"Great job Luna" Evan exclaimed. Then he looked at a red-faced Ron. "Ron, you haven't even caught up to me and I took out four of your friends, including your sister. How are you feeling about that." "You bloody bastard! You kept moving around! Of course I couldn't get you!" "Ron. If I was using a real knife, your three friends and sister would be lying in pools of their blood. What would you say to each of their parents? Sorry, I couldn't reach him in time to knock him out? Now, what if you had the means to defend your friends and sister without moving? Will that be enough to save them?" Evan asked.
"I think so" said Ron. "Ron, what would happen if you missed? What would happen if you hit my arm, or leg, but didn't quite knock me out? What if I was able to still take them out? What would you do then?" Evan continued. "Now, Ron, if you and nine others like you had to defend 100 people against 10 terrorists, would 40 dead civilians be acceptable to you. What would you do? I hope that now you can understand that we do not have the option of selectively knocking out 10 or 30 terrorists trying to kill tens if not hundreds of civilians, all within the span of seconds. We don't want to have to tell the loved ones of those innocent civilians who died 'Sorry, they were moving around. Sorry, we missed. We're sorry your son or daughter died because they were too many'. Let me pose another scenario for you.
You go to a boarding school. Let me assume you have 100 students per grade level and seven grade levels, that's 700 children. Let me assume you have one staff person per 50 students, that's 14 adult staff. Five terrorists penetrate into your school. They force everybody into the main dining hall, threatening they will blow themselves and all the children up if their demands are not met. What would you do? What would you expect the police do to protect you and all the other kids at that school? What if one of those police miss, and that terrorist blows themselves up killing tens of children? What if one or more of those kids are your friends, or family? What would you say then? Those are just a few of the things we train for. We don't train 'to kill'. We train to save lives."
Ron stood there, thinking about what Evan said. The others breathed a sigh of relief the demonstration was over.
Luna was staring at Evan with a curious expression. "I feel as if I know you, but don't know how or where from" she said. "It feels like you can do magic" she continued. Hermione jumped in, trying to divert everybody's attention, but Evan stopped her and said "Magic? How did you know? I just learned a magic trick last week!" He pulled out a deck of cards and shuffled them. After spreading them, he asked Luna to pick one of the cards. She did. Evan then asked her to sign her name, using a pen, on the card she pulled. She did.
Then Evan told her to place the card back into the deck anywhere she wanted while he turned his head away. Luna put the card in the middle of the deck and Evan squared the deck. Evan then told Ginny to blow on the deck of cards. She did. He then turned to Neville and told him to tap the deck with his forefinger three times. Neville did. Evan then turned to Hermione and told her to lift the top card and show everybody. It was the card Luna had signed her name on! "How did you do that?" they all asked. "Magic, of course." He responded, chuckling. Hermione secretly sighed in relief. "Aren't you just full of surprises today?" she exclaimed.
Hermione went into the kitchen to get some food and drinks to offer her guests. Winky had made a tray of sandwiches, leaving it on the kitchen table, near the photographs of Malfoy et al. Hermione surreptitiously put the photographs in a drawer for later, and brought the sandwiches out to the living room.
"So, Evan." Hermione began. "Today is the first day of freedom since you were inducted. How has it been so far? You've obviously got some sun in, judging by the dark tan." "Well, since my last letter, the only new thing is we had a week at the cliffs of Dover, learning how to ascend and descend cliffs. Then we had a week of what they call 'jumping out of a perfectly good plane mid-air'." He responded. The Purebloods from Hogwarts looked at Hermione for an explanation.
She solved their problem with her next question. "How high up were you jumping from?" "7,000 feet. You know, I wish that magic was real! If I had a flying broom - wouldn't it be cool to be able to shrink one and put it in your pocket, and then mounting it once you jump? I mean, with a parachute you are partially at the mercy of the winds and weather. If you had a broom you could have full control of your descent!" Evan responded excitedly. "7,000 feet. Up in the air? Magical brooms? You must be nuts!" Ron said. "They can only go..." Again he was interrupted with an elbow to the ribs. "Ooof! Stop that!" He said heatedly as he turned toward Ginny.
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