⤷ 14| THE LION AND THE SERPENT

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chapter fourteen : the lion and the serpent

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chapter fourteen : the lion and the serpent

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

June and Harry were finding it almost impossible to fix a regular night of the week for the DA meetings, as they had to accommodate three separate teams' Quidditch practices, which were often rearranged due to the bad weather conditions; but June was not sorry about this; she 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.

Hermione 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 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 DA a fake Galleon.

"You see the numerals around the edge of the coins?" Hermione said, holding one up for examination at the end of their fourth meeting. The coin gleamed fat and yellow in the light from the torches. "On real Galleons that's just a serial number referring to the goblin who cast the coin. On these fake coins, though, the numbers will change to reflect the time and date of the next meeting. The coin will glow hot when the date changes, so if you're carrying them in a pocket you'll be able to feel them. We take one each and when Harry or June sets the date of the next meeting, they'll change the numbers on their coins, and because I asked June to put a Protean Charm on them, they'll all change to mimic theirs."

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

"Well — I thought it was a good idea," she said uncertainly, "I mean, even if Umbridge asked us to turn out our pockets, there's nothing fishy about carrying a Galleon, is there. But . . . well, if you don't want to use them —"

"It's a brilliant idea, Hermione," June assured her.

"So that means we're using the Galleons?" Hermione said hopeful, looking around.

There was a murmur of assent and everybody moved forwards to collect one from the basket. June took a moment to admire the coin before shoving it in her pocket, a grin plastered on her face.

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