Harry Potter & The Thousand Mysteries

23/?

A Plan is Hatched

 ‘Hello?’ Harry called, as he, Ron and Hermione stood in the hallway of Lupin’s house. Only the two candles stationed at solitary points along the formerly white, now grey wall lighted the hall.

‘Hello?’ called Ron from behind Harry, as he shut the door. The circular window let light from the streetlamps in, like a tiny porthole.

‘You’re here,’ said a voice, and Harry’s eyes flicked to the staircase, where a tall man was standing in front of the curtained window.

Albus Dumbledore looked at them with a misty expression.

‘We’re upstairs,’ said the immensely powerful wizard, surveying them over the top of his half-moon glasses, before turning and ascending the staircase.

Hermione looked worriedly at Harry, and Ron patted them both on the back, before they followed him.

They were led to the fourth bedroom, and the largest. The curtains were drawn, and several candle holders and oil lamps were dotted around the room. Harry stepped in first, and immediately saw that it had been tidied up a great deal. No longer were loose sheets of parchment lying around the room, or books, their covers open, displaying their contents to the world, strewn like wreckage from a plane crash.

The desks had been polished, the windows cleaned, everything had been organized into, and Harry assumed, the three large muggle filing cabinets at the side of the room.

‘Sit down,’ said Dumbledore, the sole occupant of the room, and motioned to the trio to sit down in the new chairs.

Harry entered, trying to hold himself in a way that conveyed power- he was tired of being the shrinking, timid teenager so innocent and naïve.

Hermione was making no such attempts at adulthood, however, and sat down, her mouth slightly open in concern. Ron was just his plain self- gawky, larger-than-life, looking around with a slightly bemused expression.

‘I’m just studying this infinitely curious map,’ said Dumbledore, his nose mere inches from the canvas of the updated Marauders Map. ‘Remus informs me that the Marauders devised the idea while they were still at Hogwarts, and indeed they made a smaller, rougher version, but, alas, he seems to have misplaced it.’

The moustache quivered, and Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled with vibrant delight as he watched the three shift uncomfortably.

‘How most peculiar,’ he added, and sat down in one of the seats.

Harry noticed there were a multitude of seats dotted throughout the room- some with cushions, some oak, some large, some made of canvas or bamboo.

‘Ah,’ said a voice as the door pushed open, and Lupin appeared with a tea tray in his hands. ‘Here we are,’ he said, setting it down on a rough, wooden chair in the corner. ‘Here’s some tea.’

‘Excellent, Remus,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And, my, are those Jammy Dodgers?’ He pointed his wand at the shortbread biscuits on the silver tray, each with a small jam filled shape in the centre.

‘No more, no less,’ said Lupin.

‘Dearm dear,’ said the headmaster, taking three and putting them on his saucer. ‘I haven’t had these in years.’ He turned to Harry, Ron and Hermione. ‘You simply must try them, they’re one of the greatest inventions of the muggle world, and, indeed, that is quite something.’

He chuckled, and dipped one in his tea.

‘Did I tell you that they’re selling Bouncing Aubergines at the Magical Mart two for a sickle?’ said Lupin, as he poured some tea.

‘No!’ exclaimed Dumbledore. ‘Why, they really do offer the best in prices, don’t they? I must have the house elves order some into the castle.’

‘Yes, and the Fizzbusters Brew,’ said Lupin. ‘They’ve slashed the prices of that repeatedly this year.’

‘Well, they would,’ said Dumbledore knowingly. ‘After Morris introduced Jive Juice last spring, they aren’t the sole market- they’ve got competition!’

‘Too true,’ said Lupin, taking a sip of his tea. ‘And all the better for us; the customer and consumer!’

Harry’s brain did a slight double take. Had Lupin owled him to come urgently to listen to him and Dumbledore discuss food prices?

‘Er,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Can I ask why we’re here?’

‘Idle chit-chat, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, smiling. ‘There simply isn’t anything like it, is there!’

Not for the first time, Harry doubted the headmaster’s sanity.

‘They say the pen is mightier than the sword,’ said Lupin philosophically, ‘but I’ll tell you, the tongue is the greatest weapon of all.’

‘It’s cut down more souls than the wand, gun and blade combined,’ agreed Dumbledore, nodding.

‘Okay, this is freaky.’ Ron looked at them both, and Dumbledore chortled to himself.

How typical of Ron, Harry thought inwardly, to bring the conversation straight back to earth.

‘Well, you are not here to listen to two doddery old fools, if you’ll pardon the expression, Remus, chat about the latest offers at the Magical Mart.’ Dumbledore looked at them both.

‘We’re just waiting for the last X of this equation to arrive,’ said Lupin mystically.

Harry was flummoxed. Hermione and Ron looked equally nonplussed.

They sat, sipping their tea for a few minutes, until there was a bark from downstairs.

‘I better let him in the back door,’ said Lupin, and hurried out the room.

A few moments later, he reappeared, accompanied by Sirius.

‘Harry!’ exclaimed the prison convict who was never convicted.

‘Sirius! I’m so glad to see you!’ The old friend of his father’s sat down in yet another chair beside him.

‘Well, now the equation’s added up,’ said Dumbledore, winking at Harry, ‘I’ll give you my news.

‘The Death Eater’s launched an attack on the home of Paul and Polly Pennyfeather, and their two children, Peter, aged seventeen, and Prada, aged fifteen, earlier this evening. All four are dead, as well as the family house-elf, Tinker, Flora, Florence and Fanny, their dogs, and both their horses, whose names I forget.

‘This is yet another attack, and our list of casualties is growing on an almost weekly basis. Lupin has constructed a map, which he will show you now.’

Lupin pulled a long tube of parchment out a cleverly concealed canister, and magically pinned it to the wall. It showed a large map of the British Isles, along with Ireland, the north of France and south of Norway, as well as a large chunk of the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

‘The first attack,’ said Lupin, ‘was here. This is where the aeroplane went missing.’ He fired his wand at the map, and an acid green bullet catapulted out the tip and fixed itself to the point of the map where the plane was plucked from the sky.

‘The inhabitants of the plane were found here,’ he fired another acid green bullet towards the map, and it attached itself to it.

‘All in all, we’ve had twenty three attacks so far, mostly minor ones: houses blowing up, muggles being toyed with, occasionally some small-scale murders like tonight…’

‘Small scale?’ exclaimed Hermione. ‘A whole family being wiped out is small scale?’

‘Compared to an aeroplane being blown apart or everyone on a ship being killed, yes, it is small scale,’ said Lupin placidly.

‘Anyway, all these attacks happened in all these places.’ Lupin’s wand suddenly gave birth to a stream of luminous, acid green bullets, which shot at the map with lightning speed, making it look like a laser beam. A few seconds later, the map showed…

‘The Dark Mark,’ said Sirius. The pattern of attacks had come together to form a massive outline of the Dark Mark across the UK.

‘What are all the ones at sea?’ asked Harry. There were several dots that were fixated at points which would be covered with water.

‘Several fishing boats,’ said Lupin, ‘Rowing boats from other parts of the country ending up here, the passenger ferry you know about…’

‘What does You-Know-Who do now?’ asked Sirius. ‘He’s made his mark, now what?’

‘Well, he hasn’t finished, actually,’ said Lupin. The snake-tongue is still incomplete; I just added those last six dots in for effect.’

‘How frequent are the attacks?’ asked Ron. It was a very intelligent answer, but that was Ron’s style. Deeply in contrast to Hermione who always appeared the one with the oversized brain, she purveyed an aura of knowledge and know-it-all, although, Harry had discovered, when you got underneath the teachers pet, there was a Marauder in the making. Ron, on the other side of the spectrum, appeared to be the laid back, take-it-easy, lacklustre guy who didn’t care about anything save quidditch. However, he was the complete inverse of Hermione. For when you got underneath Ron’s portrayal of himself, he was actually startlingly intelligent- asking all the right questions and knowing everything he needed to know to get through life, without cramming it down other peoples throats. Often, Harry felt as if he were the tagger-on, holding both their cranial capacity’s back.

‘They average at one point zero two per week,’ said Lupin, businesslike, clear and crisp as usual- always keeping emotions to a minimum.

‘So the next one will be?’ he prompted.

‘Tomorrow evening at eleven o’clock. This is the part Dumbledore wanted to talk about.’

‘Thank you, Remus,’ said Dumbledore, setting his cup and saucer down on the desk. There were no Jammy Dodgers left at this point.

‘If I know Voldemort, and I do, he will complete his pattern at all costs, even if it means depleting his *troops*. This means that without a shadow of a doubt, we will have a minimum of six casualties over the next six days. However, we can turn this to our advantage.

‘By stationing a team of the old crowd there, we can capture as many Death Eaters as possible, and bring them back to the castle for questioning.

‘This will involve considerable risk- Voldemort will invariably catch on to what we are doing and will act accordingly, but not before he’s been into our trap.’

‘So you’re saying we wait until they’ve done they’re raid, and catch them,’ said Sirius. ‘Surely they’ll have thought of that.’

‘No,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I’m quite sure they don’t have that much forward planning at their disposal.’

‘Who’s going to be on these little bands of catchers?’ asked Sirius.

‘Well, that’s the thing.’ Dumbledore looked troubled. Harry had never seen the old man look so tired. ‘If we suffer no losses at all, we’ll need a minimum of ten people stationed at all of the six sites waiting to be attacked. Of course, they’re all quite close together, so people waiting at each station can apparate or fly to the one under attack and help out there, but even still, that means we need sixty people per night.’

‘How many do we expect to lose?’ Sirius looked stonily at his former Headmaster.

‘We can expect to lose ten people over the six weeks, and, according to the law of averages, about twenty people will be incapacitated temporarily each night.’

‘So who’s’ in?’ pressed Sirius. He was getting impatient.

‘Did I tell you that the fifth year Gryffindor Defence Against the Dark Arts Class is far ahead of all the other classes?’ said Dumbledore suddenly. ‘They’ve successfully completed stage one and stage two of the Auror Training Course- they’re only five stages, and the first two usually get rid of the less-talented ones. Professor Janney has nothing but good things to say about them.’

‘Dumbledore!’ said Sirius.

‘Remus has made a list of all the people we have enlisted already. Remus?’

Lupin withdrew another roll of parchment from the ingeniously concealed canister, which was disguised to look like a wine rack, and unrolled the parchment.

‘Here,’ he said, turning it round so they all could see. ‘These are the one hundred and fifty four people we’ve contacted and who have agreed to join the team.’

There were six categories, Harry saw, each written in a different colour of ink.

‘Each division will man the same station every week. When the Death Eaters arrive, they should send word to the other divisions, and then attack.’ Dumbledore was very quiet, very pronounced. ‘We should take down as many as we can per night.’

‘Dumbledore! Answer the question! Who’s going!’

‘The Third team who will man the third station will comprise of,’ said Dumbledore in response, ‘Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Minerva McGonagall, Claudia Janney, Deladus Diggle, Hermione Granger, Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter.’

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