"I can't shake the feeling that that was a tactical error. We shouldn't have provoked him. He's not stable, old man, you had to see that."

"And if he cracks before the elections so much the better. It will reflect horribly on Shackelbolt and rid us of Potter all in one fell swoop. They're getting desperate, Blaise, that's why they tried that stunt today. They needed leverage against us, and getting you into the Ministry where they could do what they liked was a ploy to imtimidate and control us." Draco looked thoughtfully into a snifter of brandy, swirling it as he thought. "If they're willing to go this far they're more sure of their own defeat than we are. That's a good sign."

"I can't put Neville through that, Draco. He means too much to me. We've barely been able to Floo to Hogwarts, now it doesn't even feel safe."

"Blaise, I'm all right, truly." Neville squeezed his lovers shoulder comfortingly. "It's strange, but ever since we started this it's been getting easier. It's like doing something is helping me through it."

"Merlin save me from Griffyndor bravery," Blaise groaned. "Nev, please don't go all 'let's save the world' on me now, I don't think my heart can take the strain."

"But mine can and I can do it for both of us. I was scared today, Blaise, I won't say I wasn't, but it wasn't because it was outside and then open spaces and crowds, and everything else that it's been, it's because I might have been separated from you. Next to that, everything else is just window dressing."

"You should take a holiday. Leave the club with the day manager; go to France. We have a villa there under the Fidelius. It's lovely and you'd be safe. You can stay as long as you need."

"I don't want to take the cowards way out and run when I could be helping," Neville was adamant. Hermione took up the argument with a shake of her head.

"Neville, please. Now that they know they can make us respond they've painted a target on your backs, and they'll be planning how to best use you to get to us. This was sloppy and spur of the moment. The next try won't be. It's better all around if you go. We won't have to worry, you'll be safe, and we'll have taken yet another weapon away from them. No one is questioning your loyalty, you've been an invaluable help already, but the elections are close and we'd like to make it without more bloodshed. Hasn't there been enough war?" HE looked like he was about to argue again when Blaise put a pleading hand on his arm, and the look on his lovers face made him visibly deflate.

"All right, we'll go," he said quietly. "We can leave straight from here; we've been carrying emergency packs for a month now just in case something happened and we had to get out fast. We don't want to cause more hurt than help, 'Mione, but it's damned frustrating fighting a war with words and opinions insteads of wands."

"I know, but it's the right thing to do," she said softly. "We'll keep you updated, just be by your Floo every now and again." Draco leaned over and whispered the location of the villa to each of them and they were gone through the Floo in less than five minutes.

"You don't believe for one moment that it's going to just settle after the election." Draco looked up and shook his head.

"There isn't going to be an election, love, there never was, at least not this way, Shackelbolt can't risk that and he knows it. He'll be trumping up a reason to declare martial law soon, within a few weeks at most, and then it will start. NO, all this has been is a dress rehersal to see who the people will want once the fighting calms down again, and who we can trust to make it work when it does. Now all we have to do is make sure they all survive till the end of it."

"It's too late for Harry." There was such sorrow in her voice that he kept the words that he wanted to say behind his teeth and simply a moment later when she put her hands in her face and cried for the childhood friendship that was gone forever, and the friend who had turned into the thing he was fighting so hard against, he had the sense to just hold her.