A Hop Skip And A Jump Away

Pack out

"You listed Molly and Bella... why? I understand Poppy with how often that witch has had to put me back together over the years in both timelines but Molly and Bella?" Harry asked Luna softly as the group prepared to descend upon the ministry. The plan was mostly to wing it (much to the disgust of Harry's husbands) but the first step regardless of anything else was to distract most of the ministry employees with a ruckus in the Atrium. Distracting people was something over half of the DA was rather good at judging by the various pranks most of them had played in one way or another over the years at Hogwarts.

"Bella will be joining us soon and Molly... Molly will have one last chance to choose you over Dumbledore. After that she will either be with us or will try to kill both you and the baby," Luna said sadly. "Mostly I added her because she was one of the people who could get you to eat the last time through."

"And Ginny? Ron? Arthur? Hermione?" Harry asked softly. Luna just gave him a sad smile before shooing him off in the direction of his husbands. He figured that the answer was either bad or depended on Molly's choice, neither possibility was comforting.

"Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever understand Luna or if I'll just give up trying to maintain my sanity," Harry muttered to his husbands. Everyone else was doing final checks on their gear and supplies or saying good bye to the members staying to protect Severus and Voldemort. No one wanted a repeat of the previous ambush.

The twins had begged for permission to prank the idiots who had attacked when Harry had slipped and told everyone about it. Luna had redirected the duo by pointing out the people who had ordered the attack would likely get hit when the distraction went off. She had also suggested putting the two redheads in charge of raiding the records room so that they would have the name of the idiots who gave the attack order and thus a target painted on their backs.

"I hate letting you go haring off without something protecting you. I've guarded you too long to be comfortable with this," Severus fretted. He was standing next to a much calmer, if still worried, Voldemort who's hands had drifted to hover protectively over the growing baby in his belly. "Your immortality doesn't count brat so don't try to argue with me about it and the others don't even have their NEWTs!"

"You are a much better duelist than I am, my lovely potions master. Our baby could cripple our Dark Lord here in a fight and it would kill me to lose either of you if only for a moment, not to mention that the baby wouldn't come back when Voldemort woke from death. Besides, you both know how I am, diving in head first with my Gryffindor impulsiveness. At least this time I will have people guarding my back and making sure I get out of the trouble I will be starting," Harry soothed with a gentle impish smile. "All we are going to do is act like children pulling pranks. This is not the first time I have had to direct students in a potentially dangerous action, not to mention that you were there as I made absolutely sure that they knew what they were leaping into this time. If the plan fails I will send them all back, rip through the wards, overpower a couple of different shield spells and pull them out by brute force."

"I still don't like it," Severus grumped, begrudgingly admitting in his mind that their brat had a point and the raw power to pull off the back up plan if it came down to it.

"Harry is a magical tank," George snickered with his twin.

Harry whipped around to stare at the redheads in shock. The apt phrase had been coined among the magical forces when Harry had gone head to head against a set of actual tanks and come out the winner. No one knew that his rage at the tanks tearing apart one of the camps filled with rescued children from both sides had kept him on his feet and kicked his magical healing into super Wolverine level overdrive. He had been throwing up bullets for two weeks after that on top of his magic assimilating a good chunk of them as bone coating just like Wolverine had. Severus and Poppy had decided that Harry had done it all subconsciously at the time and very carefully spent two weeks removing it. They had found afterwards that the metal had been infused with the Basilisk Venom and Phoenix Tears that lingered in his blood from the time in second year when he had been bitten. The goblin smiths were delighted to get the material and turn it into weapons.

"At our request we shared our full memories after restoration," Fred explained. "We are Gemini, one soul in two bodies. Sharing our memories like that re-stabilized our twin bond and allowed us to once more be whole."

"The two of you don't let our brat out of your sight. Is that perfectly clear?" Severus growled. They both nodded heartfelt agreement, earning a dry look from Harry. The spy relaxed marginally to the knowledge that his brat would have at least two veteran Lieutenants at his back to guard him if things went bad.

"We need to chart when everyone is getting their memories back and how far they stretch," Harry said with a sigh. Five minutes later the portkey took the whole group into the Atrium at the Ministry only for them to discover chaos.