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Chapter Sixteen: In a Name

A week had passed since the meeting at the Three Broomsticks where Harry informed a large portion of the Hogwarts students that he planned on forming a Defense Against the Dark Arts group. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any indication to Harry that Umbridge or anyone else threatening had caught wind of what he was planning. There was little change of anyone undesirable finding out what Harry was going to do, but little chance was far too much chance for Harry. Even with all the safeguards, Harry was very, very, careful where he discussed what he had planned to go over when he taught the students in Hogwarts proper Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Outside of the Room of Requirement, around fifteen minutes before the meeting was supposed to start, Harry stood outside the Room of Requirement as Hermione, Theodore, Daphne, and Ginny looked over Harry’s notes for a few seconds before Hermione looked up at Harry.

“I must say it’s a very novel idea for the first lesson Harry,” said Hermione slowly as if trying to find the exact right words to say. “Although I must question how well this particular thing will…”

“It has to be done, because if this particular fear roadblock is overcome, then any spell I teach anyone will be useless,” said Harry coolly. “This has to be done.”

“I agree that it has to be done, but I can just imagine how some people might react,” said Hermione before shuddering.

“If I worried about how people would react, I wouldn’t have decided to do this,” said Harry. “My two priorities to start out is this and the perfection of a disarming curse, as once you deprive most witches or wizards of their wand, exactly what kind of attack do they have against you.”

“Yes, most witches or wizards are simply too lazy to learn any attacks beyond magic, because that’s the only alternative they’ve been conditioned to know,” said Ginny. “And it wouldn’t be too much of a problem for them if wandless magic wasn’t too draining and most people simply don’t have the ability to do it.”

Harry nodded his head in agreement. The most crippling thing that Hogwarts had done was conditioning people that a wand had to be necessary to use magic. Harry found out that only three spells absolutely required a use of a wand no matter how powerful the person using the magic and those three were punishable by a lifetime sentence in the prison known as Azkaban.

“Absolutely but their isn’t too much we can do to change people’s minds when they have it set to the fact that they need wands to perform any magic whatsoever,” said Daphne.

“It’s not like just anyone can do it,” said Theodore. “I mean Harry can do it.”

“I have that ninjitsu mentality that you can’t rely on just one thing in a fight. Everything can be used as a weapon to your advantage,” said Harry. “Not everyone has been brought up like that and when they get to Hogwarts, they are only as good as what they have been taught.”

Ginny looked around, frowning as there seemed to be someone missing from their group. She turned to Harry to inquire about this fact.

“Harry, do you know where your sister could possibly be?” asked Ginny. “I thought I told her that you said she was supposed to be here about thirty minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start.”

“Well, last minute problem there, Hailey is unfortunately unable to join us today because she’s in detention today,” said Harry. “Her first non-Snape detention, as apparently something that Umbridge said, well Hailey really didn’t agree with something that Umbridge said. Although I’m a bit hazy on the specifics of what caused Umbridge to issue the detention, it did end with ten points from Hufflepuff and a weeks worth of detention.”

Harry paused, before he saw a few students filing around the corner that had signed up for his Defense Against the Dark Arts study group walking around the corner towards the Room of Requirement. Earlier Harry had walked past the room, causing it to modify to the specifications that he wanted and it was a good thing that earlier this week, Harry figured out how to slow time down within the confines of the room. He managed to make a minute in the real word equal to an hour inside the Room of Requirement. This fact was extremely fortunate, as a group of students all going missing for an extended period of time would be a reason for suspicion and if there one thing that Harry wanted to avoid above everything else was undesirable people getting suspicious of Harry.

Within a matter of minutes, just a couple of minutes before the meeting was to begin, everyone who had signed up for the group crowded around the area around the Room of Requirement. Harry, Ginny, Daphne, Theodore, and Hermione wasted little time, making sure everyone walked into the Room of Requirement.

Everyone looked around, looking rather impressed by the décor that Harry’s mind had created. Dozens of padded chairs stood in rows in the center of the room and on the bookshelves stood massive tomes which contained information on nearly every defensive spell imaginable. A few people snickered at the picture of Umbridge’s face superimposed on the body of a toad that hung on the far wall.

“If you could all take a seat please, then we can begin,” said Harry in a commanding voice and everyone hastened to obey, finding a chair in the center of the room. Miraculously there were just enough chairs for everyone.

Harry took a seat in the chair that just materialized in front of the group, waiting for everyone to settle down which only took about a minute or so.

“Now that you have all arrived, I need to address an extremely pressing matter before I begin to teach you some of the defensive spells that could be the difference between life and death,” said Harry in a calm voice, looking pleased that he had the undivided attention of everyone in the room. “I would like to say a few words about Voldemort.”

Harry waited for everyone, except for Daphne, Theodore, Hermione, and Ginny, to cringe at the sound of Voldemort’s name like they always did. After taking a deep breath, Harry continued to speak.

“Now Voldemort has caused much fear, down to the fact that many cringed at the mere mention of his name, even through he had been thought to be dead after a slightly significant event involving me approximately fourteen years ago,” said Harry before sighing. “Voldemort has killed many and ruined the lives of many others. He created an atmosphere of fear until a fluke occurrence knocked him out of his body fourteen years ago. Of course, many do not know the full story about Voldemort and how he came to be the terror that he was. For most in this room, that ends right now.”

Harry took a deep breath and decided that he better reveal this information. Voldemort would not be too pleased with Harry if he revealed this information about his past, but since Voldemort already wanted to kill Harry, Harry felt revealing this couldn’t hurt him at all.

“Almost seventy years ago, a half blood wizard by the name of Tom Marvolo Riddle was born,” said Harry. “Tom was the product of a Muggle father and a witch mother. Of course, when Tom’s father found out that his mother was magical, he left her without another word. Tom was born and his mother died shortly after his birth. Tom was put up in an orphanage where he stayed for eleven years before he found out about his magical abilities and thus went to Hogwarts, where he found himself sorted in the Slytherin House.”

Most in the room stared at Harry, a few with slightly apprehensive looks on their faces as if they had a slight suspicion where exactly Harry was heading with this story.

“Now, Tom, having not been in the magical world, was extremely curious and from what I found out, read books on any form of magic that he could get his hands on. As his studying continued his taste for knowledge was not quenched by knowledge of light magic, he decided to begin delving into the dark arts around his third year of Hogwarts. It was no coincidence that when he began to delve into the dark arts is when he found out that he was the Slytherin heir and at the same time about the Chamber of Secrets,” said Harry calmly. “The Chamber of Secrets contained a deadly monster that could only be manipulated by the Slytherin heir and around that time, Tom came to the assumption that since he was the Slytherin heir, it was his divine right to be the most powerful and feared wizard in the entire magical world. With that in mind, in his fifth year, for the first time ever, the Chamber of Secrets had been open. Tom and the rest of the magical world had misinterpreted the reasons of why the monster was put in the Chamber but that is another story for another day. The Chamber was opened and Tom set the basilisk inside on several muggleborn students, petrifying most and inevitably killing one.”

Harry paused as he heard many gasps at this piece of news that he just spoken. He waited for the noise inside the Room of Requirement to die down before drawing in a deep breath and proceeding to finish the story on what he knew of the history of Voldemort.

“After the death, Tom felt that he could not use the basilisk to attack students any longer, as the teachers at Hogwarts would be on the lookout for anything suspicious, so he sealed the Chamber with the basilisk inside and decided to pretty much keep a low profile for the last couple of years of his time at Hogwarts before leaving and appearing to drop off the face of the earth. Most believed Tom Marvolo Riddle left Hogwarts and disappeared, never to be heard again. The truth, as it turns out, is a bit more sinister and directly ties into the subject of Voldemort.”

Another round of cringing around the room as Harry sighed. This behavior of reacting in terror to Voldemort’s name that had been conditioned for everyone in the magical world would take some time to correct. If they couldn’t stand to hear Voldemort’s name, how much of a chance did they have of surviving if they actually saw him in the flesh?

“Tom did disappear from the public eye. He went into seclusion, learning dark arts that you could only scarcely imagine and undergoing rituals that rendered him a completely different person in physical looks. One could also make a case that the darkness of the rituals warped Tom’s mind, causing him to have an uncontrollable thirst for absolute power,” said Harry. “Tom resurfaced a little over twenty five years ago, but he decided to bury every bit of his past, especially his name. I personally believe that Tom felt that his name was all too common and wanted to create a name that someday everyone would fear to mutter. To make a long story short, when he returned to magical Britain from his travels around the world, Tom Marvolo Riddle became known from that time forward as Lord Voldemort.”

Harry heard gasps echo throughout the Room of Requirement but he could tell for some that they were only gasping due to the fact that they were conditioned to react with fear whenever they heard the mere mention of Voldemort’s name.

“There is a very simple reason of why I’m telling you this information that I can assure you that Voldemort doesn’t want anyone to know after he spent countless time and resources burying every trace of his past as Tom Marvolo Riddle. The fact is, I hope you can realize that Voldemort is nothing but a false name and thus holds no meaning to be feared,” said Harry. “While I strongly opposed to fear of the name, the actual man, if you can call him that after all he’s done, is something to be feared. Calling him You-Know-Who and He-Who-Must-Not be named will only amplify any fear you will have of Voldemort himself. While I’m not expecting you to become comfortable about saying Voldemort’s name, I must encourage you not to say You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. If you must call him anything, I would suggest calling him by his proper name, Tom Riddle.”

Harry rose from his chair to his feet.

“Now, with that little piece of important information out of the way, now we get to the reason why all of you signed up for this. Namely, learning practical Defense Against the Dark Arts since Umbridge refuses to teach us anything that might be of value. I managed to get my hands on a very detailed, Ministry approved curriculum of the Defense Against the Dark Arts,” said Harry.

“Exactly how did you get your hands on that Harry?” asked Neville. “I heard that the Ministry didn’t like to let people see exactly what they deemed to be acceptable.”

“That’s a very good question and let’s just say that I have an inside pipeline to the Ministry that I would not like to reveal,” said Harry, choosing his words carefully so he didn’t tip off the little known fact that the magical government in the United States had a spies within the British Ministry that could readily get Harry certain information that the Ministry would like to keep classified. “Sufficient to say, I was reading through this and after skimming through how they would like students to be taught about certain dark creatures in disgust, I found something very interesting. No where in the Ministry approved curriculum did it specify the teaching of what is in my honest opinion the most crucial spell for defending yourself. That of course being the disarming curse, which many of you may remember being used when Professor Snape embarrassed the second worst Defense Against the Dark Arts professor that I have had the misfortune to experience, Lockhart.”

Harry looked at everyone with a completely serious expression.

“Now, the disarming curse can be very simple to pull off, but it is something that should be reserved only for a last ditch effort to escape. Should you find yourself in the unfortunate position of being forced to defend yourself from a threat, I would strongly recommend throwing your opponent off balance with a few spells before disarming them long enough for you to escape,” said Harry. “Of course, spells are useless without any practical use, so what if you would get into pairs so you can practice the disarming charm, the incantation for the disarming charm is “expelliarmus”. I would suggest that you would take turns in disarming each other.”

Everyone hastened to find partners, pairing up within about a minute or so. Harry watched as everyone paired up evenly because of Hailey being in detention at the moment. Walking around, Harry heard the yells of “Expelliarmus” several times and a few wands go flying but some people had mild looks of frustration on their face because of their lack of progress in having success with the spell.

“No one should be discouraged if you are not successfully on the first few tries, just keep trying and I have confidence that all of you can manage to excel with this spell with a little hard work,” said Harry in an encouraging voice before walking around, checking up with the progress of everyone. Harry found that they were all doing rather well for the first couple of tries, but Harry found that they seemed to be a bit tentative right now and they weren’t quite proficient at quickly drawing their wands before the other person had the chance to react than Harry would have liked to see. It only took a few seconds too long for Harry’s tastes but those few seconds would be a definite difference between life and death. Harry made a mental note to attempt to work with everyone on this.

After waiting a couple more minutes, Harry paced around the Room of Requirement looking over everyone’s techniques, while making small suggestions that how they can improve but for the most part, Harry’s critiques were only small.

“I agree, drawing the wand has to be done rather quickly, as you are already giving the person you are facing enough time to react by simply saying the words,” said Hermione who was partnered with Neville after Harry was telling her about how she might want to work on drawing her wand a little quicker.

“Yes, and it doesn’t help when your partner keeps blasting your wand away before you even can draw a breath out,” said Daphne, who was off picking up her wand after Theodore had disarmed her.

“You’re telling me,” said Neville in a slightly bitter voice looking at Hermione. “I mean, I disarmed Hermione once, but it was an accident.”

“Neville, don’t beat yourself up over it, you’ll get better over time,” said Harry. “There are quite a few things that I have trouble with as well.”

Harry didn’t want to tell Neville that the only things that he ever had trouble with was wandless magic, which was something that most normal witches and wizards had trouble even doing even the simplest of charms.

One could perhaps argue the point that Harry was disqualified from this little fact because of the very simple fact that he was farthest thing from normal.

Harry finished up looking at everyone before pulling out his wand and sending a blasted curse at a metal block on the floor that caused a loud sound to echo throughout the room gaining everyone’s attention.

“Not too bad but as we just started, I’m not expecting you to be world class duelists our first go out,” said Harry with a bit of a smirk before growing serious. “But one thing that I would like to remind you of and I will keep saying this is that do not go looking for trouble, no matter how many advanced spells I teach you. Trust me, there may be a chance that the trouble will find you, it has often enough for me, and I would hope that you agree that whatever trouble comes your way is more than enough to deal with. We will have a meeting next Saturday, at the same time, and then I’ll let you know beyond that. See you next meeting.”

Without another word, Harry watched as one by one, everyone but Daphne, Theodore, Hermione, and Ginny left the room. Harry sighed, before sitting down in a chair that just materialized in the room. Everyone had done rather well for a simple, yet effective spell such as the disarming curse, but Harry felt that he had a bit of work ahead of him to get everyone good enough to defend themselves long enough to keep themselves from harm. Harry was adamant about making sure that they knew not to actively fight Death Eaters unless absolutely necessary, but Harry felt that this may come to pass sooner rather than later.

In the early evening, Hailey flew around the Quidditch field, attempting to ignore the stabbing pain in her right hand from that detention that Umbridge had put her through. Of course, detention would be categorizing what happened early very loosely, a better term would be torture session. Hailey didn’t believe that Umbridge would think of using such a horrific tool on school children.

When Hailey first heard she was writing lines, she didn’t worry too much. She had worse detentions but when she saw the writing implement, she was utterly horrified. That damned quill forced her to write line after line in her own blood and the worst part was that Umbridge looked rather pleased at any pain that Hailey managed to show. Hailey had a pretty strong suspicious that Umbridge wanted to condition anyone who disagreed with the Ministry into silence and since Harry was smart enough to keep his opinions of the Ministry to himself around Umbridge so they couldn’t have anything on him, Umbridge made damn sure she punished someone close to Harry

Hailey flew around the Quidditch Pitch, wondering how she was going to survive an entire week of detentions with that horrible, disgusting excuse for a human being; she felt one thing was for certain. She wasn’t going to tell Harry or her mother. Harry had enough to worry about without knowing the details of Hailey’s detentions. As for her mother, well Hailey felt that she would just kill Umbridge or at the very least, severely injure the woman. Not that Hailey had any problems with Umbridge undergoing bodily harm, but she did not want her mother to be sent to Azkaban.

Hailey also debated whether or not she was going to tell anyone, because in her mind that meant conceding defeat to Umbridge.

“So, there you are Hailey, I’ve been looking all over for you all afternoon,” said a voice which caused Hailey to turn around and see Ginny waving her over from the stands. Hailey landed down, putting her broomstick over her shoulder before walking over to greet her friend. “I thought you might want to know what we learned in You-Know-What today.”

“Yes, since I was indisposed I think that would be a good idea,” said Hailey, who was attempting to stealthy conceal her right hand so Ginny did not see the scars on it from the detention with Umbridge.

“Well, Harry more or less blew Voldemort’s cover by telling his life story to everyone,” said Ginny.

“Oh, Tom will be extremely ecstatic when he hears that, I bet,” said Hailey, grinning in spite of the pain in her right hand from the blood quill.

“Yes and Harry must have decided that he hasn’t pissed Tom off enough before he told his life story but I sort of agree that people need to realize that Voldemort is simply an alias so they can lessen the fear they have of his name,” said Ginny. “Then, Harry taught the disarming curse to everyone and that was pretty much our meeting in a nutshell.”

“So nothing I already don’t know,” said Hailey.

Ginny watched as Hailey raised the sleeve of her robe and she could have sworn that she saw a few small spots of blood.

“Hailey, what exactly did you do in detention?” asked Ginny calmly.

“Lines,” said Hailey in a calm voice who made the mistake of raising her right hand, allowing Ginny to see the words “I must not question my betters” etched into her hand.

“Lines! That isn’t lines, whatever that woman made you do in detention was pure and utter evil!” yelled Ginny in an indignant voice. “What exactly did she make you do?”

“She made me write lines in a quill to cut into my hand and wrote the words in my own blood,” said Hailey quickly, as Ginny looked as if she was going to get sick. “Look, Ginny, do not under any circumstances tell Harry about this.”

“I think Harry would want to know about this,” said Ginny in a low voice.

“I know he would, but he has enough to worry about and he might do something to Umbridge that lands him in Azkaban,” said Hailey. “And Mum would react even worse than Harry.”

“I don’t like this,” said Ginny with a frown.

“Yes, that Umbridge woman is got to be stopped,” said Hailey.

“No, I don’t like keeping anything from Harry, “ said Ginny.

“Well, you have to,” said Hailey stubbornly.

“Okay, fine, I won’t say anything but I really think you should, Hailey,” said Ginny. “Because Harry will find out, somehow, just like he’ll eventually find out about that Black Phantom nonsense you pulled twice already.”

Hailey paled quickly at the mention of her alter ego but quickly straightened up to look at Ginny with a look of mock confusion.

“I haven’t had the slightest idea what you are talking about,” said Hailey in an innocent voice.

“Hailey, I’m not stupid, you know,” said Ginny in a final voice. “I had a theory the first time but the second time I was completely sure it was you in that cheap disguise.”

“Cheap disguise, how dare you, that’s in insult!” exclaimed Hailey before quickly adding. “Or it would be if I was the Black Phantom, which I’m not.”

Ginny sighed, putting her head in her hands in frustration. Sometimes talking to that girl could be slightly headache inducing.

“For the quill thing, I really think you should tell Harry,” said Ginny. “For the Black Phantom thing, for Salazar’s sake please quit while you’re ahead.”

“If you say so, Ginny,” said Hailey before turning and walking towards the school for another word.

Around this time, Lord Voldemort sat in the heart of his base of operations, deep in thought, looking over the floor plan for Azkaban prison that detailed all of the security charms, outside of the Dementors that Voldemort had under his control thanks to the Eye of Darkness. The plan to swipe the scrolls that Voldemort had his eye on from Hogwarts required many capable Death Eaters to keep any unfortunate surprises at bay and unfortunately, most of those who were not entombed in Azkaban lacked the competence that Voldemort required to pull off an operation to left no room for error.

Fortunately, Voldemort had dozens of able Death Eaters locked away in Azkaban and even through their minds may have been driven to the point of insanity, Voldemort cared little about their minds, only their viciousness along with the ability to perform magic. Even his most able followers during the height of his uprising were considered to be mere puppets and little else.

Voldemort looked over the plans for the prison; the Ministry had upgraded the defenses around the prison since the escape of Sirius Black and Bellatrix Lestrange a couple years ago. Still, there was a slight defect that allowed even Muggles to slip through undetected. And what better way to pull off an efficient retrieval operation of his most deadly followers, was to send a group of ninjas into the prison to sneak in and sneak his Death Eaters out.

Voldemort laughed at his own genius, the Ministry of Magic would not expect a wide scale jailbreak without one bit of magic being used in the operation. The Dark Lord made plans to get in contact with his business partner Oroku Saki to work on a plan to break his followers out of Azkaban involving Saki’s Foot Ninjas.