Disclaimer: The writing's mine, the characters aren't.

A/N: The challenge for this ficlet was "First Line: Pick up any of the six Harry Potter books. Open up to a chapter, any chapter. Take the first line of that chapter, and type it out, using that first line as the first line of your fic." My first line was from Deathly Hallows, The Silver Doe.


It was snowing by the time Hermione took over the watch at midnight. She hadn't slept all that well before this shift but she wasn't tired anyway. The fact that Umbridge was actively pursuing the DA was reason enough to be unable to sleep. It had been almost a month since Umbridge had found them out and now they were all holed up in the Room of Requirement. Most of them were Fifth Years and busy studying for their OWLs. It was strange, not going to the library for books, not going to the Great Hall for meals and most of all not going to classes. Oh, the Room of Requirement was being its brilliant self. It had installed special boxes into which they could put their homework and any other work that needed to be graded and anything that was put into one of them was transported to the office of the specific professors. Except Umbridge's, of course. Nobody ever handed in her work.

Of course, some teachers weren't all that pleased by their decision to take a stand against Umbridge and some – namely Snape – failed all work that was handed in by them, but for the most part they were good. They wouldn't give Umbridge the satisfaction of expelling them. There were worse things at stake here, as Harry often reminded them, and it was a good thing that they all stuck together. They needed unity.

The watch in the Room of Requirement was usually a pretty easy affair. It provided two windows to let them see what was going on. One of them showed the corridor that the Room of Requirement was in – but it couldn't be seen from outside of the room – and the other one showed the grounds of Hogwarts – where it was currently snowing. Hermione missed the outside world. The Room of Requirement could provide them with illusions and all but it wasn't the real thing. As silly as it was, she really wished for a snowball fight right now. Or anything else that was done outside.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't realise that someone had sat down beside her until it was almost 1am and she turned around to view the sleeping figures of their resistance group.

"Harry? What are you doing here?" She asked bemusedly. When had she started drifting off so far that she didn't notice people around her?

"Can't sleep," he mumbled, looking through the enchanted window that showed the grounds. "Wishing you were out there, hm?"

"Yes. I miss going outside, Harry. I wish she wouldn't do this to us," she whispered sadly. "Are you okay, Harry?"

He didn't answer for a while but then he nodded. "Yes. I think, I'm fine. We're fine. Everything is going to be fine, I think. It's only just a few more months. We can do this and then everything will be fine."

"You say that so easily, Harry. What if she finds a way to get to us?"

"She won't. Hogwarts will make sure of that," Harry told her and kissed the top of her head. "We will be fine, I promise you."

"Well, I don't know about you, but I don't think we're going to be fine. Not if Ron finds out about us!" Hermione replied, trying hard not to giggle. There were still worse things than Umbridge.

"You know what, I don't think he'll have a problem with that. He was rather intent on telling me all about Susan Bones today."