Disclaimer: I don't own anything that has to do with Harry Potter or have any relation to its publishers or distributors and I do not profit from writing fanfiction.


Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville arrived at the brick wall behind the Leaky Cauldron; it served as a barrier between Muggle London and Diagon Alley. With a tap of the wand, the bricks detached and reformed on their own to create an opening through which they could enter. Harry smiled appreciatively at the sight; recently, Harry had been impressed with aspects of the magical world that everyone else was accustomed to. Ron and Hermione attributed this to Harry being free of any remnants of Voldemort's mangled soul.

"Where to first?" asked Ginny.

"Flourish and Blotts," said Hermione, and she received a few appraising looks from Ron and Harry. "It's closest, all right!"

"Right," said Ron, his eyes shifting toward Hermione's beaded handbag. "Can we use your bag?"

"Yes, of course, but you know you could simply charm your own bags in the same way."

"You could do it for me."

"I could, but then how will you learn?"

"Okay, fine, I'll just use yours."

"Flourish and Blotts, then?" Neville interjected, spotting Hermione's narrowed eyes. "Professor Sprout's recommended Fifty Three Things You Probably Shouldn't Know About Mushrooms."

They made their way through the crowd to Flourish and Blotts Book Store. The teenagers soon noticed several pairs of eyes following them. A good portion of the passersby recognized them, gasping and pointing them out to friends.

"Harry Potter!"

"It's Dumbledore's Army, they're together—"

"Except that other girl—Loony was her name, I think—"

"Aren't those the Weasleys?"

"And Granger!"

But, for the first time since he was much younger, Harry was unaffected by the attention and scrutiny of the crowded street. He merely beamed and waved, and said "Thank you."

"Yeah," said Ron nonchalantly as they entered Flourish and Blott's. "I'm a bit famous."

After a bit of browsing, the group plopped their books down at the front counter and combined a pile of gold Galleons and silver Sickles to pay. The man behind the enchanted wooden register flicked one Galleon back toward Harry, saying it had been tampered with. Harry inspected it, and discovered that it was his D.A. Galleon, which Hermione had bewitched with a Protean charm.

"Look at this," said Harry, showing it to everyone. "Almost spent it."

Harry slid a real Galleon toward the clerk and stored his books in Hermione's beaded bag.

"Do any of you have any interest in continuing the D.A.?" asked Hermione as they made their way to Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. "I must admit I got a lot of experience in those lessons, and learned a fair amount of things that were beyond my level."

"Nothing's beyond your level," said Ron. "And yeah, I reckon it was much better than Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"It would be fun to teach again," said Harry. "I'll ask McGonagall. It could be a sort of Defense club."

"We'll all teach, then," said Neville. "We'll get Luna too—we sort of became the leaders after you three left."

"Yeah, well, we've turned up, so we're calling the shots—" began Ron, but he stopped at a glare from Hermione.

"What if a tradition is started?" wondered Ginny. "Hundreds of years from now, people might still be checking their Galleons for their next meeting."

"Wow," breathed Neville.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," said Hermione, laughing lightly, though Ron swore he heard a hint of pride in her tone.

After visiting the necessary shops and collecting their school supplies, the five D.A. leaders walked into the Leaky Cauldron for lunch. Ron sat next to Hermione at a booth, with Harry sitting next to Neville opposite them, while Ginny went to order. Harry, once again, appeared to be scanning the place in awe, as if he'd never seen it before.

"Isn't this great?" he said. "We're off to Hogwarts for another year—a normal year."

"I don't think there is such a thing at Hogwarts," said Neville with a smile. "It'll be eventful, at the very least."

"Yes," said Harry. "First, we should go to Hagrid's—no, hold on, I've been meaning to have a word with Dumbledore's portrait, actually... But wait, attention must be paid to congratulating McGonagall! At some point, I want to fly over the lake again, but on a broom. I've never formally introduced myself to the Giant Squid—oh, stop it, Neville, he's always been a gentle giant."

Harry was looking at his three friends with an incredibly wide smile.

"Harry," began Ron delicately, as if he were talking to a mental patient. "You didn't eat any of the mushrooms in Neville's greenhouse, did you?"

Harry snorted and shook his head. Ron's stomach growled, and the rest of the table agreed, all glancing at Ginny who was ordering food from Tom the toothless barman at the counter. A moment of waiting, whistling, and table-drumming went by, then the four teenagers in the booth were alerted by utterance of one of his least favorite words, coming from the booth behind theirs: "Mudblood."

Harry and Ron stood and walked over to the adjacent booth, and came across two of their least favorite people, Draco Malfoy and Rita Skeeter, sitting across from each other. Rita's obnoxious, acid-green Quick-Quotes Quill was scribbling frantically beside her, logging and romanticizing any words spoken.

"You!" exclaimed Harry.

"What do you want, Potter?" spat Malfoy.

"Malfoy," growled Harry, fixing Malfoy with a glare that threatened to burn a hole through his head. "What are you doing here?"

"Yes, what's a wizard doing at the Leaky Cauldron, how absurd..."

"With Rita Skeeter," added Ron, looking incredulous. Hermione and Neville had come over to investigate the commotion as well. "You two in the same place, at the same booth—trying to see if people can die of disgust, are you?"

"Actually, I'm conducting an interview as part of my new book," said Rita in a poisonously sweet tone. "It will detail the events of Harry Potter's first Hogwarts school year as the first installment of a seven part series. Care to give an interview?"

"So you're going to do him like Dumbledore and try to make it out to be some sort of scandal," said Ron indignantly.

"What ever do you mean?" asked Rita. "Draco here was just telling me of his work as a spy for the—"

"A WHAT!" barked the trio in unison. Several patrons of the pub turned to look at them.

"Spy," said Malfoy. "You saw me in action, of course—"

"I saw you switch sides depending on who had their wand aimed your way," said Harry. "Unlike Dumbledore, Rita, I'm still around to refute your lies, and I will."

"You'll have to get our approval before publishing," said Hermione. "And I'll certainly not approve any of this hogwash about Draco being a spy—or anything but a whimpering coward, for that matter."

Malfoy opened his mouth, poised to respond, but they were joined by Ginny.

"Did I hear the words 'spy' and 'Draco' in the same sentence?" asked Ginny, laughing, before she set her eyes on Rita. "Oh, of course."

"I'm afraid I won't have to get anyone's approval," said Rita. "No, no."

"Oh well, I see it can't be helped," said Hermione, and she received shocked looks from Harry, Neville, Ginny and Ron. "Just be sure not to forget to write about the Beetle of Hogwarts—oops, I meant 'Battle,' silly me."

"Good day," added Ginny, as she and the rest of the Dumbledore's Army leaders turned and headed for a booth on the other end of the pub, well away from Malfoy and Rita.

As they sat there, smirking and shaking their heads in amusement, the food arrived: Bowls of chunky soup and mugs of hot Butterbeer.

"You're scary sometimes, you know that?" said Ron quietly through a mouthful of beef. "Brilliant, but scary."

Hermione's smile faded when they were joined by a cheerful girl of their age with sandy blonde hair and a big white smile who walked up to the side of their table and addressed Ron.

"Ron!" said Lavender brightly. "I never had the chance to thank you—you saved me from that—that thing."

"Don't mention it," said Ron casually. "It's Hermione that did the cursing, anyway."

Lavender frowned and turned to Hermione. "Thanks."

"It's nothing," said Hermione with a forced smile. She placed an arm around Ron's shoulder, as if out of instinct. Harry and Ginny struggled to surpress grins.

"Want to join us—" began Neville, but he faltered at the look Hermione gave him. Ron was staring into his soup as if he were so fascinated by it that he couldn't bother with what was going on around him.

"Well, I'll be off, then," said Lavender after an awkward silence. "Thanks again, Ron."

"I think she wanted to thank you a bit more specially than that," said Harry coolly, waggling his eyebrows. Hermione scowled, and Ron looked up from his soup with pink cheeks.

"We should stop by the joke shop," he said. "I want to check on George."

"Maybe we'll glimpse whatever it is he's working on," said Hermione. "I hope it isn't dangerous."

"I'm not sure it is," said Harry. "He said it wasn't related to the shop."

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville ambled down the main road of Diagon Alley all the way to the end, and stopped before Weasley's Wizard Wheezes Joke Shop. It was packed with wizards and witches browsing and purchasing various products, all of which were fitted with mysteriously complex enchantments. The five D.A. leaders pushed through the sea of customers towards the registers in search of George, only to find that they had been bewitched to handle the purchases automatically. Every once in a while, Verity, an employee, would stop by the registers to ensure their functionality.

"Hello, Lee," said Harry as they passed a young black man with short dreadlocks who was wearing a magenta uniform with a golden W across its back.

"Harry Potter!" gasped Lee in mock awe. "Merlin's banana raincoat—it's the living legend!"

Harry chuckled lightly. "I see you're working here?"

"George needs all the help he can get around this place, and what could be better than working with my best mates? Besides, there are a few other attractions," said Lee with a nod towards Verity who was restocking shelves across from them.

"Ooh."

"Where is George?" asked Ron.

"Upstairs, in his room—apparently there's some top secret stuff going on in there." Lee leaned in, and whispered. "I told him he'd better not be testing things on that Centaur."

"Is that what he's doing?" asked Hermione, her eyes wide. "That's horrible!"

"I know," said Lee. "There's just no chance of a Centaur market for the shop. They live in the forest, and I don't think they like to have fun."

"There's no way he's testing things on her," mumbled Ron as they bade Lee goodbye and continued through the crowded aisles of the shop towards the stairway to George's flat.

Weasley's Wildfire Whiz-bangs sparked overhead in a dazzling display, pink heart-shaped bubbles floated to the ceiling from the Love Potions stand, and an illusory cloud of white smoke that resembled Peeves was hopping from shelf to shelf, chanting vulgar limericks. They climbed the stairs, and Ron reached the door first, rapping his knuckles against it none too lightly.

"Lee?" said George's voice from inside. "I'm busy with the project."

"It's Ron." Ron turned and gave his friends a questioning look; they shook their heads, equally confused, and Ron turned back to the door. "What project?"

"I cannot divulge that information, Ronnie. Wait a second, won't you?"

After a moment, the door swung open, and there stood George Weasley in his magenta robes, wearing an eyepatch that covered the hole in his head where his ear used to be, presumably so as not to bother the customers. The room was cluttered with broken quills, stray cogs and gears, burn marks and potions of various colors in a rack of phials above George's dresser. There was also an area of the room where grass inexplicably grew out of the floorboards, and a small tree was planted in the corner.

"Buying your books, kiddies?" he asked with a grin. Helinora the Centaur waved to them from behind him.

"What were you doing in here?" asked Ron.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" replied George as he stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind him, motioning for them to follow him back into the shop.

"How are you?" asked Hermione.

"Jolly," replied George. "Oh, they must be buying their books as well."

George pointed to four children who were carrying school supplies similar to those stored in Hermione's beaded bag.

"Roque, don't set that off!" exclaimed George.

Roque, a blonde boy with a formidable jaw who was one of the four, immediately set the Portable Swamp he was threatening to activate back on its shelf. Neville walked over to it and picked it up.

"For Herbology," he said, before making his way to the register.

"George, what is this thing you're working on?" demanded Ron.

"Look, a distraction!" urged George, pointing behind Ron. Ron quickly turned around and squinted.

"A distraction—wait... OI!" Ron called after George who was already halfway back up the stairs to his flat.

"I'll find out what he's up to," said Ron. "Maybe use an Extendable Ear."

"That'd be humorous," said Hermione. "Hoisted by his own petard."

"Hey, I know he only got 3 O.W.L.s, but that's no reason to call him names," said Ron sincerely. Harry and Hermione shared an amused look, then burst into laughter.