Chapter Twenty Seven
The next day was bright and clear, but the air seemed tense, like there was a storm on the way. The atmosphere was not helped by the increasing worry Harry had over that evening's activities.
By half seven he was relieved to be doing something, walking calmly up the steps towards the seventh floor. He went to the old, disused study room where his friends were waiting, Daphne had refused to sit down on the grubby looking chairs and was pacing around waiting for Harry.
"You're here." Draco grinned, quickly shutting his book.
Harry nodded, "And the coast is clear." he said, holding up the map.
Harry could feel himself worry, starting to doubt he had somehow dreamt about the perfect room for them to study in.
"Harry, there's nothing there." Daphne said after a moment.
"We need to think about what we need, a place to train." Harry said, as confidently as he could.
He led them passed the blank wall, thinking as hard as he could on the room he'd seen before.
"Oh my gods." Draco gasped.
Harry grinned, he could of jumped for joy at the sight of the large wooden door that had appeared in the wall.
"This is not normal." Neville said quietly, walking towards the door.
"We go to a magic school, what exactly is normal any more?" Hermione laughed.
Harry pushed open the door and showed them the fully equipped training room inside.
"Look at all these books!" Draco and Hermione said together.
Harry smirked, "Yeah, I thought you might like those."
"There is literally everything we could possibly need in here." Daphne said, looking around, "Where does it all come from?"
Harry wasn't sure about that, and hadn't thought to ask Dobby, "I'm not sure, maybe it's all stuff other people have left? Like lost property from a thousand years. I'm pretty sure that broken Foe Glass was in the fake Professor Moody's office last year."
"Do you think any of it might be missed? We can't draw any unnecessary attention to ourselves and if those books have come from the library..." Pansy said.
"They haven't." Hermione said, "The library copy of 'One hundred and one effective curses' has a large blue ink stain on page five and I've never even seen this section of books."
Pansy nodded reassured. Harry moved some of the pillows over to the other side of the room as well and made sure that there was a large enough space before checking his watch and pulling out the Marauders Map.
"Filch is down stairs in the Dungeons, Umbridge is in her office… in fact the seventh floor is completely clear." Harry said, "I'll go get everyone then."
He left the room before they could argue and walked and quickly as he could to the study room. It was filled with more students than Harry was sure it had seen in a hundred years.
"All here?" he asked, looking to make sure there was no one obviously missing, "Follow me. Now watch for land marks and stuff as I'll need you all to meet straight in the Come and Go room next time."
"And what exactly is the 'Come and Go room?" Zacharias Smith sniffed, "That has never been there before..." he said, catching sight of the door.
"You created a whole room Harry?" Cho said impressed.
Harry smiled, a warm glow in his stomach, "Not exactly."
He opened the door and stepped aside as the students filed in. Daphne, Draco, Pansy and Neville had all arranged themselves at the far end of the room, a clear spot for Harry in the middle. Hermione was more off to one side, looking very awkward and pretending to read.
As soon as the last person was in Harry closed the door and tapped the lock with his wand. He was very aware of all eyes being on him as he walked through the students to the end of the room.
"Well, first of all thank you for coming, sorry you all had to wait in that horrible study room but from now on, we will just meet right here. If the door isn't here when you get here just think of how much you need this room and walk past the wall." Harry said, taking a deep breath, next was the hard part, "The next thing, a very important thing to… discuss, is..." Harry cleared his throat and shot a glance at Hermione, "I told Hermione to put a curse, a binding spell of sorts, on the parchment you all signed."
There was a murmur of shock and several people looked furiously between Hermione and Harry.
"It'll do you no harm as long as you don't tell anyone about this, me teaching you all. It won't do any huge harm, just mark you as the one who ratted us out, or introduced the person who ratted us out." Harry continued, "Don't fool yourselves, what we're doing is dangerous. If Umbridge were to find out, well lets just say I don't think she'd be very happy."
"You all saw the new 'Educational Decree' about no clubs or groups," Daphne said, "this is the cause; she found out, somehow, and wants to stop us from learning to defend ourselves. We can not allow that."
"I realise it was wrong, not to tell you all about the curse. So anyone who wants to leave can do so. We'll remove your name from the parchment and make your memories fuzzy around this meeting so you can't tell anyone." Harry told them.
No one stepped forward for a moment before Ron, looking nervously at Fred and George, went over.
"Mum has said I'm to have nothing to do with any of this." he mumbled.
"Ron!" George snapped, in a rare flash of anger, "Are you seriously stepping away from this? You'll fail your O.W.L."
Ron blushed, "Mum says-"
"Mum says." Fred and George whined together.
"If Ron wants to leave he can." Harry snapped. He was disappointed; he thought better of Ron, and that was saying something.
Ron, shame faced, walked over to Hermione who gave him a quill to trace over his name, it disappeared with every movement he made, leaving a small gap in the list of names. Draco and Daphne then placed their wands to Ron's head and muttered the spell, leading him out of the room.
"Is he going to be OK?" Fred asked.
Harry nodded, "He'll be fine. He's on his way to the Gryffindor common room. He'll remember going somewhere, just not anything else."
Fred and George nodded, melting back into the crowd, a couple of other students also stepped forward, and removed their names, including Cho's friend Marietta.
Harry was pleased only a few left, he had had visions of everyone leaving, furious that he could of tricked them like that, but he hadn't wanted to drop Hermione in everyone's bad books either.
"Right well, thank you all those that stayed." Harry said, clapping his hands together, "We should get started."
"We should have a leader." Ginny said, moving to the front of the crowd.
"Is it really just Ron that your mum doesn't want doing this?" Neville asked in confusion.
"No, she sent the same letter to all of us." George said.
"We're just ignoring it." Fred grinned.
"Well, ok then." Neville smirked.
"I think Ginny is right, we should decide on a leader." Hermione said.
"Harry should be our leader." Cho said quickly.
Harry felt himself blush and smiled at her, "Well thank you but-"
"Cho's right." Ginny nodded, "You're the one teaching us."
"Here here." William smiled.
There was a murmur of agreement around the room.
"Ok. Thank you." Harry said humbly.
"We should also have a name." Ginny said, "So we have some way to talk about it that isn't 'that secret defence group with Potter training us to do all the spells that the Ministry don't want us to know'. It might make us a bit obvious." she grinned.
Harry smirked, "Well I'm open to suggestions."
"The Anti-Umbridge League?" Angelina said hopefully.
"Or 'The Ministry of Magic are Morons Group?" Fred grinned.
Harry snorted a laugh, "While I think they are both wonderful suggestions, I don't think they are the most deceiving of names."
Cho coughed slightly, "How about something simple, like 'The Defence Association?" she suggested, "The DA for short, that way no one will know what we're talking about."
Harry tried not to blush, or be over dramatic over what a good idea it was, "That's good." he said, managing to keep his voice level.
Cho smiled, "Thanks Harry."
Harry gave her a smile back.
"Let's make it stand for Dumbledore's Army though." Ginny pipped up, looking quickly between Harry and Cho, "I mean, that's what they're all afraid of isn't it?"
Harry nodded, the DA also worked for Danica's Army, although Harry thought it best Danica never found out she had an army at her finger tips, even if that was the name that stuck in his head. After all, it was her he was trying to make the world better for most of all.
"Ok then." Harry said, "The DA?" he quickly counted the hands, "That's over half of us."
He walked over to the parchment which had all their names on and wrote, 'The DA' in large letters at the top before pinning it to the wall.
Harry looked around the room of faces waiting for him to do something, "Right so, I think that's everything. Any more questions?"
The room was quiet, a few people shaking their heads.
"We're going to start today with something simple. This is not only a really useful spell to know, it will also help me gauge where you're all up to. Expelliarmus."
Zacharias Smith snorted, "Seriously? I mean, it's hardly going to do us any good against You-Know-Who."
Harry gritted his teeth, "If you think it's beneath you, the door is over there, make sure it hits you on the way out. We don't have time for everyone picking and choosing which spells they want to learn. And for your information, that spell saved my life in June."
Zacharias looked stunned and slightly ashamed, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly, "Sorry." he mumbled.
Harry took a deep breath, "Look, I know that most of you, including us," he said gesturing to his friends, "have been brought up to fear Voldemort as some sort of monster, unstoppable. He isn't. Voldemort is nothing more than a wizard who practised, researched and had fewer morals than the rest of us… he went to school here in fact, and worked hard. It doesn't matter what spell he is trying to use, if he doesn't have his wand, it's NOT going to work at full strength at best. There's no evidence that Voldemort has any use of wandless magic." Harry wasn't sure that was all strictly true, he certainly didn't think of Voldemort as just another wizard but it was what they needed to hear, "He's not some monster, or goblin or undefeatable foe, he went to this school. His name was Tom Riddle, until he changed it to scare people."
"It's a bit pathetic when you think about it." Pansy sniffed, "I mean how scary can you actually be if you need to give yourself a scary name?"
There was a ripple of laughter around the room before people seemed to realise they were laughing about Voldemort and stopped themselves.
"Right." Harry said, smirking himself, "Let's get started, pair up everyone and on my count of three."
He stood at the end of the room, reflecting on how weird it was to have his orders followed without question.
There was enough people for everyone to have a partner, leaving Harry free to simply watch and correct.
"Everyone ready?" Harry said, "One… Two… Three!"
The room was filled with shouts of Expelliarmus as wands went flying, bouncing softly to the floor Harry noticed, another gift from the room.
"Ok, that looked really good." Harry nodded, "I'm going to try and watch each pair in turn so those of you who lost your wands, go and get them."
Harry wasn't surprised to see that most of the students still had their wands. He wandered to the closest pair, Daphne and Pansy.
Daphne was just quicker and sent Pansy's wand flying from her hand before summoning it back for her friend. Harry nodded and watched them try again, this time it was Pansy who succeeded.
"You two seem very well matched." He commented. Harry thought about how well they would work against someone rather than against each other; he was sure he wouldn't want to go up against them.
Hermione had the slight upper hand against Fred, although Fred was still managing to disarm her when she was even slightly distracted.
"That's really good guys." Harry said encouragingly, before moving on.
Draco was next, lazily flicking his wand and disarming Ginny, so far she hadn't managed to be quick enough once.
"Go easy on her." Harry muttered to Draco with a smirk, "Here Ginny, try flicking your wrist a little more sharply." he said showing her.
Ginny smiled and nodded, turning back to Draco, from the squeal of excitement she made, Harry guessed correctly that she'd managed the spell.
Harry spotted Cho and walked, calmly, towards her.
"Hi Harry." She smiled. She was practising against Mandy Brocklehurst, another Ravenclaw in Harry's year.
"Hi." He blushed, before not knowing what else to say so nodding for them to continue, Cho turned back to Mandy,
"Expelliarmus!" She said. Mandy's wand gave a slight shake but stayed in her hand.
"I was managing it before." Cho said, "You've put me off." she smiled.
Harry smirked, "I didn't realise I was so distracting."
Mandy rolled her eyes at their obvious flirting.
"I'd better carry on." Cho said.
Harry nodded, "Yeah, yep. Umm you're both doing really well, I was watching you over there as well. Just keep practising."
Harry turned to walk away but felt a tap on his shoulder, Cho looked a little awkwardly at him.
"I just wanted to say thank you, for telling us about the curse. I nagged Marietta to come with me, she's been told by her parents not to upset Umbridge, she's making it really difficult for her Mum at the Ministry. It meant that she could leave without… I'd just hate for anything to happen to her because of me." Cho said softly.
Harry nodded, "I'm sorry Umbridge is making life difficult for her. You two always seem to be together." he said, unsure of what to say.
Cho nodded, "I was so upset, after… Cedric… she was the only one who still wanted to be my friend while I was crying all the time." Cho gave a rather forced laugh.
Harry nodded, "Yeah, I know my friends have helped me a lot, not really sure what I'd do without them. What about your parents?"
Cho shrugged, "They've forbidden me from getting on the wrong side of Umbridge as well, but if they think that I'm not going to fight You-Know-Who after what he did to Cedric..." she said fiercely.
Harry nodded, "Good for you."
William was managing fairly well against Neville but they were well matched, managing to disarm the other evenly, although Harry suspected that Neville was a little quicker, managing to disarm William two out of three times.
Over all the first lesson went very well. Apart from a couple of students they all were able to send their opponents wands flying.
"That's really good, well done everyone." Harry said, "I'm very impressed."
"Before you all go." Hermione said, pulling a box out of her bag, "Daphne, Pansy and I have managed to come up with an easier way to get the word round when we have lessons."
She opened the box, which appeared to be filled with galleons.
Daphne picked one up and held it in front of her, "These are, actually, pretty brilliant, and will let us be able to tell you when the next meet up is, we'll always meet here. You will need to keep checking these numbers, they're normally the serial numbers but these ones will have the time and date of the next meeting."
"That's really clever." George said, impressed.
"Hermione came up with the idea." Pansy said.
Hermione blushed, "Well, I couldn't of finished them so quickly without help."
Harry dug out his map, quickly checking the corridor was clear for them to all get out, "Right, we'll try and meet at least once a week, as said, everyone take a coin on your way out, and make sure you don't spend it by mistake!"
He waited until everyone else had left before leaving the room himself, the door melting back into wall as soon as they were clear of it.