Grindelwald's Burden (Books 1-7)

82. The Lion and the Serpent

Harry felt as though he were carrying some kind of talisman inside his chest over the following two weeks, a glowing secret that supported him through Umbridge's classes and even made it possible for him to smile blandly as he looked into her horrible bulging eyes. He and the DA were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing she and the Ministry most feared, and whenever he was supposed to be reading Wilbert Slinkhard's book during her lessons he dwelled instead on satisfying memories of their most recent meetings, remembering how he and Y/n had taught Neville how to successfully disarm Hermione, how Colin Creevey had mastered the Impediment Jinx after three meeting's hard effort, how Parvati Patil had produced such a good Reductor Curse that she had reduced the table carrying all the Sneakoscopes to dust.

Harry was 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 Harry nor Y/n were sorry about this, They 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 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. She 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. Y/n lifted one up and looked at it. 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...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..."

"They are brilliant Hermione...I could not think of a better way to communicate than this." Y/n said deeply impressed with her.

"You can do a Protean Charm?" said Terry Boot.

"Yes." said Hermione.

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

"Oh..." said Hermione, trying to look modest. "Oh...well...yes, I suppose it is."

"How comes You and Y/n are not in Ravenclaw?" he demanded, staring at them with something close to wonder. "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. So, does that mean we're using the Galleons?"

There was a murmur of assent and everybody moved forwards to collect one from the basket. Harry looked sideways at Hermione. "You know what these remind me of?"

"No, what's that?" She said.

"The Death Eaters' scars. Voldemort touches one of them, and all their scars burn, and they know they've got to join him." Harry said.