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Inside Information
Things dragged on rather uneventfully for the next few months. By the time Christmas rolled around, everyone had mastered the Disarmament Charm - apart from Zacharias Smith who could not keep his wand in hand even when he was not partnered with me; I happily gave up my duels to Fred Weasley, if that meant disarming Smith from across the room and watching his confused face as the wand toppled from his hand.
The Slytherins had meanwhile joined the 'Inquisitorial Squad'. By degree I-cannot-remember-the-numbers-anymore, Umbridge had officially started the group and was sending Draco and his friends through the school to 'maintain order'. They maintained about as much order as a pack of stray dogs.
Much to my satisfaction, neither Tracey nor Blaise joined, though the former kept demanding why I protected Hufflepuffs nowadays. (I told them Hufflepuffs had extraordinarily good access to extra food from the kitchens, which was both a lie and very, very true.)
Christmas came and went without too much of a fuss - thanks for the zero presents I got from you, by the way, would it have killed you to at least send a note? (And no, it would not have, we all now that it was not that easy) - and before I knew it, a new year had started and I had turned sweet sixteen with the passing January.
It was already warming again, spring arriving in late March, when Tracey unceremoniously dropped an issue of the Quibbler in front of me at breakfast.
Mind you, I do not know why she had it in the first place. The Quibbler, strange little paper as it was, was not usually read at the Slytherin table. That day, things were obviously different.
"Read," Tracey said breathlessly.
HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST: THE TRUTH ABOUT HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN
"What," I whispered. "In Merlin's name?"
"Can you believe he would do that?" she asked, and sank down on the bench next to me as if her knees had suddenly gone weak. "What's your father going to say?"
"How would I know?" I shot back while my eyes scanned over the text, a step-by-step account of what had happened last June, when you had returned. "And, either way, I don't suppose he'd care."
Across the hall, a bubble had built around Harry Potter and his friends - Gryffindors, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs alike had gathered and were reading the article over Potter's shoulder.
I did not need to see Umbridge's sour expression to know that she would not approve. She stalked over to Harry and snatched the paper from his hand.
"Oh," Tracey said and plucked the article from my hand in much the same way. "I feel like we shouldn't be seen with this."
She was absolutely right. It did not take even a day before Umbridge had put out Educational Degree Number-Even-More-Than-I-Cared-to-Count and forbid owning any copy of the Quibbler, which of course meant that a black-market trading of the Quibbler boomed within hours.
By the end of the week, I owned ten copies of the same issue, just because I could and started putting them in Pansy Parkinson's purse. She shrieked every time she found one.
There was a slight bit of trouble, though: Harry had named all the Death Eaters he had identified that night and they were, as expected, relatives of almost all my classmates.
"D'you think the Ministry will take this seriously?" Theo Nott, who usually did not speak to me - or anyone - asked, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. "I'd really rather my father did not go to Azkaban."
"If he was there that night, that means my father needs him," I told him, though I had no idea what or who you needed. "And he won't let anyone he needs get locked up."
His shoulders sagged in relief and I nodded back at him when he headed back to his lonely desk in the far back of the common room.
Blaise appeared, basically out of nowhere, and sat down on the couch next to me. He had a knack for stepping out of shadows as if he was a freaking vampire.
"Why would you tell him that?" he asked. "You have never even seen your father."
"That's... true," I admitted. "But that's not what he needed to hear."
His eyebrows drew tightly together. "Since when do you care about Theodore Nott?"
"He's one of us, isn't he?" I said. "And he's scared for his family, why would I not offer some comfort?"
"You never comfort me when I'm scared for my family," he said, his tone vaguely accusatory, but his lips twitching into a smile.
I grinned back. "You're only scared you'll come home to Husband Number Eleven," I said.
"Well, Ten was Scottish," Blaise shot back. "What do you expect?"
Time continued to speed by, especially because the O.W.L.s were fast approaching. I was stressed, much like every other fifth year student, but not much worried - not even for Defence Against the Dark Arts, because Potter did a very good job at teaching us everything that Umbridge refused to.
By mid-April, it seemed that I spent every bit of free time either in the library or in the Room of Requirement.
Harry had gotten us started on Patronuses, which was a lot harder than I had thought. He said that, in the safety of our well-lit room, surrounded by friends, it should be relatively easy, but it really was not.
He said to just hold on tight to some happy little thought, but that was precisely the problem.
"What's your thought?" I asked him finally, when my Patronus still resembled a silvery blanket more than anything else.
"Uh," Potter said. "That's a pretty personal question, isn't it?"
I groaned. "It's just - it won't work!" I waved my wand impatiently and produced yet another veil of silver smoke. "I just don't know why!"
He cracked a smile at that. "You know, that's the first time I see you not be perfect." At my exasperated glance, he added. "I think of finding out I'm a wizard. How about that?"
I blinked at him. To this day, I do not know if he was honest with me or not, but even if he was not, he was aiming to give me a good idea. Trouble was, the day I had found out about being a witch had not been a happy one - it had also been the day that I learnt I descended from the evilest wizard who ever lived.
"I don't... I don't think that will work," I said.
He smiled awkwardly and seemed a little tortured, so I let him off the hook and waved any additional advise away. No one else could find a happy memory for me, either way.
Harry walked off across the room towards Neville Longbottom and Lavender Brown, a loud and obnoxious Gryffindor girl. Slightly irked, I thought that I should definitely do better than the two of them.
There was a sudden commotion by the door. People fell silent and the Patronuses flying around the room flickered out. It was a House Elf, though the strangest one I had ever seen, who apparently wore any article of clothing it came across. It walked with small, shaky steps, but headed with obvious determination towards the middle of the room, where Harry stood.
"Harry Potter, sir," it squeaked. "Dobby has come to warn you... she...she..."
"Who's 'she', Dobby?" Potter asked, but we all knew who she was. "Umbridge?" The house elf tried to bang his head against the wall. "Is she coming?"
The house elf let out a terrifying howl. "Yes, Harry Potter, yes!"
There was a beat of silence in which everyone seemed to be frozen in terror. Then Potter yelled, "What are you waiting for? RUN!" And we did.
People were toppling over each other around the door, someone was actually screaming and Harry had picked up the house elf from the floor like a doll.
If this room could become anything we wanted it to be, then why in Merlin's name did we not have an escape route?
I was already halfway on my way to the door when I spotted something that made my heart stop. The list. The list with all our names and the treacherous name sprawled all over, it was still hanging on the wall, left for the taking. If Umbridge came in here, we were all doomed.
Before I could think better of it - and it was one of the few moments when I acted before I could weigh my options - I started off in the exact opposite direction of my mistake.
"Cassie!" someone yelled, probably one of the Weasley twins, but I did not turn to look.
The parchment ripped as I plucked the list from the wall and it almost sizzled in my hand with its hidden magic. Had someone betrayed us, I wondered, someone on this list?
I stared at the list, the names glaring up at me, my own glistening with the most tantalizing gleam from the bottom of the parchment.
"Incendio!" I whispered and in my hands, the parchment lightened and burnt in to a crisp. Hissing when the heat licked at my fingers, I let go, watching the ashes drizzle to the ground in front of me.
The members of our group had scattered in every direction and now satisfied with what we left behind, I hurried after them. The corridors outside were still buzzing with students; I slipped in between two Hufflepuffs, passed a Ravenclaw, stepped around the corner-
and bumped straight into Draco Malfoy.
His eyes widened as much as mine and my gaze slid down to his chest, where a plaque with a dark "I" - Inquistorial Squad, was that it? - was gleaming next to his prefect plaque.
"Cassie," he said softly. "Why are you here?"
"Why are you here?" I retorted. His eyes narrowed. "C'mon. Who told you?"
"Doesn't matter," he said. "Some Ravenclaw girl. Umbridge will really love to find you here."
Now, I will not deny it, for a short moment I thought that Slytherin loyalty had finally failed me; that he would drag me to Umbridge, throw me to the wolves. In that moment, I hated you more than ever for abandoning me - because if you had, from the beginning, been in contact, I would have had so much more sway, so much more authority over my classmates.
As it was, Draco for once found his conscience. His features softened and, with a look over his shoulder, he stepped aside. "Go," he said.
"Really?" I asked.
He groaned. "Don't make me question it."
My heart soared with sudden affection for him. I was tempted to hug him in thanks - but I kept myself from it, mostly because his eyes sparkled menacingly when he heard Potter's voice around the corner.
"Go," Draco repeated.
"Don't do anything you'll regret," I said.
His smile was broader than was fit for this occasion. "I won't."
I did not think that we had the same idea of what would be regretted and what would not, but I also knew that I did not have the time to dally. It was already luck that I had run into Draco and not Umbridge herself and if she caught me here, I would not get out of detention until the skin of my hand had scraped of completely.
I nodded to him and we parted; he sauntered around the corner I had come from and I hurried as fast as my legs could carry me along the hallway, down the stairs towards the safe haven of the dungeons.
Tracey threw herself at me the moment that I stepped through the door to the common room. Her arms tightened almost painfully around me and I patted her back, while my eyes locked with Blaise behind her back.
"Where were you?" he asked.
"The school's in disarray!" Tracey whined as I pushed her back so I could breathe. "Half the house is up and about - what happened?"
I swallowed hard. It had just become obvious what would happen if any of the DA's secrets were betrayed and I would certainly not risk further exposure by revealing anything, not even to my friends.
"Something around Potter," I said. "Draco warned me in time."
Blaise's eyebrows rose so high that they disappeared underneath his fringe. "Draco warned you?" he repeated, disbelief dripping from his voice.
I rolled my eyes at him and did not dignify his question with a response. Granted, Draco had not truly warned me, but had let me go, which was basically the same - so, obviously, the idea was not as preposterous as Blaise pretended. Slytherins, after all, would always stick to their own.
Tracey was so nervous that she could not go to sleep and kept Blaise and me awake with her. She paced up and down through the common room while waited in armchairs by the fire - waited for any sort of news.
By now, I felt decidedly sick. Had Harry and his friends got away? Had Fred and George? Maybe they had caught Zacharias Smith, it would serve him well - but then, I suspected he would rattle of the list by heart to save his own skin.
The first members of the Inquisitorial Squad returned about an hour after my arrival. Greg Goyle had to talk around his own yawning, but he was obviously beaming with happiness.
"We caught Potter!" he announced. "He'll never get on a broom again!"
I was close to vomiting right on his shoes.
Tracey was swaying between happiness and horror. We hated Gryffindors after all, and Potter more than anyone, but she, too, hated Umbridge more than anyone and would not wish her punishment on anyone.
When Draco returned, another half an hour later, the worry about Harry Potter's punishment was wiped from our minds. His face had lightened with untarnished glee, his grey eyes alight with sheer happiness.
"You'll never believe this," he said to the room, though his gaze was fixed on me. "But Dumbledore's gone."
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