*is now up to date*
Jan. 3rd, 2009 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canonical_insanityTitle: What We Did During The Occupation: The Stories of the DA
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Possible AU (I have no idea which DA members lived and I'm sure that there were no seventh year Slytherin defectors as far as the novel goes).
Summary: We know about what Harry, Ron and Hermione were doing during the last year of the War. But what about the people stuck at Hogwarts?
He had started it off.
He knew that if he told Parvati, she would tell Padma, who would tell the rest of the Ravenclaws who belonged to the former DA. From there, one of the Ravenclaws (probably Michael, who shared Potions with him) would tell Ernie, who would then proceed to tell the entire Hufflepuff house. He didn't have to say much, just to tell people to keep their coins on them, but it was enough.
The first meeting started quietly, with veteran DA members drifting in ones and twos. Ernie had brought a substantial number of the fourth and fifth year Hufflepuffs with him, but there were even less Ravenclaws than he remembered.
"I...uh...I'm glad to see you all got my message. Harry may not be here, but we do still need to learn Defence Against the Dark Arts, and so, this group will serve two purposes. We will teach ourselves, and we will show the Death Eaters that Hogwarts will fight back. Are you with me?"
The force of their answering yells shocked even him.
***
He was the leader of the DA, Dumbledore's Army, the strongest student movement that Hogwarts had ever seen. He had tried to act more like Harry, asking himself what he would do in any given situation, and discarding the notion if it was too extreme (since Harry, for all of his amazing qualities, had only a casual relationship with common sense). So far, it had worked. Granted, both him and Seamus were barely recognisable due to all of the bruises and cuts, most of them had suffered the Cruciatus -or worse, had to perform it- by this point and any day now, Snape would just snap and tell the Carrows to kill them all, but he had eventually managed to unify all four houses.
There weren't that many people who could say that they had ever done that.
She has her first Unforgivable cast on her in her third week -by a fifth year Slytherin that she knows by face, if not by name- and she can't stop herself from screaming. Less because of the pain -because the other student isn't particularly malicious and she can only barely feel it- but more for what this must be doing for their mental states as well.
She did pay attention during Moody's (the Moody that wasn't) lectures on the effects of the Cruciatus curse, and had done some extra research -she knew what was coming, even if no-one else but Trelawney seemed to- and apparently it had almost as much of an effect on the user as it did on the victim.
Of course, anyone who had the misfortune of meeting Bellatrix Lestrange (or most of the high ranking Death Eaters, really) could have told her that, but she had wanted to see some factual evidence -because if she ever wanted to discuss the subject with anyone else, they would insist on seeing it- so she had done her research.
She raises this point with the other Ravenclaw DA members. She fully intends to pass this on to Neville, eventually, along with her suggestion of letting some of the younger Slytherin students into the DA in order to help them (and some of the more nearsighted DA members) realise that the other houses are prepared to accept them if they don't want to walk down the path of least resistance, but there may still be a few problems with her idea; and, in the absence of Hermione, Ravenclaws make the best troubleshooters.
Padma likes the idea, and starts giving her a few tips as to how they could start recruiting among the younger Slytherins; Anthony thinks that it is a good idea in theory, but emphasises that the students would fear retaliation from their housemates if they were found out; Terry thinks that she is being far too idealistic, that it is an awful lot of risk involved to get a couple of Slytherins on their side (his exact estimate is less than ten, which she thinks is a little too conservative), but he is prepared to help her efforts if the rest of the DA are for it and Michael thinks that Terry's actually being too optimistic with his estimate and doubts that any of the Slytherins would actually be willing to rebel.
She takes it to Neville the next meeting, having added some of Padma's ideas and a few ways that they could conceal any Slytherin involvement in the DA from the rest of the House. He isn't completely convinced, but suggests that she attempts it anyway.
They pass Terry's estimate on the first trial week, as eleven Slytherins (one of which, Luna is pleased to note, is the fifth year who was forced to torture her) appear for the meeting and a seventh year even shows up for their third attempt at true inter-house unity (a girl called Daphne, who smiles politely and asks if she could learn how to perform a Patronus charm).
Luna smiles through the meetings and thinks of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
She hates this.
To emphasise her dislike, her wand flashes in her hand and a handily created chair in the Room of Requirement explodes, showering both her and Luna with sawdust.
She hates just waiting here in occupied territory, while the majority of her brothers are out there actively fighting Voldemort's forces, as if she doesn't know how to take care of herself. She fought in the battle at the Ministry too, she was one of the best fighters in the original DA (even counting the ones that had graduated in the two years since then) and she's become even better at duelling since then.
And yet she's trapped at Hogwarts, while her brother (who was only a year older than her, and she knows that she's faster than him with a wand) travelled all over Britain with Harry. While her twin brothers ran the main Wizarding rebel radio broadcasts. While every single member of her family is in danger (even Percy, although he's better at ignoring that fact than the rest of the Weasleys) and she can't do anything to help them.
Not yet, at least. If the final battle came to Hogwarts, and how could it not, seeing as how both Harry and Voldemort had such an affinity for the place (and doesn't she know it, most of all)? So, when it happened, she would have helped Neville train up the forces that they had -a lot of Hufflepuffs, pretty much every Gryffindor from the third year or higher and most of the older Ravenclaws (she will add, later, a number of younger Slytherins to the list, but right now this is not her priority)- and done something in her own small way to help Harry win this war for good.
She still doesn't think that it is enough.
Ravenclaws are meant to be known for their wits, not their bravery.
Which was why Michael Corner should have been revising for the Arithmancy lesson that he was too beaten up to attend last week, instead of sneaking around the dungeons trying to find and rescue the group of first years that the Carrows had taken for telling them that Harry Potter would win the war. Quietly -because Ravenclaws are better at being sneaky than Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs on the whole- he opened the door, checking first to disable the alarms, and walked in.
One of the chained students, a Hufflepuff girl that he didn't know, whispered something.
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
Terry would tell him later that it was a reference to a famous series of Muggle films, but at that moment, he seriously thought that the girl was delirious with pain. So, since he's never believed that Gryffindor deserve their monopoly of being both stupidly reckless and still keeping the moral high ground, he freed every single person there, then proceeded to call one of the house-elves and ask her very nicely if she would take all of these students to their common rooms.
He had just finished his message "Don't Panic!" in bright pink, friendly and permanent lettering on the wall (this had been Terry's idea, due to a Muggle book that he'd read once. Michael had tried to get through it, but failed to understand the meaning of the phrase 'galactic hyperspace bypass' and had put it down shortly after) when Snape caught him.
They tortured him for a while, tried to make him admit that he'd been there with someone else -which he hadn't because he had ended up drugging Anthony and Terry so that they wouldn't come with him and get hurt even more- or, failing that, how to remove the message.
He told them an anatomically possible place where they could shove their wands, and they tortured him again.
Twenty years later, Professor Longbottom took his first years -as he had done every year, on the first Herbology lesson in term- down to the dungeons and told them about what the DA, and Michael in particular, had done for the wizarding world and for the reputation of Ravenclaw house. No longer were they only seen as being useful on the sidelines and in the background, or mocked for having no spines to go with their excessive intelligence.
Because if the landslide is powerful enough, even square pebbles will roll.
She comes to the fifth meeting of the reformed Dumbledore's Army.
Her reasoning is simple. Unlike the rest of her House, Daphne believes that, having beaten him already as a toddler, the Dark Lord is not going to have much more luck against Harry Potter now that he's an adult. Potter might actually be able to kill him at this point, which will put the rest of her House on the losing side of the war.
Daphne does not want to be on the losing side.
She rarely talks to Parkinson, the head of the girl's clique in their year (the Parkinson and the Greengrass families are notoriously icy in their relationships with each other, so she has little reason to talk to her) and she has never been particularly fond of any of the Slytherins in her year in any case (Malfoy's spoiled, Zabini's a flirt, Crabbe's violent and sadistic, Goyle's an idiot, Nott's insane, Bulstrode's got the worst temper of any non-Weasley on the planet...she could keep going, but this would mean actually thinking of her Housemates) so there is no reason for her not to join the DA.
She knows that they take Slytherin students because she overheard a group of first-year students talking about what they had been taught in the 'lesson' last week. She's also aware that they teach charms that, even if the Carrows were sticking to the standard curriculum for Defence Against the Dark Arts (or, alternatively, if they were actually teaching DADA) wouldn't be on there as standard -because she's heard that several of the older students can work a Patronus Charm and she really wants to know how to do that.
She gets a few glances when she walks in and asks (might as well be straightforward about what she wants, since that's what they prefer and she really doesn't think that she has the time for a master plan worthy of Slytherin deviousness in the middle of a war) but they agree, in exchange for her letting the occasional raiding party of DA members into Slytherin in order to spread their mischief and generally irritate the Carrows.
She agrees, but states her motives upfront, emphasising the fact that she doesn't know any of the other students and doesn't particularly want to either. She's doing this to be on the winning side and that's the only reason.
Oddly enough, the Hufflepuffs seemed to like her more after she'd said that. Must have been her honesty.
They liked her slightly less after she hexed their leader unconscious during one of their training sessions. Must have been her ruthlessness.
He's against Slytherin students joining the DA on principle.
Sure, he doesn't remember any of the ones that joined ever being a part of Malfoy's schemes -and as far as he knows, they weren't part of the Inquisitorial Squad last time- but he still had problems trusting the Slytherins not to betray them at the first sign of trouble. He mentions it when Luna brings up the subject at the meeting, and he says it again to Greengrass the first time that he's paired up with her in duelling practice.
She shrugs and tells him that she doesn't care if he trusts her or not. That she's laid her motives out clearly on the metaphorical table and that she isn't the type to lie to idiotic Gryffindors that can't even hit her, a barely trained duellist with about a year and a half's worth of disadvantage in experience.
He takes the point. Then proceeds to use fire to back her against a wall and curse her senseless.
To his surprise, she doesn't curse him back once she's recovered. He hates to admit it, but he left her an opening there. His back was even turned.
Instead, she draws attention to his brief lapse of vigilance.
"You'd think, being an untrusting and bitter veteran duellist -and a Gryffindor, no less- you would know not to turn your back on an irritated Slytherin. Particularly if the reason the Slytherin is irritated is because you just knocked her out against a wall without cushioning it first. You should be more careful. Anyone else would take advantage."
He turns around.
"You had an opportunity. Why didn't you take it?"
Another shrug.
"Whether you like it or not, we're technically on the same side. You're doing it for Gryffindor solidarity and I'm doing it because I'm hoping to profit from Potter's victory, but that doesn't actually matter right now, does it? Besides," she pauses, glancing at most of the other DA members, who had stopped and were now listening to them, "I'm not going to hex you from behind while half of your House are here watching. I mean, how stupid do you think I am, Finnigan?"
Seeing as how she did come from the same House as Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle...he decided not to answer that, instead giving her a challenging smirk in response.
Not a bad start, but she was going to have to do better than that in future. For now, however, he swore to never allow her the chance to lecture him like that again, especially not in front of the rest of the DA, several of which -particularly the older Ravenclaws and the other Slytherins- were starting to conceal smiles under their hands.
He wasn't going to let her do that to him again.
She's the last one to be driven in into their hiding space.
They don't find her because she has always been particularly good at hiding in plain sight -after all, Ravenclaws don't often draw attention to themselves by acting like idiots, unlike members of certain other Houses she could mention- and it didn't hurt that she had a few first-year friends in Slytherin who were willing to hide her in their dormitory every now and then.
While she's there, she takes the time to warn Daphne and the others to keep their cover and not to come charging into the Room of Requirement with the rest of them. After all, the Slytherin DA contingent are their secret ace in the hole, and there's no need to risk the Death Eaters finding out about them. Padma herself is a different matter, however.
She's from the original DA, remembers what it was like to be hunted down before and knows that eventually, Harry will come and bring reinforcements with him. If the Slytherins manage to keep their heads down until then, they'll be able to leave without fighting -she hopes that they don't, but she understands that fighting their Housemates isn't a particularly appealing prospect and she doesn't blame them if they decide to stay out of it- and after that, the fight will begin.
If she wants to make it to that point, she had better get moving to the Room of Requirement. The other Ravenclaw DA leaders have already taken the rest of the younger Death Eater opposed students there, the Hufflepuffs moved in about a month ago when they attacked Ernie for 'accidentally' melting Crabbe's shoes to the floor with a decently aimed potion -she says 'decently aimed' because Ernie was actually aiming for the back of Snape's greasy head- and the Gryffindors started hiding in there about a week after Neville ran in.
It'll be an interesting time for her, holed up with the rest of the DA.
She'll be with Parvati again, finally -she was always the less independent of the two of them and has taken the last six years of being almost completely separated from her twin harder, even though they were always in the same building- and she's really looking forward to being able to spend so much time with her. Although, she hopes that they've got some food sorted out, because otherwise it wasn't going to be long before the Death Eaters starved them out.
The question was, therefore, whether or not she trusted the rest of her house, and the army of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff that they'd gathered, to be smart enough to find enough food to keep them alive long enough for Harry to get back?
With that in mind, maybe she could raid something from the house elves before she left.
One of them has to go and remind the others that the DA are still around and that Harry will probably be coming there after doing whatever he's going to do with that dragon that he ran off with after escaping from Gringotts.
It has to be a seventh year, because there will be torture involved if the person's caught, and if it happens to a younger student, the seventh year responsible (either Neville, Lavender, Parvati and Seamus for the Gryffindors; Terry, Padma, Michael and Anthony for the Ravenclaws or Ernie and Hannah for the Hufflepuffs) will feel guilty about not going themselves anyway.
Anthony volunteers himself first, but Terry manages to talk him out of it. With Luna gone, he's the leader of the Ravenclaw contingent (he beat Michael in a duel for the role earlier in the year and often wishes that he hadn't) and he knows that, while Anthony knows more spells than even he does, his friend has problems sustaining a Shield Charm for more than a couple of minutes and tends to freeze up when he's under pressure. This will need to be a fast job. Get in, yell his piece, and run back out again, all within fifteen minutes.
They decide what he's going to say in advance, and agree -much to Neville and Ernie's horror- that Terry has to let the Carrows beat him up to show the other students that, despite being in hiding, the DA aren't cowards. This is also a reason why it has to be a Ravenclaw student, as it'll be more disturbing to see a Ravenclaw, who usually aren't stupid or brave enough to do something like that for the sole purpose of proving a point.
If they start using the Cruciatus curse, then he has the choice of letting them do it (he doesn't particularly want to, obviously, but it would help prove his point that they were still around and weren't scared of a little torture) or running back. If they try to kill him, then he's supposed to dodge it. If he hexes them as a response, then...he has to tell Neville and Ernie, going into as much detail as he can as to the looks on their faces while he's doing it.
He doesn't hex them.
He lets them beat him up for a while -if Harry is bringing the battle to Hogwarts, he's going to need those teeth grown back pretty damned quickly- and he watches the non-Death Eater teacher's faces for a while as he does it. McGonagall looks torn between pity and annoyance; Sprout keeps twitching, as if she desperately wants to go for her wand and stop them and Flitwick...he thinks that Professor Flitwick must know what he's up to, because he's never seen any teacher look so proud of him in his life.
At some point, Michael throws a large amount of Peruvian Darkness Powder in the Great Hall -that's his cue to leave- and they escape back to the Room of Requirement, Terry leaning against his friend's shoulder.
There.
That was something to tell Susan next time he saw her.
Daphne's wand is shaking in her hand.
She's one of the only Slytherins that stayed behind. For some reason, Nott -who she still thinks is completely and totally insane, even if it turned out that he's more like Lovegood than his father- is right beside her, the rhythmic tapping of his fingers upon his own wand the only sign that he's as nervous as she is.
"I suppose you don't know how to produce a Patronus Charm either?"
She does. Learned it the week before the Carrows started hunting the other DA members down, but by then she was already involved too much in this business to stop. She smirks as a reply and he shrugs back. She knows for a fact that he's only there because he's just too damned contrary to do what everyone else expects him to, and not for any love of the DA or Muggleborns in general.
They've been put with the Ravenclaws, under Boot and Lovegood's command -not that Nott cares much, but she's actually somewhat grateful to the younger girl for fighting their cause with the other commanders at the beginning of term, so she's okay with that- and Anthony Goldstein gives her a flirtatious wink from her other side.
"So, after this is over, do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me? There's a weekend coming up, if we're still alive."
She starts laughing.
"Are you that confident that we'll make it?"
He grins back -nice smile, she notices, and then wonders why they're even talking about this right before the battle that will decide what the future of the Wizarding world will be like- and shrugs.
"I don't see why not. We've been training all year, Harry's there at our head and he's brought the remnants of the Order to help him, with most of the other original DA members and the entire former Gryffindor Quidditch team, apparently, which was a bit odd," he muses for a moment before brightening up, "I've not calculated the odds yet, but I don't think that Voldemort has much of a chance, to be truthful."
"Don't calculate the odds!"
Both Slytherins say it at the same time, shooting each other near-identical smirks and Anthony starts laughing.
"I was joking! I don't have the numbers to do that, anyway. So, will you think about it, Daphne?"
She smiles. To be honest, it'll be the first time that anyone has asked her out on what sounds suspiciously like a date, but since she isn't going to be a child after this battle anyway, she might as well go for it.
"If we both live, I'd be happy to go with you."
"Fantastic!"
***
Terry isn't quick enough.
The hex that Avery throws at him is evaded by ducking sharply, and he manages to send his Patronus (which is in the shape of a bird, and he kept forgetting to find out what type, because there was always something else to do as a result of being the leader of the Ravenclaw DA members while Luna was gone) out towards that group of Dementors while still running, but he doesn't quite manage to reach Michael before the swarm of Acromantula do.
He casts as many spells as he can think of -which is quite a lot, considering that he's very good at thinking- and manages to fight his way over, but it isn't enough. His friend is bleeding in several places under his clothing (neither of their robes are bright blue anymore, but he'd always told Michael that after dating Weasley, his friend deserved to be in Gryffindor anyway) and if he doesn't have any cover with which to heal him, then they'll both be killed.
He finds a girl - a sixth year Gryffindor who should really have gone home, but if it means that Michael won't bleed to death then he'll forgive her for her stubbornness- and talks her into providing some support while he drags him into the shadow of one of the remaining Hogwarts walls and starts trying to charm some of the wounds to close. He does what he can, but if there isn't a rest period soon...Michael's lost too much blood, and he doesn't happen to carry anti-venom on his person.
He doesn't want him to die. He doesn't want anyone to die, on either side, because he would prefer to get straight to the negotiations (or the trials, in this case) without any fighting, but that isn't a choice that he has available to him right now.
They call a rest period eventually, but it's too late for Michael. The sixth year girl helps Terry take the body (and it hurts when he thinks of Michael like that, but that's all he is now, another body) to the Great Hall, with all of the other casualties.
Cho Chang catches his eye, and he looks away sharply. He knew that her and Michael had still been dating (first Cedric, now Michael, all they'd need would be Harry to die and she'd be three for three) and he did feel for her, but right now he is too tired to think of anything.
Anything but the fact that there had been three of them together wandering into the Hog's Head to see what Potter had actually been up to, three of them to take Umbridge's punishments (all three of them to have scars, Anthony and Michael on their right hands, Terry on his left, as a statement of their lack of faith in the authority of the Ministry) and three of them to join the new DA.
And now Michael was dead, and there was only two of them. Possibly one, because he doesn't manage to see Anthony before he blacks out.
He hopes not.
Luna's going to need them both to help when the fight restarts. Not much point in having a Ravenclaw DA unit if there aren't any Ravenclaw DA members left.
***
The battle restarts.
Padma doesn't know if Harry's living or dead -she saw his body, but it's gone now- but it doesn't matter at the moment. He's just another casualty, and she has to pull it together, as does every member of the DA, original or present.
She keeps count in her mind.
Michael and Colin are dead; Morag got Kissed by a Dementor, Lisa's unconscious and none of them have been able to wake her -she parries and slashes at a Death Eater, as Daphne comes to provide backup for her, just like in the practices, except they weren't duelling Ernie and Hannah anymore- Lavender got torn to pieces (and she's so sorry because she'd been so jealous of Lavender all of this time for stealing Parvati away from her, when it really wasn't her fault and she didn't deserve to die at all, never mind in such a gruesome way) by a werewolf.
She saw Dean go down but they couldn't find his body and she doesn't know why he went out into the battle without a wand anyway, because that was idiotic, even if she's not supposed to speak ill of the (possibly) dead.
Bellatrix LeStrange goes down to Ron's mother (and Padma wonders if Mrs Weasley knows that she went to a ball with her son, once upon a time, back before there was a war) and then, after all of that, he dies. And Harry lives.
They've won, but it doesn't seem like much of a victory. She doesn't understand why she isn't as excited as the others seem to be, but all she can think about are the people who should be celebrating with them but aren't.
Maybe it's true what Parvati told her, back before the war.
She does ruin every party she's invited to.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Possible AU (I have no idea which DA members lived and I'm sure that there were no seventh year Slytherin defectors as far as the novel goes).
Summary: We know about what Harry, Ron and Hermione were doing during the last year of the War. But what about the people stuck at Hogwarts?
He had started it off.
He knew that if he told Parvati, she would tell Padma, who would tell the rest of the Ravenclaws who belonged to the former DA. From there, one of the Ravenclaws (probably Michael, who shared Potions with him) would tell Ernie, who would then proceed to tell the entire Hufflepuff house. He didn't have to say much, just to tell people to keep their coins on them, but it was enough.
The first meeting started quietly, with veteran DA members drifting in ones and twos. Ernie had brought a substantial number of the fourth and fifth year Hufflepuffs with him, but there were even less Ravenclaws than he remembered.
"I...uh...I'm glad to see you all got my message. Harry may not be here, but we do still need to learn Defence Against the Dark Arts, and so, this group will serve two purposes. We will teach ourselves, and we will show the Death Eaters that Hogwarts will fight back. Are you with me?"
The force of their answering yells shocked even him.
He was the leader of the DA, Dumbledore's Army, the strongest student movement that Hogwarts had ever seen. He had tried to act more like Harry, asking himself what he would do in any given situation, and discarding the notion if it was too extreme (since Harry, for all of his amazing qualities, had only a casual relationship with common sense). So far, it had worked. Granted, both him and Seamus were barely recognisable due to all of the bruises and cuts, most of them had suffered the Cruciatus -or worse, had to perform it- by this point and any day now, Snape would just snap and tell the Carrows to kill them all, but he had eventually managed to unify all four houses.
There weren't that many people who could say that they had ever done that.
She has her first Unforgivable cast on her in her third week -by a fifth year Slytherin that she knows by face, if not by name- and she can't stop herself from screaming. Less because of the pain -because the other student isn't particularly malicious and she can only barely feel it- but more for what this must be doing for their mental states as well.
She did pay attention during Moody's (the Moody that wasn't) lectures on the effects of the Cruciatus curse, and had done some extra research -she knew what was coming, even if no-one else but Trelawney seemed to- and apparently it had almost as much of an effect on the user as it did on the victim.
Of course, anyone who had the misfortune of meeting Bellatrix Lestrange (or most of the high ranking Death Eaters, really) could have told her that, but she had wanted to see some factual evidence -because if she ever wanted to discuss the subject with anyone else, they would insist on seeing it- so she had done her research.
She raises this point with the other Ravenclaw DA members. She fully intends to pass this on to Neville, eventually, along with her suggestion of letting some of the younger Slytherin students into the DA in order to help them (and some of the more nearsighted DA members) realise that the other houses are prepared to accept them if they don't want to walk down the path of least resistance, but there may still be a few problems with her idea; and, in the absence of Hermione, Ravenclaws make the best troubleshooters.
Padma likes the idea, and starts giving her a few tips as to how they could start recruiting among the younger Slytherins; Anthony thinks that it is a good idea in theory, but emphasises that the students would fear retaliation from their housemates if they were found out; Terry thinks that she is being far too idealistic, that it is an awful lot of risk involved to get a couple of Slytherins on their side (his exact estimate is less than ten, which she thinks is a little too conservative), but he is prepared to help her efforts if the rest of the DA are for it and Michael thinks that Terry's actually being too optimistic with his estimate and doubts that any of the Slytherins would actually be willing to rebel.
She takes it to Neville the next meeting, having added some of Padma's ideas and a few ways that they could conceal any Slytherin involvement in the DA from the rest of the House. He isn't completely convinced, but suggests that she attempts it anyway.
They pass Terry's estimate on the first trial week, as eleven Slytherins (one of which, Luna is pleased to note, is the fifth year who was forced to torture her) appear for the meeting and a seventh year even shows up for their third attempt at true inter-house unity (a girl called Daphne, who smiles politely and asks if she could learn how to perform a Patronus charm).
Luna smiles through the meetings and thinks of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
She hates this.
To emphasise her dislike, her wand flashes in her hand and a handily created chair in the Room of Requirement explodes, showering both her and Luna with sawdust.
She hates just waiting here in occupied territory, while the majority of her brothers are out there actively fighting Voldemort's forces, as if she doesn't know how to take care of herself. She fought in the battle at the Ministry too, she was one of the best fighters in the original DA (even counting the ones that had graduated in the two years since then) and she's become even better at duelling since then.
And yet she's trapped at Hogwarts, while her brother (who was only a year older than her, and she knows that she's faster than him with a wand) travelled all over Britain with Harry. While her twin brothers ran the main Wizarding rebel radio broadcasts. While every single member of her family is in danger (even Percy, although he's better at ignoring that fact than the rest of the Weasleys) and she can't do anything to help them.
Not yet, at least. If the final battle came to Hogwarts, and how could it not, seeing as how both Harry and Voldemort had such an affinity for the place (and doesn't she know it, most of all)? So, when it happened, she would have helped Neville train up the forces that they had -a lot of Hufflepuffs, pretty much every Gryffindor from the third year or higher and most of the older Ravenclaws (she will add, later, a number of younger Slytherins to the list, but right now this is not her priority)- and done something in her own small way to help Harry win this war for good.
She still doesn't think that it is enough.
Ravenclaws are meant to be known for their wits, not their bravery.
Which was why Michael Corner should have been revising for the Arithmancy lesson that he was too beaten up to attend last week, instead of sneaking around the dungeons trying to find and rescue the group of first years that the Carrows had taken for telling them that Harry Potter would win the war. Quietly -because Ravenclaws are better at being sneaky than Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs on the whole- he opened the door, checking first to disable the alarms, and walked in.
One of the chained students, a Hufflepuff girl that he didn't know, whispered something.
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
Terry would tell him later that it was a reference to a famous series of Muggle films, but at that moment, he seriously thought that the girl was delirious with pain. So, since he's never believed that Gryffindor deserve their monopoly of being both stupidly reckless and still keeping the moral high ground, he freed every single person there, then proceeded to call one of the house-elves and ask her very nicely if she would take all of these students to their common rooms.
He had just finished his message "Don't Panic!" in bright pink, friendly and permanent lettering on the wall (this had been Terry's idea, due to a Muggle book that he'd read once. Michael had tried to get through it, but failed to understand the meaning of the phrase 'galactic hyperspace bypass' and had put it down shortly after) when Snape caught him.
They tortured him for a while, tried to make him admit that he'd been there with someone else -which he hadn't because he had ended up drugging Anthony and Terry so that they wouldn't come with him and get hurt even more- or, failing that, how to remove the message.
He told them an anatomically possible place where they could shove their wands, and they tortured him again.
Twenty years later, Professor Longbottom took his first years -as he had done every year, on the first Herbology lesson in term- down to the dungeons and told them about what the DA, and Michael in particular, had done for the wizarding world and for the reputation of Ravenclaw house. No longer were they only seen as being useful on the sidelines and in the background, or mocked for having no spines to go with their excessive intelligence.
Because if the landslide is powerful enough, even square pebbles will roll.
She comes to the fifth meeting of the reformed Dumbledore's Army.
Her reasoning is simple. Unlike the rest of her House, Daphne believes that, having beaten him already as a toddler, the Dark Lord is not going to have much more luck against Harry Potter now that he's an adult. Potter might actually be able to kill him at this point, which will put the rest of her House on the losing side of the war.
Daphne does not want to be on the losing side.
She rarely talks to Parkinson, the head of the girl's clique in their year (the Parkinson and the Greengrass families are notoriously icy in their relationships with each other, so she has little reason to talk to her) and she has never been particularly fond of any of the Slytherins in her year in any case (Malfoy's spoiled, Zabini's a flirt, Crabbe's violent and sadistic, Goyle's an idiot, Nott's insane, Bulstrode's got the worst temper of any non-Weasley on the planet...she could keep going, but this would mean actually thinking of her Housemates) so there is no reason for her not to join the DA.
She knows that they take Slytherin students because she overheard a group of first-year students talking about what they had been taught in the 'lesson' last week. She's also aware that they teach charms that, even if the Carrows were sticking to the standard curriculum for Defence Against the Dark Arts (or, alternatively, if they were actually teaching DADA) wouldn't be on there as standard -because she's heard that several of the older students can work a Patronus Charm and she really wants to know how to do that.
She gets a few glances when she walks in and asks (might as well be straightforward about what she wants, since that's what they prefer and she really doesn't think that she has the time for a master plan worthy of Slytherin deviousness in the middle of a war) but they agree, in exchange for her letting the occasional raiding party of DA members into Slytherin in order to spread their mischief and generally irritate the Carrows.
She agrees, but states her motives upfront, emphasising the fact that she doesn't know any of the other students and doesn't particularly want to either. She's doing this to be on the winning side and that's the only reason.
Oddly enough, the Hufflepuffs seemed to like her more after she'd said that. Must have been her honesty.
They liked her slightly less after she hexed their leader unconscious during one of their training sessions. Must have been her ruthlessness.
He's against Slytherin students joining the DA on principle.
Sure, he doesn't remember any of the ones that joined ever being a part of Malfoy's schemes -and as far as he knows, they weren't part of the Inquisitorial Squad last time- but he still had problems trusting the Slytherins not to betray them at the first sign of trouble. He mentions it when Luna brings up the subject at the meeting, and he says it again to Greengrass the first time that he's paired up with her in duelling practice.
She shrugs and tells him that she doesn't care if he trusts her or not. That she's laid her motives out clearly on the metaphorical table and that she isn't the type to lie to idiotic Gryffindors that can't even hit her, a barely trained duellist with about a year and a half's worth of disadvantage in experience.
He takes the point. Then proceeds to use fire to back her against a wall and curse her senseless.
To his surprise, she doesn't curse him back once she's recovered. He hates to admit it, but he left her an opening there. His back was even turned.
Instead, she draws attention to his brief lapse of vigilance.
"You'd think, being an untrusting and bitter veteran duellist -and a Gryffindor, no less- you would know not to turn your back on an irritated Slytherin. Particularly if the reason the Slytherin is irritated is because you just knocked her out against a wall without cushioning it first. You should be more careful. Anyone else would take advantage."
He turns around.
"You had an opportunity. Why didn't you take it?"
Another shrug.
"Whether you like it or not, we're technically on the same side. You're doing it for Gryffindor solidarity and I'm doing it because I'm hoping to profit from Potter's victory, but that doesn't actually matter right now, does it? Besides," she pauses, glancing at most of the other DA members, who had stopped and were now listening to them, "I'm not going to hex you from behind while half of your House are here watching. I mean, how stupid do you think I am, Finnigan?"
Seeing as how she did come from the same House as Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle...he decided not to answer that, instead giving her a challenging smirk in response.
Not a bad start, but she was going to have to do better than that in future. For now, however, he swore to never allow her the chance to lecture him like that again, especially not in front of the rest of the DA, several of which -particularly the older Ravenclaws and the other Slytherins- were starting to conceal smiles under their hands.
He wasn't going to let her do that to him again.
She's the last one to be driven in into their hiding space.
They don't find her because she has always been particularly good at hiding in plain sight -after all, Ravenclaws don't often draw attention to themselves by acting like idiots, unlike members of certain other Houses she could mention- and it didn't hurt that she had a few first-year friends in Slytherin who were willing to hide her in their dormitory every now and then.
While she's there, she takes the time to warn Daphne and the others to keep their cover and not to come charging into the Room of Requirement with the rest of them. After all, the Slytherin DA contingent are their secret ace in the hole, and there's no need to risk the Death Eaters finding out about them. Padma herself is a different matter, however.
She's from the original DA, remembers what it was like to be hunted down before and knows that eventually, Harry will come and bring reinforcements with him. If the Slytherins manage to keep their heads down until then, they'll be able to leave without fighting -she hopes that they don't, but she understands that fighting their Housemates isn't a particularly appealing prospect and she doesn't blame them if they decide to stay out of it- and after that, the fight will begin.
If she wants to make it to that point, she had better get moving to the Room of Requirement. The other Ravenclaw DA leaders have already taken the rest of the younger Death Eater opposed students there, the Hufflepuffs moved in about a month ago when they attacked Ernie for 'accidentally' melting Crabbe's shoes to the floor with a decently aimed potion -she says 'decently aimed' because Ernie was actually aiming for the back of Snape's greasy head- and the Gryffindors started hiding in there about a week after Neville ran in.
It'll be an interesting time for her, holed up with the rest of the DA.
She'll be with Parvati again, finally -she was always the less independent of the two of them and has taken the last six years of being almost completely separated from her twin harder, even though they were always in the same building- and she's really looking forward to being able to spend so much time with her. Although, she hopes that they've got some food sorted out, because otherwise it wasn't going to be long before the Death Eaters starved them out.
The question was, therefore, whether or not she trusted the rest of her house, and the army of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff that they'd gathered, to be smart enough to find enough food to keep them alive long enough for Harry to get back?
With that in mind, maybe she could raid something from the house elves before she left.
One of them has to go and remind the others that the DA are still around and that Harry will probably be coming there after doing whatever he's going to do with that dragon that he ran off with after escaping from Gringotts.
It has to be a seventh year, because there will be torture involved if the person's caught, and if it happens to a younger student, the seventh year responsible (either Neville, Lavender, Parvati and Seamus for the Gryffindors; Terry, Padma, Michael and Anthony for the Ravenclaws or Ernie and Hannah for the Hufflepuffs) will feel guilty about not going themselves anyway.
Anthony volunteers himself first, but Terry manages to talk him out of it. With Luna gone, he's the leader of the Ravenclaw contingent (he beat Michael in a duel for the role earlier in the year and often wishes that he hadn't) and he knows that, while Anthony knows more spells than even he does, his friend has problems sustaining a Shield Charm for more than a couple of minutes and tends to freeze up when he's under pressure. This will need to be a fast job. Get in, yell his piece, and run back out again, all within fifteen minutes.
They decide what he's going to say in advance, and agree -much to Neville and Ernie's horror- that Terry has to let the Carrows beat him up to show the other students that, despite being in hiding, the DA aren't cowards. This is also a reason why it has to be a Ravenclaw student, as it'll be more disturbing to see a Ravenclaw, who usually aren't stupid or brave enough to do something like that for the sole purpose of proving a point.
If they start using the Cruciatus curse, then he has the choice of letting them do it (he doesn't particularly want to, obviously, but it would help prove his point that they were still around and weren't scared of a little torture) or running back. If they try to kill him, then he's supposed to dodge it. If he hexes them as a response, then...he has to tell Neville and Ernie, going into as much detail as he can as to the looks on their faces while he's doing it.
He doesn't hex them.
He lets them beat him up for a while -if Harry is bringing the battle to Hogwarts, he's going to need those teeth grown back pretty damned quickly- and he watches the non-Death Eater teacher's faces for a while as he does it. McGonagall looks torn between pity and annoyance; Sprout keeps twitching, as if she desperately wants to go for her wand and stop them and Flitwick...he thinks that Professor Flitwick must know what he's up to, because he's never seen any teacher look so proud of him in his life.
At some point, Michael throws a large amount of Peruvian Darkness Powder in the Great Hall -that's his cue to leave- and they escape back to the Room of Requirement, Terry leaning against his friend's shoulder.
There.
That was something to tell Susan next time he saw her.
Daphne's wand is shaking in her hand.
She's one of the only Slytherins that stayed behind. For some reason, Nott -who she still thinks is completely and totally insane, even if it turned out that he's more like Lovegood than his father- is right beside her, the rhythmic tapping of his fingers upon his own wand the only sign that he's as nervous as she is.
"I suppose you don't know how to produce a Patronus Charm either?"
She does. Learned it the week before the Carrows started hunting the other DA members down, but by then she was already involved too much in this business to stop. She smirks as a reply and he shrugs back. She knows for a fact that he's only there because he's just too damned contrary to do what everyone else expects him to, and not for any love of the DA or Muggleborns in general.
They've been put with the Ravenclaws, under Boot and Lovegood's command -not that Nott cares much, but she's actually somewhat grateful to the younger girl for fighting their cause with the other commanders at the beginning of term, so she's okay with that- and Anthony Goldstein gives her a flirtatious wink from her other side.
"So, after this is over, do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me? There's a weekend coming up, if we're still alive."
She starts laughing.
"Are you that confident that we'll make it?"
He grins back -nice smile, she notices, and then wonders why they're even talking about this right before the battle that will decide what the future of the Wizarding world will be like- and shrugs.
"I don't see why not. We've been training all year, Harry's there at our head and he's brought the remnants of the Order to help him, with most of the other original DA members and the entire former Gryffindor Quidditch team, apparently, which was a bit odd," he muses for a moment before brightening up, "I've not calculated the odds yet, but I don't think that Voldemort has much of a chance, to be truthful."
"Don't calculate the odds!"
Both Slytherins say it at the same time, shooting each other near-identical smirks and Anthony starts laughing.
"I was joking! I don't have the numbers to do that, anyway. So, will you think about it, Daphne?"
She smiles. To be honest, it'll be the first time that anyone has asked her out on what sounds suspiciously like a date, but since she isn't going to be a child after this battle anyway, she might as well go for it.
"If we both live, I'd be happy to go with you."
"Fantastic!"
Terry isn't quick enough.
The hex that Avery throws at him is evaded by ducking sharply, and he manages to send his Patronus (which is in the shape of a bird, and he kept forgetting to find out what type, because there was always something else to do as a result of being the leader of the Ravenclaw DA members while Luna was gone) out towards that group of Dementors while still running, but he doesn't quite manage to reach Michael before the swarm of Acromantula do.
He casts as many spells as he can think of -which is quite a lot, considering that he's very good at thinking- and manages to fight his way over, but it isn't enough. His friend is bleeding in several places under his clothing (neither of their robes are bright blue anymore, but he'd always told Michael that after dating Weasley, his friend deserved to be in Gryffindor anyway) and if he doesn't have any cover with which to heal him, then they'll both be killed.
He finds a girl - a sixth year Gryffindor who should really have gone home, but if it means that Michael won't bleed to death then he'll forgive her for her stubbornness- and talks her into providing some support while he drags him into the shadow of one of the remaining Hogwarts walls and starts trying to charm some of the wounds to close. He does what he can, but if there isn't a rest period soon...Michael's lost too much blood, and he doesn't happen to carry anti-venom on his person.
He doesn't want him to die. He doesn't want anyone to die, on either side, because he would prefer to get straight to the negotiations (or the trials, in this case) without any fighting, but that isn't a choice that he has available to him right now.
They call a rest period eventually, but it's too late for Michael. The sixth year girl helps Terry take the body (and it hurts when he thinks of Michael like that, but that's all he is now, another body) to the Great Hall, with all of the other casualties.
Cho Chang catches his eye, and he looks away sharply. He knew that her and Michael had still been dating (first Cedric, now Michael, all they'd need would be Harry to die and she'd be three for three) and he did feel for her, but right now he is too tired to think of anything.
Anything but the fact that there had been three of them together wandering into the Hog's Head to see what Potter had actually been up to, three of them to take Umbridge's punishments (all three of them to have scars, Anthony and Michael on their right hands, Terry on his left, as a statement of their lack of faith in the authority of the Ministry) and three of them to join the new DA.
And now Michael was dead, and there was only two of them. Possibly one, because he doesn't manage to see Anthony before he blacks out.
He hopes not.
Luna's going to need them both to help when the fight restarts. Not much point in having a Ravenclaw DA unit if there aren't any Ravenclaw DA members left.
The battle restarts.
Padma doesn't know if Harry's living or dead -she saw his body, but it's gone now- but it doesn't matter at the moment. He's just another casualty, and she has to pull it together, as does every member of the DA, original or present.
She keeps count in her mind.
Michael and Colin are dead; Morag got Kissed by a Dementor, Lisa's unconscious and none of them have been able to wake her -she parries and slashes at a Death Eater, as Daphne comes to provide backup for her, just like in the practices, except they weren't duelling Ernie and Hannah anymore- Lavender got torn to pieces (and she's so sorry because she'd been so jealous of Lavender all of this time for stealing Parvati away from her, when it really wasn't her fault and she didn't deserve to die at all, never mind in such a gruesome way) by a werewolf.
She saw Dean go down but they couldn't find his body and she doesn't know why he went out into the battle without a wand anyway, because that was idiotic, even if she's not supposed to speak ill of the (possibly) dead.
Bellatrix LeStrange goes down to Ron's mother (and Padma wonders if Mrs Weasley knows that she went to a ball with her son, once upon a time, back before there was a war) and then, after all of that, he dies. And Harry lives.
They've won, but it doesn't seem like much of a victory. She doesn't understand why she isn't as excited as the others seem to be, but all she can think about are the people who should be celebrating with them but aren't.
Maybe it's true what Parvati told her, back before the war.
She does ruin every party she's invited to.
