black and white ✰ g.w.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It only took Umbridge a day to come to Olivia with her decision to allow the Gryffindor Quidditch team to reform. This news had calmed Olivia's nerves, but she had found out through word of mouth that Umbridge had allowed the Slytherin team to reform immediately after Draco had asked her on Monday morning. She had apparently held her decision above the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw teams' heads as well, forcing them all to remain on their best behavior and do whatever she asked of them until she saw fit to give them her answer. This just made Olivia heavily dislike the woman even more.

"Just what this school needs is more biased teachers," she muttered angrily after being told this information.

It was decided that the defense group would continue despite the new educational decree. Olivia had already figured this much; the whole reason the defense group was needed was because of Umbridge, so her imposing a new rule would not change anything. It just meant that they all needed to be a bit more careful.

On Tuesday, Olivia and her friends were informed that a place for the defense group to practice had been found. That evening at eight o'clock, they would need to pace the seventh floor corridor three times, thinking of the defense group, and apparently, a door to the room would appear. This confused the six of them but since they had been around long enough to know not to immediately dismiss things that seemed too outrageous to be true, they accepted it.

At eight o'clock that night, they entered the room the meeting was taking place in to see that they were the last ones to arrive.

"Told you we should we have left earlier," Angelina muttered. "Now everyone's staring at us."

"Personally, I don't mind it," Fred responded, winking at the group.

"Of course you wouldn't. Sit down!" She grabbed his arm and yanked him down to take his seat on the cushion next to her.

Seeing that everyone had arrived, Harry stood up to begin the meeting. "Well. This is the place we've found for practices," he said, "and you've obviously - er - found it okay-"

"It's fantastic!" Cho Chang called out.

"It's bizarre," Fred said. "We once hid from Filch in here, remember, George? But it was just a broom cupboard back then..."

"I think this is the room I hid in a lot back in third year," Olivia said. "It looked nothing like this, though."

"So that's where you went!" Alicia said, remembering to the times back in their third year when Olivia was nowhere to be found. "We searched the castle for hours looking for you, you know."

"Well, you didn't miss much. All I really did was cry."

Alicia frowned. "Now I feel bad."

"You two," Angelina said, snapping her fingers in their faces, "pay attention."

"Well, I've been thinking about the sort of stuff we ought to do first and - er-" Harry was saying, "What, Hermione?"

"I think we ought to elect a leader," Hermione said.

"Harry's leader," Cho said.

"Yeah, obviously, Hermione," Arabella said, "that's kind of the whole point."

"Yes, but I think we ought to vote on it properly. It makes it formal and it gives him authority," Hermione explained. "So - everyone who thinks Harry ought to be our leader?"