Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness

Chapter 12: Stricken

Their ranks had swelled to seventy-eight members by the third week in January. Neville was forced to divide the meetings, leaving the Lieutenants—Ginny, Ernie, and Terry, who had taken Luna's place for Ravenclaw—to deal with the majority of the training, while he took the most senior members for smaller meetings.

They had by necessity become more and more of a real army now. A chain of command spread from Lieutanants to their Seconds, and from there to Sergeants, each of whom was responsible their own year within their house. The officer's responsibilities also became more rigorous. From Neville on down, they began to drill themselves on the layout of the castle, memorizing trick steps and secret passages, closets and portraits, hidden doors and moving stairways until they could walk the halls blindfolded. Strengths and weaknesses, fears and grudges all had to be learned, and they began to pay attention in History of Magic for the first time in their academic careers, taking out library books and working by wandlight late into the night to study famous wizarding battles for tactics and strategies. Non-verbal spells were mandatory now, and Anthony Goldstein and Li Su began to give the officers lessons in Occlumency as well.

Two more full battle drills were conducted, the numbers each time coming a little more evenly than the first, and Neville announced that they would soon be forming the line-up for the actual battle in June. Students had a little less than six weeks to prepare for the tests that would be coming immediately after Easter break, and then they would be sorted by spellwork, physical fitness, and versitility into teams of ten. The most elite would be dueling Death Eaters in single combat, while others would be fighting in pairs, holding defensive positions, or acting in reserve. Neville took great care to make it clear that these divisions would make no discernment by age or rank, and that Dennis Creevey—who still, to everyone's growing concern, had not spoken—had the same chance of making the upper echelons as he himself did.

Then, only a few days before the end of the month, calamity struck. It was an enemy neither the D.A. nor the Death Eaters had forseen, and it swept through the school without regard for age, skill, or loyalty. Those who were from large Pureblood families or had gone to wizarding Primary schools were more likely to be spared, but almost all the Half-Bloods—as well as nearly everyone who had been homeschooled or a particularly isolated child—were struck down without mercy. The Hospital Wing was almost instantly filled with the most seriously afflicted, but everywhere people were sweating, gasping bursts of flame, writhing under the unbearable itching of hundreds of livid green pustules.

Dragon Pox.

Neville called an immediate stop to the D.A. meetings in a desperate attempt to slow the spread of the rampaging virus, but it was too late. Of the eight most senior officers, Seamus, Ernie, Parvati, and Michael were already stricken, and it was with a sickening sense of forboding that he woke up himself on the third day of the outbreak to find his bedsheets soaked with sweat and his head pounding, tiny green trails lacing his arms with the unmistakable announcement that he had not been spared.

He moaned, sinking back down into his sodden pillow as he felt nausea begin to clutch at his throat. For a few minutes, he tried to fight it, then he was forced to leap to his feet and make a mad dash for the bathroom, barely making it before he was violently sick into the sink, fire scorching the porcelain black as his stomach heaved. It wasn't fair. Shaking, he leaned his head against the cool glass of the mirror, refusing to give in to the overwhelming urge to tear at his itching skin. It just wasn't fair.

Footsteps sounded unsteadily behind him, and he saw Seamus' reflection approach in the mirror. His friend's face was puffy and distended in huge, lime-colored blisters, and his eyes were bloodshot, his lips reddened and burned as he smiled weakly. "Fearless Leader too, then?"