The next day, I wrote a letter to Sirius. He asked us to call him Snuffles in our letters in case someone intercepted our letters.
Dear Snuffles,
I hope you and Freya have been doing better than the rest of us. We have this new defense teacher, Dolores Umbridge. She's awful. She's having us read first year material and she's not letting us use our wands. How are we supposed to learn? She used a blood quill on Harry and me! It didn't work on me because of...well, you know, the thing.
Is Freya doing okay? Is she still afraid of nearly everyone? Can you tell her about her dad? I would of it myself, but I'm not with you two.
Love,
Nina
I walked up to the Owlery. I passed by Peeves who was about to drop a bust on my head until he realized who I was. He grinned at me sheepishly before zooming back to his hiding place. I rolled my eyes at the poltergeist and continued on my way. Skittles, are you in here? I called, searching for my owl. A rainbow swooped down in front of me.
Hi, Nina. You need me to deliver a letter?
Yup. Can you bring this to Sirius at Grimmauld Place?
Sure! Skittles stuck out her leg and I tied the letter to it. She flew off into the ir and I ran down to the Great Hall. I was starving!
Vati showed me the Daily Prophet. The headline was Sirius being spotted in London. I'll bet Lucius Malfoy spotted him. That's what Malfoy meant when he said he would be dogging Harry and me. That little...
That night, Ron got a letter from Percy, his older brother. Percy believed what the ministry was saying and had cut all ties from the family. He said that Ron shouldn't hang out with Harry and me. Percy called me unbalanced and violent. I won't deny the fact that I am slightly violent at times, but I am most certainly not unstable. Ron called his brother a git.
Later that night, after everyone had left the common room, something appeared in the fire. I knelt down to get a closer look. Vati and Lav dropped to their knees beside me. Harry knelt beside Lav and Ron beside Vati. Hermione stood behind me. Sirius' head had popped up in the fire. "I was starting to think you all would go to bed before everyone else had disappeared. I've been checking every hour. Hello, Lavender, Parvati."
"Hi,Sirius," the sisters grinned. Sometimes I wonder if they're twins instead of Padma and Vati.
"This was the only way I could answer Harry's letter. I didn't want to resort to codes because they're breakable."
"What about my letter?" I asked, slightly annoyed he hadn't wanted to answer me.
"I didn't need to put any disclosed information in my response to you, Nina. Freya says hi, by the way." Sirius told Harry that he didn't think his scar hurting had anything to do with Umbridge. It was probably just the fact that Voldemort was back and gaining power. Sirius also told us that Fudge thought Dumbledore was making a wizard army out of the students. How ridiculous can you get to ignore the truth? Sirius disappeared with a tiny pop just as a first year came down to grab a book. He looked at us oddly. I guess we did look pretty strange sitting around the fire like this.
The next day, Lavender threw the Daily Prophet down in front of me. The article was not good.
MINISTRY SEEKS EDUCATIONAL REFORM
DOLORES UMBRIDGE APPOINTED FIRST-EVER "HIGH INQUISITOR"
Basically, Umbridge got to inspect all the teachers, fire the ones she didn't approve of, and make whatever educational degree she could think up. Great, what next, I'll meet a tomboy daughter of Aphrodite?
Umbridge was inspecting Trelawney. We were still working with prophetic dreams. "I relived what happened with Kronos up on Olympus," I whispered.
"Is the subject Kronos or Olympus?" Vati asked.
"I think Kronos because that was what my dream was mainly about." Umbridge interrupted the class and ordered Trelawney to make a prediction. You cannot just force a prophecy to occur. I looked into the fire. The room spun out of focus. I sitting in History of Magic listening to Binns talk about Bellerophon and how he killed the Chimera. Been there, done that. There was a tap on the window. I looked over and spotted two white owls. One had rainbow wings. I recognized the other as Harry's owl. I stood up quietly and went to the window to let them in. Skittles had some blood mixed in with the dye on her wing. I picked her and Hedwig up and brought them back to my seat. Harry quickly took Hedwig from me. The toad hurt me and read your mail, Nina! I'm sorry, I tried to stop her, but she was too strong. I hushed my owl and asked Binns to go to the bathroom. I snuck my owl out with me.
Everyone stared at me as I came back to the real world. "Did you have another vision, Miss Jackson?" Professor Trelawney asked eagerly. I nodded and turned to Umbridge.
"I would appreciate it if you didn't injure my familiar and read my mail, Professor." Umbridge spluttered and I turned back to Lav and Vati. I told them what happened in my vision.
Our next lesson was DADA with Umbridge again. She yelled at me for not opening my book. I said, "Well, Professor Umbridge, the entire book is permanently etched into my brain. Unfortunately, there is no possible way to erase it." Umbridge asked me what Slinkhard said about counter jinxes in in chapter 15. "He says they're improperly named and that a counter jinx is what people call their jinxes to make them more acceptable. I disagree. I think Slinkhard just doesn't like jinxes. They can be very useful when used defensively." Umbridge said my opinion didn't matter. That was mean.
Umbridge was in Transfiguration the next day. "Wonderful," Ron smirked. "Let's see that toad get what she deserves." I grinned. I was excited to see Umbridge get what was coming to her. Gotta love karma sometimes. McGonagall made no indication that she knew Umbridge was there until the shorter witch coughed.
"I was wondering, Professor," Umbridge started, "whether you received my note telling you the date and time of the inspec-"
"Obviously, I received it," growled McGonagall through gritted teeth. "Otherwise I would have asked you what you were doing in my classroom." McGonagall went back to the lesson and when Umbridge tried to interrupt her again, she said, "I wonder how you expect to gain an idea of my usual teaching methods if you continue to interrupt me. You see, I do not usually permit people to talk while I'm talking."
Umbridge humphed and started to scribble on her clipboard. McGonagall had me pass out little field mice to everyone. We were vanishing them. It took me a couple tries to get the spell this time, but I still was the first to achieve success. Hermione managed to vanish hers only seconds after me. Umbridge didn't speak for the rest of the lesson.
That night, Hermione made a very good suggestion. "Harry, why don't you teach us Defense Against the Dark Arts?"
"W-what?" Harry spluttered.
"She has a point," I agreed. "You do get really high marks in Defense."
"So do you," he pointed out.
"Yeah, but we're asking you to teach. Not me."
"No," Harry said, walking out of the room.
"Personally, I thought it was a good idea," said Ron. HErmione and I nodded our heads.
Two weeks later, after a whole lot of pestering, we managed to convince Harry to teach us DADA. He wasn't happy about it, but he agreed. We told a whole lot of people who we knew didn't think Harry was a nutter and they all agreed to meet us in the Hogshead, a bar in Hogsmeade.
I arrived with Harry, Ron, Hermione, Vati, and Lav before anyone else. I was in black skinny jeans, a white and blue striped sweater, and dark brown moccasins. A lot more people than I expected showed up. There was Alicia Spinnet, Angelina Johnson, Cormac McLaggen, Colin and Dennis Creevey, Fred, George, Ginny, Dean, Katie Bell, Lee, Nigel Wolpert, Rionach O'Neil, and Seamus from Gryffindor. From Ravenclaw, there was Luna, Cho Chang, Marietta Edgecombe, Michael Corner, Anthony Goldstein, Terry Boot, and Padma. From Hufflepuff, Ernie MacMillan, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones, a girl named Leanne, and Zacharias Smith showed up.
It took a while, but eventually, we got everyone to agree to join the group. Now, we had to try to come up with names. "How about the Defense Association," suggested Cho. "We could call it the D.A. for short."
"Oh," said Ginny. "How about Dumbledore's Army. You know, since that's what Fudge fears the most right now. We can still call it the D.A. so no one knows what we're doing." Everyone agreed to that. We all signed our names on a piece of paper that Hermione warned us she had jinxed. If anyone who signed their names spoke about the D.A., something bad would happen. I wonder what would happen. Hermione refused to tell anyone. That was probably a good thing.