What happen’s at Dumbledore’s Army (DA) isn’t actually real life. The kids here, they hardly know whats going on in the world. A red flash streaks across the room and Neville goes skidding across the floor, not really a surprise. They say they all want to help the cause, to stand up for whats good in the world. But this isn’t about good and evil.
I can’t remember anything about my father, he was supposedly a good guy.
The mirrored walls of the Room of Requirement twinkled from the ethereal lighting. Two dozen heads bobbed around. Some nervously, glistening with sweat-covered foreheads. Who someone is in DA is not who they are in Hogwarts. After a night at DA, the booming halls and corridors of Hogwarts seem to shrink. The world becomes tinier and you, personally, have leveled the playing.
The Chosen One tells me that he didn’t know his father either. He says that he was a great man who changed a lot of lives.
I used to be nervous and afraid, just like the people here. I’d lie awake, confused by my own life. I’d cry. I’d sit in the empty common room at some untold hour of the night and just stare into the ever-present fire, fueled by some charm which I could never hope to learn. But that was just it, every thing is empty. Everything is just a fuel for something else.
The first DA was just The Chosen One and I. I was telling him about 16th century potion preservation practices. We still go to DA but, now, its more than just the two of us. You see some poor second year who cant tie his robes right, he was a god for 10 minutes. After countering a jinx from a sixth year and sending him crashing through a training dummy, talking to Snape doesn’t scare you much any more. In six weeks, he looks like he brews Snape’s own stock of Veritaserum.
What you see in DA is a generation raised in fear and ignorance.
There are a dozen new faces tonight. The chosen one yells, “the first rule of DA is that you don’t talk about DA.” The Chosen One and I had to turn people away. Come back next week. If you really give a crap, be here when it matters. Clearing a space in the middle of the room, he continues, “the second rule of DA is that you do not talk about DA.”
The Chosen One steps into the middle of the Room of Requirement, under a magical orb. He walks up and down the line reciting, bellowing the rest of the rules: two wizards per duel, one duel at a time, no cloaks no uniforms, duels go on as long as they have to. The Chosen One stops in front of a girl I’ve never seen before, a Ravenclaw, and yells “and the sevenths rule of DA, is that if it’s your first time at DA, you have to duel.”
DA is not like listening to Quidditch on the radio. It’s not sitting idly by watching the world, in all its supposed extravegance, pass you by. You aren’t listening to the description of the pretty colors of the robes and flags, drinking pitcher after pitcher of butterbeer, listening to the same advertisements. After you’ve been to DA, watching Quidditch is like licking the crumbs off the floor when you have the seat at the head of the table with the entire pie waiting jsut for you.
Last week, a Hufflepuff tapped me on the shoulder and we got on the list for a duel. This guy must’ve had a bad week, blasting me through the air, having my wand launched to the opposite side of the room, bending me like a pretzel with a hex I’ve never heard of. The Chosen One walks over and says, “cool.” The Hufflepuff walks over and helps me up, shaking my hand. He starts fixing the dent in the wall from where I landed as The Chosen One and I make way towards the Hospital Wing. There, The Chosen One tells Madam Pomfrey that I fell down the stairs.
Sometimes, The Chosen One speaks for me.