Operation: Enduring Freedom

Operation: Enduring Freedom

AN: Hopefully you know what Operation enduring Freedom is, and if you don’t, I probably shouldn’t tell you about it.  I spend allot of time on accents, to show you how much everyone has to be disguised.  If anyone is having trouble following this story, it might be because the point of view jumps around.  It is first person point of view from Susanne, and Third person from everyone else.  Good luck following.

I moved closer, past the people in front of me.  Most of them were too stunned to move, and others were unable to move, suddenly, next to me, I heard the familiar sound “Tcha Tcha Tcha,” I moved sideways, away from the sound counting, the ‘Tcha’ sound always went twenty-seven times before it exploded, but it went faster if it felt fast movement.  When the bomb reached twenty four, I turned and ran, the bomb registered the movement, and the sound stopped, I ran faster than I had ever run before, knowing that this was stupid, that I could unknowingly set off new bombs and kill people, but I was scared out of my mind, and I was beginning to give up hope.  I looked back over my shoulder and saw the bomb explode, leaving an evil slime green residue over all the grass.  it was horible, more casualties every day, and everything was turning that horrible shade of green in front of my eyes, I was beginning to wonder why I ever signed up for this, and why they had decided that this was the war where they would finally use woman.

“Susanne!” yelled Harry, as she kept running, even though she was past the bomb and hadn’t been hurt.  He grabbed her around the waist to stop her from continuing.  “Hermione is twenty feet from us, with a bomb that hasn’t started ticking.  We don’t know if it is a dud, or if it is a new kind of motion sensor.  We are going to calmly walk away in the other direction, and you are going to close your eyes,” he said it is that tone of voice that Susanne had always found impossible to disobey, even thought she was a higher rank than him.  Of course, he was one of the best fighters, and she could tell by the look in his eyes that he had been through more things than she could have dreamed of, even before he joined the military.

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Hermione looked up, relieved, Harry had convinced Susanne to walk away, she had been running crazily, like she didn’t know why she was doing it.  Hermione knew though, it was because she was under imperious.  Looking at the round bomb that reminded Hermione of a water balloon, she took out her wand as it began the familiar ticking sound.  Muttering a few choice words, the bomb stopped ticking and popped, not exploding, just popped, and left a patch of slime green grass where it had been sitting.  Hermione smiled, there would be allot less dead people if only everyone was able to disable bombs like she did.

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I at down, in the chair inside my tent.  I couldn’t figure out what had come over me!  I was the comander of this troop, and one of the last people alive with any rank.  She had undergone field promotion after field promotion towards the beginning, and lately, even though people had become much more wary, with the last death, she had become commander.  Her troops were losing hope too, and her last hope had been that she would get away from that bomb.  Now that she got away from that, she just prayed that Hermione hadn’t found a new type of bomb.

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“Gosh I’m tired,” said Hermione, dragging herself into camp.  Everyone was sitting outside, trying to eat, but it wasn’t working.  Here and there people were seen crying and others comforting.  taking a quick count, Hermione noticed sixteen people gone, each one of them was missed terribly too.  Hermione knew that everyone was giving up hope.  It wasn’t like at the beginning of the war, when only three of their people had died, now new people died every day.  That was one reason why Hermione had joined but there were other reasons too.

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I rolled out of bed, the sun was about to rise, but the nightmares were too much, I couldn’t sleep any longer. 

“What’s the matter?” asked Ginny, who shared a tent with me.  The New Englander had always found some way to cheer me up, and the Boston accent conflicted strongly with my New York accent.

“Do you know what today is?” I asked emotionally.

“September eleventh, 2004,” the twenty-three year old said slowly.

“I remember when it all began, the terror I felt then.  I was close to there you know,” I said, opening up to Ginny like I hadn’t opened up since my brother died.  Telling the story that had haunted me now for three years, “I was six blocks away.  I heard the plane coming, and knew that it wasn’t supposed to be down that low.  I just stopped where I was, and looked up at it, and I saw it crash into the building, and I just stood there, too shocked to do anything, I heard the screams of panic of the people, and all around me people were stampeding away from the buildings.  Then, I saw the other plane crash, and at that moment, I felt a pulling at my heart, and I ran towards the buildings as fast as I could,” I looked at Ginny with my haunted eyes, staring up at her.

“And,” prodded Ginny, “What happened next?”

Compulsively I continued, “My brother worked there you know, on the twenty seventh floor.  I remembered when the second plane crashed, and I ran to try and help him.  I think I knew it was too late, because I didn’t run nearly as fast as I could have, or maybe I knew what was going to happen, since when I was just blocks away, the buildings collapsed.  I screamed, I knew that if my brother wasn’t out, there was no hope for hi, and as the cloud came closer, I did the most cowardly thing possible, I turned around, and ran, much faster than I had run towards the towers.  But then, after they had collapsed, I made myself go back, to where the firemen were.  I was in uniform, so I was allowed closer, and there, one of the worst sites of my life met my eyes.  Coming out of the dust, was a woman, supporting a man, one of his legs missing, barely alive.  I screamed out his name, Adam, and he looked up at me, except, he couldn’t look, because his eyes were gone.  He stretched out one arm towards me, and the woman led him towards me.  Then he said to me ‘When you find out who did it, get them for me.’  It was his last request, and I sort of think that it is the only reason why I am still alive.  It was so easy at first, but now, with the new weapons, and new alliances, getting Asama Bin Ladin has grown so Difficult.  You know, I thought once that Bin Ladin was the most evil man in the world to, but the one that joined in and brought all of the bombs two years ago, he is worse.  I don’t remember his name, I’m not sure if anyone knows it, but I saw him yesterday.  He was watching the bombs explode, and on either side of him were two men, but they were wearing hoods so I couldn’t see them.  This man though, he looked almost snake-like, it appeared that he had no nose, and his eyes were just slits, but they were red.”

Ginny nodded, dismissing the fact that the thoughts were jumping around, and nudged her to continue, “The woman that helped my brother out of the building.  She’s here you know.  My brother saved her life.  She got stuck under a beam on one of the higher floors after the first plane hit.  He was up there too, and even though he was burned pretty badly, he helped her out, and they went together down.  when the second  plane hit, he jumped in the way of her and the flames, and that is how he lost his eyes.  then, when they were on the third floor, the building started to collapse, and he jumped between her and a falling wall, keeping her from dieing a third time.  That was when he lost his leg.  She helped him out of the wreckage, and outside.  He died in our arms.  he loved her you know.  They had been dating, and he had been up on that floor because he knew it was her break, and he hadn’t started work yet.  When he made the request, I thought it was only for me, but she thought it was for her too.  When they started allowing women to fight, I signed up right away, and she enrolled too.  the two of us, have been here since the beginning.  You have too, but we are the only two in this command that have a personal linkage to the beginning of this whole war.  Now though, almost every American has a personal tragedy to go along with this war.  If only there was some way to disable the bombs.”

“Maybe you should go talk to the other woman that you spoke of.  She probably needs as much comfort as you do, remember, your brother was her boyfriend, and for both of you, he’s been gone for three years.  Go, be with her” said Ginny kindly pushing her out of the tent.

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“Harry, you know it has been three years,” said Ginny, walking into the tent that not many people knew of.  For once the tent was semi-crowded, since inside were Hermione, Harry, Ron, Cho, Seamus, Lavender, Fred, George, and Neville.

“Three years what?” asked Harry, slightly confused.  He couldn’t think of anything that happened three years ago.

“Today is September eleventh.  Three years ago, Two planes crashed into the Twin towers, and one plane crashed into the pentagon.  It started this whole war.  Two years ago, You-know-who joined Asama Bin Ladin, and we joined the American Military shortly after.  Harry, I think Susanne needs to now why the fight has been so much harder,” said Ginny, gaining some nods around the room.

“I think so too, yesterday she was under the imperious, to cause a bomb to blow up in front of Hermione.  I was nearby, it would have killed all three of us,” said Harry.

“But when should we tell her?” asked Fred, one of the formerly Jolly twins.  They were now very distinguishable.  George had joined a year before Fred, it was the first time that the twins had disagreed, but then, a year after everyone else in the tent, Fred joined.  His face wasn’t as hard, he hadn’t seen as many evils.  You could still see a reaction from him when he saw someone get hit.  His eyes weren’t blank yet, and he was one of the people who still had hope.

“Today, maybe at lunch,” said Hermione, who as always a perfectionist, had worked her way up until she was second in command.

Ginny looked around the room once more, and noticed nods of agreement, but then she saw her sister-in-law’s tears. 

“Cho, what is the matter?” she questioned, as George hugged her.

“Its just that, someone died today,” began Cho Weasley.

“Who?’ said Ginny, looking around the room, but too many people were gone for Ginny to figure out the one person.

“Dean,” said Seamus hollowly.

“Oh no, where’s Parvati?” asked Ginny shocked by the news.  Dean had been one of the most careful people she knew, and he had never even been injured. 

“She is with Angelina,” said Fred.  It wasn’t supposed to happen, to have relationships between soldiers, but it happened anyway, and all of the people were paired off with someone, or had been paired off at some time, Parvati had been with Dean for over a year now. 

“Is that why you are here Neville?” Ginny asked the Military Psychiatrist.  He was the best, and Ginny knew that he wouldn’t have been sent here normally, that he probably had requested to come here, since he knew them all, as he nodded his head, Ginny frowned and left the tent.

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“Ginny, are you OK?” asked Harry, with emotion.

Ginny stopped and turned around.  Looking into those deep emerald eyes she felt weak.  She always did, he was able to stand so much, and it seemed like he was always coming after her, ever since her second year...  Ginny jerked her thoughts back to where they should be, and looked at Harry and nodded.

“It’s just that.... I don’t know, I was talking to Susanne this morning, she had a bad nightmare and this is all just so.... We can’t even act normally here Harry!  This isn’t what I signed up to do!  It has been so long since I have seen mum and dad.  Mum doesn’t know that George and Cho are Married, or Ron and Mione!” as Ginny ranted, her American accent faded, and her British accent became more and more pronounced, “Mum wouldn’t recognize me!  I’ve changed so much since I graduated from second school you know, plus, I’ve hardened.  I never thought that I could look at something like what happened yesterday without breaking down into sobs, but yesterday?  I just looked, and tallied the numbers.  Tallies!  I acted like they were just tallies, not people.  I don’t show emotion until one of those tallies became someone that I knew.  But then, I start to think, I’ve always been sort of hard, this just made me harder!  The Chamber hardened me too, but not this much.  Mum won’t be able to recognize me!  The twins aren’t identical any more, and Ron, Ron’s just different.  My family, Harry, My life, everything that makes me, me has changed Harry, and I don’t know if I can deal with it any more.

“You can Gin, you are strong, and you aren’t completely hard yet.  Its going to be over soon.  Then we can go back, and visit the Burrow and finally see our mum again,” said Harry slipping back into his own British accent as he held the sobbing Ginny, “Please, Ginny, its going to be over soon.  We are going to tell Susanne about us all, and then, we can get back to the ministry and explain, and get more of us to help the fight.  And then, when we have brought more hope, more muggles will enlist, and then we will win.”

“What about You-know-who,” said Ginny between sobs.

“We’ll take care of him,” Harry reassured.

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Everyone looked at the food, many of them remembering the food that they used to eat, like Mom’s home cooking, or McDonalds.  The rations were beyond belief most of the time, just canned food, although the Spam wouldn’t be bad if they didn’t have to eat it all of the time.  At Ginny’s table she looked around.  It was all of her school-day friends, so making sure that no one was watching, Ginny stuck the tip of her wand out from her sleeve, where she kept it hidden.  “Delicioso,” she said, waving her hand, as though she were praising the food.  It was a charm that she had made up after half a year there, it was a necessary thing, she thought that everyone else's taste buds must be dead.   She had never shared the char with anyone, although, she was thrown suspicious glances sometimes.  Once a week she sacrificed her taste buds though, and did not charm her food.  ‘Some day,’ she thought , ’I will show someone the charm.’

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I sat down next to Rose, my brothers former girlfriend, and began to eat.  I had always thought that Rose was an inappropriate name for her, she had black hair, and black eyes, and dark toned skin.  to her, a ‘Rose’ looked more like Ginny, with her flaming red hair. 

“Are you OK,” asked Rose, eyeing Susanne’s red eyes.

“I’ll be fine, its just, memories,” I said.

“I understand,” Rose said, lowering her own red eyes.

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“Who should go?” asked Fred, as they sat at the table.

“Ginny is good friends with her,” said Lavender.

“Harry is pretty important to the explanation,” said Cho.

“Hermione is second in command,” said George.

“Might as well send all three, and add Ron too, to make it even,” said Neville, with false cheerfulness.   Everyone was nervous, hoping the ending of this venture wouldn’t be a brainwashing. 

“Alright,” said Harry, “We’ll all go.”

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I looked up at the four approaching me, they all looked so serious, although, its hard not to in the middle of a war.

“Susanne,  could we speak to you alone?” asked Ginny, carefully speaking with her Boston Accent.  She wished fervently that Harry, who was so good at his southern drawl that there was no trace of British-ness, had been the first spokesperson.  It was so hard for her to get her accent right.

“Sure,” I said, looking at Rose, who nodded.  Walking out of the mess tent to an area where no one was around, I turned to them, saying, “What’s the matter, one of you pregnant?”

“No, if one of us were we’d be able to take care of it.  No, this is something important, and its been part of us our whole life, and this whole war may be centred around that,” said Hermione with her careful      non-accent-ish Californian accent.

“OK, that sounds strange,” I said, unsure what to think.

“Well, we are strange,” said Ron, with his North-Midwestern accent. 

“Really, I never noticed Ron Weasley, Hermione Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Harry Patrickson were strange.  Gosh, I have so many Weasley’s here, that it is hard to keep track of them.  How many are there now, seven, eight?”

“There’s six,” drawled Harry, hating the fact that he had to talk like Draco Malfoy.  The thought of the boy made Harry frown though.  He had switched over when the whole war started in England, and had died eight weeks ago, “Lets get down to business.”

“What?” I said, extremely interested, since they all seemed worried about beginning.

“Well, first of all, would you believe that we are the whole reason that there is so much action around this company, no matter where we go,” began Ron, slowly letting go of his fake accent.

“Who is ’we’, you four?” I asked, skeptical.

“No, everyone who sits at our table to eat, and everyone who used to sit there,” said Hermione, letting her fake accent drop too.

“You mean, Fred, George, Draco, Pervati, Dean?” I said, amazed at the amount of he people that they meant.

“Neville too,” said Ginny.

“But why?” I asked.

“Well, the man who you saw yesterday, the one you were telling me about this morning?  Well he hates us.  But he hates Harry most of all,” said Ginny.

“But, why does he hate you, how long has he hated you?” I questioned getting more and more confused.

“Well, he has hated me for twenty three years, but why is harder to explain,” began Harry.

“But, you re only twenty-four, that means he has hated you almost all of your life!” I said incredulously.

“There is something you should know before Harry starts the story that would probably lead to complications if you didn’t know it when he begins,” said Ron, “You see, I am a Wizard.  So is Harry, and all of the men from our table.  Ginny is a witch, and so are all of the women.”

“No,” Susanne said shocked, “Prove it!”

“Wait just a moment,” said Ginny with a smile.  She rushed off into the mess tent, and came back out with a tray of food.  Looking at everyone’s raised eyebrows, she laughed.  “Now, you all hate this food, correct?” said Ginny, completely abandoning all pretences of a fake accent.

“Of course!” exclaimed Ron, horrified.

“Well, all of you remember Mum’s cooking, except you Susanne, right?” Ginny asked     

“Ginny, Mum is the best cook in the world!” exclaimed Hermione.

“Everyone take a bite of this food,” said Ginny, holding out four forks.  Everyone took bites, making faces as they did, since Ginny had made them expect good food.

“It tastes even worse than usual,” said Harry, also dropping his drawl.

“What is wrong with your voice?” Susanne said.

“Well, you see, we’ll explain that later,” said Hermione.

“All of you have accents like Ginny’s?”

“Yes, we are all from the same place.  Didn’t you ever think it was odd that Ginny and Ron didn’t have the same accent?”

“Well, really, I didn’t.  Fred and George had the same accent, and I just figured that their parents were divorced, and lived in different places with different children.  It would explain why they actually got sent to the same base,” Susanne said.

“No, our parents aren’t divorced.  They haven’t seen us for two years though” said Ginny, “But back to the point, the food was disgusting, correct?”  As everyone nodded, Ginny slipped her wand out from the sleeve of her uniform.  “Delicioso,”  she said once more, pointing at the food.  Eagerly, before she even said anything else, Hermione took another bite of the food.

“Oh, it tastes like Mum’s fried Chicken!” exclaimed Hermione, and everyone else dug in. 

As the tray was polished off, Susanne said, “Ok, that is pretty outstanding proof.  What about you others.  Do witches really fly on brooms?”

“Oh, well, Harry’s best at that, where is your Firebolt?” said Ron.

“Firebolt?” questioned Susanne.

“Only the best broom ever made!  I have it here, in my trunk, but I can’t fly it, too many muggles” Harry said, smiling.

“Muggles?” asked Susanne.

“Maybe we should start from the beginning, and that will explain most of it.  Harry’s life story pretty much tells it all,” said Ron.

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