Chapter 199 - The Operation

London. Number Four, Privet Drive.

Four fifty in the morning. The English sky had already gone light.

Harry buried his burning forehead in the quilt and kept it there, blocking out the dawn before it could heat his skull any further.

It was only when he returned to Privet Drive, sat down on the carpet to sort through his things, and touched the gold locket that it hit him all at once — Dumbledore was dead.

From that late night at the Astronomy Tower to this moment, he had kept himself busy. First, the locket, and R.A.B. Then playing security for Praeris's research. Then sitting with Ginny Weasley for a long, quiet stretch of time, not doing anything else at all. Then Dumbledore's funeral. Then, finally, Aunt Petunia's house on Privet Drive.

He read the Daily Prophet to stay informed. He explained to his aunt and uncle what he would have to face when he came of age. His eyes drifted across the name "Dumbledore" in the newspaper column and slid away — ignore it, move on — and he felt something close to relief that there were no other deaths reported today. Good. That was good.

After leaving Hogwarts, Harry flipped his schedule upside down. He slept through the daylight hours and only stirred after dark, padding to the fridge and stuffing himself with leftover bread and cold scraps, leaning against the fridge door and guzzling milk straight from the carton until his stomach cramped. Strangely, neither Uncle Vernon, nor Aunt Petunia, nor Dudley said a word to him.

Those were the better days.

On the worse days, he would sit in the dark with a torch and read that battered poetry anthology word by word, studying Dumbledore's handwritten annotations in the margins, turning the words over in his mouth, slowly tasting the emotions soaked into them. Emotions that had belonged to Dumbledore.

When he was unhappy, the dreams were cruel. They replayed the image of Dumbledore falling with his eyes open, over and over, stripped of all cause and context.

Just death. Pure, simple death.

Sometimes Harry wanted to slam his own head against the wall hard enough to knock himself unconscious. He could not stand the thought of Voldemort seeing Dumbledore's death. Could not stand the idea of Voldemort feeling even a flicker of satisfaction. But he was also afraid that if he actually blacked out, he might lose control in his sleep and leak something he shouldn't.

Emotion interferes with a wizard's ability to cast spells. He tried using Occlumency to cut the connection, but it was no use. He could never manage it.

Winnie said, with the calm certainty of someone who already understood: "Harry, your emotions right now are like an active volcano. It hasn't erupted yet, but it's burning in your chest all the same."

Unsteady emotions made Occlumency impossible.

During this time, the old Harry had eaten poorly because he'd had no choice; the current Harry simply had no appetite. Because of the inverted schedule, he rarely crossed paths with anyone else in the house and barely spoke at all.

Sirius Black tried again and again to reach him through the Two-Way Mirror. He wanted to comfort him, to talk him through it. But he could never find his godson during the day, so he settled for staying up and keeping Harry company through the nights instead.

Sirius cracked jokes. He clowned around and made a fool of himself. He wrung his brain dry trying to find the right words of consolation.

None of it helped.

"Harry." Sirius, on the other side of the mirror, somehow looked more normal and healthier than Harry did. "Why don't you — why don't you come to Order of the Phoenix headquarters?"

"No."

The person who answered was not Moody, who was temporarily running everyone's assignments. It was not Winnie, who loved contradicting Sirius at every turn. It was Harry himself.

He hadn't spoken much to anyone in a while. His words came out slower now, deliberate, like he was composing each sentence somewhere deep in his chest before it reached his mouth.

He said, in a tone that left no room for argument: "Dumbledore said that before I come of age, only this place can truly protect me."

Lupin said: "Accepting death is something you can only digest on your own. It takes a great deal of time, and it can only be done alone."

Lupin had lost his parents. He had lost his best friends, a husband and wife both. He spoke from that, and the weight of it was enough. The other Order members stopped hovering anxiously around Sirius's Two-Way Mirror every day.

Then one morning, Harry sat on his bed and watched the sun come up slowly before going to sleep — a fat red orb, like a burning, beating heart.

When he woke, the sky was already black. Boundless emptiness filled him, body and soul, like someone cut adrift in the oldest kind of dark, wandering with no direction and no purpose.

For an entire day, he thought about nothing at all. He simply emptied himself out. Let his mind drift like a single-celled creature in a drainage ditch, no feeling, no thought, no destination.

After that day, Harry got back up.

He pulled himself together as though he had simply decided to stop thinking about losing Dumbledore altogether. He opened the Daily Prophet and read the coverage again, actually read it this time. Some of the eulogies moved him. Some of the commentary made him furious.

The Order members didn't know exactly what he had gone through during those weeks. By unspoken agreement, no one brought it up. They rarely mentioned Dumbledore either, unless it was necessary, and they turned their attention to the more immediate problem: getting Harry out before he came of age.

The 27th of July arrived.

Moody's plan: George and his father Arthur as one pair; Fred and Lupin; Purnell and Kingsley; Mundungus and Winnie; Tonks and Sirius Black; Fleur and Moody; Harry and Hagrid.

"Why can't I be with Harry!" Sirius was the first to object.

"Because you are the most dangerous pairing, Sirius!" Moody roared. "Voldemort's primary targets are you and me! They'll believe immediately that you'd fight to stay with Harry, because you are —"

"Harry's godfather." Sirius drew himself up proudly and finished the sentence himself, which earned him a withering eye-roll from Winnie.

Winnie pulled open the Dursleys' fridge with the ease of someone who had done it a hundred times, fished out a tub of yogurt, and dug a spoon in. "Alastor, I have a question. Why aren't we asking Professor McGonagall to help?"

In Winnie's view, Hagrid was loyal, no question, but Professor McGonagall was simply on a different level.

"Hogwarts needs McGonagall." Moody didn't turn around. "Dumbledore is already... If something happens to McGonagall too, I don't think I need to spell it out."

They could not let Hogwarts fall entirely into the hands of the Ministry, or worse, the Death Eaters. Minerva McGonagall was without question the person Dumbledore had prepared to be the next headmistress. The students' last line of shelter.

Bill Weasley would originally have been a reasonable choice. Praeris Prince had already spared him the tragedy of becoming a werewolf.

But Prince's potion had side effects. Bill Weasley was currently wearing a new face, smooth and delicate and inexplicably glowing, that could not be exposed to direct light for at least another month. Every day he had to sit at the Burrow drinking supplements and eating carefully. Moody refused to bring an invalid into the plan.

Ron and Hermione were underage, and they had enough people as it was. Both were out.

Sirius Black's group and Moody's group carried the most danger, which was why they were assigned Tonks and Fleur, the two with the strongest combat abilities. Purnell was included specifically as a check on Winnie, who was a former Death Eater.

Moody believed that healthy suspicion was the foundation of real trust, and he applied that principle to his own people without hesitation. As long as Purnell was present and outside Winnie's sphere of protection, Winnie's loyalty was verifiable. Nothing to doubt.

So Moody paired Mundungus with Winnie, and quietly told Winnie in private: if Mundungus tried to turn traitor, she was to deal with him on the spot.

The former Death Eater Winnie grinned and gave him a discreet thumbs-up.

Their targets were 12 safe houses in total: the Burrow, Tonks's parents' home, Moody's house, Kingsley's house, Auntie Muriel's, and others. Each safe house had a Secret-Keeper, and each Secret-Keeper held a Portkey set for a single use, a one-way trip to Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.

The Portkeys had a fixed activation window. One chance, and one chance only.

After Sirius Black and Winnie raised their questions, the loudest objection of all came from Harry. He could not accept that anyone might die for him. This was Harry, who had only just dragged himself out from under the weight of death.

"Listen, Harry." Moody's voice was hard. "Time is short. Every second you stall is a second that puts us all in danger. Every single person here is ready to take the risk. Now move."

Winnie snorted. "I'm not sure Mundungus got that memo."

"Will you stop!" Madam Prim nudged her sharply. "You're not helping!"

Winnie's expression said she knew perfectly well she wasn't helping. She looped her arm through Prim's and called across the room: "Kingsley! Look after Prim for me!"

Kingsley Shacklebolt thumped his chest and raised an eyebrow at her. The look said: obviously.

Sirius Black immediately turned to Lupin with barely-concealed sourness. "Remus, how come you're not telling me to look after Tonks?"

"Should I apologize?" Lupin said, with complete sincerity. "But Sirius, I trust you. I trust Tonks. And I trust that you'll protect her."

Tonks, who was perched on top of the washing machine, dissolved into laughter. "Don't worry about me! I can handle myself!"

Not long ago, Tonks and Lupin had gotten married. With Sirius Black as a witness, equal parts delighted and aggrieved, Lupin had stepped down an entire generation in family seniority.

The aggrieved part: the two of them had kept the whole relationship from Sirius for ages. He only found out the morning after Dumbledore died. Not that Sirius had exactly paid close attention to his great-niece's love life, but his best mate had gone and pinched the apple from the only family he actually cared about!

The delighted part: he genuinely was happy for them. They loved each other. Marriage was supposed to make both people happy, wasn't it?

From now on, Sirius Black could pull rank on Lupin as a grand-uncle, and the moment Lupin put a foot wrong, he would hear about it.

Lupin, faced with this, actually felt better. If Sirius had simply approved without reservation, Lupin would have worried he was being unfair to Tonks. But if Sirius had rejected it entirely, Lupin could not have brought himself to accept Tonks's love. This was the right kind of difficult. It felt honest.

In any case: those who needed brooms rode brooms, those who needed Thestrals rode Thestrals, and those who needed the motorbike took the motorbike.

Harry was startled to realize he could see the Thestrals now, fully, clearly. He thought he knew why. It was Dumbledore.

The Dumbledore Harry was thinking about was, at that very moment, drinking Polyjuice Potion. He had sampled quite a few varieties of it lately.

The one bright spot: today, Praeris was drinking it alongside him. Suffering shared is always easier to bear.

The hair was Muggle-sourced, but Praeris hadn't chosen her donors carelessly. She was strategic about it. She targeted tourists passing through Britain, people who would only be around briefly, who wouldn't end up on any Death Eater's radar because of what she'd done. Whether someone qualified as a short-term visitor was a question she left to her own judgment, which was more than adequate for the task.

Praeris raised her potion vial and clinked it against Dumbledore's.

Dumbledore said: "To world peace."

Praeris said: "To a smooth journey."

Malfoy Manor sat in Wiltshire. Both of them knew this. They had scouted it in advance and discovered that getting in was not a simple matter.

On the surface, the only barrier was a pair of wrought-iron gates. But those were decoration. The gates were enchanted. Death Eaters only needed to raise their left arm, the arm bearing the Dark Mark, and they walked straight through.

"We can't simply break the enchantment." Praeris's black eyes were swallowed by the darkness around them, but when she fixed her gaze on the gates, there was a faint gleam in them. "This is the Dark Lord's spell. The moment it's broken, he'll know someone has forced entry."

Dumbledore smiled. "I usually just walk straight in." Overwhelming force renders technique unnecessary. At his level, finesse was rarely the first consideration.

In truth, if he were alone, he would simply force his way through. It would also disrupt the Death Eaters' plans for Harry in the process, two problems solved at once, why not?

But Praeris was here.

Dumbledore asked directly: "Praeris, what do you suggest?"

Praeris blinked. "There's only one option. We have to create something that mimics the Dark Mark closely enough to fool the enchantment."

She had seen the Dark Mark before, but she had never seen what it looked like during an actual summons. Dumbledore offered his memory generously, allowing her to view it.

Though Dumbledore, being a master of Occlumency himself, had carefully extracted only the portion he wanted her to see.

After several days of work, the two of them had etched a mark onto a piece of cured animal hide, shaped like the Dark Mark on a Death Eater's arm, close enough to be convincing. But neither of them could be certain it would work.

This was not something that could be tested in advance. Once activated, there were only 2 outcomes: success, or failure.

According to the timing Snape had disclosed, Dumbledore and Praeris arrived early and waited beside the tall hedgerows outside Malfoy Manor.

The moon climbed into the branches overhead. The luminous hands of the pocket watch aligned with the agreed hour. Praeris snapped the cover shut and, side by side with Dumbledore in his black robes, walked toward the iron gates of Malfoy Manor.

At the entrance, they raised their left arms at the same time. The tanned sheepskin, etched with its mark, was bound tight around each wrist.

They walked through.

Praeris heard herself exhale, silent, slow.

Beyond the gates was the Malfoys' garden. Somewhere ahead, a fountain murmured faintly. The garden was dim, shapes visible but not sharp. She stayed close to Dumbledore's side and did not let the distance between them grow.

➤ Next: Infiltrating Malfoy Manor