Reflections - Mattheo Riddle

Our King

Kirra 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 and even made it possible for her to smile blandly as she looked into her horrible bulging eyes. 

She and the DA were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing she and the Ministry most feared, and whenever she was supposed to be reading Wilbert Slinkhard's book during her lessons Kirra dwelled instead on satisfying memories of their most recent meetings, remembering how Jasper had successfully disarmed Mattheo, how Theo had mastered the Impediment Jinx after three meetings' hard effort, how Mattheo had produced such a good Reductor Curse that he had reduced the table carrying all the Sneakoscopes to dust.

She 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 Kirra was not sorry about this; she 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.

Kirra 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 

'You see the numerals around the edge of the coins?' Kirra 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 and I set the date of the next meeting we'll change the numbers on our coin, and because I've put a Protean Charm on them, they'll all change to mimic mine and Harry's.'

A blank silence greeted Kirra'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 –'

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

'Yes,' said Kirra.

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

'Oh,' said Kirra, shifting a bit. 'Oh ... well ... yes, I suppose it is.'

'How come you're not in Ravenclaw?' he demanded, staring at Kirra with something close to wonder. With brains like yours?' 

'Dunno,' said Kirra with a small smile, 'But I'm happy it put me in Hufflepuff'

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

'No, what's that?'

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

'Well ... yes,' said Kirra, 'Tom is the one who taught me how to do it... that is where I got the idea ... but you'll notice I decided to engrave the date on bits of metal rather than on our members' skin.'

'Yeah ... I prefer your way,' said Harry, grinning, as he slipped his Galleon into his pocket. 'I suppose the only danger with these is that we might accidentally spend them.'