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The swooshing, whistling sound of over 50 owls soaring over the house tables filled the great hall. A jolt of excitement ran through me as I looked up to see three owls gliding our way, tightly furled scrolls of parchment clutched in their beaks, our new timetables!
My owl came to a halt to land gracefully on my outstretched arm. It held out its leg for me to remove its burden then took the toast crust I offered it and flew beautifully out of the hall. I opened the parchment quickly then glanced around to see whether Harry, Ron and Ginny had got theirs yet. Ginny and Harry were both reading theirs with identical delighted smiles whereas Ron was attempting to dry his by wafting it around and spraying orange juice on all of us. Apparently Ron hadn't noticed the owl soaring towards him and had moved his arm out of the way so that the poor beast had continued to fly along and had collided with his glass of orange juice! I burst out laughing and reached for the piece of parchment in his hands. Waving my wand to create a cascade of glittering silver sparks that showed it with magic I handed it back, good as new.
"Thanks Hermione! What would we do without you!" He exclaimed looking relieved.
"Go around with a soaking, unreadable timetable obviously." I replied grinning. Suddenly I realized that I was still holding my timetable. Looking down at it I smiled, there were a few obvious differences that jumped out at me straight away. Firstly that there were, obviously quite a lot of lessons missing. These had, however been replaced by several different classes. The remaining lessons were: Defense Against the Dark Arts (of course!), Charms, Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures (to be taught by Firenze) and DA. The final subject made me laugh.
"The DA! She used our original name, that's great!" Harry grinned at me.
"Well it's us that are going to be teaching it so she said I could chose the name and , of course, it had to be DA." He replied through a mouthful of toast.
"What exactly are we going to be teaching?" interjected Ron.
"Well, it's sort of like Defense Against the Dark Arts really. That's Lupin's job obviously, but we'll be talking about our own experiences with Voldemort. We'll also be teaching them spells that we found particularly useful and just generally giving them tips on how to survive. I also think that we should give them information on the young Voldemort, obviously not about his Horcruxes but enough so that they can at least try to understand him, without that understanding, they don't stand a chance against him and his followers.
There will also be members of the Order coming in to give us updates on his movements and as much of his plans that we know. This however has diminished an awful lot due to Snape revealing his true colours; unfortunately we now have no spies inside Voldemort's ranks. Without Dumbledore this war seems unwinnable, I just hope to god that I'm wrong."
Harry was looking very worried, his bright green eyes were filled with pain, regret and a desperate hopelessness.
"Hey! If we just sit here with no hope then we definitely can't win but that's why all these people came back: to help. Now we've got to help them by showing them that there is hope. We will win this thing, a positive outlook works wonders!" Everyone laughed a feeling of sudden hope and happiness filling up the empty space where, just a moment before, dark and deadly thoughts of loss, anger and grief had ruled.
Trust Ginny to bring us back down with a laugh, that's one of the best things about the new arrangements here, all of us have classes together. That is, me Ginny, Harry and Ron, we're in all the same classes for everything. I suppose now there's so few of us there can't be many classes. I think there's only going to be about three at any one time.
I glanced at the others thinking we really should get a move on, we don't want to be late for our first lesson now do we!
"Don't you think we should…"
"I'm way ahead of you 'Mione, we've got a free period first!" Ron was grinning like a nutter.
"Oh." I glanced down at my timetable to see that Ron was indeed correct. "So we have." I guess my disappointment must have shown in my voice because Ginny looked up from her own timetable with an evil grin.
"Well Hermione don't you agree that this is the perfect time to go for a spot of Quidditch practice? Seeing as there's so few of us now don't you reckon that you should have a go too?"
"What? No I erm… I have to go plan out our first lesson!" a smiled in a relieved sort of way across the table, anything to get out of Quidditch, I hate it!
Outside the great hall we all walked up to the common room; Harry, Ron and Ginny then continued up to their dormitories to change into their Quidditch stuff and collect their broomsticks. I on the other hand settled down in front of the fire and pulled out some parchment, a quill and some deep violet ink.
"Hermione! You're not really going to spend our first free period of the year writing out lesson plans are you? Come down and watch us, you don't have to fly!" Ginny was standing behind me a broomstick held in her hand with her long curly red hair clashing horribly with the scarlet of her Gryffindor Qiudditch robes. I laughed and stood up, packing my things back into my bag.
"I guess it couldn't hurt… wait a bit will you? I'll be down in a minute." I ran upstairs and deposited my bag, spinning on the spot I scurried over to my trunk to shove it open and grab my scarf, hat and gloves. Hey, it was cold out there and I knew how long they'd be playing for! Quickly pushing it closed I made it down the stairs in record time to find Harry and Ron grinning at me from either side of Ginny.
Ron pushed open the portrait hole with a glance back at us, Harry and Ginny followed him, their hands were now entwined as they smiled a sweet smile only meant for them at each other.
I shook my head in a bemused sort of way and followed in their wake.
A/N Sorry if Ginny is a little OoC. I just see her as one Hermione's only female friends which would in, my eyes make them quite close and as Harry's girlfriend she would be with them a lot.
Sparkle Black: Thank you for your review! I'm really glad you like it. I'm not sure when Draco's going to make his appearance but in the next few chapters I'm going to skip quite a lot of time so it should be fairly soon.XD
1madcat: Thanks for the review, it means a lot to me. I hope you like this chapter. As I said before, Ginny's going to be in this quite a lot so hope you like it but sorry if she a OoC, it's quite hard to get her right!
I'm going to try and update as much a possible though I'm back at school on Tuesday so I won't be able to as quickly. Hopefully though I'm going to try and get the chapters a bit longer before posting. Please review and hope you enjoyed it.:D
Miss Moonshadow
