Chapter 51

The dangers attendant on the Forbidden Forest had one advantage, for they made it an excellent place for a secret meeting, and no place inside the forest was better for a meeting than that section of the Forbidden Forest which itself was forbidden, the territory of the centaurs. The centaurs had taken much of the forest as theirs in ancient times, their territorial claims long accepted by the other inhabitants of the forest. These other creatures had no choice; quarrelling with the semi-human archers was not an option. Anyone invited into the centaurs' land automatically enjoyed their protection, and was as about as safe as anyone could be in the wizarding world.

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon in March, thirteen students of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were practicing their skills, confident that there was no chance they would be discovered by any Hogwarts student or professor. It was Imogen who had secured permission from the centaurs' chief, Magorian, to use their land (highly unusual) and their wands as well (unheard of). Magorian made good on his promise to Imogen that she only had to ask in order to receive an invitation, and he was gracious enough to extend the same invitation to the twelve friends named in the letter she'd sent him by owl. Olwyna, Imogen's barn owl, had waited patiently while Magorian consulted his advisors, and then delivered his penned a reply, which included a simple map illustrating where Imogen and her friends could practice their magic, free of interruption. But not of observation, for the unused clearing designated as the students' practice place was lined by a dozen very curious centaurs, eager for the opportunity to learn something about the magical powers of their human neighbors.

Harry divided his friends into two groups, with equal number of Gryffindors in each. Marietta and Cho joined the Weasley twins along with Imogen and Hermione. Luna and Ernie hooked up with Ron, Ginny, Neville and Angelina. The two groups each formed lines in the center of the clearing, very eager but some also nervous, for today they were to practice the killing curse. Facing each line of students was a group was six targets, roughly in human form and conjured from the twigs and brush bordering the clearing. They all listened attentively as Harry instructed them.

"It's only a few months until we'll be at the Ministry. If I'm right, and if we have a meeting with Voldemort and his gang, the plan is that at the very start, only a few of us will be visible. The rest of you will be hidden by the Asturias potion. For the first minute or so of the meeting, there'll be a discussion between me and Voldemort's followers. While the discussion is going on, each of you must choose a target. Each of you will try to pick the person nearest you. The idea is that after the initial attack, that there will be a minimum of enemy survivors. Ideally, each one of us will kill one opponent in the initial encounter, but as a practical matter I think its more likely that one or more of us will fire a curse at the same target, and so leave one of our enemies untouched. But we'll try to do in as many of them as we can, because that will leave fewer of them to fight back.

"So this is what we're going to practice today. At my signal, each of you will use the killing curse at the nearest target. The signal today is the same signal that I will give when we're at the ministry: I'll extend my hand, and say, "Alright, here's the prophecy." As soon as you hear me saying these words, blast away."

Harry continued to talk to the group for a while, telling them how important it was to listen carefully so that they all would fired on cue. In the middle of this lecture, he suddenly uttered the words, "Here's the prophecy."

At these words, the Weasley twins, Hermione and Marietta immediately blasted their targets, their straw men exploding in a burst of green light. Imogen was not quite so quick off the mark, nor so accurate, and missed her target entirely. The other group did not fair quite as well. Ernie and Luna must have been wool gathering, and missed the signal entirely. Only Angelina and Ron acted quickly and hit their targets. Harry bade them all turn around to face him.

"We got six out of twelve targets on the first try. Not a bad start. You see the difficulty, though, I think. I want to give the signal in a way that doesn't tip off Voldemort's people. This means I don't want to shout something like, "attack!" or anything so obvious. But it also means that unless you pay extremely close attention, you'll miss the signal. Let's try this again." A few minutes later, the clearing resounded with cries of the killing curse, and a number of targets exploded: more this time, but not enough to satisfy Harry. They continued to practice well into the afternoon, until the winter shadows of the surrounding forest fell upon the field.

"Lets take a break, everyone," said Harry.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" piped up Hermione. "I'm starving!"

She ran over to where she and the other girls had left their things at the start of practice, and pulled out her school bag. From it she extracted some packages and a water bottle. She walked back to her friends, holding the packages and opening them as she did so. She was just about to bite off a hunk of bun she had brought when she noticed the stares.

"I wish I thought to bring something to eat," said Imogen enviously.

"Me, too," said Ron sadly. "I should've realized we'd be out here so long.

There was the loud sound of someone's stomach growling, and then Neville spoke up.

"Sorry, guys. But I'm so hungry I can hardly think straight." The members of the group all began to talk at once, a number of them suggesting that perhaps an immediate return to the school and the common room snack cupboard was called for. From the sound of things, it looked like the group was about to reach a consensus. This will never do, thought Harry. It had been hard to organize the practice session, requiring as it did extreme secrecy, the cooperation of the centaurs and the breaking of at least a dozen school rules and even wizarding law.

"I'm hungry too," said Harry, "but can't we hang on for a while longer? Even an hour? There's so much we have to do." Ron immediately spoke up loyally in support of Harry, but he was the only one, the rest of the hungry team eager to get some food into their stomachs.

"Maybe Hermione brought enough to share. What did you bring?" asked Harry optimistically.

  "Just a bun and some salted kippers. Really only a snack, that's all," said Hermione, clutching her packages as Harry reached out for them.

"I won't eat them. Just let me have a look. Please." With evident reluctance Hermione relinquished her parcels of food which Harry opened, revealing a bun and a couple of small fish. Ron and his brothers gazed covetously, their mouths watering.

Harry stood up and pulled out his wand. He pointed it at the small loaf of bread and weaved a complex spell, uttering not a sound as he did so. Suddenly where there had been one bun, there were two. Harry performed the spell a second time, and now there were four. At each repetition of the spell, the number of buns doubled, and Harry stopped when there were sixteen. He then repeated his spell on the kippers, conjuring enough for everyone.

"I can't help any of us with the water," he said regretfully. "We don't have any bottles to put it in. But I'm sure you all know how to melt snow if you're that thirsty." Harry reached down to grab a bun and tore off a piece hungrily. He was halfway through when he noticed no one else was eating.

"I thought you were all hungry. Dig in!"

Hermione spoke for the whole group.

"Harry, what you just did was impossible. It's contrary to Gamp's law. You can't transfigure food from nothing!"

"Are you quite sure of that?" said Harry, taking a bite from one of the kippers. He swallowed, and the continued. "I mean, if you can make wine out of vinegar like McGonagall taught us, why can't you make bread out of bread? Or fish out of fish?"

"Because it can't be done. Or at least that's what we've been taught. It's in any basic transfiguration textbook. Gamp's law says that while you can transfigure something that's edible into something else edible, you can't simply create food out of nowhere and you can't duplicate it, either. It simply can't be done." Hermione's whole sense of the wizarding world have been turned upside down by what she had just seen. She was even a little bit outraged, as if her friend had done something blasphemous.

"Look," said Harry. "We all came out here to practice, and I just wanted everybody to be able to keep on working instead of leaving early just to get some food. I wasn't trying to add anything to wizarding knowledge or take anything away from it either. It's not like I'm trying to permanently abolish hunger or something like that. I'm sure the wizarding law is the same now as it's always been. I just wanted us all to have something to eat. Once the edge is off our hunger, we can practice the stunning spell some more."

"Looks like your textbook was wrong, Hermione," said Ron, tearing open a bun and shoving half into his mouth. "Hey, this is pretty good, too," he added. "You know what Harry? I don't think Dobby will have to fetch us food from the kitchens anymore after hours. Just take something from the table, and the whole Gryffindor house can have unlimited eats."

Harry laughed uneasily. He felt inexplicably diminished by his effort, as if some part of his own vital store of energy had been depleted. He was not at all eager to try the food making trick again, not unless it was absolutely necessary.

"I'm not eating whatever it is you made, Harry," said Hermione with some asperity. "I want the original food I brought with me, and not the copies."

"Hardly think it matters," said Fred, shoving a kipper into his mouth. "But my guess is it's the ones nearest Harry."

Hermione pondered over what to do until hunger overcame her reluctance. She pretended to have identified her satisfaction the original food that she brought with her, and soon she and everyone else was eating.

"Do all wizards eat this way?" asked the centaur Idas, watching with great interest from the edge of the forest.

"They look like wolves over a kill, not civilized at all," said Ronan with a toss of his red mane. "But perhaps it is because they are young ones with no elders around to teach them their manners. Indeed, that must be it. I cannot imagine Albus Dumbledore eating in such a fashion."

"I hope they will be using that green light some more," said Idas. "It looked like a lot of fun." But when the humans finished eating and resumed their practice, the green light was nowhere to be seen.

"They've switched to using the red light," said Ronan. "And they're sending the lights at each other, not at targets."

"What does the change in light colour signify?" asked Idas.

"It's a form of communication, a signal," explained Ronan complacently. "You'll get better at understanding the customs of magical humans when you've been observing them as long as I have."

"I have to admit that I envy you your knowledge," replied the younger centaur.

"It looks like they're going to be at this for quite a while," said Ronan. "Perhaps our friend Imogen will be tired at the end of all this. I wonder if her ankle is healed since she injured it when she was visiting us. If you had to give her a ride back, it would be quite sometime before you return."

Idas knew that he was supposed to rebel at the notion of carrying a human on his back, and made a few protesting noises for form's sake. Ronan was silently very amused.

"Let's head back now. We've seen enough that we can report to Magorian about what's going on. If any of the humans need our help, I am sure they will find a way to let us know."

Ronan turned and headed into the forest, Idas trailing reluctantly behind him.

It was louder than usual in the Great Hall that evening, it being Saturday and this by itself sufficient to make the evening a little bit celebratory. The students at all tables were noisy and animated. An upper-year Ravenclaw leaped back as his goblet of pumpkin juice erupted in a fountain, his friends laughing at him. At the Hufflepuff table, some of the students were dueling by proxy, allowing charmed cutlery to fight on their behalf, while other students laid bets on the outcome. Slytherin was only a little bit more restrained, the table rather noisy in showing their enthusiasm for one of Zabini's stories.

While there were some boisterous students at the Gryffindor table, a number of the students in that house did not join in the revelry. This was partially because they were missing Ron, who usually made enough noise for half-a-dozen students. Another reason was that Harry and all of his friends were observing in watchful silence the Sytherin table and the front door. Draco had not arrived yet, and five minutes into the meal, they were beginning to wonder whether he would be arriving at all.

"He's skipped dinner twice this week already," said Hermione. "He can't keep doing that. He's got to come to dinner more than just now and again, or he's going to starve."

"Maybe he's figured out how to get extra food, after hours, from the house elves in the kitchen," countered Fred.

"I'll to speak to Dobby about that," responded Harry. But before he could say more, Draco entered the Great Hall. Harry and his Gryffindor friends watched as the lanky blond boy ambled to his customary seat at the Slytherin table. At the Ravenclaw table, Marietta, Cho and Luna also closely observed the boy's arrival. Of all Harry's friends, only Ernie McMillan had failed to notice Draco's arrival. As had become custom for him of late, he was deep in his thoughts and took no notice of his surroundings. Ernie's friends missed their rather pompous but usually cheerful friend, who had been replaced by a brooding, withdrawn and troubled teen. Given that his family had disappeared at the start of term and not been heard from since, no one could blame Ernie for the manner in which he bore his troubles.

At the Gryffindor table, Hermione removed a coin from one pocket, and withdrew her wand from inside her robes. With her hands under the table, she charmed the coin, so that the "A" visible on its edge suddenly changed to a "P". In the Gryffindor common room Ron had been maintaining a watchful eye on his own coin, hoping for just such a signal. The 'A' was the default setting, meaning that Draco was absent from the Great Hall. The moment Ron's coin displayed a 'P', he knew Draco was now present in the Great Hall and seated at his usual place. The Marauder's Map was already unrolled on the table and ready for Ron, and his eyes quickly went to the spot where he knew Draco had to be sitting. Very small dots accompanied by the names of the persons those dots represented bustled around the Slytherin table as if a game of musical chairs were underway: Friday evening fun of some kind. Ron waited for the commotion at the Slytherin table to die down and for everyone at that table to resume their seats. As Ron watched, the moving dots all froze, moved once more, and then were still, all in their appointed places: obviously a professor had called the table to order. This was the opportunity Ron had been waiting for, and his eyes immediately went to the place invariably occupied by Draco. There he found nothing. Nowhere was the little caption bearing the name of 'Draco Malfoy' that Ron was sure he had every right to expect. He looked and looked again, furious with himself, knowing he would look the fool if he reported that he had unable to see what must have right in front of his face. Ron looked at his charmed coin again: perhaps the writing on it had changed. But he had no difficulty seeing the 'P' on the edge of the coin, telling him unequivocally that Draco was, at least from Hermione's perspective, present, in plain view and seated at his usual spot at the Slytherin table.

Ron was forced to recognize a horrible truth: Draco could not be traced on the Marauder's Map. He was free to wander all over Hogwarts, and there was no means of tracking him. But after dinner, he had a hard time convincing some of his friends about the conclusion he had reached.

"I tell you, he wasn't there on the map!" said Ron for the umpteenth time, now red in the face with anger and very defensive. "I kept my eyes on the map and the coin and as soon as I saw Hermione's signal I looked straight to the Slytherin table where Draco was supposed to be. And I tell you, he wasn't there."

They were all in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. In addition to Harry and his Gryffindor friends were the other refugees from Dumbledore's Army: Cho Chang, Marietta, Edgecombe, Luna Lovegood and Ernie. Most of them were sure that Ron had messed up, Hermione, Ginny and Angelina being the most vocal. Then Ron's brothers joined in, and berated Ron for his idleness and stupidity, but Harry put a stop to it immediately.

"Leave off that," said Harry, his exasperated tone silencing the Weasley twins. "Ron says Draco couldn't be seen on the map, and that's that. What he reported is consistent with what everyone has been finding, that there is no trace of Draco anywhere on the map. So let's focus on a solution."

"I hope you don't mind me asking," said Cho, "But why didn't you tell us before about the Marauder's Map? Maybe with the rest of us helping, we might have found Draco earlier."

"I wish now that I had told you sooner," said Harry. "But I never imagined that what we were doing would turn out to be so difficult. This map is one of the most secret things in this school, and prior to this year, the only person I shared it with was Ron and Hermione. Then I shared it our friends in Gryffindor. And now I'm sharing it with the rest of my friends. We all need to take turns watching it. Who is up for the night shift?" he continued. "Any volunteers? We in Gryffindor are pretty exhausted."

"I'll watch it till midnight," volunteered Marietta. Harry ignored Hermione's furious look as he passed the map over to Marietta and explained to her how to change the map from a plain looking piece of parchment into a powerful magical tool, and then back again. Marietta nodded, rolled up the map with great care and placed it inside her robes.

"I'm not saying I'll do any better the rest of you," she said, "but I'll do my best."

"I'll take over at midnight," volunteered Cho. Luna piped in that she would keep wtach on the map from 4:00 A.M. until breakfast.

"Watching the map is important," said Imogen, "but like Harry said, we have to focus on a solution. We have to think of how it is that Draco is defeating the map. If we can come up with some ideas about how he's managing that, then maybe we can figure out how to find him. So does anyone have any idea how we could all see Draco in the Great Hall during tonight's dinner, and yet Ron couldn't see him on the map?"

No one spoke up. In the silence they could now hear the water dripping here and there from the damaged faucets in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. The students exchanged glances, baffled at what dark magic Draco could have employed to defeat a map that he had no right to know existed.

"There is one possibility," said Hermione. "It's rather obvious, actually, and I'm not sure this is what Draco is doing. But consider this. Remember how Imogen described for us that in an unaltered future, Draco's friends use polyjuice potion to look like first-year girls so they can stand guard for him outside the Room of Requirement?" The Gryffindors present all nodded, but Luna, Cho, Marietta and Ernie knew nothing of this.

"I'll tell you all about this another time," Imogen told them. "But please go on, Hermione."

"Maybe Draco's friends are using polyjuice, like Imogen said. But this time, they're using it to look like Draco. And so when we saw Draco in the Great Hall tonight -"

"He was really somewhere else! That's brilliant!" enthused Ron.

"I'm not saying that's the only possible solution," continued Hermione, "but it's the most obvious."