Benji approached the Room of Requirement nervously. He had seen the flier up on the bulletin board. He had seen the symbol. He was pretty sure he knew what it meant. And that he could potentially get in trouble if he showed up. And then Certified Good Boy Benji Park, the Boy Who Did Not Break Rules, decided that he had to go.

Merlin, his parents were going to kill him.

He hadn't told anybody anything, not even Penny. He wondered briefly if he should have. But no, he didn't want to implicate her in anything... If he got into trouble, he didn't want it to happen to her, too.

Ironically, she was kind of the reason he felt like he needed to be here. He had never broken a Hogwarts rule, not even one single time, until he had met her. And now that they had done it once, he couldn't imagine not being able to hug her or hold her hand or kiss her but that one was a secret again.

Of course, he'd been upset before by the new regime. It wasn't like he'd been perfectly happy until Penny came along. She was just the catalyst for him feeling like he needed to be proactive in making a change. He'd never liked it. The rules, the professors being sacked, all of it was complete rubbish in his opinion. But he'd been raised not to speak up, not to make a ruckus, definitely not to fight back. In fact, his attitude toward the beginning of the year had been annoyance at those students who did try to fight back. He had wondered why they couldn't just make things easy on themselves and go with the flow. Why complain when you couldn't change anything? And the thought of talking back to or arguing with or disrespecting an adult... The thought still made his skin crawl. But he had finally realized that he couldn't sit back and ignore it anymore. Now that Penny was around, and now that all of his favorite professors -- especially Professor Stewart -- had been sacked... Well, he felt it necessary.

He entered the room cautiously and saw only one other person there. Must be the one who had called for this. He was the first to arrive? He remembered the girl... Something about her uniform in Care of Magical Creatures...? He didn't know her, but he recognized her, anyway. "Hi," he said softly. "Is this the... study group?" He held up the Divination textbook he'd brought with him. Just in case he was wrong and this was a real study group, he figured he'd bring something he actually did need help with.