Harry Potter and The Fate We Make

Chapter 25: The Scope of the Problem

A/N: Disclaimer's in the first chapter.

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October 7, 1995

Things, it seemed, were both better and worse than Harry and the Marauders had feared. The Slytherins continued to move in packs, though it became clear early on that the firsties and second years, at least, were doing it for self-protection. The verdict was still out on the motives of the third years. The rest ... well, there was little doubt. It varied from person to person, but it became clear early on that the older Slytherins were changing. The verbal sparring that had always been such a part of Slytherin/Gryffindor interaction (regardless of year) had taken on a more vicious, yet more ... subtle ... edge. As if the Slytherins were poking at the Gryffindor ranks to find the true weak spots. Neville had, predictably, come in for a lot of heat the first couple days, but the Slytherins figured out fast that he'd not only become part of Harry's group and therefore had backup, but that Neville had begun to grow a spine over the summer. The boy who had been forced to bunnyhop up to Gryffindor tower thanks to a leg-locker curse in years past was fast disappearing, and a far more self-confident young man was taking his place.

The New Marauders were, by and large, unaffected by the nastier edge to the Slytherins, except for the wear and tear on their tempers. Especially Harry's year. It helped that there were four of them, and that after a summer of training together, they moved and reacted to things as a unit, which lessened the Slytherin's chances of taking them by surprise or picking one of them off. Harry made sure Dobby kept an eye on Ginny in the halls, as she was the only Marauder who didn't have a Marauder classmate to walk the halls with as backup ... though she really didn't much need the help. A few Bat Bogey hexes had the Slytherins a touch more respectful of Ginny's person ... or at least more wary of retaliation, at any rate. Anyone stupid enough to try to tackle the twins deserved what they got, both immediately in terms of return fire and later in terms of pranks.

But that did not mean that everyone was so lucky. The Creeveys, in particular, came in for a lot of trouble, and Harry and company had to rescue Colin and his brother Dennis from bullying more than once. Other kids, especially the muggleborns, were coming in for trouble too. Malfoy, of course, was not only not stopping it, he was encouraging it. Hermione and Ron did all they could as prefects to protect the muggleborns, but they were undermined at every turn by Malfoy and his fellow prefect Parkinson. The Slytherins essentially had carte blanche to do as they pleased, as far as their prefects were concerned.

And speaking of Malfoy ... that boy was definitely up to no good. What, Harry had yet to discover. Malfoy'd taken to disappearing for long periods of time ... he was the lone exception to the Slytherins traveling in packs. He invariably arrived at any class after a break alone, and almost late. He also ate quickly at meals and left early. Harry had taken to trying to watch the Marauder's map whenever he could, and finally got lucky in mid-September, catching Malfoy appearing out of nowhere on the seventh floor corridor ... by the Room of Requirement. What Malfoy was doing in there, Harry had no idea. He'd asked Dobby to try to spy on Malfoy, but only if he could do so without getting caught. So far, no luck. Malfoy was being exceptionally cagey about what he was doing, and keeping a sharp eye on his surroundings. Dobby'd not so much as gotten a peek into the room, and without that, he couldn't risk popping in, lest there be nothing to hide behind.

And beyond the Slytherins there was yet more trouble, by the name of Umbridge. Firstly, her classes were utterly useless. They were forbidden to talk, ask questions, or use their wands. They simply read chapters in the world's most boring and useless book ever. She also was auditing classes. Harry was the first to admit he'd found the audit of Snape particularly hilarious, though he'd had to work hard to conceal it lest Snape disembowel him with his paring knife. Likewise with Trelawney, the useless, crazy old bat. The audit of Binns had been laugh-worthy, but for a different reason, as Binns seemed to think Umbridge was a student and treated her as such, essentially ignoring her as he droned on nonstop. The audits, however, became less amusing when it was McGonagall and Flitwick and worse, Hagrid on the line. Especially Flitwick and Hagrid. McGonagall took no guff from anyone, so she not only didn't rise to Umbridge's bait, she gave as good as she got. But Umbridge was downright vicious with Flitwick and doubly so with Hagrid. It had taken all Harry's self-control (and a very hard foot-stomp from Hermione) to not jump to Hagrid's defense.

And that was the other issue. Umbridge seemed to go out of her way to get Harry's goat. She made snide little comments in DADA class, on a range of subjects, all in the name of 'teaching'. And spent the entire time eyeing him, as if waiting for him to say the wrong thing. It had been an exercise in self-restraint (and his growing skill with occlumency) to keep calm and avoid rising to her bait, and even then, Harry had had reason to be grateful Hermione or Ron or Neville always sat next to him in that class, as they'd all had to elbow him or stomp on his foot more than once to distract him.

Add to this the fact that Harry's Voldemort-visions were now an almost daily event. Daily. They'd ceased to come only at night, which stressed him out, though the during-the-day visions provided a wealth of information, now that Snape had to be at school teaching and could therefore only attend 'meetings' on weekends. Dobby spent a lot of time ferrying notes to Dumbledore. Though at least the good news there was that Snape was wholly cleared of being the spy-leak. He'd not been around to hear the majority of the information that Dumbledore had passed on to the Order to act on. The continued information leak was infuriating Voldemort, which was also good news, though Harry found it a bit disconcerting to watch as he spent half or more of every meeting crucio'ing his own people as his mood deteriorated. And Harry was getting more and more frustrated by and worried about Dumbledore. Harry realized he was having problems dealing with Umbridge and such, but to go from talking to him fairly frequently to not seeing hide nor hair of the man except at meals ... and even then, Dumbledore avoided his eye ... was troubling. It made Harry wonder, just a bit, if Dumbledore was punishing him for daring to do things his way, rather than Dumbledore's.

School itself, of course, was hectic, save for DADA and History of Magic. Umbridge's insistence on using that book and nothing else made the DADA class itself a breeze, and History was the snorefest it always was, but every other class (and doubly so for Potions) was piling on the work and the homework at insane levels in preparation for their OWLs. And Hermione had them revising every night of the week ... and for once Ron wasn't arguing. Much. For once, Quidditch was taking a distant second place in both boys' lives. The twins, despite having only three classes each, were in even worse shape, since this was their NEWT year. The Marauders aside, most of the fifth, sixth, and seventh year students were panicking more than a bit over DADA, since they'd had several years of less-than-ideal tutelage, and Umbridge was certainly not helping.

It was Lee Jordan who'd done something about it. Long a friend of the twins, he'd noticed just how much better they were doing in DADA, noticed that they were thick as thieves with Harry and company, noticed that Harry and company were just as good as the twins, and put two and two together. He'd approached the twins about joining their drills ... and things had snowballed from there. Before Harry quite knew what had hit him, they had virtually the entirety of Gryffindor Tower wanting in on the fun ... and then it had spread to Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.

They'd had to time things right, waiting for Malfoy to not be using the Room, since that was the only place Harry knew of that they could meet to organize things. Fortune had smiled on them today, as Malfoy had headed into town for the Hogsmeade trip, and seemed content to stick to the Slytherin dungeon thereafter. So, now, after dinner, the Room was filling up with people.

It wasn't the entirety of the other three Houses, but it sure felt like it to Harry, who was more than slightly intimidated by having to talk to and organize this lot. He wondered, not for the first time, how it had all got so out of control, and glanced over at Hermione. She grinned at him while she and the rest of the Marauders waited for the last arrivals. Eventually, everyone that was going to come was, evidently, there.

Harry got to his feet and grimaced awkwardly before calling out for attention. Gradually, everyone settled. "Right, so ... Umbridge is paying no nevermind to teaching us anything, and except for R ... Professor Lupin, our last few years worth of professors have been less than worthless." Harry glanced over at the twins. "I've heard the professors prior to Quirrell were no joy either. So most of us are in a bit of a jam when it comes to defending ourselves ... and it's rather obvious the Slytherins are gearing up for Merlin-knows-what, which means most of us are pretty defenseless. After the Cup last year, I took steps to correct that. So did the Weasleys and Neville and Hermione. So we're at least better prepared, though we're probably not as well off as we ought to be."

"And you think you can teach us?" Someone asked, their tone disbelieving.

"I can try. We can try." Harry said, motioning towards the rest of the Marauders. "We certainly can't be worse than the nothing you've all got now, and the truth of the matter is that we've all of us been in scrapes of varying levels." Harry sighed. "And whether Fudge wants to admit it or not, the Death Eaters are not causing trouble for no reason. Voldemort's back."

"Says you."

"Yes, says me." Harry snapped. "I've seen him. I was there when he came back! He bloody well /touched/ me, so I am not inventing things or crazy or whatever. He's back, and he's up to his old tricks, and the Slytherins are cozying up to him, which explains why they're trying to terrorize the school all of a sudden. And if most of us go out there right now, and Death Eaters show up, we're going to be in a world of hurt. We need to be ready ... or readier than we are now. We need to be able to protect ourselves."

There was a lot of muttering and rumbling about that, but no one voiced an objection. Evidently, the raids and general problems had been such that not even the most oblivious could pretend there wasn't big trouble, even if they didn't agree about the whole Voldemort thing.

It took the best part of an hour to organize everyone (there were at least two people from every year from each of the three Houses) and figure out what they knew and didn't know, but eventually, they managed it and Harry gratefully headed for the Tower and what sleep he could count on getting at night these days. It was a rather sad comment on the state of affairs he was in that he'd managed to adapt to only three or four hours of sleep a night. He just wished things were not so dire. Something was coming. He could feel it in his bones. But what, and when, he hadn't been able to discover, not even during his Voldemort-visions. If it was something Voldemort was up to (and let's face it, the odds on that were strong), he wasn't thinking about it or talking about it, though that was hardly surprising with his tantrums over the 'leak' he still couldn't find a source for. It was a rather sad state of affairs when Harry found Voldemort's growing rage about that amusing.