Supported & Torn (HP) {Book 3 of the Wild & Free Series}

15. The Quidditch Match

I felt as though I was carrying some kind of talisman inside my chest over the following two weeks, a glowing secret that supported me through Umbridge's classes and even made it possible for me to smile blandly as I looked into her horrible bulging eyes. Harry, I and the D.A. were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing that she and the Ministry most feared, and whenever I was supposed to be reading Wilbert Slinkhard's book during her lessons I dwelled instead on satisfying memories of our most recent meetings, remembering how Neville had successfully disarmed Hermione, how Colin Creevey had mastered the Impediment Jinx after three meetings' 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 and I were finding it almost impossible to fix a regular night of the week for D.A. meetings, as we had to accommodate three separate Quidditch teams' practices, which were often rearranged depending on the weather conditions; but we were not sorry about this, we had a feeling that it was probably better to keep the timing of our meetings unpredictable. If anyone was watching us, it would be hard to make out a pattern.

Hermione and Lucy soon devised a very clever method of communicating the time and date of the next meeting to all the members in case we needed to change it at short notice, because it would look so 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 D.A. a fake Galleon (Ron became very excited when he saw the basket at first, convinced that they were actually giving out gold).

"You see the numerals around the edge of the coins?" Lucy said, holding one up for examination at the end of our 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 Liana set the date of the next meeting they'll change the numbers on their coins, and because I've put a Protean Charm on them, they'll all change to mimic theirs."

A blank silence greeted Lucy's words. She and Hermione looked around at all the faces upturned to them, rather disconcerted.

"Well — we thought it was a good idea," Hermione 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 Rowan, impressed.

"Yes," said Hermione and Lucy.

"But that's... that's N.E.W.T. standard, that is," he said weakly.

Oh," said Hermione, trying to look modest. "Oh... well... yes, I suppose it is..." But I noticed Rowan wasn't looking at Hermione; he was staring at Lucy, looking very impressed. Lucy blushed.

"So does that mean we're using the Galleons?" I asked quickly.

There was a murmur of assent and everybody moved forward to collect one from the basket.

Harry looked sideways at Hermione and Lucy. "You know what these remind me of?"

"No, what's that?" Hermione asked.

"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 Hermione quietly. "That is where we got the idea... but you'll notice we decided to engrave the date on bits of metal
rather than on our members' skin..."