The Fallout by EveryThursday (reposted)

Twenty

Day: 1439; Hour: 23

Seamus, Justin, Lavender, Lavender's boyfriend Harold, and herself. There had been two fresh faces, just barely seventeen, that Seamus had charmed into joining but who had backed out somewhere around the time Hermione and Seamus had trespassed into Lupin's new office. Hermione got the impression they hadn't known this wasn't exactly a legit mission from the Order, but more a personal one.

It took them until two in the morning, when everyone at Grimmauld had left the house or for bed, for them to get into Lupin's office. It had only taken a minute to find the sheets of parchment on his desk, stamped with the seal of Azkaban and signed by several different interrogators, that outlined the places housing Death Eaters. There were nearly two dozen places listed and just five of them, and it didn't take anyone intelligent to know that there had to be more than just twenty-one hideouts and residencies. Death Eaters had numbered in the hundreds, most of them wealthy and not keen on sharing much but a passion for power and murder. But even if Ron, or any of the missing, were not in a single one of them, the possibility wasn't going to stop them from looking anyway.

Hermione is a thorough person, and so they plan for three hours in her bedroom with enough locking and silencing charms to look suspicious if anyone tried to break them. They have a whole pouch of Portkeys to various safe houses, maps and ten pages of planning that they stare at her strangely when she uses a chess board to figure them out.

Everything is the very best that it can be for the situation, and there is a determined excitement in the room as they realize this. They have no idea what they will be facing, and there is not enough of them by even half, and so there is also fear that creeps along the knots of their spines but it is something they are used to. But it still makes them jump and Lavender let out a sound like an injured cat when the doorknob rattles.

They eye the bronze knob with trepidation, no one moving or even breathing, as if the silencing charms hadn't been put in place at all. There is a pause at the other side of the door, and then the rattle again, harder and almost angry.

"Who could that be? Everyone's in bed, silencing charms are up... They are up, right?" Lavender's whispering proves her doubt.

"Lupin?"

"Maybe we shouldn't answer it."

"We're definitely not answering it."

"What if something happened though? Or they need us?" Hermione asks this but makes no attempt to move, and there is silence again until something smacks into the door.

"Shit."

"Hide!" Lavender suddenly reverted back to an eight year-old caught by her parents as she jumped up and searched the room frantically. Hermione hadn't even seen her act like that when it was Death Eaters on the other side of the door.

"The stuff!" Justin yells, grabbing the pouch of Portkeys and flinging it into his suitcase, slamming the top down and sits on it for good measure.

Harold proved useless as he knocks over the chess pieces like the game would give them away, Lavender shoving the maps into the waistband of her pants and covering them with her shirt. Justin, for all his realization that they needed to hide the evidence, simply stands in the middle of the room with his hands in the air at his shoulders. Hermione shoves the plans, markers, and list into her pillowcase.

It is probably comical, the look of innocence they plaster onto their expressions when Harold opens the door. Hermione's breathing stops again when the door pulls back, and she recognizes the shoulder, the arm, the long fingers. She can just see half his face when Harold stops from opening the rest of the way. There's a red dash of coloring across his cheekbone and he's out of breath for some reason she can only guess at. He hasn't moved his eyes off Harold, and Hermione curses under her breath when the vein at his temple appears. There is only one positive event that causes that, and this certainly isn't that.