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lomonaaerenTitle: Of Defense Associations and Darkness Averted
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Background references to James/Lily, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU starting in third year, angst, brief violence
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry asks early on about the Patronus Charm, but Lupin refuses to teach it to him. So Harry sets out to learn it with the help of his friends, eventually drawing in others—and creating their own Defense group.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” short stories, for a prompt by Katie, which is essentially the summary. It should have three parts.
Of Defense Associations and Darkness Averted
“Professor Lupin?”
The professor turned around with a small smile. He still looked tired, but Harry was determined to ask his question, and pushed aside the guilt about asking a question like this when Lupin had been ill.
“Yes, Harry?”
“I—sir, I’ve been reading up on the Patronus Charm. You know, the one you cast on the train? And I want to learn it. I can’t stand the thought of being helpless if a Dementor sneaks up on me. It’ll be easier for me than most people because my boggart’s a Dementor, so we don’t need a real one. Please, can you teach me?”
Lupin stared at him with slightly widened eyes. Harry shifted from foot to foot, unsure. He wanted to learn, but maybe he shouldn’t have asked the question.
Lupin blinked, cleared his throat, and said, “Do you know how long it takes to learn the Patronus Charm, Harry?”
“No, sir.”
“Months. Years. There are Aurors who can’t do it.”
Harry breathed out a little and was glad that he hadn’t followed his initial plan of waiting for a few weeks or months to ask Lupin, if the Dementors started coming onto Hogwarts grounds again. “That means I should start now, right, sir? So I can be sure I master it?”
“It means that it would be irresponsible for me to teach it to you.”
“I don’t understand, sir. Is it just the amount of work? I can work really hard! I promise!”
Lupin shook his head. He had an odd expression on his face, as if he were speaking more to someone else than Harry. “No, it’s because you don’t need the Patronus Charm at your age. The Dementors are forbidden from coming onto the grounds, even to search for Sirius Black, and there will be people who can handle them if they do. You’re better off putting that effort into your classes and working on your homework.”
Harry stared at the professor. “Sir, they came onto the train! What would have happened to me if you weren’t there?”
“But I was.”
“But what if something happens where—”
“All you need to do is stay in the castle, and you won’t need to worry about that. And I believe that you don’t have permission to go to Hogsmeade village, do you? So you already have a good way to avoid them.”
“Sir, it could still happen. I don’t think the Dementors are really under the Ministry’s control, not if they were coming into train compartments the way they did. They could—”
“You’re a child, Harry,” Lupin said in a warm, kind, patronizing tone. “You don’t need to learn a highly complicated and risky piece of magic at your age.” Harry started to ask why it was risky, but Lupin put a hand on his shoulder and ushered him out the door. “It’s much better to think about your classes and spending time with your friends and playing in the sunshine.”
The classroom door shut, and left Harry out in the corridor.
Harry stood there, blinking, and felt something inside him crumple. Then he took a deep breath and started walking back to Gryffindor Tower.
*
“But why?”
“There will always be adults around to save us, apparently.”
“But that’s not even true!”
Hermione’s voice was getting a little shrill, and attracting attention from around the common room, so Harry leaned forwards and frowned at her. She sighed and went on in a quieter tone. “There weren’t professors around when we had to protect the Stone! Or when we met Fluffy the first time! Or when you and Ron had to go down into the Chamber of Secrets—”
“Lockhart, technically—”
“You know why he doesn’t count, Ron!”
Harry interrupted hastily before Ron and Hermione could start bickering. “I know, Hermione, but Lupin wasn’t here those years, and he probably thinks that we were poking around where we shouldn’t be. If he even knows about it. The way that no one wanted to talk to me in any detail about Sirius Black.” Harry took a deep breath. Having to find out from Malfoy that Sirius Black had betrayed his parents had been—something. “We’ll just have to do something about it ourselves.”
“But if the Patronus Charm is risky?”
“We don’t know that it is, exactly, or why. And at least we can do some research and figure out why it is, and if there’s something else we can do instead.”
Ron groaned a little as Hermione’s eyes lit up. “Now you’ve done it, mate.”
Harry smiled at Ron, but didn’t reply. To learn the Patronus Charm, he would spend as much time in the library with Hermione as he needed to.
And maybe learn other magic that’s useful?
Harry shrugged to himself. He would keep it at the Patronus Charm for now, and grow from there if necessary.
*
“It’s not risky, it’s just difficult.”
Harry nodded. That had been the conclusion he’d come to after reading the same books, or chapters of books, that Hermione had. The Patronus Charm was “risky” in the same way any complicated piece of magic was: it might not work, and it might cause you a lot of magical strain. But Hermione was incredibly smart, and Harry intended to practice so hard that the charm absolutely would work the next time he came face-to-face with a Dementor.
“We need a place to practice.”
Hermione blinked at Ron. They were sitting in a corner of the common room near the fire, chairs facing each other. “What do you mean? I thought we could just find an unused classroom the way some people do for brewing practice.”
Harry made a face at the thought of brewing Potions outside class, but he could see what Ron meant. “Lupin—”
“Professor Lupin, Harry.”
“Doesn’t want me practicing it,” Harry continued, ignoring Hermione’s correction. He wasn’t feeling that charitable to Lupin ever since the man had decided Harry was essentially a toddler. “We have to find some place that’s secret and where he can’t run across it by mistake. Or because he was looking for me,” Harry added, because it did seem that Lupin turned up more often than by chance when Harry was wandering down the corridors between dinner and curfew.
“I don’t know any place like that,” Ron muttered.
“Maybe the twins would?”
“Would you trust anything they told you, Hermione?”
“Point.”
“There should be somewhere,” Harry said, although without feeling very hopeful. There were always people looking for places to practice spells or brew Potions or have duels or play pranks or snog, and he thought the best ones would have been taken already. Unless he could ask someone who would know an overlooked place, and in that case, why would they share it with anyone?
Someone overlooked, too, would be best. But that was mostly the first-years, in Gryffindor, and they didn’t know the castle well enough to—
Harry sat up with a gasp.
“Harry, what is it?”
“You all right, mate?”
Harry nodded, making sure that his idea was firmly within his mind so he wouldn’t lose it, and then turned and smiled at them. “Why don’t we ask the house-elves?”
“House-elves?”
“They work for Hogwarts to put the meals on the tables and clean our clothes,” Ron said. “Things like that.” His eyes were big and surprised. “Do you think we could find them? I’ve just seen the food and the clean clothes. Never the actual elves.”
“Especially the food.”
“Oi!”
“What are house-elves?” Hermione interrupted. “You told me about Dobby last year, Harry, but never actually what he was.”
“Like brownies, in fairy tales?” Harry said. “You probably read about them?” He was relieved when Hermione nodded. “So I think the elves who serve Hogwarts get—I don’t know, some kind of magic in exchange?” He was a little embarrassed that he didn’t know. “They would know the secret places if anyone would. And they probably don’t need to use them themselves, because they’re busy doing other things.”
“Do they get paid? Do they get treated the way the Malfoys treated Dobby?”
Head her off, Ron mouthed urgently to Harry over the top of Hermione’s head.
Harry just shrugged. “I don’t know, but we can find out. If we can find out where they are in the first place and talk to them. Do you think the twins would tell us and we could actually trust them, Ron?”
“I don’t know, mate. Maybe if we included them in the Patronus practice.”
Harry thought about it, then shrugged. Fred and George would probably either want to learn or they would get bored and wander off. “All right. I’ll ask them.”
*
In the end, Fred and George agreed to show Harry, Ron, and Hermione where the kitchens were, in exchange for Harry teaching them the Patronus Charm if they were successful. They seemed puzzled at Hermione’s questions about whether house-elves were paid or not, which led to Hermione marching into the kitchens with a long scroll of parchment filled with things she wanted to ask the elves.
Harry found an elf to ask while Hermione was doing that, who said her name was Iris. She looked uneasy, her eyes flitting between Harry and Hermione, and Harry felt a little bad for bothering her, but this was important.
“Is there anywhere we can practice magic, Iris? Where other peo—humans don’t go and wouldn’t stumble across us?”
“Why can Master Harry Potter not practice magic in the classes?”
“I want to learn to defeat Dementors, but Professor Lupin said we didn’t have time to practice that in class.”
After talking with the twins, Harry had agreed this little lie would be the best one. The house-elves would probably want them to follow the rules if they heard that Lupin had already decided not to teach Harry, George had said. Better not to make it look as if they were doing something the teachers didn’t want them to do, Fred had agreed.
(Granted, it had taken the twins a lot longer than that to express what they meant, plus an explosion of colored smoke, but after experience with Dobby, Harry knew what they meant).
Iris’s face cleared. “Yes, Master Harry Potter. The Room of Requirement!”
“What’s that?”
“It is a special room on the seventh floor. There is a tapestry of trolls dancing, and you must walk back and forth in front of it three times while thinking…”
It sounded mental, frankly. But neither Harry nor Ron or Hermione had any better ideas, so they went up to the seventh floor near the middle of a Saturday afternoon when most other students would be outside or in their common rooms, and walked back and forth three times in front of the tapestry of trolls dancing.
Harry didn’t know for sure what his friends were thinking, but he was thinking A place we can practice Defense spells safely.
There was a shimmer like a pair of folding wings, and a stone door came into being. It had a polished knob made of something that looked like cut glass. Harry exchanged nervous glances with his friends, and opened it.
There was a huge room beyond, so big that it dwarfed Lupin’s classroom three times over. Mats and cushions littered the floor. Targets stood against the far wall opposite the door, and shelves crowded with books along the nearer ones. There was a shallow pool of water in a far corner that made the room seem to have five walls, and Harry imagined that they could freeze it to practice fighting on ice, or use it to clean off injuries.
“Wow,” Hermione breathed, staring around. “It’s a bit dim—”
A fireplace that Harry hadn’t noticed because it was surrounded by the bookshelves sprang into life. A grate around the sides of it shimmered with charms that were probably meant to keep the books safe.
“It’s incredible,” Ron said with finality, and stepped in.
Harry and Hermione followed him, and Harry firmly shut the door. Maybe someday he would want to share this with other people affected by the Dementors, but for now, this was their private room.
He grinned at Ron and Hermione, who were examining everything with wide eyes, and went to the shelves to find books on the Patronus Charm.
*
“Expecto Patronum!”
As usual, a Patronus failed to form in front of Harry. He scowled at the nothingness he’d got instead.
“You know it’s very hard, Harry,” Hermione said absently as she flicked through a textbook. It apparently had some history in it that wasn’t commonly taught in either Binns’s class or the books Hermione had read, even Hogwarts, A History. Harry had asked her to tell him if she found anything interesting, but so far, she was still flitting from book to book instead of settling down with one. “Even Professor Lupin said that.”
Harry nodded and took a step back. “Right, but I’ve got that Quidditch match coming up. What if the Dementors come onto the grounds?”
“They haven’t so far.”
“They came right into our train compartment, and one of them got close enough that I fainted. No rules kept them out then.”
“Well, I suppose they had orders to search the train for Sirius Black…”
“Still.”
Hermione gave him a concerned glance and nodded. “You’re right. It’s not as though we can be sure that they’ll stay away. And I did hear something when Ron and I were in Hogsmeade about how they’d entered a house that they weren’t supposed to be in, and then Black tried to break into the common room…”
Harry scowled at the mention of Hogsmeade and Black before pushing away his irritation. It wasn’t Hermione’s fault that she had good parents who were still alive. “Yeah. So I want to practice as much as I can.”
“What if you—”
The door to the Room abruptly swung open. Harry jumped and aimed his wand at it, even though Iris in the kitchens had said that no one could get into versions of the Room different people used unless they were invited. Other people could see the door, but would just bang on it without being able to get in.
So this had to be Ron, but he wasn’t alone. He was tugging Ginny behind him, and his face was so dark red with anger that Harry was surprised he wasn’t yelling.
“Ron?” Harry asked tentatively. “Hi, Ginny.”
Ginny flushed a little, the way she usually did around him, but her eyes were teary, and she seemed too distracted to be flustered.
“Some of the other second-years were teasing Ginny for what happened last year,” Ron said flatly, folding his arms. “Saying that they would never let themselves be used by the Heir of Slytherin to open the Chamber of Secrets.”
“Do they know the details? About the—diary, and everything?”
Ron shook his head, and then abruptly aimed his wand at the far wall and cast a hex that blasted the stone apart. Even though more stone immediately crawled over to repair the hole, it seemed to make him feel better. “No, but they know Ginny was manipulated somehow. And Ginny’s only real friend in her year is in another House.”
“Luna Lovegood,” Ginny whispered when Harry looked at her. “She’s in Ravenclaw. And she gets bullied so much, herself. I didn’t want to bother her with this.”
“That’s terrible,” Harry said, frowning. “Why does she get bullied?”
“Luna and her father believe in all kinds of imaginary creatures no one else does. I reckon the Ravenclaws are upset about that.” Ron’s face was slowly returning to its normal color again. “I brought Ginny along so that we can teach her some real magic to hit people with the next time they start teasing her.”
“But if you use hexes when they’ve been using words, you’ll get in trouble!” Hermione said.
Ginny looked up, and her eyes flashed with temper. “I don’t care. If I hit them hard enough, I might get detention, but they won’t do it again.”
Harry nodded slowly. He could remember thinking that way about Dudley, although he’d never got the chance to really hit back because he wasn’t strong enough.
“What about Lovegood?”
“What about her?” Ron asked.
“Shouldn’t we bring her along as well?”
Ron blinked a few times, then glanced at Ginny. Ginny immediately nodded. “Luna might not want to learn all sorts of offensive hexes because she’s—different. But we should offer the chance to let her learn to defend herself.”
“Don’t you think Professor Lupin should do that?” Hermione asked.
“All he’s having us do is really basic spells,” Ginny said with a frown. “The Disarming Charm is useful, but it’s not the kind of thing that will keep Luna safe. And the older students already know it. They’ve taken her wand from her a few times.”
Harry’s blood burned hot at that. He hadn’t noticed Luna Lovegood himself, and he didn’t know exactly how bad the bullying was, but he knew that no one deserved it. Bullies deserved to be hit with a few hexes, so they would stop.
“Let’s teach her.”
*
Ginny had been right. Luna was…different.
The first Defense practice session Ginny brought her to, Luna looked around, nodded, and announced, “This room was built by Heliopaths.”
“What are Heliopaths?”
“No one knows exactly,” Luna said happily.
Hermione looked as if she might explode in her eagerness to ask how Luna could know the room was built by Heliopaths in that case. Harry spoke up quickly. “Ginny said that you could use some extra Defense practice, Lovegood.”
“You have to call me Luna! It’s very important!”
Suddenly her eyes were wide and distressed. Harry just managed to keep from backing off and raising his hands defensively. “Uh, all right. That’s fine. You’re Luna. You can call me Harry.”
“Oh, I knew that.”
And now she seemed calm again. Harry looked at his friends. Ron was frowning. Hermione tilted her head as though she was going to say something, and then just shook it and stood there.
Harry shrugged. Luna didn’t have to act perfectly like everyone else they knew to deserve to learn defensive spells. “All right. We’ll start with the Disarming Charm. Do you have a wand holster?”
“No.”
There was a shimmer along the wall, and a wand holster appeared, lying on the floor. Harry blinked. It was made of what looked like leather, with stripes of pink and white on it that he thought were hardly standard. But they would probably appeal to Luna.
Luna scuttled over to pick it up, turning the holster back and forth as if to make sure that it had all of its straps. “There you are!” she said in a scolding tone, and slipped the holster onto her arm. “You need to stop running away from me.”
“Hey, can I get a wand holster?” Harry asked the Room.
“Harry, you can’t just order it—”
A blue wand holster made of what looked like shiny leather popped into being near the base of the wall where Luna’s had appeared. Harry grinned at Hermione and bent down to pick it up.
“Why not? It wants to provide.”
Hermione rolled her eyes, but since she and Ron also asked for their own wand holsters right after that, Harry thought she couldn’t disapprove too badly. And when they had holsters on their arms, with their wands within easy reach, it made Harry feel sort of sharper, like they were real duelers now.
“Okay,” he said, and turned to face Luna, holding up his wand. “Are you ready to focus on defensive Charms?”
“Yes, Harry.”
Harry shook his head as he started teaching her. Luna seemed so open and sweet that he couldn’t imagine someone bullying her. People were really gits sometimes, and it seemed that included Ravenclaws as well as Slytherins.
*
“Watch out!”
Harry instinctively jerked his wand up as the tank that Lupin kept the grindylow in shattered. Water flooded out, and the grindylow flailed on the floor for a moment. Then it jumped up, shrieking, and grabbed at the nearest student’s ankles. The nearest student just happened to be Neville.
Harry cast without thinking about it. After his drills in the Room with Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and sometimes the twins, it was second nature now.
“Flipendo!”
The charm grabbed the grindylow and hurled it across the classroom. It crashed into the far wall with what sounded like thin snapping sounds. Harry winced. He thought he’d broken its fingers. He hadn’t meant to.
“Harry.”
Lupin’s voice was faint. Harry turned and looked at him uneasily. Today was a book day, not a practical day, and he wondered if he would get in trouble for having his wand out in class.
Lupin, though, didn’t say anything about that. “Where did you learn that spell?”
“Charms class?” Harry asked. That was a weird question. He could see Lupin getting upset if Harry had cast a Dark spell or a dangerous one, but Flipendo was the kind of thing that most people learned in first year and everyone had mastered by second.
Lupin looked at him in silence, then shook his head and went to retrieve the grindylow. Harry sat down at his desk and put away the wand.
“Th-thanks, Harry.”
Harry smiled at Neville. “You’re welcome.”
“You were really fast.”
Harry looked over to make sure that Lupin was still busy with the grindylow, and then leaned towards Neville. “Ron and Hermione and I have been practicing some spells,” he whispered. “Along with other people.”
“Oh.”
Neville looked so wistful that Harry couldn’t help the thought that popped into his head. If Luna got bullied, so did Neville.
“You can come, if you want?”
Neville jumped as though Harry had punched him like Dudley used to punch Harry. Lupin coughed as he came back to stand in front of the classroom. “Terribly sorry about that. I’ll investigate the cause of the wards on the tank failing, have no fear. Mr. Longbottom, are you all right?”
“Y-yes, Professor.”
“Good,” Lupin said, and turned to the board, and went on with the lesson.
Harry bent his head over his book, pretending to be reading, but really watching Neville. He looked so frightened that Harry felt a little bad. Maybe Neville thought Harry was joking, or maybe he just really didn’t want to practice spells outside class.
But when they were leaving, it turned out Neville just didn’t want to say anything where Lupin could overhear. “You said I could come? You really m-mean it?”
“Of course!” Harry said, and stepped a little down the corridor so that no one would come out of Lupin’s class and overhear them. Ron and Hermione followed, looking curious. “But it’s kind of a secret place, so we wouldn’t want you to tell anyone.”
Neville’s face lit up with joy that confused Harry until he thought—how many people would ever have invited Neville to share a secret with him? No one at school that Harry knew about.
Harry hadn’t done it, either, until today.
He licked his lips and fought his feeling of guilt back. He would share spells with Neville and teach him how to protect himself, the same way he was doing with Luna. That would help make up for what he’d done. Or hadn’t done.
“Yes,” Neville said, and he wasn’t stuttering, now, as he smiled into Harry’s eyes. “That would be great.”
*
“Expecto Patronum!”
Harry cast the spell every day, although Ron and Hermione always made him pause and rest after a few tries. It was becoming mechanical, the way he used to talk to the Dursleys, but Harry kept on casting anyway.
And then—
A shimmering silvery flash exploded in front of him.
Ginny gasped from the corner of the Room. Ron whooped, and Hermione smiled at Harry as they watched the light waver back and forth for a moment. Harry tried to push more magic into it and make the shield into an animal.
It vanished, and Harry slumped over on the floor, panting.
“Th-that was fantastic, Harry,” Neville said, coming over to help him up and staring at Harry with a kind of awe that he felt embarrassed by. “Do you think we can all learn the Patronus?”
“If we keep practicing,” Harry said. “Professor Lupin said it was a pretty hard spell, though. And there are Aurors who don’t know it.”
“Aurors are often allergic to practice,” Luna observed as she came out from behind a couch the Room had created for them. She’d been using Freezing Charms on a small pool of water that was also there, and she smiled now at them as her fingers wove through her hair. “And dandelions.”
“We’ll do it,” Neville said. Harry had never seen him look so interested outside Herbology, or stand so tall. “We’ll keep practicing, and we’ll prove to them all that we can do it.”
Harry was pretty sure that Neville was thinking about the people who ignored him as well as the ones who bullied him, but it didn’t matter. He grinned and raised his wand. “Let me go one more time, and then it’ll be your lot’s turn.”
Harry did manage to conjure one more flash of silver, and then he stepped back and rested while Neville and Ginny went at it with determined faces. Neither of them got a light, but they didn’t seem upset about it.
Harry went to bed that night feeling more tired but also more satisfied than he had any time since he’d faced the Dementor on the train. It was important to get the Patronus right, but there was also something about teaching people that he really liked.
“Maybe I’ll be a professor someday,” he whispered into the darkness.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Background references to James/Lily, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU starting in third year, angst, brief violence
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry asks early on about the Patronus Charm, but Lupin refuses to teach it to him. So Harry sets out to learn it with the help of his friends, eventually drawing in others—and creating their own Defense group.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” short stories, for a prompt by Katie, which is essentially the summary. It should have three parts.
Of Defense Associations and Darkness Averted
“Professor Lupin?”
The professor turned around with a small smile. He still looked tired, but Harry was determined to ask his question, and pushed aside the guilt about asking a question like this when Lupin had been ill.
“Yes, Harry?”
“I—sir, I’ve been reading up on the Patronus Charm. You know, the one you cast on the train? And I want to learn it. I can’t stand the thought of being helpless if a Dementor sneaks up on me. It’ll be easier for me than most people because my boggart’s a Dementor, so we don’t need a real one. Please, can you teach me?”
Lupin stared at him with slightly widened eyes. Harry shifted from foot to foot, unsure. He wanted to learn, but maybe he shouldn’t have asked the question.
Lupin blinked, cleared his throat, and said, “Do you know how long it takes to learn the Patronus Charm, Harry?”
“No, sir.”
“Months. Years. There are Aurors who can’t do it.”
Harry breathed out a little and was glad that he hadn’t followed his initial plan of waiting for a few weeks or months to ask Lupin, if the Dementors started coming onto Hogwarts grounds again. “That means I should start now, right, sir? So I can be sure I master it?”
“It means that it would be irresponsible for me to teach it to you.”
“I don’t understand, sir. Is it just the amount of work? I can work really hard! I promise!”
Lupin shook his head. He had an odd expression on his face, as if he were speaking more to someone else than Harry. “No, it’s because you don’t need the Patronus Charm at your age. The Dementors are forbidden from coming onto the grounds, even to search for Sirius Black, and there will be people who can handle them if they do. You’re better off putting that effort into your classes and working on your homework.”
Harry stared at the professor. “Sir, they came onto the train! What would have happened to me if you weren’t there?”
“But I was.”
“But what if something happens where—”
“All you need to do is stay in the castle, and you won’t need to worry about that. And I believe that you don’t have permission to go to Hogsmeade village, do you? So you already have a good way to avoid them.”
“Sir, it could still happen. I don’t think the Dementors are really under the Ministry’s control, not if they were coming into train compartments the way they did. They could—”
“You’re a child, Harry,” Lupin said in a warm, kind, patronizing tone. “You don’t need to learn a highly complicated and risky piece of magic at your age.” Harry started to ask why it was risky, but Lupin put a hand on his shoulder and ushered him out the door. “It’s much better to think about your classes and spending time with your friends and playing in the sunshine.”
The classroom door shut, and left Harry out in the corridor.
Harry stood there, blinking, and felt something inside him crumple. Then he took a deep breath and started walking back to Gryffindor Tower.
*
“But why?”
“There will always be adults around to save us, apparently.”
“But that’s not even true!”
Hermione’s voice was getting a little shrill, and attracting attention from around the common room, so Harry leaned forwards and frowned at her. She sighed and went on in a quieter tone. “There weren’t professors around when we had to protect the Stone! Or when we met Fluffy the first time! Or when you and Ron had to go down into the Chamber of Secrets—”
“Lockhart, technically—”
“You know why he doesn’t count, Ron!”
Harry interrupted hastily before Ron and Hermione could start bickering. “I know, Hermione, but Lupin wasn’t here those years, and he probably thinks that we were poking around where we shouldn’t be. If he even knows about it. The way that no one wanted to talk to me in any detail about Sirius Black.” Harry took a deep breath. Having to find out from Malfoy that Sirius Black had betrayed his parents had been—something. “We’ll just have to do something about it ourselves.”
“But if the Patronus Charm is risky?”
“We don’t know that it is, exactly, or why. And at least we can do some research and figure out why it is, and if there’s something else we can do instead.”
Ron groaned a little as Hermione’s eyes lit up. “Now you’ve done it, mate.”
Harry smiled at Ron, but didn’t reply. To learn the Patronus Charm, he would spend as much time in the library with Hermione as he needed to.
And maybe learn other magic that’s useful?
Harry shrugged to himself. He would keep it at the Patronus Charm for now, and grow from there if necessary.
*
“It’s not risky, it’s just difficult.”
Harry nodded. That had been the conclusion he’d come to after reading the same books, or chapters of books, that Hermione had. The Patronus Charm was “risky” in the same way any complicated piece of magic was: it might not work, and it might cause you a lot of magical strain. But Hermione was incredibly smart, and Harry intended to practice so hard that the charm absolutely would work the next time he came face-to-face with a Dementor.
“We need a place to practice.”
Hermione blinked at Ron. They were sitting in a corner of the common room near the fire, chairs facing each other. “What do you mean? I thought we could just find an unused classroom the way some people do for brewing practice.”
Harry made a face at the thought of brewing Potions outside class, but he could see what Ron meant. “Lupin—”
“Professor Lupin, Harry.”
“Doesn’t want me practicing it,” Harry continued, ignoring Hermione’s correction. He wasn’t feeling that charitable to Lupin ever since the man had decided Harry was essentially a toddler. “We have to find some place that’s secret and where he can’t run across it by mistake. Or because he was looking for me,” Harry added, because it did seem that Lupin turned up more often than by chance when Harry was wandering down the corridors between dinner and curfew.
“I don’t know any place like that,” Ron muttered.
“Maybe the twins would?”
“Would you trust anything they told you, Hermione?”
“Point.”
“There should be somewhere,” Harry said, although without feeling very hopeful. There were always people looking for places to practice spells or brew Potions or have duels or play pranks or snog, and he thought the best ones would have been taken already. Unless he could ask someone who would know an overlooked place, and in that case, why would they share it with anyone?
Someone overlooked, too, would be best. But that was mostly the first-years, in Gryffindor, and they didn’t know the castle well enough to—
Harry sat up with a gasp.
“Harry, what is it?”
“You all right, mate?”
Harry nodded, making sure that his idea was firmly within his mind so he wouldn’t lose it, and then turned and smiled at them. “Why don’t we ask the house-elves?”
“House-elves?”
“They work for Hogwarts to put the meals on the tables and clean our clothes,” Ron said. “Things like that.” His eyes were big and surprised. “Do you think we could find them? I’ve just seen the food and the clean clothes. Never the actual elves.”
“Especially the food.”
“Oi!”
“What are house-elves?” Hermione interrupted. “You told me about Dobby last year, Harry, but never actually what he was.”
“Like brownies, in fairy tales?” Harry said. “You probably read about them?” He was relieved when Hermione nodded. “So I think the elves who serve Hogwarts get—I don’t know, some kind of magic in exchange?” He was a little embarrassed that he didn’t know. “They would know the secret places if anyone would. And they probably don’t need to use them themselves, because they’re busy doing other things.”
“Do they get paid? Do they get treated the way the Malfoys treated Dobby?”
Head her off, Ron mouthed urgently to Harry over the top of Hermione’s head.
Harry just shrugged. “I don’t know, but we can find out. If we can find out where they are in the first place and talk to them. Do you think the twins would tell us and we could actually trust them, Ron?”
“I don’t know, mate. Maybe if we included them in the Patronus practice.”
Harry thought about it, then shrugged. Fred and George would probably either want to learn or they would get bored and wander off. “All right. I’ll ask them.”
*
In the end, Fred and George agreed to show Harry, Ron, and Hermione where the kitchens were, in exchange for Harry teaching them the Patronus Charm if they were successful. They seemed puzzled at Hermione’s questions about whether house-elves were paid or not, which led to Hermione marching into the kitchens with a long scroll of parchment filled with things she wanted to ask the elves.
Harry found an elf to ask while Hermione was doing that, who said her name was Iris. She looked uneasy, her eyes flitting between Harry and Hermione, and Harry felt a little bad for bothering her, but this was important.
“Is there anywhere we can practice magic, Iris? Where other peo—humans don’t go and wouldn’t stumble across us?”
“Why can Master Harry Potter not practice magic in the classes?”
“I want to learn to defeat Dementors, but Professor Lupin said we didn’t have time to practice that in class.”
After talking with the twins, Harry had agreed this little lie would be the best one. The house-elves would probably want them to follow the rules if they heard that Lupin had already decided not to teach Harry, George had said. Better not to make it look as if they were doing something the teachers didn’t want them to do, Fred had agreed.
(Granted, it had taken the twins a lot longer than that to express what they meant, plus an explosion of colored smoke, but after experience with Dobby, Harry knew what they meant).
Iris’s face cleared. “Yes, Master Harry Potter. The Room of Requirement!”
“What’s that?”
“It is a special room on the seventh floor. There is a tapestry of trolls dancing, and you must walk back and forth in front of it three times while thinking…”
It sounded mental, frankly. But neither Harry nor Ron or Hermione had any better ideas, so they went up to the seventh floor near the middle of a Saturday afternoon when most other students would be outside or in their common rooms, and walked back and forth three times in front of the tapestry of trolls dancing.
Harry didn’t know for sure what his friends were thinking, but he was thinking A place we can practice Defense spells safely.
There was a shimmer like a pair of folding wings, and a stone door came into being. It had a polished knob made of something that looked like cut glass. Harry exchanged nervous glances with his friends, and opened it.
There was a huge room beyond, so big that it dwarfed Lupin’s classroom three times over. Mats and cushions littered the floor. Targets stood against the far wall opposite the door, and shelves crowded with books along the nearer ones. There was a shallow pool of water in a far corner that made the room seem to have five walls, and Harry imagined that they could freeze it to practice fighting on ice, or use it to clean off injuries.
“Wow,” Hermione breathed, staring around. “It’s a bit dim—”
A fireplace that Harry hadn’t noticed because it was surrounded by the bookshelves sprang into life. A grate around the sides of it shimmered with charms that were probably meant to keep the books safe.
“It’s incredible,” Ron said with finality, and stepped in.
Harry and Hermione followed him, and Harry firmly shut the door. Maybe someday he would want to share this with other people affected by the Dementors, but for now, this was their private room.
He grinned at Ron and Hermione, who were examining everything with wide eyes, and went to the shelves to find books on the Patronus Charm.
*
“Expecto Patronum!”
As usual, a Patronus failed to form in front of Harry. He scowled at the nothingness he’d got instead.
“You know it’s very hard, Harry,” Hermione said absently as she flicked through a textbook. It apparently had some history in it that wasn’t commonly taught in either Binns’s class or the books Hermione had read, even Hogwarts, A History. Harry had asked her to tell him if she found anything interesting, but so far, she was still flitting from book to book instead of settling down with one. “Even Professor Lupin said that.”
Harry nodded and took a step back. “Right, but I’ve got that Quidditch match coming up. What if the Dementors come onto the grounds?”
“They haven’t so far.”
“They came right into our train compartment, and one of them got close enough that I fainted. No rules kept them out then.”
“Well, I suppose they had orders to search the train for Sirius Black…”
“Still.”
Hermione gave him a concerned glance and nodded. “You’re right. It’s not as though we can be sure that they’ll stay away. And I did hear something when Ron and I were in Hogsmeade about how they’d entered a house that they weren’t supposed to be in, and then Black tried to break into the common room…”
Harry scowled at the mention of Hogsmeade and Black before pushing away his irritation. It wasn’t Hermione’s fault that she had good parents who were still alive. “Yeah. So I want to practice as much as I can.”
“What if you—”
The door to the Room abruptly swung open. Harry jumped and aimed his wand at it, even though Iris in the kitchens had said that no one could get into versions of the Room different people used unless they were invited. Other people could see the door, but would just bang on it without being able to get in.
So this had to be Ron, but he wasn’t alone. He was tugging Ginny behind him, and his face was so dark red with anger that Harry was surprised he wasn’t yelling.
“Ron?” Harry asked tentatively. “Hi, Ginny.”
Ginny flushed a little, the way she usually did around him, but her eyes were teary, and she seemed too distracted to be flustered.
“Some of the other second-years were teasing Ginny for what happened last year,” Ron said flatly, folding his arms. “Saying that they would never let themselves be used by the Heir of Slytherin to open the Chamber of Secrets.”
“Do they know the details? About the—diary, and everything?”
Ron shook his head, and then abruptly aimed his wand at the far wall and cast a hex that blasted the stone apart. Even though more stone immediately crawled over to repair the hole, it seemed to make him feel better. “No, but they know Ginny was manipulated somehow. And Ginny’s only real friend in her year is in another House.”
“Luna Lovegood,” Ginny whispered when Harry looked at her. “She’s in Ravenclaw. And she gets bullied so much, herself. I didn’t want to bother her with this.”
“That’s terrible,” Harry said, frowning. “Why does she get bullied?”
“Luna and her father believe in all kinds of imaginary creatures no one else does. I reckon the Ravenclaws are upset about that.” Ron’s face was slowly returning to its normal color again. “I brought Ginny along so that we can teach her some real magic to hit people with the next time they start teasing her.”
“But if you use hexes when they’ve been using words, you’ll get in trouble!” Hermione said.
Ginny looked up, and her eyes flashed with temper. “I don’t care. If I hit them hard enough, I might get detention, but they won’t do it again.”
Harry nodded slowly. He could remember thinking that way about Dudley, although he’d never got the chance to really hit back because he wasn’t strong enough.
“What about Lovegood?”
“What about her?” Ron asked.
“Shouldn’t we bring her along as well?”
Ron blinked a few times, then glanced at Ginny. Ginny immediately nodded. “Luna might not want to learn all sorts of offensive hexes because she’s—different. But we should offer the chance to let her learn to defend herself.”
“Don’t you think Professor Lupin should do that?” Hermione asked.
“All he’s having us do is really basic spells,” Ginny said with a frown. “The Disarming Charm is useful, but it’s not the kind of thing that will keep Luna safe. And the older students already know it. They’ve taken her wand from her a few times.”
Harry’s blood burned hot at that. He hadn’t noticed Luna Lovegood himself, and he didn’t know exactly how bad the bullying was, but he knew that no one deserved it. Bullies deserved to be hit with a few hexes, so they would stop.
“Let’s teach her.”
*
Ginny had been right. Luna was…different.
The first Defense practice session Ginny brought her to, Luna looked around, nodded, and announced, “This room was built by Heliopaths.”
“What are Heliopaths?”
“No one knows exactly,” Luna said happily.
Hermione looked as if she might explode in her eagerness to ask how Luna could know the room was built by Heliopaths in that case. Harry spoke up quickly. “Ginny said that you could use some extra Defense practice, Lovegood.”
“You have to call me Luna! It’s very important!”
Suddenly her eyes were wide and distressed. Harry just managed to keep from backing off and raising his hands defensively. “Uh, all right. That’s fine. You’re Luna. You can call me Harry.”
“Oh, I knew that.”
And now she seemed calm again. Harry looked at his friends. Ron was frowning. Hermione tilted her head as though she was going to say something, and then just shook it and stood there.
Harry shrugged. Luna didn’t have to act perfectly like everyone else they knew to deserve to learn defensive spells. “All right. We’ll start with the Disarming Charm. Do you have a wand holster?”
“No.”
There was a shimmer along the wall, and a wand holster appeared, lying on the floor. Harry blinked. It was made of what looked like leather, with stripes of pink and white on it that he thought were hardly standard. But they would probably appeal to Luna.
Luna scuttled over to pick it up, turning the holster back and forth as if to make sure that it had all of its straps. “There you are!” she said in a scolding tone, and slipped the holster onto her arm. “You need to stop running away from me.”
“Hey, can I get a wand holster?” Harry asked the Room.
“Harry, you can’t just order it—”
A blue wand holster made of what looked like shiny leather popped into being near the base of the wall where Luna’s had appeared. Harry grinned at Hermione and bent down to pick it up.
“Why not? It wants to provide.”
Hermione rolled her eyes, but since she and Ron also asked for their own wand holsters right after that, Harry thought she couldn’t disapprove too badly. And when they had holsters on their arms, with their wands within easy reach, it made Harry feel sort of sharper, like they were real duelers now.
“Okay,” he said, and turned to face Luna, holding up his wand. “Are you ready to focus on defensive Charms?”
“Yes, Harry.”
Harry shook his head as he started teaching her. Luna seemed so open and sweet that he couldn’t imagine someone bullying her. People were really gits sometimes, and it seemed that included Ravenclaws as well as Slytherins.
*
“Watch out!”
Harry instinctively jerked his wand up as the tank that Lupin kept the grindylow in shattered. Water flooded out, and the grindylow flailed on the floor for a moment. Then it jumped up, shrieking, and grabbed at the nearest student’s ankles. The nearest student just happened to be Neville.
Harry cast without thinking about it. After his drills in the Room with Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and sometimes the twins, it was second nature now.
“Flipendo!”
The charm grabbed the grindylow and hurled it across the classroom. It crashed into the far wall with what sounded like thin snapping sounds. Harry winced. He thought he’d broken its fingers. He hadn’t meant to.
“Harry.”
Lupin’s voice was faint. Harry turned and looked at him uneasily. Today was a book day, not a practical day, and he wondered if he would get in trouble for having his wand out in class.
Lupin, though, didn’t say anything about that. “Where did you learn that spell?”
“Charms class?” Harry asked. That was a weird question. He could see Lupin getting upset if Harry had cast a Dark spell or a dangerous one, but Flipendo was the kind of thing that most people learned in first year and everyone had mastered by second.
Lupin looked at him in silence, then shook his head and went to retrieve the grindylow. Harry sat down at his desk and put away the wand.
“Th-thanks, Harry.”
Harry smiled at Neville. “You’re welcome.”
“You were really fast.”
Harry looked over to make sure that Lupin was still busy with the grindylow, and then leaned towards Neville. “Ron and Hermione and I have been practicing some spells,” he whispered. “Along with other people.”
“Oh.”
Neville looked so wistful that Harry couldn’t help the thought that popped into his head. If Luna got bullied, so did Neville.
“You can come, if you want?”
Neville jumped as though Harry had punched him like Dudley used to punch Harry. Lupin coughed as he came back to stand in front of the classroom. “Terribly sorry about that. I’ll investigate the cause of the wards on the tank failing, have no fear. Mr. Longbottom, are you all right?”
“Y-yes, Professor.”
“Good,” Lupin said, and turned to the board, and went on with the lesson.
Harry bent his head over his book, pretending to be reading, but really watching Neville. He looked so frightened that Harry felt a little bad. Maybe Neville thought Harry was joking, or maybe he just really didn’t want to practice spells outside class.
But when they were leaving, it turned out Neville just didn’t want to say anything where Lupin could overhear. “You said I could come? You really m-mean it?”
“Of course!” Harry said, and stepped a little down the corridor so that no one would come out of Lupin’s class and overhear them. Ron and Hermione followed, looking curious. “But it’s kind of a secret place, so we wouldn’t want you to tell anyone.”
Neville’s face lit up with joy that confused Harry until he thought—how many people would ever have invited Neville to share a secret with him? No one at school that Harry knew about.
Harry hadn’t done it, either, until today.
He licked his lips and fought his feeling of guilt back. He would share spells with Neville and teach him how to protect himself, the same way he was doing with Luna. That would help make up for what he’d done. Or hadn’t done.
“Yes,” Neville said, and he wasn’t stuttering, now, as he smiled into Harry’s eyes. “That would be great.”
*
“Expecto Patronum!”
Harry cast the spell every day, although Ron and Hermione always made him pause and rest after a few tries. It was becoming mechanical, the way he used to talk to the Dursleys, but Harry kept on casting anyway.
And then—
A shimmering silvery flash exploded in front of him.
Ginny gasped from the corner of the Room. Ron whooped, and Hermione smiled at Harry as they watched the light waver back and forth for a moment. Harry tried to push more magic into it and make the shield into an animal.
It vanished, and Harry slumped over on the floor, panting.
“Th-that was fantastic, Harry,” Neville said, coming over to help him up and staring at Harry with a kind of awe that he felt embarrassed by. “Do you think we can all learn the Patronus?”
“If we keep practicing,” Harry said. “Professor Lupin said it was a pretty hard spell, though. And there are Aurors who don’t know it.”
“Aurors are often allergic to practice,” Luna observed as she came out from behind a couch the Room had created for them. She’d been using Freezing Charms on a small pool of water that was also there, and she smiled now at them as her fingers wove through her hair. “And dandelions.”
“We’ll do it,” Neville said. Harry had never seen him look so interested outside Herbology, or stand so tall. “We’ll keep practicing, and we’ll prove to them all that we can do it.”
Harry was pretty sure that Neville was thinking about the people who ignored him as well as the ones who bullied him, but it didn’t matter. He grinned and raised his wand. “Let me go one more time, and then it’ll be your lot’s turn.”
Harry did manage to conjure one more flash of silver, and then he stepped back and rested while Neville and Ginny went at it with determined faces. Neither of them got a light, but they didn’t seem upset about it.
Harry went to bed that night feeling more tired but also more satisfied than he had any time since he’d faced the Dementor on the train. It was important to get the Patronus right, but there was also something about teaching people that he really liked.
“Maybe I’ll be a professor someday,” he whispered into the darkness.
