There were so many more of them than he had expected. Neville had added up the remaining members of the D.A., and the numbers had worried him deeply. Only twelve of the original thirty were still at the school—scarcely enough for a good brawl, much less a serious battle—but as he looked around the Room of Requirement, easily three times that many faces stared back at him. He had hoped his count might be off, but this was absurd.

He shifted nervously, clutching the scrap of parchment that held his notes as though it would protect him from the expectant stares of so many pairs of eyes.

"Well ..." His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, feeling himself flush with embarrassment. "Um ... this is ... there's a lot of you. I'd really thought ... uh ... that it would be just ... a couple of us." Fantastic. Just fantastic. Real way to inspire them in their choice of leader.

Romilda Vane tossed her head, sweeping her thick, dark hair out of her eyes with one hand. "You don't mind having a few more wands on your side, do you?"

"No! It's just ... not what I expected." He looked around the room again, realizing that he didn't even know most of the people there. "I guess ... we should start with a count or a roll call or a sign- in or something. That's what Harry did last time."

On cue, the air shimmered, and a quill appeared on the table at the head of the room, neatly sitting in a bottle of fresh ink alongside a long roll of parchment. Neville gestured to it.

"Everyone knows that Hermione put a jinx on it last time. I'm not going to do that." Now that he was back on the ground covered in his notes, he grew more confident, and the words started to come easier. "Marietta deserved to have to carry around what she had done for a year when she ratted us out, but if anyone does something like that this time, well, we won't have to worry about being expelled. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we'd probably be killed or at best sent to Azkaban, much less what they'd do to our families, and personally, I think having that on your conscience would be a lot worse than anything that you could have on your face."

In the front row, Michael Corner crossed his arms and smirked. "That's a real nice sentiment, mate, but I'll be the first to say I'd rather not trust my life to no one here having a streak of yellow."

Ernie cleared his throat indignantly at this, and Michael shot him a look of exasperation. "Oh, really, Ernie, that was nothing against you lot. It was one of ours last time, anyway!"

Ginny stood, her pretty face set in surprisingly harsh lines of determination. "I think we should trust each other. Neville's right, the stakes are too high for anyone to sell out their friends. It would be— "

"No. Michael has a point." Neville was surprised to hear the firmness in his own voice as he cut her off. "And I wasn't finished before. I agree with him completely. If being friends was enough, Harry would still have parents."

The words seemed to echo through a room that was abruptly deafening in its silence, and Neville cleared his throat again.

"You all read about Peter Pettigrew after the ... you know, the whole thing at the Ministry. He betrayed James and Lily Potter, even when he knew it meant they'd be killed, and that should have included Harry, too. If someone can betray his best friend and his whole family, even a helpless baby, we can't say it won't happen to us. But we can't expect it to be just a simple matter of some ugly pimples warding it off, either."

Neville looked down at his notes, reminding himself that he had decided on this before the meeting ever began. That didn't make it any easier. As he forced himself to raise his head and seek out the wide, eager blue eyes he was looking for among the crowd, he felt almost dirty for what he was about to do. "Colin, would you come up here, please?"

Colin Creevey bounced to his feet and almost sprinted to the front of the room, snapping to attention. "Sir?"

Neville smiled gently at the boy who was only ten months younger than he himself, but still seemed so much a child. "Colin, I want to do something. There's a spell called the Fidelius Charm. It's pretty complicated, but I think it's our best hope. Trusting that none of us will tell that the D.A. has come back, where we're meeting, or who's in it is a lot to gamble on, but if I do this, you would be the Secret-Keeper, and that would mean that the only way You-Know-Who and his followers could find out about us is if you told willingly. It couldn't be broken by the Imperius Curse, Veritaserum, or anything like that, but if you told: even if you were under the Cruciatus Curse, even if they were going to kill Dennis ..."

The rosy, freckled cheeks burned a brighter red as if in shame from the very thought of such a thing. "Even if!"

Ritchie Coote, a fifth-year who had played Beater for the Gryffindor Quidditch team the year before, jumped to his feet. "But that's what you just warned us about, the thing Peter Pettigrew broke!"

"I know." Neville did not allow himself to break eye contact with Colin. "And Colin knows, and I think that's exactly why we're safest. Would you betray us the way Harry's parents were betrayed?"

There was not the faintest trace of hesitation. "I'd die first."

"Then—" He was cut off as Ginny seemed to appear out of thin air at his side and grabbed his arm, pulling him away from Colin with surprising force.

"Neville, you can't! You're using him!" Her voice was both pleading and appalled.

"Of course he is." The words, spoken in a voice that was utterly calm and matter-of-fact, shocked them both, and they turned slowly, feeling every eye in the room join them in staring in disbelief at Colin.

For the first time since Neville had known him, Colin looked his age. He had brushed the messy fringe back from his eyes, and he was standing at the front of the room remarkably casually, his hands in his pockets. He was not tall, nor strongly built, but it was suddenly apparent that his shoulders had broadened over the past year or so, cheekbones had emerged from the round face, and his voice held a depth that excitement usually erased as he met the looks from his audience without flinching. "He'd be a fool not to."

Colin took a few steps to his right and turned, now directly in front of the assembled group. "We're all going to be used. This is a war, and we're here because we're agreeing to be soldiers now. Soldiers are meant to be used. Harry's out there right now, fighting for our lives and our freedoms, and those of our families, and he's definitely being used. He's being used for his bravery, Hermione's being used for her brains, Ron's being used for his loyalty. They might die. They know that. Neville's using me because Harry is every hero from every book I used to read as a child, and I had the privilege to know a real, breathing person who made those stories real and showed me that not only did magic exist, but that the people who had made magic worth dreaming about existed too. Betraying him would be betraying everything I have ever believed about what Good meant, and there would be no reason to keep living if I had to stop believing that Good will triumph in the end. Maybe that's stupid, maybe it's naïve, but Neville knows it's true, and I am proud to be used for that."

The soft blue of his eyes suddenly took on the vividness of a summer sky just after a storm. "Don't ask Neville why he's using me. Ask what you can be used for, or leave."

There was a long silence, then Luna stood. "I'm Luna Lovegood, in case some of you who aren't in my house or my year don't know me. I think I can be used because my father prints the Quibbler, the primary alternative news source of the wizarding world, and anything you need to tell the public, I'll find a way to get it in. We have excellent connections among a lot of witches and wizards who have never subscribed to the Ministry. Some of them aren't even known to the government at all."

"Not to be materialistic, certainly," Ernie looked a bit embarrassed, but still determined as he got to his feet, "but my family has done rather well for themselves, and shall we perhaps say that the Malfoys are not the only ones who can make generous endowments should the need present itself for monetary resources. Oh, and I'm Ernie Macmillan."

A blonde, freckle-faced Hufflepuff who seemed vaguely familiar but whom Neville couldn't quite place was the next to rise. "Fritz Bagman. My Dad was a Beater for the Wasps, and I've been training for pro most of my life. I could give a few pointers on good old-fashioned brawling if we lose our wands, how to take hits, physical conditioning—" he gave a good-natured shrug, "or whatever."

"Terry Boot. I've memorized all seven Standard Books of Spells, as well as eighty-six of the supplemental and complimentary texts in the library, and four from the restricted section with special permission of Professor Flitwick."

Ginny muffled a giggle behind her hand. "I guess we won't miss Hermione that much after all."

Boot raised an eyebrow archly, but there was a smile on his lips. "Miss Granger's absence gives me a chance to catch up ... I trail her by half a percent in one subject for highest marks in the school."

"Susan Bones. I have an invisibility cloak my Aunt gave me before..." She trailed off, then caught herself, and her voice rose defiantly again. "It's kind of old, but it still works okay in dim light, or if you hold really still under it."

"Camellia Parkinson. My sister's in Slytherin, but I'm Ravenclaw. I'll say up front that I don't believe Muggle-borns belong in wizarding society, but I believe in Dictatorships less. People should have their minds changed by rational argument, not at wand-point. Pansy doesn't care as long as it doesn't affect her, but I think this affects all of us, so I'm willing to fight with you, and spy on Slytherin if you want me to."

Neville stepped forward again, spreading his hands to stop the half-dozen others who had risen to their feet. "Whoa—this is pretty incredible, but I don't have the best memory at Hogwarts." There was a ripple of giggles at this, and he gave a small, bashful smile. "If you'd all just jot down what you've got—just briefly, like 'invisibility cloak' or 'can spy on Slytherin' next to your names, that would be a lot better. Otherwise, I'm going to wind up asking Anthony to put something in the Quibbler for us. I'll go first." He picked up the quill and signed his name at the top of the parchment, then paused before writing: "Fool in charge."

To his surprise, the parchment shimmered with the look of a heat wave, the same way everything did when the magic of the Room of Requirement was adapting to their needs. Now, the words read: Neville Longbottom—Commander, Dumbledore's Army. He blushed, turning away from the line that had already formed behind him.

Colin was next, and as he finished marking Soldier and Secret-Keeper beside his signature, Neville tapped him quietly on the shoulder and motioned him aside. "That was some speech, Colin."

The younger boy shrugged, beaming with as much of the familiar bright sparkle as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. "I just said what's true."

Yeah, Neville thought ruefully, that's all I did on Tuesday, and look where that got me. "Still," he said, "I really appreciate it. I just wanted you to know that I didn't think of it as using you when I decided on you for the Fidelius Charm. I was honestly thinking of who cared about Harry the most, and I thought about Ginny ..."

"But she's got five more people than I do who could be used against her."

"Exactly." He glanced over to make sure that she was out of earshot, then dropped his voice. "And I think Harry would kill me if he ever found out."

Colin grinned. "So I'm your man!" He pulled out his wand, shoving up his sleeves. "What do we do?"

"Give me a second." Neville reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a piece of parchment that had clearly been copied from one of the older spell books in the library. He squinted at the elaborate old-fashioned script, then took a deep breath, concentrating with all his might on the secrets he would be trying to conceal. At last, he drew his own wand, holding it out in front of him as he turned in a slow circle. "Fidelius Incorporium."

Everything in the Room of Requirement took on a vague golden glow, but it seemed to Neville as if only he could see it, because no one else reacted, not even Colin, who looked almost painfully cherubic in the shimmering light. He took another deep breath, focusing on the terrible stakes that made the charm necessary. "Fidelius Sanctus."

The glow became brighter, so much so that he had to squint as everything surrounding him appeared to have been dipped in sunlight.

Now he traced his wand carefully in the air, forming the outline of a cube. The light seemed to gather and coalesce, contracting in and leaving everything oddly dull-looking as it formed a gleaming golden box a little smaller than a deck of cards floating in mid-air. "Fidelius Impervium."

Plucking the box out of the air, Neville held it out on the palm of his hand. It reflected brightly in Colin's eyes as he took it. There was no hesitation, only acceptance and a sense of deep gratitude, and Neville could barely maintain the eye contact so necessary to seal the spell. "Colin Creevey," his voice was barely more than a whisper, "do you swear to become the Secret-Keeper for Dumbledore's Army and all those who are now, ever were, or ever shall be in it? That you will be solely responsible under magical oath for the knowledge of membership, purpose, missions, and all functions and places of meeting? That you understand the nature of the Fidelius Charm, and hold it to be true and binding upon you for all time, or until it is released by the one who placed it upon you?"

"I do."

"Fidelius Finite." The box lifted out of Colin's hand, turning three times in the air. Then, with the speed and abruptness of a bullet, it sped towards his chest, vanishing into his body directly over his heart. Colin gave a great gasp, and his spine arched backwards, his body stiffening, the whites of his eyes showing in eerie, gleaming crescents as his eyes rolled back in his head and the brilliant gold glow enveloped him. For a single, breathless moment, he was suspended, then the glow faded, and he fell to the floor like a rag doll.

"Colin!" Terrified that something had gone horribly wrong, Neville dropped to his knees, but before he had even reached a hand towards the Secret-Keeper, Colin had begun to stir.

He sat up, shaking his head as if trying to clear away the last remnants of a dream, blinked twice, then fixed Neville with the grin of a kid who had just ridden his first broomstick. "Wow."

Relieved almost beyond words that he had not killed one of his fellow students at their very first meeting, Neville reached out one shaking hand and ruffled Colin's hair, letting out a tense laugh as he did so. "You little Stinkpellet, you scared me!"

Someone coughed, and Neville looked up, surprised to see Ginny standing there. "If you're finished throwing people around with your fancy spellwork," she smiled, "the rest of us are trying to have a meeting here." She motioned behind her, and he saw that everyone had finished signing their names and had returned to the chairs and cushions strewn around the room. The weight of their combined stares found him again, and he sighed as he stood, helping Colin to his feet beside him.

"Right." He looked around as Colin scampered back to sit next to his brother as though he became a Secret-Keeper twice daily before breakfast. Neville shook his head, trying to recover his bearings as he fished the crumpled notes from his robes. "Yeah ... so ... looks like the next order of business is to set up some kind of system for how we want to do this. I mean, we already have the coins to communicate—and Terry, if you could Gemino those so everyone has one by the time they leave, that would be great—but this is a little different from when it was just a class we were hiding. We're at war now, and we need a chain of command, as well as some way to handle things if we can't all meet up. I want to assign a ... well, a Lieutenant, I guess, for each house."

He motioned towards Ginny. "I think Ginny Weasley should take Gryffindor. She's got eight family members in the Order of the Phoenix, and her brother's with Harry now. If Dumbledore trusts the Weasleys that much, it's good enough for me. Gryffindors vote?"

Parvati raised her hand, but there was a frown of confusion on her face. "I don't understand, Neville ... you're a Gryffindor, why would we need anyone else?"

"Because," he explained, "I'm going to have my hands full with the whole D.A.. Ginny would take care of stuff that's just our house and report directly to me, just like the other Lieutenants."

Satisfied, Parvati nodded, then raised her hand again. "I vote for Ginny, then."

Hands went up scattered throughout the room, and Ginny seemed to be the only one surprised to see that her housemates had voted her in with unanimous approval. She turned the famous Weasley shade of deep magenta and gave a little curtsy and a wry smile. "Well," she said, "I guess that either means they like me, or they know the twins send me a lot of stuff."

Chuckling, Neville craned his neck over the crowd until he found the next person he was looking for, sprawled on her back almost invisibly in a pile of cushions and twisting a strand of hair around the end of her wand idly. "Luna?"

"Hmmm?" Her voice was as dreamy as ever, as though he were merely going to ask her opinion on what color socks he should wear rather than offer her the command of a group of soldiers.

"Will you take Ravenclaw?"

With an awkward glance at Michael Corner next to him, Anthony Goldstein raised a hand. "Not to be rude, Neville, but, um ... I mean, I don't think she's crazy like some people, but ..." His words trailed off, and he gave a despairing don't-make-me-say-it look at the pile of cushions.

"Okay," Neville shrugged, "show me another Ravenclaw who's held their own against a dozen fully- grown Death Eaters—twice."

Anthony blushed as if caught, and Neville realized that until that moment, Luna's participation in the two fights had been written off by her fellow students as another of her fantasies. Now Anthony cleared his throat and asked tentatively, "You've really done that, Loon—I mean, Luna?"

She sat up, tucking her wand behind her ear and crossing her legs casually. "Oh yes. They're not that scary without their masks on, really. I find it's a lot easier to confront them if you take care of those little psychological games first, so I like to use a Banishing Charm on the masks as soon as it's convenient." The absolutely effortless conviction in her voice had a clear effect on the others, and Anthony's hand was the first into the air by less than a heartbeat.

"Okay," Neville smiled, "we have Luna Lovegood for Ravenclaw." He glanced around. "Hufflepuff ... Ernie?"

"Not meaning to second-guess your decision," Ernie said slowly, "but Hannah's a Prefect too, and I would frankly have expected you to choose her, as you have been known to be friends for some time. I hope that I'm not being selected because ..." he paused, then shrugged, "well, it's no secret you two had a bit of a tiff the other day."

"Actually, it's because she's my friend that I picked you." Neville met Hannah's eyes, hoping she would see that he was sincere. "I want to play to everyone's strengths in this, and for Hufflepuff, you're all such hard workers, that might not always mean the nicest jobs, and I don't want anything to get in the way of what's best for everyone. No offense, but you're not as likely to set off any Gryffindor chivalrous streak, Ernie." To his relief, Hannah didn't look angry at this. If anything, she looked rather touched, and he gave an inward sigh of relief.

Satisfied, Ernie made a little bow. "No offense taken, and I assume the position with the honor it was given."

"Great." Neville said, checking his notes again. "Then we just—"

His words were cut off by a loud crack, and three dozen wands appeared as if out of thin air, pointing at the bizarre figure that had just appeared in the middle of the room.

It was short, coming barely to Neville's waist, and wore what appeared to be a large copper cooking pot on its head, only the mouth, chin, and the tips of two bat-like ears visible beneath this strange helmet. One of Ron's unmistakable lumpy maroon Christmas sweaters had been shrunken into a kind of tunic, and two bandoleers of Tasmanian Thumping Toadstools were slung criss-cross over the thin chest. Each long foot was clad in a half-dozen wildly mismatched socks that dragged the floor, and the spindly hands clutched a rusty, ancient saber easily as tall as the entire creature, propping it over one shoulder like a rifle.

Ginny was the first to recover her voice. "Dobby?"

The house-elf snapped smartly to attention, clicking his heels together as crisply as the many socks would allow, though not seeming to realize that he was facing the blank wall. His high voice echoed oddly beneath the cavernous pot. "Dobby has come to join the friends of Harry Potter, sir!"

All of the veteran D.A. members exchanged a nervous glance. "Does Professor Snape know about this?" Neville asked.

"No, sir! Professor Snape cannot forbid Dobby from joining something he does not know about." The little mouth broke into a wide grin.

"Dobby can say nothing bad about Professor Snape, but Dobby can say that he is a very good Death Eater, oh yes, and that he is most faithful to the Dark Lord, and Neville Longbottom can make of that what he will!"

Neville smiled and lifted the pot off of the elf's head, revealing the huge eyes, which stared up at him with the open adoration that was reserved for the very closest friends of the idolized Harry Potter. "The house-elves do not like their new masters, sir. Dobby has formed H.E.L.P. for you!"

"H.E.L.P?"

"House-Elves to Liberate Potter! We are resisting, sir, in all the ways we can." His eyes narrowed, and he glanced around the room with a vindictive little look. "The Death Eaters, sir, we have neglected to salt their food! And we do not clean their washrooms quite as often! And sometimes..." He swallowed hard, trembling slightly with his own audacity. "... sometimes, we leave dust bunnies under their beds."

Neville barely managed to keep a straight face. "You don't dare."

Dobby nodded solemnly. "Oh, yes, Neville Longbottom, sir. We are most serious. We will assist the friends of Harry Potter any way we can. Dobby has come prepared to join the battle!" He made several swiping and thrusting motions with the immense sword, but it was too large for him, and he overbalanced, tripping on the dangling socks and falling to the floor in a heap of gangly limbs.

Giggling madly, Ginny extended a hand to help the now slightly cross-eyed elf to his feet again. "That's really brave of you, Dobby, but we're not fighting yet. This is just the first meeting."

Dobby looked crestfallen, and Neville knelt down so that they were at the same level. "You can still be helpful, though. I'm going to give you this;" he reached into his pocket and pulled out the charmed Galleon, "as a real D.A. member, so you know when we have meetings, and I want you to come and report on everything that Snape and the Carrows and the other followers of You-Know- Who have been up to. You're going to be our eyes and ears. It's a very important mission, can you handle it?"

The round eyes brimmed with tears of joy, and Neville had the breath driven from him as the surprisingly heavy elf threw himself onto Neville's neck in an enormous hug of gratitude. "Oh, yes! Yes! Dobby will tell Harry Potter's friends everything! Everything!"

Thankfully, Ginny saw that their leader was beginning to turn rather purple, and she gently pried the enthusiastic little creature's arms away. Her voice was still shaking with giggles, but she managed to keep her expression serious. "Okay, now you'd better get going before anyone misses you."

Dobby grabbed up his pot-helmet and planted it back on his head again, then snapped to attention and saluted the assembled D.A. with a loud clang. "Dobby will do his duty! And H.E.L.P. will see to it that best cakes and tea are in all the common rooms after the meeting, and that your rooms are most perfectly clean!" With another clanging salute and a crack, the elf was gone.

There was a long silence, and then Ernie Macmillan spoke, his face utterly deadpan. "Well, it's good to know we have allies."

Fritz Bagman nodded, though he could not keep his own laughter back so easily. "Thank goodness, or we might be facing dust bunnies as well as Death Eaters!"

This was the last straw for most of them, and the room dissolved into the giggles, laughter, and outright guffaws that had been held back while Dobby was there. It went on a long time, and as it was finally dying away, Neville wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robes and looked out across the room. Their numbers had stopped being intimidating now that they weren't all lined up in strict rows staring at him.

Over the course of the meeting, the tight little groups of veterans and new people had collapsed. Now they were all mingled together: tall, confident seventh-years next to nervous fourth and fifth-years, bold Gryffindor scarlet, cool Ravenclaw blue, and bright Hufflepuff yellow mixing freely.

So many different skills and personalities, so many different backgrounds, hopes, and fears, but they were all there for one reason: the same reason that had driven the most servile and accommodating creatures in the magical world to what was for them the very extremity of revolt. They were there to fight, to defy the cruel, unjust tyranny that had been forced upon them. They would break this siege, and maybe, just possibly, it did not seem too much to hope that they might even win this war.

He wondered if this was how Harry had felt that first night in that dark, filthy pub in Hogsmeade, and he wondered where his friend was now. Somewhere You-Know-Who wouldn't like, he was certain. Neville closed his eyes, willing Harry and the others to know somehow that they were not alone. Whenever, wherever, however they were needed, they would be ready. He had an army at his command, and he was not afraid.