OR DIE TRYING: CHO CHANG'S SIXTH YEAR
By monkeymouse
NB: JKRowling built the Potterverse; I'm just redecorating one of the rooms. And one of the great things about JKR telling the story from Harry's point of view is that stuff could be happening all over Hogwarts that Harry isn't aware of.
Rated: PG
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
15. The DA
The wizarding world chose to keep itself apart from Muggle society, and vice versa, for a number of reasons, and one reason was because each world had done things that the other might find foolhardy, if not downright dangerous. When Muggles spoke of witches and wizards, they would dwell on spells gone wrong or maleficent demons summoned up from Hell Itself. Magical folk similarly dwelt on those Muggles who, for the benefit of humankind, had developed guns capable of firing 1,500 bullets per minute or released clouds of toxic gas, killing thousands at one go.
Of course, for each fearful action on either side, there were dozens that were little worse than folly, and either side could laugh at itself over these miscalculations. There was, for example, the wizard known to history as Barnabas the Barmy, whose love of the theater in the Age of Elizabeth led to the act of foolishness for which he is remembered to this day: trying to teach ballet to trolls, in the mistaken belief that it might stimulate their intelligence and raise them above their vicious and warlike states.
The results of that mistake were on display on the seventh floor of Hogwarts castle, where a tapestry showed the corps de ballet expressing its appreciation of Barnabas' efforts by clubbing him without mercy. This was the tapestry Ginny Weasley had told Cho Chang to look for in order to find their first round of independent study in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
"Can't imagine what she's playing at," huffed Marietta Edgecombe as the two Ravenclaw Sixth Years finally reached the seventh floor and stopped to catch their breath. There were two staircases down from that floor, one at either end of the corridor, and because they hadn't seen other students making the climb, they were afraid that this was all some elaborate hoax.
"There's the tapestry," Cho pointed, "but I don't recall a classroom..." Cho's voice trailed off as she looked across from the tapestry at a door she was sure hadn't been there before.
xxx
Two hours later, Cho was sitting at her writing desk, a fresh scroll laid out in front of her. She'd finished an essay for Binns on how the Dementors came into being, but she felt that she couldn't sleep without taking a few notes.
She picked up her quill, set it down again, picked it up and set it down three times before she realized her nervousness was due to fear that someone might read her notes. She would have to write something, but also protect it as best she could. After pondering the problem a minute, she Transfigured her quill into a brush, and began writing notes in Chinese:
"Room--good point!"
And it was, Cho thought. She had never seen that classroom before, for whatever reason--she had accepted long ago that, despite the thickness of "Hogwarts--A History," the castle did not give up its secrets easily. But one could not ask for a better classroom for Defense Against the Dark Arts.
It was large, certainly large enough for the almost thirty students who were there tonight, with room for them to break up into practice pairs. There were no writing desks or benches; instead, the floor was almost covered with large cushions. The walls were lined with shelves, and, except for one set at the far end of the room which held odd little machines (which Cho was sure Harry would explain about and allow them to use at some point in the future), the shelves were full of books: old and new, large and small, even some titles which Cho had seen in the Restricted section of the library, but all of them devoted to the Dark Arts and how to defend against them.
At first, Cho was a bit nervous about some of the Restricted titles; she knew that the school would have limited their circulation for a reason. However, no sooner had she thought this than one of the younger students--a girl named Hannah Abbott--pulled a Restricted title from the shelf: "Unto the Fourth Generation: Coping with Really Long-Lasting Hexes." When she tried to open it, though, the book, instead of shrieking like the library's Restricted volumes, simply said, "Not old enough, dearie."
Nice to know he's looking out after our well-being, Cho smiled as she wrote, "Library--very good point."
"Group Name--" She hesitated before finishing the entry: "sort of good point." Cho felt proud of herself for proposing the name "Defense Association;" it explained the group's purpose in a general way, and the initials could stand for "Dark Arts," which they were there to study about anyway. But then the Weasley girl pointed out that the name could also stand for "Dumbledore's Army," and Granger wrote that down at once. Absurd, Cho thought; Dumbledore was nowhere near the room, and might not even approve of what they were doing if he knew. It was petty, she knew, but it was why she didn't vote for the name. And Granger seemed to take some sort of satisfaction that Weasley's name had been chosen over Cho's...
"Disarming Spell--good point." Good enough to begin with, certainly, regardless of what that noisy Zacharias Smith thought. If it was simple but still effective against Voldemort, as Harry said, so much the better. And there was no certainty that any of them would actually have to face down Voldemort anyway; maybe just a couple of his followers, with no heightened powers to speak of--she hoped...
"Students--" She had to stop and think for a minute. "Not enough Ravenclaws--bad point."
We're supposed to be the smart ones, she thought. Why aren't there more of us who know that Voldemort is back and want to do something about it? I mean, I sort of had to drag Marietta along, and Luna Lovegood was, well, just being Luna, sort-of being there and not being there at the same time; and that other boy--what's his name? Corner?--I think young Weasley dragged him along. They're both Fourth Year, I think. They looked as if they might be, well, involved...
"Zacharias Smith--very bad point!" I mean, who did he think he was, anyway? Always finding fault with anything Harry tried to tell us. Even at the Hog's Head meeting, he was the same. Unbelievable that he's a Hufflepuff. He hardly deserves to be in the same House with Cedric--
Cho caught herself. Heavenly Emperor, what am I doing? I've never thought of Cedric as if he was still alive. I know he's dead; why did I forget it just now? This can't be good...
"Harry--" No hesitation this time: with a smile and a blush, she finished the line.
"Harry--very good point!"
But she immediately added another line.
"Me--very bad point!"
She set the quill down and remembered how she tried and tried to master the Expelliarmus, but seemed to get toungue-tied if Harry was observing her. She thought she had understood the wand movements and the words--they seemed simple enough--and had made them work on Marietta once or twice when the group had paired off for practice. But then Harry started pacing around the room, and Cho kept watch out of the corner of her eye, rather than concentrating on the spell. He seemed to want to inspect all the others first, sometimes seeming to walk toward Cho and Marietta only to turn away and watch someone else, as if he was nervous about being near her. But the longer Harry took to get to her, the more nervous she got.
She was sure that he was going to finally get to her when he had to stop and reprimand the Weasley twins for interfering with Zacharias Smith's practice--not that Smith didn't deserve it, but this is serious, Cho thought at the time. Our lives could depend on this! She let Marietta Disarm her for a while, but she seemed to master it quickly; it was Cho who was having trouble and needed the practice.
So it was that, after watching Weasley and Corner Disarm each other yet again, Harry turned toward Cho, who had been thinking once again not about the Disarming Spell but about how Ginny Weasley could come up with a silly name like "Dumbledore's Army." Which was why, when Harry stepped closer and closer, Cho, instead of saying "Expelliarmus!", which should have Disarmed Marietta, instead said "Expelli-Army-ous!" Which did nothing at all.
No! This was as embarrassing as Harry in the carriage in September, getting sprayed with the Mimbulus. Cho tried again, "I mean, Expellimelius!" Before she could try a third time, though, Marietta's wand-arm sleeve burst into flame.
Cho was frozen in embarrassment; Marietta put out the flames herself. She tried to tell Harry that she wasn't usually so bad at it, that he made her nervous; he tried to say at first that she was quite good, which even she refused to swallow; she looked at him in disbelief, he admitted she was terrible but made a joke of it, while Cho laughed nervously. Marietta, who seemed bothered by Harry, moved away from them. They talked for a bit about Marietta, about Cho standing up to her parents because of Cedric...
His name was out of Cho's mouth before she realized it. She remembered from the Hog's Head meeting that Cedric's death was a sore point with Harry. She stood there, nervously afraid to say anything else, and so apparently did Harry, and it might have stayed that way if Luna Lovegood hadn't started to tell Harry some of her father's theories about the Ministry of Magic--Quizzler rubbish about assassinations and poisons and whatnot. Cho had started to challenge Luna about all that when Harry whispered, "Don't ask." Harry was right, of course; Cho shouldn't take Luna so seriously, and she found herself giggling out of relief.
Of course, just then, class ended. Harry didn't just let everyone leave at once, however; he used an enchanted map of Hogwarts that showed who was where, and sent them off in groups of three or four. Cho was fascinated by the map and watched Harry refer to it a few times before he sent all of the Ravenclaws off at once, returning to their tower in the west wing.
The feelings of mistrust--that somehow Umbridge would hear or see whatever happened in Hogwarts--were still so thick at Hogwarts that none of the four spoke until they were at the tapestry and Marietta had given the password ("avuncular"). Once they were in the Common Room, Marietta muttered, "I'm not going back next Wednesday."
"But you should!" Cho urged her as they climbed the stairs to their dormitory. "You were very good, you know."
"I suppose," Marietta admitted.
"You are," Cho repeated; "I'm not making this up!"
As they got to the top of the stairs, Marietta sort of shrugged. "Well, I would like to do something with my life that isn't just about running the Floo Network. Something more active."
Cho smiled to herself now as she finished her scroll, then reduced it to the size of a Muggle postage-stamp and hid it inside Slinkhard. Finally, she thought, there'll be something between the book covers worth reading.
xxx
to be continued in part 16, wherein the DA meetings continue successfully but the first Quidditch match of the season ends in disaster...
By monkeymouse
NB: JKRowling built the Potterverse; I'm just redecorating one of the rooms. And one of the great things about JKR telling the story from Harry's point of view is that stuff could be happening all over Hogwarts that Harry isn't aware of.
Rated: PG
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
15. The DA
The wizarding world chose to keep itself apart from Muggle society, and vice versa, for a number of reasons, and one reason was because each world had done things that the other might find foolhardy, if not downright dangerous. When Muggles spoke of witches and wizards, they would dwell on spells gone wrong or maleficent demons summoned up from Hell Itself. Magical folk similarly dwelt on those Muggles who, for the benefit of humankind, had developed guns capable of firing 1,500 bullets per minute or released clouds of toxic gas, killing thousands at one go.
Of course, for each fearful action on either side, there were dozens that were little worse than folly, and either side could laugh at itself over these miscalculations. There was, for example, the wizard known to history as Barnabas the Barmy, whose love of the theater in the Age of Elizabeth led to the act of foolishness for which he is remembered to this day: trying to teach ballet to trolls, in the mistaken belief that it might stimulate their intelligence and raise them above their vicious and warlike states.
The results of that mistake were on display on the seventh floor of Hogwarts castle, where a tapestry showed the corps de ballet expressing its appreciation of Barnabas' efforts by clubbing him without mercy. This was the tapestry Ginny Weasley had told Cho Chang to look for in order to find their first round of independent study in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
"Can't imagine what she's playing at," huffed Marietta Edgecombe as the two Ravenclaw Sixth Years finally reached the seventh floor and stopped to catch their breath. There were two staircases down from that floor, one at either end of the corridor, and because they hadn't seen other students making the climb, they were afraid that this was all some elaborate hoax.
"There's the tapestry," Cho pointed, "but I don't recall a classroom..." Cho's voice trailed off as she looked across from the tapestry at a door she was sure hadn't been there before.
xxx
Two hours later, Cho was sitting at her writing desk, a fresh scroll laid out in front of her. She'd finished an essay for Binns on how the Dementors came into being, but she felt that she couldn't sleep without taking a few notes.
She picked up her quill, set it down again, picked it up and set it down three times before she realized her nervousness was due to fear that someone might read her notes. She would have to write something, but also protect it as best she could. After pondering the problem a minute, she Transfigured her quill into a brush, and began writing notes in Chinese:
"Room--good point!"
And it was, Cho thought. She had never seen that classroom before, for whatever reason--she had accepted long ago that, despite the thickness of "Hogwarts--A History," the castle did not give up its secrets easily. But one could not ask for a better classroom for Defense Against the Dark Arts.
It was large, certainly large enough for the almost thirty students who were there tonight, with room for them to break up into practice pairs. There were no writing desks or benches; instead, the floor was almost covered with large cushions. The walls were lined with shelves, and, except for one set at the far end of the room which held odd little machines (which Cho was sure Harry would explain about and allow them to use at some point in the future), the shelves were full of books: old and new, large and small, even some titles which Cho had seen in the Restricted section of the library, but all of them devoted to the Dark Arts and how to defend against them.
At first, Cho was a bit nervous about some of the Restricted titles; she knew that the school would have limited their circulation for a reason. However, no sooner had she thought this than one of the younger students--a girl named Hannah Abbott--pulled a Restricted title from the shelf: "Unto the Fourth Generation: Coping with Really Long-Lasting Hexes." When she tried to open it, though, the book, instead of shrieking like the library's Restricted volumes, simply said, "Not old enough, dearie."
Nice to know he's looking out after our well-being, Cho smiled as she wrote, "Library--very good point."
"Group Name--" She hesitated before finishing the entry: "sort of good point." Cho felt proud of herself for proposing the name "Defense Association;" it explained the group's purpose in a general way, and the initials could stand for "Dark Arts," which they were there to study about anyway. But then the Weasley girl pointed out that the name could also stand for "Dumbledore's Army," and Granger wrote that down at once. Absurd, Cho thought; Dumbledore was nowhere near the room, and might not even approve of what they were doing if he knew. It was petty, she knew, but it was why she didn't vote for the name. And Granger seemed to take some sort of satisfaction that Weasley's name had been chosen over Cho's...
"Disarming Spell--good point." Good enough to begin with, certainly, regardless of what that noisy Zacharias Smith thought. If it was simple but still effective against Voldemort, as Harry said, so much the better. And there was no certainty that any of them would actually have to face down Voldemort anyway; maybe just a couple of his followers, with no heightened powers to speak of--she hoped...
"Students--" She had to stop and think for a minute. "Not enough Ravenclaws--bad point."
We're supposed to be the smart ones, she thought. Why aren't there more of us who know that Voldemort is back and want to do something about it? I mean, I sort of had to drag Marietta along, and Luna Lovegood was, well, just being Luna, sort-of being there and not being there at the same time; and that other boy--what's his name? Corner?--I think young Weasley dragged him along. They're both Fourth Year, I think. They looked as if they might be, well, involved...
"Zacharias Smith--very bad point!" I mean, who did he think he was, anyway? Always finding fault with anything Harry tried to tell us. Even at the Hog's Head meeting, he was the same. Unbelievable that he's a Hufflepuff. He hardly deserves to be in the same House with Cedric--
Cho caught herself. Heavenly Emperor, what am I doing? I've never thought of Cedric as if he was still alive. I know he's dead; why did I forget it just now? This can't be good...
"Harry--" No hesitation this time: with a smile and a blush, she finished the line.
"Harry--very good point!"
But she immediately added another line.
"Me--very bad point!"
She set the quill down and remembered how she tried and tried to master the Expelliarmus, but seemed to get toungue-tied if Harry was observing her. She thought she had understood the wand movements and the words--they seemed simple enough--and had made them work on Marietta once or twice when the group had paired off for practice. But then Harry started pacing around the room, and Cho kept watch out of the corner of her eye, rather than concentrating on the spell. He seemed to want to inspect all the others first, sometimes seeming to walk toward Cho and Marietta only to turn away and watch someone else, as if he was nervous about being near her. But the longer Harry took to get to her, the more nervous she got.
She was sure that he was going to finally get to her when he had to stop and reprimand the Weasley twins for interfering with Zacharias Smith's practice--not that Smith didn't deserve it, but this is serious, Cho thought at the time. Our lives could depend on this! She let Marietta Disarm her for a while, but she seemed to master it quickly; it was Cho who was having trouble and needed the practice.
So it was that, after watching Weasley and Corner Disarm each other yet again, Harry turned toward Cho, who had been thinking once again not about the Disarming Spell but about how Ginny Weasley could come up with a silly name like "Dumbledore's Army." Which was why, when Harry stepped closer and closer, Cho, instead of saying "Expelliarmus!", which should have Disarmed Marietta, instead said "Expelli-Army-ous!" Which did nothing at all.
No! This was as embarrassing as Harry in the carriage in September, getting sprayed with the Mimbulus. Cho tried again, "I mean, Expellimelius!" Before she could try a third time, though, Marietta's wand-arm sleeve burst into flame.
Cho was frozen in embarrassment; Marietta put out the flames herself. She tried to tell Harry that she wasn't usually so bad at it, that he made her nervous; he tried to say at first that she was quite good, which even she refused to swallow; she looked at him in disbelief, he admitted she was terrible but made a joke of it, while Cho laughed nervously. Marietta, who seemed bothered by Harry, moved away from them. They talked for a bit about Marietta, about Cho standing up to her parents because of Cedric...
His name was out of Cho's mouth before she realized it. She remembered from the Hog's Head meeting that Cedric's death was a sore point with Harry. She stood there, nervously afraid to say anything else, and so apparently did Harry, and it might have stayed that way if Luna Lovegood hadn't started to tell Harry some of her father's theories about the Ministry of Magic--Quizzler rubbish about assassinations and poisons and whatnot. Cho had started to challenge Luna about all that when Harry whispered, "Don't ask." Harry was right, of course; Cho shouldn't take Luna so seriously, and she found herself giggling out of relief.
Of course, just then, class ended. Harry didn't just let everyone leave at once, however; he used an enchanted map of Hogwarts that showed who was where, and sent them off in groups of three or four. Cho was fascinated by the map and watched Harry refer to it a few times before he sent all of the Ravenclaws off at once, returning to their tower in the west wing.
The feelings of mistrust--that somehow Umbridge would hear or see whatever happened in Hogwarts--were still so thick at Hogwarts that none of the four spoke until they were at the tapestry and Marietta had given the password ("avuncular"). Once they were in the Common Room, Marietta muttered, "I'm not going back next Wednesday."
"But you should!" Cho urged her as they climbed the stairs to their dormitory. "You were very good, you know."
"I suppose," Marietta admitted.
"You are," Cho repeated; "I'm not making this up!"
As they got to the top of the stairs, Marietta sort of shrugged. "Well, I would like to do something with my life that isn't just about running the Floo Network. Something more active."
Cho smiled to herself now as she finished her scroll, then reduced it to the size of a Muggle postage-stamp and hid it inside Slinkhard. Finally, she thought, there'll be something between the book covers worth reading.
xxx
to be continued in part 16, wherein the DA meetings continue successfully but the first Quidditch match of the season ends in disaster...