HERMIONE MADE NO MENTION OF THE DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS LESSONS FIR TWO WHOLE WEEKS AFTER HER ORIGINAL SUGGESTION. Harry's detentions with Umbridge we're finally over ( Alena still had a month left ). Ron had had four more Quidditch practices and not been shouted at the last two; and all four of them had managed to vanish their mice in Transfiguration ( Alena and Hermione had actually progressed to vanishing kittens ), before the subject was broached again, on a wild, blustery evening at the end of September, when the four of them were sitting in the library, looking up Potion ingredients for Snape.
"I was wondering," Hermione spoke suddenly, "whether you'd thought any more about Defense Against the Dark Arts, Harry."
"'Course have," Harry answered grumpily. "Can't forget it, can we, with that hag teaching us—"
"I meant the idea Ron and I had—" Ron cast her an alarmed, threatening kind of look; she frowned at him. "—oh, all right, the idea I had, then—about you and Lena teaching us."
There was a pause.
"Well," Harry began slowly. "Yeah, I-I've thought about it a bit."
"And?" Hermione asked eagerly.
"I dunno," Harry answered.
"I thought it was a good idea from the start," Ron told them, who seemed keener to join in this conversation now that he was sure that Harry was not going to start shouting again.
Harry shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
"You did listen to what I said about a load of it being luck, didn't you?"
"Yes, Harry," Hermione started gently. "But all the same, there's no point pretending that you're not good at Defense Against the Dark Arts, because you are. You and Lena were the people last year who could throw off the Imperius Curse completely, you two can produce a Patronus, you both can do all sorts of stuff that full-grown wizards can't, Viktor always said—"
