Chapter 36 (Alternatively, Chapter 1 of the spin-off series: Parvati Patil and the Rise of Punisher)
Parvati and Padma went home the day after Dumbledore's funeral.
The Hogwarts Express was far more somber than usual, obviously. Parvati pretty much just slept the whole way.
Their mother picked them up at the station and together they apparated to their home outside Finchingfield.
Dinner conversation was subdued that night. Parvati merely picked at her food.
"Why the long face, Parvati?" asked her mother.
"She's missing her boyfriend," teased Padma.
"Shut up."
"Boyfriend? What boyfriend?"
Mother's defense mechanisms were activated.
"It's that Ziad chap from last summer- remember him?" said Padma.
"Ooh... Didn't he get blown up?"
"Yeah. He's alive, though. Obviously."
"Of course..."
The conversation came to an awkward halt. They finished the meal, cleaned up, and went to their respective duties.
Parvati went to her room, got out her CD player, and put in her favorite CD.
Contamination by Belgian aggrotech group Suicide Commando.
Five minutes before midnight, Parvati stepped outside and sat on the front steps of her house.
She waited for the next two hours, dozing off occasionally.
Ziad didn't show up.
"Damn..." she whispered to herself.
She decided to take things into her own hands. She thought to herself- where would Ziad make a base of operations?
The answer was immediate and obvious. Shlomi's house in Jerusalem.
So, since she had yet to master apparating, Parvati quickly made a portkey and was whisked away to Shlomi's house in Jerusalem.
Fortunately for her, she was seventeen so no alarms were raised at the use of magic.
Parvati stared at the house. It had... changed... a lot... since she had last been there. It had been stripped of furniture and useless items and filled with racks of guns, boxes of bullets, crates of explosives, rocket launchers, anti-air cannons, anti-tank missiles and launchers, and just about any military accoutrement that could possibly be stuffed into a house.
There was also extensive literature on the use of all the weapons she could find.
One book within arm's reach was a book titled "The Use and Care of the RPG-22 Anti-Tank Rocket-Launcher: Translated by Cpt. Jonathan Banks, US Army Intelligence."
Underneath that book sat "The Use and Care of the PKM general-purpose machine gun: Translated by Cpt. Jonathan Banks, US Army Intelligence."
Captain Jonathan Banks's work occupied quite a lot of the bookshelves that still remained, and Parvati saw books on everything from the Makarov pistol to the KSVK anti-materiel rifle to the DshK heavy machine-gun.
If Parvati had actually known what any of that meant, she would have probably been a lot happier at the huge array of weapons that surrounded her. She grabbed a handful of the books and stuffed them in a duffel bag.
If she was going to start a revolution, she might as well be well-read on how to do that.
She also grabbed a few books about guerilla warfare, espionage, and history. She intended to be a good revolutionary, because bad revolutionaries always die horribly.
Without anything else to occupy her time, Parvati plowed through a dozen training manuals and other useful books in a week. A dozen more were consumed the next week, and within a month she had read every book in Shlomi's house.
Then she started learning how to apply that knowledge.
She cleaned an example of each of the guns in the house before taking them out to a desolate part of the Maghreb desert in Northern Africa and teaching herself how to shoot each and every one of the weapons in Shlomi's house.
Learning how to fire a rocket-launcher was way scarier than she could have imagined.
Let me just say that it's really really important to figure out which end is the front end.
Another important thing Parvati learned is she definitely wanted to use a thermobaric weapon against her enemies.
Her reasoning? This quotation from one of her books.
"The kill mechanisms against living targets is unique- and unpleasant. What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction which ruptures the lungs. If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common thermobaric fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated thermobaric explosives should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical agents."
Delicious. She also discovered that a thermobaric explosive would be perfect for usage within Hogwarts castle itself. Why? Again, let us refer to the experts:
"The effect of a Thermobaric explosion within confined spaces is immense. Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness."
Parvati began actually looking forward to the start of the revolution.
She had a sudden realization that summer: If the wizards ever went to war against the muggles, the wizards would be absolutely annihilated. While the most dangerous curse the wizards had meant the death of one man, the most dangerous "curse" the muggles had meant the deaths of millions and the utter destruction of a city.
By late July she had become fairly competent in the care and usage of all of the guns. Except the really big ones she couldn't carry. But, Parvati reasoned, the really big ones wouldn't be much use in guerilla warfare anyway.
She had begun packing a bag of things she would bring to Hogwarts, which included a number of weapons and a few pounds of C4 explosive.
The bit she liked the most, however, was what took up most of the bag.
An RPO-A Shmel. It fired a 2.1 kg thermobaric rocket.
She couldn't wait to use it.
At long last, the first of september arrived.
Parvati's trunk was significantly heavier than Padma's, and her family just couldn't figure out why.
Author's Note:
It's a bit short, I know. But that's what happened. So deal.
Hogwarts is going to start looking a lot more like Chechnya now. Dumbledore's Army was a pitiful attempt at guerilla warfare.
Please.
Parvati's Army will be far more effective.