Over the next two weeks, lessons continued at a rate Harry wouldn't have expected, approximately once every two days. The lessons alternated between Sirius and Remus, and somehow there was an sense of urgency to the training that everyone seemed to understand but Harry.
It was frustrating to be the one person who was not informed about anything. Harry hated being kept in the dark, but he understood. The idea that Voldemort might be snooping around in his mind the same way he'd been doing was chilling. The thought that whatever he found might get someone Harry cared about killed was even worse.
Umbridge was stalking around the school, enjoying her new found sense of power. She observed teachers classrooms and seemed judgmental. Even worse, she seemed to sense that something was going on with Harry.
Time after time she tried to get him to respond. She would insult him or his parents, or Hagrid or Steven. Somehow, though, either Hermione or Steven was there every time, and they always found some way to defuse the situation.
From what Harry heard from others, Umbridge was worse on Steven than she was with him. With Harry she pretended to be polite, even as she insulted him quietly. With Steven she was openly hostile, talking about how he shouldn't even be allowed at the school.
Somehow Steven managed to avoid getting detention, although Harry had no idea how he managed it. If it had been him, he'd have lived in detention.
It bothered him that the two of them were working so hard to keep him out of trouble. They didn't seem to bother with any other teacher, not even Snape.
When Hermione started hinting around about forming a Defense club in order to counter the lack of schooling they were getting, Harry resisted. The Occlumency lessons were taking up a lot of his free time, and he was feeling frustrated with Umbridge. The teachers all seemed spooked and on edge, and that attitude spread to the students as well.
The news from outside was growing even worse. Wizards were being imprisoned without trial, and Umbridge as much as suggested to students who stood against her that the same thing might happen to their parents.
Fortunately, Harry wasn't particularly worried about the Dursleys. Given the way they had treated him, he didn't have any great love for them anyway. More importantly, this administration didn't seem to consider Muggles as being fully human.
He never once heard a Muggleborn being threatened with their parents being imprisoned. Instead they suffered from detentions from which they came back pale faced and trembling.
Hermione warned him not to put anything sensitive in the mail, especially to Sirius. The mail at Hogwarts was being censored, and information that children were sending to their parents was being used against them.
One Slytherin first year actually vanished after most of his family was imprisoned after one letter. Hermione thought that her remaining family had fled with her to Eastern Europe.
Harry could see the attitude of the student body growing uglier and uglier. Privately he thought Umbridge was a fool to be this openly vicious. She was in a school with a thousand people who knew how to do magic. Poison recipes were in the library, and not always in the restricted sections.
There were warnings in the regular textbooks about what not to do lest a regular potion become a deadly poison. Harry could think of a half dozen potions he could turn to poison just from his textbooks this year. With magic, slipping poison into pumpkin juice would be the easiest thing.
Furthermore, there were all sorts of spells that weren't even Dark that could be used to kill. The slicing spell was not meant to be used on living beings, but it could.
The only thing that had kept her from being murdered already was the fear that the Ministry would send someone worse.
Hermione kept pestering him about a defense club. What Harry didn't understand was why it was so important, and why it had to be him who ran it.
When she pestered him, she got that look she got when things were important.
He suggested Steven, but she disagreed. In a real fight, they'd be even, or Steven might even be ahead given his reflexes and strength. But much of what Steven did couldn't be taught. No Wizard could create a bubble, or especially a shield capable of deflecting an Avada Kedavra.
Harry was better at Defense because it was important to him. He'd been the target of repeated assassination attempts since he was eleven years old, and knowing how to stay alive had been one of his top priorities other than Quidditch.
Better yet, he was actually capable of teaching what he knew. The more he saw Umbridge strutting around, the angrier he got and the closer he came to agreeing.
"Wake up," Steven said quietly.
Harry blinked. What was Steven doing in his room. It was after hours and he shouldn't be in the Gryffindor quarters at all.
He looked around; the others were sound asleep.
"What's going on?" he asked.
For a moment he felt suspicious; he'd already been targeted once by a polyjuiced assassin on the way to Hogwarts. He relaxed after a moment, though. Polyjuice couldn't be used to duplicate a half-human or non-human.
Out of everyone in Hogwarts, Steven, Flitwick and Hagrid, assuming he ever came back were the only ones he could trust to be who they said they were.
"I need your help," Steven said. He looked flustered.
Harry stared nearsightedly at him for a moment, then sighed. He reached for his wand and glasses and quickly began to get dressed. He moved as quietly as he could, but still stumbled a bit as he slipped on his trainers.
They slipped down the stairs and quietly out of the Gryffindor entirely.
Even the paintings on the walls seemed to be sleeping. Harry felt relieved that he'd thought to bring his invisibility cloak. Given the glee that Filch was taking with the new powers given him by Umbridge, getting caught by him wouldn't be pleasant.
"Where are we going?" Harry whispered.
"We're going to get brooms," Steven said grimly.
"Where are we going?" Harry asked, putting his hand on Steven's arm. "You're not talking about leaving the grounds, are you? There's a world of assassins out there just waiting for us to step foot outside."
"It'll be fine," Steven said. He grimaced. "I wish I could tell you, but..."
He glanced up at the paintings around them. Even though most of them seemed to be asleep, it was possible that some of them were faking.
"Fine," Harry said. "But you are going to tell me."
It occurred to him that he was being monumentally stupid going anywhere with anyone no questions asked, even Steven. After all, someone could have used the Impirius on him, even if he was resistant to magic.
They reached the broom shed by the Quidditch pitch. Harry wondered why Steven hadn't asked him to bring his Firebolt, although carrying it through the halls might have given what they were doing away. Harry thought that the invisibility cloak would have probably covered it, but maybe he hadn't wanted one of Harry's roommates to find him and the broom gone.
After all, Harry missing might just be a trip to the loo, but Harry missing with his broom was something completely different.
Steven used his wand to open the broomshed, and he pulled out two brooms.
"I'm sorry about all of this," Steven said. "There's so many paths that she misses some sometimes, and there's nobody else."
Harry had no idea what he was talking about, but a moment later he found himself flying through the night sky, high over the Forbidden forest. He couldn't help but feel a clenching in his gut as he left the familiar environs of Hogwarts behind.
There were giant spiders below, he found himself thinking, and he found himself wondering if they were flying over the spot where he and Steven had confronted Quirrell for the first time.
They'd flown for ten minutes before finally reaching their destination, a large clearing in the woods.
There was farmland below him; it looked huge despite being surrounded by the Forbidden forest. Harry wondered for the first time just how large the forest was.
As they landed, he froze. They were in some kind of village, with buildings that looked a lot like Hagrid's hut all around them. There were neatly planted rows of vines on hills all around them, and there was even some kind of waterwheel in the distance.
Harry felt even more uneasy, and he pulled his wand silently as they landed.
Figures stepped forward in the darkness; there were dozens of silhouettes, possibly hundreds. They were all short and Harry wondered if he was in a goblin village.
Steven lifted his wand and said a quiet word. His wand lit with a pure white light and suddenly, blinking, Harry could see.
There were hundreds of Watermelon Stevens staring impassively at them.
"What did you do?" Harry asked, staring. Only two watermelons had been sent into the wilderness. He had no idea how this many could have been created. It took him a moment to realize what the crops growing in neat rows on the hill were; row after row of baby watermelons.
"They did it on their own," Steven said quietly. There was a sound of quiet pride in his voice. "I created them to defend me and the kids at Hogwarts, and they decided that two of them wouldn't be able to do that on their own."
"So how..."
"One of them sacrificed himself for seed," Steven said. He sighed. "I never would have asked them to do it, but they did."
This was exactly what the Ministry had been afraid of, Harry realized. After only three years there was already an army of them with more of them growing all the time.
"Could you take over the light for me?" Steven asked.
Harry nodded, casting a quick Lumnos on his own wand.
"Expecto Patronus!" Steven said, waving his wand. A moment later, Lion appeared. It stared impassively at them, then bowed, it's head lowering to the ground.
The watermelons began to line up and a moment later they began to march into Lion's mane.
"What are we doing?" Harry asked, staring as Watermelon after watermelon entered Lion, like something out of an old American cartoon.
"We're about to stop an uprising," Steven said grimly.
"What?" Harry asked. He stared at Steven, and he wondered if the expression on his face was as stupid as he felt.
"Giants," Steven said. "We're going to fight giants."