The Inadequate Life

“Harry, we just got word from Dung,” Ron said. “He was supposed to meet someone tonight—I thought it would look suspicious if he didn’t show, so I told him to go.” He looked nervous. “Er, I know we didn’t talk about it—”

“It’s fine, Ron,” Harry assured him. “I’ve been thinking, and I don’t want to tell Dung too much anyway. We’ll pass him a bit of information later, but for now it doesn’t matter.”

“Good,” Ron said, relieved. “Have we heard about Tonks yet?”

“She had a shift tonight,” Harry answered with a grimace. “The Ministry is still watching Neville’s parents, and Tonks is on duty at their house. We’ll have to bring her in here when we get the chance—I want to talk to her about some ideas I have, anyway.”

“Like what?” Hermione asked curiously. “You haven’t mentioned it…”

“That’s because I’m not sure how possible any of it is,” Harry admitted. “I’ll fill you all in after the meeting.”

Hermione nodded, clearly disappointed that her curiosity hadn’t been sated. “It’s probably just as well that Tonks couldn’t come tonight, because we’ll have to have Tonks go through the Veritaserum with her again since she’s never been to the House of Black before,” she pointed out.

It was almost eight at night, and they were seated in the conference room with the door open, waiting for the D.A. to gather in the practice room across the hall. Ginny had run upstairs when they realized that Seamus and Dean hadn’t shown up yet, and neither had Susan.

Harry stifled a yawn. He, Ginny, Hermione and Ron had spent the entire day talking about this meeting—what to say, how much to explain, who to tell to do what—and he’d gotten up early to get ready for his visit to Privet Drive. Harry had been so exhausted that around six p.m. Ginny had abruptly interrupted Hermione and demanded that they take a break so Harry could get a bit of sleep before the meeting. Harry hadn’t objected, especially since he’d suspected that Ginny wanted some time alone with him. He’d been right—Ginny had curled up with him in bed and clung to him until they fell asleep.

Harry had only woken up fifteen minutes before the meeting was due to start, and still felt mildly groggy. But as the practice room filled up he began to wake up more and more, as what was about to happen began to sink in.

Finally Hermione, who had been ticking off names on a list, put down the parchment and quill she’d been using after Fred, Sally-Ann and Lee came up the stairs, having just Flooed in after closing up Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes for the night. “That’s everyone except Seamus, Dean and Susan,” she said. “Erm, Harry… do you want to do anything about Susan?”

Harry didn’t have to ask what Hermione meant—Susan had been out of sorts since Neville had returned to the D.A. and surprised everyone by becoming involved with Pansy. Susan had had designs on Neville, and even though she’d been acting less angry about the whole thing, she was clearly still unhappy. “I don’t think we can,” Harry said. “At least, not until it starts becoming a problem. It’s personal—Susan’s going to have to work it out on her own.”

Hermione nodded uncomfortably. “I’d like to talk to Hannah privately, just to see what she’s doing to try and help—and to make certain she’s not encouraging Susan to stay angry at Neville.”

Harry looked at her sternly. “Don’t meddle, Hermione. It’s none of our business!”

“I’m not meddling,” Hermione replied, stung. “I just want to keep things from getting worse!”

Harry hesitated, and then shrugged. “Okay, but don’t get in over your head.” Ron snorted, drawing a glare from Hermione.

Ginny came down the stairs a moment later, herding Seamus, Dean and Susan in front of her. Susan looked disgruntled, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. “Let’s go,” Harry said, pushing himself out of his chair.

Hermione and Ron had set out chairs and pillows for everyone to sit on, so everyone was arranged in a semi-circle facing the door. Ron entered last, shutting the door, and he and Hermione took seats to one side; Ginny, seated to the other side, smiled reassuringly at Harry as he walked to the center of the group.

“Hi,” Harry said, trying to collect his thoughts. “I know it’s been a long day and everyone’s tired, so this meeting will be short, but something momentous happened—one of the projects we’ve been working on reached a turning point this morning. I found something so important that it’s changed everything—all our plans have shifted. Starting immediately, the D.A.’s focus is changing. We’ve reached the point where we’re ready to start preparing for a battle with Voldemort.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” Parvati asked.

“Not exactly,” Harry answered. “I mean yes, we’ve been working to bring Voldemort down, but it’s been passive while we’ve been gathering information. Now we’re ready to take the fight to him—we’re going to create a conflict with him, so some of us can get face to face with him and bring him down once and for all.”

The idea of intentionally confronting Voldemort face to face was enough to scare anyone, and the members of the D.A. were no exception. “Are you bloody mad?” Lee exclaimed. “Pick a fight with V-Voldemort?”

“He picked the fight with us, Lee,” Harry said calmly. “Voldemort’s been killing people we care about since before any of us were born. Up until this morning it would have been pointless to confront him, for various reasons. But now, we have a real shot at defeating him for good—so we need to strike as soon as possible, before he can get wind of what we’re up to.”

“Most of you won’t ever have to face him,” Harry continued quickly when he saw panic on several faces. “We’re laying out a battle plan—we’re still working on it, but we’ve been developing it from the beginning and the basic structure is ready. I’m going to be reassigning most of you to new tasks, starting right now, that are designed to make the final battle plan possible.” When there was still nervous muttering he added sarcastically “We all knew that this would happen, didn’t we? Or did you all think that Voldemort would hear about our efforts and get so scared he’d give up? It’s always been building toward a battle—so the best thing you can all do is put everything you have into the plan. We’re doing everything we can to lessen the risk for everyone. Remember, when I decided to restart the D.A. I only had two goals—take down Voldemort, and have us all survive in the process. That’s still the intention, and the harder we work at it the more likely we’ll succeed.”

There was still a bit of nervous fidgeting until Pansy spoke up; “Well, I signed up for this mad war with every intention of surviving, Potter. What’s my chore?”

Harry smiled thankfully. “You’re going to keep on as you have been,” he told her. “But focused on a very few items.” He stepped back a bit so he could see everyone. “A while ago I asked Fred and George to develop some… er, interesting magical items,” he said, noting Fred and George’s identical grins. “Lee and Pansy have been helping them—some of what I asked for they’re still working on, but some of it they’ve already figured out. Pansy, from now on you’re exclusively responsible for potions work, focused on what Fred and George need, and a few other things—we’re eliminating all our experiments and concentrating on what we know we can make and use, in as large quantities as possible. Hermione will help when she can, but she’s going to have a lot to do so that probably won’t be too often. The same is true for Fred and George.”

“If you’re going to add to the already extensive workload, I won’t be able to keep up on my own,” Pansy said darkly.

“You won’t be alone,” Harry replied. “Justin? You’re pretty good at potions, right?”

“I got an O on my Potions OWL,” Justin answered proudly.

“Good. I’m permanently assigning you to help Pansy with Potions—you won’t have anything to do except go to your normal job, practice spell casting and help Pansy. She’ll know everything we’re working on so she’s in charge—you’ll help as she directs, got it?” Justin nodded. “Good. Pansy, will Justin’s help be enough?”

“If he’s really going to be assisting that often, then I think so,” Pansy said reluctantly.

“You’ll also have help from Hermione from time to time,” Harry reminded her, “and you’ll be meeting with Fred, George and Lee regularly to talk about your progress. They’ll be doing a lot of the potions work for their inventions.” He turned his eyes to Neville. “Neville, with the increase of potions, there’s going to be an increase on demand for plants from the greenhouse. You’ll be needing help too.”

“That would be nice,” Neville agreed.

“Parvati, Lavender—both of you are going to be helping Neville,” Harry told the girls. “Just like Justin’s helping Pansy. Neville’s in charge, so just follow his direction.”

“But—but neither of us are any good at Herbology!” Lavender said unhappily. “Why can’t—”

Lavender cut herself off, but Harry was pretty sure she was going to ask Why can’t Susan and Hannah help Neville? The two Hufflepuff girls were both good at Herbology, but Harry didn’t think it was prudent to assign Susan and Neville to work together—not while they were still having problems. “You’re not brilliant at Herbology, but you’re not terrible at it,” Harry told Lavender. “Just follow Neville’s directions and it should go okay.” Neville, Parvati and Lavender all looked skeptical, but didn’t protest further. Maybe Hermione was right, and we should intervene with Neville and Susan, Harry thought, but dismissed the idea. It wouldn’t do to interfere unless they had no choice.

“Cho,” Harry said, seeking out and locating the Ravenclaw girl, “You’re going to be giving everyone in the D.A.—and I mean everyone—a crash course in Healing.”

“I—I am?” Cho replied anxiously.

“Yeah. When it comes down to it, we all need to know a few basic things, like what we need to do to make sure it’s safe to move an injured person so they can be transported to St. Mungo’s. I want you to put together a list of spells and potions that you think would be important for us all to know—”

“More work,” Pansy grumbled.

Harry ignored her. “—and bring it to me a week from today. We’ll talk about it and pare it down to the most essential items. Then we’ll set up a rota so you can meet with everyone.”

Cho swallowed, clearly nervous about having such a large responsibility. “All—all right,” she squeaked.

Harry smiled at her encouragingly before turning to his next assignment. “I also need to meet with groups of you, in private,” he said. “There are still some things that are important to keep secret until the last possible moment to maximize their effectiveness.” When no one protested, he nodded. “Padma, Sally-Ann and Terry—I need to meet with the three of you first thing tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock. Luna, I’d like you to be there as well.”

“All right,” Luna agreed calmly, and the other three nodded.

“The four of you should plan to be there a while,” Harry told them. “We’ll bring in lunch.” They nodded. “Seamus and Dean,” Harry continued, and the two boys sat up straight. “The two of you are going to meet with me, Ron, Lee, Fred and George about a special project. Tomorrow at one in the afternoon.”

“Right,” Dean agreed.

Seamus nodded, grinning. “If it’s something Fred and George cooked up, it’s gotta be fun!”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Lee demanded indignantly.

“Give it up, Lee,” George said lazily. “Seamus knows genius when he sees it.”

Harry’s lip twitched as he tried not to laugh. “Right. Just be there, Seamus. Lee, Fred, George, you have to be there too.” All the boys nodded. “Okay…Angelina, Alicia and Katie…”

“About time!” Angelina declared triumphantly. “If we didn’t get a challenge I was going to have to hit something!”

“It’ll be a challenge, that’s for sure,” Harry said sardonically. “But we’re not ready to meet with you yet—we’re still in the early stages so your assignment is still under discussion. We’ll want to meet with the three of you together, about a week from now. After that, you’ll have a very difficult task ahead of you, so plan on spending almost all your time on it. In fact, try to get as much spell practice in as possible between now and then, because you may not have much time to practice afterwards.”

Hermione looked confused, but Harry caught her eye and shook his head slightly, indicating that he knew she didn’t know what he was talking about and that he’d fill her in later. Pursing her lips in frustration, she nodded. “Angelina, is there going to be any problem with getting away from your team?”

Angelina was on the national Quidditch team, and Harry was concerned that she might draw some attention if she suddenly quit. He was relieved when Angelina shook her head. “We’re coming into the slow season for Quidditch,” she pointed out, and Harry nodded; it was the end of November, and they’d almost reached winter. “The team doesn’t take rookies on the winter international circuit,” Angelina continued. “We have to go through more training about properly hydrating, getting used to the regulation international gear, and so on. So I’m basically on hiatus until the end of March—I’m just expected to keep in shape.”

“And I’m sure Fred will take care of that,” Harry said before he could stop himself, and grinned when Fred and Angelina looked mildly embarrassed as the others teased them.

“All right, all right,” he said after a minute, and the group settled down. “I mentioned Cho’s going to be giving us all some lessons in basic Healing,” he said—Cho hunched down a bit further. “But that won’t be for a bit, since we have to decide what’s most important for us all to learn. For now, I’m increasing everyone’s—”

“Wait a moment!” Susan interrupted. “What about me?”

Harry hesitated. “Er… what about you?” he asked.

“You haven’t given me or Hannah any assignment!” Susan pointed out angrily. “What are we supposed to do?”

“For now I don’t have a specific task for you,” Harry said quickly. “You’re going to be training harder than ever on spell casting. I’m increasing everyone’s time in the rotation to whatever they can fit in.”

There were some groans as the members of the D.A. contemplated how exhausted they were likely to become. “Have a heart, Harry!” Dean begged. “We’re gonna be dead on our feet!”

“Better that than dead and in the ground!” Harry shouted back, silencing everyone. “What the hell do I have to do to make you understand? If you’re not prepared, you’re going to die!”

“Harry, calm down!” Ginny said sharply. “Dean’s right—if we don’t have any time to relax and enjoy ourselves every now and then, we’ll all be burned out when the time comes for the final battle!”

If anyone else had said that, Harry would have angrily refuted it, declaring it necessary. But he couldn’t dismiss it when it came from Ginny. “All right, fine,” he grumbled. “We’ll make sure that everyone gets a bit of free time to relax. Satisfied?” Harry suspected several people weren’t, but in the face of Harry’s outburst no one protested further. “Good. We still have to work up the schedule, so consider tonight some of that free time.” Everyone looked somewhat happier when they heard that, Harry noted. “Everyone give us an updated version of your work schedules, even if they haven’t changed,” he concluded. “Otherwise, that’s it for tonight.”