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

agreement.
    Angelina, however, said quickly, ‘The Quidditch season’s about to start, we need team practices too!’
    ‘Let’s say next Wednesday night, then,’ said Harry, ‘we can decide on additional meetings then. Come on, we’d better get going.’
    He pulled out the Marauder’s Map again and checked it carefully for signs of teachers on the seventh floor. He let them all leave in threes and fours, watching their tiny dots anxiously to see that they returned safely to their dormitories: the Hufflepuffs to the basement corridor that also led to the kitchens; the Ravenclaws to a tower on the west side of the castle, and the Gryffindors along the corridor to the Fat Lady’s portrait.
    ‘That was really, really good, Harry,’ said Hermione, when finally it was just her, Harry and Ron who were left.
    ‘Yeah, it was!’ said Ron enthusiastically, as they slipped out of the door and watched it melt back into stone behind them. ‘Did you see me disarm Hermione, Harry?’
    ‘Only once,’ said Hermione, stung. ‘I got you loads more than you got me –’
    ‘I did not only get you once, I got you at least three times –’
    ‘Well, if you’re counting the one where you tripped over your own feet and knocked the wand out of my hand –’
    They argued all the way back to the common room, but Harry was not listening to them. He had one eye on the Marauder’s Map, but he was also thinking of Cho saying he made her nervous.

 
     
— CHAPTER NINETEEN —
     
The Lion and the Serpent
    Harry felt as though he were carrying some kind of talisman inside his chest over the following two weeks, a glowing secret that supported him through Umbridge’s classes and even made it possible for him to smile blandly as he looked into her horrible bulging eyes. He and the DA were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing she and the Ministry most feared, and whenever he was supposed to be reading Wilbert Slinkhard’s book during her lessons he dwelled instead on satisfying memories of their most recent meetings, remembering how Neville had successfully disarmed Hermione, how Colin Creevey had mastered the Impediment Jinx after three meetings’ hard effort, how Parvati Patil had produced such a good Reductor Curse that she had reduced the table carrying all the Sneakoscopes to dust.
    He was finding it almost impossible to fix a regular night of the week for the DA meetings, as they had to accommodate three separate teams’ Quidditch practices, which were often rearranged due to bad weather conditions; but Harry was not sorry about this; he had a feeling that it was probably better to keep the timing of their meetings unpredictable. If anyone was watching them, it would be hard to make out a pattern.
    Hermione soon devised a very clever method of communicating the time and date of the next meeting to all the members in case they needed to change it at short notice, because it would look suspicious if people from different Houses were seen crossing the Great Hall to talk to each other too often. She gave each of the members of the DA a fake Galleon (Ron became very excited when he first saw the basket and was convinced she was actually giving out gold).
    ‘You see the numerals around the edge of the coins?’ Hermione said, holding one up for examination at the end of their fourth meeting. The coin gleamed fat and yellow in the light from the torches. ‘On real Galleons that’s just a serial number referring to the goblin who cast the coin. On these fake coins, though, the numbers will change to reflect the time and date of the next meeting. The coins will grow hot when the date changes, so if you’re carrying them in a pocket you’ll be able to feel them. We take one each, and when Harry sets the date of the next meeting he’ll change the numbers on his coin, and because I’ve put a Protean Charm on them, they’ll all change to mimic his.’
    A blank silence greeted Hermione’s words. She looked around at all the faces upturned to her, rather disconcerted.
    ‘Well – I thought it was a good idea,’ she said uncertainly, ‘I mean, even if Umbridge asked us to turn out our pockets, there’s nothing fishy about carrying a Galleon, is there? But … well, if you don’t want to use them –’
    ‘You can do a Protean Charm?’ said Terry Boot.
    ‘Yes,’ said Hermione.
    ‘But that’s … that’s N.E.W.T. standard, that is,’ he said weakly.
    ‘Oh,’ said Hermione, trying to look