Dumbledore's Army

Disclaimer: I don't own HP.

Kitty had not told anyone what Malfoy had said to her in detention. She knew Harry and Ron would not believe her, and nor would Vandyll. Hermione might, but the possibility was rather unlikely. Malfoy's suggestion seemed to have worked; she was no longer having dreams for the last two days.

Harry had decided to hold Defence anainst the Dark Arts classes in the Room of Requirement. Together they had spent most of the day seeking out those people who had signed their names to the list in the Hog's Head and telling them where to meet that evening. Somewhat to Harry's disappointment, it was Ginny who managed to find Cho Chang and her friend first; however, by the end of dinner he was confident that the news had been passed to every one who had turned up in the Hog's Head.

At seven thirty, Kitty, Vandyll, Luna and Dennis went up to the seventh floor to the Room of Requirement. Harry, Ron and Hermione were already there. In groups of twos and threes, the rest of the students arrived.

The walls were lined with wooden bookcases and instead of chairs there were large silk cushions on the floor. A set of shelves at the far end of the room carried a range of instruments such as Sneakoscopes, Secrecy Sensors and a large, cracked Foe-Glass that Harry was sure had hung, the previous year, in the fake Moody's office.

'These will be good when we're practising Stunning,' said Ron enthusiastically, prodding one of the cushions with his foot.

'And just look at these books!' said Hermione excitedly, running a finger along the spines of the large leather-bound tomes. 'A Compendium of Common Curses and their Counter-Actions ... The Dark Arts Outsmarted ... Self-Defensive Spellwork ... wow ...' she looked around at Harry, her face glowing, and Kitty saw that the presence of hundreds of books had finally convinced Hermione that what they were doing was right. 'Harry, this is wonderful, there's everything we need here!'

'Well,' said Harry, slightly nervously. 'This is the place we've found for practice sessions, and you've-er-obviously found it OK.'

'It's fantastic!' said Cho, and several people murmured their agreement.

'It's bizarre,' said Fred, frowning around at it. 'We once hid from Filch in here, remember, George? But it was just a broom cupboard then.'

'I think we ought to have a name,' Hermione said brightly, 'it would promote a feeling of team spirit and unity, don't you think?'

'Can we be the Anti-Umbridge League?' said Angelina hopefully.

'Or the Ministry of Magic are Morons Group?' suggested Fred.

'I was thinking,' said Hermione, frowning at Fred, 'more of a name that didn't tell everyone what we were up to, so we can refer to it safely outside meetings.'

'The Defence Association?' said Cho. 'The DA for short, so nobody knows what we're talking about?'

'Yeah, the DA's good,' said Ginny. 'Only let's make it stand for Dumbledore's Army, because that's the Ministry's worst fear, isn't it?'

There was a good deal of appreciative murmuring and laughter at this.

'All in favour of the DA?' said Hermione bossily, kneeling up on her cushion to count. 'That's a majority-motion passed!'

She pinned the piece of parchment with all of their signatures on it on to the wall and wrote across the top in large letters:

DUMBLEDORE'S ARMY

'Right,' said Harry, when she had sat down again, 'shall we get practising then? I was thinking, the first thing we should do is Expelliarmus, you know, the Disarming Charm. I know it's pretty basic but I've found it really useful-'

'Oh, please,' said Zacharias Smith, rolling his eyes and folding his arms. 'I don't think Expelliarmus is exactly going to help us against You-Know-Who, do you?'

'I've used it against him,' said Harry quietly. 'It saved my life in June.'

Smith opened his mouth stupidly. The rest of the room was very quiet.

'But if you think it's beneath you, you can leave,' Harry said.

Smith did not move. Nor did anybody else.

'OK,' said Harry, his mouth slightly drier than usual with all these eyes upon him, 'I reckon we should all divide into pairs and practise.'

Everybody got to their feet at once and divided up. Predictably, Neville was left partnerless.

'You can practise with me,' Harry told him. 'Right-on the count of three, then-one, two, three-'

The room was suddenly full of shouts of Expelliarmus. Wands flew in all directions; missed spells hit books on shelves and sent them flying into the air. Harry was too quick for Neville, whose wand went spinning out of his hand, hit the ceiling in a shower of sparks and landed with a clatter on top of a bookshelf, from which Harry retrieved it with a Summoning Charm. Glancing around, he thought he had been right to suggest they practise the basics first; there was a lot of shoddy spellwork going on; many people were not succeeding in Disarming their opponents at all, but merely causing them to jump backwards a few paces or wince as their feeble spell whooshed over them.

'Expelliarmus!' said Neville, and Harry, caught unawares, felt his wand fly out of his hand.

'I DID IT!' said Neville gleefully. 'I've never done it before-I DID IT!'

Kitty was partnering Vandyll, who had successfully disarmed her before she could even raise her wand. He threw his wand back at her. Kitty was having trouble disarming Vandyll, but a few minutes later, she too had mastered it.

Harry walked around the other pairs, trying to correct those who were doing the spell wrong. Ginny was teamed with Michael Corner; she was doing very well, whereas Michael was either very bad or unwilling to jinx her. Ernie Macmillan was flourishing his wand unnecessarily, giving his partner time to get in under his guard; the Creevey brothers were enthusiastic but erratic and mainly responsible for all the books leaping off the shelves around them; Luna was similarly patchy, occasionally sending Justin Finch-Fletchleys wand spinning out of his hand, at other times merely causing his hair to stand on end.

Harry avoided going near Cho and her friend for a while, but after walking twice around every other pair in the room felt he could not ignore them any longer.

'Oh no,' said Cho rather wildly as he approached. 'Expelliarmious!I mean, Expellimellius! I-oh, sorry, Marietta!'

Her curly-haired friend's sleeve had caught fire; Marietta extinguished it with her own wand and glared at Harry as though it was his fault.

'You made me nervous, I was doing all right before then!' Cho told Harry ruefully.

'Hey, Harry,' Hermione called from the other end of the room, 'have you checked the time?'

He looked down at his watch and was shocked to see it was already ten past nine, which meant they needed to get back to their common rooms immediately or risk being caught and punished by Filch for being out of bounds. He blew his whistle; everybody stopped shouting 'Expelliarmus' and the last couple of wands clattered to the floor.

'Well, that was pretty good,' said Harry, 'but we've overrun, we'd better leave it here. Same time, same place next week?'

'Sooner!' said Dean Thomas eagerly and many people nodded in agreement.

Angelina, however, said quickly, 'The Quidditch season's about to start, we need team practices too!'

'Let's say next Wednesday night, then,' said Harry, 'we can decide on additional meetings then. Come on, we'd better get going.'

'That was really good,' said Kitty once most of the people had gone.

'Yeah…' said Harry distractedly. He had one eye on the Marauder's Map, but he was also thinking of Cho saying he made her nervous.

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