The best Christmas gift

Potter had hoped that several members of his year from all houses would join his initiative to create a secret study group, but to his surprise, there were only a few Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students, a couple of Slytherins who he knew were not purebloods and not a single Galegold student present, which secretly annoyed him quite a bit.

He hoped Hermione, who was now a prefect like his friend Ron, would come to her senses and help him, but apparently her friendship with Soisen outweighed her duty to her fellow House mates.

Hell, even Neville wasn't present and he didn't understand why.

Ever since he got that punch (completely unwarranted in his opinion) at the end of the tournament, it seemed like every member of Galegold was giving him the cold shoulder, no doubt declaring where his loyalties lay.

He would not and would not admit that he was wrong and made the wrong decision, because he witnessed something far more important and that more than made up for it all, the resurrection of Voldemort.

To his good fortune, it seems that all was not so bad and he cunningly discovered an ideal place to practice all thanks to an unintentional oversight by the dean of his house.

The strange thing is that later on, no matter if he walked past three, six or nine times, no door appeared no matter how clear his request was in his mind. With no other choice, he had to turn Hogsmeade outings into lessons that would take place at the Shrieking House.

They named themselves Dumbledore's Army after several votes and Potter was beginning to like how things were finally unfolding, he could feel the scorn he would receive slowly being replaced by admiration.

A real shame that when he went especially to invite Cho, she refused on the spot saying she had further plans with Cedric with a smile that took his breath away.

The imaginary arrow of those words struck her heart and it was painful.

...Meanwhile in those days....

Umbridge was becoming unbearable even to the other "colleagues" at Hogwarts. This was especially true because her (unwanted) presence often interrupted the usual flow of lessons with ill-timed, rude questions or insulting actions.

The look Flitwick gave the pink toad when he brought out the tape measure to measure it....

And then came the moment when the veteran and not-so-good Divination teacher, Trelawney, was expelled from the school by Umbridge, but not from the castle grounds thanks to Dumbledore's intervention.

The bad news? The Decrees began to arrive, granting Umbridge more and more power like bullets fired from a machine gun.

The Grand Inquisitor.

Yes, they had to put the word grand, otherwise it wouldn't be pompous enough for Umbridge.

(I know that actually Dumbledore's Army is founded after that and not before, but as I said, this is AU and there's a lot of butterfly effects involved.)

Disbandment of study groups, quidditch teams, etc.

In fact, it was quite surprising to many how Galegold House managed to evade such sanctions by using excuses that were not only convenient, but could not be refuted even by Umbridge no matter how much she thought about it, forcing her to ask for additional Decrees for these specific situations.

Besides, she had bigger headaches to deal with, such as a certain poltergeist in the castle that kept bothering her over and over again, attracting most of her attention without realizing it.

Soisen spent most of her free time teaching her House and starting Hogwarts modifications with the covert help of Silvia, who, upon seeing that they would carry out her ideas, was very excited.

Materials weren't even a problem thanks to her house elves!

The end of December came and calculating the time, she warned Ginny that her father might be attacked these days in the Department of Mysteries.

She read it at the bottom of a teacup.

Mmm, was she perhaps resorting too much to that excuse?

...

Nah, it was still working well.

Why wasn't he sure?

Well, originally it would be Nagini attacking Mr. Weasley, but now it could be another snake instead. At the same time, he remembered the clock the family had to indicate the status of each member, which could confirm his warning.

Ginny didn't even question the information, knowing her friend would never joke about something like that and wrote home worriedly for her mother to consult the clock. Three days later, Ginny learned that her father had been found injured and was on the verge of death, if they hadn't received the alert from Molly when she saw the change in the watch and sent a portrait to alert some friends there, they really don't know what could have happened.

Ginny was hit much harder by the news than Soisen expected and carried away by her emotions, she hugged and kissed Soisen several times on the cheek as she cried with relief that her father was slowly recovering, but with no permanent after-effects.

Soisen patted the back of the no longer so little agitated witch, and patiently waited for her to finish crying and calm her emotions before ending up asleep and sending her to her dormitory with the help of Luna and some more girls from the House.

At the same time, the Weasley twins also got the news and sought out Soisen the same day to thank him very earnestly for what he did, promising that they would remember him. Then they returned to their usual humor and warned him that he would receive a Weasley sweater for Christmas with no chance of error.

After the reminder, everyone in the Weasley family returned to spend Christmas with their parents.

The only Weasley who didn't come to say thank you was Ron and as for the reason, he couldn't care less, but he had his suspicions. Maybe he was still suspicious of him and believed that the only way he could find out what had happened, was if he was behind it or working for the morphs. As long as she didn't bother him, she could put her conspiracy theories where they fit.

In January, the magical community had a big scare due to a mass escape that occurred at Azkaban where one of the most prominent escapees was Bellatrix Lestrange.

Neville held the copy of The Prophet so tightly that it punctured the pages of magical ink and during the following encounters, Soisen had to intercede when he was driven by anger, yielding counterproductive results only suitable for dark magic.

Surprisingly, The Fussy conducted an interview with Potter despite the lack of action from Hermione and Luna, who in the original story were the ones who came up with the idea to give Potter the opportunity to tell the tale of the dark lord's return. But, instead of Rita Skeeter, who had been missing for months when rumors spread that she suddenly became a squib, it was a different, not-so-well-known reporter who conducted the interview.

This meant that the numbers were not as high as originally, but due to Umbridge's subsequent ban on any student owning a copy of The Fussy, it actually had the opposite effect due to the rebellious feelings everyone had towards her.