This is a work of fan fiction using characters from the Harry Potter universe, which are trademarked by J.K. Rowling. I do not claim ownership of these characters nor the locations such as Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, etc. that are Rowling's creations. This work also includes Pokemon, which belong to the Pokemon Company, and I again claim no ownership of these characters.

I thank both Rowling and the Pokemon Company for the universes they have created that allows me to do something like this for my own entertainment and, hopefully, the entertainment of the readers.

Never in the process of forming this new group had Harry been for the idea more than he was against it. He agreed with the principle, agreed that they needed to learn and that Umbridge was never going to teach them, but he disagreed wholeheartedly that he was the one who should do it instead. And for that reason he was dead set against the idea, even as it progressed.

But after talking to Hagrid and being provided with one of the few crucial tools needed to actually get this group up and running Harry felt himself get excited for the first time. For now he was finally able to forget about him teaching his fellow students and focus on the rebellious side. They were finally getting one up on Umbridge, up on the Ministry, and Harry was more than ready for the fight.

His enthusiasm was dampened heavily by a notice that had been placed up on the Gryffindor noticeboard in the common room Monday morning. It was a short note, an A5 sized paper such that you could only really make out the words if you walked right up to it, but once you did you wished you hadn't.

'Educational Decree Number Twenty-Four,' the note read. 'All student organisations, societies, teams, groups, and clubs are henceforth disbanded. An organisation, society, team, group, or club is hereby defined as a regular meeting of three or more students. Permission to re-form may be sought from the High Inquisitor. No student organisation, society, team, group, or club may exist without the knowledge and approval of the High Inquisitor. Any student found to have formed, or to belong to, an organisation, society, team, group, or club that has not been approved by the High Inquisitor will be expelled.'

"Damn, how did she know?" Ron muttered as the three of them read the new decree. "You don't reckon Rosmerta told her."

"It seems unlikely," Hermione offered hesitantly. "I know she told Hagrid but I doubt she would have told Professor Umbridge. She doesn't like her any more than we do."

"Still, maybe she just overheard her," Ron suggested. "She told Hagrid, who knows who else she told. And while Hagrid would notice if that fat toad was hanging around not everyone will have."

"No," Harry spoke up, his voice stopping Hermione and Ron's debate. "No, she can't know. If she did she would have come after us directly, even if we weren't breaking a school rule. No, I think she just heard rumours. A lot of people were at that meeting. It would be surprising if nobody had noticed their absence, or the lot of them climbing up to the room. It's not like it's easy to be inconspicuous in the Three Broomsticks."

"So what do we do?" Ron asked. Harry paused.

"Nothing," he said eventually. "We act normally. It's not like we've figured out a way of hiding from Umbridge yet anyway. Besides, this decree doesn't really change things. We already knew we'd be in trouble if we were caught."

"But expelled," Hermione said worriedly.

"You think some people might bolt?" Ron asked.

Hermione nodded, chewing her lips. "I doubt the Gryffindors would and the Ravenclaws have too much sense. But that Zacharias Smith in Hufflepuff might decide to turn us in if he thought he'd get something out of it." Ron swore.

"So how do we stop him?" He asked. "He could sell us all out at any moment." Hermione frowned.

"I suppose the best way is to make sure he comes," Hermione said. "If we can tie his fate to ours he'll be much less likely to tell on us. That way if we go down he'll go down with us."

"Either that or exclude him entirely," Harry said. "Although the other Hufflepuffs might have a problem with that. Anyway, that can be left for now. Come on, lets get down to breakfast."

Harry, Ron and Hermione, some of the last students to leave the Gryffindor Common Room, began their journey towards the Great Hall.

"We have a place to practice, so that's sorted," Hermione whispered as they walked. "All we need now before we can meet is a way to get there without everyone noticing us walking across the lawn."

"We could do it at night," Harry suggested. "When it's dark you can't see anything through the windows. And provided it's late enough there shouldn't be anyone in the common rooms."

"That could be quite risky," Hermione said. "It would only take one student pulling an all-nighter…"

"Guys," Ron said, his voice loud and pulling Harry and Hermione from their conversation in surprise. "I think we've got bigger problems than studying students." And he pointed down the corridor.

Harry didn't see anything at first, the hallway seemed empty to him, yet as he looked he realised that there was something most definitely out of place. His eyes scanned the area carefully, cataloguing every inch of stone wall until he saw it and his eyes widened.

The camera was blindingly obvious, now that he'd seen it, yet it was no surprise he hadn't thought to look. It was perched above head height, in near the point where the ceiling and wall connected, and it was looking right down the corridor at them.

"They're everywhere," Ron said grimly and Harry turned to look behind them. At the junction they'd just turned at two cameras looked out from the corner, one facing towards them, one looking back the way they'd come.

"No," Hermione whispered, her face white. "They can't do this, they just can't."

"They have," Ron said grimly. "It's finally happened. The Ministry are so scared they're spying on us. No one does anything here without them knowing. And it works, too. How could we possibly meet up now?"

The cameras were a shock above and beyond the education decree that'd greeted them that morning and it had taken the whole castle by surprise. The Great Hall was silent and tense, nobody feeling even remotely comfortable and all too aware of the cameras situated in each corner and attached to the wooden beams above them. It seemed people were afraid to even breath.

"Hey, Harry," a hushed voice sounded from beside him and he turned to see Fred sitting next to him, very calmly eating his cereal as he sat there.

Harry knew what he was trying to do. But communicating properly with all these cameras on them would be impossible.

"Common room," Harry said simply, covering up his words by taking a big slurp of soup. Fred seemed to get the picture for he didn't even react.

"This is mad," Ron muttered from across the table. It seemed he had missed Harry's exchange with Fred. "How are we going to do anything if we can't even talk to each other?"

It was a difficult task but Harry already had the seeds of an idea in his head. For now, though, he needed everyone to stay calm.

"Hermione," Harry muttered, eyeing Ginny as she entered the Great Hall and wandered between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables. "Pretend you forgot something in the common room and see if there are any cameras there. On your way tell Ginny to sit with Michael this morning and spread the message to keep your head down."

Hermione didn't respond in words. Instead she put on a surprised face and ducked under the table to look in her bag.

"Shoot," she said aloud, standing up quickly and hoisting her bag over her shoulder. "I forgot something. I'll meet you in class." She strode down the aisle, pausing only to exchange a few words with Ginny, before she was gone. Ginny, not looking remotely suspicious, turned to sit at the Ravenclaw table instead of Gryffindor and muttered something to a surprised looking Michael.

"Fred, you're in charge of telling the Quidditch girls," Harry said after seeing the success of his small scheme. "Wait until you're with them naturally. Don't go looking for them or you'll be too obvious." Fred nodded, covering the movement up with a stretch and a yawn.

"Ron, when we head off to class I want you to go up to Ginny and tell her to tell Colin and Dennis," Harry said, cutting Ron off as he went to complain. "Make it look like you're annoyed to see her sitting with Michael." Ron swallowed his objection.

"I can do that," he said and his grip on his fork tightened as he narrowed his gaze on the Ravenclaw table.

"I'm going to get Neville to talk to Hannah and the Hufflepuffs," Harry told them. "Hopefully we'll be able to get through all this without anything happening." The bell rang. "Good luck."

Life at Hogwarts quickly proved to be a living nightmare. If Harry had to make a comparison he would liken it to the reaction the school had in his second year when the Chamber of Secrets had been opened. It was shocking to think things could have gone back to that.

Meanwhile Harry's scheme to keep their rebellion under wraps had gone off without a hitch. Not one mention of their battle study group had come up in the weeks that had followed and the other attendees of their Hogsmeade meeting kept their distance from Harry and did not speak of the matter.

And it was a good thing they did too as the cameras remained an ever present part of Hogwarts life. Harry had expected that at some point parents would protest, the cameras seeming to betray the students' rights to privacy, but there was no news, at least in the Prophet, of any complaints. Indeed, the Prophet continued to wax lyrically on the marvellous job the Ministry, and Professor Umbridge in particular, were doing at Hogwarts. It was like they were in their own little world completely separate from reality.

But as life always did at Hogwarts, Harry's four and a bit years experience telling him so, things started to gravitate back to normal. The cameras, though still incredibly intrusive and thankfully restricted to corridors, classrooms and the Great Hall, started to become just part of the castle and people started to forget about them, if only briefly.

They were helped by the arrival of the Quidditch season, which, in Harry's experience, was always a catalyst for things going back to normal. The first game of the season was just a few days after Halloween and was Gryffindor versus Slytherin, the biggest game of the Quidditch season bar none. The atmosphere ratcheted up over the weeks until it reached fever pitch, both houses more desperate than ever to get one over on the other.

Ron wasn't doing well with the pressure. He'd been training with the team ever since being chosen to replace Wood and he and Machop were doing a good job, though of course not as good as Wood and Snorlax had done. That would be expecting too much. Nevertheless the team threw encouragement at Ron and it seemed to stick, his play with Machop only improving as time went on, but not everyone was so encouraging.

The Slytherins were never above using underhanded tactics, in fact they revelled in them, and they had quickly identified Ron as the weak link in an otherwise established and experienced Gryffindor team. In the week before the match Slytherin students mocked and jeered him in the corridors, doing everything they could to throw him off his game, and it was working incredibly well.

"I can't do this," Ron muttered as he sat at breakfast the morning of the match. Harry had expected this, having seen it coming a mile off, and already had his response planned out.

"Yes, you can," he said simply, trying to put as much surety into his voice as possible. It was quite difficult to do. Harry fully believed that Ron could do this, and do it well, but he also saw how flummoxed he was by the attention shown to him and Harry knew that this Ron, the one who was slightly green and hadn't even touched his breakfast, was a liability on the pitch.

"You should eat something," Hermione said, doing her best to help out. "Remember when Harry started and he was all nervous. That turned out fine, didn't it."

Ron swallowed. "Alright," he said, unconvincingly. "I suppose."

Harry rolled his eyes. That was probably the best they were going to get. He took another bite of sausage, his stomach settled and his attitude confident, as Angelina stood from her seat further up the table.

"Team," she said imperiously. "Let's go." Ron paled.

"Come on," Harry said encouragingly, standing up and brushing off the crumbs from breakfast. Ron rose too, more automatically, and he bumped the table loudly as he did so.

"Good luck," Hermione said. "Both of you." Harry knew she only really meant Ron, Ron was the one who needed the encouragement, but he nodded to her nevertheless and took a grip of Ron's shoulder, guiding him towards the doors as Ron automatically gave in to his control.

The Slytherin table jeered loudly as they went. Harry ignored them. Ron gulped.

Out on the open grounds things were clearer and Harry breathed in a breath of fresh air. It was quiet out, no sound but for the rustling wind as the rest of the students remained in the Great Hall for a few minutes longer, and Harry felt at peace. He was never nervous during Quidditch games anymore. He loved them.

Ron would eventually have the same attitude, Harry knew, but for now it was all about getting him through that first game. It had been the same for him, back when he was a first year, and the confidence from winning that game had continued on to now.

"Harry," Ron spoke up nervously, halfway down to the Quidditch pitch. "Tell me seriously. Do you think I can do this?" His expression was so pitifully vulnerable that Harry wouldn't have been able to tell him no even if he'd wanted to.

Instead he did what was asked and told Ron the truth.

"If you play like you do in practice," he told him. "You're not Wood, no one is expecting that. You're not meant to be the star of the team. So stop putting so much pressure on yourself. There are six guys out there, one of whom is me, that have your back. Just do your thing, we'll do the rest."

Ron swallowed and nodded. He stood up straighter, to Harry's delight, and he marched into the changing room standing tall, looking confident, even if it was just a mask.

The rest of the team had already gathered, Angelina already fully kitted out and ready to walk out onto the pitch despite the fact the stands were still empty. The rest of the team nodded to Harry as he entered, familiarity removing the need for words to be spoken, and he followed Ron to his locker as Ron almost mechanically got ready, his face focused and unflinching. Even as sounds were heard outside, the thundering of feet in the stands above, Ron kept his gaze firmly on his locker.

Eventually Angelina called them to attention.

"Right, we know what we've got to do," she said brusquely. "Slytherin are a known quantity. We know what they're going to do. What we have to do in response is to play our game and force them to play at our pace."

"Now get out there and win," she told them, as if daring any of them to argue. "Wood may be gone but I expect nothing less than the cup this year. If you're not playing for that then you are not playing at all. Let's go."

They walked out to tumultuous applause, garnering the support of the majority of the school, as usual. The Slytherins were traditionally unpopular, due to their foul play and even worse attitude, and so even the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were hoping to see them thoroughly trounced.

The pregame handshakes passed by without major incident, the Slytherins doing their best to crush the hands of their opposite numbers, but the Gryffindor team were far too used to this tactic to care. Only Ron showed any reaction, nursing his wrist gingerly as he returned to his position, though seeing the three female Chasers non-reaction he quickly shrugged it off.

"Alright teams, release your Pokémon!" Madam Hooch called and a flash of red light lit up the field briefly as fourteen Pokemon made an appearance at once. On the Gryffindor side of the field the three Chasers stood together, as did the two Beaters, giving the impression they were conspiring together, while Machop made his way to the goalposts, flexing his muscles. Harry rose high above the pitch, Talonflame by his side, looking down as the pitch revealed itself in its entirety before him.

A/N: Hello there, thanks for reading this chapter. I hope you've enjoyed it.

I just wanted to talk about the reaction to the last chapter, particularly the negative comments regarding a potential Harry/Ginny pairing. I'm not going to be making any statement about what pairing I'm actually going to use, for any character, but I was interested by the response, especially considering there was actually very little in the last chapter that hinted at a future Harry/Ginny pairing (though I do see what prompted the response).

I know that people have pairings that they like and pairings that they absolutely hate but I've always struggled with the hate for Harry/Ginny pairings. After all, this is the canon pairing. Also the review that hoped for Harry not to be paired with Hermione or Luna either confuses me a bit. Hermione, Ginny and Luna are the three female characters who are most likely to have ended up with Harry based purely on the fact that they get on well with Harry and they are of a similar age to him. I suppose the Quidditch girls could also be counted in this but I'm suspecting that what you really have in mind by saying this is for Harry to end up with someone like Daphne Greengrass, who we know virtually nothing about from canon, or Fleur or Tonks who are probably a bit too old considering Harry is still at school and they've both graduated by this point.

I'm not saying you have to like certain pairings for any reason because you do not. You are perfectly within your rights to like whatever pairings you want and dislike whatever pairings you want. You are even allowed to stop reading my story if you don't like my pairings. You can stop reading any story for any reason. I just want people reading to keep an open mind. I already know all my pairings and they aren't going to change as that would severely affect my plans for the story. I just hope that you'll give my story a chance if it seems as though I'm going for a pairing you don't like. It is my personal philosophy that a good writer can make even a disliked pairing good and since I know that there will be people disappointed no matter which pairing I choose that is all I can do.

In the meantime feel free to tell me what pairings you like and what pairings you dislike, and please let me know why as well. I have my own views so it would be interesting to hear from other people's perspectives. If you would even like to PM me so we could discuss this in more depth I would be happy to share my views and listen to yours.

With all that said if you give me a chance and still don't like the pairing then you can stop reading if you want to. In the meantime I hope you will continue to enjoy the story and I'll see you in the next chapter.