Harry found himself crouching again, this time on the limb of a tree. They had drilled, of course, in natural settings, but only drilling was a far cry from the reality. None of the human detection charms could be expected to work, not with the bizarre druidic protection enchantments on the land itself; it was dark magic before dark magic was even a thing, before light first shined in the whole of Britain. Luna was right next to him because she was determined to be something like a flight risk, which he found insulting and a mischaracterization of her internal conflict, but she would probably feel worse if he refused to work with her, even if she did not know why he had been asked to work with her.

"We're on the rear-exit and entry team," he explained to a recruit, one of two- Danae Diphthong and Peter Puddlemere, both only a few years his senior. "There's no backup for us; this is it."

"We were just reassigned from-"

"That's why we're explaining," Harry said. It was annoying to have to whisper to a different tree. "Our only real concern is if someone's inside. That's the only time we become relevant."

"We're hoping not to be relevant?"

Ron had been leading the charge through the access point they had determined during Hermione's sweep of the area with some of the other librarian-type recruits. He was not overly fond of that designation, but she surprised him by finding it funny and the other subject specialists all admitted to having spent a lot of time in the library. At the moment, they were serving as support in the event that something unexpected happened. Each of the troops wore an amulet under their clothes that could be used to target them for a spacial displacement, much like one of Susan's shields. It would get them out of there, but then make it a challenge to go around getting everyone to apparate them out, which was why Blaise and Ernie were both on her team- if it came to that, they would at least have a head start at going around and getting their people, but there was nothing they would be able to do for some of them if they broke out of their units.

"That's the opening shot," he muttered over the muffled sound of an explosion. According to Neville, here was no way other to get rid of a Shady Creep, a plant that seemed to unify and consolidate druidic enchantments. Without a specialist who could disentangle them, the best approach was just to destroy them, and that seemed to be working so far. Right about then Ron's wands would be forming a wall and blasting the entire area with every different kind of spell they know, leaving no room to dodge and no shield that would be effective. The Lestranges were all formidable duelists, but there was nothing they could do against such absurd numbers, even in their home, and if they knew some advantage they could use, Hermione would be on top of it.

"There's our man," Peter muttered. "He's not an illusion." His one skill was having cursed eyes, which usually resulted in just being half-blind, but every so often, turned out to be useful.

"Avada Kedavra," Harry incanted. The body dropped. It was strange how quick it was, still, even after all the times that he had done it. The all-clear signal came from outside, though he only knew that much because he would not have been able to tell if it came from inside. "That means Ron's team has made it through," he said. "Thanks everyone."

"We didn't do anything," Danae said.

"That's how it is sometimes. We were here as contingencies. Luna, you don't see anything out here, do you?"

"I would have mentioned it."

"That's what I thought. You three, switch to lookout. We don't want there to be anyone out there." He went ahead and assumed that Hermione's team had already done the same. Going inside, it was just as dream-like and mysterious as they all had said it was. Ginny had fallen asleep on the grass, and Neville levitated her. "That was Rabastan out there. I recognized him from an old wanted poster your grandmother had." He frowned. "It didn't seem likely that he'd hit her with a sleeping charm."

"I did it myself. He hit a few of us with the Cruciatus. It was awful. Apparently putting someone to sleep right after getting hit with it is a quick fix."

"Did you hit him back?" He did not think Ginny of all people would have taken it lying down, unless that had been decided for her.

"We thought we did. It was like he was everywhere and then he was never there when we hit him. Really, I think we almost underestimated him, but he must have known there were too many of us to really keep at it. It was smarter to make an exit rather than keep fighting once he had an idea of our numbers. If they were ready for us the next time, they could get us all at once and keep some of us as hostages."

"That's probably right," he said. "He knew he couldn't apparate out until he got out the back way, and that was when we got him." He took a deep breath. Again, an operation going well was not sitting the way he wanted it. "We'll just have to make sure there's nothing and no one else here. The human revealing charm isn't worth anything in a place like this."

"A place like this..." Neville mused, staring off into space. "If you don't mind, I've got an idea. I'll see you in just a bit."

"Dismissed." He went over to find Susan, who had been at the front, and she explained to him that apart from the enemy avoiding them, the operation went as expected. She characterized putting their own troops to sleep after getting hit as an overreaction.

"We've all been hit by it before," she reminded him. "I'm sure you remember the drills."

"I'll talk to everyone about it. We need to have a procedure in place for when we knock our own troops out, and when we can't afford it."

"We might have outnumbered our enemy enough in this instance, but we could lose if we-"

"Yes; I know; I'll make sure that everyone else knows." He took a breath. Having taken it for granted when Neville put down Ginny was probably the wrong move. "I'll have to ask you to go around talking to everyone on the assault team and come up with a list of things that we could've done better."

"Very well."

"That's not a punishment. You won't have to take care of the wand-policing."

"Thank you."

If she truly felt grateful, he was not certain, but at the absolute least, it was communicated to her that he was not intentionally handing her another task in response to her reporting of something important. He had not thought about the fact that his troops were bound to loyalty or at least non-betrayal on pain of death in months, and it was probably because by most metrics, they had all done a fantastic job. That did not mean, however, that there would not be conflicts. He decided to head over to Michael, who had just been awakened.

"You doing better?" he asked.

"I'm fine." He could see that it went too personal, but it seemed he was none too offended. "It still stings a little, but there's nothing for it."

"Yeah, as far as I know. You must have been one of the first ones in."

"Dragon Marshal Weasley said we had to take the initiative. It's just basic strategy; we couldn't let the enemy think about how to respond. Where is he now?"

"That's a question for Terry. I killed him myself. He went out the back way, just like we thought he would in plan c or d."

"It almost feels too easy."

"Well, you spent part of the time unconscious, but even on our end, people were feeling like that. It's unexpected, but really we should be grateful. If it didn't end quickly, someone would have died, probably, or the target might have gotten away." He thought for a moment. "It's not like Quidditch where fighting strong teams makes your own team better and gives you pointers on how to improve. Encounters should be like this. Fast and quiet is the hardest to counteract."

"Where does this go, then?" he asked. "Do we tell the world that this happened?"

"It wouldn't do any good. People know that he escaped from Azkaban, and they know he was responsible for a slew of murders twenty years ago; more evidence came out after he went away." He took a breath. "It wouldn't tell anyone that Voldemort was back, and it might tell him that one of his victims was getting revenge, and the other Lestranges wouldn't be able to take that lying down. They'd start going after the families of the people they killed, and we wouldn't be able to trap them by getting there first, because there's no way to know where they would start. Frequently mass killers don't even remember everyone."

"That's correct, as far as I know," Michael said, letting out a long breath and getting up, casting a detection charm, second nature for him. "What do we want them to think, though? There's no way that someone as loyal wouldn't report for duty. Are we going to leave a letter?"

"That's where things get more complicated."

"Master Harry, I got him!"

The two wizards turned to look at Dobby holding another elf hostage. They had brought him in on a sort of joint-ex because they suspected the enemy might have an elf, one loyal to their cause like Kreacher. If so, there was no way they could keep it from escaping, but they could get another operative into the heavily defended Malfoy Manor, the most logical place for an elf to go. According to their former servant, they were expected to appear by the main fireplace whenever they entered the home through their own form of apparation, and that was only in emergencies; in all other circumstances, they were to appear outside and walk in, as was considered polite.

"Good work." He applied a sticking charm. "Bring him back here if he tries to flee again. We'll need Luna and Hermione to delete certain segments from his memory to make it look like Rabastan left on his own." Daphne, who had come over to make a report, rolled her eyes and turned to get those he requested.

"That still doesn't explain it, though. If he doesn't report for duty, then Voldemort's going to think something's up."

"He will, because something is- he won't know what it is right away, though, and that's going to have to be good enough. The target wasn't a schemer; if he used his head, it was to think of ways to hurt people. No one is going to think that he abandoned his post."

"What about other evidence that we were here? The elf's memory can't be all there is."

"Clean-up is on it. If they miss anything, we'll know soon enough." He took a deep breath. "I need you to make up some fake evidence to suggest that he was interested in Eleazar Higgen. I know you've got the chops in Transfiguration."

"It'll take a lot to fool Death Eaters."

"You've got a lot. Get to it."

If Michael wanted some form of recognition that the task was hard and would take him time, he could have it. It seemed like he was trying to rebuild his reputation without actually apologizing for causing confusion, though of course most of the blame was with Parkinson. It had been better since they found something to do with her once they had all the information they could get. He had received a few complaints about the way that she stared at everyone, and it was not like they were going to get any valuable strategic asset or favor for her return, even though she was an only child; they could not justify using her just to get gold from her parents; then it was a kidnapping rather than a prisoner exchange; the last thing they wanted was to turn it into a private matter.

When the clean-up crew was done with their work, which did not take all that long, they were outside again. A few of them had already been apparated out. Ron joined him to tell him that the assault team was ready for the lecture, which he knew he would not enjoy giving, though he had some amount of confidence that they would realize that it was their own unit that was submitting the data he would be using. The lecture was thankfully short and there were no objections, so either they all decided to take it to heart as beneficial advice, or they were incensed that someone who had not been part of the assault was telling them what to do. The only thing he knew for certain was that they were not plotting to betray him, since none of them died.

"I've been thinking," he said to Hermione after she was done with the elf. It was just the two of them left and apparently it was her turn to stare off into the distance. Should he have expected it would be easy to manipulate the memory of a magical creature, even if she had already helped with modifying human memories? "About when... er, well, when in the process of deciding to turn against us does a traitor actually die?"

"It's not right away. Everyone gets traitorous thoughts sometimes. It's a matter of whether or not you can remind yourself that you don't have a choice any longer." She sighed. "I don't exactly feel guilty about all that, but the fact that no one has betrayed us so far makes me wonder if it was all necessary. I don't know if someone thought about turning on us, and then eventually decided against it... but maybe it's better that I wouldn't know that. I don't know about you, but I think people should get the chance to put their best foot forward, as it were. It's better if people decide to be honest, but we can't live without any secrecy at all. We can't live without the privacy of our minds."

"Is that what's bothering you?"

"It's not that I've concluded that something's wrong. It's more that I've found something to contemplate, that something might be wrong. Harry, we've done everything so that we can live, so that we can have our country back... in the same way that we might have to kill people to accomplish that, I've come to accept that we might have to do things worse than killing people as well. We might have to sentence someone to something worse than what we fear. It's..."

"It's frustrating?"

"There is no way that we should be able to just edit the memories of a witness when we don't like them." She sighed. "I've accepted that, generally speaking, magic itself seems to be on the side of the rebel and the criminal instead of the authority. In our case, it's even convenient... strategically. I just know that this isn't the way forward. There needs to be a way to have a clear record. I've even started to doubt much of what I've already read. I think we have to go further than just putting things back the way they were."

"I thought you were just saying that people need to have a right to lie about things."

"They do." She took a deep breath. "Things also don't need to be decided by skill. I'm trying to think of a way to make it all work."

"You don't have to think of it all yourself," he said after a moment. "Let the rest of us help you. Talk to Terry about it. I spoke with him about the law not too long ago. None of us think that your moral concerns don't matter."

"I haven't heard it the same way," she said, sighing. "I don't want to name names, and I especially don't want anyone pulling rank to decide something like this, but I've heard of people talking behind my back about me. It hasn't been good."

"That's part of what you meant earlier, then. You were saying that people should be able to keep their secrets about what they think of all three of us."

"I might as well say that some people think that Ron has an inflated idea of his knowledge of strategy just because he liked playing chess. I've only heard that one once or twice, though. It seems that enough of us accept him that there's no point in objecting by those who think they could do a better job."

Harry frowned, imagining having to join some other group and barely knowing anything about the leadership because they were three teenagers who mostly kept to themselves for most of their schooling. He would have thought, or hoped at least, that promoting some of the others would make a difference, and perhaps it had, but as always, that did not mean that there would not be conflicts.

"Well, I have to hand it to Parkinson," he said after a moment of thought. "It worked. She completely shattered the trust we had in each other. Maybe we're better off that way, though. Maybe it's better that we have to figure it all out ourselves."

"How? We need some amount of trust in order to function."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm not denying that, but we were never going to make this all work on everyone trusting us. Even if we never picked up anyone else, we would have made mistakes. We already have made mistakes, probably more than we even realize. There's no avoiding it. People have to go along with us because that's the rule that we've imposed. If they've got another reason, all the better, but we just couldn't hold a large organization together without effective rules and punishments. Going forward, we're going to have specific penalties for insubordination."

"Harry, this is all based on what our former captive thought, and that's if she was even right-"

"She was right- she might have been trying to prove a point just because she didn't like us, but there's no other way. I didn't know Terry before all this, not really. I don't think even he knew what he would be like today. They might have trusted us because they knew about us, but we only trusted them because we left them with no other choice; we had to after Edgecombe turned on us. We never even gave her a reason not to trust us."

"I hate to say it, but what you are saying makes a lot of sense," Hermione said after a moment. "I just want to know this. What if one of us betrays you? What if it's not even a strategic thing, but a personal thing?"

"Then I'll handle it myself," he said after a moment. He could tell a real question when he heard one, and he knew that it needed a real answer. With that, the two of them were again ready to rejoin the others. His task as something like a talent organizer, as long as he held that position, had necessitated the occasional one-on-one conversation, and for the most part, everyone understood. He knew of nothing to suggest that people had been prying and trying to figure out what he had been saying with the others. It went both ways, of course; he could always just tell everyone about his conversations with those not content to let others keep their secrets. Should he remember it all, though, or had he been told with the understanding that he would forget? On that front, he had little choice in the matter; he already knew he had forgotten some discussions, and others felt familiar.

The only question that remained to him as they rejoined the others was whether or not he should be the only one with all the secrets.