The trial was not slated to start until right after school let out. If it seemed like a mercy, because it would have been harder to arrange for the key witnesses to appear if it had been held when they were otherwise occupied, that was an intentional misdirection of the court. As rigid as Professor McGonagall was, she would have allowed them to leave in order to appear in court, as it was the least the school could do for centaurs who had saved two of the students, even if they did not see it that way. She had told them as much the last time she was able to meet with any of them, in that case, Hermione.

"Can't be helped," Ron said between their last two classes. "She's busy with all sorts of end of the year responsibilities. If it doesn't look like the school is working because she can't hack it, the Ministry'll have all the excuse it needs to send someone else to ruin things." He referred to a coming trial in which the evidence was even more certain than the case of the centaurs, the reviewing of the scores after a year with Umbridge. It would be painfully clear to anyone who could read that the only students who had learned anything during the year were the participants in the not-allowed study group, so the Prophet would not be printing anything about it.

"They'll have to distract the public rather than just be strangely silent about the results of their little experiment," he said.

"Well, sure. D'you reckon it'll be 'batty students kill teacher' or 'Burmese Weizza invents new spell'?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Harry asked.

"I should think about as much as it is meant to," Hermione said, lowering her own newspaper. "I would normally look down on abject cynicism, but they really have printed several outright lies in the last year. I know it's rare for you to think of yourself as a victim or make things about yourself at all, but the fact that they have been running a smear campaign against a minor is just absurd. According to Blaise, it's not even the blood purists doing it; it's just Fudge putting pressure on the paper to conform to the narrative."

"Oh, so when Daphne says it-"

That was a new subject of a debate between his two friends. Ron was not convinced that the new arrivals had the best of intentions, and did not appreciate the way it was being dressed up as house bias. He had already conceded that he had never suspected a traitor would come out of Ravenclaw, and that the new system was plenty strict; his argument was that they must have foreseen that they would have to agree to something and still have some plan in the works. Initially, he had not ruled it out that they would sacrifice their lives in the effort, but they had proven to be two of the most selfish people the three of them had ever met; even Zacharias Smith appeared to care more about others, or at least what they thought of him. He went so far as to apologize by proxy for not showing up to the first meeting of the new DA, as if he ever had any intention.

"Well handled," Hermione had commented, eyes half open as the messenger walked off.

"Well handled and completely pointless," Ron elaborated.

The three of them were going to their last meeting of the new organization for the school year. The arrangements for their future meetings had already been made; there were moments where he was shocked how easy administrative things like that were to get done, but after a few meetings, some members of the group had even asked to be given duties of that nature. A more cynical part of him whispered that they realized how challenging and frightening actual combat could be, and chose to avoid it, but if that was the case, he could not fault them.

"I sometimes wonder why anyone even agreed to it," he said. "We made the best case we could, and it was obvious that they should help us, but I can't help but think it's strange for everyone to go from a normal student to a resistance fighter just like that."

"I think in this case we might be giving our classmates too little credit," Hermione said. "When we were coming up with the rhetoric for why everyone should join, we made it as rigorous as possible, but really, everyone else has been just as worried about increasing hostilities as we have, even if most people don't have a prophecy hanging over their heads. The Azkaban breakout probably did it for everyone who was still telling themselves everything was under control."

"Yeah," Ron agreed. "I used to talk to the other blokes in Gryffindor often enough. It's clearer now than it was. Everyone knows something's wrong, but for a while no one wanted to say anything. It's a bit mad that starting a study group was all it took to get people to see we all know how badly the system's failed us, but that's about how it is."

When they went into the Shrieking Shack, as always, they started by checking the security. Teachers and lingering government personnel would be looking for repulsion charms, but a simple spiderweb was usually more than enough to convince people that no one had used the building in ages, and were easy to set up after every meeting, though it required a specialized spell, one most people did not know, most likely. Thus far, it seemed no one had investigated their hideout.

"I still think it's worth seeing if we can improve the security on the old place," Ron muttered. Dealing with spiders had become a daily occurrence for him, but it was not as if he liked them.

"Next year," Harry suggested for the second time. "This is our last time here, then."

"None of us like it," Ginny said, showing up without warning, as always. "It's like cleaning out the Doxies in Grimmauld Place, only they're never cleaned out." Luna and Daphne showed up right after and it had him wondering if they got along.

"Once everyone's here, we're going to get started on practicing Occlumency. I know we've gone over it a good bit, but protecting your mind is just as important as protecting the rest of you." If he looked over at Hermione, he knew she was going to give him a look because she had been hinting that they should tell everyone about the Order, because they were basically creating an extension of it, populated by students, without their knowledge. As such, he did not look over at her, grateful that she had been willing to divert some time into Legilimency.

"I should go ahead and say that I am not exactly accomplished," she warned as more people trickled in. It seemed Boot was absent, which was weird, because he had attended every single meeting before, even when the other Ravenclaws had not been there, but there was no need to stop the meeting on his account. "Don't think you're done learning how to defend your mind just because you manage to rebuff my feeble attempt." It looked like Neville was paying close attention. Having attended the DA meetings had done wonders for his confidence, but Harry had honestly not known whether or not to expect him to show up to the new iteration. Speaking to him after one of the meetings shed some light on his situation.

"I heard from McGonagall," he had said.

"You heard what?"

"She said she thought I ought to know, since you know."

A moment passed as he realized that the other child of prophecy was aware of it.

"She wasn't worried someone would try to get it out of your head?" He mumbled a response. "Sorry?"

"She said I was more likely to forget it than anything else. I never thought I'd amount to anything. I was almost used to the idea." He shook his head. "At least now I don't have a choice, now I'll definitely matter."

"What do you mean?"

"It's you, Harry. McGonagall didn't exactly say it, but it's obvious. You're the chosen one. You're going to save everyone, like always. I'm just happy to have a part in it. I don't mind risking my life one bit."

"Neville, I-" He put his hands together. "I know we haven't always exactly been friends, but... I'm not trying to risk anyone's life. I don't even know about Daphne and Blaise, because they took the same oath as everyone else, but they were lying from the beginning. The thing is, though, I really don't even want them to die-"

"I know," he had said. "I trust you."

That had been the entire conversation.

Presently, Hermione was going around the room trying to break into each member's head. It seemed Luna was taking to it well, and so was Hannah, but Ron and Ernie were finding it more challenging. He wanted to encourage them, to tell them he had not succeeded on his first, second, or third try, but they were taking a completely different approach, and not heartened by the fact that he could keep his own friend out after all his experiences in remedial Potions. Blaise and Daphne declined to participate. Ginny and Neville both gave a solid effort, from the looks of it, but did not succeed. Susan and Michael were not there, but absences were not a regular thing for them, and in previous classes, seemed to understand the material well enough to help others.

"It's hard to know how to respond to these results," he said after a moment. Ron had his nose in a book of all places. "I know we should be further, but I don't want people to envy me for having to go up against Snape."

"Maybe they do," he said. "Maybe no one minds Hermione digging around in there enough." He shook his head. "No, that's stupid. Even I don't really want her in there. I do think she could be pushing us harder, though. The enemy definitely will."

"I think she's trying not to push anyone too hard." He found it hard to think of another way. "We'll have to get more people trying to learn Legilimency. If the key to this really is more exposure, more practice, then we can't make it all depend on her. It's a useful skill and I think more of us could pick it up."

"Do you have anyone in mind?"

"Start with the volunteers."

That was how a lot of discussions had gone. With every skill that they had tried to get some part of the DA to learn, there was always sense in seeing if someone would take to it naturally rather than having to be coerced. It was starting to seem like even when everyone was trying at everything, specialties were emerging.

"Did you learn anything more about how... the enemy might have survived?" Ron asked after a moment.

"McGonagall told me a few things that Voldemort would already know," he said. "This was never released to the public, but there was no corpse... but that's probably because Dumbeldore destroyed it himself."

"What?"

"The Ministry never knew. He never said anything." He remembered the time that Barty Crouch Junior was being arraigned for crimes committed on behalf of 'his exiled master'. If it had been public knowledge that Voldemort had died, no one would have used that phrase. "She only figured out that he had disposed of it because of an offhand comment."

When Hermione was done with her drills and allowed Luna to take over with something she had been studying recently, he repeated what he knew to her.

"So... Headmaster Dumbledore seemed to know that a body existed, and the Ministry never saw it... I am afraid I have to agree with your assessment. He must have made a judgement call and decided to destroy the body, or he had Professor Snape do it for him, and he never explicitly discussed this with the staff because he never wanted to implicate them."

"Implicate them in what?" Ron asked. "It was an act of war. He couldn't let the body fall into the wrong hands. I don't know what they would have done with it, but that's no reason to find out."

"That was probably his exact thought process," she said. "Unfortunately, with the war ending, technically, that night, it might have been a challenge for him to characterize it as an act of war. Everyone was having Secrecy-violating soirees that day." She shook her head. "Destroying the body could even make him look suspicious. They might suspect that he had it hidden away somewhere, and he would never be able to produce it. The safest thing to do was to just wash his hands of the whole thing, and make it that much harder for the Death Eaters to figure out what happened, if they ever wanted to retrace their master's steps, finding out how he died."

"It might have been possible for him to justify his decision," Harry said. "Especially if he had a witness, but it was still easier for him to just take care of it quickly and keep his mouth shut after the fact." It was almost scary thinking about what a wizard of his caliber could do when he was not confining himself to the law, and he supposed that was the present circumstance. "I just thought about this a moment ago, but we shouldn't assume he's just hiding right now. We just don't know what he's doing."

"That's probably for the best."

They returned to the demonstration Luna was giving, which was on a creature that actually existed, called an Inferius, though she had seemed moderately surprised when allowed to speak of a magical creature. She said it was an important distinction that their weakness to fire was most likely due to the fact that despite, or perhaps because of the complexity of the unknown magical machinations animating the corpses, there was no way of making the dead flesh immune to fire. It was not to be inferred that against a different type of undead, fire would be the only effective recourse.

"She even teaches the approved material better than Umbridge did," Ron muttered. It was something of a wonder he happened to remember that a few magical creatures had been in their Defense books that year, not that any explicit instruction was provided to the end of their destruction. "It's not a high bar, though, so maybe I shouldn't say that out loud." Since hearing about how some of her housemates treated her, it seemed he was making some effort to be nicer to her.

The way it had been explained to them, mostly by Michael of all people, was that Flitwick, in charge of all the discipline in Ravenclaw, had strict penalties in place for violence, but exclusion, verbal harassment, and even stealing all had loopholes that had been argued into existence. Theoretically, it was a good thing that the students had a hand in how discipline worked, but the results were a disaster for the one unlucky victim the house seemed to choose every few years. According to him, though, Luna never complained about it. Basically, they could move other people's possessions around as long as they had the intention of returning them, they could say whatever they liked, even if it was untrue, as long as they thought it was, and they were not obligated to associate with anyone.

"Almost sounds like it works," Ron had said. "They just abuse it."

"Basically, yes," the long-haired wizard summarized. "I can get behind part of it in theory; it makes perfect sense to allow students to form their own groups, but under one Prefect in second year, she wasn't even allowed in the common room; they made it a de jure study area for a specific group."

"What did she ever do?" Harry asked.

"She invoked the rules." Michael sighed. "It wasn't long after she started here, she went on these long explanations about creatures that don't really exist, and when someone told her to shut up, she said that she could say whatever she wanted as long as she thought it was true." He sighed. "Again, there's no problem with that in theory, but in revenge for her saying things she couldn't prove, some of the witches in her year started saying that her parents did not truly love her. It spiraled out of control from there."

"What, did she keep messing with them?" Ron asked.

"I can only think that she never went to Flitwick and said that the others were taking advantage of loopholes because she believed she could take care of herself. She might not have liked the way the some students were choosing to read the rules, but she could not find a problem with them, so she never complained about the way they were written."

Harry remembered it was about then that he started to understand her perspective. One of the worst things about living with the Dursleys was that he was always wrong; when the facts vindicated him, no one cared. One time he said he had put out the milk bottles on time and the man must not have come, and even when they ran into him later and he admitted to having been sick that day, thinking nothing of it, no one apologized for the punishment young Harry had received. It had been a long time since then, and he had just accepted it as a matter of course.

"I think we should show her that we are genuine friends," he said after a moment. "I think it's the least we can do for her, with all she's done for us."

Since then, they had tried to be nice to her, without looking like they were walking on eggshells; somehow that was hard even though at least most of them had already been decent to her. According to Michael, he had never taken part in any of the bullying and neither had Terry, but he did not have an exact list of who had and had not. Hermione had another question.

"Did the two of you ever get along?" she had asked. "It seems like you don't want anything to do with him."

He waved that away as a difference in the way they chose to live their lives and nothing more. There would be no trouble in their working together as part of the DA. Following that, he went on to say as they were leaving that none of his other relationships would get in the way either.

If Ravenclaw turned out to be more fragmented than he had thought, the same was true of Slytherin and it seemed like everyone was pretending to get along in Hufflepuff. He had taken the general camaraderie of Gryffindor for granted, but he supposed there were also problems there; Seamus had made a scene at the beginning of the year and divided everyone. As much courage as he had seen out of his personal friends, there was a particular cowardice in some, like Percy, who had gone so far as to suggest that Ron sever ties with him. At the time it had only seemed weird and ridiculous, but they were currently in a completely different position than they were at the start of the year; thinking on it a second time made his fist tighten around his wand.

The demonstration shifted to a discussion about a familiar topic, the Unforgiveable Curses. The present iteration of the DA had no one in it he did not at least respect in some way, but there was still differences. After Terry had brought it up, and Ginny went along with it, a few others had taken to suggesting that they learn dark magic. It was not as if they could simply stun Death Eaters, not if they seriously meant to fight them, and the killing curse had the added advantage of going through magical shields; there were too many reasons to support learning it. Neville was leading the charge against it, though, because apparently he heard that the use of dark magic was damaging to the soul and there was no way of fixing it. Harry knew he could probably just end the discussion one way or another, but strangely he was happiest that his fellow Gryffindor was making use of his spine.

"Sadly, Longbottom raises a valid point," Daphne said. Being joined at the hip for better or worse in a death pact, most of the students were on a first-name basis, but some kept their distance a little more. "I for one would not like to be twisted into some foul creature, but it seems that we should at least treat the enemy as forcefully as our own allies. Perhaps there are other ways of killing people, but perhaps this also could be an opportunity. If we punish those who step out of line with having to learn dark magic-"

"There are some of us who are willing to learn it already," Ginny said.

"Yes, and there are some of us who are concerned about the resulting unity of the group," Neville said after a moment. "There is no way that you can use the Cruciatus without it changing you."

"Sounds like you've done your research," Enrie Macmillan said.

"Shut up," Harry interjected. "We're not forcing anyone to practice dark magic. If you want to practice it, hand in a report on the effects it will have on you. You're not blaming me for not knowing the risks. That's final."

"I'm curious," Blaise said after a moment. "How is it that you learned to speak Parseltongue? You were rather young when you first demonstrated the ability."

"I inherited it," he said. "The Hat considered putting me in Slytherin."

If anyone had been listening, and a pin dropped, it would have been audible. Daphne seemed to pride herself on indecipherable expressions, and yet there was clear interest on her face, so that was probably intentional. Everyone in the room knew that you had to have a bloodline to get into their house, and the fact that he natively had the ability to speak to snakes, that he was a Parselmouth, was an obvious indicator of what kind of bloodline it was. With all his and Ron's anti-snake prejudice, or at least what was not merited by Malfoy, it had been a long time since anyone viewed him negatively over it. It was unfair, perhaps, but he stared right at Ernie for a moment before moving on.

"The Hat put me in Gryffindor," he continued. "-because I chose to be there. If anyone has any other questions about dark magic or getting cursed by dark wizards, don't ask me, because I don't know how it works. I didn't ask for it. Do your own research. If you don't want other people using it, you'd better come up with some good reasons, because they will too. That's it; meeting dismissed." Rather than take a moment to stare at everyone, he started moving the spiderwebs back into place. It was a pain, but someone had to do it. His friends were quick to join him.

If anyone had any objections to what he proposed, they were not vocalized.