Cassia. Poppy. Neville. Ginny. Luna.

Seamus. Parvati. Padma. Cho. Lavender.

All of them and more stood in the Room of Requirement, gathered in a tense atmosphere.

After last year, Cassia didn't think she'd ever be back into the Room of Requirement when it wasn't a room full of junk. But here she was, standing in the version of the room Harry used to hold the DA in.

It was the same. The mirrored walls, the grated floor, everything. Cassia was in awe. She couldn't believe it.

At seven on the dot, Poppy silenced everyone, and gestured to her to take the floor. Cassia sighed, walking to the front of the group and biting her lip, taking them all in.

"Hey," she said, projecting her voice and finding some courage. "Listen, I won't be as good as Potter at this, but at least I know yoy all like me better than him."

There was a round of laughter, then she became serious. "Okay, I don't know how much you've heard about why we're here, so I'm going to tell you. Yesterday, Amycus Carrow performed the cruciatus curse on me twice in front of my class. I fucking hate him, and I have a feeling everyone in here does, too."

There was a murmuring of agreement, and Cassia smirked. "So obviously, we're not taking this lying down," she said, pressing her hands together. "From this day on, the DA is being reinstated, to fight the Carrows and Snape, the spineless git he is."

There was a loud cheer, which Cassia smiled to Poppy at. Her best friend grinned back, her eyes lighting up for the first time in a week.

"So what are we going to do?" Hannah Abbott asked.

"Well, we're still working on that one," Cassia said honestly. "But Poppy and Neville had some ideas."

The crowd turned to those two, who both looked rather surprised at having been given credit. Cassia, however, wanted to make it clear that they were all in this together.

"W-well, I had the idea that we could sneak out at night and graffiti the walls," Neville spoke up. "Write stuff like 'Dumbledore's Army is still fighting' or 'we're with Harry Potter', stuff that'll wind Snape and the Carrows up."

"Fred and George taught me a spell to do that, so that it'll be impossible to take off," Ginny put in, a smirk on her face. "They'll not be able to get the messages off."

There was a round of laughter and chuckling, everyone talking and cheering.

"And we can still recruit," Poppy said, once it all died down a bit. "We just have to be more careful, and only tell people we know will be in."

Cassia nodded. "If we get found out, this time it'll be worse than just carving out our hands in detention. Stuff like what happened to me yesterday will happen to all of us. Because they can do it, and they will."

She didn't want to scare them, but she needed to. They wouldn't take the situation seriously otherwise.

"And in the meantime, we'll plan more and try and find out what the Carrows have planned," she declared. "We can't promise anything, but we'll try our best."

Everyone looked round at Cassia in awe, wide eyed and open mouthed. Poppy grinned at her, and just by looking, Cassia knew what she was trying to tell her.

He'd be so proud of you.

"Right, come on you lot, we've got to get out of here before we all get caught!"

And, as Cassia snuck out with the rest of them, she couldn't help but smile.

Oh, how she wished to god he was.

❦︎❦︎❦︎

He thought of her often.

When they ate a food she used to like, when Hermione and Ron bickered, when he looked at the map, when he wore a shirt she had once tried on. All these were times he thought of her.

They'd been camping for a couple of weeks now, and hadn't managed to achieve anything after snagging the locket from Umbridge. His heart ached more and more everyday for her. He wanted to hold her, to hug her and kiss her. To tell her he didn't blame her, and that he was never, ever leaving her, and that he understood.

But he could do none of those things.

"You're thinking of her again, aren't you?" Hermione, who he thought was sleeping, joined him on watch in the tent flap, sitting down with a sigh.

"Yeah," Harry said in a low voice. "Listen, I know I shouldn't, I just... well, she's one of the only things in my life that... isn't fucked up at the moment."

Hermione nodded, leaning her head onto his shoulder.

"Oh, Harry," she whispered, her eyes becoming slightly teary. "You love her so much, don't you?"

Harry nodded, whispering back. "And she has no idea. She thinks I hate her, Hermione. She thinks-"

"No, she doesn't," Hermione said firmly, turning to look at him. "Harry, you have to understand, she's angry at everything right now, because the world's made her into someone she doesn't want to be. She said in her letter that you were the best thing that's ever happened to you-"

"Yeah, and she's the best thing that's ever happened to me t-"

"So, that means she still wants you to be with her," Hermione said meaningfully. "I know she said all that stuff about moving on, but... she doesn't mean it. She still loves you, Harry. And you love her more than anything in this world."

Harry nodded, staring out at the cold and dark forest that surrounded them.

"I do," he muttered, looking down.

Hermione touched his arm, looking at him. "You will see her again," she promised earnestly. "She's not going to leave you, Harry, not before she sees you again."

She left him with that, standing up, squeezing his shoulder, and heading back inside.

But Harry had listened to her. Because as she tried to sleep and he stayed on watch, he whispered something into the chilly darkness of the night.

"I really bloody hope so."

❦︎❦︎❦︎

WE STAND WITH HARRY POTTER

DUMBLEDORE'S ARMY: ALIVE AND WELL

Those were the two messages Snape found graffittied on the wall outside his office the following morning.

Cassia felt weirdly smug as she headed down to breakfast with Poppy and Neville and Ginny. She knew she'd done something objectively terrible last night, but under the circumstances, she felt so fucking proud.

"When do you think we're gonna get the warning?" Poppy murmured to her over breakfast, as they tucked into fried eggs and bacon.

"I don't know," she murmured back. "But whenever it is, I for one am looking forward to it."

She was completely secure in the fact they weren't getting in trouble for this. I mean, they would if veritaserum was used, but only the five of them (Cassia, Poppy, Ginny, Neville and Luna) knew what had happened. And none of them would take veritaserum on a trick.

Snape and the Carrows could suspect them all they wanted, but they had no evidence. The only way they could have been caught is if someone was eyewitness to their supposed crime, and they'd had someone on lookout the entire time.

"Aren't you even a little bit scared?" Poppy asked her, as she shovelled in more eggs.

"No," Cassia shrugged. "What can they do? Torture me? It's you guys I'm afraid for, not my own skin."

Poppy and Neville and Ginny all smiled slightly, Poppy turning to her best friend and putting a hand on her shoulder. "That's not the only thing they would do and you know it."

"They wouldn't kill me," Cassia shook her head. "You know they wouldn't. Not with my father being... y'know."

You guys, though... she chose not to say. You guys could be killed easily. And it'd be all my fault.

She shoved that thought down. If she was ever interrogated, she'd take all the blame, and then she'd never have to worry about her best friends.

"But your father's not exactly safe," Poppy thought back.

"It'll be fine," Cassia said. "We're not gonna get caught, oka-?"

At that moment, the doors to the great hall slammed open and Snape strode in, his face stony, his black cloak billowing behind him. Cassia watched as he walked with purpose up the hall, not stopping until he reached the top and the whole hall was looking at him, even the teachers.

He stood facing them, his mouth drawn, his eyes dark, his whole body tensed.

"As I'm sure most of you in this hall are not aware, last night, someone, or perhaps several people, defaced the wall outside my office," he said, putting emphasis on my as if to say 'it's not Dumbledore's anymore'.

Cassia watched him, poker face, not letting anything away. She knew he didn't have any evidence, but if he so much as suspected her, he would go after her.

"Now, I do not think I need to remind you that this is unacceptable," Snape looked around the hall, his eyes like lasers. "And, should the culprits be found, they will face severe punishments. That... is all."

As he strode from the hall, Cassia, Poppy, Neville and Ginny exchanged glances.

Cassia still felt secure, though.

But it hurt her to know they had not much to hurt her with.

❦︎❦︎❦︎

Naturally, by lunch, everyone had seen the wall outside Snape's office. Even people that didn't have to go there went there, just to catch a glimpse of the grafitti, or, as he put it the 'defacing'.

Cassia couldn't help but feel a dull pride as she heard people explaining to first and second years in the corridors what Dumbledore's Army was, and heard whispers of how glad people were that someone else in this place was with Harry.

She couldn't help but feel like they'd done something big, when all they'd done was write something that couldn't be removed on a wall.

That day, in muggle studies, Alecto treated every single student that wasn't a Slytherin to scathing looks and harshly spoken words. Cassia didn't care much; she wasn't doing anything to them, and she had no evidence that it was even them, anyway.

By the end of the day, Cassia was in her dorm with Poppy, Lavender and Parvati (Hermione, their dorm mate was of course not there) laughing hard.

"And the look she had on her face..." Poppy said, doing a demonstration of Alecto's flare and sending them all into screams of laughter again.

And it felt good to laugh. It felt good to just go wild, because really, it was funny.

Cassia laughed that night until her cheeks hurt and her throat was dry. And then she laughed some more.

❦︎❦︎❦︎

There were quite a few claps and cheers at the meeting the following night, and a lot of laughter.

"I can't believe we pulled that off!" Seamus whooped.

"Snape was so annoyed!" Padma giggled.

"And did you see the Carrows?" Cho added, making more people comment.

Cassia just stood back, fat smirk on her face. She was very proud of everyone in this room for having the bravery to stand up against authority like that. Even if most of them hadn't been there, they were still here. They were still part of this.

"Alright, alright!" She eventually called, grinning round at them all. "I know we're all excited about what happened today, and to be honest, I'm more excited than any of you, but we also need to talk about what we do in future."

She had everyone's attention now, as she spoke to them with a shit eating grin on her face.

"We need to do more," she told them. "We can keep graffiting walls and making Snape and the Carrows angry, but that doesn't really defy them that much."

"So what'd you suggest we do?" Seamus asked, except he didn't sound sarcastic, he sounded more... anticipated.

"I don't know," Cassia said honestly, shaking her head.

The room was plunged into silence. Cassia looked around, but everyone just looked down or to someone else. The girl was desperate for someone, anyone, to help her.

Then, finally, a hand went up. Cassia looked at the boy who had raised it, interested.

"Yes, Neville?"

"How about we steal the sword of Gryffindor?"