The Time-Meddlers [Harmione]

30. Fighting Back

"Every night Aunt Amelia complains about how much the bureaucracy is holding the government back from fighting Umbridge, so we can't count on their help!" shouted Susan. "Why won't you accept help from those not bound by that, Harry?" She'd spent the last twenty minutes trying to convince Harry and Hermione to let the D.A. help them. Hermione seemed convinced, but her boyfriend was still resisting.

"I don't want them killed because of me," he replied stubbornly.

"If we die, it'll be because of Shadow, not you!" argued Susan. "You may not have noticed, but you're not the only one with a reason to fight back." Harry noticed that the scar above her left eye, a memento of her time as Umbridge's prisoner, hadn't faded at all, but didn't comment on it.

Hermione, looking like she'd just understood something, turned to Susan. "Could you allow us a few minutes? I think I know what's bothering Harry. It's kind of private."

Harry glared at his girlfriend. "What do you mean, bothering me? I just..."

"Alright. Five minutes. I'll be in that room." The young redhead pointed at a door and walked toward it. Once she was in the other room, Hermione turned to her boyfriend.

"This isn't about the D.A. This is about Cedric. You're afraid he's going to die and you won't be able to stop it."

"Can you guarantee me that that won't happen?" asked Harry, not bothering to argue with his companion of two lifetimes. She knew him far too well. "Not just to Cedric but all of them?"

"No," she replied, shaking her head solemnly, "but they have as much right to fight back as we do...some of them have more reason. And the fact is that we'll need help. We're not superheroes."

Harry let out a sigh. He knew she was right. He could either spend the next few hours arguing about it until he gives in, or spend that time planning how to avoid casualties. "Fine. Tox and Sky will be paying the D.A. a visit. Let's call Susan back in."

❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾

"That'll never work!" declared Bartholomew Headon, an aging member of the Wizengamot. "We'll just lose more people. The Muggle-borns will have to tough it out." They were meeting in a classroom on the first floor of Hogwarts.

"In concentration camps?!" shouted Minister Bones. "The odds that anyone could survive a month in one of those places is negligible. We have the location of one now. We just have to..."

"There are casualties in every war," interrupted the representative of another ancient house, Timothius Caladron. Bones had long suspected he was a pureblood supremist, despite his family's neutrality in the Voldemort war. "That is what they should be considered."

"We must help those people!" argued Augusta Longbottom, also a Wizengamot member, but unfortunately her pleas fell on mostly deaf ears.

After that frustrating debate that ended in yet more non-action, Amelia decided to send a message to someone else...someone who might actually do something about the concentration camp that some of her remaining aurors had located. The atrocities they'd witnessed were horrendous, and that was from a distance.

❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾

"These are the people who rescued me from that evil monster. They're fighting outside the government's limitations, and are willing to let us join them," said Susan, introducing her friends' alter egos. "This is Tox and that's Sky." Both were taller than their normal sizes wearing black robes obscuring their faces as they stood at the front of a D.A. meeting. Cedric had approved of Susan introducing her rescuers to the group.