The harsh November wind was roaring and lashing at the castle windows. Fortunately for the D.A., the Room of Requirement seemed to know this and got rid of the windows inside the room, replacing them with warm fireplaces and warm armchairs. Ernie found himself lying on his back, a circle of faces looking down at him from above. The room slid in and out of focus for a few moments, but finally the edges sharpened and he was able to see detail instead of just blurry blobs. He recognized the faces.
"Seamus, Hannah, Michael -" he started rattling off the names of everyone he saw as he forced himself to sit up. A part of him was embarrassed at being in such an undignified position on the floor, but he had other pressing matters to worry about. "Where's - where's Neville...Lavender..."
"Hospital wing." Romilda Vane said, nervously tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. "Madam Pomfrey says they should be okay by tonight. We got them there before they could get" she shifted her weight uncomfortably. "well, brain-damaged."
"Madam Pomfrey threw a fit when she found out what happened. She was yelling about damaged lungs and internal bleeding, and wouldn't calm down until McGonagall, Flitwick and Slughorn all came in. If they hadn't, she probably would have went out and hexed the Carrows into next week." Michael said.
"Professor McGonagall didn't look like she wanted to calm Madam Pomfrey down, though. She looked like she wanted to do some hexing herself." Ginny added.
"McGonagall went out and yelled at Amycus in the corridor. He told her to mind her damn business." Seamus clenched his fist. "I'll hex him one day, I will. Turn him into a wee cockroach then grind my heel into his slimy, foul body, I'm telling you now!"
Susan placed a hand on his shoulder soothingly. As he looked around at all of the familiar faces - Seamus, Parvati Patil, Padma Patil, Hannah, Michael, Romilda Vane, Susan, Ginny, Luna Lovegood and several others - he realized who he was forgetting."
"Terry!" Ernie exclaimed. "Where's Terry, is he alright?"
Everyone exchanged a look over his head, a look that said: Oh, boy, we have to break it to him.
"Ernie, mate," Michael put a hand on his shoulder. "Terry...he's upset."
"Badly upset." Ginny nodded. "He's hiding away in the dormitory and refuses to come out."
"He feels like what happened is his fault." Seamus sighed. "It's not his fault! Its that hag's!"
"One day, that son of a goblin will get what's coming to her." Ernie said. The words surprised him as much as they surprised everyone else. He didn't remember planning on saying it, the words just tumbled out. But he meant them. He wasn't used to saying such malicious things, but it felt good to let it out.
"Amycus, too." Seamus agreed. "They all will."
"Let's all hope Harry kills You-Know-Who soon." Hannah said. "But in the meantime, we should keep writing his name all over the place. We may not be able to do too much to them, but if anything drives them up the wall, its Harry's name."
"At least we have that one power." Romilda''s eyes lightened a bit. "The power to scare them with our loyalty."
"Its true." Ernie said. "Our loyalty to Harry, Ron, Hermione and the Order of the Phoenix terrifies them. They used to drop hints about what a menace Harry is and how the Order must be stopped, but once they saw how much we support them..." he grinned wickedly. "...its like they don't even bother trying to turn us against Harry anymore. They know they can't. They know that they can Cruciate us, they can hit us, they can use us as little experiments for new hexes...but our loyalty is something they can't touch. And our friendship, our fond memories of Harry, Ron and Hermione, our throwbacks about the good old days before the war started...they can't hurt us there. And they know it. It scares them. They don't understand what loyalty is, what true friendship is."
A heavy silence fell upon them as Ernie's unexpected, inspirational words sunk in. The truth of them was strange, and a little exciting. Ernie realized for the first time that they did have something left the Carrows couldn't take away: their loyalty and friendship.
"That's why they get so panicked whenever they try to say something against Harry, and instead of agreeing with them on what a menace Harry is, we'll all start talking about the time he won the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor..." Ernie continued. "That was actually a really good day for everyone...except for the Slytherins, of course. We Hufflepuffs were all so excited that Slytherin didn't win, we couldn't care less that it was Gryffindor that won and not Hufflepuff." Ernie stopped, his mind and heart racing with a newfound confidence as he realized something he wished he realized on the first day of school. "And remember the old D.A., back when Umbridge took over? She put up all those new decrees, all of those restrictions, all of those harsh punishments...and still, we kept meeting back in this very room. We didn't let her stop us because we were determined, and we knew something that everyone else didn't: You-Know-Who was back.
"Its the same as now, if you think about it. Yes, its so much worse now. Its torture, its inhuman, its hell, its far more cruel than anything Umbridge could ever dream of - but its still not so much different than it was in our fifth year." Ernie, for once, wasn't choosing his words carefully before he spoke them. He didn't care if he sounded stupid or if it wasn't grammatically correct. All of the racing thoughts in his head spilled out into words, filling the room with a sense of hope. "Somebody is in our school, changing it, ruining it - but we all have each other, and we have this room. This room is still our haven. And we know something other people don't know: Harry won't fail."
His last words hung in the air. Silence descended upon all of them for about the tenth time that day, but it was a different kind of silence than the others. It wasn't the silence of impending disaster, the quiet that falls as you cringe and wait for the blow. It was the silence of an epiphany shared by everyone in the room. Ernie wasn't a Legilimens but he knew what he said was making sense to them. He could tell from the sudden light in their eyes, the way all of their chins lifted up a fraction of an inch.
"We have about thirty members in the D.A. right now - mostly everyone leftover from the old D.A. with a few new recruits thrown in. So most of us here in this room have met Harry, or know him personally." Ernie looked at Ginny as he said this, who surprisingly didn't blush or look away. She matched his hard gaze with one of her own, and it only encouraged him to keep going. "And we know he isn't a menace to society. We certainly know he didn't kill Dumbledore" scowls of rage from just about everyone in the room at this. "and we don't think of him as some perfect, invincible cardboard-cutout in which we fill in the blanks with whatever we want him to be." Ernie looked uncertainly at Colin as he said this part, hoping it was true for him as well. Colin was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him with wide, fascinated eyes. "We know him as a real person, as our fellow classmate, as our friend. And if we look back at everything he's done so far, remember who he is as a person, how brave he is - then I think we all know somewhere inside that Harry will make it.
"But he's going to need support. He's going to need people who believe in him. And just the thirty of us isn't going to be enough. We have to get other people to support him. I'm sure there are dozens of others in the school who do, but they're too afraid to come out with it - maybe they think they'll be punished by the Carrows, or maybe they're afraid everyone will think they're crazy if they just stand up and say 'Hey, I think Harry Potter can save us.' That's why we have to encourage them to do that. And then there's the dozens of others who don't know what Harry's really like, so they'll either think he won't save us, or they'll think he's as bad as the Daily Prophet's been saying he is. That's why we have to show them who he is.
"Just writing 'Support Harry Potter' all over the place isn't going to do much more than piss off the Carrows and Snape. We need to make people believe in Harry. And not just so Harry will have the support he deserves - we can also spread hope. We can give this school the hope it so desperately needs. The Carrows have turned this school into a torture chamber. They've changed all our classes. But our classes were never what made Hogwarts what it is. Our unity and loyalty make it what it is.
"Everybody forgot that. I know because I forgot it too. But I know now that if we remind everyone what Hogwarts is all about, if we just remind them about the unity and trust we felt with each other not more than a year ago, we can make things better. We as students can't get rid of the Carrows, and we can't make everything perfect, but we can make things better. We can't make Hogwarts feel safe, but we can make it feel a little bit safer. And we may not be able to stop the Carrows from torturing, but we can remind them that this school is ours, and they're only temporary. Dumbledore's Army needs to have more meaning to it than just writing Harry's name on the walls - and I think I may have just found that meaning. So are you guys with me?"
Everyone stared. Ernie's chest heaved with every deep breath he took. His head no longer felt swollen. His vision was no longer blurry. In fact, he felt as if he hadn't been knocked out at all. He was ready to get up and skip around the castle. Because he had a purpose now. He finally found that one silver lining inside this storm. Collapsing and hitting his head on the desk really knocked some genius into him.
All of their eyes were bulging in shock as the words of his long speech sunk into their heads. For a moment, he was worried that they wouldn't think it was a good idea, that he was out of his mind, that he ought to lie down for a little while more. He desperately hoped that wouldn't be the case.
Seamus whistled. "You hit your head, and suddenly you're Gandhi."
Ernie tried to figure out if that was a 'yes, I'm in' or 'no, you're out of your bloody mind.'
Finally, Seamus grinned and said, "But you ought to hit your head more often. That's bloody brilliant and makes perfect sense. Did angels sing to you when you blacked out, mate? Did they give you this amazing idea?"
Ernie grinned as Seamus clapped him on the shoulder. He looked over at Ginny and was surprised to see her eyes brimming with tears, a smile on her lips. Behind her sat Luna, staring at him dreamily. To the right of Luna was Parvati and Padma, both smiling. Everywhere he looked he saw ecstatic faces, overjoyed with this sudden epiphany of his.
"So everyone is in on this?" Ernie asked. "Recruiting new members and showing people who Harry really is? Showing people that he can do this?"
Everyone nodded, grins and bright eyes all around.
Why didn't I think of this sooner? he wondered.