‘Yeah,’ said Harry slightly defensively.

‘Yeah,’ said Harry slightly defensively.

‘A corporeal Patronus?’

The phrase stirred something in Harry's memory.

‘Er—you don't know Madam Bones, do you?’ he asked.

The girl smiled.

‘She's my auntie,’ she said. ‘I'm Susan Bones. She told me about your hearing. So—is it really true? You make a stag Patronus?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry.

‘Blimey, Harry!’ said Lee, looking deeply impressed. ‘I never knew that!’

‘Mum told Ron not to spread it around,’ said Fred, grinning at Harry. ‘She said you got enough attention as it was.’

‘She's not wrong,’ mumbled Harry, and a couple of people laughed.

The veiled witch sitting alone shifted very slightly in her seat.

‘And did you kill a Basilisk with that sword in Dumbledore's office?’ demanded Terry Boot. ‘That's what one of the portraits on the wall told me when I was in there last year ...’

‘Er—yeah, I did, yeah,’ said Harry.

Justin Finch-Fletchley whistled; the Creevey brothers exchanged awestruck looks and Lavender Brown said ‘Wow!’ softly. Harry was feeling slightly hot around the collar now; he was determinedly looking anywhere but at Cho.

‘And in our first year,’ said Neville to the group at large, ‘he saved that Philological Stone— ’

‘Philosopher's,’ hissed Hermione.

‘Yes, that—from You-Know-Who,’ finished Neville.

Hannah Abbotts eyes were as round as Galleons.

‘And that's not to mention,’ said Cho (Harry's eyes snapped across to her; she was looking at him, smiling; his stomach did another somersault) ‘all the tasks he had to get through in the Triwizard Tournament last year—getting past dragons and merpeople and Acromantula and things ...’

There was a murmur of impressed agreement around the table. Harry's insides were squirming. He was trying to arrange his face so that he did not look too pleased with himself. The fact that Cho had just praised him made it much, much harder for him to say the thing he had sworn to himself he would tell them.

‘Look,’ he said, and everyone fell silent at once, ‘I ... I don't want to sound like I'm trying to be modest or anything, but ... I had a lot of help with all that stuff ...’

‘Not with the dragon, you didn't,’ said Michael Corner at once. ‘That was a seriously cool bit of flying ...’

‘Yeah, well—’ said Harry, feeling it would be churlish to disagree.

‘And nobody helped you get rid of those dementors this summer,’ said Susan Bones.

‘No,’ said Harry, ‘no, OK, I know I did bits of it without help, but the point I'm trying to make is—’

‘Are you trying to weasel out of showing us any of this stuff?’ said Zacharias Smith.

‘Here's an idea,’ said Ron loudly, before Harry could speak, ‘why don't you shut your mouth?’

Perhaps the word ‘weasel’ had affected Ron particularly strongly. In any case, he was now looking at Zacharias as though he would like nothing better than to thump him. Zacharias flushed.

‘Well, we've all turned up to learn from him and now he's telling us he can't really do any of it,’ he said.

‘That's not what he said,’ snarled Fred.

‘Would you like us to clean out your ears for you?’ enquired Greorge, pulling a long and lethal-looking metal instrument from inside one of the Zonko's bags.

‘Or any part of your body, really, we're not fussy where we stick this,’ said Fred.

‘Yes, well,’ said Hermione hastily, moving on ...'the point is, are we agreed we want to take lessons from Harry?’

There was a murmur of general agreement. Zacharias folded his arms and said nothing, though perhaps this was because he was too busy keeping an eye on the instrument in Fred's hand.

‘Right,’ said Hermione, looking relieved that something had at last been settled. ‘Well, then, the next question is how often we do it. I really don't think there's any point in meeting less than once a week—’

‘Hang on,’ said Angelina, ‘we need to make sure this doesn't clash with our Quidditch practice.’

‘No,’ said Cho, ‘nor with ours.’

‘Nor ours,’ added Zacharias Smith.

‘I'm sure we can find a night that suits everyone,’ said Hermione, slightly impatiently, ‘but you know, this is rather important, we're talking about learning to defend ourselves against V-Voldemort's Death Eaters—’

‘Well said!’ barked Ernie Macmillan, who Harry had been expecting to speak long before this. ‘Personally, I think this is really important, possibly more important than anything else we'll do this year, even with our OWLs coming up!’

He looked around impressively, as though waiting for people to cry ‘Surely not!’ When nobody spoke, he went on, ‘I, personally, am at a loss to see why the Ministry has foisted such a useless teacher on us at this critical period. Obviously, they are in denial about the return of You-Know-Who, but to give us a teacher who is trying to actively prevent us from using defensive spells—’

‘We think the reason Umbridge doesn't want us trained in Defence Against the Dark Arts,’ said Hermione, ‘is that she's got some ... some mad idea that Dumbledore could use the students in the school as a kind of private army. She thinks he'd mobilise us against the Ministry.’