This is going to be the most explicit out of all the chapters and even then it is incredibly mild, but nonetheless I shall add the following. Trigger Warning: A very vague allusion to rape at the end of the chapter. Nothing worse than this other than canonical violence in later chapters.
The general anticipation of the latest meeting of Dumbledore's Army could be felt all day. In the corridors and the great hall, a sense of excitement could be felt in the air. In addition, Seamus was being more than civil nowadays and they were considering letting him join.
All in all, life was good for Ron Weasley.
He was currently in the Room of Requirement with his two best friends planning the next lesson. So far, the room had provided targets and crash mats, while Hermione consulted the list of spells on the regular defence curriculum. Harry and Ron were flicking through the spellbooks for anything useful for a future meeting.
"If we focus on stunners today, when do you think we'll progress to cutting spells?"
Ron shrugged. "I dunno, but I think everyone's got the hang of disarming and shielding now, so it'll probably take a couple of weeks before they have stunners mastered."
"Oh good," said Hermione happily. "Then I should be able to schedule a lesson on conjuring a patronus in just over a month's time!"
"I think it takes more than a single lesson to produce a patronus, Hermione." Ron muttered. For anyone other than yourself anyway.
"Yeah, it does take a while to get the hang of it." Harry said, but he didn't appear to have fully heard the question. Actually, now that Ron came to think of it, he had been quite distant all day.
Hermione frowned in worry. Ron hadn't been the only one that noticed. "Are you sure that you're alright, Harry? Your scar isn't hurting again, is it?"
"Er, no?" Harry blinked in surprise. "What gave you that idea?"
"No offence, mate, but you've not exactly been acting yourself today." Ron stated. The fact that even he'd picked up on it was a bad sign. Harry hadn't exactly been having a great year what with Dumbledore ignoring him, Umbridge, Snape and his visions, but he wasn't normally this quiet around his friends. He was obviously trying to stop them worrying about anything.
Hermione straightened her stack of parchment in front of her. "If you aren't feeling up to it, we could always reschedule the DA meeting to another time, Harry. It would be inconvenient, but I'm sure the others would understand."
"What? No - don't cancel the meeting Hermione!" Harry sighed. "Look - promise you won't be angry with me?"
Well that sounded ominous.
"No promises, mate." Ron shook his head. Just what was his best friend about to tell him?
Hermione narrowed her eyes at both of them and dug her elbow into Ron's ribs. "Whatever it is, we'll be sure to listen." She assured their friend over Ron's yelp of pain.
"Well, I've invited someone new to the next meeting and I do trust her…" Harry trailed off, as if unsure how to continue.
Ron heard Hermione grind her teeth beside him. Were they going to have to drag this information out of him?
"My occlumency lessons with Snape haven't been going very well lately, so she's been offering to help, as we both hate him trying to rummage around in our heads-"
Ron exchanged a glance with his bushy-haired friend. Harry had never mentioned anyone other than Snape in his trips to the dungeons.
"-And she hates Umbridge as much as anyone else, so she wants to join the DA. She's not likely to side with Voldemort either - I don't think she cares about blood purity very much - but I don't know how the rest of the DA is going to react to her being here-"
"Harry," Hermione instructed. "Stop rambling. If you trust this girl then we do too. Although, you really should have kept learning from Snape."
"Yeah, but Snape's an evil git." Ron cut her off sensing a lecture coming on. "Pretty much anyone else would be better to teach him to defend his mind from You-Know-Who. Who is it anyway?"
Harry's shoulders slumped, like a great weight had been lifted from them. "Ellie's a first year, but she self-taught herself in both occlumency and legilimency. Snape was trying to give her lessons too, but she's already mastered anything he could possibly show her."
"A first year?" Hermione exclaimed. "But I thought…"
Ron shrugged. "Anyone's better than Snape and between you and me mate, I think this first year sounds way better than Snape."
"That's great!" Harry smiled. "I told her to turn up early, that way both of you can back me up when the rest of the DA arrives. She's probably waiting outside right now."
The three of them made their way to the door of the Room of Requirement, both Ron and Hermione shooting uncertain looks at each other. Hermione clutched the parchment listing the names of all the members of Dumbledore's Army to her chest, as if it would protect her from whatever was about to happen next.
Harry pushed open the door to the seventh floor corridor to reveal a girl who was far too tall to be a first year. What's more, she was wearing silver and green robes.
"Hey Ellie, meet my friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger."
As it turned out, Harry had not been kidding about the Slytherin.
Both Ron and Hermione fussed over that fact, but their friend remained resolute.
"You did promise," Harry reminded them when they tried to complain. Ron went rather red in the face and sent a pleading look to Hermione, asking her to somehow fix this.
Hermione didn't argue. Once she had gotten over her shock, she seemed determined to make sure that Ellie became a fully-fledged member of Dumbledore's Army before any of the others arrived.
"And now, if you would just sign your name on the parchment here..." Hermione shoved the list of names in the first year's face, fishing a quill and inkwell out of her bag. "I'll have your membership galleon sent to you sometime in the next week."
Ron just sat in the corner in disbelief, wondering if the entire world had gone mad. There was absolutely no way that girl was to be trusted. First, she was a horrible, slimy little Slytherin who had somehow tricked her way into gaining Harry's trust. Second, he had never seen her around the school before and 'Ellie' was far too tall to be a first year, as Harry claimed. It was probably a Death Eater in disguise. Or a polyjuiced Umbridge (and wasn't that a horrific image). Really, the newest member of the DA could be literally anyone.
The infiltrator in question was currently wearing a shy half-smile and seemed to be using Harry as a sort of human shield. Hermione's smile was rather fixed and Ron knew that the hand in her pocket was clutched tightly around her wand. In the middle of all this, Harry grinned obliviously, happy that at least one of his best friends appeared to be accepting of the Slytherin.
Grumbling about spies, snakes and stupidity, Ron was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost didn't realise that the other members of the DA had finally begun to arrive.
"What's the snake doing here?" Cho Chang demanded when the Ravenclaws entered.
Harry ran a hand through his already messy hair. "She's um, this is Ellie. She's a new member of the DA."
"That's ridiculous. I wouldn't have come here if I'd known that Slytherins would also be invited." Zacharias Smith sneered, his nose scrunched up as if he had smelled something particularly bad.
Ron glared, fists clenching. "Well not all of them are followers of You-Know-Who are they? Everyone here has been vouched for and isn't just going to run off to Umbridge, so what's your problem Smith?"
The two of them were currently inches apart, faces flushed with anger.
"I'd never thought I'd see you side with the snakes, Weasley." The Hufflepuff retorted.
It didn't matter that Ron hated Slytherins. He hated the little sneak who had somehow befriended his best mate. Yet none of that mattered when confronted with Zacharias Smith's entitled smirk. Ron hated that little prick. Both were now reaching for their wands.
"That's enough!"
A rather tall, brown-haired Slytherin stood between the two boys. Everyone inside the Room of Requirement turned to face her. "That's enough. I don't want anyone to fight because of me. I..."
She turned towards Harry, her face apologetic. "I knew your friends probably wouldn't accept me, but I didn't think it would be quite this bad. I'll leave now - I didn't mean to trouble you."
However, Elowen's escape route was blocked by a wall of bushy hair. Hermione held up the DA sign-up sheet.
"No one has to leave. We all joined in order to learn how to defend ourselves, we each signed our names and promised to keep a secret." She took a deep breath. "If anyone isn't happy with that, they are free to go, but they aren't going to tell anyone."
Zacharias Smith looked like he was going to leave for a second, as did a couple of the Ravenclaws, but when no one else moved they stayed put.
Harry clapped his hands together. "Well, now that that's sorted, I was thinking that we should focus on stunning this week..."
After the lesson, Ron and Hermione were taking down the targets, while Harry and Neville packed away the crash mats on the other side of the room. The lesson had been a huge success after the initial confrontation about their newest member; most people had just pretended to ignore the oversized first year, not wanting to acknowledge her.
"Would you like some help?" A small voice asked behind them.
Ron and Hermione glared at its source, turning away from the targets for a minute.
Since glaring had little-to-no effect, Ron made his voice as cold as his gaze. "Go away, Ellie."
"Sorry. I just, I just wanted to thank you both." She paused, uncertain. "You didn't have to stick up for me like that."
Hermione frowned. "We didn't do it for you."
There was a silence, filled with all the assorted things that the Gryffindors weren't saying. That girl really couldn't take a hint, could she?
"I-I know. I still wanted to thank you though." The Slytherin seemed to deflate in her robes. "I guess I'll see you around."
The two of them stared after her. Each lost in their own thoughts. "I don't trust her."
Ron snorted in agreement. "Me neither. I've got no idea what Harry sees in her."
"Good thing I hexed the parchment in case anyone betrayed us." Hermione murmured, causing Ron to blink in surprise at her admission. The whole hexed-parchment-thing made Hermione's eagerness for the Slytherin to sign up make a lot more sense. Ron was just a little scared of his friend sometimes.
Hermione's face continued to darken, as Neville and Harry finished up tidying their half of the room. "Although I doubt that's the last we'll see of dearest 'Ellie'."
Since Trelawney's sacking, Umbridge had been gearing up for something big. Ron and half the school were anxiously holding their collective breaths, waiting for what she would do next.
"It's probably going to be evil." Hermione remarked from beneath her usual mountain of books. "She's a vile, selfish, control-freak of a woman, of course she's going to retaliate with something big."
Ron shrugged and mumbled an agreement, knowing that his bushy haired friend was building up to a full-blown rant. Harry was currently having his usual detention (read: torture) session with Umbridge, leaving him alone with Hermione only eight weeks before exams.
"I mean, some of the degrees she has already enforced are entirely deplorable," Hermione continued. "She's actually trying to ruin our education and I haven't studied enough as it is!"
Picking up his quill, Ron nodded sympathetically and decided to attempt his Transfiguration homework. Long experience had taught him that there was nothing he could do except wait for his passionate friend to finish. In the meantime, he would try and tune out her increasingly shrill voice.
"-and speaking of evil! Ron, look who just walked past!"
Ron raised his head at Hermione's suddenly hushed voice. There were few things that could distract her mid-Umbridge-rant.
Between the bookshelves of the library, a rather tall girl in green robes was lurking. Her fingers skimmed the spines of each tome, as though carefully reading each one, but her proximity to them could hardly be a coincidence.
"Oy, Snake!" Ron called out. "Trying to sneak up on us were you?"
The first year turned, no surprise shown on her face. Ron scowled; she'd obviously been trying to listen in.
"Of course not," she denied, her tone expressionless.
Hermione frowned at the younger girl. "Unlikely. I don't know what you want with Harry, but eavesdropping on our conversations isn't going to please him."
Facial expression unchanging, the girl looked blankly at them. No indignation, no pleading denial or shame at being caught. "I was not trying to eavesdrop. I was merely searching for a book."
"In the family history and law section?" Hermione raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
"Yes," Elowen stated. "I'm doing some research."
Ron snorted. Who actually did extracurricular research other than Hermione and Ravenclaws?
Scowling, Hermione turned away from her mountain of books, folding her arms. "Oh really. Then just what are you studying?"
Behind his Transfiguration homework, Ron gave a small smirk. Whatever the Slytherin was going to say, he knew that Hermione was going to rip her to shreds. No one could stand up to her temper when she was in full lecture-mode.
"Muggleborns." Replied Elowen simply, ignoring the confused looks of the two fifth years. "My father doesn't believe in them, you see."
"B-b-but that's ridiculous!" Ron spluttered. Stupid Slytherins and their stupid Death Eater parents. It's not like they're wrackspurts or anything.
Hermione meanwhile had gone a shade of fuchsia and did not yet seem capable of speech.
When Elowen did not elaborate further and turned towards the bookshelves again, Ron felt the urgent need to interrupt her. "How can someone be so conceited as to believe muggleborns don't exist? It's kinda obvious that they do!"
Beside him, Hermione's face had regained some of its usual colour, but she didn't appear ready to speak just yet.
"Well," Elowen began with a sigh. "His logic is that magic has to come from somewhere and it is rather worrying that the wizarding world has such a thing as a memory charm, but not a contraceptive charm, isn't it?"
"That can't be right," Hermione told her. "There's theories that muggleborns are descended from magic, but nothing I've ever read has suggested... that can't be right."
She pushed the first year aside and rapidly began to pull books from the shelves, the manic focus of a person possessed. Ron swept his Transfiguration homework to the side to make room for Hermione's new books. By the time he had looked back, the first year had gone.