Faery Heroes

Chapter 29: The Grass isn't Always Greener

"Can we take these things off now?"

"Sorry, Harry. Just a little further."

The raven-haired teen sighed as he once again wished the blindfold wrapped around his head would spontaneously vanish itself; Luna was enjoying this far too much. It was finally Saturday, and that meant it was time to take on their first 'live' heist. All that was certain was that robbing the Greengrasses blind was going to be much, much different from picking through the empty houses of dead or imprisoned Death Eaters.

His stomach was fluttering in a way it hadn't since the morning before his first-ever Quidditch match.

Beside him, Hermione sighed. "Couldn't you have waited to put these on us until we were closer to the room you've been using?"

"Oh, poor, silly Mione." The tugging on their hands disappeared, indicating that Luna had stopped in her tracks. "Wherever would be the fun in that?"

"You've been dragging us since we left the Room! That is on the seventh floor; we're on, what, the third now?"

"First, actually. And we're here!" Luna quickly added at Hermione's growl. The hands wrapped around their own were suddenly gone, and a squeak signaled a door opening. "Now, walk forwards."

One, two, thr— and a sudden impact with something solid caused him to fall hard to the floor. The consequent giggling did not make him feel any better.

"No, Harry, that's a wall. Get up, take a big step to your left, and try again."

A second attempt had him inside the room, though that had not stopped Luna's laughter. "Okay, you two can take off the blindfolds."

He did so with no small amount of relief and blinked in surprise at the outfits clothing three manikins labeled with their names. These were not the robes he had been half-expecting. Instead, the Ravenclaw's creations looked very much like catsuits, leaving only the manikins' heads and hands uncovered by the dark-dyed...

"Leather?" he asked in surprise. "Not that I'm saying I won't enjoy watching you two girls move around in these, but I thought we had decided to wear outfits made from Acromantula silk for their magical resistance."

"We did, but I realized when I started designing them that silk is just a bad material for protective garb, no matter how resistant it is. The original plan would have dampened the effects of curses, certainly, but the first banished object to hit it would have torn it to shreds, and then we'd be screwed. Leather, on the other hand, is lightweight, provides decent protection from moderate physical blows, and can be replaced at a much lower cost than the silk lining it. It's also easy to charm for temperature regulation to keep us cool when we're inside and warm when we're outside breaking wards in the middle of winter. It was this or we take a break from our heists for a few months; I don't know about the two of you, but I'm not going to stand around in knee-deep snow and freeze my baps off."

He stepped closer to better examine the disguises. Pouched belts wrapped around their waists, and a quick check involving opening one of them and sticking his entire arm down it proved that they were charmed with space-extension like the sacks the trio had been using before now. Hermione had approached with him, but she was fingering the hood attached to her suit. "Preventing anyone from seeing what our hair looks like is a good idea, but how do we keep them from remembering our faces and body shapes? We don't look quite like adults just yet, and tipping the DMLE off that the Hooded Foxes are students would make all this a moot point."

"Excellent points," Luna replied, picking up a small bag from behind an overturned table. "If I may address the second first, I spent some of my downtime in Siberia tinkering around with the notice-me-not charm. While it would keep anyone from spotting us on the outset, I quickly realized that not only would it make it difficult to find each other, but casting it on ourselves and then making a big enough disturbance to attract people's attention would cause them to look hard enough that they would eventually see through it. However, if they can see us just fine, they'll be too busy with the thought that they're being robbed and their attempts to catch us to pay too much attention to our figures. When they try to describe us to the Ministry investigators, their minds will fill in the details with their preconceived notions, and who honestly expects three teenagers to be master thieves? Originally, I considered that we might wear cloaks, but those have a bad habit of getting in the way at the worst possible time. All that said, I'd much rather that we not put my theory to the test."