Authors Note: I don't know why the reviews from the last couple of chapters haven't been showing up; I'm getting copies of them in my e-mail, but they aren't showing up on the site for me either. I'm not sure what's going on or how to fix it, or even how to get hold of the moderators to get their help. Anyone who has a suggestion feel free to tell me. Also, if I haven't said it before, I don't own Harry Potter or Steven Universe.
"We're not taking Slytherins!" Ron said.
"They're members of Steven's band," Hermione said composedly. "And a few others. It'll be fine."
Harry didn't know why she seemed so sure, or why she and Steven had refused to allow Marietta Edgecomb, a Ravenclaw in their year or three of the Slytherins, but seemed fine with allowing seven other Slytherins into the group.
"Whose families do you think the Ministry is persecuting?" Hermione asked, when Ron looked particularly stubborn.
"Everybody!" he said.
"The Slytherin families have it the worst of anybody," Hermione said. "There's not one of them that haven't had family members jailed already, and they are all just waiting for the axe to fall on the rest of their family."
"Good!" Ron said. "They're all dark anyway."
"Slytherins are ambitious," Steven said quietly from the corner. He looked tired. "They don't care about being famous like Gryffindors, or making friends like Hufflepuffs, or even being proved right like the Ravenclaws."
"That's why we shouldn't trust them!" Ron said, leaning forward. "They're going to go with whoever has the most power, and that's the Ministry or Voldemort."
"They'll go with whoever gives them and the people they care about the most power. The Ministry is purposefully cutting them out of the loop; we're including them," Hermione said.
"The Ministry IS pushing a lot of people to side with Voldemort." Steven said soberly. "But not everybody is going to feel safe with that. Half-bloods, or people whose families went too far to satisfy the Ministry during the last war, making them look disloyal. They're going to be too scared of what he'll do to them to go back."
"More importantly, we're teaching them to defend themselves, which is something neither Voldemort nor the Ministry is doing." Harry said. "Steven says none of these guys are Pureblood fanatics, and that they can be trusted. The only question is whether you believe him."
Ron stared at him for a moment, then looked down at the table. He grimaced. "Fine; but if they betray us to Umbridge don't blame me."
"We've got a way around that," Hermione said. "A jinx that will let us know whether anyone betrays us or not."
She and Steven shared a significant look.
It occurred to Harry that both of them were looking tired. If he hadn't known better, he'd have thought they were using those Time turners Hermione was going on and on about. She'd admitted that she'd thought of using them during her third year before Steven had convinced her that taking Muggle Studies and Divination was crazy on top of the load she was taking.
Those only allowed time back for five hours anyway, and one couldn't actually change anything that had actually occurred, so Harry didn't see the point in using them.
It did seem like the kind of thing Hermione would do while preparing for this, but he couldn't see Steven either doing it or allowing it.
They'd planned out every aspect of this; this wasn't just meeting in Hogsmeade where anyone could overhear them. This was going to involve planning, and given the numbers they were wanting to include, Harry felt himself becoming anxious.
He would have thought that actually seeing Voldemort with their own eyes at the Triwizard tournament would have driven students away. Instead it only seemed to make people feel a fanatical need to learn how to protect themselves.
Looking at the list, Harry didn't see how they were going to include seventy people in their group. There was no way they'd ever be able to keep a group that size secret; even if no one intentionally betrayed them, it would be too easy for someone to be followed to their meeting place.
"This will work," Hermione said. That same, strange certainty shone in her eyes that she'd had at other times, and he found himself wishing desperately that his occlumency lessons were going faster.
The certainty that she and Steven both had was something that he envied deeply. He was anything but certain. There were assassins out for his blood, and worse, Voldemort and his men. Worse, people seemed to expect him to be some sort of leader.
It was as though they expected him to lead them against Voldemort when all he wanted was to get through another school year without being killed.
Given his charisma and power, he would have expected Steven to be the leader, but instead Steven always seemed to defer to him. Harry didn't understand why Hermione and Steven kept trying to push him into the spotlight.
Worse, he didn't know anything about public speaking. There were going to be people in the group from years ahead of him, including Cedric Diggory and the Weasley twins. How was he supposed to tell upperclassmen what to do when they were going to be teaching him?
The greatest mystery was how they'd gotten him to agree to it.
Getting the group together in the Room of requirement was a logistical nightmare. Having seventy students avoiding Filch and Mrs. Norris was hard enough without Umbridge strutting around and Snape scowling everywhere.
Somehow, Steven and Hermione always seemed to know where the watchers were going to be, even without the Marauder's map, which the twins were using to help other students toward their goal.
The fact that they looked even more exhausted than before was only part of the mystery.
The more important thing was what Harry was going to say in front of everyone. How was he going to convince everyone that he was the one to listen to, even if others knew more about Defense than he did.
As he stared out at the crowd of faces before him, Harry felt himself sweating. This wasn't some kind of informal group; this was almost ten percent of the population of the school! Steven and Hermione had gone over each name carefully before agreeing to admit them. They'd ignored Ron, who'd generally wanted to cut Slytherin names and include more Gryffindores.
Harry sighed as he heard the crowd growing restless. He felt Steven's reassuring hand on his shoulder and he stood up.
"You all know who I am," Harry said. "And you all know what happened at the end of the Triwizard tournament. A lot of you would rather be anyplace other than at this school."
He paused and looked out at the expectant faces.
"I don't particularly want to be here either. The thing is, it's no safer outside than it is here. From what I'm hearing, its actually worse. There's nowhere to hide, and the Ministry is doing everything they can to make sure we can't defend ourselves."
Harry shook his head. "Umbridge tells us that we don't need to know how to do spells; she thinks that if we learn we'll be a threat to the Ministry. Voldemort doesn't want you to learn so that when he conquers Britain it'll be easier to herd us like sheep to the slaughter."
"The thing is," he continued. "Is that nobody has asked us what we want."
He hesitated. Hermione and Steven had gone over this speech with him over a period of several days, looking more tired every time they'd returned with suggestions about how he should change it. In the end he'd felt like he'd practiced more for this than for finals in his first two years.
"We have a right to defend ourselves, and the only way it will happen is if we teach ourselves. I know I'm asking a lot, especially of upper years, but this is the only way we'll be ready. It's not a matter of if the Ministry or Voldemort come knocking at your door, it's a matter of when."
"We need to be ready."
Everyone was silent for a long, interminable moment, as though they were waiting for him to say something else. Harry simply stood and watched them. Hermione had insisted that silence was as important as what was said, which was ironic given that she hadn't shut up for the entirety of first year.
The crowd exploded with questions.
What struck Harry was that no one was objecting to the idea. Everyone seemed excited about it, even people he would have expected to be ambivalent.
Maybe it was seeing Voldemort. Most of his classmates had been babies during the war. They'd grown up with Voldemort as the boogieman, as the tale told to terrify them in the night. Now they knew in their bones that he was real. They'd seen him with their own eyes, and that had terrified a lot of them.
Seeing the power that Voldemort and Dumbledore had wielded against one another had to have made them aware of their own powerlessness.
Harry would have expected more of them to be too afraid to fight back, especially those outside his own house. Of course, Gryffindor didn't have a monopoly on bravery.
Other than the seven Slytherins, there was also a Hufflepuff contingent. Predictably, they were all sitting together, clumped around Cedric Diggory. He was the most popular Hufflepuff secondary only to Steven himself.
"So what are we going to call ourselves?" Cedric called out.
"Ginny had an idea," Hermione said, grinning. "Fudge is terrified that Dumbledore is going to teach us magic and turn us into an army, so why not give them what they want?"
Dumbledore's army was voted in as their name before the session was out.
Everyone had questions; some were about his and Steven's experience with Voldemort. It was something that Harry didn't really want to relive, but he did anyway. It was important that everyone understand that while Voldemort was powerful, he wasn't unbeatable. He and Steven had stopped him with a rock and the element of surprise.
All it would take was one wizard to have a good day, and Voldemort would be dead again. That had to be part of the reason he hadn't shown himself again. He was afraid.
Harry had a sudden flash of Steven saying something about Voldemort being afraid, but after a moment it was gone.
The meeting went on far longer than Harry had intended; everyone wanted to make sure they were heard. In the end, everyone agreed to signing and making themselves subject to the jinx that would punish them if they betrayed the group.
As the group filtered out; guided by Steven and Hermione's newfound ability to predict just where teachers would be and the twins with the Marauder's map, Harry found himself standing alone with Luna and Neville.
Neville looked almost as afraid to talk as he had their first year when he'd lost his toad.
"You need to tell him," Luna said, pushing Neville. "If you don't, you'll just keep gathering wrackspurts, and you can't afford any more."
Her face had lost its dreamy look and her expression was sharper than she'd ever seen it.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"I had detention with Professor Umbridge," Neville said nervously. He refused to look Harry in the eye.
"What's it like?" Harry asked. For some reason Steven and Hermione had been conspiring to keep him from getting detention with her all year.
"She makes us do lines," Neville said.
"That doesn't sound too bad," Harry said. "At least you aren't cleaning up frog bile, like with Snape."
"Show him," Luna said.
Reluctantly, Neville lifted the sleeve of his robe.
There were scars on his arm. Some looked older while others were still red and weeping. They formed words.
"I will not tell lies."
Harry's mind went blank.
Steven and Hermione...had they known this was happening? How could they know and not do anything about it?
What was wrong with them?