Sirius tossed his wand to Marlene—not trusting Dora to catch it—and bowed into Padfoot.
Enough of his audience had gone through Hogwarts that they'd probably seen McGonagall transform once or twice, but they were still suitably—flatteringly—impressed. He walked a few body lengths in one direction, barked, and then trotted back to where he's been and straightened back into his human form.
"So…" he said, "animagi." Sirius clasped his hands. "Pretty useful, obviously. Good for going undercover—as long as your form isn't widely known or something conspicuous like an elephant or a crocodile. And, in my experience, there tend to be some enhancements to your senses as a human after you transform for the first time, though it's obviously pretty dependent on your form; being a dog, I have a good sense of smell, and good hearing." He shrugged. Thirty or so pairs of Auror trainee eyes stared back at him. "And, like I just did, you can do it without a wand." He glanced at Marlene, who tossed it back. "Of course, there's always the chance that you're something useless, like a fish, or a slug, but you lot already know what you'd be anyway, I think—you've still got that mirror as part of their testing, right?"
He glanced at Scrimgeour who inclined his head.
"There you go. So you should already have an idea about whether you'd be working toward something you'd actually want to be. From there it's just a matter of either brewing up the form-changing elixir, or creating your incantation." He grinned. "I'll be able to help with both well enough, but we went for the incantation method ourselves… gave up on the potion after too many failed attempts with the mandrake leaf." Those who knew enough about the animagus process to understand what he was talking about chuckled, but the rest seemed confused. "Anyway, that's about it—you know where to find me if you're interested in becoming an animagus as your special study topic." He glanced at Scrimgeour—who gave another small nod—and returned to his place on the side of the room.
"Inspiring," Dora muttered. He pulled a face at her. Up where Sirius had just been, a Trace Reader started her spiel with a lot more enthusiasm than Sirius had been able to muster.
"Surely it wasn't that bad," he muttered back.
"It wouldn't have put off anyone who's actually interested," she said thoughtfully, "but I'm not sure you'll have inspired anyone who wasn't already considering it."
"I'm all right with that," Sirius said, and Dora's mouth twitched. "I'm happy to help out here and there, but if I'd wanted a trainee, I would have signed up for one with the rest of you."
Dora's eyes slid over to the pair of trainees she was sharing with Kingsley; one was a former-Ravenclaw named Sebastian Bexley, who Sirius had taught at Hogwarts last year, and the other was a girl who'd gone through a couple of years before whose name Sirius didn't know.
"Speaking of things that take up time…" He glanced at Marlene, whose eyes were on the Trace Reader, but who Sirius was positive was listening to them instead, "We're having a bit of a dinner party two weeks from now—second of October. Expecting a good turn-out, too; won't have seen most of the people coming since August." Marlene's head turned minutely toward him.
"Why so long between catch ups, then?" she murmured.
"It's been hard to find a night that works for everyone," Sirius said. "What with you lot taking on trainees, and then Harry's been having trouble at school, which has been a big distraction."
Marlene turned rather sharply the rest of the way.
"What sort of trouble?" she asked.
"He's struggling in Defence," Sirius said, and Marlene's brow furrowed; she knew enough, he was sure, to understand he was referring to Umbridge, but wasn't sure how much more than that she knew.
"You'll have to catch me up at this dinner party," she said, arching an eyebrow.
"I'm sure it'll come up," Sirius said darkly. Admittedly Harry's first week back at school had been the worst; the last two weeks—at least as far as Sirius could tell—had consisted mostly of passive aggression from Umbridge and of Harry doing his best to ignore her—or at least not provoke her more than he already had. It was still far from ideal, and the uncomfortable truce between them surely couldn't last, but at least Harry wasn't being tortured in detentions or up for expulsion at the moment. "Though hopefully it's settled properly by then."
When the Trace Reader was done she was replaced by a Curse Breaker, then Marlene who talked about her self-study of wandless magic, and, finally, by a middle-aged man named Silas Switt, who'd won the Dunstable Duelling Championship twice and was offering advanced duelling lessons.
"Lots of options, as you can see," Scrimgeour said, as he made his way unhurriedly to the front of the room. Despite that, it was utterly silent, and every eye was on him; this wouldn't be the first time the trainees had seen Scrimgeour around, but Sirius suspected they could count the instances on one hand. The number of times Scrimegour would have addressed any of them directly would be even less.
"And, of course, you're not limited to what's been spoken about here—this is an area of personal study, after all, and the D.M.L.E. will support you in whatever way it can. However."
There was suddenly something bright and serious in his tawny eyes now, and his tone had a quiet edge to it that hadn't been there before.
The room, which had been quiet before, was now silent but for Scrimgeour's soft voice:
"It would be my personal recommendation that you pick something useful rather than interesting when you decide upon your field of study. Something that will help you protect yourselves, your peers and colleagues, and, of course, people—be they magical or muggle—who cannot defend themselves and so rely on our protection. It cannot have escaped your notice that the wizarding world is on the verge of war with He Who Must Not Be Named, and the witches, wizards, and dark creatures that serve him. There are…" Scrimgeour paused, frowning. "...differing opinions about how we fight, even who we fight—" Sirius ground his teeth, and Dora reached out to give his hand a squeeze. It helped, but so did the faint irritation in Scrimgeour's voice; he wasn't as unhappy with the Ministry as Sirius was, but if the last few conversations they'd had were any indication, he was close. "—but there can be no doubt that we must. We—" Scrimgeour lifted a hand to gesture at Sirius and the other Aurors standing at the edges of the room. "—will do what we can to prepare you, but you will not be trained in peacetime, as our last few cohorts have been. You will be trained differently, out of necessity, to give you the best chance of survival in whatever is to come. You will not always have the luxury of our undivided attention, however, or the teachers we would want; they may be tied up with other things. They may be dead."
One of the trainees squeaked, but none of the others were. Sirius wasn't sure any of them were breathing.
"You will know loss," Scrimgeour continued, "and fear, and you will know what it is to find yourself in a situation that you are not ready for. What you choose to study in your own time—if you choose the right thing—may well make all the difference. It may be what keeps you alive—"
"—because what Umbridge and the Ministry wants to teach us won't," Harry said.
He looked around at the Room, which held almost four times the people it had last time; they'd met just over a week ago—everyone who was already in or associated with the Order. He, Ron, Ginny, Fred, and Stebbins had sat down and brainstormed a list of people they might reach out to, and most of them had decided to come along:
Luna and Colin, Lee and the girls from the Gryffindor Quidditch team, the other fifth year Gryffindors, Blaise, Astoria and Vivienne Greengrass, Cho, and some of the fifth year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws were there, listening raptly.
"Voldemort—" Harry'd grown so used to the company of people who didn't baulk at the name that he was a little taken aback at the gasps, squeaks, twitches, and whimpers that followed this. "—is back. We all agree on that much at least."
"And so you're going to teach us to fight… Him?" Colin Creevey asked, staring at Harry with something akin to awe.
"No," Harry said, then sighed. "I mean— for some of us it is about being ready, about fighting him." How could he say otherwise, when quite a few of the people in the room were involved with the Order? "He's been after me since I was a year old, and I don't see that changing until one of us is dead." Harry tried for a grin, but he was the only one; everyone else seemed rather grim. "But that's not the whole point." He found himself looking at Cedric, who gave him a small, encouraging nod. Harry took a deep breath. "This isn't about dragging you into the war against Voldemort"-" He waited a few moments to let everyone recover. "—and it's not about building an army to overthrow the Ministry, or— or—" He took another deep breath. "This—Eihwaz—is about defence, about teaching you to defend yourselves so that if the war finds you, you have a chance of surviving it."
"Only a chance?" Blaise drawled. Lee, Angelina, and Patrick Stebbins, and all gave him suspicious looks. Astoria Greengrass—standing beside Blaise—noticed and lifted her chin, and Higgs and Pucey both seemed to shrink beside Cedric; the presence of the Slytherins had a few people on edge.
"I can't promise any more than that," Harry said quietly, seriously. "Sometimes it doesn't matter what you know—maybe you won't have your wand—" In his mind's eye, Harry saw James tossing his wand down onto the couch. "—maybe you trip and your spell misses—" He saw Bagman illuminated by green. "—or maybe you don't know you're in danger… Maybe the other person's just better."
"That's cheerful," Lavender said.
"It's true, though," Cedric said. "We can't control what the other side does—not what they know, not how they use it..." Off to the side Draco shifted, perhaps feeling guilty about the fact that his father was part of said other side. "But we do control what we know, what we do. And what Harry's offering us is the chance to get better—to practice, to train—so that we know more. And maybe it'll be enough."
"That's the hope," Harry said, shooting him a grateful look. "That's— yeah. Thanks, Cedric." He looked around the room again. "That's… pretty much it."
"You haven't told us what we'll actually be learning, though," Michael Corner said, frowning.
"No," Hermione said. "We haven't."
"We also haven't shown you where we'll actually be meeting," Harry said. The gathered students looked around in confusion; the Room currently looked like an empty classroom, which Ron had created an entrance to on the third floor for the occasion.
Hermione stepped forward and spun the wheeled blackboard around. On its other side was the large bit of parchment she, Cedric, and Draco had turned into a contract of sorts.
"Anyone wanting to take part in this group," she said briskly, "will have to sign this. It's a contract, even though it looks like a poster of defensive spells. You have to be holding a quill or have signed it to read it."
"Terms?" Susan Bones asked, folding her arms.
"Just the one," Hermione replied in the same tone. "You can't give away the identities of anyone else who signs the contract to anyone who isn't on the contract in relation to anything we do here."
"What about accidentally?" Neville asked, looking nervous.
"When I say can't, I don't mean you're not allowed to," Hermione said, "I mean you won't be able to. You'll find you say something else, or that you're not able to speak or write at all." Neville looked relieved, but several others looked rather apprehensive at that.
"Except yourself," Draco said.
"Except yourself," Hermione agreed. "Your involvement is your business, and it's yours to share if you want to." She pursed her lips. "Though I'd advise against saying anything to Umbridge." There were a few grim chuckles at that.
"So it's an enforcement contract, not a retributionary one?" Susan asked.
"Exactly," Hermione said. Susan gave her a thoughtful but seemingly approving look.
"And what if we don't sign?" Padma Patil asked.
"Then you leave now, before we tell you exactly what we're doing and where we're meeting, and you aren't invited back," Ron said simply. Harry did his best to keep his expression smooth; in truth, Draco had both Harry's cloak and the Map, and would be modifying the memories of anyone who didn't sign before they could return to their common rooms. The only one who'd liked the idea less than Harry had been Ginny, but the others had been adamant that they couldn't risk word getting back to Umbridge—or anyone else who might tell her—and reassured them there'd be no permanent damage.
"What if we change our minds after we've signed?" Alicia asked.
"You can," Harry said. "You can sit certain meetings out, or stop coming entirely if that's what you want. I'm not going to force anyone to do anything they don't want to—I know what that's like. But I think—" He glanced at Hermione, "you'd stay on the contract. That way you stay protected by it too, even if you're not involved any more."
"We'll be signing in red ink like ours," Hermione added, nodding at the signatures already in place, though the others wouldn't be able to see them yet. "If you decide to step back from the group, your name will fade to grey."
"All right," Cho said, lifting her chin. "Where's the quill?"
She was the first to sign but—one by one—everyone else came forward to read and then add their signatures to the parchment. Harry was both heartened that so many people were interested and relieved that no one's memories would need modification.
"Right," he said, when the last person—Luna—had added her loopy signature to it. "Brilliant, thanks. Ron?"
The Room warped around them into the space they'd designed for their meetings; Lavender squeaked and shifted closer to Seamus as the floor they were standing on sank into the padded training area, Lee whistled, as the room expanded, and several Ravenclaws oohed and ahhed as the walls of the newly-formed walkway above turned to bookshelves.
"This is where we'll actually be meeting," Harry said, unable to keep a grin off his face. "You need to pace back and forward in front of a wall on the seventh floor while you think of 'Eihwaz' and this place'll appear." He smiled. "Did everyone bring their copy of Advanced Defensive Theory?"
There was a general murmur of rather disgruntled assent:
"We're not going to be using that here, are we?" Terry Boot asked, looking rather dismayed. "It's rubbish!"
"Not using it here," Ron said, "but using it to get here…"
"It's the one thing Umbridge can never be mad about us having with us," Draco said smugly.
"And we need them almost every day," Harry continued, "so it's what we're going to use to tell you when meetings are."
Hermione had suggested they use something like the parchments the four of them had, but Draco had suggested Slinkhard's books; he, Hermione, and the twins had managed the charms. Harry'd expected Ginny might be resistant to the idea—taking instructions from a book—but she'd been so delighted by the pettiness of using Umbridge's assigned text against her that she'd been onboard immediately.
"Page three, ladies and gentlemen," Fred said, in a grand voice. Beside him, George opened his own copy with a flourish. "The publication date is the meeting date, and the edition number is the time. The lettering—" George snapped his book shut and waved a hand across the book's title. "—will change from silver to gold when there's something to look at."
"Make a pile and we'll get charming," George said.
"And once you've done that," Harry said, "wands out and pair up."
Harry was good at this, Ginny couldn't help but notice. He knew his stuff—no one had ever contested that—but teaching people… she'd not expected him to take to it quite so easily.
He didn't baulk at the fact that all eyes were on him, didn't hesitate to give instructions, and when he walked down the long line of people practicing disarmers, he was quick to offer a bit of feedback, or praise.
Mostly feedback, though, truth be told; almost everyone could cast a disarmer, but not with all that much control or success.
"I mean," Harry said, pitching his voice a little louder as he went to retrieve Parvati's wand, "getting a wand out of someone's hand is better than not getting it away from them at all, but it's much better if you can disarm someone and end up with their wand." He tossed it to Parvati, who caught it rather awkwardly. "It's harder for them to get back, for one, and for another, you have a spare if something happens to yours." Harry turned suddenly, his own wand flashing red. Ron's wand went soaring in an arc toward Harry, who caught it easily enough, even though he was already holding his own wand. He showed it to the room's occupants and then held it out to Ron, who grinned and Summoned it wandlessly back.
"If you're confident with disarmers," Harry said, "try them non-verbally, or practice directing the wand's trajectory." Muted chatter built back up, punctuated here and there by an Expelliarmus.
"He makes it look easy," Astoria—Ginny's partner—said as they faced each other again.
"He's had a lot of practice," Ginny said, shrugging. Astoria said nothing to that, but her face scrunched up as she focused.
"—Marietta?"
Ginny's ears caught the name and she frowned; there were a few reasons she didn't like the other girl, but the biggest one was her treatment of Luna.
"Not here," Cho replied. "Expelliarmus!" Katie's wand went soaring into her hand and she caught it with all the ease of a Seeker, then tossed it right back. "Her mum works for the Ministry and she's taken all of Umbridge's rubbish to heart." Ginny scowled.
"Probably for the best, then," Katie said, and flicked her wand. Cho's wand went whizzing away. "Oops—sorry!" It had almost taken Demelza's eye out. "I can't imagine she'd be very popular here thinking like that."
"No," Cho said, and looked a little sad. "She and Cedric had a big fight about it which ended in him telling her not to show up." She chewed her lip.
Good for Cedric, Ginny thought. The other girls' conversation stopped as Katie went to retrieve her wand from Demelza, and Ginny turned back to her own partner.
As she did, her wand gave a half-hearted twitch in her hand. Astoria made a frustrated sound; her cheeks were red, and Ginny wondered if she'd been concentrating so hard she'd held her breath.
"Need a hand?" she asked.
"No," Astoria said primly. "I need your wand." And then her eyes narrowed and she lifted her chin, wand extended toward Ginny. After a few seconds, Ginny tossed it at her, and Astoria squeaked and failed to catch it, dropping her own wand in the process.
"Was that m—" Ginny grinned. "Oh, you're rotten," Astoria said, laughing. She picked it up and threw it back, then straightened:
"Don't worry about doing it non-verbally," Harry said from behind Ginny. He looked to be fighting a grin of his own. "Get it right first and then go from there." Astoria sighed and then gave a rather begrudging nod. "And don't throw your wand away, even for a laugh," he added, looking at Ginny. She made a face at him.
Astoria lifted her wand again:
"Expelliarmus!"
Ginny's wand jumped in her grip, but she managed to keep hold of it. Harry went to stand by Astoria, eyeing her feet, and her hand.
"Again?" he said.
"Expelliarmus," she said, and at Harry's nod, tried again, to no more effect than any of her other tries. Harry gave another, slower nod:
"You're doing a… pulling sort of movement," he said, gesturing at her. "Like you're trying to pull her wand away. Your hand moves up instead of forward, and your front foot pulls back." He mirrored the way she was standing. "It's— Expelliarmus isn't a defensive spell." He smiled oddly. "It's offensive—sort of. It disables your opponent. You've got to move into it."
Astoria nodded, expression turning determined.
"Expelliarmus!" she cried, taking a full step forward. Red bloomed at the tip of her wand and then Ginny's wand was ripped from her hand and she went tumbling backward. She landed on her back on the soft, padded floor. Above her, red spells and wands flew, and she could feel the movement of thirty-something pairs of feet through the mat.
Astoria made a delighted sound.
"Er, yeah," Ginny heard Harry say, sounding torn between surprise and amusement, "but maybe not quite so much into it. Accio. All right, Ginny?"
"Fine," Ginny said, and as she sat up, Harry offered her her wand. Astoria peered over his shoulder, smile widening even more when it became clear Ginny wasn't hurt. Ginny looked at the twins, Hermione, and Draco charming books in the corner, at Ron using wandless magic to keep Blaise Benson from getting his wand, at Cedric who was giving Dennis Creevey pointers, and at everyone else who was practicing under Harry's direction.
Something warm and proud settled in her chest; they'd made this.
She grinned back at Astoria and stood, curling her fingers around her wand:
"My turn."