▬▬▬▬▬ CHAPTER ELEVEN ▬▬▬▬▬

IMPORTANT NEWS IN THE AUTHOR'S NOTE SO PLS READ IT AFTER YOU FINISH THE CHAPTER 😇

HARRY NEARLY JUMPED OUT OF his seat when the door to Umbridge's office was kicked open.

"I cannot believe you!" Esmerelda fumed as she stormed in. She was dressed in a skirt and a knitted sweater with a cartoon bear saying 'I LOVE YOU BEARY MUCH!' on the front—not exactly threatening, but the look on her face made him shrink in his seat.

Umbridge, however, did not feel the same fear. Instead, she angrily rose to her feet, her face red and flushed at the audacity of the Hufflepuff girl.

"Miss Black!" She barked. "How—how dare you—"

"—Shut up, Delores," Esmerelda snapped. "I'm not talking to you. You only speak when you're spoken to, got it?"

Much to Harry's astonishment, Umbridge closed her mouth and sat back down in her chair. He had no time to question what was going on because Esmerelda was now directing her glare onto him now.

"I thought I told you to inform me whenever you had a detention with her?" She questioned, hands on her hips. She kind of reminded him of Mrs. Weasley whenever she was scolding one of her sons.

Harry swallowed thickly. "Uh, well—"

"—And look at your hand!" She cried out. "I can't believe you put yourself through this again! You're lucky Hermione told me about this, ugh! Come on, she has murtlap essence ready for you."

He allowed himself to be tugged out of his seat, too shocked to even do anything else. Was this really happening right now? He knew Esmerelda had told him to tell her if he was ever in another detention with Umbridge, but he hadn't thought she would actually barge in and interrupt.

He glanced over at Umbridge, but oddly enough she was just sitting at her desk, looking pretty subdued.

"I-is this really okay?" He muttered to Esmerelda. "And what's wrong with her?"

Her face twisted up into a sneer that disturbingly reminded him of the uppity Purebloods whenever a muggle-born so much as breathed near them. She looked at Umbridge like how she looked at Peter: with pure disgust, as if the woman was below her.

"She'll be fine," she said with poorly hidden venom in her tone. "Right, Delores? You're just gonna sit here and eat your cat food."

Umbridge actually smiled at the command. "Yes," she said, and Harry couldn't help but shudder at the listlessness of her face. Even though she was smiling, something about it felt unnatural and empty.

Umbridge scooted back on her chair and bent over to retrieve something he couldn't see. What she pulled out made his eyes bug out wide. It was a bag of cat food. She opened it and started reaching in with her hand...

"W-w-wait, is she really—?!" His voice went up an octave.

Esmerelda began dragging him to the door. "Don't bother watching, Harry, she's disgusting."

But Harry was still gawking at the scene, his eyes growing even wider (if such a thing was possible) when she began to put a fist full of cat food into her mouth—

Esmerelda had already dragged him out of the room and shut the doors before he could witness the ending. He was grateful for it because that scene was like watching a car crash—horrifying, but hard to turn away from.

Esmerelda didn't let go of him until they reached the courtyard, where Hermoine and Ron were seated at a stone table. A bowl of murtlap essence was at the very center, and Harry eagerly dipped his scarred, bleeding hand into it.

"Thanks," he said gratefully to all three of them.

"Next time you get in trouble with her, just tell me, please?" Esmerelda asked, frowning at him as she twiddled with her ring.

"After what you just did back there? Definitely," Harry grinned. "But how... how did you even do that?"

"Do what?" Hermione asked curiously.

"I just messed with her a little bit," Esmerelda answered, but didn't go into any more detail other then that. "So what were you guys talking about when I was rescuing our damsel in distress?" She joked.

Harry grunted in annoyance and kicked her in the shin under the table. She snickered at the attempt.

"We were talking about Steve," Ron whispered carefully, looking around to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. There weren't that many people in the courtyard, and those that were there were talking pretty loudly. "He hasn't sent us anything yet, but he's probably going to want to talk to us again in the fire place like last time."

"So Essie would have to sneak in again," Harry realized. "Unless everyone's gone, but then there's the Fat Lady... I can always just use my Invisibility Cloak like before."

Esmerelda's shoulders sank at the mention of her uncle. "Um, actually guys, why don't you just rehash it to me instead? I don't really wanna risk getting caught..."

Harry eyed her critically. "You two are still fighting, aren't you?" He said knowingly.

"Sorta..." She mumbled. Her conversation with Ethan was still ringing in her ears.

It may sound whiny, but she really wished Sirius had sent her a letter of reassurance like everyone else had done. She wished he had comforted her and told her to stay strong, because at that time, she wasn't. And it wasn't just because of the Daily Prophet, it was because of, well... everything. The Daily Prophet was just the cause of the chain of events that nearly sent her in a downwards spiral until Ethan used his powers to make the tormenting stop.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione could tell that she wasn't in the mood to talk about it and changed the subject to something else. Esmerelda was grateful for it.

The next day, which was a Monday, Esmerelda woke up to see a huge crowd of concerned Hufflepuffs congregated around the common room—or more specifically, the bulletin board attached to the wall.

She rubbed her eyes and glanced over at Ernie in confusion. "What's going on? Are they not serving pies for dessert anymore?"

"Worse," he said grimly. "Look." He pointed at a large sign that practically took up the bulletin board.

Esmerelda looked, grateful that she was pretty tall compared to most of her peers. She wished she had her reading glasses though, because some dreadful person decided to type the entire thing out in that annoyingly complicated Old English font, ugh.

— BY ORDER OF —
The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts

All Student Organizations, Societies, Teams, Groups, and Clubs are henceforth disbanded.

An Organization, Society, Team, Group, or Club is hereby defined as a regular meeting of three or more students.

Permission to re-form may be sought from the High Inquisitor (Professor Umbridge).

No Student Organization, Society, Team, Group, or Club may exist without the knowledge and approval of the High Inquisitor.

Any student found to have formed, or to belong to, an Organization, Society, Team, Group, or Club that has not been approved by the High Inquisitor will be expelled.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-four.

Signed:

Delores Jane Umbridge

HIGH INQUISITOR

"Well," Esmerelda yawned. "That's not good."

I should've had her choke on that cat food, she mentally added.

"Someone must have told!" Ernie freaked out. "What do we do?!"

She shrugged, stifling another yawn. It was way too early in the morning to deal with this, especially on a freaking Monday.

"Dunno," she said. "Just let Hermione handle it. She's, like, smart and all that." She was honestly just relieved the house elves hadn't stopped serving pies for dessert. If that had happened then she definitely would've stepped in to do something.

Cedric was the next person to come running up to her.

"I didn't tell anyone, I swear," he whispered hastily.

"Okay," she said tiresomely.

He looked at her uncertainly. "...Really?"

"Dude," another sigh. "You literally poured your heart out that day. I don't think you would be sneaky enough to do that and then pull this." She motioned lazily over to the bulletin board.

"Oh. So... so I'm good?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "So, I'll see you later. Just wait 'till Hermione says something or whatever."

Unfortunately, she didn't see any of the trio until the end of the day, where Harry's mood had gone dark. He also seemed shaken up about something.

"Someone attacked Hedwig," he muttered when she asked what was wrong. "Her wing was bleeding—tried to intercept the letter."

"Is she okay?" Esmerelda asked. She knew how much Harry adored his owl.

He nodded, stiffly. "Professor Grubbly-Plank's taking care of her."

"And the letter?" She asked nervously. She had a feeling she knew who it was from. "What was on it?"

"It was from Steve," Ron muttered quietly. "But it didn't say anything that would alert anyone. All it said was 'same time, same place'. Nobody would know what that means, right?"

He was looking hopefully at Hermione.

However, said girl was biting her lip anxiously. "I wouldn't be too sure about that. Whoever intercepted the letter now knows that Harry's communicating with someone outside of Hogwarts through something other then letters."

"Well, be sure to tell Steve about this when you meet with him," Esmerelda said. "And you guys saw the educational decree?"

"No Quidditch," Harry said miserably.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Yes, because that's all that matters. I don't know who spilled, but it wasn't anyone from Hog's Head. I jinxed the parchment we all signed. If any of them were to run off to Umbridge, we'd know who it is."

"Then someone must have saw," Esmerelda sighed. "Unless it was Umbridge herself. Either way, I don't think whoever it was heard what we were talking about. A secret group meeting about learning defensive spells? That would be right up her alley for 'secret army'. She would've hunted us down one by one rather then posting up that stupid sign."

Hermione relaxed a bit. "Yeah, you're right. They must have just seen a big group of students and got suspicious. They must not have gotten close enough to hear what we were really talking about."

"We should probably put an Imperturbable Charm in the room for our next meeting," Esmerelda advised.

"Speaking of meetings," Harry added. "We'll be talking to Steve again tonight. Are you sure you don't want to come?"

"I'll be busy with other things," she said, and this time she meant it.

Harry gave her a weird look. "What are you going to be doing at midnight?"

"Things, Harry," she sighed dramatically. "You wouldn't understand."

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Harry really wouldn't have understood, because while they were talking to Sirius at the fireplace, she was in the Underworld using dead people as test subjects for her spellcrafting experiment.

(And don't worry, she was using the dead souls in the Fields of Punishment, so she wasn't breaking any rule of ethics here!)

"I don't understand what I'm doing wrong," she lamented to herself as the fifth spirit laid in a twitching, burnt heap on the ground before her. "Why is everyone spontaneously combusting all the time? This is so hard..."

One of the dead—Jeremy—had finished regenerating and was now gasping desperately for breath. He was the first person she had tested her spell on, and it had resulted in his eyeballs melting away. Oops.

"Jeremy!" She said brightly, bounding over to him eagerly. "Great, you're back! Hold still, lemme try out my spell again!"

"NO, GET AWAY FROM ME!" He shrieked, trying to crawl away, but she shot him down with Petrificus Totalus, a trusty spell she had been using to keep them from running away from her.

She placed her hands over his eyes and muttered, "Communis oculos."

She recoiled her hands back with a hiss when she felt a painful burning sensation.

Ugh, not again, she thought in disappointment when Jeremy began to burn. Thanks to the full-body bind curse, he was unable to move or even scream as his body burned away.

She turned back to her notebook and wrote down:

Attempt #31: Another failure. Jeremy burnt to death again :(

She looked around for her the next dummy to test and saw that Samantha, a child abuser, was staring right back at her with pure fear in her eyes.

"Sammy, I'll try you next!" She exclaimed cheerily.

"No, stop!" The woman shouted, but Esmerelda struck her with the full-body bind curse too.

As she walked over to her still form, she spotted another person—Raymond who was stuck in here for child molestation—had finished regenerating as well. She petrified him before saying reassuringly, "Don't worry, Raymond, your turn's coming soon!"

The terror in his face said that that was the last thing he wanted, but she didn't care at the moment. Turning her attention back to Samantha, she pressed her hands over her eyes and tried her spell again.

"Communis oculos," she murmured, before she jumped back. Her hands was stinging red, but at least she wasn't burning like Samantha was.

"I don't get it," she muttered to herself as she hastily wrote down in her notebook. "What am I doing wrong? Is it because I'm using the full-body bind curse on them? Is the presence of another spell interfering with it?"

While Samantha's flesh burnt off, she walked over to Raymond and snapped her fingers to undo the curse. He was moving in an instant, scrambling to his feet in order to try and run away. Esmerelda threw a knife at the back of his knee and he collapsed. Quickly, she held him down and forced him to face her.

She shoved her hands over his eyes, "Communis oculos!" She yelled out.

"ARRRRGHHHHH!" Raymond screamed in pain. Esmerelda recoiled her hand back once more, hissing as her hands were burnt as well.

"Ugh, shit...!" She cursed, getting off of him. She looked down at her palms with a grimace. There were blisters on them from the amount of times she had been burnt. She summoned her baggie of ambrosia from her bag and nibbled a little bit of it. She could feel a cool sensation over her palms and sighed in relief.

Another failure, she thought to herself as she grabbed her notebook.

Attempt #33: There was a possibility of a secondary spell (Full-body bind curse) getting in the way, so I removed it and tried again. Another failure, Raymond burned :(

As she was writing down more notes, a figure shimmered into existence in front of her. She tensed up.

"I can provide you my assistance if you wish," Hecate offered.

"No thanks," she responded tersely, not looking up from her notebook.

Hecate fell silent for a while before letting out an awkward, "I see..."

Esmerelda was basically just making aggressive scribbles on her notebook right now, doing anything she could to avoid having to face her. When a minute passed and her mother was still there, she finally looked up.

"What is it?" She asked, sighing. "Does Lord Hades have more work for me? I already killed that one guy he sent me after and I gave him a report about the souls waiting at the EZ Death line—"

"—I just noticed you were struggling," Hecate cut in.

"I'm not struggling," she lied. "I don't need your help mother, I'm doing just fine."

Hecate looked around at all the burnt bodies surrounding them and nodded slowly.

"...Right," she said in a careful tone. "Well... I'll take my leave then."

"Mmhmm," Esmerelda smiled tightly.

Hecate looked defeated for a brief second before she finally went away in a poof of green mist.

Esmerelda let out a long breath, but her shoulders were still stiff from the short visit.

"Well," she said quietly to herself, watching as one of the bodies slowly started to rise. "Back to work."

╞═════𖠁𐂃𖠁═════╡

"And then we just ran for it," Hermione finally finished explaining what had happened the night they talked to Sirius. Apparently, it had been interrupted by Umbridge's grubby little hand swiping through the fire as if trying to reach for them.

"I will never understand the floo network," was all Esmerelda could say.

"I don't think we're doing the right thing," Hermione whispered. "Staring this Defense Against the Dark Arts group."

"What!" Harry and Ron said together.

"Hermione, it was your idea in the first place!" Ron said indignantly.

"I know," she said, twisting her fingers together. "But after talking to Snuffles..."

"But he's all for it!" Harry pointed out.

"Yes," she said, unable to look either at him or Esmerelda in the eye. "Yes, that's what made me think maybe it wasn't a good idea after all..."

Well... that was understandable, in Esmerelda's opinion.

Harry, however, didn't share the sentiment.

"Let's get this straight," he said angrily. "Sirius agrees with us, so you don't think we should do it anymore?"

Hermione looked tense and rather miserable. Now staring at her own hands, she said, "Do you honestly trust his judgment?"

"Yes, I do!" Harry said at once. "He's always given us great advice!"

"You don't think he has become... sort of... reckless... since he's been cooped up in Grimmauld Place? You don't think he's... kind of... living through us?"

Esmerelda hadn't realized it until before the Battle of Manhattan, but Sirius truly was reckless. He didn't really think things through, was kind of childish, and even stubborn. He had wanted to stay and fight during the Battle of Manhattan despite not having the skill to, he had wanted to visit Harry even though Lucius had exposed his location in London, and many, many more instances.

She honestly wouldn't be surprised if recklessness was his fatal flaw—something he shared with Harry.

The second she found out how reckless he was, it had changed everything. It had made her paranoid, made her Charmspeak him into leaving the country which then resulted in him hating her... She almost wished she never found out about his fatal flaw.

"Well," she said, unable to hide her bitter tone. "You've got that right."

Harry was looking angrily at her now too. "What do you mean by that?"

"Hermione's right," she stated. "Sirius is reckless. Always has been, but being forced to stay in Grimmauld Place is making him go stir-crazy."

Hermione nodded in agreement. "Exactly. Think about it. I'm sure he'd love to be forming secret defense societies right under the nose of someone from the Ministry... I think he's really frustrated at how little he can do where he is... so I think he's keen to kind of... egg us on."

Ron looked utterly perplexed.

"Sirius is right," he said. "You do sound just like my mother."

Hermione bit her lip and did not answer.

The bell rang and that was when Esmerelda pushed herself off the wall she was leaning against.

"Look," she began. "I don't really care if you guys decide to continue with the DA thing, but Hermione's right, Harry. Sirius is reckless, dangerously so. Better you accept that now rather then learn of it the hard way."

The 'like I did' was left unsaid.

When the next week passed, Harry, obviously, hadn't listened to Hermione's advice to halt their secret DADA group, because Esmerelda was currently walking to the Room of Requirement where their classes were supposedly going to be held.

Esmerelda had never heard of the Room of Requirement, but she wished she did. According to Harry it transformed herself into whatever the Seeker wished. Did that mean if she thought about the White House, she'd appear in the Oval Office and would be able to see all the super cool top secret information about the United States? Or if she thought about Area 51, the room would actually turn into it and she'd see all the aliens they were hiding?

(Harry didn't know, so clearly she was the only one asking the important questions here)

The Room of Requirement was a massive, spacious room lit with flickering torches. The walls were lined with wooden bookcases, and instead of chairs there were large silk cushions on the floor. A set of shelves at the far end of the room carried a range of instruments such as Sneakoscopes, Secrecy Sensors, and a large, cracked Foe-Glass.

One by one, more students kept filing into the room, all wearing various degrees of awe as they entered. By the time it was eight, the cushions on the floor were all filled up.

"Well," Harry began, slightly nervous. "This is the place we've found for practices, and you've—er—obviously found it okay—"

"—It's fantastic!" Cho exclaimed, and several people murmured their agreement.

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

"Hey, Harry, what's this stuff?" Dean asked from the rear of the room, indicating the Sneakoscopes and the Foe-Glass.

"Dark Detectors," he answered, stepping between the cushions to reach them. "Basically they all show when Dark wizards or enemies are around, but you don't want to rely on them too much, they can be fooled..."

He trailed off thoughtfully, before turning his back to it.

"Well, I've been thinking about the sort of stuff we ought to do first and—er—" He noticed a raised hand. "What, Hermione?"

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

"Harry's leader," Cho at once, looking at Hermione as though she were mad.

Esmerelda's eyes darted over to Cedric, who was already looking between Harry and Cho expressionlessly.

Yikes, she thought.

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

Everybody put up their hands.

"Er—right, thanks," Harry said, his face burning. "And—what, Hermione?"

"I also think we ought to have a name," she said brightly, her hand still in the air. "It would promote a feeling of team spirit and unity, don't you think?"

"Can we be the Anti-Umbridge League?" Angelina said hopefully.

"Or the Ministry of Magic Are Morons Group?" Fred suggested.

"I was thinking," Hermione began, frowning at Fred. "More of a name that didn't tell everyone what we were up to, so we can refer to it safely outside meetings."

"The Defense Association?" Cho chimed. "The D.A. for short, so nobody knows what we're talking about?"

"Yeah, the D.A.'s good," Ginny nodded. She was in the middle of braiding the airy blonde Ravenclaw girl's hair. "Only let's make it stand for Dumbledore's Army because that's the Ministry's worst fear, isn't it?"

There was a good deal of appreciative murmuring and laughter at this.

"All in favor of the D.A.?" Hermione asked, kneeling up on her cushion to count. "That's a majority—motion passed!"

She pinned the piece of paper with all of their names on it on the wall and wrote DUMBLEDORE'S ARMY across the top in large letters.

"Right," Harry said when she had sat down again. "Shall we get practicing then? I was thinking, the first thing we should do is Expelliarmus, you know, the Disarming Charm. I know it's pretty basic but I've found it really useful—"

"—Oh please," Zacharias cut in, rolling his eyes and folding his arms. "I don't think Expelliarmus is exactly going to help us against You-Know-Who, do you?"

"I've used it against him," Harry said quietly. "It saved my life last June."

Zacharias opened his mouth stupidly. Then he closed his mouth and glanced over at Cedric, as if he needed a confirmation. The annoyed and tired look on the older boy's face pretty much answered his question.

The rest of the room was very quiet.

"But if you think it's beneath you, you can leave," Harry continued.

Zacharias did not move. Nor did anybody else.

"Okay," Harry said with a forced calmness. "I reckon we should all divide into pairs and practice."

Everybody got to their feet at once and divided up. In a matter of minutes the room was suddenly full of shouts of "Expelliarmus!"

Esmerelda didn't really need to practice for the lesson, and neither did Cedric (she had already trained him on how to do it nonverbally last year), so they just went around helping people.

And while she was doing that, she found herself mentally thanking Hermione for conjuring up this idea for a secret DADA group because... well, more then half of the kids sucked. There was a lot of shoddy spellwork going on. Many kids weren't succeeding in disarming their opponents at all, but merely causing them to jump backward a few paces or wince as the feeble spell whooshed over them.

She walked over to Ginny and her partner, the blonde haired Ravenclaw who commented on Fudge having his own secret army of heliopaths (which Esmerelda mistook as the electric/normal type Pokemon, Heliolisk). Ginny was handling herself well, but the blonde seemed to struggling on the spell.

"Do you need any help, uh...?" She asked the blonde.

"Luna Lovegood," she introduced herself in her usual light and airy voice.

"Luna," she finished. "I noticed you were having trouble getting the spell to work."

For some odd reason, Ginny was watching her with intense eyes while standing stiffly at the side. She looked like she really wanted to do something.

"Yes, I do would like some help..." Luna looked down at her wand. "I don't quite understand what I'm doing wrong, however. I'm doing the correct hand movement..."

"Some spells—usually defensive ones like these—require a certain feeling to be put behind the magic. It's just like with the Killing Curse, ordinary people can't really kill anyone with it without really wanting to. It's the same case for the disarming spell. You have to really want it. I noticed how soft you speak when you say the incantation, and that's not enough. You have to be a little more... harsher." She advised.

Desperation could do wonders, which was why she had put Cedric in such dire situations when she was training him.

"I have to really want it?" Luna echoed.

She nodded. "Yeah, and I got the proper motivation for you."

She turned over to Ginny, who was wearing a strained, awkward smile when they met eyes. She wondered what that was about.

"Ginny," she called out to the younger girl. "Shoot a spell at her. Any spell." Then she looked back at Luna, "Be ready to disarm her."

Once Esmerelda backed away Ginny shot her wand out and cried, "Tarantelleg—"

"—Expelliarmus!" Luna exclaimed in a much louder voice than usual. A red light shot out of her wand and struck Ginny, and Ginny's wand flew into the air.

"There you go," Esmerelda beamed, clapping her hands a little.

"That was great, Luna!" Ginny bounded over to them, her arm raised. Luna reached up to give her a high-five.

The redhead then looked over at Esmerelda in an almost cautious manner. It kind of reminded her of that time where she and Ethan went shopping at the mall and Ethan kept glaring at one of the boys who kept—

Ohhhhhhhhhh, Esmerelda's eyes widened in realization. Ginny was being protective over Luna. She liked her. That explained why she looked so uncomfortable when she came over to help Luna out, Ginny probably perceived her as a threat (but at least she was being kinder about it unlike Ethan...).

She tried to suppress a smile as she patted both girls on the shoulder.

"Well, I guess my job here is done! I'll just," she winked over at Ginny who gave her an incredulous look. "Leave you guys alone... You two have fun!"

She quickly walked away to find another group to help out in order to give them some privacy. In the corner of her eye she could see Harry talking to Cho with a small blush on his cheeks.

Love is in the air, she thought dreamily (sucked for Cedric though).

After about an hour, a whistle blew and everyone stopped practicing and turned to Harry.

"Well, that was pretty good," he said, "But we've overrun, we'd better leave it here. Same time, same place next week?"

"Sooner!" Dean said eagerly and many people nodded in agreement.

Angelina, however, added quickly, "The Quidditch season's about to start, we need team practices too!"

"Let's say next Wednesday night, then," Harry replied. "And 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.

"That was really, really good, Harry," Hermione complimented when finally it was just her, Harry, Ron, and Esmerelda left.

"I saw that you were talking to Cho!" Esmerelda grinned. "Did you ask her out or?"

He nearly dropped the map. "What? No, 'course not!"

Ron was equally as disappointed as her. "What?! Why not, mate?"

"I'm not going to ask her out when her ex-boyfriend's in the room," Harry exclaimed, flustered.

"Oh," Esmerelda blinked. "Good point."

Hermione rolled her eyes at them. "Oh for Merlin's sake, is Harry's love life all you're concerned about? Worry about your own."

"I don't have one," Ron said shamelessly.

"My love life's going just fine," Esmerelda said with a giggle. Ron faked a gag beside her.

"Don't tell you want me to ask Cho out just so you can have us double date with you and your boyfriend," Harry said flatly.

Esmerelda gasped, eyes bright. "That's actually not that bad of an idea...!" Of course, she'd have to make sure Harry got over the whole 'my boyfriend kidnapped me once when I was thirteen' part, but she was certain that she could smooth over that easily...! Maybe.

Harry snorted, and then the four of them filed out of the Room of Requirement to return to their dorms.

╞═════𖠁𐂃𖠁═════╡

For the beginning of October, Esmerelda spent her days trying to balance time for school, the secret DA meetings, work, and testing out her new spell.

Hermione managed to modify the Protean Charm in order to create this specialized coin that would alert members of the DA of upcoming dates and times for their next meeting. The next meeting would take place on a Friday, the same Friday where Ethan would be having another one of his tournaments.

She hadn't seen him in a while, just a couple times throughout the weekend, but they mostly communicated through Iris Messages thanks to school and work taking up so much of their time.

When the second week of October finally came, so did the heavily anticipated Slytherin vs Gryffindor quidditch match. More importantly, it would be Ron's first game.

Unfortunately, it wasn't going very well.

At the very start of the game, every student in the Slytherin stands began to sing:

Weasley cannot save a thing,

He cannot block a single ring,

That's why Slytherins all sing:

Weasley is our King.

Weasley was born in a bin,

He always lets the Quaffle in,

Weasley will make sure we win,

Weasley is our King.

It was the dumbest thing ever. Esmerelda couldn't believe they had wasted so much time just making that song for the sole reason of being a jackass. And they couldn't even bother to harmonize decently! The Apollo kids would be disgusted.

Even worse was Pansy's sad excuse of conducting the whole thing. She stood at the front of the Slytherin stands, waving her hands up and down in a poor attempt to conduct them. It was pitiful. Esmerelda wished Apollo would strike her down at the offensive imitation.

The song was, however, serving it's purpose of keeping Ron's spirits down. The poor kid was performing poorly and it didn't help that the Slytherin team were loudly singing the song to him as well.

"WEASLEY WAS BORN IN A BIN!"

"—and it's Warrington again," Lee had to bellow in order to be heard. "Who passes to Pucey, Pucey's off past Spinnet, come on now Angelina, you can take him—turns out you can't—but nice Bludger from Fred Weasley, I mean, George Weasley, oh who cares, one of them anyway, and Warrington drops the Quaffle and Katie Bell—er—drops it too—so that's Montague with the Quaffle, Slytherin Captain Montague takes the Quaffle, and he's off up the pitch, come on now Gryffindor, block him!"

"WEASLEY CANNOT SAVE A THING!"

"—and Pucey's dodged Alicia again, and he's heading straight for goal, stop it, Ron!" Lee's plea was followed by a bunch of groans from the Gryffindor area when Ron, once again, failed to stop Pucey.

It was okay though, since Harry managed to grab the snitch just as Crabbe whacked a Bludger to his back. It knocked him down on to the pitch, but he was low enough to avoid any broken bones. The game concluded with a Gryffindor win.

"That was the worst game ever," Esmerelda muttered, sending an irked look over at the Slytherins. "I never wanna hear those guys sing ever again."

She then had to bit back a groan she saw a familiar platinum blonde head strutting over to Harry and the Gryffindor team, flanked by his own cronies. She was way too far to hear what was going on, but she knew Draco was taunting them because Harry and one of the Weasley twins were ready to throw hands.

And, just like in usual Draco manner, he wasn't ready to catch those hands. The second Harry and George were on him, he was screeching and scrambling back in a panic, loud and shrill enough that probably everyone in the stands could hear him.

Esmerelda pinched the bridge of her nose in shame. She was related to that.

Harry and George were carted off by Madam Hooch, but Esmerelda watched as Draco stormed over to Umbridge, probably to tattle to her. Oh no... She thought with dread when Umbridge's blobby pink form followed after the pair.

At first, she thought that Umbridge had dished out more detentions for them, but it was a lot worse then that.

"You guys are banned from ever playing Quidditch? Ever?" She said, eyes wide. Harry, George, and Fred were miserable, Fred even more so because he hadn't even done anything (but wished he had).

"A lifelong ban," Harry said in a lifeless voice.

That was... awful, really. Maybe she could do something about it? She could easily have Umbridge take the punishment back, but it was almost time for everyone to retire to bed now. She didn't know where Umbridge room was. She'd have to do it tomorrow.

"Hagrid's back at least," Ron added in a forced cheery tone. "So at least there's one good thing happening today."

"You saw him?" George perked up, leaning a little closer to their table at the back of the library (it was weird to see any of the twins in the library, but they were so miserable that they didn't even care when Hermione dragged them in for a discussion).

"How is he?" Fred asked.

The trio looked at each other.

"He's... doing well," Hermione answered carefully.

"A little banged up from the journey," Harry added. "But other then that, he's fine."

They were clearly hiding something. The twins noticed it too, but kept quiet.

"But Umbridge came," Ron continued with a whisper.

"Oh no," Esmerelda groaned. Hagrid was half giant and that racist bitch hated anything that wasn't completely human. "What did she do this time?"

Harry's face was serious. "She knows that he had some sort of mission in the mountains. She specifically questioned him if that was where he was at."

"Seriously?" Esmerelda then let out a curse. "Oh fuck. Remember last year, Harry, at the hospital wing? Dumbledore told Fudge to send an envoy to the giants. He must have told her about that and she realized that was where Hagrid had gone."

"She's piecing things together," Hermione stated grimly. "We should tell Dumbledore—tell him that Umbridge knows or that—"

"—No," Harry denied, looking bitter. He was probably still upset about the whole 'ignoring his existence' thing. "I wouldn't bother. I doubt Dumbledore would listen. We already told Hagrid to be careful anyways."

"We should at least tell the Order," Fred insisted. "Warn them to act more carefully or something."

Harry's shoulders were still tense, but he let out a, "Fine." anyways.

Up on the wall next to them, the clock struck eleven o'clock.

Esmerelda glanced up at it. She was planning to head over to the Underworld soon to test out her spell again. Not much progress was going on, and she was already at attempt number 355. Her subjects were no longer being spontaneously lit aflame, but it had changed to the flesh around their eye decaying.

"We should probably head over to bed now," she said, rising to her feet. "It's been a busy day."

They murmured in agreement, the Quidditch players mumbling something about wanting to kill Umbridge. She was the first to leave the library, and she hid herself in an empty hallway before Mist traveling away.

Only, something went wrong. A cloud of green mist surrounded her and she felt herself dematerialize, but she suddenly felt like something was harshly pushing her back. And then, she was literally thrown back.

"Ugh!" She grunted, flying to the floor and sliding back several feet. A groan escaped her lips from the collision, like all her breath was knocked out of her.

"Essie!" She heard several cries. Harry, Hermione, Fred, and George were hovering over her with concern on their faces.

"Are you alright?" Hermione was saying. "What happened? We just saw you flying back like you were thrown or something!"

I'm still at Hogwarts? She thought deliriously, looking around. What the fuck?

"I, uh, I'm fine..." She muttered softly, allowing the twins to heave her back up on her feet.

"Did someone attack you?" Fred asked, checking around the corner or only to see an empty corridor.

"No, I was just, uh," she struggled to think of something believable. "Tried a spell. Failed." That was lame, but that was the best she could come up with at the moment.

"Why would you be practicing spells at this hour?" Ron looked at her like she was crazy, but she just shrugged.

Her mind was still stuck on what had just happened. Had she somehow messed up the Mist traveling? It had never reacted so violently before...

It was almost like something was keeping her from reaching her destination, the Underworld.

— author's note —

* Communis oculos = shared eyes. I suck at thinking of spell names so leave me alone 😅

YA'LL I'M WRITING CHAPTER TWENTY RIGHT NOW AND—

I THINK CHAPTER TWENTY IS IT, YOU GUYS!

AND BY 'IT' I MEAN THE ✨FORBIDDEN TANGO✨ YEP, THAT'S RIGHT. I THINK CHAPTER TWENTY IS WHERE THE FIRST FORBIDDEN TANGO WILL BE AT! 🥵 🥵 🥵

My library is literally full of 'how to write smut' books right now because I'm so hopeless at it. Will I go easy on myself and write something simple and vanilla?? HELL FUCKING NO! I'm gonna start off with a bang, go right to the explicit, smutty goodness because I know 99% of us here are all depraved human beings, this is a safe space for thirsty people after all 🥴

(Also, I know that if I write something explicit then my Wattpad readers are gonna go fucking crazy in the comments once the smut finally comes and I wanna entertain myself by reading it all 😂 😂 😂)

Now here are some memes to calm you down after that news:

Essie upon finding out Ginny's crushing on Luna:

Hmmmmm Essie can't reach the Underworld for some odd reason... I wonder why... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 🤔 🤔 🤔

You guys already probably know, but I gotta keep the mystery vibes anyways so bare with me 😂