To say it had been a chaotic year was a vast understatement, and things didn’t seem to be calming down anytime soon. In fact, if Harry Potter was to be believed, it would only get worse. Far worse. Sansa wished she could put it all from her mind. She had tried. They’re only rumors, she told herself. You’re safe, your family is safe. But the more time that passed, the less certain she became. How else could the events of the Triwizard Tournament be explained? How could someone like Dolores Umbridge be explained? Fudge was off his rocker if he trusted her. Sansa certainly didn’t. The truth was, no one was safe while Voldemort was still a potential threat, and even if he wasn’t, Umbridge still had to be stopped.
Even considering all this, when her third cousin Ron approached her about a secret meeting for learning real Defense Against the Dark Arts, she was torn. No one wanted to believe Voldemort was back in full force. It meant a war was coming, and it was almost too much to bear imagining the terrible possibilities if the Dark Lord won that war. Still, if a war was on the way, she’d need to know how to defend herself, and she certainly couldn’t do that by studying the way Umbridge wanted them to.
Sansa had nearly made her mind up, but she still wanted to talk things over with someone she trusted, so at breakfast, she took a seat beside her other third cousin, Ginny, in the Great Hall. Being a Ravenclaw, she garnered a few stares from the younger Gryffindors nearby, but she paid them no mind. She was a sixth year, after all, and Ginny was family. “Good morning, cousin. I thought we might have a word - I’m not sure I can make it to the meeting.” She spoke carefully so as not to arouse suspicion from anyone not in on the secret.