The Seventh Year

by sliz225

The world's longest drabble about the changes the Carrows have made to Hogwarts in the seventh book, and how Ginny, Neville, and Luna react.

The Carrows had definitely changed Hogwarts.

There were the obvious changes. Muggle-borns were on the run, and pure-bloods were given preference to half-bloods within Hogwarts itself. But there were other, subtler, changes. The Carrows had re-instituted the Inquisitorial Squad. Of course, it was no longer called the Inquisitorial Squad—now it was the "Pureblood Squad," a group of "ministry-loyal" students, who "honored their blood status." In other words, it was the same group of Slytherin Death Eater children, wannabes, and cronies that had made up the Inquisitorial Squad. They were given even more license than the Inquisitorial Squad, though. They could hand out detentions like candy, jinx people for the fun of it and suffer no punishment, skip class due to "Squad duties," and were even excused from end of the year exams because "their Pureblood Squad duties would hurt their studying time." As for house points, the Gryffindors had stopped counting once they reached the negative hundreds. Oddly, it just didn't matter anymore.

There were a lot of things which didn't seem as important as they once had. Quidditch, for instance—the new team captains, Ginny, Michael Corner, and Susan Bones, met to discuss it. They knew that the day after a match, the Squad would mercilessly attack any member of a team who beat the Slytherins, and thanks to the new rules, they would get away with it. In fact, if they fought back, Quidditch players would probably end up in detention, where the Carrows could inflict a far worse punishment than anything the Squad could come up with. In the end, not even the most die-hard Quidditch fans among them could find a reason to risk torture for the sake of a game. They spent most of their matches huddled in the corner of the pitch, blocking the curses that the Slytherins sent raining down on them from the stands, and waiting for Seeker Harper of the Slytherins to find the Snitch and end the ordeal. It wouldn't have felt right to play Quidditch with half the team on the run, anyway, Ginny confided in the her teammates, who completely agreed. Guessing that the Slytherins in the stands would be ruthlessly attacking any Quidditch team they played against, she had chosen her team at tryouts based on ability to defend themselves against the Slytherin's curses rather than flying ability. After blocking three Cruciatus Curses, four Stunners, one Reductor Curse, and many other spells for which she had no name over the course of a single match against Slytherin, she felt her suspicions were well founded.

Not all of the changes were bad. Because their numbers were so reduced by the lack of Muggle-borns, it was announced that Hogwarts would begin doubling up years. First years would take classes with second years, thirds years with fourth years, and sixth years with seventh years. Fifth years would continue to take classes alone, because of the unique, O.W.L-oriented nature of their curriculum. To the older children, this meant that Neville, Ginny, and sometimes Luna had classes together, which was nice for the three friends. It also allowed Neville to cast non-verbal Silencing Charms on Ginny when she opened her mouth to snap at the Carrows, made it possible for Luna to pull Neville back into his seat when he leapt up to stop the Squad from Cruciating a younger student, permitted Ginny to whisper soothing words of caution when Luna looked ready to challenge Snape to a duel. Looking back on that terrible year, Neville, Ginny, and Luna rather felt that if they had not been present to sooth each other's tempers, they would have been tortured into insanity before Christmas.

Restarting the D.A. helped vent a lot of the frustration they felt. They barricaded the Carrows in their quarters, scrawled graffiti on the walls of the castle, slipped Skiving Snackboxes into the Carrow's meals, snuck into the Dark Arts or Muggle Studies classroom and trashed the place beyond magical repair after casting their best Muffliatos, and much more. It wasn't all easy. They found out the hard way that the Carrows did not allow students out of their classroom to got the Hospital Wing, not even if they swallowed their most spectacular Skiving Snackboxes. The afflicted students couldn't swallow the counter to their Snackbox with the Carrows watching, so they ended up vomiting/bleeding/feverish for the entire lesson. The Carrows expected them to practice the Dark spells they taught in Dark Arts on one another, and the three ringleaders of the D.A. dedicated an entire meeting to faking the effects of the Cruciatus Curse. To avoid constant detentions and torture, D.A. members made a pact to allow one another to curse each other. They still steadfastly refused to curse younger students, though, and this frequently resulted in a whole other round of detentions and punishments.

The teachers watched the torture and resistance with despair. Defying the Carrows would mean risking their post and the small modicum of protection they could provide their students. Still, they helped wherever they could. Professors McGonagalls and Flitwick pointedly asked the leaders of the D.A. if there were any spells they felt would be "especially useful to them in the present climate." In other words, what spells would be most useful in fighting the Carrows? At their students' request, their teachers taught them Disillusionment Charms that were as good as Invisibility Cloaks in dim light, a few simple Healing Charms which made the after-effects of detentions easier to deal with, a wide variety of defense shielding spells that protected them from more than one Pureblood Squad member's casual attack, some simple dueling techniques, and a range of countercurses that repaired the damage done by a unblocked curse from a Slytherin's wand. Professor Sprout secretly showed them which plants would dull pain if you chewed their leaves, and even Professor Slughorn taught them to brew Pain-Killing Solutions and Wakefulness Draughts which helped students who had been sneaking out all night make it through the day. These spells and potions ventured increasingly further from the original curriculum, but the teachers were really beyond caring. In fact, the D.A. speculated that students at Hogwarts would receive the better final marks than ever before. Their teachers were too scared of Death Eater retaliation to fail Slytherins, and they were too proud of how their students were resisting the Carrows to fail anyone else.

Schoolwork was another thing that had receded in importance. Many of the core D.A. members were now sneaking out two nights in three, secretly committing acts of vandalism and sabotage around the school. Neville, Luna, and Ginny insisted on coming along on each and every mission, and they were relying on frequent swigs of Wakefulness Draughts just to make it through the day without falling asleep from little-to-no sleep. In spite of upcoming N.E.W.T tests for seventh years and standard exams for fifth and sixth years, few students were really committed to studying and schoolwork. D.A. work and resisting the Carrows just seemed so much more important. Even the teachers didn't seem as serious about the tests as they used to. They continued to veer off their standard curriculum to teach them useful spells, and they gave light homework to the older children, knowing that they were spending their nights doing things more important than classes. If their teachers noticed that each fresh wave of nighttime pranks was followed by yawning and sleepy children in class the next day, they said nothing, though Neville pointed out that he had never seen a teacher report them for falling asleep in class. In fact, their teachers rarely reported them for anything, anymore. After the first few disastrous weeks, when they saw the students they reported were showing up to class the next day bloody and battered, they quit reporting minor infraction to the Carrows, choosing instead to quietly administer more traditional punishments like loss of house points and writing lines. Professor McGonagalls went so far as to secretly make an agreement with her class—if they behaved reasonably well and scraped A's in her class, she would never report them to the Carrows. They agreed.

(A/N: So there you have it—the world's longest drabble. I just had so much fun writing it, I had to publish it. So please—no complaints that my little story is scattered or lacking focus. I already know that it is. Hope you liked it! Reviews are soooooooo appreciated.)