He put the proposal to McGonagall on the fourth of November, in the early-morning window before first period when her office was available.
He presented it as a student initiative responding to a documented need. The OWLS and NEWTS Defense curriculum, he said, required practical application that the current class format — which he was careful to describe accurately and without unnecessary editorial — did not fully provide. There were students across multiple houses and years who would benefit from a structured additional practice opportunity. He was proposing, with her approval, a twice-weekly session in the Great Hall before dinner, supervised, open to any student who wished to attend.
McGonagall looked at him across her desk with the expression she had when she was assessing something for the traps in it. She found none, because he had not put any there.
'This would be open to all houses,' she said.
'Yes,' he said. 'Including Slytherin.'
She absorbed this. 'You would run it yourself.'
'With assistance from other competent students,' he said. 'Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny have all indicated willingness to help facilitate. The sessions would focus on exam-relevant material. I'll provide session plans in advance for your review.'
She looked at him for a long moment. He had the sense, as he sometimes did in McGonagall's office, of being weighed in a way that was not unkind but was thorough.
'You have my approval,' she said. 'Session plans three days before each session. Any concerns about conduct are reported to me directly.'
'Understood,' he said.
'And Mr. Weasley.' He was almost at the door. 'Whatever else this group is,' she said, 'it will also be exactly what you've described it as. The exam preparation should be real as the students do need it.'
'Yes,' he said. 'That was always the plan.'
She nodded once and went back to her work.
The first session was on the Wednesday of the following week, seven to eight-thirty before dinner, in the Great Hall with the house tables pushed to the sides to create a working floor.
Forty-seven students came.
He had not expected forty-seven. He had prepared for thirty and had been planning to be satisfied with twenty. Forty-seven arrived from all four houses, in the various configurations of people who had different reasons for being there and had all decided that being there was worth the time.
He stood at the front of the cleared floor and looked at them for a moment — the range of them, the mixed configurations of houses sitting beside each other with the specific slightly uncertain quality of people who were used to very defined social geography and were managing the unfamiliarity.
'This is a Defense practice group,' he said. 'The aim is simple: when you sit your OWL or your NEWT, you will be able to perform every spell on the practical component correctly and without hesitation. If that's what you want, this is the right place to be. We begin with the foundations. The foundations are not boring — they are the thing that makes everything else work. Any questions before we start?'
There were three questions. He answered them precisely and without condescension and then they began.
He ran it the way he ran everything that involved teaching — full explanation of the principle before the practice, the assumption that everyone in the room was capable until they demonstrated otherwise, the specific quality of someone who had been taught badly enough in his original life to understand what good teaching felt like from the inside. Hermione took the east half of the floor. Neville took the north end, where the Herbology-adjacent Charms applications gave him particular authority. Ginny moved through the room with the ease of someone who could identify the specific problem in a student's casting from six feet away and had no patience for the kind of feedback that softened the point into uselessness.
Luna ran the silence practise at the far end. This had not been part of the original plan. She had simply sat down with a group of third-years who were struggling with non-verbal Lumos and begun talking to them in the way she talked to things she found interesting, and by the end of the session they had all managed it and had the quality of people who did not entirely understand how.
By the end of the first session, three Slytherin students who had sat at the back and said nothing were staying to ask questions.
He answered them. He noted their names.
The second group assembled itself.
He had not announced it. He had not advertised it. He had simply, at the end of the fourth public session, looked at a specific set of people as they were leaving and said, without raising his voice: 'If you have time on Saturday morning. Room of Requirements. Seven o'clock.'
They came.
Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Luna — his core group, present as he had known they would be. Fred and George, who had the quality of people who had made a decision about what the year required and were implementing it with characteristic thoroughness. Cedric Diggory who was now Head boy.
Susan Bones arrived separately from Hannah Abbott, though they came from the same direction and had clearly walked there together and had decided, for reasons of their own, to arrive as individuals rather than a pair. Susan had the quality of Amelia's niece — the assessment, the specific attention of someone who had grown up understanding what the world could become and had been thinking about their response to that understanding for some time. Hannah had the quality of someone who was slightly afraid and had decided that being afraid was not a sufficient reason not to be there.
Cho Chang came with Cedric. She did not speak for the first session beyond the necessary, but she was present and attentive and her casting, which he had observed in the public sessions, had the quality of someone with real skill and real motivation.
Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis arrived together, in the configuration of people who had made a decision jointly and were committed to it. Their presence in the room produced a specific quality — not hostility from the others, but a particular alertness, the awareness of a boundary that had not existed before. He let it sit for a moment. Then he said: 'Welcome. You know why you're here. We start the same way every session.'
They started.
The second group's first session was different in quality from the public sessions — not just more demanding, though it was that, but more honest. He told them directly what he had told Harry and Hermione and the others in fourth year: there was going to be a war. Not a distant possibility. A certainty, arriving on a specific timeline. He was asking them to prepare for it. This was what preparing looked like.
He looked at each of them in turn as he said it. None of them looked away.
Fred said, from the back: 'You've been building to this for a long time, haven't you.'
'Yes,' Ron said.
George looked at Fred. Fred looked at George. Something moved between them that had the quality of a conversation compressed into a look — the specific twin communication he had observed since he had memories of observing anything. Then Fred nodded once, with the quality of someone confirming a thing they had already decided.
Cedric said: 'What do you need from us?'
'The work,' Ron said. 'That's all. Show up and do the work and trust the process even when it feels basic. The moment where basic saves your life is not the moment to discover you skipped it.'
Cedric nodded. 'Then let's do the work,' he said.