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The D.A. was one of the few things keeping him going.

He'd been banned from playing Quidditch and Umbridge was making a mockery of his favourite subject while she slowly tainted everything that Harry had ever loved or enjoyed about Hogwarts.

Her educational decrees were multiplying by the day and it was getting increasingly difficult to subvert her in even the littlest of ways.

The D.A. offered a reprieve from her tyranny but it was only a temporary measure.

Still, Harry and the D.A. were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing that she and the Ministry most feared, and whenever he was supposed to be reading Wilbert Slinkhard's book during her lessons he dwelled instead on satisfying memories of their most recent meetings.

He was finding it almost impossible to fix a regular night of the week for D.A. meetings, as they had to accommodate three separate Quidditch teams' practices, which were often rearranged depending on the weather conditions; but Harry was not sorry about this, he had a feeling that it was probably better to keep the timing of their meetings unpredictable. If anyone was watching them, it would be hard to make out a pattern.

Hermione's trick with the charmed coins had been a lifesaver. She had given each of the members one of the fake Galleon so Harry thankfully no longer had to contend with people coming to ask him about the next meeting at breakfast in the Great Hall where anyone could see them or overhear what they were saying.

All in all life seemed like it was going as well as it could be with a Ministry inquisitor in residence trying her utmost to make their lives miserable.

The wild party McGonagall had been dragged away to clean up had only added to Umbridge's ire and she had been cracking down as hard as she had ever been on what she termed as 'elicit gatherings'.

Rumour had it she'd gotten stuck in some potion residue that had acted like super glue when coming into contact with her, cementing her in place until the other teachers managed to get her out from where she was mired amidst several feet of bleating goats and chicken's feathers.

She'd been particularly vicious since then when it came to stamping out non approved gatherings. Thankfully she as of yet hadn't been able to interfere within the house common rooms when it came to celebrations. Not that there was much to celebrate under her reign of terror.

So while things for Harry might be the best he could hope for things were by no means enjoyable. All in all it life at Hogwarts was rather miserable.

Worse still the Voldermort situation was looking bleak. The Daily Prophet had recently announced a mass break out from Azkaban and Sirius news from the order hadn't been heartening. They were doing what they could but with Voldermort operating in such secrecy combating him was increasingly difficult.

Carmilla and Laura had disappeared off the face of the earth and were presumably doing something of their own somewhere in Austria. No one knew what they were doing but they'd promised to raise awareness on the continent where they could.

Voldemort had never been as wide spread as Grindelwald's legendary campaign and while he was feared in Britain he'd never had the power to spread his influence beyond its borders. The other countries would monitor the situation but they were unlikely to intervene except to prevent it from spilling over the borders.

Since her appearance to teach their transfiguration lesson for McGonagall while she was otherwise occupied with transfigured party revellers, she'd been the talk of the castle.

Hogwart's rumour mill was legendary and in the absence of most other relaxation activities owing to the toad's tyranny, castle rumour mongering had only increased in productivity.

Her impossible Animagus trick had had Hermione and most of the Ravenclaws in a frenzy ever since she's done the supposedly impossible.

They'd been researching it almost obsessively in their spare time but they'd yet to have been able to ask McGonagall about it. She was looking rather frazzled these days and was increasingly busy preparing for the coming O.W.L.'s as well as trying to help Dumbledore to contain the damage Umbridge was doing while continuing to subtly undermine her.

So far they hadn't been able to find any plausible theories on how she'd done it or what exactly it was she had done. It might have even been something completely separate from the Animagus transformation for all they knew.

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Harry was dreaming. He was a snake, long serpentine body moving across a stone floor. At first glance, the corridor was empty . . . but no . . . a man was sitting on the floor ahead, his chin drooping onto his chest, his outline gleaming in the dark. . . .

Harry put out his tongue. . . He tasted the man's scent on the air. . . He was alive but drowsing . . . sitting in front of a door at the end of the corridor . . .

The man was stirring . . . a silvery cloak fell from his legs as he jumped to his feet.

He reared high from the floor and struck once, twice, three times, plunging his fangs deeply into the man's flesh, feeling his ribs splinter beneath his jaws, feeling the warm gush of blood.

The man was yelling in pain . . . then he fell silent. . . He slumped backward against the wall. . . . Blood was splattering onto the floor. . . .

His forehead hurt terribly. . . . It was aching fit to burst. . . .

"Harry! HARRY!"

He opened his eyes.

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The flesh-colored strings wriggled like long skinny worms, then snaked under the door. For a few seconds Harry could hear nothing, then he heard Tonks whispering as clearly as though she were standing right beside him.

". . . they searched the whole area but they couldn't find the snake anywhere, it just seems to have vanished after it attacked you, Arthur. . . But You-Know-Who can't have expected a snake to get in, can he?"

"I reckon he sent it as a lookout," growled Moody, " 'cause he's not had any luck so far, has he? No, I reckon he's trying to get a clearer picture of what he's facing and if Arthur hadn't been there the beast would've had much more time to look around."

"So Potter says he saw it all happen?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Weasley. She sounded rather uneasy. "You know, Dumbledore seems almost to have been waiting for Harry to see something like this. . . ."

"Yeah, well," said Moody, "there's something funny about the Potter kid, we all know that."

"Dumbledore seemed worried about Harry when I spoke to him this morning," whispered Mrs. Weasley.

" 'Course he's worried," growled Moody. "The boy's seeing things from inside You-Know-Who's snake. . . . Obviously, Potter doesn't realize what that means, but if You-Know-Who's possessing him." "Maybe we ought to get Hollstein to have a look at him—"

Harry pulled the Extendable Ear out of his own, his heart hammering very fast and heat rushing up his face.

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