"Albus Perceval Wolfric Brian Dumbledore" said Demelza, smirking as we sat back down to finish dinner, which we were glad to find was still warm "just what would we do without him"

"Fuck knows" I said "What we do know now is that, despite how horrible Tralawney's dismissal was, Divination classes are about to get a whole lot better"

"I almost wish I had taken it now" said Amy "It would be fascinating to be taught by a centaur, we've never encountered one"

"Yeah well, it's easy to say that after the fact isn't it?" said Demelza

It turned out that Firenze's classes were indeed unlike anything else at Hogwarts, as Ron told me. He had classroom eleven transformed so that it looked like a clearing in the Forbidden Forest, and the divination was based on the movements of the planets and stars. To my satisfaction, he had said that Tralawney's teachings about what those things meant was "human nonsense", and he had proceeded to try to teach them the ways of the centaurs, though with no success. This wasn't a bad thing however, as he said humans were rarely good at this, and that even centaurs sometimes got it wrong.

April arrived, and as well as the fifth years beginning OWL revision, we were now starting to learn Patronuses in the DA. Knowing the effects the studying was having on those in the year above me, such as when Hannah Abbott had a breakdown during Herbology, meant I was grateful that I still had a year to go before doing it myself. I still had my fourth year exams of course, but those would be no where as bad.

As expected, producing a proper Patronus had been extremely difficult, though several of us, myself included, were eventually able to. Mine was a horse, as I was expecting it to be, and it felt very nice watching it gallop around and briefly interact with some of the other silvery animals. The memory that did it for me was when I won my first ever Hogwarts Quidditch game as reserve team captain. An interesting effect occurred when Demelza, Amy and I all produced ours, as my horse seemed to make some playful motions with Demelza's beaver and Amy's lion before disappearing. It was as if they shared the same sisterly dynamic that the three of us did.

Matilda had produced hers, a ladybird, in only our second lesson trying, and was naturally the first of us to succeed. Hermione did it in our third, near the start of it, and the rest of us that were successful did so near the end. Harry kept reminding us that producing a Patronus in the middle of a brightly lit classroom when we were not under threat was very different to producing it when confronted by something like a dementor.

"Oh, don't be such a killjoy," said Cho brightly, watching her swan patronus. "They're so pretty!"

"They're not supposed to be pretty, they're supposed to protect you," said Harry patiently. "What we really need is a boggart or something; that's how I learned, I had to conjure a Patronus while the boggart was pretending to be a dementor —"

"But that would be really scary!" said Lavender, who was shooting puffs of silver vapor out of the end of her wand. "And I still — can't — do it!" she added angrily.

"There's no shame in that, a lot of adults struggle" Demelza said

"That's easy for you to say when you've already done it!" Lavender snapped back at her.

Neville was having trouble too. His face was screwed up in concentration, but only feeble wisps of silver smoke issued from his wand tip.

"You've got to think of something happy," Harry reminded him.

"I'm trying," said Neville miserably, who was trying so hard his round face was actually shining with sweat.

"Harry, I think I'm doing it!" yelled Seamus, who had been brought along to his first ever D.A. meeting by Dean. "Look — ah — it's gone. … But it was definitely something hairy, Harry!"

Hermione's Patronus, a shining silver otter, was gamboling around her.

"They are sort of nice, aren't they?" she said, looking at it fondly.

"They really are" Amy said, as the three of us, having conjured ours again, watched their synchronized movements in the middle of the room.

The door opened, and Dobby entered, looking very upset about something. He went over to Harry and started tugging at his robes around the knee area.

"Hi, Dobby!" he said. "What are you — what's wrong?" For the elf's eyes were wide with terror and he was shaking. The members of the D.A. closest to Harry had fallen silent now: Everybody in the room was watching Dobby. The few Patronuses people had managed to conjure faded away into silver mist, leaving the room looking much darker than before.

"Harry Potter, sir …" squeaked the elf, trembling from head to foot, "Harry Potter, sir … Dobby has come to warn you … but the house-elves have been warned not to tell …"

He ran headfirst at the wall: Harry made to seize him, but Dobby merely bounced off the stone, cushioned by his eight hats. Hermione and a few of the other girls let out squeaks of fear and sympathy.

"What's happened, Dobby?" Harry asked, grabbing the elf's tiny arm and holding him away from anything with which he might seek to hurt himself.

"Harry Potter … she … she …" Dobby hit himself hard on the nose with his free fist: Harry seized that too.

"Who's 'she,' Dobby?"

I looked at Demelza and Amy nervously, and they nodded at me, clearly having come to the same conclusion.

"Umbridge?" asked Harry, horrified. Dobby nodded, then tried to bang his head off Harry's knees; Harry held him at bay.

"What about her? Dobby — she hasn't found out about this — about us — about the D.A.?"

"Is she coming?" Harry asked quietly. Dobby let out a howl, and began beating his bare feet hard on the floor.

"Yes, Harry Potter, yes!" Harry straightened up and looked around at the motionless, terrified people gazing at the thrashing elf.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?" Harry bellowed. "RUN!"

We all pelted towards the door, Demelza, Amy, Magda and I got there first and began running left as fast as we could.

"Where are we going?!" Magda said

"Library!" I yelled back "we can pretend we've-"

But before I could finish that sentence, we heard 4 voices yelling "Incarcerous!"

I felt myself thrown backwards and into the others, and then within seconds, we were all sitting back to back in the middle of the corridor, tied up with ropes. From the open door of a classroom came Avery, Mulciber, Yaxley, and Sarah Bagman. Avery stepped forwards, smirking at the looks of anger and shock on our faces.

"Accio wands!" she said, and all of ours shot into her hands. She placed them on a table inside the classroom, then returned to us.

"Yes, we know all about Potter's secret little defence club. And now that we've caught you, I think it's safe to say your time at this school is well and truly up"