Prologue: Rescue

"Harry!", a voice could be heard amidst the burning tents.

Harry, still concealed by the cloak of invisibility, slowly regained his consciousness. He finally identified the voice that had been calling out to him, Ginny.

He propped himself up and looked around. The floor was full of scorch marks, cuts and craters and the air was full of smoke. Harry suspected he knew which group was responsible for the attack, even the Death Eaters' magic wouldn't make them impervious to damage.

"Pantheon.", he said with a voice full of venom while removing the cloak from himself, becoming visible once again.

"Oh, Harry, thank Merlin you're safe!", Ginny shouted while rushing towards him, stumbling and almost falling over due to the uneven floor.

"Hey Gin. Are the kids okay?", Harry replied, wrapping his arms around his beautiful wife to comfort her.

His mind was already running at top speed, trying to figure out how and why this had happened. The only answer was a traitor.

"Yes, they never came to the upper floors. I only heard about it when they were gone. I was scared for you!"

"It's alright now. I'm fine.", Harry reassured her. He needed to find a safe place to prevent this mess.

However, first he needed to make sure that the kids were doing fine, and compile a list on all the people that had gone missing.

Once all those things had been finished, Harry apparated to a bunker aboveground and, planning to send his past self a notice that there was a Pantheon traitor among the people, to conduct a mass-Legilimency and Veritaserum testing, he took out the Malfoy time-turner, the one that was capable of going decades into the past if need be.

However, as Harry spun it thinking of the time three months earlier, right after Harry had been approached by Chronos. However, something strange happened: as if the time-turner had hit an elastic wall, it started turning in the opposite direction, doing exactly as many revolutions.

Thinking that he had done it wrong, Harry tried again, but the same thing happened. He then remembered Chronos saying something about time being sealed off. Harry kept trying again and again, only to discover that the only point he could go back to was just half an hour earlier, the time he had spent on the ground unconscious.

With each failure, Harry grew angrier. He was clenching his fist tighter and tighter, his fingernails digging into his flesh, he didn't even notice when blood started dripping on the floor. 'Just how the hell can anyone manipulate time to that scale? How powerful do you need to be to do that?', he wondered while, unbeknownst to him, cracks had started to run through the building he was holed up in.

Little did Harry know that sealing off time had less to do with power and more to do with knowing the method and the amount of lives you were willing to sacrifice to achieve that effect.

As there was no way to just prevent the tragedy from ever happening, Harry apparated into the conference room.

"Oh, good, everyone is already here. Let's get started then.", Harry said, seeing that there was only a single empty seat left.

"What do you mean everyone's here, Hermione is still missing!", Ron said. It was the first time he had spoken during all the meetings he had attended so far.

Harry explained with a placating smile: "She's not missing, she's sleeping in the lab. I passed through there in the morning. I think she will need a good few more hours at the very least."

Ron, however, saw that smile as a hint to something else, especially with all the rumors going around – they had to start from something. He wasn't proud of it, but he had taken a few looks with eye-extenders, under the door and he had seen how Harry was all over her and she had given him smiles Ron hadn't received for years! No matter how important she said her work was, he had to get Hermione away from Harry, to save his family!

"Most, if not all of you already know what this meeting is about. This morning, there was an attack from what I suspect to be Pantheon personnel. The details aren't clear yet, but there must've been either a traitor or a spy among us. To avoid further incidents like this, and successfully liberate the people that were taken from us, I think it would be reasonable to conduct a thorough mind-search on each and every person here."

Voices of dissent immediately erupted from most people around the table, but Harry continued: "It has become painfully obvious that this place is no longer safe. Those that consent to the search will be moved to a new location to avoid any further personnel losses. Those that disagree will be left to fend for themselves. Everyone in favor, raise your wand."

Immediately, there were enough wands in air to start a mid-sized campfire, meaning it was accepted by the majority. There were still others, that hadn't even touched their wands, like Ron and Snape, for very different reasons.

"I will conduct the procedure personally to avoid things getting hidden behind a layer of Occlumency, or in some cases, to keep the sensitive secrets as they are."

Snape's and a few others' wands rose at that – they were all Unspeakables, a profession that was still going strong even despite the state the world was currently in.

"Now, to the most important topic of today. As soon as the Trace department has found our missing family members, we will rescue them. The research has progressed far enough to breach the Titans' wards, if the need arises."

Finally, some approving mumblings could be heard from the people around the table. Knowing the fate that awaited the captives, it was only natural.

---

In the end, even those who had initially wanted to avoid their privacy being invaded and their minds being laid bare had been convinced by their family members or friends that were still there. Everyone had moved to a new location, carved under a small island off Britain's coast. Even so, it had been covered with wards and protections, as well as two layers of Fidelius before most of the personnel was moved over.

Most of the people there didn't even realize that they were inside a cave – it had been covered with charms and illusions on the inside to the point that it felt as if they were in the countryside, not to mention the actual trees and lush gardens involved in the package – those in charge of building the new sanctuary had truly gone above and beyond.

A few days after the big moving effort, a team was put together, consisting of Harry, Hermione, Neville, Ginny and Ron as the leaders, fifty Hitwizards and twenty Aurors – that was all the manpower they could spare even after the location of the captives had been revealed.

At first, Hermione had tried contacting ICW for reinforcements, but there had been no reply at all, even the owls hadn't returned, and all the messages were on 'pending'.

Of course, there had been volunteers, but they had quickly been persuaded to practice for the next raid instead after their defenses were broken through by Harry's first son, proving them completely not up for the task.

Half an hour later, the group was standing outside a barrier covering a village of, well… cubes. It wasn't just any cubes, however, they were houses without windows and a single door, apparently held together by permanent sticking charms, wooden boards and blind faith.

Under the cover of night, Neville took out a planter pot with what looked like a massive Venus Flytrap in it and placed it next to the barrier. The plant immediately craned its neck and opened its jaws before latching on to the slightly glowing barrier. After he had placed ten more such plants, the barrier started visibly dimming, until, with a shattering sound, it broke into fragments and dissipated.

Once the planters had been recollected, the group quickly advanced.

There was one thing that made Harry and the others rather uneasy, however – they had yet to meet a single guard. It couldn't be that they were so confident in the wards, after all, the traitors or infiltrators among them were well aware that the Resistance was researching into ways to disable the barriers.

After quietly opening one of the doors, their questions were answered – each person was wearing a necklace that Hermione quickly identified as explosive devices that would blow off the wearer's head if tampered with or taken too far from or too close to a linked device.

"We should look for something with runes on it around the center of this area. It shouldn't be too hard to find."

The Aurors quickly cast a few spells, causing the former outline of the barrier to re-appear and with a few more spells, a green ball of light appeared at the location that was at the exact center. It illuminated a large stone tablet that was covered with runic markings.

Harry looked at Hermione and asked: "Any chance this thing doesn't have tracking spells cast on it and a tracking mechanism implemented with runes?"

Instead of answering, Hermione examined the tablet from a distance, as did Luna with a few different lenses. "None.", they both said.

"Shiny!", Luna said, her eyes shining as brightly as whatever her spectacles revealed to her.

"It has a tracking mechanism, an anti-tampering system and a life-detecting system. You get too close and boom. Everyone with a collar dies.", Hermione said, making an exploding gesture near her neck. "The good news is, the collars can be deactivated by casting a spell on the tablet, but I don't know which one yet. Fortunately, the runes are out in the open so I should be able to figure it out in a bit."

"Everyone, keep your eyes open and wands on the ready!", Harry said while Hermione was already pulling out a fresh piece of parchment, candle, quill and inkwell.

With a quick enchantment, all the items were made to float in the air. Then she took out a Runecarving knife and a small stone with blue glowing specks on it. She carved a portion of the runes from the tablet onto the small stone and a few dozen that couldn't be found on the tablet at all.

Then she started furiously scribbling onto the parchment, occasionally casting a spell onto the blue-specked Wardstone.

Suddenly, quiet popping sounds could be heard close to them and the moon that had just come out of the clouds revealed that there was a group of half a dozen men in black cloaks that nearly melded into one with the night. A moment later, the men had become invisible, however, Neville had already thrown a Quaffle-sized object into their midst. Vines quickly sprouted out of it and coiled around invisible objects, then thorns came out of the vines and blood could be seen flowing seemingly out of nowhere.

"Did you get them?", Ron asked.

"Specialis Revelio!", the Hitwizards shouted out. While the unwelcome guests remained invisible, five sets of enchantments were made visible in the approximate shape of cloaks, meaning that there were five men stuck in the vines. Spells were already being shot into the vines by the men, but it was too late for them – as soon as they had been revealed, they were bombarded with multiple single-target killing spells and exploded into body parts and gore.

Meanwhile, both the Aurors and Harry started spamming 'Revelio' around the enemies' corpses, hoping to find the last one.

Seeing that it didn't have any effect, Harry shouted: "Everyone, stay still!" His wand begun releasing a special kind of fog that would allow him to sense anything living and nonliving within it, especially if it moved.

Within seconds, the area was filled with the fog and a barrage of spells was heading towards Harry, but the Auror closest to him cast a shielding charm and deflected the attacks while everyone else concentrated their spells to the attack's origin.

Fully aware that apparating in the middle of combat was nearly impossible without the risk of severely splinching yourself, Harry kept his senses open and quickly found the assailant that had somehow dodged the all-out attack of sixty people.

Harry cast three spells, two bombardments and one green sparks, followed by a colorless killing curse (Hermione's modification).

Mere seconds later, the last assailant had been taken care of.

At that moment, the Wardstone Hermione had been testing spells on started glowing with a green light and she quickly pointed her wand at the stone tablet in the middle of the clearing before chanting: "Open Sesame!"

A portion of the runes on the tablet glowed green as well and on the woman that they had first discovered, the runes on the collar dimmed and with a click, it opened.

Ginny used a voice amplification charm and shouted: "Wake up everyone! Your collars have been turned off! Apparate everyone to the previous Resistance base and we'll take you from there!"

As Ginny was instructing the people, Harry and Hermione were already setting up wards of their own, including one that forbade apparating into the protected territory, but not out of it.

Meanwhile, Neville cast a sunlight charm onto the vines on the ground and they quickly retreated back into a spherical container, only leaving some mangled corpses behind. He then picked the sphere up and put it into one of his extended pockets while saying: "I'd like to see the faces of those that said Herbologists are weak in a fight!"

Sounds of people Disapparating slowly came to an end, only leaving the assault group remaining. A few moments later, however, figures cloaked with black fog apparated outside the barrier, accompanied by people in black cloaks that quickly turned invisible.

"Let's get out of here!", Harry shouted.

Their group disapparated as one, the Hitwizards and most of the Aurors returned to the island base's 'reception' area while Harry and company apparated into the Ministry's Atrium.

In there, the rescued people stood absolutely still, only their eyes moving around.

Harry spoke up: "I'm really sorry about that. It is my understanding that there was a traitor among us, and since a new and safer haven has been created, I'd like to keep it traitor-free. I'll be making an in-depth scan of your minds.

Please do not resist, as resistance could lead to unfortunate side-effects. It is for the safety of everyone and those that have moved to the new living area have already gone through a similar procedure. I assure you, any dirty secrets you have, they'll stay with me."

Like that, without waiting for any signs of approval or disapproval (not that the people could give them other than moving their eyes up and down or left and right), Harry started going through the people one by one.

Occasionally, he found some rather… juicy details about the people's private life, but just as he had promised, he locked any such 'unimportant' details away in the deepest recesses of his mind, never to see the light of day again.

Slowly, all the three thousand-odd people were processed and with a tap of Harry's wand, the people's foreheads were marked with various different runes.

Each time a rune was placed on a person's forehead, they were sidealong-disapparated. At last, Harry disapparated as well, leaving the empty ruins of the Atrium behind.

Harry apparated into a chamber where a duo of still paralyzed people were standing. They were shirtless and Hermione was carving runes into their flesh, connecting them through cuts in their skin.

"You know, a year ago, you would've gone to Azkaban for that.", Harry said.

"Oh, please. I'm the Minister of Magic and I have the head of the DMLE as well as the Head Auror on my side. Who could possibly try and touch me?", she replied.

Harry smirked and took out the Elder wand and two crystal balls. Then he started casting a spell that looked very familiar, one that had nearly gotten him killed before.

However, instead of releasing the spell, he slowly pushed the wand forward until the fully-formed spell was inside the crystal ball. Hermione had apparently finished maiming her helpless victims, as she started working on the crystal ball instead.

After a while, she said: "Alright, now slowly put it in."

Harry approached his target and inserted it into an area on the man's chest where the carved runes left an empty circular area. Hermione connected the crystal ball to the runes with strands of magic until the ball disappeared into the man's chest completely, even the magic fluctuations produced by the spell stored in it disappeared.

The other captive received the same treatment before Harry cast multiple mental spells on them and finally spoke: "After a week has passed, go to the largest gathering of your highest-ranked superiors that you can attend to without arousing suspicions and say these exact words: 'The Resistance sends their regards' make sure the two of you are in different facilities by that time."

Harry set the time to a week because he figured it was around that much time before they managed to track down where the children from Hogwarts had been taken to. He had never expected a multi-layered defense system involving three Fidelius charms could be breached at all, unless, of course, similar to their own case, there was an infiltrator involved. In fact, it seemed that the Pantheon had managed to do an almost clean sweep of every pocket of the Resistance, leaving only some core personnel that would be kept docile through hostages.

Once the two Pantheon's goons were redressed and instructed not to show their bare skin to anyone, Harry and Hermione returned to the island. The people that had been sent there had already been divided into groups based on the rune on their forehead and were receiving instructions – Harry had divided them based on their talents and life experience so far, to get the most efficient teams for every civilian purpose.