A/N: The "artwork" accompanying the Asterish-English dictionary (depicting different planets moving against different starry backgrounds) won't come through on this forum,so I beg you to picture them for yourselves.

To hear one version of the stirring music of "Rachie," go to www dot melbournewelshchoir dot com dot au Harry's taunt to Malfoy will probably be recognized by most readers as the song of Sir Robin's minstrels in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

V. Come and gather, children

At the end of the exhausting first day at Hogwarts there were no calls for prefects to escort students to their rooms, and sleeping arrangements were left in a state of indecision. The Slytherin password had been uncovered in the Headmaster's office, leaving plenty of extra space for those looking to take advantage of it, and a number of couples did so. None of the officers thought the issue worth their attention so long as everybody involved was old enough to have covered silencing and contraceptive charms. Harry went to sleep in his usual dorm with Ron, Neville, Dean and Seamus, and woke up with Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, Dean and Seamus. (Within a few days Dean and Seamus had moved out, presumably to the girls' dorm with Parvati and Lavender.)

In the morning the radio was playing its reassuring static, and breakfast was proceding with surprisingly healthy appetites and good-spirited noisiness when a rumble was heard near the statue of Barnabas the Barmy. A few words from the officers sent the DA into their positions, wands ready, and Harry felt a surge of glee at how quickly and efficiently the army had responded to what might turn into the first encounter of the war. Rumbles turned into the sound of footsteps, footsteps which stopped ominously close, just on the other side of the wall. The tense silence in the hall was finally split by two voices coming from that other side, declaring:

"Knock, knock!"

Though the pair of voices certainly sounded familiar, the officers maintained silence.

"Oh, come on, you expect to win a war with troops who don't even know the right response to 'knock, knock?' "

The temptation was too much for Ron.

"Who's there?"

"Attaboy, Ronnikins!"

" 'Attaboy Ronnikins' who?"

"That wasn't the 'Who's There?' answer, you dolt." "We were just happy to hear your voice." "God knows why." "Yeah start again."

"I'm not bloody starting again, get on with it."

"You expect us to ruin the rhythm of one of our jokes because you stepped on your line?"

"WHO'S THERE?" Harry yelled.

"G. Wea."

"G. Wea Who?"

"Gee, we hope you still have room for us in your little sleepover party."

"Ha ha," Harry responded, "and how do you close the Marauders'--"

"Wait a minute, you haven't heard my knock knock!"

"Oh for 's sake--"

"HERMIONE!" "Oh Ron, what have you done to our sweet English rose?" "Yeah, what have you done; we want details." "For example, have you--"

"F. WEA WHO" Ginny interrupted.

"F wea pass your stupid ID, will you let us out of this passageway already? because we're freezing our arses off here." "And the answer of course, is 'Mischief Managed.'"

The entranceway was opened, and the twins embraced their brother and sister, then the rest of their friends.

"As you can see," Fred proclaimed, "we didn't come emptyhanded." He and George dragged two bulging sacks out for inspection.

The officers peered within. One bag contained fifty or so Slinkies. The other held as many rolls of Saran Wrap. The brothers waited expectantly.

"Well... Voldemort's in real trouble now," Harry finally announced.

"Truer words were never spoken, Captain Potter" said George.

"And for those of you who are wondering what use a bunch of prank items can be in a war," Fred declared to all who were listening, "we have an answer."

"Pay attention now," said George, "because these are the words which may define us for future generations."

"And those words are: A trap is just a prank that doesn't let go."

A murmur of hmmmm went through the hall in response to Fred's epigram.

"We were debating whether to have that put on our tombstones," George continued.

"And we're really kicking ourselves now that we didn't buy those when the market was soft."

"As an alternative, we were considering Silliness may not save your life, but it's damn good evidence that you are alive."

After they had given assurances that the passageway they had used to come in from Hogsmeade wasn't still open to infiltrators, George and Fred sat down to breakfast with the officers. Ron recounted the scene at Platform 9 3/4 and George tried to summarize the family situation. "So, Mum's home in the Burrow, Dad is probably at the Ministry, Percy too, Bill's in Egypt, Charlie's in Rumania, neither of them effected--"

"But once they hear what's happening they'll probably try to come back," Fred suggested.

"And the first thing they'll try to do..."

"...is check out what happened to the Burrow."

The four Weasleys shook their heads. It seemed they would have to count Bill and Charlie as out of action.

"So why didn't you two get caught up?" Hermione asked.

"We were in France when everything went mad," George said, "talking business with Zonkos of Paris."

"Then we came back to Hogsmeade, made a stop at Honeydukes, and about a hundred members of the Moldy Voldy fan club are marching down main street, calling everybody out, raus raus, everybody line up and be counted in the name of His Feculency," Fred continued.

"We kept down and disillusioned and tossed out a few extendible ears--"

"Speaking of which," Ginny said, "I'm assuming you got the idea for using Saran Wrap from eavesdropping on our OWL review. You owe us royalties."

"We'll take that under consideration," Fred grudgingly answered. George picked up the tale.

"Lucius Malfoy was the one at the head of the parade. Well, either him or a bowl of snot transfigured into semi-human shape."

"Then we heard everybody's footsteps hurrying to fall into line."

"And one set of footsteps tapping in last."

There was a pause, then Fred continued. "After a moment or two, Malfoy said, 'Mr. Sheffield, you seem the least enthusiastic here in declaring your allegiance to our Lord'--"

"All right," Hermione interrupted, "I think we know what happened next."

"Yeah, he was killed on the spot" Fred confirmed in a loud voice which made heads turn around the nearby tables. There was a moment's silence.

"No resistance after that," said George.

"We plan on changing that."

"Phase One is figuring out a way to put glasses and buck teeth on the Dark Mark."

"Not that there's anything wrong with glasses, Captain Potter."

"Perish the thought."

"Or with --"

"Don't finish that sentence, Fred," Hermione warned.

"We need to coordinate," Ron said, putting on his best no-nonsense voice to his determinedly yes-nonsense brothers. For once, it seemed to get through, and after some discussion of the mechanics of such coordination the elder Weasleys said their so longs and returned down the tunnel to their base of operations/chocolate source.

----------

The six officers now put themselves to the task of reckoning their assets and liabilities. Ron asked Hermione to create some form on which students would make a list (a truthful one, on pain of pimpling) of their abilities and weaknesses. The six knew one another's strengths and weaknesses well enough after all this time, though Harry might have something new to add: after a year's work, with considerable help from Sirius's diaries, he was very close to achieving his Animagus form. It was a raptor, he knew, and a very large one. It would be crucial to determine precisely what kind, for the magic governing the Animagus transformation was demanding and pitiless: within an hour after the first full transformation the Animagus needed to eat a meal in that animal's form, of that animal's food, or die.

Among the students' strongest assets was Hogwarts and its system of wards, though given a free hand the Death Eaters would eventually be able to bring them down. This pointed to the need to go on the offensive from time to time rather than sit passively inside their fortress when the siege began in earnest. The essential question was whether this was reasonable wartime risk or suicidal folly, and there was no way to answer that question except through trial. On a simple power scale, it would surely be folly: the average student wasn't nearly as magically strong or knowledgeable as the average Death Eater. The students would almost certainly be outnumbered to boot, with only seventy-two trained DA members. (Ron was heavily reluctant to throw any new volunteers into the battle until they had been through a significant training period.) The Death Eaters in Hogsmeade alone, according to Fred and George's report, numbered over a hundred. The hope of Hogwarts rested in the fact that the students were not simply an assemblage of individually powerful witches and wizards but a well-trained team. MG3 had driven home the point, again and again, that the average pureblood, especially the average Slytherin, had almost no concept of the power of teamwork. Their attitude might be compared to that of a medieval Samurai, who saw power as a function of each individual's swordsmanship and willpower. In this worldview, one with lesser power would lose a duel to one with more, and a battle was won by the side which won the most individual duels. Defense exercises had consistently demonstrated, however, that four relatively weak students acting in concert would almost always prevail against four relatively strong students each casting spells individually as the mood struck them.

The great unknown, of course, was Harry vs. Voldemort. Even if the Hogwarts students prevailed against the first attacks, that would certainly bring Riddle to their gates in order to settle his scores in person. Harry still didn't know how exactly he was going to perform the prophesied vanquishing. The last prophetic word he had heard was not encouraging. He recalled Lavender and Parvati coming at the end of last year to reveal reluctantly what Firenze had shared with them.

"The rest of the centaurs take this very seriously," Parvati had said. 'That's part of why they were so set against trying to help you."

"Because I'm going to lose anyway," Harry concluded. The two young witches glumly nodded agreement. Lavender then unfolded a star chart onto the library table and Parvati used her wand to levitate a book next to it, too heavy to be physically lifted. Ron and Hermione looked over Harry's shoulder as their housemates opened the book to a page about a third of the way through the huge volume.

"This is the only copy," Lavender declared in a hushed voice, "of the Asterish-to-English dictionary. Firenze says he composed this himself." Harry couldn't see any order in the hundreds of pages filled with hand-drawn star and planet symbols crawling across the page in all directions.

"How can it be the only copy?" Hermione asked. "How do the Centaurs learn all their astrology without books?"

"Firenze says that Asterish is their native language" Parvati said. "He produced this for our benefit, once he saw that the other centaurs were so convinced -- well, we'll get to that -- anyway, when he saw they weren't going to do anything about the war."

The page they were turned to, it turned out, held the highlighted entry for the first element of the star chart, the basis for the Centaur forecasts of the war's outcome. Page by page, the highlighted sections of the dictionary allowed them to translate the chart:

Evil, Deadly

Ruler, Commander

Defeat completely, Destroy

and other positions and motions indicating "passive participle of 'to Choose,Select' "; "in great number or volume"; "Tears"; and "ablative of 'Power'." These came together into a sentence, a sentence imposed upon Harry by the Centaurs:

"The Dark Lordshall Destroy the Chosen One, and a Flood of Tears shall come Irresistibly literally, "with power"

Naturally, everybody had fallen back on the notorious fact that even the most seemingly decisive prophecies often bore some hidden sense only apparent in retrospect, but Harry didn't see much wiggle room in "A destroys B". He still tried to maintain an optimistic front, of course, before the student body or in the current discussion of ways to counter Voldemort's terrible strength.

"It seems very simple to me." Luna had the floor now. "If Harry has the power to defeat Voldemort, then whatever Harry is best at has to be the thing Voldemort is most vulnerable to. Harry, what would you consider has been your greatest asset so far?"

"Luck" Harry responded immediately, then revised and extended his remark: "People being ready to risk themselves, coming to my rescue." He looked guiltily at Ron and Hermione, remembering last year at Grimmauld Place...

"That is a very powerful magical resource," Luna said, nodding vigorously. "And the special advantage of having it is that it can be applied to almost any situation--"

"Luna, I was joking; you can't really count luck as a power."

"Why not?"

It seemed obvious to Harry, but he had a hard time putting it into words. Power was something you... powered. It came out of yourself, you hit people with the force of it. Luck was just something that came to you, maybe, if you were... lucky. You didn't bring it about though, with your own... power. Or having friends who would help you, that was because of what they felt, being your friends, you couldn't make them, force them. Then Harry remembered

"You draw people to you who can help you; it's part of your magical endowment."

He still didn't understand how magic worked. Have to look into it some day, if I get the chance. Harry then recalled that Luna was waiting for an answer.

"I don't know. Maybe you're right, Luna, but I don't feel like 'trusting to luck', you know, literally, agai-- with so much at stake."

"Well then," Luna persevered, "leaving that aside, what do you consider your greatest strength?"

Harry tried to think of something that wasn't abstract, like "determination"; something you could hit somebody with. Nothing really came to mind.

"In terms of the spells we've learned," Ginny suggested, "it would have to be your Patronus."

Everyone assented to that. Hermione summarized: "You learned it at a remarkably young age, and you've used it to extraordinary effect."

Luna was beaming with satisfaction. "It's obvious then," she cried: "Voldemort must be a Dementor!"

The other officers had moved past the point where any suggestion by Luna would be greeted with rolled eyes and a change of subject, but they were struggling to give this their full consideration. Ron offered a counter-proposal:

"Harry's also a professional-level Seeker, Luna. Maybe that means Voldemort must be a Golden Snitch?"

There was a moment of silence, during which Luna turned to Ron with a look of concern. "Ron," she said gently, "wouldn't you consider that a little..." -- she was obviously struggling not to be too brutally frank -- "a little... far-fetched?"

"Umm, yeah, maybe so. Sorry, Luna. I move we put off any more Voldie talk for now."

Harry was glad enough to second that motion, but something about Luna's crazy idea stuck in his head. The way Tom turned everything into a spectacle with all his gloating and threatening, when he could so easily kill his enemy and be done with it, like he could have so easily killed Harry in the Little Hangleton graveyard... did he, like a Dementor, need the fear, or at least get some sustenance from it?

----------

Ron took to ferociously drilling the Defense Association, which now in time of war was in search of a more appropriate name for themselves. "Dumbledore's Army" seemed off: the Headmaster wasn't their leader now, nor was he, personally, their cause. Suggestions included "The Army of Hogwarts," which was rejected as too plain, "The True Heirs' Army" (too pompous), "The Army of the Three Founders" (too cute), "The Oath-Takers' Army," which drew some votes, as did "The Army of Upper Hogwarts," suggested by Lee's "Army of Northern Virginia" for its implication that this was only a fraction of the forces they could muster if needed; but in the end "The Army of the Forbidden Forest" was chosen, though they had neither fought nor expected to fight there, because it sounded so cool. A set of phoenix masks were made part of the uniform, partly as a visual comeback to the Death Eater masks, but more, Harry was sure, to guard his own identity and prevent a mass attack on him.

The Army of the Forbidden Forest, then, practiced its spells in the Room of Requirement and its maneuvers on the Quidditch Pitch, which gave them the opportunity to fly and to feel the sun and air from within the safety of the wards. Over and over Ron stressed that the first encounter was their best chance to drastically lessen the odds against them for the whole war. Figure that Voldie, or whoever was making the tactical decisions, underestimated them, and didn't want to spare too large a portion of his strike force; say they felt that a hundred marked wizards and witches would be more than enough both to take down the wards and to deal with a few score schoolchildren; hope that all of MG3's assumptions were right; pray that everything broke right for them on the battlefield; then they could kill or capture the bulk of the attack force, maybe all of them, and suddenly the two sides would be a lot closer to evenly matched. But the Army would have to be ready to kill; if they met in the air they would have to be ready to knock their attacker off their brooms from a height which would guarantee death. Would that spell do it, Abbot? What about it, Finnegan? Are you putting enough into it to push them over and out?

Over the next few days, despite (or because of) there being no sign of any assault, tension began to rise again. Some students found themselves unable to keep food down, some began drawing wands against nothing, or against one another. At the dinner table one night some third year made a passing reference to "You Know Who" and one of his classmates stood up, pointed a finger at the euphemist, and loudly demanded, so the entire hall could hear him,

"Say 'Voldem-- ... Say Volde--... Say--"

and then sat down in choked humiliation.

It wasn't only the younger students who heard this breakdown in bravado and were reminded of the sickening fears they had been pushing aside. If he were to open the gates and walk slowly down the Hall, wand at his side and disdain on his face, would they cast a spell against him? or would the shaking even allow them to raise their wands, when the only thought running through their minds would be please don't let him look at me?

It was time for the prophecy (previously known only by the other five officers) to be shared. Dumbledore's pensieve was used to show the relevant dialogue between Harry and the Headmaster to any skeptics (and there were a few). For many students, knowing that there was among them one who had the power made the crucial difference between soul-crushing despair and mere stomach-turning fear. At the end of this long day, the sixth since their arrival at Hogwarts, veins were throbbing on every forehead (especially that of Neville, who had been circulating among all the tables, tirelessly answering questions and issuing reassurances). Ron brought many of those veins to bursting by telling the rest of the officers that he wanted a way to ensure nobody would be captured, and did Harry have any way of getting more of "that stuff he had taken with him to Grimmauld Place last year?" Hermione went into a rage and refused to hear any more discussion of the topic. Harry found the path of least resistance lay in agreeing with her. Neville and Luna were giving him looks full of curiosity. They knew that something horrible and deadly had taken place at the old Black mansion, suspected it had involved a death wish on Harry's part, but had never been given the details; only Ron, Hermione and Ginny knew those. One of these days, he would have to clear it all up.

The seventh day dawned, and a mostly silent hall ate their breakfast. The Army of the Forbidden Forest put on their practice gear and prepared to head for the Quidditch Pitch. The younger students went off into their study groups, organized by Hermione to keep the flame of learning alive. And the radio broke out of its static mode and began singing for the first time.

For a long moment, the only motion to be seen in all Hogwarts was that of Sir Cadogan jumping up and down in excitement and attempting to mount his horse. Then came shouts and rushes in all directions, mostly corresponding (miracuously enough) to the orders issued by the officers for this occasion. Above the clatter of feet on marble, the voice of a chorus could still be heard on the radio, singing in Welsh. Few knew the tune and fewer the language, but in a hall so filled with magic that proved no obstacle. The song is called "Rachie," and the English version begins something like this:

Come and gather, children

On the side of Light;

You shall hold the balance

In the final fight!

Satan gathers power;

Demons him obey;

God shall find us faithful

Till the dawn of day.

Then the initial stanza, Come and gather, children/ On the side of Light... repeated, now sung together by most of the Army and many of the younger witches and wizards... then

Hell and darkness threaten

With their deadly flame;

We shall meet them blow for blow

In Jesu's name!

We'll rush in together

None shall fail his friend;

Till we stand embracing at

The battle's end!

Come and gather children, sang two hundred and twenty nine voices;

On the side of light, they proclaimed;

We will hold the balance, they told themselves, ad-libbing a little

In the final fight.

COME AND GATHER, CHILDREN, came a roar that rattled the helmets and woke the spirits of the old suits of armor,

ON THE SIDE OF LIGHT;

WE WILL MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

IN THE FI...NAAAL FIIIGHT!

All the students, all the statues, all the paintings, were on their feet now, if they had feet, shouting, if they had mouths. Harry felt he had to get out and fight now, or his head would explode. "FOLLOW ME," he yelled; "COME ON COME ON COME ON!" And as Sir Cadogan capered back and forth leaping from one frame to another like a long-confined border collie, the Army of the Forbidden Forest rushed out to battle.

The eighteen mini-squads of four brooms each tore out the gate, they soared past the Quidditch Pitch, in a moment they would come to the wards -- Harry passed them and felt a tingle, not as strong as when he had flown out a week ago, but still there -- he looked down and there were upwards of a hundred forty Death Eaters...

And they were all standing in line on the ground!

The arrogant bastards had all simply approached to a few meters from the wards, an optimal distance for their anti-ward spells, and were standing in a line at leisure, with their leader -- Lucius Malfoy, Harry was sure of it -- calmly counting off "one, two, three: Dissipio!" Ron was staring down in amazement, like a chess player whose opponent has just made a grossly amateurish blunder, and is temporarily paralyzed by having so many ways of making him pay for it. The moment of indecision quickly passed, and he issued a series of orders.

First, eight squads hovering high out of sight waited until the long line all had their wands out and the first syllable of "Dissipio" was on their lips, then dived and cast "Stupefy!" at their stationary targets before they could change their spell or the direction of their wands in self-defense. There were perhaps twenty direct hits (about ten on each wing): the students were flying too fast and aiming from too far away to insure perfect accuracy, and they quickly doubled their distance from the enemy by soaring up and away as soon as they had let loose the first volley. The Death Eaters in the middle who hadn't been hit all swivelled instinctively in the direction of the retreating squads and tried to cast curses at them. The thirty two students were way out of range by then, and the Death Eaters had virtually all turned their backs towards the next wave of flyers, whose stunning spells now rained down on them, striking another score unconscious.

Lucius finally gave his first defensive command, ordering everybody on the wings to put up shield spells for themselves and the rest, while those in the center were to keep up a barrage of deadly curses if any more flyers approached. Ron gave another set of orders. While a token few squads kept up a light barrage of spells (none piercing the Death Eater shields), two larger sets of squads on either side took out their sacks of ordinance. First, they grabbed a fistful of pebbles and tossed them downward towards the enemy wings, waited until they had fallen almost out of range of their transfiguration spells, and turned them into boulders. Then they tossed down thirty two Slinkies and thirty two rolls of Saran Wrap.

Protego spells, notoriously, did not offer protection against physical objects, so to keep from being crushed by the falling rocks the Death Eaters quickly abandoned those shields in favor of Impedimenta or Reducto spells. These worked for the most part, although some of the less skillfully aimed spells only pushed the missiles in the direction of their comrades or created shrapnel blowback, disabling five or six more. But the real devastation came from the pranks that would not let go, which had fallen on them while they were preoccupied with the boulders: the wrapping plastic unwound itself and sought the faces of the Death Eaters, becoming form-fitting masks which didn't lose their cling until their victims passed out; the bouncy toys climbed up their legs and squeezed around their wand arms, slicing deep into their fingers, crushing their hands and their wands. Some of the Death Eaters managed to come to the aid of the afflicted ones in time to prevent the worst, but not many, and those who did try to help laid themselves open to further barrages of spells and weapons.

Within minutes of their initial attack, the Army of the Forbidden Forest had put more than half of their hundred and forty attackers out of combat. They now had the initiative, the high ground and the numbers. Those who were strongest with a wand but weakest in the air -- notably, Hermione and Neville -- had landed and disillusioned themselves early in the fight, and had spent their time mostly incarcerating the fallen and picking away at those who tried to enervate or release them. Now, at another signal from Ron, they circled behind the enemy and put up anti-apparation wards.

In the meanwhile, Lucius was finally getting around to organizing the able-bodied wizards left unhit into something of a defensible position. He ordered them to take to their brooms and pursue their tormentors, but the A.F.F. was ready for this too. From their higher level they sent down a series of turbulence spells which effectively prevented most of the enemy from lifting off, and kept those who did from being able to control their flight. Then they sent handful after handful of the transfigured pebbles down into the howling wind, this time with only a mild engorgement spell. The winds whipped the stones around with deadly effect; they were too many, too small, moving too fast and too erratically to be knocked away with spellwork, especially spellwork performed by a wizard trying to hold onto a bucking broomstick in a windstorm. A Death Eater fell, then another, then another... With a curse, Lucius ordered a general Disapparation. Thirty witches and wizards disappeared... then reappeared in the same spot, a dozen of them badly splinched.

In desperation, Lucius gathered the remaining eighteen around himself, and the group simultaneously incanted a series of spells to blast an escape path for themselves through the rocks and turbulence. They managed to lift off and began their flight through the self-created magical tunnel, away from the wards, away from Hogwarts, to explain to their Lord how they low-lying fruit they had been sent to pluck had turned out to be a Stinging Tentacula. Now, like a pod of dolphins circling a smaller and smaller school of mackerel, thirty Hogwarts flyers sliced across the escape path, cut off the rear six from their twelve fellows, and quickly surrounded and overwhelmed them. The remnant twelve didn't so much as glance back, just kept fleeing. Then another thirty students performed the same maneuver, cutting off the six hindmost of the remainder.

There were only six Death Eaters left now, and Harry was among the group of twelve sniping at their rear, hoping to complete the annihilation. As he approached, Lucius barked an order, and four of the Death Eaters turned around to try slowing down the pursuers and so allow their leader to get away. Harry found the idea infuriating, that Malfoy would get away, that after being such a 100-proof balls-up 'commander' he would get some more of his own men killed or captured so he could save his own worthless neck. Harry broke off from his group and flew as fast as he could towards the two rapidly disappearing escapees. At that distance a destructive spell wouldn't carry, so he hurled the only thing he could at them, at the top of his voice:

"That's right, Malfoy, that's what we expected... He's packing it in and packing it up, and sneaking away and buggering off, and chickening out and pissing off home..."

On hearing the voice, the second Death Eater stopped and turned his broom back, calling back over his shoulder towards Lucius: "Father, it's Potter! It's Potter! If we kill him, we've still won! We can kill him now!"

Lucius didn't so much as slow down in his escape, but Draco now was within striking range. And at that moment, Harry suddenly, stupidly, froze. He knew he was Voldemort's target, the Death Eaters' target, but somehow, ridiculously, the idea that a fellow Hogwarts student would be looking to kill him like this came as a shock. Draco only needed that moment of shock to cast a turbulence spell of his own, and Harry's hasty counter-spell came too late. The broom swung up and Harry hung onto it; it swung left, and Harry swung with it; it swung hard left again while Harry was guessing right; then the broom took one route, Harry took another, and then there was only one route left for Harry to take.

He looked down at the approaching ground about two hundred feet below himself, tried and failed to finish the Animagus transformation, and screamed a curse at himself for his own stupidity. The sound of the curse dissipated in the wind, so Harry howled it out again, wishing he knew a spell to make it follow him into the ground and under it. I'm sorry Mum, I'm sorry, he thought, and closed his eyes. Then he felt the sudden shock of impact... on his two rear cheeks.

Harry opened his eyes, and saw his vector had changed from "plummet straight down" to something like an airplane's landing vector... too steep, still. He didn't dare turn around to see who or what had grabbed his behind, out of fear the motion would disturb their grip or concentration. He felt something starting to slide up beneath him towards his head, and quickly realized it was a broom stick. He hesitated--

"Grab it, Harry, help me keep it up!"

He hastily did so, not in time to get them airborne but in time to turn a crash landing into a hard bump, a long bounce, a skid through the grass (the friction of which almost set his kneepads on fire) and a final rollover, at the end of which Harry found himself lying on his back. He lifted his head and found he was looking straight into the face of Ginny Weasley, just above his knees. She was panting with exertion, her clothes had been badly torn from the landing, and her arms were snaked under his legs and her hands were still magically fastened to his buttocks.

Needless to say, that was the condition everybody found them in when they came flying and running to the crash site. Explanations were deferred; first Harry offered a fast and (he knew) deeply inadequate string of "thank you"s, then came the de-sticking, and a quick search for injuries. Ron, Hermione, Neville and Luna hastened over to check them both out.

"Any casualties?" Harry asked.

"Believe it or not, mate," Ron answered, "I think you two are the worst we have."

Harry opened his eyes wide in incredulity. Two scraped knees? A few dislocated knuckles? "And them?"

"Five dead. Forty injured, a few might not survive. Eighty nine prisoners."

Harry shook his head and started... he wasn't sure what to call it: giggling, crying, barking? Whatever it was, it was contagious, and soon the rest of the officers were joining in, arms around one another, except for Luna, who cleared her throat and apologized for not quite getting the rhythm and tone of the piece they were performing. This set off another round, which was interrupted when Hermione cried "Look!" and pointed to the Quidditch Pitch. A few members of the Army of the Forbidden Forest were at work on the scoreboard there, and when they had flown off the officers could see it now read,

LAST MATCH OF THE SEASON, CURRENT SCORE:

HOGWARTS 10, DEATH EATERS 0