The attack did not come entirely without warning, but it came without a vague sense that an attack was about to come. Was that what was so terrifying about war, that it seemed to take no satisfaction in the lives it claimed coming as a surprise? They had known, of course, that the campaign office of Eleazar Higgen was an obvious target; they had even placed it as far away as they could from magical and mundane civilization to minimize damages to other entities. The troops were readied as soon as they got the message from a recruit who was tasked with watching it, and they were on the scene as quickly as possible.

"Death Eaters?" he asked as soon as he arrived.

"They wouldn't waste their own lives on something like this." He looked over and saw Sturgis Podmore, realizing it was a joint operation with the Order, more so than usual, anyway. "They're not expecting resistance."

"More minions, then?" Blaise asked, transporting the last of the stragglers. "I almost feel sorry for them."

"It's not the best of circumstances that they were suckered into a war that they probably never really wanted, but they're still willing participants," Azariah Westenberg said, echoing his years of being a particularly unforgiving Hit Wizard. "We're not punishing them. We're killing them to stop them from killing us."

Harry was reminded that none of the recruits had been told that the candidate was not a real person. In part, it was an experiment to see if they would figure it out, and in part, it was because they had decided it at a stage when they could not have trusted every single one of them, and their ranks would soon swell all the more, if people were inspired by their actions, but that was a probably vain hope. They were leaving the possibility open, and as he had said, they would welcome those who wanted to join into the ranks of the recruits, so there was no reason to eliminate the distinction between the recruits and the members, at least not at the moment.

They split up and got into position. Technically, there was nothing wrong with using the same strategy again, at least not for the purposes of the current battle, but twice in a row was a bad idea for future battles, and they had to have at least the amount of optimism necessary for their own responsibilities. The idea was to basically set up a small amount of defenders in the house for credibility and put everyone else in a much larger ring around the attackers. Even common criminals willing to work with the Death Eaters would check behind them, though; that was just basic procedure, so they would have as many people disillusioned and behind camouflage shields as possible, with less experienced people behind that. The middle ranks had the responsibility of confunding anyone who came back to check for an encirclement, and those on the outside would join them in putting down anti-apparation jinxes.

"I have to wonder," Hermione said. "Was it really wise to have all three of us in the very center? I never heard an explanation as to why until now."

"I reckon it's not," Ron said. "At the same time, we've got a chance of being better off this way. Some of them might have heard of us, but they haven't heard of the others. If they use a human reveal charm, and they see the two of us, they won't have any reason to think someone's behind them."

Part of the reason for the structure was so that no one would escape once it became clear who was being surrounded by whom. The physical encirclement would not be complete, of course, there would be a narrow avenue that the more desperate would take when trying to escape, and that would make it easier for their own men to hit them in the back for deserting, if the DA did not bring them down. Using the one Invisibility Cloak in their possession, Michael was basically a last line of defense for anyone trying to get out. If things went well, they would stop to try and disapparate, and that would be their final mistake, but that still remained to be seen. The top brass had discussed the plan with everyone who knew anything of strategy and as much as it was met with approval, it was met with words of caution as well. The whole plan would fall apart if the enemy came in greater numbers, and not all of them would be able to get out in that event.

"It's starting," he whispered, getting a positive on the human reveal charm. One of the most obvious weaknesses in their own security was the lack of protection against the same, which could be figured to be a trap, a way of distracting the enemy from their true numbers, but it seemed like they fell for it, for the time being. They were being relatively smart and fanning out as they went in, putting up refracting shields to hide their movements, but it was clear that the ones who wanted to do things carefully were in the minority; all most of them knew was violence. If they studied anything outside of school, it was just dangerous magic, and for the most part, the unforgivables had all the bases covered.

"Avada Kedavra," Harry incanted, starting the conflict with the proof that knowing violence made a difference. It went straight through a shield charm and hit one of the cleverer-looking enemies, dropping him instantly. He had killed people before, but not with dark magic. The enemy was quick to react, and the three defenders hit as many of them as they could as they were getting into formation, and the row behind them in the woods punished them severely as soon as their backs were fully turned, killing and stunning about thirty percent as the three in the middle defended against an onslaught of various spells; he was grateful for every second he had spent training with Susan.

"Damn it," Ron muttered, struggling against a hail of killing curses coming at the window he was guarding. The quickest thing he could do was to raise the earth to block them, but they were coming in too quickly and from too many different angles. Hermione had her wand knocked out of her hand, somehow; Harry had not the time to check, and had switched to using Legilimency to try to throw off the aim of their attackers, and he had already been forced from the door. It was like they were vampires hiding from the light as spellfire poured in from all sides. Their moderate fortune that they had taken out some of the better casters first only lasted so long; one of the walls was hit by an explosive hex, forcing them to take to the basement while continuing to put up shields in hopes they could keep the enemy from advancing right away; every second that they could buy their friends was inestimably valuable.

"They've stopped," the witch said a moment before it sounded like they stopped. "They're trying to run for it. Use the locking charm,- Colloportus-"

"Colloportus," Harry whispered, remembering having studied it upon hearing the incantation. It was a simple spell, but not one he practiced all that often. The sound of heavy footfalls could be heard just above them immediately after. He knew that the trapdoor was disguised; it looked just like the rest of the wooden floor, but it would not stand up against any kind of thorough inspection.

"Anyone here?" someone asked above.

"They don't seem to know how to defend against the human revealing charm. Not surprising; I never learned either."

"Do we have a headcount?"

"There are seven of us left. We're better off calling for terms."

"Trapped us in here- don't be daft. They'll kill us before anything else. We need a hostage."

"The three in the middle must've had a way out." Harry and Ron both readied their wands.

"That, or they're right under the floorboards."

It was hard to say whether or not he was being serious; a heavy thump preceded a failed killing curse and several shouted incantations rang out above them before the all-clear signal was given. He emerged without hesitating, summoning Hermione's wand to restore it to her. It did not bear belabored explanation that the others had closed in to rescue them; that had been part of the procedure from the beginning, if there was a moment of uncertainty about the timing. From the moment the encirclement was complete, their responsibility had only been to keep the enemy from getting the hostage they wanted.

"Anyone injured?" he called out. There were a few, and unfortunately some of them were better at healing. A recruit was dead; that was about all they could have expected with all the killing curses flying in the air. The last thing he wanted to do was find out the name and inform the family, and yet, he knew that would be part of his duties, if not someone else's. He could only think that as their operation grew, if their operation grew, the deaths would be in greater numbers, and he might not be able to make it to every doorstep personally, but as it remained to be seen, he could not use it as an excuse.

"Any living captives?" Ron asked. Fortunately, that was also met with a positive response, but it meant quickly transporting them safely to an unrelated location where their allies, if they had any, would not be able to guess at their whereabouts. The next challenge was deciding how to pitch it to the papers whenever they showed up, and the short version was that he won the argument that they should go with something close to total honesty. To the best of their knowledge, the Death Eaters sent a bunch of goons to get rid of their candidate, and they had protected him and moved him to another safehouse so it would be harder to attack him again. Ernie had volunteered to speak with the press, but he settled for writing the speech when it was decided there was still a point in pretending there were only a few of them. Even if it would not fool the senders of the many minions, it had a chance of fooling the general public. He had only just gotten through with warping the injured to their new base where the medics could treat them without being interrupted when Rita Skeeter arrived, Ron waiting for her with too obvious a frown.

"Perhaps you could tell us what exactly happened here?" she asked.

"Can't even make something up?" he asked.

"There's no need," Harry said before launching into the explanation. Blaise had said it would be a better idea to act like he had no idea how she got the tip about something happening, but not actually say as much. She would figure it out, of course, if she had not already, but it would make for a better story to act like it was totally random. The most recent headline about him characterized him as a daring, rebellious teenage heartthrob. Apparently even those who among the DA found it amusing thought it was going a little far, but he hardly cared about what the Prophet printed in terms of how people who cared about the truth saw him; they were reading the Quibbler if anything.

When they were done with the explanation, they disapparated. Harry wanted to interrogate the prisoners, trusting they would be at least slightly more valuable than Parkinson had been, but he already knew that the Death Eaters were going to escalate, and that necessitated a planning meeting on how they would respond to different scenarios. There was also the matter of delivering the bad news, and he wanted to go before the other side knew they had one missing. A sudden thought told him he was being too callous, but he was sure it would catch up with him properly when he went to deliver the news and there was nothing to do but wait on the doorbell.

"As I said before, we're dealing with an attack on civilians, plain and simple," Ron was saying. "It's the most likely way to strike back against-"

"They're not that stupid," Daphne said. "This Higgen character has apparently gone on record saying that escalations, including the attack on Azkaban, are evidence that the Dark Lord has returned."

"Yeah, the whole problem with that is that it's not really evidence. It doesn't mean anyone's back. For the past year, everyone has just been saying that it only means that they knew they needed help, so they went and sprang their old friends. There's no 'coming back from the dead' part of that required for that to make sense."

"What do you think is going to happen when they just keep attacking and we just keep saying that it's because Voldemort's back?" Neville asked.

"Ron's right," Harry interjected, getting away from his own thoughts. "We can keep making a consistent claim and it won't be worth anything except that down the road, people might realize we weren't lying. Speaking through the Prophet is effectively our only option to communicate with people, and they're only working with us when they could be just making things up out of whole cloth because we're working with them. Skeeter said that the paper exists to sell itself, and I would think she would know, and I would think she's right. It's not just a mouthpiece for the Ministry; it only functions that way when the money works. I've not looked through the corporate leadership and ownership of the paper myself, but Terry has, and he hasn't noticed any consistencies. Almost certainly, it's just a bunch of shifty wankers who want gold."

"Thank you for adding to the perspective," Hermione said, taking a breath. "We've done a good thing by coming up with a consistent, believable narrative and sticking to it. What we need is a backup plan for an attack on civilians. Even if it compromises our position, we can't allow Voldemort to just destroy the world we're trying to save just for a better chance to kill him. For this reason, I propose that if there comes a day when we need to prove that he has come back, we grab a Horcrux from where we've stored them, and reveal it to the world as his method of surviving. Many will not believe us, but there are more than enough who would, and far more than Voldemort can track down. If we show everyone, enough of them will be able to recognize another on sight, wherever they're being hidden."

No one said anything for a moment. It was obviously a bold plan, more so than what they expected, but it was hard to deny that it had a chance of working for a last-ditch effort to get the enemy destroyed. Harry had not been able to tell Skeeter, or any other journalist, how his parents' killer had survived, or come back, but so far, no one had expected him to know that. If he could prove it was possible, though, if he could say that he was holding onto a real, living soul fragment and that all the theory for creating it suggested that it could protect its maker from dying properly, then even if that did not technically prove that Voldemort was back, it would make it a far less ridiculous suggestion.

"There's a chance that he goes and looks for his Horcruces, or sends someone else to do it for him, and he realizes all on his own that someone is stealing them," he said to end the pause. "If that happens, he won't say anything. He'll go to his other locations to see how many we have, and then he'll personally wait at one of them. It's better than any trap he could have set, and he can just deputize one of the Death Eaters to take care of his duties in their organization until he returns."

"Am I to understand we would not have a chance against him?" Daphne asked.

"No, there's some chance, but it's not worth considering," Ron said. "I'm sure that if we all rattled off as many different spells as we could all at the same time, and he couldn't get out of there, then he wouldn't be able to survive it, but we would have to send the barn every time on a stealth mission. At that point, we might as well tell everyone, because it'll be a foregone conclusion. I don't know how we're going to get rid of him when he's got the last of his soul. Maybe he'll just start splitting it up again. I don't reckon it's exactly easy for him to do, though. There's got to be some process associated."

"That's what the books indicate," Hermione said. "Though they did not say exactly what that process was, of course. In either case, it is worth considering how we can possibly defeat him when his magical protections are destroyed. I understand that Harry's wand has a shared core with his, and it froze him in place for a moment?"

"That's true," he said. "I don't know if that would happen every time, and I don't know if he knows either, but it seems like it wouldn't be that hard for him to switch wands. He's supposed to be brilliant and powerful at the same time. I can't see it being impossible for him to use another wand."

"If he's cautious enough to make Horcruces I find it hard to disagree," Daphne said. "In that case, simply assassinating him should be impossible. I doubt even Dumbledore could win in a duel against him, so we're left with nothing but a war of attrition. We'll have to kill as many of his servants as we can."

Hermione looked annoyed at her suggestion, but it seemed like she was unable to protest; her fist tightened on the table between them, but that was it before she let out a long sigh. Obviously, a long war would have the most negative consequences for the average person, but if Voldemort would not fight by himself, then he compromised part of the reason that the Death Eaters continued to work with him. They needed him as a shield against those in a league of their own, and if they were having to throw their own bodies in a meatgrinder instead of having him intimidate everyone else into submission, then they would at least wonder why they allowed him to be in charge.

"I reckon he'll still have a role in the most important operations," Ron said. "They still don't know what the prophecy is, not in full, and not in the exact words. They're not willing to give up the advantage of the Ministry denying their existence, so they can't come in force against the Department of Mysteries... but they can send him out against us."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked. "He can't possibly know that..." He trailed off.

"He tried to kill you in the graveyard. I don't suppose he figures there's any harm in it." He looked around. "It's a simple question of resource allocation. He can't afford to make an appearance in a public place, but the minions can't seem to get the job done when they attack some objective that's ultimately helping him. What if they just switched roles?"

Again, everyone was silent. Neville let out a long breath about three seconds in, so that was not exactly silent, but he did not have a response. Was it always on him to end silences? Was that his job, as a people-organizer, or whatever he was?

"The last time, we responded with everything we had," he said after a moment. "Many of those minions are dead, so they can't exactly use them again, but they haven't even started with the Death Eaters. If Voldemort led them against a target that he expected us to defend, all of us would die. That isn't even a question. The trick here is getting him to think that we'll be defending it, when really it'll be the Ministry."

"How are we going to do that?" Daphne asked. "Are we going to use the Prophet again?"

"It worked last time. That's all we've got either way."