One year and one week after Professor McGonagall persuaded him to take Charms, Neville Longbottom stays up late with his textbook.
The weight of studying for exams hasn't overwhelmed him quite yet; he can't tell if Flitwick is going any easier on them because it's only their first week back, or if he's actually grown more competent with the material. At any rate, he is not doing homework. Though his wand traces and traces numerals, golden motes issuing from it every so often, this is far more banal than Arithmancy. Banal, however, does not mean easy.
But finally, everything is as ready as it's going to be, at least for the night. Trying not to yawn, he snaps his wand downward and cries out, "Protogeo!"
"Neville!" He didn't know that Seamus was still awake in the too-empty dormitory. The other boy has emerged in a flash, wand at the ready. "Are you all right?"
"Fine, sorry," Neville pants. "Hey, get out your Galleon, will you?"
"My Galleon?"
"Oh, that's right, you don't have one. Hold on."
"Where're you going? I'll come."
"Ginny's dorm, and it's fine."
"You can talk to her tomorrow, the staircases are charmed so that boys can't get up there."
"All right," Neville yawns, still fingering his newly-charmed coin. And then, "...Seamus?"
"Yeah?"
"What do you know about trying to sneak into the girls' dorms?"
Six years and three weeks after she and four brothers started school, her parents living Galleon to Galleon, Ginny Weasley flips a fake coin nonchalantly in the Room of Requirement.
Around her, her schoolmates wait expectantly. It's hard to think of them as Dumbledore's Army without Dumbledore. Without Ron and Hermione, Colin and Dennis and Justin and Dean, without Harry.
And without Harry, it's hard to know who should speak, but people seem to be looking at her. "Right. So." Is she supposed to say something about what Neville's just worked out? "Er...Harry's off. Doing things," she stresses. "And he's taken the original Galleon. So, Neville's worked out the Protean Charm, obviously, so he'll let you know when the meetings are...you've all found your way here, so it works..."
"Me?" Neville cuts her off. "Come off it, Ginny, here." He grabs the Galleon from her hand. "You too, Luna."
"Excuse me?" says Luna, who is sitting with the others, apparently fixated on Padma Patil's braid. "Oh, all right." She pulls it out of her robes and hands it to Neville. Slowly, he repeats the same charms on both of theirs, as the others watch, as stunned as Ginny.
"Right," he says. "See if it worked. You should be able to hold down any of the digits in the serial number...yeah, like that!" Ginny presses down a 2, which flickers into a 3. "And you keep holding it, until it's what you want." She releases it on 5.
"It worked!" Lavender Brown holds up her coin. "Mine turned hot."
"So what's this news you said you had?" asks Michael Corner.
"That's the other thing Luna and I were talking over," says Neville, as Luna takes the coins and starts casting something else on them. "It's one thing to say just meet here at Friday night, but what if we want to do something somewhere else? It'd be slow, but if you can read fast enough, there's no reason you can't change the letters where it says "Galleon." So it could spell out a place. Or any other message you wanted to pass along."
"I've heard from Lee Jordan, we could use this to send word to him," Ginny adds. "He says he's...planning something. I don't know either."
"The important thing," says Neville, "is that this message bit, any of you could do it. We're all in this together."
"Could we send messages to someone outside Hogwarts?" Seamus eagerly asks.
"If...if they had their coin." Neville trails off at the look on Ginny's face.
"But it's something," says Luna, passing Neville and Ginny their coins back. "It's a start."
One year after she stood in uncomfortable black velvet, remaining motionless during her mother's funeral, Hannah Abbott bursts into tears at the dinner table.
Every day has been almost as bad as every other, really. She makes too much a mess of her spellwork, coming back after a year, to be any good, but maybe that's for the best. That day, though, she has spent her last Knut of willpower keeping a blank face all through class, and can't keep going.
Ernie notices first, glancing over at her, and gets up from the table, offering her a hand. "C'mon, let's go."
"Nnnn," says Hannah, too exhausted to spit out the "o" or the "I'm fine."
"It's—just, let's go," he says, and the second time she does not fight. The staircases he leads her past seem to be rising, rather than falling, but she isn't paying attention to anything.
Vaguely, she feels Ernie's hand stiffen around hers, with the rest of him growing taut as well. Without letting go, the other hand tries the doorknob of—where are they? The common room doesn't have doorknobs.
"Oh, just you," Ernie and Neville blurt at once, bursting into weak laughter.
There are couches in the Room of Requirement, where she could sit and sink and not get up, but out of the corner of her eye Hannah notices a pair of small, thick gloves flicker into view. "What...what're you doin'?" she mutters.
"Er. Weeding," says Neville, pointing to what appears to be a small window box. "Want to help?"
She shrugs, but shuffles forward, sliding the gloves on. "What plants are those?"
"I'm not sure. I don't think they're magical, just something normal. Nothing to it, just rip the weeds out."
So she paws through the dirt, only splatting it on Neville once or twice to tease, and he gives as good as he gets. In between, she yanks out the weeds by their roots, then follows his lead in chucking them out the window. It's a long, and oddly satisfying, way down—neither quite understand the magic of the room, perhaps they'll have vanished before they hit the ground, but that's fine. She loses track of time, just rooting out the roots and ridding herself of them. He asks no questions, and neither does she, and when they both silently agree that they're done, Ernie marks his page in Self-Defensive Spellwork and walks her back to the common room.
Four months after a gleaming yellow badge of a badger informed him that Life Went On and that, furthermore, he had become captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, Zacharias Smith cancels practice.
"C'mon, you've earned a break," he says. "Yes, that means you, William, I can tell you're working hard." The young Chaser blushes. "Next week, same time, same place is fine. But it's too bad of a storm out out there, I'm not having any of you get hurt."
"If you say so, captain!" Sylvia Quirke grins.
So instead of spending the evening where he'd like to be, soaring above the pitch and screaming through the rain, Zacharias holes up in the Hufflepuff common room, insulated from the wind outside. Indeed, as he doggedly checks the footnotes in the textbook he has to read for Muggle Studies, he starts to feel rather warm. Or at least, his bottom does...
Nervously, Zacharias makes sure no one's watching, then reaches for his pocket. Sure enough, there is the Dumbledore's Army coin, the sides indicating that there will be a meeting in a week.
He sighs and puts the quill down, knowing he will not finish the essay tonight. It was all well and good when they were actually a study organization, practicing the spells they couldn't get to in class. But now? Now they are learning, and if there's one thing Amycus Carrow isn't it's a fool.
Class is enough. He learns, and if one day the teachers are weak enough that he can use their own spells against him, who's to say he will not take the chance? And if, as Zacharias knows is likely, that moment never comes...well...
A week from today is more Quidditch practice, anyway. He shouldn't skip that.
One day after Amycus Carrow beats him up for slacking off in detention and he proceeds to bed without doing his alchemy reading, Anthony Goldstein is called on in Transfiguration.
"What stone," Professor McGonagall snippily repeats, "was said to turn base metals into gold?"
There's nothing for it now but to wing it. Maybe it was supposed to be an easy question? For him? Maybe the etymology of his name would help? "Er...the...Goldstein, ma'am?"
He can tell she's trying not to laugh. "Very droll. Does anyone know the answer?"
Michael hesitates, maybe torn between wanting to move the class along and not wanting to embarrass his friend. Anthony gives him a go for it nod and he speaks. "The Philosopher's Stone, Professor."
"Very good," she says. "You must understand the background of transmutation to appreciate the historical development of the field and the precise formulation of these spells. You ought also to do the reading—the endnotes are particularly worthwhile. Now, if you would take out your iron samples..."
They graffiti the walls that night instead of doing the reading, never running across the endnote warning them that trying to live forever is an impossible dream, admonishing them to try and make their lives worthwhile instead, however short they may be. In the end, perhaps, they don't need to.
Two days after he comes back from class with his arm in horrendous pain, trying not to clutch it too closely, Ernie Macmillan is approached by Stephen Cornfoot.
"Where do you keep sneaking out to?" Stephen asks.
"Er," says Ernie, and cannot think of anything else to say.
"I know you're going somewhere. You and Susan and Hannah and them."
All right, so maybe he and Susan and Hannah have not been the most discreet people in the school. But still. "Them?"
"You know, the little kids."
"Well, I am a Prefect." And Hannah would still be if she hadn't missed a year. "Of course I ought to be helping my younger classmates around the school."
Stephen looks around, shrugs, and continues. "We've all seen the graffiti, mate. And we know about Hannah's mum. We can add two and two."
Ernie licks his lips.
"I...Look, I'm in Defense myself, I can keep pretending to cast those curses but there's no way I can...I can...keep doing it."
Susan will herd anyone into the hidden room, but Ernie has been more wary. The younger students are frail and scared and confused enough already; he would take curses for them, stand up to the Carrows on their behalf, but actually recruiting them into resistance and bloodshed? He can't bring himself to do it. "And have you seen me skip class? Run away and hide? Nonsense! I pretend to cast those curses, same as you!"
"Yeah, but you lot are actually...doing stuff. It's them against us, or it'll be soon enough anyway. I want in with you."
"I suppose," says Ernie, and looks up at Stephen again. He is of age—no, past age, he turned eighteen last month and Ernie won't until the end of May. And if not him, he'll just bother Susan about it anyway.
"Well," he says, clearing his throat, "what say you we meet here...six o'clock Friday night, and see what we see?"
Stephen realizes that's as much as he's going to get for now. "Right. See you then."
Four days after St. Patrick's Day, Seamus Finnegan comes home.
He rides the train to be with his friends—not plotting, not worrying too much, but keeping their wands at the ready in case anyone comes for any of them. Once he would have been safe enough, his mother slavishly following the Ministry line, but now he is just a Muggle's son.
But nothing happens, and they get out at King's Cross Station. He Apparates back home, suitcase in tow, missing the weeks when he could do it to get back at Fergus rather than just getting back quickly. His Mum hugs him longer than she should need to for him being eighteen; he doesn't let go.
"I'm going out to get groceries," she says after dinner. "Do you still want some of those sausages?"
"Yeah, but hold on," he says, rummaging through his trunk. "Just, any kind is good."
"Seamus!" she teases. "I only see you a few weeks out of the year, I can cook the kind of sausages you like." Neither of them mention the future.
"All right, but at least let me chip—no!"
"What is it?" she cries, rushing forward.
He tells himself to calm down, there's enough to panic about anyway. "Lost a fake coin," he says, "nothing important."
To his surprise, she smiles. "Tracked down a leprechaun already, have you? Well done!"
"No, just...not leprechaun gold. Just, just a fake coin."
"Oh."
But she's more downcast than she should be. "Why, what does it matter?"
"The leprechauns. These last few months, they're...they've been pulling away, they're hiding from us."
"How's the weather been? They just camping out at the end of the rainbow?"
"No. We're used to the weather. They...they see what we're doing to the Muggles, I don't think they like that. Unless things get better soon, who's to say they'll want to interact with wizards anymore?"
Seamus doesn't respond for a minute, still frantically riffling through his trunk, but all of a sudden he remembers that he stuffed the Galleon in his pockets again; it's so much a part of him now, he's forgotten the weight. Feeling for it through his robes, he exhales.
"Found my coin, it's all right," he smiles. "Potter will show up and...and...and kick out the snakes."
A dozen years after West Ham United's best finish ever, Dean Thomas listens to the Muggle wireless in Shell Cottage as the Hammers mark another win in what will turn out to be their best season since then.
When their defeat of Blackburn Rovers is complete, he returns to the sketch he's been working on, self-consciously tilting it towards him so that no one will see. Not that most of them would mind, really, but all the same.
Sure enough, Luna comes in and he hurriedly flips to a new sheet of paper. "Hello," she says coolly.
"Hey."
"What're you drawing?"
"Nothing!" he snaps, a little too quickly.
"Oh. Sorry." She backs away.
"No, it's fine, just...never mind."
She leaves, unconcerned, and he flips the page over again, adding small details. Here a curve of the tail, there a hoofprint in the dirt.
The first few hours of listening to her Snorkack tales were a bit off-putting, and he will never show her the pictures because he knows he does not really understand, he'll have gotten it all wrong. But now? Now he wants to put the beauty she believes in to paper. Even if it is not truth as he knows it, it might still be beautiful.
Thirteen days after Neville Longbottom left the dormitories, Terry Boot sits in the library, revising his Charms essay.
He hasn't had the easiest time of it, as a Muggle-born, but he and Kevin were able to convince the Ministry that their mad grandmother was a Squib. And he still goes to the Room of Requirement every night now—Anthony will gladly chatter on about the schoolwork he's abandoned, claiming he's "bored" of all the young Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs Neville has recruited. Michael is more concerned about practical defense.
Maybe he should be too. Maybe he should throw everything away and go disappear with them, yet most of him wants to stay put. There are other young children, caught in the crossfire, to defend, and he is not quite himself without theories and thoughts and dreams to get lost in.
So it is that he stays in the library past the time when the others have left their robes behind and are piling into the Hogs Head. It is he who feels his coin chill.
He takes it out, hiding it behind Quintessence: A Quest.
Special
broadcast.
Password:
Fenwick.
He races to the Room of Requirement and turns on the wireless that he and Wayne "liberated" from the staff room after the Easter holidays. "...again, eyewitness reports in Diagon Alley suggest that Harry Potter was indeed on the dragon that escaped from Gringotts."
Terry listens a minute longer, then inhales and walks down to the Great Hall, which looks even emptier than usual.
"What's new?" says Mandy. "Got that Potions done?"
"Not yet," he says, and finds his voice growing louder. "But listen, Harry Potter broke into Gringotts! Stole a dragon, rode it out! Bet Weasley and Granger are with him too!"
Face by face, the students turn to look at him, and he repeats Lee's broadcast over and over again. He barely feels it when Amycus Carrow's magical belt laces into his back.
Two hours before he dies, Colin Creevey wakes with a start.
Dennis is still asleep, his robe hanging on the back of their bedroom door, but Colin has kept his coin close at hand, even in his pajamas. Without a magical wireless, it's the best way to keep track of everything that's going on.
Apparate
to Hog's Head.
Well, he's never learned to Apparate, but he can get there. This is it, isn't it? There was a reason he convinced his family to hide out in London.
I will be at
London Diagon
entrance in
fifteen minutes.
Can someone
Side-Along
me?
he sends.
Moments later, Parvati Patil responds, Okay.
He silently puts on day clothes, grabs his wand, repockets his coin, picks up his Comet 280 from the corner, and Disillusions himself.
He thinks about writing a note, or waking people up, but decides against it. Once everything's settled in at Hogwarts, he'll be able to send his parents an owl, or even send Dennis a message through his coin. By morning his brother will be awake and checking the Galleon as regularly as he did.
Besides, he thinks as he disappears into the night, I'd better stay at Hogwarts once we get rid of the Carrows. When Dennis finds out he missed this, he's going to kill me.