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

“All in favour of the D.A.?” said Hermione bossily, kneeling up on her cushion to count. “That’s a majority—motion passed!”

She pinned the piece of parchment with all of their signatures on it on to the wall and wrote across the top in large letters:

...

DUMBLEDORE’S ARMY

“Right,” said Harry, when she had sat down again, “shall we get practising 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,” said Zacharias Smith, 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,” said Harry quietly. “It saved my life in June.”

Smith opened his mouth stupidly. The rest of the room was very quiet.

“But if you think it’s beneath you, you can leave,” Harry said.

Smith did not move. Nor did anybody else.

“OK,” said Harry, his mouth slightly drier than usual with all these eyes upon him, “I reckon we should all divide into pairs and practise.”

It felt very odd to be issuing instructions, but not nearly as odd as seeing them followed. Everybody got to their feet at once and divided up. Predictably, Neville was left partnerless.

“You can practise with me,” Harry told him. “Right—on the count of three, then—one, two, three—”

The room was suddenly full of shouts of Expelliarmus. Wands flew in all directions; missed spells hit books on shelves and sent them flying into the air. Harry was too quick for Neville, whose wand went spinning out of his hand, hit the ceiling in a shower of sparks and landed with a clatter on top of a bookshelf, from which Harry retrieved it with a Summoning Charm. Glancing around, he thought he had been right to suggest they practise the basics first; there was a lot of shoddy spellwork going on; many people were not succeeding in Disarming their opponents at all, but merely causing them to jump backwards a few paces or wince as their feeble spell whooshed over them.

“Expelliarmus!” said Neville, and Harry, caught unawares, felt his wand fly out of his hand.

“I DID IT!” said Neville gleefully. “I’ve never done it before—I DID IT!”

“Good one!” said Harry encouragingly, deciding not to point out that in a real duel Neville’s opponent was unlikely to be staring in the opposite direction with his wand held loosely at his side. “Listen, Neville, can you take it in turns to practise with Ron and Hermione for a couple of minutes so I can walk around and see how the rest are doing?”

Harry moved off into the middle of the room. Something very odd was happening to Zacharias Smith. Every time he opened his mouth to disarm Anthony Goldstein, his own wand would fly out of his hand, yet Anthony did not seem to be making a sound. Harry did not have to look far to solve the mystery: Fred and George were several feet from Smith and taking it in turns to point their wands at his back.

“Sorry, Harry,” said George hastily, when Harry caught his eye. “Couldn’t resist.”

Harry walked around the other pairs, trying to correct those who were doing the spell wrong. Ginny was teamed with Michael Corner; she was doing very well, whereas Michael was either very bad or unwilling to jinx her. Ernie Macmillan was flourishing his wand unnecessarily, giving his partner time to get in under his guard; the Creevey brothers were enthusiastic but erratic and mainly responsible for all the books leaping off the shelves around them; Luna Lovegood was similarly patchy, occasionally sending Justin Finch-Fletchley’s wand spinning out of his hand, at other times merely causing his hair to stand on end.

“OK, stop!” Harry shouted. “Stop! STOP!”

I need a whistle, he thought, and immediately spotted one lying on top of the nearest row of books. He caught it up and blew hard. Everyone lowered their wands.

“That wasn’t bad,” said Harry, “but there’s definite room for improvement.” Zacharias Smith glared at him. “Let’s try again.”

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There was a gentle knock on the door. Harry looked round. Ginny, Neville, Lavender, Parvati and Dean had arrived.	\|	He moved off around the room again, stopping here and there to make suggestions. Slowly, the general performance improved.

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