It was confusing in the extreme for the Marauders when their teachers stopped being affected by their comments. James was even held back once for Harry to ask him solemnly, "One big diamond or lots of little ones? Gold or platinum?"

Even Remus was at loss. How on earth could he formulate plans centered round a pair like that?

Harry, however, was getting less and less concerned by small matters such as matchmaking. Voldemort was clearly campaigning to display his power, and the wizarding world was feeling the effects. He sat down to breakfast one morning to find a headline screaming out of the Daily Prophet's front page.

YOU-KNOW-WHO'S POWER RISING – OVER A THOUSAND DEAD!

The Minister of Magic announced the current overall Death Toll of the victims of this war, which stands at:

637 muggles dead

394 half-blood/muggle borns dead

73 purebloods dead

812 muggles injured

491 half blood/muggleborns injured

157 purebloods injured

This cold-blooded massacre has continued since last January, and the situation was formally declared 'critical' in June. After announcing the above numbers, the Minister then issued the following statement;

"I beg that you all continue to play your parts with calmness and courage. Aurors, Hit Wizards and volunteers carry on reporting for duty in accordance with the orders they have received. It is vital, particularly in light of recent events that you should all carry on with your jobs. If you allow even more damage and disruption than has already been caused, then He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has already won. May the light be with us all, and let us live on the hope that She will prevail."

Owls began arriving to students every day, bearing terrible news of death, injury and torture. It became common for people to run sobbing from the breakfast table. The student's faces were permanently pale.

In early November, the Death Toll had risen to over two thousand. Harry began to grow desperate. During breakfast one morning, after watching Isabella Hatfield burst into tears at the written news of a dead cousin, he leant towards Ginny and muttered in her ear, "Gin, it's time to bring the DA to 1977."

ß

The following evening, a notice went up in all the Common Rooms, cleverly charmed to be visible only to those who wished to help the Light.

LEARN TO HONE YOUR DEFENCE SKILLS!

PUT THEM INTO PRACTISE!

LEARN SOME STRATEGY!

JOIN THE WAR EFFORT!

WE ARE AT WAR. A NEW DEFENCE CLUB IS NOW IN PLAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS AND CHANCES. SIGN UP HERE. OPEN TO ALL YEARS.

ß

All of Gryffindor signed up, and most of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Even a good handful of Slytherins put their names forward. They turned up surly faced, expecting to be treated suspiciously, but were instead welcomed with big smiles by the two instructors. Harry strode to the front of the room, of which he had cleared of chairs, desks and other furniture.

"Right. The first thing I want to say is that in this club, I am not Professor Potter, I'm Harry, and the same goes for Ginny. Welcome to the Defence Association, a club we have formed to help you put your Defence Against the Dark Arts skills into practice, so they'll actually be of use to you when the time should arise for you to use them. First through to third years, we'll meet on Saturdays at four thirty. We'll be teaching that group how to behave in a situation in which you are under attack, and will be basically self-defence. They can all go now, and I'll see you on Saturday" he added. As the bottom three years filed out, he turned to face the rest of the students.

"You will all be learning a multitude of things. First, we're going to work on your basic dueling technique, and how to adapt to your opponent. In a couple of months, we'll be holding a friendly tournament to put your skills to the test."

An excited chatter broke out, but was quickly silenced by Harry simply raising his hand.

"Thank you. After doing this, we will be focusing more on military type scenarios, which will be accentuated by a series of mock battles. Any questions?"

There was a pause, but then Alice Brown raised a hand. Harry nodded at her.

"How will this differ from normal Defence?"

Harry considered for a second.

"Good point. In this club we will be putting more emphasis on working as a team, and each of us having our parts to play. For an instance, we will be helping those of us who are skilled at strategy to extend on that. Those of us who are good healers to help us to heal. Essentially, the whole thing is more like an army."

He paused, as if in the throngs of some memory, but after a moment seemed to slide back into focus.

"First off, I want you to practice disarming each other. And don't look at me like that," he added, seeing the looks of scorn and disappointment on the assembled faces, "That spell has saved me against Voldemort himself, not to mention scores of Death Eaters."

He rolled his eyes at the compulsory gasp-and-shudder at Voldemort's name.

"Oh, for Gods sake, it's a NAME! Don't fear the bloody name, fear the man! If you can call him that, which personally I don't."

He snorted, but then looked around. "What are you waiting for? Pair up and practice Expelliarmus!"

Hurriedly, the two hundred or so students that were crowded at the front of the room separated out into pairs.

Harry and Ginny wandered in between the couples, amazed to be correcting some of the most basic mistakes.

"Stand side-on," Ginny explained to Frank Longbottom, "If you face them like that, then you're presenting a much larger target. And loosen up your wand arm, you need to allow for more movement."

Harry could already see the Auror in the seventeen year old, the quick reflexes, the fluid movements. Yes, it was easy to believe that the boy would become one of the finest of his profession. Alice was showing potential too, not quite as clearly as Frank, but still fairly strong.

Lily Evans seemed to put an unusual amount of power into every spell she cast. Remus had told Harry that Lily had been an incredibly powerful witch, and someone as attuned as Harry could clearly feel the magical tremors that she caused. He could well believe that this was the same woman who had faced Voldemort defiant.

ß

Harry sat once again on the couch in his privet sitting room. The DA meeting had certainly been interesting, but it had pulled back painful memories of the first, or was it the second DA. Most of them had died in the final battle, defending the castle. Only a few had survived.

Lavender, the Patil sisters, the Creevy brothers, Hannah Abbot, Ernie Macmillan, Terry Boot, Justin Finch-Fletchey, Susan Bones.

Cho Chang and her friend Marietta in one of the earlier DA battles, along with Zacharias Smith.

Dead. All of them.

Really, there had been just a handful of the DA left, Neville, Seamus, Dean, Michael Corner, Ginny, Ron and Hermione.

It was a war for Gods Sake. Children don't belong in a war…

No, they hadn't been children, he corrected himself. Not most of them at any rate, but Dennis. He was fourteen, for the Love of God.

Only fourteen bloody years old, to die defending.

It shouldn't have been their war to fight. Leave it all to the grown ups.

He scoffed.

Yeah, because that really got us somewhere.

What he hated most was that he could just reel their names off. So much death that you could just list the fallen. In the aftermath of the final battle, it had really been easier to just count the living.

Oookay, A/N coming up...

the speech that the minister gave was based on the speech given on the British wireless by neville chamberlain during WW2.

Thanks to my shiny new beta, bobkat2007!

Uh, next chapter will be up some time in the next few days. I can't believe I've hit the 20 chapter mark!