Daphne, as it turned out, was already using Legilimency to connect with Luna at a range, switching between her and Ginny. The clean-up crew had not moved yet, but that was not a bad sign. The heist crew was already in position.

If things had gone according to plan, Hermione would have used her own knowledge of the mind arts to reach Mundungus, and basically make a deal with him. There was no way he valued the stolen locket as much as his freedom; if he realized its value, he never would have had it on display. As he was arrested on the charge of stealing several rare magical artefacts from a prominent magical family, though that was all the article said; there was no data on who the victim was. First, she went into his head without his notice to discern the identity of the victim, and then pledge not to press charges as long as the locket was returned, and to that end he only had to hand it off to a heavily disguised Blaise, who would be claiming to be a witness who could positively identify the suspect. Almost certainly, the authorities were going to tell him that the suspect's identity was not in question, but if someone claimed to be relevant to the case in any way, they could not just turn him out. The entire time, Hermione was going to have to be effectively confounding the authorities below her by looking through the eyes of her inside man, and Luna would be available for communication until she became necessary.

Basically, the only policy they could use was just to obliterate as much of the evidence as they could, and that meant erasing memories, no matter what else happened. They could leave a false clue, and the clean-up crew would be responsible for that if nothing else happened, but as much as they wanted to, they could not convince Voldemort that the locket had disappeared in Ministry custody. He had people on the inside and he could have it investigated without anyone getting terribly suspicious. The point of Harry and Neville being somewhere else at the same time was to make it look as much as possible like they had nothing to do with it. Lastly, they had a decent fake that Blaise was going to wear on the way in, and they would swap, if at all possible. Witnesses were always kept away from suspects, but they could fake getting into a scuffle if they were allowed to get close enough.

"How is going so far?" he asked Daphne.

"There's been a complication. Our inside man has the locket, but he hasn't managed to give the fake back."

He had more questions, but he knew that asking them while she was trying to focus would be no good. There were any number of reasons why it would have been hard to give the locket back. He frowned, annoyed that he was unable to do anything.

"Remus Lupin has shown up as the legal counsel for Mundungus Fletcher and requested a word with him."

Harry was floored with this immediate sense of regret. In all their planning, it never came up to work with the Order, and neither did it come up that they could pretend to be legal counsel, the better to get a meeting alone with the client. The most likely reason that the former Defense teacher was there, though, was not because of the Horcrux, but because of the man who stole it.

"He would have immediately insisted on the Order taking responsibility," he theorized. "We were the ones who decided to trust him, so it's on us if he decides to steal from someone else."

"I have to agree," Terry said after a moment. "I can easily see how he would reach that conclusion. Most likely, he intends to see what was stolen, and from whom, and see how it can be returned. Part of the reason the organization would have to send someone is because he could easily reveal secrets about his co-conspirators in a deal, and so Lupin wishes to propose something else."

"We'll just wipe his memory either way," Hannah said. "I mean, sure, we can return whatever was stolen, but we're not giving him the chance to betray us."

"I could do without this many of us weighing in," Daphne said. "I'm still trying to listen." She frowned. "They're suspicious of Blaise."

That much made sense. The plan was for him to get in and out, but they had no way to advise him on exactly how to do that. If the worst thing that happened was that he made it to the official hearing and they found out he really had nothing to say about the case, then they would let him go. He might have claimed that as soon as he saw the suspect, he realized that he was thinking of someone else. No decent excuse would give them any cause to hold him, but they could be suspicious all they liked. The main concern was that he got out; he was still hoping they could do it with as many memory charms as necessary and as few killing curses as possible.

"We can't just stay here," Neville urged. As always, his heart was in the right place, but they could not afford to have Voldemort realize they had anything to do with the disappearance of the locket. If the Ministry found a fake one around his neck, he would just say that he must have stolen it without realizing it was a fake, and then there would be nothing concrete, nothing that really meant that someone was going after the Horcruces. "Can you listen in on the conversation between Lupin and-"

"Of course she can't," Susan said. "It's privileged information. They're taken to a special room where no one can use the mind arts from the outside."

Everyone was stopped for a moment. It was pretty much decided that they were not going to jump in, as much as they wanted to do something, so it seemed like everyone was just trying to stay on top of things. He could sympathize; it was not even the first time in the last few days that he had thought back to the time that he was trapped at the Dursley residence starving for information. Even at the present, he could not come up with any lie about what he would do with it if he got it, nor could he think of any way that his friends could avoid the extreme risk of sending valuable secrets over owls. Had he just been stupid, or what? It was, of course, ill-advised and especially rare for anyone to expect a lot of maturity out of a teenager who was going through a lot, but were his actions so completely determined by his age and situation? Had he not been arguing that he could be trusted with information?

"Well, we got ourselves out, for all the good that'll do," Neville said, annoyed. Had he been hoping it would come to a fight? Would at least that circumstance have afforded some amount of certainty, or perhaps meaning? "Has anything happened to the clean-up crew? Have they decided to move yet?"

"They shouldn't have moved yet," Harry said, cognizant of their procedure, which had been arranged in advance. It was only when the situation was beyond salvaging that they would move in, and only to rescue what was left of the heist crew. Anyone with a pair of brain cells to rub together could figure out that former Hogwarts students his age who had worked with him in the past were working with him again, and they would probably not buy into any distractions about how they were there because of the mini press conference. Whatever the rest of the world would make of it, Lord Voldemort would know that they were working together to destroy his soul fragments.

It was hard to imagine exactly what he would do if he knew. Presumably, each of the Horcruces had been hidden or guarded about as well as they could be, and he would not necessarily know where to move them, but as long as there was a trail of breadcrumbs, he would have reason to expect them to get taken out one by one. One option was simply making more of them. It was clear that he stopped at seven for the Arithmantic Auspicion, to give the textbook answer, but even if he were totally in love with that number, realizing a few of them were destroyed would be reason enough to get back up to seven by making more. He might have been worried about the effects of dividing his soul too much, as all the books on the subject warned, but it was doubtful that a man who drank unicorn blood would prioritize that over survival itself.

"They've been forced to move. It looked like someone saw them and Hermione broke contact with them."

The situation was about as bad as it could get without being so bad they had to intervene; it was a supremely annoying level of compromise where they were all on edge, and yet there was nothing to do. Harry estimated that everyone else was in his same situation, asking themselves why they spent time on one thing or another when they could have spent it on Legilimency. What was he thinking, that two out of thirteen would be plenty?

"We're achieving nothing like this," Terry said. "We're practically hindering our friends by interfering with their communication. If anything, we should apparate Daphne to Ron, and get her in contact with the heist crew."

"I'll do it myself," he said, stepping forward and taking her by the arm. No one was going to like the plan at all, but any idiot could see that it was perfectly necessary. It felt like he was completing something of a loop by sentencing his friends to radio silence, like a child growing up and being a parent, if he really knew enough about either end of that relationship to make that comparison.

The clean-up crew had relocated itself to a nearby rooftop, as had been part of the plan if they were forced to move. With the goal not having been for everyone to see a number of Harry Potter's yearmates in different parts of Magical London, they had arranged three points ranked by cover, where they could retreat without being seen or heard except by someone specifically looking for them. The streets were compact and almost always, the rooftops were technically in a blindspot, except for the odd low roof here and there; if anything the concern had been that they would make too much noise running across the rooftops and someone inside would hear them. Michael had lived there all his life, and as expected he provided decent insight on how to stay in range and avoid trouble.

"You're not staying?" Daphne asked, looking back at him as soon as he let go of her arm. From that and the previous time, he wondered if she had been trained in some system of etiquette in which a witch was to take a wizard's free arm when apparating.

"I would be redundant here. If you need me, you can get me."

It felt less strange than he expected to leave, making his younger self wrong. Was that his objection to it, that he would have to admit to having been wrong before? Except that a baby be born with all the positions and objections and opinions he or she would later have, admitting having been wrong was inevitable- it was just a matter of how much had been invested into the wrong things in the first place. Only distantly telling the others that it something finally went as planned, he found himself more relieved than anything else, that he was no longer so much like his previous self.

"You look like you just remembered something," Susan said as soon as the others were locked in a conversation. It seemed like they still wanted to have a contingency for the clean-up crew getting caught.

"I did," he said. "I remembered I wanted to ask Hermione how she knew where to find the Horcrux that was in Hogwarts. She wasn't telling me anything at the time because my Occlumency wasn't as good, but we at least think that I can keep him out when I'm at a range now."

"You never think that he's just tricking you?"

"He could be, but with any kind of security, they say that nothing's ever perfectly secure. You've got deterrence, which is basically just convincing people who aren't really that invested that it's too much trouble, and after that you're just buying yourself time to respond. If Voldemort's trying to get into my head nonstop for years, he'll get it, but we've learned that location matters. The school itself was protecting me, but some of those charms can be replicated and distance is part of it. If we think he's near me, I can at least apparate out of the way, but over time, as I get better at it, my ability to detect his presence might get worse."

"Were you able to see the locket was a Horcrux as soon as you looked at it, though?" she asked. "Even though you were nowhere near it?"

"Yeah," he said. "I hate to put it like this, but it's magic. I've handled one of those things before and I know one when I see it." He bowed his head a little. "The same could be said of Ginny."

"She'll be scanning the papers for months."

"She already was. We have a few people who go through the news, but she wanted something else to do. She thinks that we basically just use her every time someone needs to get killed. That's not entirely true, but it's not the only thing that she has weighing on her."

"Do you like her?" Susan asked out of nowhere. Was it so beyond the pale, though?

"I understand her," he said. "That's more than I can say for most other witches."

"That's good," she said, her expression lightening a little. "To put it one way, you're not really my type, and I don't do a lot of 'girl talk'. You can tell me pretty much anything without any risk of it going anywhere. I can sympathize with you more than you probably realize."

"Really... er, well, that's just a bit unexpected." He knew that she had a lot of friends. It was not that she grew up like Hermione did. What was with the lack of girl talk, then? Ginny had said they talked about everything.

"Oh, was I not vague enough there?" she asked, equally amused. "I would have thought you would expect me to look a certain way." She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Maybe someone said something."

"I mean, to answer your question, I know this isn't what she'd want to hear, but I don't know what I want with her. I want to give her a real chance and I don't think it's possible right now. I want to really talk to her and I barely ever get the chance."

"I can see what you mean, in a sense. I wouldn't want to make a decision like that under this circumstance either. I can't help but think some people, not naming any names, are just getting hormonal and looking for a stress reliever, but having a relationship like that once isn't really a bad thing. I don't think she would hold it against you down the road, whether you decide to stick with each other, or go your separate ways." She seemed to think about it a little bit. "Put it this way. Is there anyone else that you want?"

"Not really. I'm not withholding an answer from her just because I'm thinking about someone else, anyway. My relationships with just about everyone are all changing at once."

"It seems like before all this, you didn't have many relationships to track. That must have been nice."

"I mean, it was better for a bunch of misfits that we got along, but we still fought, even with just the three of us. It was all stupid stuff. What about you? Did you have a lot of friends before all this?"

"Well, my first two years it was a bunch of witches, and then, well, my second two years they slowly got switched out with wizards... it wasn't anything I did all that intentionally, and it wasn't even anything they did intentionally. I wish it had been as simple as picking up from one table and going to sit at another. It was a bunch of causal friendships, but there are some that I still wish I could see again. Zacharais wasn't all bad; he was funny and we got a lot done whenever we studied together." She propped her chin up on the heel of her hand. "The DA was fun. I didn't have nearly as much attention on me as you did, so I suppose there's that."

"If it'll satisfy your curiosity," he started, thinking more on it. "I care about Ginny. I think I need to care about her more than most of the other members, and probably even more than is appropriate for her rank. She's not the only one who can use dark magic, but it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy if we keep saying that she's already lost."

"Should she stop? Would it be better for someone else to take a turn with it?"

"I'm starting to think we should even do the same thing with the Horcruces. If we ever have to carry the around, we should be taking turns." He set his expression and got up. "I'll tell the others. When she gets back, she's cycling off the dark magic team, and I'm cycling on."

"That's responsible, I suppose. You were just asking me to teach you something of shielding, and I did, because Hannah thought you should be stronger. This can be a good way of closing that gap and shutting up the critics."

"Who's criticizing me?"

"Well, like I said, I'm not really one for girl talk," she said, getting to her own feet. "I think I just heard-" He turned away from her as he felt Daphne's presence in his mind and he apparated to her, guessing that was what she needed. They were in a different place again, but that was almost expected.

"Good news," Ron managed. He was the only one of the four still conscious; the others had been hit by stunners, presumably. "We're not the only targets." He put up a shield and forced Ginny on him, and Harry got the message, taking her back and then rejoining them, getting Daphne second. He went for Michael third, but only because he very much doubted that he could defend himself while unconscious. When he was finally back in the base with his old friend, the others were being looked over.

"What the hell happened?"

"A few Death Eaters showed up. I reckon they weren't there for the locket, but I don't have a clue what they wanted; they were shouting at everyone that Sirius Black wasn't one of them. They even killed someone."

"That could have been a distraction."

He turned around to see the heist team had returned, a silver locket around Blaise's neck.

"You're not wearing that full-time," he said. "Most likely, the reason they were there was to make it look like our people were dressing up as Death Eaters and killing people for good measure. I've already said that my godfather was innocent. It wouldn't be strange for an attention-seeking starlet to pull that kind of stunt to support the narrative he was advancing. It also wouldn't be much of a risk if they don't fool anyone."

"At least it means that the Ministry probably assumed everyone there who wasn't supposed to be was one of them," Ron said. "As much as we all wanted, we couldn't afford to take a shot at them."

"Luna-"

"I erased all the memories that you asked, Harry," she said. "Not only did I follow orders, I made up a few of my own."

"Brilliant. Did we get the fake locket in position?"

"Close enough," Hermione said, looking drained. The amount of brain-hopping she had done had every right to give her a substantial headache. "Any other questions or can I go and pass out somewhere?"

"Just one for you."

"Fine."