the girl with all of the choices

t h i r t y - n i n e

**TW: mentions of blood**

5640 words

march twenty-fourth- getting caught

We had been working with Harry for about two months now. There had been a couple of close calls with the Inquisitorial Squad, but nobody had confessed or been caught yet.

Speaking of the Inquisitorial Squad, Draco and I had talked. He explained more about his father, although it was hard to get words out of him. He kept talking about how his father was close with the Minister and if he did anything to upset Umbridge, it would ruin his father's reputation. It was sad. He obviously just wanted to make his father proud, but he didn't want to have to do Umbridge's dirty work.

Today for the DA, we were supposed to be doing an exercise with all of us, working together to defeat one of the dummies the Room had provided for us.

After duelling me a month ago, Harry asked me if I wanted to be his assistant in training, to help him give tips and tricks that I had learned from Tonks. He asked the same of Fred and George since they had been training under Professor Lupin over the summer. I was hesitant, but I only said yes because he said I was the most skilled one there. He explained how he had noticed that I was ahead of everyone for weeks, which convinced me to say yes. 

Harry and I had decided, with input from Fred and George, of course, that this would be the best course of action to try to evaluate where our skills were. The dummy would circulate around the group, landing on different people, at which that person would have to use a spell to defend themselves. It would then travel to a new person and the process would continue until the dummy was defeated or we couldn't keep up with it. We could practice thinking on our feet while also getting to be more comfortable with our stamina. It was perfect.

Everyone met in the Room of Requirements right on time, so we got started right away. Harry explained the rules to everyone, as it wasn't really my place. I was just more of an assistant, using my experiences with training with Tonks as an outline for what we might do.

We all stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, a dummy in the centre. 

"So," Harry explained, "it'll go after one person, and that person has to use a spell to move it on to another person, but the order in which people go is random. Let's give it a try." 

Harry had the dummy start, and it circulated a few times around until everyone had a chance to defend against it.

"Stupefy!" a Ravenclaw girl said. 

"Expelliarmus!" Neville shouted.

"Expelliarmus!" Fawn chanted.

"Expelliarmus!" Luna chided.

"Reducto!" Ginny cried, causing the dummy to crumble into a cloud of fine dust, littering the floor in a pile. 

Everyone looked at her, in awe of her talent, and unsure what to do next, considering the dummy was gone.

"Okay, well, brilliant," Harry mumbled. "Everyone partner up, I guess. Practice your stunning spells."

"Want to be my partner, Corbyn?" George teased.

"Do you even know me?" I joked back. "Listen, don't go easy on me. No special treatment. Got it?"

"Got it," he said with a smirk.

We started shooting spells at each other. George was good. He kept a fast pace, rebounding from defensive spells fast.  I felt as I had when I was duelling with Harry a month ago, the day we had learned how to produce Patronuses.