Blame finals, vacations, and Homestuck's magical time-suck abilities for the extreme lateness of this update where not much happens. But luckily, now it's summer break for real, and I have pretty much nothing to do, so updates should be faster, yay! Enjoy!

~o~

The suite of rooms that Sam and Dean Winchester shared in the Eastern Tower of Hogwarts had suddenly doubled their occupancy. Two humans, an angel, and a demon were lounging on the pair of undersized couches. Dean kept shooting suspicious glares at Meg, who replied with blandly uninterested glances.

('How can you be cool with this, Sammy? She possessed you!'

'Dude, just hear them out, okay?')

Slowly, the frigid silence defrosted into a more genuine conversation, both sides sharing what they'd been doing over the past few months.

"Being tortured, mostly," Meg said, taking a long slug of whiskey out of a glass she'd stolen from Dean when he wasn't looking. "I got so damn sick of that fucking bathroom wall."

Cas awkwardly patted her shoulder before picking up the thread of conversation again. "I was... not in control of myself," he said haltingly. "One of my sisters, Naomi, she is in charge of... reforming disobedient angels. She had me searching for the angel tablet and... she wanted me to kill you, Dean."

He swallowed convulsively, and Dean had a moment to consider just how human the action was before he was crossing the room and pulling the angel into his second hug of the day.

"There's an angel tablet?" Sam asked from behind him, having apparently been the only one to pick the relevant information out of Cas's confession.

"Ah. Yes," the angel said as Dean returned to his spot on the opposite couch, pulling the carved stone from the inside of his trench coat. "They want it back... very badly. It frightens them."

"The demons want it, too," Meg piped up as Cas passed the tablet over to the Winchesters for inspection.

"Oh, fuckin' perfect," Dean announced in sarcastic exasperation, throwing his arms up. "I was worried this was going to be easy."

Sam was running his fingers over the deep, angular gouges in the tablet's surface, his forehead creased in a frown. "It's not like we can do anything about it without Kevin, though. So... what now?"

"Hide it," Dean said decisively. "You too, Cas... and I guess the demon bitch too."

"Gee, thanks," Meg drawled sarcastically. "You're such a gentleman."

~o~

After the first official meeting of what would soon be named Dumbledore's Army in the Hog's Head, Harry was finally feeling like he was making progress and doing good for the first time that year. His grin felt genuine for the first time in months, and even though Umbitch would lynch them if she found out, she had been out cold for the past day (after the sudden appearance of the Winchesters' new guests, which was something they really should look into) and so they hadn't had to worry about dodging her on the way to the course, something that good couldn't last, and by supper she was up and about again, albeit a bit woozy and with a lovely moustache that Harry was just positive the Weasley twins were responsible for. They'd really been stepping up their pranks lately, even to a degree that was likely to get them kicked out of school if they were ever truly caught red-handed.

The meeting had had a healthy turnout, and for the first time Harry really understood how many of his fellow schoolmates wanted to stand up against Umbridge and the Ministry (and even Voldemort!) and make a difference, and it gave him a warm feeling in his chest to know how many of them were willing to stand with him. Neville, Luna, Cho Chang, several assorted Weasleys, Lavender and some students he didn't even know. He didn't even have to worry about betrayal (at least without finding out who had done it) due to the jinx that Hermione had placed on the paper.

Still, an illicit club was an illicit club, and the recent closure several less-official school activities, even sanctioned ones, had made it very clear how Umbridge felt about that. Therefore, there could be no more meetings until they had, at the very least, a safe meeting place. It would help to have a staff supervisor, too, but Harry doubted that even the teachers sympathetic to their cause, such as MacGonagall, would want to risk losing jobs they loved and the wrath of the Ministry, and he couldn't blame them.

~o~

Unbeknownst to the as-yet-unnamed Dumbledore's Army, they were being watched as they met in the Hog's Head by both sides- Umbridge and the Ministry of Magic and the Order of the Phoenix. Meetings in a public place, while safer by far than anywhere inside Hogwarts Castle and outside of Umbridge's usual range of surveillance, were still public, and a certain student had overheard the meeting and sold them out to the High Inquisitor.

Three days later, new fliers were posted all along the walls of the school:

'All Student Organizations, Societies, Teams, Groups, and Clubs are henceforth disbanded. An Organization, Society, Team, Group or Club is hereby defined as a regular meeting of three or more students. Permission to re-form may be sought from the High Inquisitor (Professor Umbridge). No Student Organization, Society, Team, Group, or Club may exist without the knowledge and approval or the High Inquisitor. Any student found to have formed, or to belong to, an Organization, Society, Team, Group, or Club that has not been approved by the High Inquisitor will be expelled.'

~o~

Later that same day, Professors (and Dean was never, ever going to get used to that) Sam and Dean Winchester were summoned to the Headmaster's office to explain the two strangers who had apparently violated pretty much all the rules of magic and materialized in a heavily-warded castle in the middle of class.

Which, admittedly, which would be hard to explain with anything except the unbelievable truth, so that is exactly what they did, tag-teaming the story and taking turns explaining how and why Meg and Cas had gotten there, who and what they were, how useful they could be in teaching their classes, and promising several times over that they just needed a place to lie low for a while and wouldn't interfere with the workings of the school at all.

(Even though that last one was a bold-faced lie and they both knew it.)

Dumbledore, to his eternal credit, simply sat with this hands clasped in front of him and listened to the entire story without objecting or claiming that it was impossible, only interrupting to ask clarifying questions.

"Plus, they both have badass sparkly magic powers and could probably help protect against Moldy-guy," Dean pointed out.

Which is how an angel and a demon took up temporary residence at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.