Notes: Umbridge's mind is a scary place to be.
Story written for the Secret Coconut, a fic exchange promoted by the community Saint Seiya Super Fics Journal. Signups for the next round start 8/6/12!
Characters/Pairings: Dolores Umbridge
Genre(s): Gen/Character Study
Dolores Umbridge adjusted her bright pink scarf to lay perfectly over her pink sweater, and looked around the room that was to be her office at Hogwarts.
She gave a delicate, ladylike sigh at the disarray. There were boxes everywhere! She disliked all the disorder, but then again, it wasn't like any of the imbeciles who made a joke of running this school could have arranged her office properly.
With another carefully practiced sigh, she waved her wand, and the boxes flew open. Her favorite cat figurines flew to their preordained places on the walls—they always went in the same order, of course—while furniture assembled itself and paperwork filed itself with perfect precision.
It was enough to bring a smile to Umbridge's lips. The one thing she loved more than anything else was bringing order to chaos.
That was why she was here.
This school had once been a great, well-ordered bastion of learning…but now, it had fallen from that great height to something much lower and meaner. She had seen the pictures, with the past students marching silently in ordered rows, each wearing the proud uniform of Hogwarts and moving together in unison.
Unlike now.
Now, they all insisted on being different, even though they were nothing but students! If they wanted to stand out, they needed to work hard and get into the Ministry, where their talents could be appreciated…assuming they had any, of course. Most of them didn't. Certainly not enough to be anything more than rank-and-file witches and wizards.
Umbridge shook her head firmly. No, mere students needed to learn their place. Their job was to keep quiet and pass tests, that was all.
And the teachers…if anything, they were even worse!
Many of them actually encouraged things like independent thought…among children! It was bad enough when all adults were encouraged to think independently, but children? No, no, that would just make a mess of things. It had made a mess of things; just look at this place!
Umbridge turned a delicate frown around the room, pausing to adjust one of her decorated plates and straighten a stack of papers.
She should feel better now that the room was to its proper state, but she didn't.
No, how could she feel good about the order of a single room when she still had a whole castle to set to rights?
With her frown deepening, but still ever-so-ladylike, Umbridge adjusted her pink hat, turned on her heel and stalked off to show the rest of the school what true order looked like.
It wasn't as easy as she had thought, and she hadn't thought it would be easy.
Still, she had expected a little more cooperation than this.
It seemed like every time she tried to make an improvement, these fools came up with a thousand new ways to upset the stability of her little empire.
It was incredibly frustrating.
Why were they acting like this? Didn't they know that she was the representative of the Ministry, and thus deserving of their respect? Did they honestly prefer such bedlam? Didn't they know that everything the Ministry did, everything she did, was for the greater good?
True, making some enemies was unavoidable, simply a cost of doing her job properly. Bad people had to be punished, after all.
She just hadn't expected so many disobedient students! No matter what punishments she came up with to encourage them to do better, they still kept coming back for more!
And the teachers…well, obviously she couldn't put them in detention, much as she wished she could, so corporal punishment was out. Still, she did have a great deal of authority here, and could make the lives of those who opposed her miserable in other ways…or simply get rid of them, like that useless Divination professor, or that filthy half-breed groundskeeper.
Why on earth any of the other teachers would want to keep such people around she had no idea. But apparently they did…and they were willing to defy her to get what they wanted! They would defy her!
Oh, they were usually subtle about it, much more than the students. Indeed, it often took the form of simply turning a blind eye to the children's clearly illegal activities.
Oh, they knew. She could tell, but she couldn't prove it.
This was beyond frustrating, since she didn't yet have the power to punish people based on her suspicions.
She would, though.
Some day, she would.
And then there would be nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent her from realizing her dreams of a perfect world, where everything was in its place and nothing dared stray out of the ordained order of things.
No matter what the cost, to her or anyone else…
She was going to bring order to chaos.