(minor tweaks to Author Notes, 10th March, 2015)

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following one-shot is set in an alternate universe where, one difference aside over the mechanics of how Hallowe'en 1981 played out in Godric's Hollow, everything else went as canon up until the end of the 1994-1995 Hogwarts school year (which in canon is that of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). During the scene in the graveyard at the end of the Triwizard Tournament Voldemort's actions and dark magic had effects beyond those of canon (although they weren't apparent to anyone on the scene at the time). As of the opening of this story, something dark and sinister has come to Hogwarts...

Warning: The following story is tagged as 'Horror' and is rated 'T'.

There was something wrong with the seemingly smug, self-satisfied, woman in the pink cardigan bustling around at the front of the defence classroom, Harry Potter realised. After a few minutes, he pinpointed exactly what it was. When she'd been there during his trial before the Wizengamot, her eyes had been brown. Now they were for some reason green.

The woman caught him staring at her and smirked back. Harry hastily looked away.

"Something bothering you, Mr. Potter?" she asked.

Oh yes, the voice was the same, although it sounded not quite so unctuous now – perhaps because there wasn't any minister around to suck up to.

"No." Harry said, and as an afterthought added a hasty "Ma'am."

"Splendid." the woman said. She paced to the front of the class and raised her voice slightly. On her own, in front of the class, she had a sort of terrifying presence.

"The Ministry of Magic is aware that unhelpful personages have been attempting to spread fear and panic by starting a rumour that You-Know-Who is 'back'. You-Know-Who was quite thoroughly killed by Mr. Potter here back on Halloween, 1981, as far as the Ministry is concerned and it is thus impossible for 'him' to be back. Therefore, you will all repeat after me, before we commence the lesson, 'The Ministry says that You-Know-Who is dead'. On the count of three: One. Two. Three."

There were a few half-hearted murmurs from the class, and the woman from the ministry tsked.

She drew her wand, and suddenly had everyone's attention. It was long. It was sleek. And suddenly there seemed to be a faint scent of smoke, and of ozone, tinged with sulphur in the air.

"Perhaps a class which contains so many brave Gryffindors requires me to 'conduct' them in? I have authorisation to use magical compulsion, if need be, I assure you. Now, let us try again: One, two, three." She beat the air in time to her words with her wand like a conductor's baton, and this time, the entire class, in some cases not entirely willingly, joined in.

"The Ministry says that You-Know-Who is dead."

"That was somewhat half-hearted, but will have to do for a first lesson." she said. "Now, you will all open your textbooks at page 92 and read it. Then you will read pages 93, 94, and 95. Does anyone not understand this?"

Lavendar Brown put her hand up.

"Yes, Miss Brown?" the woman from the Ministry said, pointing her wand at her.

"Will we, err, be doing anything other than reading?" Lavendar asked.

"Miss Brown: The Ministry's perspective at present is that school-children are not expected to participate in fights against dark wizards. For OWL level, you are required to understand nothing more than the theory in this class, and I will be severely displeased if I catch you trying to hex one another or use any kind of magic in one of my classes."

"What about practical exams though?" Hermione had her hand up.

"Miss Granger." the pink-cardigan wearer rounded on Hermione, the wand following to point at Hermione. "The Ministry is abolishing all practical exams in defence against the dark arts except for those of NEWT students who plan a career in magical law enforcement or in the auror service."

"But…" Hermione began, and then trailed off, and scowled.

"Are you unwell, Miss Granger?" the teacher asked.

"No, but…"

"Then a point from Gryffindor for pulling a face at me. And in future you will address me as 'ma'am' or 'Madam Umbridge' whilst in class. You wear a prefect's badge. You are supposed to be an example to your house and to the school."

There were no further comments or questions, and the class sat in a cowed silence and read, whilst Umbridge sat at the front of the room. She had produced a ball of wool and some knitting needles from somewhere, and sat there clicking away, occasionally pausing to glance at a pocket watch.

"It is now twenty minutes to the end of the class." the woman at last put away her needles. "I shall return in fifteen minutes' time. I am going away to check on my pet kneazle. You will continue to study in my absence."

And just like that she swept out of the classroom.

Ron brightened at once.

"Is she really gone, do you suppose?" he asked Harry.

"Does it matter? She's going to be back, and we've got a whole year of her." Harry complained.

"Mate. If she's going to be gone for a quarter of an hour, then we've got ten minutes or so to practise, unless she's got some way to watch us when she's out of the room." Ron pointed out, as he pulled out his wand. "Post someone on the door to watch out for her, just in case she comes back early, and…"

Hermione looked scandalised.

"Ron." Hermione hissed. "We're prefects. We're supposed to be setting an example."

"And I reckon that this is just the sort of example that we ought to be setting." Ron said.

And so the great secret rebellion commenced.

By the time that half a term had passed, it had become apparent that Professor Umbridge would routinely disappear at some point in the last twenty minutes or so of any given defence lesson, and although she occasionally came back early (and put a whole third year class which had omitted to post a watch in detention when she caught them actually practising spells) there was always at least ten minutes into which practical work could be crammed.

"It's almost as if she's playing a game with us." Ron concluded several weeks into the term. "Telling us what the Ministry expects us to think and do, but not going out of her way to enforce it unless we get careless. There's got to be a catch in it somewhere."

The more that Harry saw of her, the greater the doubts he had that, even though she looked the same and had the same sounding voice, this was not the same woman as the one who had been involved in his prosecution for the use of magic. He occasionally wondered if, whomever she was, this woman had the 'real' Dolores Umbridge trussed up somewhere and was drinking polyjuice to imitate her, although this theory lacked the supporting evidence of constant swigging from a flask which 'fake Moody' had been regularly doing last year – well that, and that her eyes should be brown (assuming that that had been the true colour of the woman's at the Wizengamot hearing) if she was taking polyjuice. The Marauders' Map wasn't much help in resolving the issue. It showed that someone was there but nothing other than a constantly shifting set of squiggles which Hermione hadn't yet managed to identify to indicate an identity. But as Hermione had pointed out, maybe the squiggles just meant that the woman had some sort of magical protections against identification.

As Christmas neared, Harry took the chance to confront Professor Umbridge in her office.

"Are you really Dolores Umbridge?" he asked her, having discussed this with Ron and Hermione beforehand, and taken the precaution of their knowing exactly who he was going to see and for what purpose.

"Mr. Potter. I believe it has become something of a tradition for your defence against the dark arts professor to either try to kill you or to otherwise attempt do you serious harm upon an approximately annual basis." the woman in the pink cardigan said to him. "It would be a pity if this pattern were to repeat itself so early in this school year." she said in a tone chilling in its utter casualness.

Harry made his apologies and hurriedly escaped.

He concluded it would not be a good idea to continue with attempts to question her identity for now. It wasn't as if she was actually a *bad* teacher, by defence standards, and she seemed to give Professor Snape the absolute willies too for some reason. Professor Snape had glanced at her during the welcoming feast, meeting her eyes, and gone deathly pale (even by Snape standards) and almost crumpled at the knees, and had seemed different thus far for the rest of the year. He'd cut his snarky remarks in potions classes to a minimum, and reserved the really strong language for occasions solely involving carelessness and some sort of brewing disaster. The fact that Professor Umbridge seemed to turn up in potions classes with a notebook and quill to check his 'teaching methods' far more regularly than in any other classes seemed to have him constantly glancing over his shoulder…

Author Notes:

As a reminder, this story is clearly identified as 'horror'.

To clarify what I consider it necessary to clarify, in this universe, between the dates of Harry's trial before the Wizengamot and the start of the 1995-1996 Hogwarts school year, Dolores Umbridge was attacked and horribly killed by something from the infernal regions, which has since adopted her shape to gain access to Hogwarts. That 'something' has a very particular interest in Harry Potter, and in fact crossed over to the material plane as a side-effect Voldemort neither intended (nor, if he knew it was going to happen, would have wanted) of Lord Voldemort's 'resurrection ritual' of the end of the Triwizard Tournament. (It wasn't apparent to anyone in the Little Hangleton graveyard at the time that the ritual had caused anything to arrive on the scene from an infernal dimension, as the entity did not arrive accompanied by any flashy lights or dramatic thunderclap, nor did it immediately manifest itself in any visible form.) At the moment said entity is observing Hogwarts and toying with the regular inhabitants, pretending to be Dolores Umbridge, carrying out her Ministerial-assigned mission, whilst in fact doing its best to subvert said mission for its own amusement. Nobody at Hogwarts realises the entity's true nature, except for Severus Snape – who has his own reasons for keeping silent, but who is currently engaged in frantic research to try to determine what might be going on?

This story is a one-shot, posted whilst I try to get the fourth installment of another (unconnected) story on this site, 'What If?', into some sort of shape fit for posting. For the record, I suspect that if this story continued that Voldemort would be utterly annihilated at the end of the 1995-1996 school year, when he ran into the entity currently imitating Dolores during a confrontation at the Ministry, Voldemort having lured Harry Potter, much as in canon, down to try to retrieve the prophecy. Harry Potter would, with his usual luck, barely escape being dragged down to the nether regions by the entity as it departed. (It amuses me to think that maybe Peter Pettigrew's intervention and sacrifice ('No! You want vengeance on me! Take me with you!') might end up being what ultimately saves Harry from said 'being dragged down'.)