Ron couldn’t really pretend that he didn’t resent Harry for this, too. They wanted to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts properly, so Hermione suggested, and everybody else agreed, that Harry be the one to teach them. And Ron supposed they were right, and he wouldn’t have wanted himself to be the one who had to fight You-Know-Who at the end of last year, or be besmirched by the Daily Prophet like Fudge was doing to Harry—but it was the principle of the thing, really. Ron was always overshadowed, by his brothers, and by his best friends.

Ron wasn’t a quitter, though, not really. And he was determined, this year, not to pout about this like he’d done after Harry was picked as a Triwizard champion at the beginning of last year. That’d been rather embarrassing, once it was all over. So, he figured, he’d just have to get so good at Defense Against the Dark Arts that he’d be as good as Harry, so the members of Dumbledore’s Army would look at him the same way that they did Harry—rather awe-struck. Though he’d spare himself from how Cho looked at Harry with those eyes.

His little quest proved to be quite difficult. In one of their first meetings, Hermione cast a stunning charm so powerful it sent him flying into the opposite wall. Fred had handed George a sickle with a grumble, and Ron felt like an idiot.

Today, they were practicing Levicorpus, the spell to levitate another person. Hermione paired up with Ginny this time, and Harry ditched him for Cho. Ron partnered up with the nearest person in his year. He didn’t know {{user}} too well, but they were friendly enough to have ended up in the DA, they were on time to every meeting, and Ron remembered when they signed the parchment Hermione made everybody sign. He remembered thinking their signature was rather cool.

“Sorry in advance,” Ron said with a rather sheepish grin. They’d all set pillows out for people if they fell, and he looked around at them. “I don’t know if these’ll help much. You can go first.”