Grimmauld Academy: Illegal School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Chapter 1

(Unedited)

"Iron Chain, watch your left. There's a blue signal coming up from behind. There's a red signal next to it, so it's likely an Eater." Hermione was sitting crisscross on the floor, her otter Patronus recording her words. She sent it away, to Kingsley, with a flick of her wand. Codenames were useful during war.

Tonight wasn't a particularly hard night, but it wasn't pleasant. These patrols always worried Hermione and always left Harry plotting revenge. None of the Order had been killed or captured on one of these patrols, but they'd had some close calls. One time, Fred Weasley had been hit with a hex and dropped a Storm in a Bottle.

Storm in a Bottle was one of the items kept in Go-Bags made for the Order, by the twins. All you had to do was uncork it and you got a storm that acted like the climate around where it was opened- so you wouldn't end up with a rain storm in the desert. The force of the air had broken the bottle and he was caught, unprepared, in a storm. It still had the desired effects of causing a distraction to Death Eaters, though. Fred managed to get away from the wizard who had spotted him.

So yeah, while Hermione was 'calmly' sitting on the floor and giving directions from their Tracking Map (an invention surprisingly made by Harry, not the Twins, which allowed them to look at a certain area through color coded dots), Harry was pacing the room and giving strategy advice.

The first few models had been on parchment, like the Marauders Map, but now they had a small, handheld device that gave a 3D projection. All they had to do was put a tracking spell on someone and then put a tracking spell on the map, and they would be able to see all living things larger than a cat near the person who was placed under the tracking spell.

One issue they had discovered early on was that, since the map detected life forms, they couldn't always tell what things were. Their Tracking Maps, because they were imbued with Harry's magic, were able to do something magnificent. They could tell whether someone had bad intentions or not. Sometimes really large birds has bad intentions and it made things confusing. But the Tracking Map seemed to understand that.

The system for the dots was simple. Red meant bad guy, green meant good guy, and blue meant unknown. Really, they should throw in a yellow dot and make it mean malicious because the colors they used were all Hogwarts House colors. Except, they all meant the opposite of their house.

"Weasel Two, you're free to leave the coast. Head north, but be watchful for Iron Chain. He'll hand off the package." Hermione wrote something down on a parchment she had sitting next to her Tracking Map.

Did he forget to mention they were also smuggling people out of the country?

The Order only did these patrols when they needed to smuggle people out. International travel had been banned by the Ministry, so nobody could leave. However, Death Eaters were starting to go after the Muggle families of magical people. If a wizard or witch had married a Muggle, they were now in danger. Smuggling these people into safer places was one of the many tasks the Order of the Phoenix had taken on.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron had often thought that they wouldn't be able to communicate with the Order while on the run, but then Harry had created his Tracking Maps and figured out how to make a Patronus carry a spell. It really was quite simple.

But Ron wouldn't know that. Ron didn't even know that Harry was a horcrux or that his brother was helping Harry remove it. There were a lot of things Ron didn't know now.

On the first day Harry and Hermione arrived at Grimmauld, Bill told them that Ron was living with him and told them about how torn up Ron was about leaving them. Harry didn't want to hear it. He had no doubt he'd forgive Ron later, as best friends do, but he was angry right now.