Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter
A Girl Named Hope: Chapter Twenty-Six: Children to Warriors
AN: This chapter ties into the next chapter of Looking Beyond (something to look forward to!), inspired by my sister, Zephyri Magia.
Everyone has to grow up some time, Hope regretted that she was the one that forced them all to do so. Hope had lost all that kept her rooted in the mindset of a child when her godfather had died right before her eyes, when she realized she may very well have led her friends to their death.
It wasn't a feeling she had ever wanted to replicate.
But she also didn't want Dumbledore's Army running around half-blind; it was better to be over-prepared than ill-prepared, after all.
They called her leader because she understood more. She had felt the sting of loss and the pain of death and had borne the cruel rumors aimed towards her, and she had never wavered. She knew more spells and how to apply them than any in the DA.
She was not the leader simply because she had a scar on her forehead from a Dark Lord, and the students that showed up for every lesson did so of their own accord.
She did not demand respect or loyalty as Albus Dumbledore did with his Order of the Phoenix.
The DA could joke and laugh and tell her off if they wanted to, and in some ways Hope didn't regret how it was her that was changing them from children to warriors.
She didn't regret it if what she taught them all would one day save their lives, because in the end, that was the thing that it always came down to; coming out alive.