"Briar Lupin had dreamt, predicted, foreseen death more times than she cared to admit. If she actually remembered all of the times it had occurred, at least."
Sequel to Blue.
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CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
LOAD UP ON GUNS, BRING YOUR FRIENDS
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
THE COUNTDOWN HAD BEGUN.
It was a deadly image in Briar's mind, a number that lost value the more that the days went on. Once, the countdown was pictured as a cutesy timer, the sort she had seen in muggle shops targeting cookie-cutter families. Now, Briar saw it for what it was. Bold and impactful and destructive.
Briar stood in the Dursley house. The empty Dursley house, in fact. Over the summer, the family had been told to leave for their own safety. She, like the rest of the Order, were standing around in the house, her hands shoved into the pockets of her burgundy faux-leather jacket. Her fingers curled around the keys to the muggle car she had acquired, an ugly old green BMW that easily fitted in with every other car in the United Kingdom's motorway.
"As Dedalus probably told you, we had to abandon Plan A," Moody explained to Harry. Briar observed the wallpaper in the room, and the remains of the house's insides. It was a suburbia dream. "Pius Thicknesse has gone over, which gives us a big problem. He's made it an imprisonable offense to connect this house to the Floo Network, place a Portkey here, or Apparate in or out. All done in the name of your protection, to prevent You-Know-Who getting in at you. Absolutely pointless, seeing as your mother's charm does that already. What he's really done is to stop you getting out of here safely."
A noise came from outside. Briar instantly turned on her heels, spotting just the neighbour's cat jumping onto the patio and then climbing onto the next house's fence. Moody continued, "Second problem: You're underage, which means you've still got the Trace on you."
"I don't—"
"The Trace, the Trace! The charm that detects magical activity around under-seventeens, the way the Ministry finds out about underage magic!" explained Moody, his voice as harsh and loud as usual. Briar looked at Harry. She wasn't sure if he was taking it well or not. "If you, or anyone around you, casts a spell to get you out of here, Thicknesse is going to know about it, and so will the Death Eaters. We can't wait for the Trace to break, because the moment you turn seventeen you'll lose all the protection your mother gave you. In short: Pius Thicknesse thinks he's got you cornered good and proper."
"So what are we going to do?"
"We're going to use the only means of transport left to us, the only ones the Trace can't detect, because we don't need to cast spells to use them: brooms, thestrals, and Hagrid's motorbike," Moody told him. "Now, your mother's charm will only break under two conditions: when you come of age, or you no longer call this place home. You and your aunt and uncle are going your separate ways tonight, in the full understanding that you're never going to live together again, correct?"
