Chapter 12

(Just as a side note, if i have a warning at the beginning of a chapter that says strong language it means I have added swearing into the chapter. I honestly don't know what you expected.)

Harry clutched the back of his hand in pain. The angry words flared up against his pale skin as blood slowly oozed out of the thin scratches. He sighed, but found he couldn't complain about his current situation. He would rather have to suffer though a few hours detention with Umbridge than deal with the nightmares. He found he was able to sleep a bit better after the incident a few days ago, although he suspected that may have not been his own doing.

He had seen George slip something into his drink at dinner tonight and Ron had told him they had been there to witness his exhausted coma. This lead him to believe that the twins had been slipping him some sort of sleeping potion, although he hadn't felt tired after eating any of the other nights. He was too tired to care and drank from the cup. If whatever the twins were giving him was helping him sleep so be it.

The corridors of Hogwarts were cast in the flickering shadows of candlelight. Silver moonbeams streamed through the open windows, along with a chill to remind Harry winter was on its way. For a moment he forgot about his worries. The image of Cedric's body that followed him around constantly was pushed from his mind. His anxiety towards Sirius faded as he watched the silver moonlight dance with the golden light from the candles. As soon as it appeared, his tranquility faded and Harry's shoulders once again slumped with the weight of the world.

He wiped his bloody hand on his trousers and continued down the hall until he reached Gryffindor tower. He knew it would be difficult to get all of his homework done and get enough sleep, but Harry was used to surviving on a few hours of sleep by now.

He saw Ron and Hermione talking as he entered the common room. He felt a bit confused for a moment as to why they were still awake before realizing that they were waiting for him. A warm glow spread through Harry as he concealed a smile. He didn't know what he had done to deserve such caring friends, but he was glad he had done it.

"Harry!" exclaimed Ron as he plopped down on the couch next to them.

"How was detention?" asked Hermione, yawning.

Harry shrugged before stretching out as much as he could next to Ron, "you get used to it after a few days.

"Alright" sighed Hermione, before grabbing a stack of parchment off the table in front of them, "I revised your potions essay about Moonstones. Considering the detentions and lack of sleep you've been getting it was actually well written."

"Thanks Mionie" said Harry with a smile as he reached for the essay.

Rather suddenly Hermione put the essay down in her lap and grabbed Harry's hand, "Harry! What is this?"

With a slight wince Harry realized he had reached for the essay with his injured hand, "uh, detention?"

His two best friends looked him in absolute horror as Hermione read out the words engraved in his flesh, "I must not tell lies".

"That woman's sick she is!" yelled Ron, as another small drop of blood rolled off the s.

"It's not as bad as it looks" tried Harry, wrenching has hand out of Hermione's grasp.

"I thought you said she was giving you lines" whispered Hermione, shock still evident on her face.

Harry hesitated before explaining what had actually been happening in his meetings with Umbridge. By the time he had finished, Hermione had tears in her eyes and Ron looked a bit sick.

"Harry! You-you have to tell someone!" whispered Hermione, hoarsely.

"That old hag" Ron muttered angrily.

"No" said Harry immediately, "I can't let her think she's got to me."

"Harry!" scolded Hermione, "this isn't about willpower! She's torturing you!"

"You can't let her get away with this!" added Ron.

"I can handle this!" replied Harry rather loudly.

"You've got to tell Dumbledore mate," said Ron.

"He's got enough on his mind at the moment" replied Harry stoically; "I don't need to bother him with this." He then stood and left his two friends as he climbed the stairs to his dormitory.

"Why won't he ever tell anyone about these things?" asked Hermione sadly.

"Do you think it's because of the Dursleys?" added Ron.

"What do you mean?"

Ron shifted uncomfortably, "well those bastards probably never actually listened to Harry about anything when he was little and uh...I mean Harry always thinks he has to do everything on his own, and that everything that goes wrong is his fault, and that he bothers people with his problems..."

"I...I believe you're right Ron" said Hermione quietly.

"I'm sor...wait what?"

"There have been a lot of more recent muggle studies done to learn how a child's environment can shape who they are. Children who grow up in an abusive environment like Harry tend to keep to themselves and blame themselves for everything that goes wrong. Mostly because that's all they've ever been told" although Hermione sounded as if she was quoting a book, there were tears shining in her brown eyes.

"Does that mean his Aunt and Uncle and really abusive?" asked Ron in disbelief.

"I mean I've always suspected they were more than just mean" sighed Hermione, "but there's not much we can do in the muggle world or wizarding world unless they actually hurt Harry."

"That's stupid," muttered Ron.

"I guess we could keep him at the burrow as much as we can?" suggested Hermione, "from what Harry's said about them, they don't want him around anyways."

Ron nodded, "I'll talk to mum."

"I just wish I could have put this together before this" said Hermione looking a bit angry.

"Mionie, we've talked about this before. Neither of us really understood the effect this had on Harry before just now" comforted Ron.

"Alright" she sighed, rubbing her eyes wearily, "let's just get some sleep for now. We can talk about this more in the morning."

With that the two Gryffindors gathered up their books and went their separate ways, although neither of them could shake the feeling growing from their new revolution.

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Harry woke up covered in icy sweat. His subconscious had decided to to play a highlights reel of all his fears, although many of the horrible memories had lost their edge at this point.

He looked over to check the clock and saw it was six in the morning. Almost five and a half hours of sleep was much better than the rest of his track record this year and he marked it as a successful night's sleep in his mind.

Rubbing his neck, Harry stood and grabbed his towel and shampoo. One of the good things about always waking up before everyone else was that there was always warm water in the showers.

As his towel brushed against the back of his injured hand he looked down. It had finally stopped bleeding although those horrible words were still branded on his skin.

'I must not tell lies'. It wasn't the first time someone had tried to ingrain that saying into him. When he was small his aunt and uncle would yell it at him every time Dudley did something wrong and Harry attempted to defend himself when he was inevitably blamed. Or when he had come to school with a black eye from either his uncle or cousin and attempted to tell a teacher what happened. They always called the Dursley's a 'respectable family' and 'not the most pleasant people, but that's ridiculous'. Eventually he gave up.

As soon as he reached the showers, Harry turned the water on as hot as it would go and stepped in. Under the hail of the steaming hot stream, his tense muscles relaxed and he took a deep breath. Harry closed his eyes and simply let the water wash away all his worries. The slight headache he had woken up with faded and he finally felt like a normal student again.

Without even realizing, Harry stayed in the shower for half an hour. When he heard some of the other students begin to enter the bathroom and Harry quickly shut off his water. He toweled off and changed into some fresh clothes before heading down to breakfast.

He spotted Hermione's bushy head of hair as soon as he entered the great hall, although surprisingly Ron was not in his usual spot across from her. Instead two identical heads of red hair sat across the table from her. Although Harry could not see Hermione's face, the twins both looked extremely excited.

"What's going on over here?" he asked as he approached the table, standing behind Hermione.

"We were just discussing some business when Hermione here gave us an idea" answered Fred.

Taking a seat next to one of his best friends, Harry shot her a questioning look and was surprised to see a mischievous look on her face.

"Well, uh Fred and George were talking about a way to prank Umbridge, as they can't prank the Ministry as a whole they decided she was a good surrogate" Hermione said sheepishly.

"You're helping them with a prank?" exclaimed Harry with a smile.

"Indeed" answered George.

"Do I get to know about this prank?" asked Harry, drawn in by the twin's troublemaking auras.

"Seeing as you were the inspiration I think we could stand to tell you" said Fred.

Harry looked to Hermione. "I...after I saw what that vile woman was doing to you in detention I suggested that Fred and George steal her...blood quills...and send them as a nice gift to Dumbledore" she said.

Harry actually laughed, "as much as I would love to see that, it's nearly impossible to get into her office. She's got all these wards up..."

Fred shrugged, "We've done harder..."

"Than sneaking into a troll's office" finished George.

Harry loaded his plate with food as Hermione suddenly stood up, "what are you doing?"

She had a pondering look on her face, "I need to check something."

The three boys watched her leave as she muttered something about wards being illegal inside hogwarts with confused looks on their still sleepy faces.

Hermione's original plan was to head to the library but she was sidetracked when she noticed Luna Lovegood standing in the center of the hallway, staring into nothing.

"Luna?" Hermione called out.

"Oh? Hello Hermione" said Luna with a kind smile.

"What are you doing?"

"I was thinking about a past conversation I've heard" the strange girl answered. Seeing Hermione's confused look she continued. "You see, a couple weeks ago I was wondering around near the owlery as I had misplaced one of my shoes. When I was walking down the stairs I heard Professor Emrys discussing something with the Grey Lady."

"Who's the Grey Lady?" interrupted Hermione.

"The ghost of Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter of course" answered Luna as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "She's told me she isn't very fond of the living but her and the Professor were talking as if they had known each other for centuries. He mentioned an 'old religion' and they were talking about Voldemort."

Hermione gave the blonde-haired girl a confused look. She was sure she had heard of the old religion in one of her books before, but could not place the name at the moment. Recently it wasn't too uncommon for people to talk about Voldemort, but ghosts normally didn't take much of an interest in human affairs. Luna examined Hermione's thoughtful face before continuing.

"Professor Emrys said that a man named Tom had damaged the old religion and that it was hurting him. That's what confused me the most" continued Luna. She looked up at the older girl's face to study her features. Although Luna was strange, she was not stupid. She knew that by relaying some of the more alien terms she had heard to Hermione, she might get the answers she wanted.

"Tom...?" muttered Hermione before a look of understanding dawned on her face. Luna smiled as the fifth year rushed off in the direction of the library. She would have to find her later and ask again. She whipped around and began her merry way skipping down the hall as her long blonde hair swayed behind her.

Hermione's brain was working at top speed. Harry had told her before that Voldemort's original name was Tom Riddle. She was sure she had read something about the old religion in a book about magical history before, but she could not for the life of her remember what it was.

Luckily, Hermione had her first period free and spent the entirety of it looking through the many books in the library. She was sure if she could find out what the old religion was she could make sense of what Luna had told her. She already had a theory about their Defense teacher and this discovery could prove it to be true.

Harry wandered into the library after she had been at it for around half an hour. He was carrying a cup of steaming tea and placed it next to her pile of books. He watched her with a look of endearment before clearing his throat.

"I ran into Luna and she said she thought you'd be in here for a while" he said with a smile. Hermione felt a warm pang of affection towards her friend as he left the library. She took a sip of the camomile tea and returned to her books.

She continued to check the time constantly before nine thirty came to pass. Giving it up as a bad job, she put back the enormous pile of books and headed out to her first class of the day.

Ron and Harry both noticed she was distracted thought the day but decided to keep quiet. Although she still took her normal amount of notes, her mind was anywhere but the lesson at hand. For some reason she felt that the old religion was something that could answer a lot of questions for her; if she could remember what it was.

At the end of the day Hermione packed up and headed back to the library. She alternated between research and homework as she slowly made her way through a new pile of books. Each one was as unhelpful as the next and all contained facts that contradicted with the information from the other books. By the end of the night, she was beginning to grow rather frustrated. Why did wizards make it so difficult to find information?

Suddenly an extremely worn book caught her eye. She vaguely remembered reading it at the end of her fourth year, right before the third task and before Cedric died. Pulling it from the shelf carefully she examined the spine. 'A history of Magic' was pressed into the leather and many cracks spanned both covers. Ever so carefully she opened the dusty book and began to read. It was around ten o'clock in the evening before she truly found what she was searching for.

"The old religion is considered mythical by most in the magical community. It was said that many centuries ago magic was so ingrained in the earth that everything born of its fruits was a creature of the old religion. During this time magic was much darker, but could be learned by all humans. Only one human in known history was known to be a creature of the old religion: the great sorcerer Merlin. Although most of the information about the old religion is either mythical or incorrect, some theorists have used the little information we do know to create items such as the philosopher's stone and other extremely powerful magical objects" Hermione read quietly.

She remembered their research on the philosopher's stone in first year. It said that the Flamel's stone was the only known one, but that didn't mean more didn't exist.

"I suspected that Professor Emrys was older than he actually looked but this..." she muttered to herself.

Quickly, she grabbed the book and shoved it into her tote before leaving the library and walking purposefully down the deserted halls. Thankfully, her destination was close to the library so she did not have to travel far.

As soon as she reached the gargoyles guarding the headmaster's office she began to name types of sweets.

"Chocolate frog, Bertie Bott's every flavored beans, Fizzy Wizzy, Acid Pop" she listed at top speed.

Hermione looked at the door thoughtfully for a moment before trying one more, "cauldron cake?" Ever so slowly the statues outside the entrance began to grind to the side leaving a small opening for her to squeeze through.

"Professor Dumbledore?" she called tentatively as she walked up the short flight of stairs leading into the office.

"Who's there?" came the warm reply as Hermione pushed open the heavy oak door separating the stairs from the headmaster. As the door creaked open she was bathed in a wash of warm yellow light. She never quite get used to all the bobbles and gadgets that whirred around the room.

"I um..." she started. She had come to tell the headmaster her groundbreaking revelation, but how did one divulge that a professor was immortal without sounding insane?

"Yes dear girl?" asked Dumbledore, "I am a bit curious as to how you managed to get into my office..." he added thoughtfully.

"I guessed," she answered, "a friend of mine, Luna Lovegood brought up some...ah...concerns of mine and I think I may have discovered something important." Dumbledore nodded for her to continue.

"Well I have always had some questions about Professor Emrys. Harry and Ron mentioned him telling them that he knew Matilda Peterson in her seventh year of Hogwarts which would be impossible as she attended Hogwarts from 1917-1924 which would make Professor Emrys 72" Hermione began.

"Are you positive he said he knew her in her 7th year?" asked Dumbledore and Hermione nodded.

"I was confused too, but Ron and Harry repeated exactly what he said and I trust them" replied Hermione, "he also had that magical outburst in class a month or two ago and it didn't seem like any of the teachers knew much about him either which wouldn't make sense if he attended Hogwarts." Dumbledore's eyes were sparkling happily and he encouraged her to continue.

Hermione took a deep breath, "this lead me to believe that Professor Emrys was a lot older than he appeared. I didn't exactly know where to go from there and I honestly wasn't too worried as he's one of the best defense teachers we've ever had. He...seems like a good man. But today I ran into Luna in the halls and she began to tell me about a perplexing conversation she had overheard between Professor and a ghost named the Grey Lady."

"The Grey Lady?" said Dumbledore looking rather surprised.

"I had never heard of her before today" said Hermione.

"That is understandable. She isn't very fond of living creatures" clarified Dumbledore.

"I see. Well Luna mentioned that the Gray Lady and Professor Emrys talked as if they had known each other for many centuries and that they mentioned the Old Religion repeatedly. They discussed Voldemort for a minute before referring to a man named Tom who I assume is Tom Riddle" Hermione continued. Dumbledore's smile grew and the twinkle in his eyes seemed to grow even stronger.

"I remembered hearing about the Old Religion before in a book I had read and...I found it," she said awkwardly. Dumbledore leaned forward in interest as Hermione removed the thick book from her bag.

"I had a theory that Professor Emrys was older than he actually was but..." Hermione added, taking a seat in the overstuffed chair across from the Headmaster. She waited as he read through the marked section and his smile seemed to grow with every word he read. Hermione hadn't known what to expect in Dumbledore's reaction to her news, but excitement and joy was not it.

"I see..." the headmaster finally said as his old blue eyes twinkled happily.

"I think that...Professor Emrys has his own version of a philosopher's stone" she finally said.

"Miss. Granger you have just answered many of the questions I had" Dumbledore said, sounding rather proud.

Hermione was about to ask if the Headmaster agreed with her theory when a large group of people suddenly burst through the entrance to the headmaster's study. Cornelius Fudge, Dolores Umbridge, Percy Weasley, and an assortment of aurors stood awkwardly in the office. Severus Snape and Minerva McGonagall came in soon after them, both seeming out of breath.

"Ah, hello Cornelius" greeted Dumbledore calmly, "would you like a lemon drop?"

Fudge gave the headmaster a look of utter disbelief before shaking his head violently, "Albus Dumbledore you are under arrest for conspiring to overthrow the ministry!"

Both McGonagall and Snape gave the Minister incredulous looks. "That's completely ridiculous!" McGonagall exclaimed. Hermione stood silently in front of the mahogany desk, not sure what to do.

Dumbledore sighed softly, the twinkle in his bright blue eyes dulling slightly, "what are the grounds of these charges Cornelius?"

"You have continued to allow wands in classrooms after my clear warning and I have received word from an inside source that you have been secretly plotting to overthrow the entire ministry with this ridiculous 'order of the phoenix' business!" Fudge yelled, drawing some worried looks from the aurors that accompanied him.

"Albus has no such plans!" snarled McGonagall. Hermione wasn't sure if she had ever seen the old woman so angry before.

"Arrest him! You will be taken to azkaban to await trial!" ordered Fudge. Slowly Dumbledore stood as the aurors moved to grab him.

"I'm sorry Cornelius, I'm afraid that just won't do" he gave Hermione a quick wink before raising his arms in the air. The beautiful phoenix that sat on it's perch in the corner of the room flew right above the headmaster and as Dumbledore's hands clapped together they both disappeared in a fiery tornado.

The entire office sat there in shock as a small wisp of disappeared into the air.

"Find him!" barked Fudge at the aurors, "Delores, I am appointing you headmaster for the time being." Hermione watched as the ministry lackies shuffled out of the room and Snape and McGonagall looked at each other in horror.

"G-go back to your house Miss. Granger" commanded McGonagall in a shaky voice.

Hermione nodded and exited the room. What was to become of Hogwarts with that horrid woman as headmaster? They had no one to defend them anymore.

She sat pondering as she walked back up to the common room before she suddenly remembered what Professor Emrys had told her.

'Sometimes we have to take things into our own hands.'

As soon as she was sat on a couch in front of the fireplace, Hermione whipped out a sheet of paper and began to write.

She smiled to herself as she wrote the title at the top of the paper.

Dumbledore's Army

She was ready to take things into her own hands.

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Wow guys! Longest chapter yet! So nows about the point where the story may be different or out of order compared to the book. I'm so glad to get to read all your opinions about Morgana and I'm so excited for you all to read my writing in the future! There was a lot to fit into this chapter so although it is much longer than normal, I will probably go back to 2500-3000 words next chapter. But who knows! If you guys like the longer chapter a lot I may try to stick to it. Tell me what you think!