SuperPotterLock - The Order of the Phoenix

The Lion and the Serpent

Dean carried the success of the DA around like a warm glow in his chest over the next two weeks. He spent a portion of each meeting with Cas, coaching him on the offensive spells and helping him overcome his fears, just as he had with Cas's potion making. Cas mastered the Impediment Jinx, and Dean was stuck in one spot for ten minutes, though Cas struggled with the Reductor Curse, refusing to cast it after his first attempt demolished half of the room. On the whole, though, Dean caught more smiles and lingering gazes from Cas as he wandered around the room, checking on everyone else.

By the third meeting, Dean was getting desperate. He dropped more and more obvious hints to Cas, but Cas did not appear to notice his interest at all.

Dean sidled up to John half way through a meeting under the pretence of helping him with the Impediment jinx.

'Hey, so... I can't get a read on Cas,' Dean muttered. 'I was wondering if you could...?'

'What, use my power to tell you whether or not Cas fancies you?' John said with a raised eyebrow.

'Well... yeah.'

John lowered his wand. 'First of all, you don't need to be a Seer to know that. Second of all, it would be really rude of me to invade his privacy like that, and third of all, how many times do I have to tell you that I can't See Cas?'

'Wait, wait, go back to that first thing?'

'Dean,' John sighed.

'Okay, okay... what do I do now?'

John rolled his eyes. 'How should I know? Aren't you supposed to be good at this sort of thing?'

'All right, fine,' Dean sighed. He began to walk away.

'Dean, wait,' said John, calling him back with a slightly glazed over expression. '...Ask him when it's snowing.'

Dean grinned. 'Awesome. Thanks, John.'

With the first Quidditch match of the season rapidly approaching, the meetings began more and more difficult to organise, as Angelina insisted on almost daily practices for the Gryffindor team.

Hermione soon devised a clever method of communicating the time and date of the next meeting to all the members in case they needed to change it at short notice. It was a regular occurrence to see Sherlock and Castiel leaving the Ravenclaw table to come to talk to them, but it would look suspicious if too many people of different Houses went back and forth to talk to each other too often.

Hermione gave each of the DA members a fake Galleon. 'You see the numerals around the edge of the coins?' she said, holding one up for examination. 'On real Galleons that's just a serial number referring to the goblin that cast the coin. On these fake coins, though, the numbers will change to reflect the time and date of the next meeting. The coins will get hot when the date changes, so if you're carrying them in your pocket you'll be able to feel them. We take one each, and when Harry sets the date of the next meeting he'll change the numbers on his coin, and because I've put a Protean Charm on them, they'll all change to mimic his.'

A blank silence greeted Hermione's words.

'Well - I thought it was a good idea,' she said uncertainly, 'I mean, even if Umbridge asked us to turn out our pockets, there's nothing fishy about carrying a Galleon, is there? But... well, if you don't want to use them - '

'You can do the Protean Charm?' said Terry Boot.

'Yes,' said Hermione.

'But that... that's NEWT standard, that is,' he said weakly.