Title: A Call to Arms

Prompts: One of my entries for the 'School Subjects Competition – Defense Against the Dark Arts'

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is a trademarked brand owned by J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers; any material used belongs to the aforementioned parties. This material is only used in recreational purposes and I receive no monetary or material rewards from using it. Please don't sue me.

In the weeks following the end of the war, everyone involved would agree unanimously that it had been all Terry Boot's idea.

They call his actions 'heroically strategic in the face of impending disaster' - a description that never fails to make the Ravenclaw a bit uncomfortable when he hears it, because he's still not entirely sure if he deserves to be held in such high regard.

Did he do the right thing? Did he make the best choice? Terry's spent many a sleepless night pondering these questions, and most nights he can't come up with a conclusive answer, perhaps because there isn't one: complicated questions don't have simple answers.

Sometimes, when he's just thinking about it in terms of numbers and statistics, he knows that they would've been hopelessly outnumbered without his message rallying so many people into fighting, that even more students, mere children most of them, would've been slaughtered without the backup he inadvertently provided. Then he remembers the fallen, the people that were lured into a battle that ultimately led to their demise at his signal, people that might be alive today if not for Terry, and he wonders how he'll ever manage to live with himself with so much guilt weighing down on him.

And not once has anyone questioned his judgment on the matter, but Terry still feels the need to justify his actions to someone, even if the only person asking for such justification is himself, because it was his idea. Because even though Neville Longbottom's the one who physically sent the message, Terry's the one who cast the spell. Terry's the one who altered the Protean charm on the DA coins, enchanting them with an alarm system that was set to activate whenever the serial of any one coin changed to a specific number, creating the chain reaction that people were already starting to refer to as 'The Call to Arms'.

'Hey Neville,' Terry asks suddenly, breaking the silence in the Room of Requirement. He and the Gryffindor are the only two still awake, and now seems just as good a time as any to ask a question he's been worrying about for a while now. 'What's the plan for when Harry finally shows up? Do we even have one?'

'Well, I promised Ginny and Luna that I would send them a message via the coins, but other than that, I don't really have one. I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'

'Oh.'

'I dunno mate, what else can we do?' Neville says with a shrug. 'When Harry finally risks showing his face around here, it'll be the beginning of the end, you can count on that. We just have to trust that he'll have a plan.'

There's silence for a few minutes as Terry thinks this over. Neville's right of course. If Harry does come back to Hogwarts, it would have to be for a damn good reason. He pictures a gigantic army swooping down on the ancient castle in pursuit of the-boy-who-lived, an army so large and so far reaching….

Terry shivers. The few DA members that hadn't gone on the run or graduated would never be able to match them alone.

Then he has an idea.

'What's the message you, Ginny, and Luna decided on for when Harry shows up?' Terry asks.

'645056734,' Neville reels off from memory.

The translation comes easily to Terry after a whole year's worth of practice, but even still, he's confused.

'F-D-E, space, E-F-G-C-D," he says with a frown. 'What sort of gibberish is that?'

Neville shrugs again. 'It's something that Luna came up with,' he says as if that should explain everything, and in a way, it does. 'She said it was some sort of super-special code or something, extra wrackspurt resistant just in case.'

'Let me see your coin.'

Neville complies, throwing both the coin and a questioning glance in the Ravenclaw's direction.

He taps it with his wand, muttering a spell under his breath. The coin glows red for a moment but is otherwise unchanged. He tosses it back to the pureblood who catches it deftly.

'What did you do to it?' he asks curiously.

'Just in case,' Terry echoes.

So in the end, it doesn't matter whether or not Terry's choice was the right one, because it's a choice that's already been made, and nothing he can do will change it.

(They say that hindsight is 20/20, but Terry's starting to wonder if he's the exception to this rule, because no matter how much he replays his memories, he can't think of a single action he could've taken that would've made the outcome any better than it already is.)

(When he's feeling his most optimistic, he wonders if that's because there wasn't one.)