand, but perhaps one apparent problem resolved the other. Because she was performing it on herself, she would not necessarily need a wand to focus her magic, and it was possible that was even better than simply pointing a wand at her own head. He really wished he had known that ahead of time.
"Could you have moved the book on the Memory Charm?" he asked after a moment. That had been the one detail that seemed to make the self-inflicted angle untenable.
"Maybe you should ask Michael."
"She's lying," he insisted, pointing. "She's just trying to get my head examined, so that we trust each other even less. She's been tricking us the whole time and I haven't said one word that wasn't true-"
"Come with us," Ron said. "We're deciding what to do where the others can't hear us."
"Why?" Hannah asked. "What's the problem with that? I thought the case was solved."
"There are certain aspects of the case that we haven't figured out," Harry said. "We didn't say anything about the book earlier because we didn't want anyone to make use of it. I shouldn't have said anything about it still."
"Should be fine," Ron said, gesturing to another clearing in the trees with his wand. "Don't believe a word she says while we're out."
It was probably a show of good faith that they were not taking Hermione with them, but there were some who would read that the wrong way. It was not that they did not trust her not to go ahead and look, but they wanted to assure their witness that everything they would get out of him, they would get voluntarily.
"We're not saying we suspect you or anything, but do you have any kind of prior relationship with Parkinson?" Harry asked.
"No," he said. "I barely knew her name. She doesn't look like much, and you can say whatever you like about that, but I think she just picked me because I was the most upset about all this. She thought she could divide us in half or something. Do you suspect me?"
"We're just trying to answer the last few questions. We reckoned since early on that there might be two suspects, and we need to know what happened to the book. Even if she could summon it without a wand, what'd she do with it?"
"She could've vanished it." Michael shook his head. "Some people think of it as a parlor trick or something, but this is why people learn wandless magic. Once you learn how to do one or two things without a wand, it gets easier. She could've practiced by summoning rocks and then vanishing them."
"Would she have known that the book was unguarded?" Harry asked. "Would she have known that no one was sleeping on top of it?"
"I know Luna's a bit of an odd ball- I was the one who told you how people treated her, but do you really think she would sleep on a book?"
"Didn't say anything about Luna, mate," Ron said. "Don't think you were on the mission where she used the Memory Charm either."
"Well- who else could it have been?"
"It could've been Hermione," Harry said. "She's more than clever enough to learn it and she's already got some experience with that stuff. It doesn't really matter, though. I think that you stole the book. I don't think you did anything to the captive, though, so you've got one chance to tell us what's going on before we get back over there and find out."
"I just assumed she was the one who did it."
"You slipped up," Ron said. "We didn't say that the book was stolen from the witches' tent. We didn't say it was in there last. If I'd been reading it myself, I wouldn't have thought anything of it if you or Neville picked it up while I wasn't reading it. Wouldn't even have to ask. It's a problem, though, because you shouldn't have been in there."
"She said the whole thing was going to be put on me," Michael muttered at length. "She said she already knew about... some other thing, and she said that if I didn't go along with what she wanted, then she'd tell everyone."
Harry looked at his old mate. Most likely, assuming Hermione would have said something about it if she had seen some embarrassing or dangerous in Parkinson's head, there actually was not anything in there about him, and she only tricked him into thinking that she knew something. Then again, had she said something? She had asked them to look into him, after all.
"So, you reckoned you didn't have a lot of options. Where did you find out that Luna had the book?"
"The captive told me. She must've overheard something. I think people talked around her thinking it wouldn't matter. I walked over there when I was sure no one was in there and I summoned it straight out. It wasn't magically protected at all."
"It is now?" Ron asked.
"It's simple enough. I've been putting up anti-apparation jinxes whenever we've moved camp and I've put an anti-summoning jinx on my own wand. I don't even think about it. The future of putting together a peaceful society, the way forward, is a decent amount of cancellation. The average person should be aware of most tricks that criminals can use and stay on top of them. Trusting the government to take care of everything is just a lark."
"We were thinking about something like that earlier, but you won't get us sidetracked," Harry said. "I just want to know- why didn't you tell us earlier?"
"Nothing had changed. The captive still knew that secret-"
"Even if she did know some secret, mate, people were getting their heads examined. "D'you really think you could get whatever it was past Hermione?"
"I thought she knew. As long as she wasn't saying anything..."
"She would have said something if she found out that you moved the books around. I don't think we'd have ever had any reason to think that Parkinson did it to herself. More than enough of us probably wouldn't have had any sympathy for you after we went through their secrets."
"I didn't know what to do. It was a long shot that my Occlumency would be able to hold out against her, but-"
"Terry made a decent offer," Ron said. "I don't think we'd be terribly honest as an organization if that wasn't the best one you were getting."
"I pointed out that she was tricking us."
"Didn't you know that from the beginning?" Harry asked. "If you'd pointed it out sooner, then-"
"I didn't know how she was tricking us. You would have just thought that I was saying anything to get away with whatever it was people thought I did." He looked back. "There are a lot of us not being rational about this."
"You can just say 'witches', mate."
"Fine. Fine. They just assumed that it wasn't one of them, and they knew that if something wasn't done, one of them could be next. There was no reason to hesitate, no reason to ask questions. They formed this completely united front seeking to destroy whatever might be in its path. If Terry hadn't said something, I'd have had to fight my way out."
No one said anything for a moment. For a while, the investigation had thought one of the girls was involved, because they did not know how anyone else would have stolen the book, but Michael must have counted them and made sure they were all away from the tent at the exact same time before going over there, and they still had no idea how Parkinson had learned that Luna was the owner of the book, but they were probably not going to find that out, if she erased that. It was supremely inconvenient that she had managed to get everything done in the window that she eliminated from her memory.
"We could have handled the investigation somewhat better," Harry said after a moment. "None of us are professionals at this. I should probably admit I learned a lot of this from a few muggle television programs, and it wasn't ever this complicated. We shouldn't have been biased toward any group of potential suspects and maybe you had a reason to fear that the second it looked like you did it, Ginny would have hit you with a killing curse and that would have been it, but you don't have an excuse for not being more direct with us. The moment you were out of earshot of everyone else, you should've started from the beginning."
No one said anything. The truth was out there, and he was left with no way of evading it. It made no sense to offer something like what Terry had said, because that was contingent on his voluntarily coming forward. Was he seriously going to try to fight his way out?
"If I could get off so easily, I would think that the others would be satisfied if I got a light search."
"What do you mean?" Ron asked. "You think Hermione's not going to poke around in there?"
"Stay here," Harry said. "I'll get her." Though he had no idea how she was going to respond to the information, he had even less of an idea how the rest of the group would react. The point was to leave Michael with his mate and test to see if he would do a runner. "If he's serious, then..."
"Do you need something?" she asked as soon as she saw him. The others were not still lined up waiting for progress on the issue. It seemed like they had all decdied that as long as they were not going to be suspected, they could get to their other tasks. In a way, he was grateful that they were not rubbernecking. "Did he confess?"
"He knows we won't trust him unless you have a look around," he said as she started to follow him back. "Don't expect him not to try to hold you off, butI guess he can't complain if you get past his defenses." He took a look back. "Did you get anything else out of Parkinson?"
"No. There's really nothing else we need. We figured out her objective, and while you were gone, we decided to try to trade her back, and if no one makes an offer, then we'll kill her." It seemed somewhat hard for her to say, and he could see why. Though the DA had killed a few grunts and even a few of Malfoy's friends, those instances were in live combat settings. The choice was between killing and dying.
"Can't we just get rid of the rest of her memory and drop her off somewhere?"
"It's remarkably heartening that you would suggest that, but there's a point where it doesn't make a difference. She would still be effectively dead, but someone else would be burdened with taking care of her."
"What about her soul?" They stopped walking.
"Right. I suppose she has one." Hermione shook her head. "Harry, I swear I didn't consciously think that Voldemort was the only one, but I... well, I haven't, at least for several years now, thought of people as having souls. You know that the ghosts at Hogwarts aren't the same thing, right?"
"They're more like memories," he said. "They're just going through the motions forever."
"Right. I just... do you believe there's an afterlife and all that?"
"I mean, I didn't, but... where else do the souls go?"
They reached the others and the mind reading began. Ron shrugged as he took to Harry's side.
"D'you reckon he thought he just couldn't get away?"
"I dunno. I think we might have gotten through to him. Maybe that's just optimistic."
"He doesn't really seem like the Slytherins. He seems like the kinda bloke to argue his way out of things rather than... I don't know, just call it tact whenever he's caught lying." He only looked forward a moment. "Might be even though nothing happened immediately, something that Terry said made a difference to him."
"Yeah. That's possible. I think we really should have started the investigation like that, telling people what to expect, and giving them time to mull it over."
They went back to the others and were not surprised to find that Daphne, Neville, and Susan had an argument going and they wanted someone to weigh in. Apparently, there was some interest in basically liberating Hogwarts, others thought it was too dangerous with basically no chance of achieving anything, and they decided that they had to ask why there had been no attempt to go back there.
"It's sort of as you say," Ron said, thinking about it a moment. "I reckon we've got everything we're going to get from there. I'd like to get everyone out of there, but I don't think it's really an option. We don't have enough wands."
"I've been on recruitment for weeks. The only way we're going to get more is in there," Neville said. "It won't even be just the students; the parents will help us out too once they realize that their kids were being held captive."
"That's naive," Daphne said. "For the most part, they realize it, and they're just so afraid of the Ministry that they do nothing about it. There is no circumstance where they all rally around us just because we did something nice for them; at least eight in ten would send the kids straight back."
"I was saying that once we've struck a real, meaningful blow against the Ministry then the idea could have some merit to it," Susan said. "We simply can't grow to a massive organization, though. They're not going to join us, but they might find other ways to support us."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked. "We don't really need any other resources."
"It's going along with Hermione's idea of becoming an alternative for government services. If we partner with the Order, we'll have even more teachers available to us, and we'll basically have a secret school, though we might have to move it overseas-"
"Oh, as if that's a minimal challenge," Daphne said. "Have you even been to other countries before?"
"Problem is that the Order doesn't want that kind of thing," Ron said. "I don't think they'd agree to partner with us. They're always on about maintaining trust in the institutions and they might believe our whole world falls apart if Hogwarts gets abandoned. They're... cautious about what happens even if we win the war."
"They have every right to be," Neville said. "Even now we should already know that not everything can go back to the way it was. Some things were lost and they're not coming back. Some things were just illusions in the first place. Now's not the time to hesitate, though. I might be the last person you want to say it, but it's like we've gone off a bridge with a broomstick. We need to fly, even if that means learning in mid air."
No one said anything for a moment. It was an important discussion, but ultimately not a large crowd that had gathered around to hear the developments. There had been some debate about what their larger goals should be, about what the real causes of the problems were, and it appeared that one of them was entering that argument for the first time. Everyone looked at Harry for a response.
"There are a ton of things that the world could have been doing better," he said. "You're right, though. The institutions don't deserve even the respect they had; we can't go on respecting them just because that was how the system worked before. Hogwarts was a great school, but it wasn't nearly independent enough from the Ministry if they could take over in a year after causing all the problems they're claiming to solve. I don't know what was going on behind the scenes, but we should've been able to keep it out of their hands."
"I hate to say it, but if they were the ones who knew what was going on behind the scenes between the school and the government, and they've decided that we shouldn't invade the castle, then we should at least see why," Daphne said. Susan seemed to go along with it, though it looked like she did not want to go directly against him. That was something he had noticed more and more commonly and he hoped it was more out of respect than fear. He looked around, but did not see Terry.
"If we can really make a case for why we should get the kids out of Hogwarts, then we can make it in front of the Order. It's senseless that there's not more cooperation between their camp and ours, even if they have a different purpose. We're using an adversarial system. Everyone who wants to liberate the castle, come up with a list of arguments and everyone who doesn't want to, you might as well do the same. Don't bother hiding arguments from each other."
"Why ever not?" Daphne asked.
"It's not about getting your side to win; it's about doing the right thing," Ron said. "Besides, we don't have a lot of time as it is."