Harry Potter 05 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

turns to practise with Ron and Hermione for a couple of minutes so I can walk around and see how the rest are doing?’
    Harry moved off into the middle of the room. Something very odd was happening to Zacharias Smith. Every time he opened his mouth to disarm Anthony Goldstein, his own wand would fly out of his hand, yet Anthony did not seem to be making a sound. Harry did not have to look far to solve the mystery: Fred and George were several feet from Smith and taking it in turns to point their wands at his back.
    ‘Sorry, Harry,’ said George hastily, when Harry caught his eye. ‘Couldn’t resist.’
    Harry walked around the other pairs, trying to correct those who were doing the spell wrong. Ginny was teamed with Michael Corner; she was doing very well, whereas Michael was either very bad or unwilling to jinx her. Ernie Macmillan was flourishing his wand unnecessarily, giving his partner time to get in under his guard; the Creevey brothers were enthusiastic but erratic and mainly responsible for all the books leaping off the shelves around them; Luna Lovegood was similarly patchy, occasionally sending Justin Finch-Fletchley’s wand spinning out of his hand, at other times merely causing his hair to stand on end.
    ‘OK, stop!’ Harry shouted. ‘Stop! STOP!’
    I need a whistle , he thought, and immediately spotted one lying on top of the nearest row of books. He caught it up and blew hard. Everyone lowered their wands.
    ‘That wasn’t bad,’ said Harry, ‘but there’s definite room for improvement.’ Zacharias Smith glared at him. ‘Let’s try again.’
    He moved off around the room again, stopping here and there to make suggestions. Slowly, the general performance improved. He avoided going near Cho and her friend for a while, but after walking twice around every other pair in the room felt he could not ignore them any longer.
    ‘Oh no,’ said Cho rather wildly as he approached. ‘ Expelliarmious! I mean, Expellimellius ! I – oh, sorry, Marietta!’
    Her curly-haired friend’s sleeve had caught fire; Marietta extinguished it with her own wand and glared at Harry as though it was his fault.
    ‘You made me nervous, I was doing all right before then!’ Cho told Harry ruefully.
    ‘That was quite good,’ Harry lied, but when she raised her eyebrows he said, ‘Well, no, it was lousy, but I know you can do it properly, I was watching from over there.’
    She laughed. Her friend Marietta looked at them rather sourly and turned away.
    ‘Don’t mind her,’ Cho muttered. ‘She doesn’t really want to be here but I made her come with me. Her parents have forbidden her to do anything that might upset Umbridge. You see – her mum works for the Ministry.’
    ‘What about your parents?’ asked Harry.
    ‘Well, they’ve forbidden me to get on the wrong side of Umbridge, too,’ said Cho, drawing herself up proudly. ‘But if they think I’m not going to fight You-Know-Who after what happened to Cedric –’
    She broke off, looking rather confused, and an awkward silence fell between them; Terry Boot’s wand went whizzing past Harry’s ear and hit Alicia Spinnet hard on the nose.
    ‘Well, my dad is very supportive of any anti-Ministry action!’ said Luna Lovegood proudly from just behind Harry; evidently she had been eavesdropping on his conversation while Justin Finch-Fletchley attempted to disentangle himself from the robes that had flown up over his head. ‘He’s always saying he’d believe anything of Fudge; I mean, the number of goblins Fudge has had assassinated! And of course he uses the Department of Mysteries to develop terrible poisons, which he secretly feeds to anybody who disagrees with him. And then there’s his Umgubular Slashkilter –’
    ‘Don’t ask,’ Harry muttered to Cho as she opened her mouth, looking puzzled. She giggled.
    ‘Hey, Harry,’ Hermione called from the other end of the room, ‘have you checked the time?’
    He looked down at his watch and was shocked to see it was already ten past nine, which meant they needed to get back to their common rooms immediately or risk being caught and punished by Filch for being out of bounds. He blew his whistle; everybody stopped shouting ‘ Expelliarmus ’ and the last couple of wands clattered to the floor.
    ‘Well, that was pretty good,’ said Harry, ‘but we’ve overrun, we’d better leave it here. Same time, same place next week?’
    ‘Sooner!’ said Dean Thomas eagerly and many people nodded in