Hindsight

Sixth of Eight

Oi, Harry!'

Harry woke up from a sleep that he did not even realize he had fallen into. He rubbed his eyes. 'Oh. Sorry, fell asleep. Hey, Neville.'

'Hi, Harry,' Neville said, sounding rather cheerful. 'Guess what?'

'What?'

'I kinda…asked Luna to Hogsmeade,' Neville replied, grinning a little.

Hermione perked up. 'Neville! Congratulations!'

'Thanks,' Neville mumbled.

'Now, you will be good to Luna, won't you?' Harry teased, 'I'll have to hurt you if you aren't. Luna, you'll let me know if Neville does something bad, won't you?'

'Of course,' Luna replied serenely, 'Neville won't do anything bad, though. He has very few Wrackspurts floating around him. Just like you, Harry, and you, Hermione.'

'Uh…thanks?' Harry guessed.

'You're most welcome,' Luna said, giggling as he leaned in to kiss Neville on the cheek. 'Neville's a good boy.'

'He is,' Hermione agreed.

The other three girls arrived a few minutes later and settled down. 'There's a huge imbalance of masculine and feminine energy here,' Harry joked to Hermione in a whisper.

Hermione snickered. 'We're here to keep you two men in line.'

Harry pinched her arm playfully before turning to the group. 'Alright. Uh…a few things. First, a warning. Ginny caught her brother Ron trying to slip me and Hermione Amortentia on Dumbledore's instructions. You need to be careful with what you eat and drink from now on. Are you familiar with Scarpin's Revelaspell?'

All five shook their heads.

'That's fine. Harry and I will teach you,' Hermione picked up, 'Use it to inspect your food at every meal. Your association with us has probably gotten out by now. They might try to target you, be it with potions or poisons. Just be careful and – oh, make sure you warn anyone you're close with.'

'Dean already knows,' Ginny said, 'I told him. Ron or someone else might try to target him next to make him break up with me or something. I wouldn't put it past Ron to do something petty like that.'

'Good thinking,' Harry complimented. 'All of you, just be careful, alright?'

Everyone nodded their heads.

'Great,' Hermione said. 'Second thing. We're planning to go after the Ring sometime next week. Provided that you're all ready, of course. Are you?'

'You just need us to keep open the wards while you two work through them, right?' Susan asked.

'Yeah, that's all.'

'Then we're ready whenever you are,' Susan answered, 'It doesn't take too much preparation to just push magic into a ward to keep it open, especially with five of us doing it.'

'What Susan said,' Luna added.

'That's good with everyone else? It could be difficult work.'

'As Susan said, there's not much we can do to prepare either way,' Daphne replied. 'I'm good to go.'

'I'll be fine, too,' affirmed Ginny.

'Next week's fine,' added Neville, 'The sooner we get rid of that thing, the better.'

'Brilliant,' Harry chirped happily. 'We should go during a weekday afternoon. Less people will notice that we're gone. I checked the schedules. Everyone here's off after three on Wednesday. Hermione and I will take two of you each by side-along apparition. Our house elf, Winky, will take the last. We'll arrive Disillusioned in the unlikely case that someone's keeping a lookout there. If someone's there, we'll just take them out. Simple enough. We'll also swap the bone while we're there. Any questions?'