Chapter 12

I'm sorry I haven't really updated lately. I am currently waiting to fly in a few days to my new house, and then my moving situation will be over. I'll update more often after that.

Sophie.

Rose POV

I woke up in the Hospital wing that evening, and Umbridge dragged me out of my bed to serve detention with her, again with the Blood Quill. I thought again about messing with her and allowing my gift to heal me as fast as I could write with the Blood Quill, but doing so would drain me again, and I didn't have an explanation for her that wouldn't give me away. I bore the pain in silence and unwillingly gave her the resulting satisfaction, and endured it again for the three days that remained in the week.

I finally came to a conclusion: Umbridge and the Ministry had gone too far. If Harry refused to train our classmates, then I would.

It was a cold and rainy Halloween night when Ron, Hermione, Harry, and I sat in the empty common room. Everyone was off at dinner, but we had eaten early. Sirius had told us that he would contact us around eight thirty. Harry kept watching the flames as I paced the room and Hermione stared out the window. Ron sided with Harry and stared into the light. Those boys were going to go blind at this rate.

I spoke up after the silence began to drive me batty. "Alright Harry. If you won't teach the students, then I will." I asserted firmly. He blew up then, turning and looking at me as if I had two heads.

"No Rose." He ordered.

Before I could think of a good retort, the fire sputtered to life and the face of Sirius Black formed itself out of the glowing embers of the dying fire. "Sirius." Harry whispered urgently.

Hermione and I raced to the fire and I sat on the floor while Hermione joined Ron on the couch. Harry moved to kneel next to me on the floor by Sirius. "How are you? I hear that Umbridge is not letting you use magic?" Sirius said in a thin raspy voice.

"Sirius she's not letting us use magic at all." Harry stated.

"Hm. It appears that Fudge doesn't want you trained in combat…" Sirius informed us.

"Combat?" Ron cut in. We turned to look at him. "What, does he think we're making some sort of Wizard Army?" He leaned down and interlaced his fingers with his hands in his lap.

"That is exactly what he thinks. Our sources tell us that he is afraid that Dumbledore is preparing to take on the Ministry."

I sat amazed by the accusation. Our headmaster, the great Albus Dumbledore, take over the Ministry? The thought made me want to laugh.

"No one in his right mind would…" Harry started.

"He isn't, Harry." Sirius said. "The war is coming, and you students better prepare yourselves for it." Sirius Black finished before he melted into the embers of the smoldering fire.

Hermione got up after our conversation with Sirius had ended and drifted to the window as lightning broke through the sky. Harry and I stood and followed her. The stone floor really was a very uncomfortable place to sit for long. As Hermione peered out the rain soaked window, she mused. "We're not learning how to defend ourselves. We're not learning how to pace our OWLs. She's taking over the entire school." She had very good valid points, and I was about to say that I agreed when she continued. "If Umbridge won't teach us how to defend ourselves we need to find someone who will." She turned around and looked at us. The stare she gave Harry seemed to make him uneasy, but with as much pressure as was being put on him, I would be too.

Harry was debating in his mind whether he should take up what he had refused to the month before or if he should keep himself out of the fray. I walked over to the debating man and put my hand on his shoulder. He whipped his head around to look at me.

"Harry…" I started, unsure of how to word it. He continued to think and appeared to be getting nowhere. "It is a large undertaking." I said, formulating my proposition as I went along. If only I had my parent's powers of perfect speech. They always seemed to know what to say, no matter the occasion. However, in times when I wasn't around they may fumble about with their words just as bad I was now. "And I think it is too big for… any one… person… to tackle. But… you have us Harry. We're your friends and… friends help each other. And if we are ever going to have a chance of defeating…" I rolled the unpleasant word on my tongue several times before I finally said it, "Voldemort… then we're going to need all the help we can get. So… what do you say, Harry Potter, do this together?" I held my hand out in offering.

He analyzed it and left it there as if it was going to bite him, and I lost my confidence and began to lower it, feeling like a fool. If I couldn't help my best friends, how would I ever take my parent's place at the Ministry and change our government for the better? Finally though, he took my hand and agreed, "Together." I beamed in acknowledgement.

Hermione and Ron soon joined hands with us and we sealed the pact. We would assist Harry and each other with our new Dumbledore's Army—the name chosen by me to spite the Ministry—and we would only recruit those who we thought as trustworthy; or, as Harry thought trustworthy. I knew that it would be impossible to convince Harry to let Slytherins in on it, and he was the main teacher. It was for the best I guess. I would have to think up some reasonable excuse if Draco got an inkling of what I was doing.

"Where should we go to try and… recruit people?" I said awkwardly. I bit my lip as they talked.

"Well, we could go into one of the classrooms and do it there." Offered Ron.

"Are you mental?" balked Harry. "Umbridge would find out if we did it somewhere inside the castle."

"The Shrieking Shack?" Hermione spoke this time.

"We could never get the students to go there." I said. "The Three Broomsticks perhaps?"

"No. Too public." Answered Hermione.

"No." interjected Harry. We all looked at him. "I think she's right." Harry got up off the floor and we followed.

Ron protested, agreeing with Hermione. "The Three Broomsticks is too public. We'd be found out."

"Not the Three Broomsticks, Ron." Harry countered. Our interest was piqued and I motioned Harry to continue with his plan. "The Three Broomsticks isn't the only pub in Hogsmead." He pointed out.

"Do you mean the Hogshead?" Hermione sighed. The Hogshead was a run-down old pub that hardly anyone went into anymore. I was surprised that the owner: a big, bearded man named Aberforth; hadn't closed it down already.

"It could work." I said. "It's the best place we've got." I finished.

"The Hogshead it is." Harry exclaimed.

The first snowfall of the winter months swirled about our feet as we made our way through Hogsmead into the Hogshead Pub. Umbridge had tried to have the permission to visit Hogsmead revoked school wide, but the Headmaster had put his foot down on that issue.

Harry pushed open the creaky door of the little pub with his gloved hand. The light that filtered in through the door showed us that the Hogshead was just as run down as we had assumed, but no one had told us about the goats. Before Harry walked cautiously into the pub he asked openly. "Are you sure about this guys?"

I shoved him into the pub and came in behind him so that he couldn't run right back out.

"It will be fine Harry. Come on, students will be arriving soon."

We made our way to the fireplace in the main room, got ourselves situated, and waited for our potential students. Harry was sitting on a stool by the cold fireplace while I sat on a table and swung my legs absently with Ron and Hermione sitting and standing respectively when our first wave of class mates trickled in. The flow was slow at first, quickly building until we had an excess of twenty five students crowded into the front room of the Hogshead Pub.

Once everyone had assembled in the Pub, Hermione started awkwardly. "Hi. Well, you all know why we're here. We need a teacher. A proper teacher. One who has experience defending against the Dark Arts."

Harry cut in. "You know, I'm not the best."

"He's just being modest." Hermione assured them.

"No Hermione," Harry interjected, "I'm not. Out there… is not like school. If you do something wrong at school then… oh well, you can just try again tomorrow. But, when you're a second away… from being murdered, or you're watching a friend die right before your eyes, you don't know what that's like. And if you're just here to hear about Cedric I'm sorry to disappoint you." Harry finished.

His speech was so emotional and moving that I felt tears prick my eyes, knowing exactly whom he was talking about. Cedric had been like a brother to me in my first year, and he had helped me get my bearings when no one else would.

As people began mumbling and started to leave, Luna—bless you Luna!—asked, "Is it true you can do the Patronus Charm?"

Dean Thomas, standing next to my cousin Ginny, piped up. "I didn't know you could do that Harry."

To this inquiry I was the one who answered, happy to be able to get a word in. "Yes. We both can."

Some of the students breathed in sharply, and Ron added, "And in our third year he took on over fifty Dementors at once."

"Can you show us?" Asked one of the students in the back, a skeptical Ravenclaw with bobbed brown hair and glasses.

"Oh, no." Harry answered her modestly. The girl sniffed and began to walk away, satisfied that the Boy-Who-Lived wasn't all he was cracked up to be.

I made a humming kind of sound - the kind that you make when you are wordlessly trying to get someone's attention - and retrieved my wand. The girl turned again and the rest of the party leaned in closer to watch me. "Expecto Patronum." I said quietly, drawing off memories of playing in the snow with my family.

A white mist emanated from my Holly wand, slowly growing until a silky white ferret was bounding around the room and chasing the skeptic, causing laughter to ignite in the rest of the group. "Okay, I believe you!" She screamed.

Before long, all of the group were lined up by a table and signing their names into a ledger that I had brought with me. By the time we left the Hogshead pub, Dumbledore's Army had grown from four to thirty four students – with no safe place to train. As we trekked back to the school in a pack, students threw suggestions about like a game of Hot Potato.

"The Hogshead?" asked a random student.

"No, too small, and it would make Aberforth angry anyways." I shot back.

"Myrtle's bathroom?" offered Ginny. We just looked at her as if she'd grown another head.

"The Shrieking Shack?" Offered Hermione.

I opened my mouth to remind her that there would be no way that the students would go into the Shrieking Shack, but Harry beat me to it. "No, too small." Countered Harry.

"The Room of Requirement?" I offered.

Harry looked at me as if he'd lost his glasses, his emerald green eyes eerily like my own unfocused but searching my face for my meaning. Did he think it was a myth? Well, I guess it would make sense; not many people knew of the Room of Requirement, an ancient room made out of the Castle's magic that always had whatever the seeker required, but only when they truly needed it. It didn't take an emergency to make the room appear, but it did take more than an urgent need for the lavatory, or so I'd read. Hermione wasn't the only bookish one of the four.

"The Room of Requirement? But that is just a myth." Harry replied.

"I've read that it isn't, and, well, it's worth a shot." I answered back.

Hermione, far livelier than usual and almost skipping down the bridge with her hair bouncing under her hat, replied, "Who cares? It's refreshing isn't it, breaking the rules?" She sounded breathless, giddy at rebelling against the teacher that we probably all universally hated.

My cousin chuckled under his breath and picked up his pace so that he was toward the front with us. "Who are you and what have you done with Hermione Granger?"

Hermione beamed. "At least there is one good thing that came from today."

"What?" asked Harry, curious.

"Cho couldn't take her eyes off you could she?" Hermione answered back. Behind me, I heard Ginny growl under her breath.

If we'd looked up as we entered the castle, we would have seen Umbridge standing on the balcony of the Clock-Tower, but we didn't, and at that point, we didn't care. We had finally carved a chip out of her overreaching rule, and that was enough for us at that moment.

The next day Umbridge put up another one of her famous decrees; or Filtch put it up I should say. Umbridge would never get her hands dirty like that. She decreed that all student organizations with more than three students was disbanded from that point, and any student who dared to defy her would find themselves on the train back to London before that could say "Umbridge". Oh, the Quiditch teams would be having a word with the Headmaster about that one.

I for one was looking intensely for the Room of Requirement at every possible moment, feeling that it was the only place where we could be truly safe from Umbridge, since the door was said to disappear after all who needed it were in or out.

Finally, after being bullied by Crabbe and Goyle, Neville found it.

Thank you everyone for liking and reading my work.