The rain was still coming down, and the drill showed no signs of reaching its conclusion. Several of their members had already suggested moving inside for study rather than sprinting around and slipping on the wet ground, but there were enough voices saying that they needed to be able to perform in the rain, so they settled for Impervious Charms and got back to it. Summer would not be with them forever, and they needed to take advantage of the opportunities that it presented, despite the complaints about how they could change the weather or whatever else.

"Can't change the weather during a sneak attack," Ron had explained before the bout started. That had been an hour ago; they had arranged to have a go with everyone they had on hand against everyone else, and no one was looking to get knocked out first. It was not that they strictly punished incompetence, but someone had to tell Augusta Longbottom about the plant they destroyed a few days earlier and a good way of deciding that seemed to have presented itself. Having lost Daphne, Harry was not optimistic about his chances of punching through the enemy with just Michael still next to him, but it was not as if the young man was useless; he could even apparate short distances.

"We could both get out of there right after we hit them," he suggested.

"It's easier to get in than out," Harry muttered back, speaking from experience. "If you're running, it's hard to gauge your own position and where you're headed."

"With four of them left, what other choice do we have?" his partner asked rhetorically. "If we fail, it's on me. It's my idea."

Michael's people skills were a genuine resource. Blaise liked to think of himself as a manipulator, but really he was just a library of sarcastic insults and flattery, with some ability to hide information. To his credit, he was decent at Occlumency, but that only meant that he needed someone 'stronger' than Hermione to continue his training; she had yet to give a second thought to getting better at cracking the tough nuts when so many of their members were still at the lowest level and she had her own research on top of that.

"Fine," he said. "We need to put ourselves right behind them. They'll hear it the second we're there; all we can do is hit them before they can turn around. Their shields should be facing us right now; they just took out Ginny and Hannah like that."

Without needing to hash anything else out, they apparated together, moving from behind a fallen tree to directly to the backs of their enemies. Ron and Hermione provided a contrast in strategy that worked well whenever they did not have enough time to actually argue with each other, and Susan had gotten good at staying alive, acting as a shield for her teammates. He hit her first, then turned to Ron, the spells practically flying through each other as Michael fell next to him. Fortunately for him, it seemed his teammate had already taken out Hermione, or she was down already and they simply had not known.

It was almost on instinct when he threw himself out of the way; whoever casted the spell that passed right over him was probably confused, and as he ducked behind a tree, which blew up, he lost consciousness almost immediately after. His old friend was there again.

"Oh, so you were knocked out as well?"

"Yeah. Wasn't a stunner. I don't think we ever said not to blow the trees up when someone's hiding behind them. It's not like our enemies are going to care."

"Are you sure we'll... have to fight them?"

"Yeah. We've used up all of our luck. To be honest, I don't know how I lived past first year."

They were awakened as soon as it was decided the practice match was over. He was not sure who had taken him out; it was probably exactly as Michael surmised and there had been a fourth person. Either because they anticipated the strategy of what was left of Harry's team, or acting out of an abundance of caution, they had sent one person back a bit and that was plenty. Had Ron decided to do that because their backs were open? Could he not have had someone walk backward?

He was sure that they could have a whole strategy denouement when they were done with the update from the Quibbler, brought in by none other than the editor's daughter herself. It was a deviation from the usual procedure of having to buy it somewhere, he supposed, but the issue had not sold at all due to the incredibly boring and somehow still weird headlines on the cover, so there were loads of extras lying around their house.

"How the hell does her father get the money for this?" Hermione whispered as she thumbed through her copy. "I would guess that magic makes publication easier than I might be imagining, but he has to pay for space at newsstands to sell it."

"The Lovegoods have always done stuff like this," Ron said, regarding an article about how Quidditch was not a real thing with a raised eyebrow. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We're actually a bit impressed that old Xenophilus isn't running himself into the ground with his passion project."

"What did they do that worked?" Harry asked.

"Well, one time they got rich off selling wand wood to Austria. They had to ship it, then take it over land. Apparating it would've broken some stupid laws somewhere. Anyway, Austria actually produces some of the best wand wood and wand makers in Europe, so everyone said they were being mad, but when they got there, a pox had taken all the old trees. The wand makers had contracts to fill because the wealthy from all over the world placed special orders, so all they could do was pay the ridiculously high prices the Lovegoods were charging."

"I didn't expect they would be that cruel about it," Hermione said.

"That was literally just what they reckoned it was worth. They told old Septimus Weasley that they'd be selling the wood for five Galleons each, no less, or they'd wear clogs on their ears."

"A completed wand cost seven galleons," Harry remembered.

"In those days, in Austria, even for a master wandmaker's product, they'd only pay the equivalent of two galleons. The gold went a lot further."

"Did things like that ever happen to your family?" Hermione asked around the time she finished reading. How did she focus on that and the conversation at the same time?

"Yeah. There were times when we had some land, grew something never sold, and then ended up having to sell the land." He sighed. "Did you really think we were poor just because my parents couldn't stop having children?"

"I... well-"

"We'll always be able to feed ourselves, 's long as we've got wands. The only issue is that it takes some gold just to learn how to use them."

They probably would have all liked to keep the conversation going, or at least they would have been willing, because it was something of a rare thing that they could just talk about something unimportant, just the three of them, but there was nothing for it. It was not as if the other members were poor students, it was just that they had not taken certain things seriously, and there was more to it than book smarts when it came to combat readiness. So far, they were generally doing well on the drills, and that was partially because they had deliberately turned it into a competitive game, but there was a boring side to all the work they were doing, and they had to lean into that as well. Fortunately, Neville had taken to heading up Survival Magic, as he called it, and gave a more than adequate demonstration about how one can with minimal gear, be prepared for any situation.

The DA generally knew that any fighting they did had a decent chance of being in an urban setting, but if they needed to hide out for a while, that was going to take them far from civilization, magical or otherwise. According to some former members, who had told some current members, enough to where at least Ron thought there was some truth to it, the Hit Wizards, who looked for most basic magical criminals, had ways of working with the muggle authorities to keep them from realizing the larger scope of what they were doing. Even if it was technically a Statute violation, they were never going to cause a problem, so no one was going to bother them about it.

As night fell, they were required to take care of a list of tasks independently before sleeping, and it would be easy enough to tell if any of them had been faked. Susan had given a general demonstration of protective charms that she found useful and not theoretically repetitive, and each of them would have to at least be able to see a threat coming. They were required to provide food for themselves, but no one had been told that their success with that would be evaluated by their mood the following morning. The hardest thing was probably picking a spot where they would not be seen, because they would not be able to simply change the landscape; that would only make them more conspicuous.

"Wingardium Leviosa," he muttered. He had mastered the levitation charm to the extent that he could effectively have it take care of something simple while he did something else with his hands. His defensive charms were already in place and he had enlarged an edible root, which he could burn for safety purposes, but there was probably little need for that and it would destroy what little flavor it had after being stretched out. It tasted like chalk.

The more he and everyone else learned and practiced different spells, the more it became clear that it was impossible for anyone to be capable of everything, though they wanted the whole DA to have at least a basic level of ability in most things to account for members dying. It was probably the case that only once they had each tried to do everything, taking it completely seriously, would they have any understanding of their true skills, which were only overlapping with their preferences. If the goal was for each of them to become monsters, getting over something like sleeping in the woods was a good step to take early on, and the sooner they could see where their weaknesses were, the better. If one of their numbers picked something in which to truly specialize, and not simply study for the benefit of the group, it needed to be after these kinds of tests, not before.

When he woke up the following morning, he was glad not to have been taken out in his sleep. He had been confident in his spellwork, but there was no way to say what kind of tactics would have been used against it. The team of hunters had been chosen out of those who had been eliminated early in the previous exercise, because after being unconscious, they essentially had a decent rest already. As he looked around with the others on the hastily formed wake-up crew, it seemed some had suffered the embarrassment of getting caught by the hunters, but everyone had at least slept somewhat.

"Give Susan's wand back, Ron," he heard Michael say elsewhere. He looked over to see someone else had the same idea. "She's learned her lesson."

"I'm just asking her how it happened. Anyone could have made the same mistake. I was just a bit surprised she was one of the ones to get found out."

"I don't know," she said. "I heard some laughing and that was it. Once I realized someone had found me, I went back to sleep."

"How did you get to be holding her wand?"

"I summoned it out of a tree," Ron said. "I just said 'accio wand' and it flew straight over to me. Now you see why I'm trying to figure out what happened here?"

Harry did see. It was probably not an enviable task to go around testing the defenses of the DA's members while they went to sleep, but that did not give anyone the license to do away with their wands. Was it simply a tasteless way of indicating that the owner of the wand had been busted? Satisfied that his friend had not been acting in a pointlessly cruel manner, he assembled the troops all in front of him. Everyone was there except Daphne, which was fine, since they had even teams for the earlier exercise.

"You lot did reasonably well with the battle, and the defensive exercise," he started, pacing in front of him as he had on their fist meeting. "I'd like to say, though, that I don't approve of separating our members from their wands as a punishment. I don't care who did it. That's not what this is about. Getting your first wand, for a lot of us, is the first sign we have that it's all real. I don't know how it is for purebloods, but if anything it's probably more significant because you've spent your whole life expecting to be able to do magic."

No one said anything. Either they agreed with him or they had learned to let him go off when he wanted to go off. As much as he hoped it was the former, he had no way to know for sure.

"Expulsion is always accompanied with wand snapping. I don't think I need to tell you how seriously they take it. Even with everything that Malfoy and his lot did under Umbridge, McGonagall didn't even consider expelling him; she was quick to say that everything he did was allowed because she was the de facto authority. She could've just allowed them all to wake up, waited for them to attack us, and then expelled them, but that didn't seem to cross her mind, and I'll be honest, with everything going on, it didn't cross mine either. Wand snapping is not something I would wish on our enemies. We're going to kill them, but that's because there's no other choice. We're not going to do anything unnecessary."

He walked off in the direction of the manor without waiting for a response, and Ron and Hermione caught up with him, flanking him on his way. Did they realize all he had ever wanted from them was that they would be his friends, after all the loneliness he had to endure growing up? Did they see that they had already gone further for him than he had ever asked?

"Harry, we need to think about the serious chance of getting back in school," Hermione said. "I have no doubt that the Ministry is going to send someone else awful-"

"That's just the thing," Ron said. "They're going to send someone even worse than Umbridge, and once we're in, there's no getting out."

It was as if he had an angel and a devil on his shoulders, only one really just wanted a proper education despite the risks and the other was reasonably certain they were getting a proper education already. He turned around halfway up the hill.

"Have the others heard about this?"

"We both wanted to tell you first."

"It's as much their decision as mine. I'm not saying we should put everything to a vote, but this is something that matters to everyone."

It was after a short lunch that they had summoned from the Longbottom family home that he brought it up to everyone. Basically, they learned from The Quibbler that the school and many of the parents that supported it were pushing back against the current government. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures had spearheaded the new campaign to take over the school on the basis that the centaurs were posing a threat to the students, but now they can't be found anywhere. The other magical creatures were not threatening the investigators either, suggesting to some that they only backed off because they knew someone was looking for trouble, but even in that case, they did not have the headline for which they had been hoping.

"We're at a place where everything isn't quite falling apart," Ron assessed after the summary. "If we were past that point, the Prophet would just be publishing complete lies with nothing to substantiate them, or forged photographs."

"Fortunately, this means we are not facing a war as of yet," Hermione said, confirming it for herself as she set down the newspaper. "At the same time, we should not assume that institutions will be neutral. The Death Eaters are doing everything they can to get their people into the regime, so most likely the plan includes a quiet coup. They intend to occupy enough offices that they cannot effectively be removed, except through force. Most likely, they are expecting that someone will attack them, though."

"That's why the most important step is to expose them," Harry said. "The marks they wear on their arms are concealed and most people don't even know to look for them. The fact that they keep them hidden means that they don't want people to realize what they're doing. At the moment we're pretty sure they start petty disagreements with each other to make it look like they're different."

"We can meet in pubs with a few small crowds here and there and start talking to people, but if we really want to get the word out, we have to clean up the standards at the Quibbler," Ron said. Luna frowned. "The reason people don't read it isn't because of how it treats us, it's because it acts like moon frogs are a proven fact. It's fine if you want to believe in them, but if you write an article about them, don't use phrases like 'mountain of evidence' when what you have is some random drunk talking out of-"

"For clarity," Hermione said. "-we're not blaming your father for the way he runs the only opposition newspaper in the country. There probably would have been more concerted efforts to shut it down had the readership been higher. At the moment, however, there is no other way to start up a separate publication, so it is very much our only chance at getting a message out there and there are a few simple things that would increase readership."

"Father has never been concerned with things like that."

It looked like Ron was about to say that he could tell, but Harry elbowed him in the ribs.

"It's quite possible that not caring about readership has been a point of pride for him," he said. They had discussed things to say in the event that they could get ahold of Luna and most of the others at a strategy meeting. "I'd just like for him to say it out loud. If he can do that, we'll not bother him again. I've got gold if he wants investors."

Neither of his friends objected to his using his finite amount of resources before making it past his teen years. It was not as if it was set in stone that he would see twenty no matter what. Ginny excused herself without saying anything, just quickly bowing and walking out.

"It's not every day that we can have these meetings," Ron said, rubbing his side a little. "We also need to think about what we can do ourselves. We haven't been training to run a newspaper."

"Is there going to be an attack, then?" Hannah asked.

"We can do more with our abilities," Hermione said. "It could be guard duty, it could be intimidation, but yes, what we've practiced is violence because that is the most effective way of closing the gap between ourselves and our enemies, and we intend to use it." Harry only nodded in her direction. If the other members had any objection at all to what they were about to do, it made sense to give them time to object. There was no sense dying over it and then complaining about it.

From what it seemed, however, there was nothing of the sort.