Astra

C - The Quidditch Match

ASTRA FELT AS THOUGH she were carrying some kind of talisman inside her chest over the following two weeks, a glowing secret that supported her through Umbridge's classes. She had rebelled before, revolted against the ministry her whole life. Hell, even when she hadn't joined Hogwarts yet, it was rumoured that her and her mother had been killed, making her only put onto ministry records when she turned eleven. She had worked behind the scenes in every event, hidden her father from aurors and dementors, kept the secret of their half-breed professor, and had been doing her absolute best to bend every single rule Umbridge thought of.

But she and the DA were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing she and the Ministry most feared and the satisfying memories of their most recent meetings, when Neville had successfully disarmed Hermione, Colin Creevey had mastered the Impediment Jinx after three meetings' hard effort, Parvati Patil had produced such a good Reductor Curse that she had reduced the table carrying all the Sneakoscopes to dust gave her a sense of pride that only made her more determined.

They were finding it almost impossible to fix a regular night of the week for the DA meetings, as they had to accommodate three separate: team's Quidditch practices, which were often rearranged due to bad weather conditions; but Astra had a feeling that it was probably better to keep the timing of their meetings unpredictable. If anyone was watching them, it would be hard to make out a pattern.

Hermione, Luna, and Astra soon devised a very 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 because it would look suspicious if people from different Houses were seen crossing the Great Hall to talk to each other too often. They gave each of the members of the DA a fake Galleon (Ron became very excited when he first saw the basket and was convinced she was actually giving out gold).

"You see the numerals around the edge of the coins?" Hermione said, holding one up for examination at the end of their fourth meeting. The coin gleamed fat and yellow in the light from the torches. "On real Galleons, that's just a serial number referring to the goblin who 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 grow hot when the date changes, so if you're carrying them in a 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. She looked around at all the faces upturned to her, rather disconcerted.

"Well--Luna came up with the idea and I thought it was good- Astra and I figured out the spellwork," 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 a Protean Charm?" said Terry Boot.

"Yes," said Hermione. Astra nodded.

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

"Well yeah," said Astra simply, remembering her third year, telling off Remus and McGonagall about 'following the curriculum', "but the library's open to all students."

"How come you're not in Ravenclaw?" he demanded, glancing in between the two. "With brains like yours?"

"Well, the Sorting Hat did seriously consider putting me in Ravenclaw during my Sorting," said Hermione brightly, "but it decided on Gryffindor in the end."

She looked to Astra, who shrugged.

"The hat said I'd do well in all of them, except Hufflepuff probably, but it was eventually down to Slytherin and Gryffindor." The way she said it was with an air of pride, which confused some of the students.