"There," she said, finishing the last "g" with a small flourish. They stepped back to view their handiwork. "Dumbledore's Army, Still Recruiting," was now stamped in bold letters across an entire wall of the entrance hall in shimmering gold paint.
"It feels so good to actually be doing something," said Ginny. "Sometimes I wonder why we even waited as long as we did."
Sometimes, Neville wondered, too.
Restarting the DA had been Luna's idea. The three of them, Ginny, Luna, and Neville, had been studying for Charms in the library when Luna had suddenly said, out of the blue, "When should the first DA meeting be?"
Ginny and Neville just looked at each other. Bringing back the DA had occurred to Neville on the train, but it didn't seem right, somehow, to be doing it without Harry. After all, Harry was the leader. Harry was the one in charge, and this year, Harry wasn't here. So he had pushed it to the edge of his mind and concentrated on his personal rebellion against the Carrows' teaching methods.
"We should restart," said Ginny, her eyes lighting up, "we could really make a difference. And we could teach Defense to the younger kids."
"Wait," Neville protested, "we don't have a leader. Harry's gone."
"We can do this without Harry," Ginny replied. "We don't need Harry for everything."
"But who would be leader?"
Luna looked up again from her book, fixing Neville with a stare that seemed to glow with newfound hope. "You're the leader, Neville. You and me and Ginny. We can do it."
They could do it, couldn't they? After all, now that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were gone, weren't they the most experienced members of the DA? Hadn't they learned loads of defensive spells? And someone needed to show the first years that Hogwarts wasn't usually this bad. Someone needed to let them know that the dreaded Dark Arts classes were only temporary. Someone needed to teach the students how to defend themselves.
So they restarted. Luna figured out how to make the coins transmit messages, and they sent out their first one less than a week after that day in the library. Not everyone came—but not everyone had been carrying their coins. Soon, word spread. After two meetings, every student who had been a member of the original DA was coming. After three meetings, some of the first and second years heard about it, and some of them started asking to come. So more coins were made, and the DA grew to once again reach the size it had been two years before, and then to surpass it. And it was still growing. Ginny, Luna, and Neville were still teaching, and a faint hint of hope was beginning to spread through the school. The Carrows were beginning to realize that the students weren't about to give up—not yet. Because, Neville reflected as he stared at the gold writing that meant so much, Dumbledore's Army was still recruiting.