Chapter Twenty Three

Daphne had woken that morning and had wanted nothing more than to roll over and pull the blanket back over her head.

Tracy was up already and putting the finishing touches to her make-up, "You should get up. You're going to be late for breakfast if you're not careful."

Daphne glared at her and grumbled, getting up and starting to pull a brush through her hair. Tracy clearly disapproved of her methods of hair brushing and rolled her eyes before pulling on her shoes and leaving the dorm.

Daphne looked around, she was the last person left in the dorm. Umbridge's latest fixation was making sure everyone looked neat and tidy, with harsh punishments for those who didn't put in enough effort to properly represent the school.

It had meant that everyone had been getting up earlier, no more lie ins or turning up to class looking slightly scruffy. Instead everyone was neatly pressed and perfectly presentable.

Daphne knew she was fairly lucky on that point. She'd never had to put much effort into looking good, not even as little as Pansy did. She could still roll out of bed after everyone else and pull a brush through her long, golden hair.

A small splash of water to wake her up and a fresh school uniform and she was ready to go.

Astoria had relaxed enough to sit with her friends during meals, for a while she'd been scared to leave her sister's side, although it was still the case no one talked very much.

Daphne was happy for her, and wouldn't even think of asking her not to sit with them but it did leave Daphne sitting alone, something she'd never been very good at.

She's been lucky enough that there had never really been a time where she'd had to sit alone, she was always seated next to people she knew and had a good circle of friends around her.

Well, up until now.

Daphne ran her fingers over her anklet, hoping that it would heat up, giving her an excuse to go and see Pansy once again. It wouldn't though, she knew that and it was better this way, however hard that was to deal with.

Daphne slipped into her neat, highly polished shoes and headed down for breakfast. She sat at the end of the table closest to the door and poured herself a large mug of coffee, buttered two slices of toast before smothering them in mixed berry jam and buried her nose in a book.

This way she could ignore the world around her, ignore the fact people were pointing and laughing. Ignore the fact she was sitting alone again, while people who revelled in hurting others were surrounded by friends…

It was going to be another long day.

Daphne slapped on a smile as Umbridge walked passed her, giving her a slightly disapproving look up and down.

"Hem hem. Your skirt, it seems a little short today." Umbridge said painfully sweetly, "You haven't possibly got it rolled up a little have you?"

Daphne managed not to roll her eyes, her skirt was no shorter than it always was, "I'm quite sure I haven't. Maybe it's the way I'm sitting?"

Umbridge let out a loud and patronising sigh, "You could be such a pretty girl. And you do come from a good family, do you think that maybe… Well, you do know that when you flirt, wear short skirts, it cheapens you, dear." she frowned at Daphne with mock concern.

"I'll remember that." Daphne said, equally sweetly, "I hate to run Professor while we're having this riveting conversation but I'm going to be late for class. It's Muggle Studies and it's so interesting right now."

Umbridge beamed at her, her stupid pink bow wobbling on her poofed up hair, "You run along, little one, and you enjoy your lesson!"

Daphne beamed at her and all but skipped down the hall until she was out of sight. There was no one around, Daphne took a minute to lay her head against the cool stone.

"I never thought you'd be here, surrounded by people who hate others so painfully." she said, partly to herself and partly to the castle, "But right now, I'm off to learn how awful muggles are."

Alecto was waiting for them as they filled into the classroom. She'd let her bun down for once, her long black hair hanging in a wavy ponytail down her back. As always Daphne and the others didn't sit down until they were allowed, something that took a good five minutes today.

"Sit." Alecto drawled at them, pausing for a moment of moving chairs, "Today we will be continuing to learn about how blatantly irresponsible muggles are. Last time we went over how muggles spent all of there time trying to rule one another, long before anyone with the blessed gift of magic got involved. Today we will be focusing on how muggles have children that they can not support. Does anyone have an example?"

Goyle raised his large hand quickly into the air, "They have whole organisations that have to take the children away because muggles abuse their children."

Alecto beamed down at him; Crabbe, Goyle and Millicent were her current favourite students, "Well done. Correct."

Alecto waved her wand over a large pile of papers on her desk. They floated up into the air, one landing neatly on each students' desk.

Daphne looked down at the three stapled bits of paper before her.

Case file 420

Was written in large, bold letters across the top of the front page.

"You will all read through the various case files before you in silence." Alecto ordered them, "Then write notes on the horrors that muggles inflict on their children just for the fun of it. You will then write an essay about the subject."

Daphne felt sick reading through the case file. She hoped that it was faked with every fibre of her being; that there weren't really children out there that had been so terribly failed by their parents, but there was no way to know, and the council stamp in the corner made it look more official than not.

Daphne read over the pages before quickly scribbling down some rough notes and spending the next hour working them into some sort of essay.

Alecto snatched it from her desk as she walked up and down the rows of quietly writing students. Her darks eyes skimmed over the parchment before she thrust it back onto the desk and crossed her arms at Daphne.

"You're still trying to make excuses for them. And pretending that they're not all like this." Alecto snapped, "Start again."

Daphne nodded and smiled, pulling the parchment back into place and drawing a thick line under what she'd written so far.

Three re-writes later and Alecto was finally happy with the work that Daphne had done. Neville was still trying to write even his first paragraph.

"I know how difficult it is for some of you to deal with the way you have all been so betrayed by your previous teachers, and for some of you… your families." Alecto smiled, she always seemed to do this, to beam down at them all at the end of the lesson and try and convince them that she wasn't insane, "But I can promise you that you will get past it. You will manage to learn and accept the truth of these things and accept the fact that those with magic are simply superior to those without."

It wasn't the best of speeches, and it seemed to have little effect, even those who already believed that they were better than the people around them, with or without magic.

"Next lesson, we will be starting to deal with the very serious, and very current topic of the rash of Muggles stealing magic from those who are born with it." Alecto said, nodding seriously at them, "Please read these booklets before the next lesson. Miss Davis please hand them out."

Tracy let out a loud huffy grumble and grabbed the stack of booklets, handing them to each student. Daphne took one look at the front which showed a sobbing mother, holding her bleeding child while an ugly looking man held a wand high in the air, laughing manically. She wrinkled her nose at it before shoving it in her bag.

Daphne hurried from the classroom, heading straight to her dorm and locked the door before pulling out the old DA galleon.

Pressing her wand to the centre she muttered that day's date and half past eight. She had no idea if she was going to get anyone coming, it was last minute and there was no guarantee that anyone was even checking the coins any more, apart from Ron, but she had to try.

It didn't take Daphne long to read the booklet; it was only twelve pages long and had large pictures on every page.

It came down to sob stories from magical parents telling the world how their children had died from a muggle coming up and grabbing their child's wand before cursing everyone in sight or ripping out chunks of their children to 'harvest' the magic within them. Daphne doubted any of it was true, it was more likely to have been made up by someone at the Ministry.

They had to do something, and any more of these lessons would have everyone either too scared or too brainwashed to even try and learn to fight.

Daphne got to the Come and Go room at ten to eight, walking back and forth before the blank stretch of wall, felling very relieved as the door appeared.

The room had changed a lot since she'd been there in fifth year, although that made sense as she'd asked for different things than before, still, it would have been nice to have the familiarity of the old room again.

It was bright inside, bathed in white light from the dozens of lights hanging down from the celling. Several sets of dummies for training on stood up against one of the walls, the opposite wall lined with hundreds of books.

No teacher would be able to find the room, it was something that Daphne had very specifically asked for. It might have seemed overly cautious but it just wasn't worth the risk. One of those they would be teaching might let something slip to a teacher but at least this way they'd be unable to find the hidden room.

Daphne felt herself welling up as a dozen students came nervously into the room, looking very relieved that it wasn't a trap.

Neville and Ron were the last to arrive, both beaming at Daphne.

"Do you want to start?" Daphne offered.

Neville shook his head, "Nope. This is your game, I think. You called the meeting."

Daphne took a deep breath and nodded, "Ok then… right. Well firstly, thank you all for coming. There's going to be a few changes from last time. Firstly, I'm not… we're not, going to get you to sign a contract to keep quiet, if we don't keep quiet then… it won't be good. You're all here because you've seen what 'they' are like. They don't pull their punches and we're going to need to learn to do the same."

Daphne looked around the room and smiled, for the first time that year she felt like they actually stood a fighting chance.

"We're going to work in smaller groups." Daphne said, she'd spent a lot of time over the day thinking of the best way of doing things, "It means that we can look at passing them off as homework should we get caught. If you have a suggestion for someone who could join, you must not tell them about us. Tell Neville or I, we're going to be the only two who know who everyone is."

"This is going to get bad, isn't it?" Ron said, looking worriedly at his sister.

Ginny glared at him for a moment before shaking her head at him.

"Yes." Daphne shrugged, "But the best way to say safe is for us all to learn not only to defend ourselves, but also to fight back. We're going to start with the best way to defend ourselves. Blocking our minds."

"Do you really think that's going to help?" Colin Creevey asked, wrinkling his nose, "I mean wouldn't it make more sense to learn spells to use against people?"

Daphne was expecting some level of push back against such a simple starting point, or at least simple in theory.

"No." Daphne said, "Most Death Eaters are well versed in Legitamancy and if they know what's coming they'll be able to defend themselves."

"Wait, do you think the Carrows, Snape and Umbridge are reading our thoughts already?" Ginny asked, wrapping her arms around herself, suddenly feeling very exposed.

Daphne shrugged, "Difficult to tell. I don't know about Umbridge or the Carrows but Snape knows how to use Legitamancy, very well in fact. Which is why we need to work on closing our minds, both to be better fighters and to protect ourselves now, by doing this. Our minds have to be our own."

A murmur of agreement went around the room.

Daphne nodded, running her hands through the ends of her hair, "Right, so… lets find a book…"

It didn't take them long to find several books on Legitamancy and Occlumency. Daphne and Neville both soon regretted ever thinking it had been easy for Harry to block someone from their minds.

By the end of two hours, Neville was at least able to keep his mind closed if he was thinking about it. Ron, somewhat surprisingly, was doing the clear best out of the little group; much to Ginny's annoyance and pride.

Daphne checked her watch and clapped her hands together to get everyone's attention, "We're going to have to call it here, the last thing we need it to get caught out of bed after hours. Well done everyone."

"Keep practising." Neville added, "The best way to learn this stuff is to practise every minute you get and the good thing about Occlumency is no one needs to know you're practising."

"Good luck." Daphne smiled, leaving just her and Neville in the room.

"We should do a lesson with Astoria, Matthew and Thomas." Neville sighed, "They need to know this stuff as well."

Daphne rubbed her forehead, "Yeah, I was trying to put it off I think. I should of invited them along today. I just hate the idea of this all ever getting to them, you know?"

Neville nodded and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, "I do. Younger siblings should be off limits, but if the end of last year, what happened to Danica, taught us anything it's that however much we wish it to be true, younger siblings are very much involved."

"Yeah… yeah I know." Daphne said, giving him a playful shove.

Daphne still wasn't sure about bringing Astoria to the meetings though; she thought she might be able to find a middle ground and just teach her a few basics one on one.

She was exhausted physically and emotionally when she finally got back to the common room.

"And where have you been?" Gemini demanded, the second Daphne walked through the door.

"You nearly missed curfew." Rodolphus sneered.

Daphne rolled her eyes, "It's called school work. Tends to happen a lot of the time in a… you know… school."

"Watch your tongue, Greengrass. Potter isn't here to protect you any more." Gemini hissed.

Daphne ignored her and kept waking to her room, leaning against the door for a moment to take several deep breaths and remove Gemini from her head.

There wasn't a mirror in the dorm. They were all in the bathrooms and that would mean risking running into Gemini, or Millicent. It was something she just wasn't up to right now and chose not to take the risk.

Instead she moved over to her trunk and rummaged around, hoping she'd packed a mirror of some sort that she could use to take off her make up. That way she could still get an hour or so of school work finished before making the treacherous journey to the bathroom.

She found the mirror that Dumbledore had left her in his will, wrapped carefully in her least favourite cardigan.

Still, it was a mirror and therefore what she needed right now. She grabbed the bottle of make up remover from her bedside table and a cotton wool pad, smoothing the liquid over her cheeks.

The mirror blurred for a moment, Daphne wondered if she'd simply breathed to close to the glass when Draco's face showed clearly.

"Daphne?" Draco gasped.