Note: Hey folks, I'm back after my little blip, thanks for waiting on me when I had a crisis moment. This chapter was the annoying one. Finally, the only way I could make it work was to do it in part flashback form, like chapter ten. Enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rearming the Army
Neville looked around at the other occupants of the dormitory in the dim light, all sleeping soundly, or at least pretending to. He had the distinct impression that Harry was as wide awake as he was and waiting for Neville to say something, but for the moment, Neville was not going to give him the satisfaction. He was too busy thinking about the events of the evening to speak, turning over everything that had happened in such a short space of time. When he had first suggested banding together Dumbledore's Army again, he's had no idea how many of his old comrades would return to rally to the cause, but he knew that he could not simply give up before he had begun. Neville accepted that he was not the most skilled of magicians, and he knew that if he had always given up at the first hurdle, no matter how tempting it might have been, he would never have got as far in his life as he had. It was no secret that the Sorting Hat had dithered over Neville, wondering whether to put him in Hufflepuff, but he had ended up in Gryffindor, to his great relief. It was not that he had anything against the Hufflepuff house, far from it, but he knew that had he not been placed in Gryffindor, he would not have met the friends who had encouraged him to step out of his comfort zone and push himself onto greater things, to make full use of his Gryffindor courage.
All the same, Neville could not help but wonder at the path that his life would have taken had he been sorted into Hufflepuff, because he was very aware that his Hufflepuff traits were still there within his mind, lying dormant and waiting to be put into use whenever they were needed. His stoic perseverance in going ahead with the reforming of the DA was proof in itself. Idly, Neville wondered if anyone truly belonged in just one house, or whether they were all a mixture of the four.
Presently his mind wandered back to the beginning of the meeting, and the beginning of his Hufflepuffian tendencies coming to the fore.
It felt good to be in the Room of Requirement again, thought Neville, looking around fondly at the space in which he had learned so much in his fifth year. It hadn't changed at all, but then that was the point of the Room of Requirement, he supposed. It was a constant and yet it wasn't; sometimes it didn't even exist and when it did exist it could take so many different forms, but it could always go back to the original. Well, Neville liked to think of the DA room as its original form because that was the state in which he had first seen it, but he knew that this was not really the case. He wondered what it had looked like when it had first been built, and if it even had a 'built' form so to speak. Was it even really a part of Hogwarts? It wasn't on any maps of the place. Perhaps it had been added as an afterthought by some sympathetic architect who had wanted to give the students a place of escape from the teachers. Maybe it wasn't even a room at all but rather the result of a complex enchantment. Hermione would know; she was probably the only person in the school to have read Hogwarts: A History, but deep inside, Neville knew that he didn't really want to know. The inherent element of unknown about the place was part of its attractiveness; it would not have been anywhere near as exciting if they knew the ins and outs of how its magic worked.
"I think everyone's here," said Luna beside him. Neville looked around, the majority of the old DA was there, along with a few eager-looking young faces of first- and second-years who wanted to learn some practical defence skills to aid them in the current critical circumstances. Luna had had the idea of reusing the coins that they had received during the club's first outing to get in touch with the old members again and then allowing the news to spread surreptitiously throughout the houses. As much as they wanted to get the DA back off the ground and to recruit as many new members as possible, they did not want to be too ostentatious should it come to the attention of someone who would have been better off being ignorant of its existence.
Neville took a deep breath to steady himself before he began his opening spiel, wondering how anyone ever managed to speak publicly with so many faces looking at them expectantly without making a complete fool of himself. Ginny patted him encouragingly on the shoulder and he stood up, clearing his throat to get everyone's attention.
"Erm, hello everyone," he began. So far, so good. "For those of you who don't know me, I'm Neville."
"Hi Neville," chorused the gathered Gryffindors.
Neville rolled his eyes.
"For those of you who don't know what we're doing here, this is Dumbledore's Army. We formed it a couple of years ago to teach ourselves defence against the dark arts, and we've decided to reopen our doors to new members in the current circumstances."
"Hear hear," said Dean, earning Neville a round of applause.
In hindsight, though, Neville was not quite sure why the reforming of the DA was so necessary from an educational point of view. Yes, they had Snape as a defence against the dark arts teacher, and Snape was a Death Eater who had killed Dumbledore. It made perfect sense that they did not want to be taught by him and that they would be wary of precisely what he was teaching them. Added to that, it was no secret that the curriculum had been so irretrievably mauled to pieces that the defence lessons were now designed to teach them the exact opposite.
But at the same time, Neville could not deny that Snape was a pretty good teacher. Personal detest and fear of and house prejudices against the man aside, he'd always had a very low fail rate with his students and he was more than capable when it came to class control. And from what Neville had heard from the people who had been in his classes this year, he did not seem to be focussing as wholly on dark magic as one might have been lead to think.
To be perfectly honest, Neville was pretty sure that he had reformed the club and had garnered so much interest in it once more out of pure defiance against the man, no matter what he might have said to the newest members in his opening speech.
"We're here to learn to defend ourselves, because you never know what might be happening at Hogwarts in the next year, and with Snape as a teacher we're unlikely to be learning much of the 'self-defence' part of his subject." Neville paused. "We don't have quite the expert teacher that we had last time, but hopefully there are enough of us here that we should be able to help each other along and muddle through together. Anything's better than nothing."
And that, thought Neville, was the real reason why it had been so important to him to reinstall the DA at Hogwarts. During its first outing ,it had been more than a simple club for him, it had been a support network, a lifeline, and he intended it to become one for the other students as well. In these bleak and extremely uncertain times, with the Death Eaters and the Ministry hovering at the castle gates and waiting for their perfect chance to infiltrate, it was more important than ever that everyone had somewhere that they could turn to, and if the web of DA members was that somewhere, then that was a victory for Neville, a victory for Hogwarts. Presently Hermione pulled him out of his daydream with a tap on his shoulder.
"It looks like we aren't going to have to worry about expert tuition after all," she murmured, and Neville followed her eyeline across to the doorway to the room, which had opened up again and was admitting a latecomer.
"Harry!" exclaimed Ron, running across the room to his friend and causing everyone's attention to follow him, something that Neville was fairly sure Harry was trying to avoid. "You came!"
Harry nodded, obviously very aware of the entire room's eyes on him. He found Neville in the milling crowd and nodded his acknowledgement. There was a lot said in the silent gesture; it was more than a mere greeting. It was also part thanks, gratitude to Neville for having brought Harry back to the DA, a decision which both boys knew he would not regret, not in the end.
"Well," said Harry, coming over to Neville once he had managed to shake off Ron and the small group of starstruck first years. "Where do you want to begin?"
Harry's willingness to let Neville be the leader of the newly reformed society had surprised him at the time, but having seen how easily he had delegated quidditch duties to Ginny over the past week, perhaps he should not have been quite so astounded. Harry still knew an awful lot more than Neville did and was far more competent when it came to casting the spells, that was undeniable. But it was Neville who had taken the initiative to bring the army back together again; it had flourished under his leadership, and it made sense, in Neville's head at least, to keep it that way lest Harry suddenly abandon it for whatever reason. He was not totally alone, thought Neville. Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Luna were all there rooting for him in the background, but it was Neville who was currently bearing the responsibility of a figurehead, a responsibility that had already been put severely to the test.
They were about to call it a day; to pack up for the night and go back to their various houses, when the Room of Requirement let a couple more people into its secret depths.
"You're a bit late," Ron had begun, but he had tailed off on seeing the identities of the two students. They were Slytherins.
"This is Dumbledore's Army, isn't it?" one of them asked.
Ron nodded dumbly.
"Sorry we're late; it took us a while to find the room. We'd like to join."
Ron looked at Neville, and they both looked at Harry. His mouth was opening and closing with no words coming out, giving him the appearance of an apoplectic goldfish.
"No," he said eventually. "Just no."
"Why not?" Neville asked. Putting the houses aside for a moment, he had already made the decision that the DA was a support network for the students who needed it, and they could not turn away someone in need simply because of the colour of their tie.
"They're Slytherins!" Harry exclaimed.
"And?" asked one of the new arrivals frostily. "Not everyone who gets sorted into our house automatically becomes a Death Eater as soon as they sit down at the table. Some of us liked Professor Dumbledore as much as his precious Gryffindors did."
Harry turned to Neville, his expression somewhat pleading.
"What if they just go running to Snape as soon as this meeting's over?" he said.
"They can do that whether we let them join or not," Luna pointed out matter-of-factly.
"We're still here, you know," said the other Slytherin dryly.
"Besides," Luna continued, ignoring him momentarily (Neville privately wondered if she had even heard him in the first place ), "Snape isn't the head of house anymore; he has no jurisdiction in that respect."
"He is deputy head though," said Ron.
"True…"
"Oh for crying out loud," said Neville suddenly, "debating Snape's standing in staff pecking order isn't getting the problem solved!" He turned to the Slytherins. "You may as well know that the membership list is charmed. Once you sign it, if you sneak, the entire school will know. It will not be pretty."
"We know," said the girl. "We saw Marietta two years ago." She paused. "You do realise that the best way to solve your problem is to let us join and make us sign this list because when we do that, even if our intentions were to simply rat it out, we'd be unable to, and if we refuse to sign the list because we know the consequences, then you've every right to be suspicious and put extra security measures in place."
Neville was extremely grateful that someone else had saved him the trouble of thinking up a logical solution. He produced the membership list and a quill and handed it to the girl, ignoring Harry's spluttered protests. Both Slytherins signed.
"Welcome to the DA," Neville said.
Neville had half-expected Harry to storm out in a temper then and they would have lost their tutor almost as soon as they had regained him, but he had stayed put, although evidently less than happy about the situation. It just went to show that Neville was in control of the DA now, and his decisions were the ones that were followed. His mind came full circle back to the Hufflepuff tendencies – would he have given the two Slytherin third years a chance had he been Gryffindor through and through and the pride of his house's symbol stood in the way? Probably not. It was so easy to write off the Slytherins as a completely bad bunch, but something in Neville was determined to give everyone a chance. Never judge a book by its cover, that was the rule, and never judge a student by their house. He was a prime example after all; in his earlier years no-one would have thought him to be a Gryffindor. For a moment he felt sorry for the Slytherins who were boundary cases like he had been, sometimes displaying traits more suited to the other houses. It must be hard to be part of a group which was inherently mistrusted as a result of the terrible failings of just one of its alumni.
Neville closed his eyes, a strain of the sorting hat's song penetrating his consciousness as he drifted in a doze.
Red and green and blue and yellow
Come together all once more
They had certainly done that this evening, Neville thought. Presently a voice that was not the Sorting Hat's entered his perception.
"You made the right call," said Harry from across the dormitory. "With the Slytherins, I mean. I don't like it, but it was the right thing to do."
"We've got to give them a chance," said Neville with a yawn. "If we don't start doing some repair work now, then who knows what'll happen when push comes to shove? Remember what the hat said."
"True."
This understanding reached between the two Gryffindors, Neville drifted off to sleep, wondering how many Slytherins the next DA meeting would bring.
Note2: Well, there's a first time for everything… I am convinced that the other houses' constant ostracising of the Slytherins is as much to blame for their reputation as their own behaviour is.
