Raised By Wolfstar: Slytherin Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

Chapter Twenty: Blood Boils

(One thing that has happened since my last chapter is The-Game-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named has released, and I want it to be very clear that I don't consider anything from that game to be canon, nor do I want it or its characters mentioned under any of my posts.)

Harry felt as though he were carrying some kind of talisman inside his chest over the following two weeks, a glowing secret that supported him through Umbridge's classes and even made it possible for him to smile blandly as he looked into her horrible bulging eyes. He and the D.A. were resisting her under her very nose, doing the very thing that she and the Ministry most feared, and whenever he was supposed to be reading Wilbert Slinkhard's book during her lessons he dwelled instead on satisfying memories of their most recent meetings, remembering how Neville had successfully disarmed Tracey, how Colin Creevey had mastered the Impediment Jinx after three meetings' hard effort, how Allison had produced such a good Reductor Curse that she had reduced the dummy she was practicing on to dust.

He was finding it almost impossible to fix a regular night of the week for D.A. meetings, as they had to accommodate four separate Quidditch teams' practices, which were often rearranged depending on the weather conditions; but Harry was not sorry about this, he had a feeling that it was probably better to keep the timing of their meetings unpredictable. If anyone was watching them, it would be hard to make out a pattern.

Tracey soon devised a very clever method of communicating the time and date of the next meeting to all the members in case they needed to change it at short notice, because it would look so suspicious if people from different Houses were seen crossing the Great Hall to talk to each other too often. She gave each of the members of the D.A. a price of scrap paper with a smudge of in on it.

'To those who are not in the loop, this paper will only look like scrap to make notes on,' Tracey said, holding one up for examination at the end of their fourth meeting. The paper had a slight yellow tint and was only about size of the palm of one's hand. 'When a new date and time for a meeting has been determined, the note will give off hot air to get the carriers attention and when the carrier touches the ink spot writing will appear. We'll each take one, and so when Harry decides a date for a meeting he will write it on his paper, and because I have enchanted each with a Protean Charm, they'll all change to show the same message.'

A blank silence greeted Tracey's words. She looked around at all the faces upturned to her, rather disconcerted.

'Er, um—at least, I thought that was the best choice,' she said uncertainly, 'Because even if someone like Umbridge finds one it'll look just like junk. However if you all think there might be a better way..?'

'You can do a Protean Charm?' said Terry Boot.

'Yup,' said Tracey.

'But that's...that's N.E.W.T. standard, that is,' he said weakly.

Tracey gained a little pink in her ears, 'Er, I guess that it is.'

'How come you're not in Ravenclaw?' he demanded, staring at Tracey with something close to wonder. 'With spell mastery like yours?'

'I like to cause trouble to much I guess,' she said with a bright smile. 'So do we all agree that the note paper is the best bet we have for more covert communication?'

There was a murmur of assent and everybody moved forward to collect one from the basket. Harry looked sideways at Tracey. 'You know what these remind me of?'

'Possible, but go on.'

'The Death Eaters' scars. Voldemort touches one of them, and all their scars burn, and they know they've got to join him.'

'You've be right then,' said Tracey quietly. 'That's where I got the general idea from. But I only but the date and time on a piece of paper, and not a part of their body.'