Trinity

Chapter 5

When they Flooed back to Grimmauld Place they found Mrs Weasley in the kitchen discussing lunch plans with Dobby.

"Mum! What are you doing here?" Ron said with surprise.

"Someone made an attempt on the wards around the Burrow last night," Mrs Weasley said calmly after she and Dobby decided on sandwiches for lunch. "Arthur decided to move us all here." She looked over at Harry. "Is that alright?"

"Of course, Mrs Weasley!" Harry said fervently. "Is everyone alright?"

"Of course, Harry dear," Mrs Weasley said soothingly as she tied an apron around her waist. "They couldn't get through the wards though they did wake us all up. Bill and Fleur, Charlie and Ginny are getting settled in upstairs. Charlie's moved home permanently now."

"We were just with the twins," Ron said with a frown. "They didn't say anything about this."

"Your father was going to drop round and tell them at lunch," Mrs Weasley said.

"Remind me to tell them where Headquarters is at some point," Harry said. "I didn't do that while we were there."

"We need to get set up," Hermione said to Harry and Ron.

They nodded and the three friends excused themselves and headed downstairs to the cellar. They'd decided during the week to set up the cellar as the potions laboratory and training area and Hermione and Ron had reorganized the room. Harry was still chafing a bit at the restriction on using magic but was trying to be as patient as he could. He didn't have that long to wait until he came of age and then he would be free to do whatever he liked.

Hermione and Ron had asked Dobby and Kreacher to move all of the rubbish up to the attic and had split the room into two. Several large tables had been moved down into the section of the room that was to be the potions laboratory and Dobby had taken care of the areas for the cauldrons. Cupboards for the ingredients and several bookshelves were placed along one wall. The other room had been largely left alone; they would add things to it once they had consulted Moody.

They got down there to find Dobby had left the trunks and their bags in the middle of the room and they unpacked the trunks under the supervision of Hermione. The more dangerous and volatile ingredients went into two of the locked cupboards after Hermione had warded them as best as she knew how. The remaining ingredients went into a third cupboard while the various equipment required filled a fourth. All of the potions books they had bought were placed in one bookshelf and the Prince's book was tucked in amongst them.

Finally Hermione looked around in satisfaction and pronounced herself satisfied. Just as she did so they heard Mrs Weasley's voice call them up for lunch. The trooped upstairs to find the kitchen full of Weasleys and Dobby and Fleur fighting a losing battle to get Mrs Weasley to sit down and let them do the work. Harry and Ron exchanged amused looks and sat down at the table.

"How's everything going?" came a quiet voice from beside Harry.

He looked around to find he'd inadvertently sat down next to Ginny. "Pretty good," he said after a moment's hesitation. "I see Fleur's doing well." He paused. "She's still ugly though."

Ginny grinned then screwed up her face. "I think I'm going to have to change my mind about her. I think she was trying a bit too hard before. She's been a lot better since we got back from school." She paused and gave a reluctant sigh. "I guess she and Bill really are in love."

"How's Bill been?" Harry asked worriedly.

"Okay," Ginny said. "He's a little different. Remus was right. He's more...wolfish."

"He looks leaner," Harry observed.

Ginny nodded. "He is. Remus said he might be sensitive around the full moon but he wasn't entirely sure." She paused. "He's still pretty much the same old Bill though." She paused again. "With added Phlegm."

Harry snorted with laughter then tried desperately to smother it when a few people stared at him. He really didn't want to have to explain what he found so funny. Mrs Weasley had finally beaten off Fleur and Dobby and plunked down several plates of sandwiches on the table. Everyone made a beeline for the food and the only sounds for the next half an hour were those of eating and drinking. Once they'd finished, Harry, Ron and Hermione thanked Mrs Weasley for the meal, grabbed Hermione's collection of parchment from the library then disappeared downstairs again to wait for Moody to arrive.

It wasn't long before they heard the thunking sound of someone descending the stairs then the door opened and Moody stumped into the room. He looked around the laboratory and gave an approving nod.

"Good setup," he growled. "Got someplace more suited to these lessons you want?"

Harry nodded. "Next door," he said leading the way into the large space they had left.

Moody looked around the large room approvingly. "Good work. I'll have to spend some time putting up some wards and whatnot." He looked over at Harry. "Oh, before I forget. I had a quiet word to Mafalda Hopkirk. She's agreed to waive the Restriction for Underage Magic for you."

Harry looked surprised. "Oh, thank you."

Moody waved off Harry's thanks and stumped around the room, examining every corner meticulously. Harry and his friends stayed where they were and watched the ex-Auror at work. When Moody finally made it back to where they were standing, he looked very satisfied.

"This will do fine," he growled. "Now, let's go back into that other room. We can sit down and you can tell me what you want out of these training sessions."

As they walked back into the laboratory, Harry's phoenix appeared in a burst of flame. He flew around the lab before settling on Harry's shoulder.

"I suppose you want a name," Harry said to the bird.

The phoenix warbled impatiently and Ron and Hermione snickered.

"What about Casimir?" Moody suggested. "I knew a bloke from somewhere in Eastern Europe called that. He told me it meant peacemaker."

Harry looked at the phoenix. "Well?" he asked. "Do you like Casimir?"

The phoenix seemed to consider it for a moment then gave an approving warble.

"Casimir it is then," Harry said with a nod. "The peacemaker. Let's hope that's an omen."

"Alright," Moody said decisively, sitting down on a stool at one of the tables. "What kind of ideas have the three of you come up with so far?"

Harry, Ron and Hermione took seats at the table as well and Hermione summoned her list of spells.

"These are all the spells I thought might be useful," she said with a hint of hesitation that slowly disappeared as Moody showed no signs of disapproval. "Most of these are from our textbooks. This lot are from...well, from a book Harry found. And these are from some of the books in the library here. I thought they might be a good starting place."

Moody took the lists from her and looked through them carefully.

"We were thinking that we should learn how to cast them soundlessly as well," Hermione added.

Moody nodded. "This is a good start. I've got several I could add to the list. Now, what I need to know is how much physical stuff do you want to learn? Auror training involves more than just spellwork. I can teach you everything they learn and I can also teach you a bit of armed and unarmed combat. Picked up a few Muggle techniques over the years that are damned useful."

"Anything that might be useful," Harry said firmly. "So yes, I think we should learn some combat techniques."

Moody nodded. "Alright. I'll need to spend the rest of today setting up the wards. Tomorrow we'll get stuck into things. I expect to see the three of you down here at eight am. Don't eat too much breakfast; I won't have any sympathy if you throw up."

Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged nervous looks as Moody got to his feet. The ex-Auror stumped towards the door to the training room then suddenly turned and eyed them sharply.

"Those cloak pins you lot were wearing last night," he said. "Noticed you were all wearing the same symbol. Any significance?"

Harry nodded. "We thought that if we were going to do this, we ought to have some kind of symbol. Something for Voldemort to fear. Hermione came up with the idea of the Trinity."

Moody eyed them closely for a long moment then barked with laughter. "Good idea. The Trinity, I like it." He turned and walked into the training room, shooting one last amused comment over his shoulder before he closed the door. "Unholy Trinity, if you ask me, what you lot want to do."

Harry snorted with amusement then frowned at Ron and Hermione's expressions. "What? He's right, at least from Voldemort's point of view, we'll be an unholy Trinity."

Hermione still looked disapproving as she stood. "I'm going to start on some of these long-term potions. If you two want to make yourselves useful, you can start on some of these other potions."

"I might pass on that," Ron said. "I'm going to go upstairs and continue looking through the library. We've still got to find out about those Horcruxes."

Hermione nodded and she prodded Harry towards the list of potions to be brewed. "Start with the Pepper-up and the headache potion."

Harry gave Hermione a mock salute and pulled the parchment towards him as Ron headed up the stairs. Then the two of them settled into their brewing.

*****************************************************************************

The next morning Harry, Ron and Hermione were downstairs waiting outside their new training room promptly at eight. Moody had told them when he left the previous evening that they would have to wait until he arrived to get in as he would have to key the wards to each of them. They didn't have to wait long before Moody came down the stairs. He looked over what they were wearing and grunted his approval. He then placed his hand on a small brass plate that he had affixed to the door. He then gestured for Harry to come forward.

"Place your hand on the plate," he barked and Harry hurried to obey. Once he had, Moody tapped the plate once with his wand and said, "Agnosco."

The plate became warm under Harry's hand and glowed momentarily then Moody gestured for Harry to step back. He repeated the process with Ron and Hermione then opened the door and gestured for them to enter. They walked in to find an empty room. That didn't last long as Moody took several shrunken trunks out of his pockets, enlarged them and started to empty them. He flicked his wand and various sets of equipment flew to lie against the walls. Once the trunks had been emptied, shrunken again and placed on a bookshelf Moody had brought, the ex-Auror turned and faced them.

"Right, first thing," he growled. He flicked his wand at one wall and a figure appeared. "Copy what the figure does and do some warm-up stretches."

Ron looked a trifle confused but both Harry and Hermione started following along.

Once they had finished with their stretching, Moody walked over in front of them. "We need to work on your fitness. Not much point running away from a dangerous situation if you collapse within five minutes." He stared at them for a moment then barked, "What are you waiting for? Start running laps of the room!"

The three students jumped and began running.

"Pace yourselves!" Moody yelled. "You'll be running for ten minutes. No stopping!"

Harry, Ron and Hermione groaned and slowed their pace somewhat. Hermione was the first one to start showing signs of fatigue, as she did not have the base fitness Quidditch required. She tried vainly to keep up with Ron and Harry but eventually had to slow down, clutching at her side.

"Don't stop, Granger," Moody growled. "I don't care how fast you go, just keep moving."

Hermione nodded weakly and slowed even further. Harry was the next to drop off the pace; Seekers spend most of their time circling slowly, only speeding up when they sight the snitch. Ron was the last to show signs of fatigue. Moody watched them all balefully, verbally prodding them when they looked like slowing enough to stop. Finally he looked down at his watch and called them to a halt.

"Don't stop!" he bellowed as Hermione began to sink to the ground. "Keep walking or your muscles will seize up."

The three students kept very slowly circling the room, hands on hip and breathing hard.

"You'll do this every morning," Moody said. "Stretch then ten minutes, no stopping. I shouldn't have to supervise this. It's going to be up to the three of you to have the discipline to keep going. At the end of the week, you up it to fifteen minutes. The week after that, twenty minutes and so on until you're running a half hour each day. Make sure you walk for five minutes after you finish jogging. If you just stop straight out, you'll do yourself some damage."

He watched them warm down walking around the room. Once they had finished that he started them on spell work. First he had them throw the spell he called out, one by one at the rear wall, explaining to them that he had reinforced the warding to absorb the magic. He walked up and down behind them, correcting their pronunciation, wand movement and stance before he would allow them to move on. Once they had it down perfectly speaking it aloud, he made them do it non-verbally. This proved to be a little more difficult and after an hour they had only worked through four spells. Moody ordered them to take a break and they sank down to the floor where they were standing.

"Not bad," Moody said, nodding his head in approval.

"Really?" Harry asked.

"For Sixth Year students, yes," Moody replied. "Normally you'd have another year of teaching before you went into Auror training. Think of what I'll be doing for the moment as a kind of hothouse process. Getting you as far as I can as fast as I can so that we can start in on the really serious stuff." He eyed them with amused approval for a moment longer. "Right! Up! Try Reducto this time."

The three students groaned and pushed themselves to their feet before obeying their orders.

Moody spent the rest of the morning working on their spellcasting. As they all tramped up the stairs for lunch, the three students were feeling exhausted. Moody however seemed rather chipper.

"We'll start doing some work on unarmed combat after lunch," he said with an amused look.

"Really?" Harry said weakly.

Moody laughed uproariously, his coarse laughter sounding loud in the stairwell. "You can't stop now, Potter. You have to learn how to fight when tired. Besides how else are you going to build up your endurance except by actually doing things?"

"We didn't exactly think this all the way through, did we?" Ron said with a hint of desperation.

"No," Harry replied as he pushed the kitchen door open. "But do you really want to stop?"

Ron was silent for a long moment as they dropped into chairs around the table. "No, I suppose not. We said we'd stick with you and I guess this is part of it."

Harry looked over to Hermione. The bushy haired girl was resting her head on her arm and her eyes were closed. "Hermione? Still with us?"

She opened her eyes. "Yes," she said in a small voice.

Mrs Weasley eyed them with amusement as she placed bowls of soup and plates of bread on the table. She gently smoothed Hermione's hair. "Sit up, dear," she said kindly. "You'll feel better when you get some food into you. I'll ask Charlie to get you all some of the liniment he uses. Looking after dragons can be a terribly physical business and he says this liniment works a treat on tired muscles."

The three students murmured words of thanks and slowly ate their lunch. Once they were done, Moody chivvied them back downstairs and, with a flick of his wand, transformed the room into something more appropriate for physical work. Basically this meant making the floor softer so they didn't damage themselves when they fell. And that is where he started; making sure they knew how to fall without hurting themselves.

He explained that no one could stay on their feet all the time and what you did after you fell, whether that fall was deliberate or accidental, was important. If you just lay there like a stunned mullet you were asking to be hurt or killed. He impressed upon the importance of not staying still, no matter how winded or stunned you were by the fall. He told them that by the time he was finished with them they would instinctively move after falling. The easiest move was to keep going with the fall, to turn the fall into a roll, and this is what he began with.

Harry, Ron and Hermione soon found that no matter how soft the floor was, it still hurt when you hit it. Moody threw them over his shoulder again and again and growled at them if they did not perform as he wanted. When the grizzled ex-Auror finally called the training session to a halt, Harry, Ron and Hermione were lying on the floor feeling bruised, battered but with at least some sense of accomplishment.

"Not bad," Moody said as he walked around them. "Well, Potter? Am I earning my keep?"

Harry gave a small huff of laughter. "Yes, I'd say you are."

Moody growled a chuckle. "You'll find it's all worth it when the chips are down. Trust me on that. See you tomorrow."

With that Moody stumped out of the room and they soon heard his progress up the stairs.

"You know, I'm not sure I can actually move at the moment," Ron said in a conversational tone.

"Oh, I know I can't move," Hermione groaned.

Harry wiggled his shoulders to make them a little more comfortable on the floor. "Yeah, staying right here sounds good."

Just as he had uttered those words, the enchantment Moody had put on the floor ended and the trio found themselves suddenly lying on the cold, hard, uncomfortable floorboards.

"Argh," Ron said as he shot into a sitting position then he yelped again as he slumped down almost immediately in reaction to the soreness in his muscles.

Harry and Hermione slowly levered themselves into a sitting position, both muttering under their breath. A stifled chuckle made them look over at the doorway where Charlie and Ginny were standing looking highly amused.

"Mum sent Ginny and I down with these," Charlie said, holding up a small jar. Ginny did the same. "She thought I could look after you and Ron, Harry, and Ginny could take care of Hermione." He paused and grinned. "But you'll have to get up first."

Ginny walked over to Hermione and helped her stand up. The two girls then headed out into the potions laboratory, closing the door behind them. Charlie walked over to the two boys and crouched down.

"It does get easier," he said sympathetically. "I was nearly paralysed with muscle soreness after my first day on the job." He held up the jar again. "Trust me, this stuff works wonders."

Harry pushed himself to his feet and swayed for a moment. "What do I need to do?"

"Take of your shirt and I'll rub this into your back and shoulders," Charlie instructed as he took the lid of the jar.

Harry slowly pulled his shirt off, wincing as the muscles in his back, shoulders and chest complained with every movement. Charlie gestured for him to come over to the side of the room where he'd placed the jar on a table. Harry did so and turned his back when Charlie instructed him. He winced and yelped as Charlie started rubbing the salve in with firm hands but then sighed with relief as the salve started working. He could almost feel his muscles loosening and the pain fading.

"Right," Charlie said when he finished with Harry's shoulders. "You do your arms and chest while I get stuck into Ron."

Harry nodded as Charlie walked over and teased his younger brother in getting to his feet. Ron complained initially but soon he too sighed with relief as the salve took effect and began to work on his own arms and chest.

Harry leaned against the table as he pulled his shirt back on and he sniffed the air. "Smells like cinnamon," he said idly.

Charlie nodded as he put the lid on the jar. "Yeah, one of the other dragon handlers used to complain about it. Said he wasn't sure wanted to run around smelling like a pastry. The rest of us didn't much care what we smelled like as long as we could move." He offered the jar to Harry. "Keep that, you'll need it. I'll get some more."

Just then Ginny opened the door again. "We're done," she said. "Mum will have dinner ready soon."

Harry took the jar and led the others back into the potions laboratory where Hermione was inspecting the cauldrons containing the long term potion she was brewing. She looked rather satisfied so Harry assumed all was going well. The two girls joined them as they headed upstairs. When they got into the corridor, Harry came to a sudden stop and looked down at the curtains hanging on the wall down the passage.

"Mrs Black hasn't been making much of a fuss," he said with a frown. "Ad we haven't exactly been quiet."

Ginny sniggered from behind him. "Go and have a look," she urged with a grin. "It's worth it."

Harry gave her a curious look but obediently wandered down the corridor and flung open the curtains. Mrs Black's portrait was still there but painted over her mouth was a colourful gag. It was pink with a blue and yellow flower pattern. Mrs Black's eyes were bulging but nothing more than stray sounds were escaping the gag. Harry stared at the sight in front of him then slowly started laughing. Ron and Hermione, who had come to have a look, joined in.

"Who did that?" Harry asked Ginny between laughter.

"I think it was Dobby," she replied merrily. "At least, he changes the subject very quickly when we ask about it."

Harry looked back at the portrait and flicked the curtains closed. "Well, whoever did it has my complete approval. That is wonderful!"

The revelation of Mrs Black's silencing meant that the group that entered the kitchen was cheerful and laughing and the sight seemed to please Mrs Weasley. She smiled as she fussed them into seats around the table and smiled again as Bill and Fleur joined them. Mr Weasley flooed in not long afterwards and the dinner started in an air of cheerfulness that had not existed since the death of the Headmaster.

Halfway through dinner, Harry leaned back in his chair and looked around the happy group. "You know, Professor Dumbledore would like this," he observed.

There was a small silence as everyone considered that.

"Yes, he would," Mrs Weasley said softly. "He always did like to see people sitting around a table enjoying their food and good fellowship."

Harry nodded as something that had been lurking in the back of his mind crystallised. "This is why Ron, Hermione and I are doing what we're doing. If Voldemort wins, this sort of thing won't happen." He paused and said firmly. "And I like this sort of thing."

"You know, the Death Eaters call us blood traitors," Bill said with a small smile. "That's because we don't swan around like money and our blood line is the most important thing in life but quite frankly, I'll take growing up in this family to growing up in a family like the Malfoys any day." He paused and his smile flourished into a fully-fledged grin. "This is much more fun."

"Bill is right," Fleur said, entwining her fingers with her fiancé's. "Thees ees what family ees all about."

Molly beamed at her soon-to-be daughter-in-law and the rest of the table dissolved into laughter. It seemed that that one comment alone reserved Fleur a permanent place in Mrs Weasley's good graces. The talk quickly devolved into discussion of the upcoming wedding with Bill and Fleur determined to have it at the Burrow no matter what the risks. Mr Weasley hummed for a moment then decided to ask the Ministry to have security upgraded for that day while Molly fussed over what the dresses for the bridesmaids should be like. Harry just watched all of this with a big smile on his face and wallowed in the feeling of family.