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

22. The Sneak

The happiness I had felt in the aftermath of The Quibbler interview had long since evaporated. As a dull March blurred into a squally April, my life seemed to have become one long series of worries and problems again.

As the teachers and Hermione persisted in reminding Ron, Rowan, Harry and me, the O.W.L.s were drawing ever nearer. All the fifth years were suffering from stress to some degree, but Hannah Abbott became the first to receive a Calming Draught from Madam Pomfrey after she burst into tears during Herbology and sobbed that she was too stupid to take exams and wanted to leave school now.
If it had not been for the D.A. lessons, I thought I would have been extremely unhappy. I sometimes felt that I was living for the hours I spent in the Room of Requirement, working hard but thoroughly enjoying myself at the same time, swelling with pride as I looked around at my fellow D.A. members and saw how far they had come. Indeed, I sometimes wondered how Umbridge was going to react when all the members of the D.A. received "Outstanding" in their Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L.s.

We had finally started work on Patronuses, which everybody had been very keen to practice, though as Harry and I kept reminding them, producing a Patronus in the middle of a brightly lit classroom when they were not under threat was very different to producing it when confronted by something like a dementor.

"Oh, don't be such a killjoy," said Cho brightly, watching her silvery swan-shaped Patronus soar around the Room of Requirement during our last lesson before Easter. "They're so pretty!"

"They're not supposed to be pretty, they're supposed to protect you," said Harry patiently. "What we really need is a boggart or something; that's how Liana and I learned, we had to conjure a Patronus while the boggart was pretending to be a dementor —"

"But that would be really scary!" said Lavender, who was shooting puffs of silver vapor out of the end of her wand. "And I still — can't — do it!" she added angrily.

Neville was having trouble too. His face was screwed up in concentration, but only feeble wisps of silver smoke issued from his wand tip.

"You've got to think of something happy," I reminded him.

"I'm trying," said Neville miserably, who was trying so hard his round face was actually shining with sweat.

"Harry, Liana, I think I'm doing it!" yelled Seamus, who had been brought along to his first ever D.A. meeting by Dean. "Look — ah — it's gone... But it was definitely something hairy!"

Hermione's Patronus, a shining silver otter, was gamboling around her.

"They are sort of nice, aren't they?" she said, looking at it fondly.

I was walking around and stopped in front of Fred and George, who were both screwing up their faces to concentrate on their happy memories.

"Expecto Patronum," Fred said and a some silver smoke issued from his wand tip, but disappeared immediately again.

"You'll manage next time," I encouraged him and he smiled. I turned to George.

"Expecto Patronum," he said and suddenly, a big silver animal issued from his wand tip. Everyone turned their heads around, as they did with everyone's first real Patronus.

I looked closer at the silver animal and saw it was a wolf.

"You have the same Patronus as me!" I said enthusiastically and waved my wand; the silver wolf appeared and trotted toward George's wolf.

Suddenly, Lucy began to giggle.

"What?" I asked and everyone turned their head to her.