QLFC round 4
cannons, keeper
prompt: write about the umbridges
word count: 1183
Dolores allows herself a moment to bask in the metaphorical sun of contentment. She's earned it, really. Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, stellar Defense Against the Dark Arts professor—and all before thirty! Yes, in the ten minutes before Harry Potter is supposed to show up for his detention, she is going to bask in her glory. Dolores sinks into her pink desk chair, flutters her pink eyelids, smiles (lips pink, of course), and watches her favorite kittens frolic in the pink picture frames on the pink wall.
The knock comes at the door all too soon. "You may enter," she simpers, removing a sheet of parchment and a very special quill from her desk drawer.
The boy comes in, his expression already loathsome. Dolores is really doing him a favor with these detentions; if she doesn't teach him this lesson, no one will! It's all well and good going around spouting such nonsense about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as a teenager, but graduates of Hogwarts should know better.
Harry stares straight at her even as he sits down, and Dolores holds his gaze. This face-to-face time with students is really the best part of her job. Smiling still, she stands up from behind her desk and places the parchment and quill in front of Harry.
Dolores sits back down at her desk and opens a folder at random. She likes to watch her students in detention; it's so satisfying to know she's making a difference in these young people's lives. She flips through some essays on theoretical patronuses and is almost halfway through the stack when she notices that it is far too quiet. There's no scratching of a quill on parchment, no grunts of pain that Harry thinks he can hide. Dolores looks up.
Harry is sitting there, stock-still, certainly not writing out his lines. The parchment is as bare and empty as the minds of most of the children at this school, and the cuts on Harry's hand are scabbed, not weeping blood as they ought to be by now. Dolores has half a mind to get up out of her chair and force some discipline into this child, but she composes herself and opts for subtlety, as usual.
"Hem, hem."
"Yes, Professor?" His voice is oozing sarcasm, which gives her a great idea for Educational Decree number thirty-seven.
Dolores rises calmly from her chair, crossing from behind her desk to stand in front of Harry. She isn't much taller than he is, standing at her fullest height while he's slumped in his seat. "I only wondered if there might be a problem with your assignment."
"No. No problem, Professor."
"I don't think the message has quite sunk in enough," she says, relishing each syllable. The boy is lying even now, while she's teaching him this lesson. "Another week's detention, I think."
For the first time since he entered her office, Harry Potter looks upset. His armor has begun to crack. "There's Quidditch—"
"That is enough." Dolores smiles widely and smooths down her skirt. "You will begin your lines, and you will report to my office next Monday at seven."
Harry looks for a moment as if he is going to talk back to her. She can practically hear him protesting as he is so fond of doing, but he manages to restrain himself. The sound of a scratching quill fills the office once again, and Dolores returns to her seat.
She takes this time to straighten up her desk. Parchments are sorted, quills are placed in a jar, Cornelius's portrait is polished with her sleeve. Her gaze lingers on the portrait, in which the Minister is twirling his ubiquitous bowler hat. Cornelius would be proud of how she's handled the Potter situation, Dolores thinks.
The scratching of the quill pauses momentarily. She hears something in its place, and Dolores looks up to see that Harry has torn through the parchment with his quill. His knuckles are bright white, from the blood loss or the barely controlled rage, she doesn't know. After a moment, the scratching starts again, and she smiles to herself. Yes, Cornelius would be proud.
Dolores does not look at Harry's desk for another half hour. She really would love to watch, but, as she learned from her mother, indifference can be more painful than scrutiny.
After an hour, Harry lets out a hiss of pain. It's wonderful to see his defenses come down. Glancing at the state of his hand, Dolores decides the message has sunk in enough for the evening. She's just about to stand and tell him so when Harry beats her to it.
He stands in a flash, knocking over his chair. The quill floats to the floor, its slow descent incongruous with the fast, hot rage that consumes Harry. He storms towards her, and Dolores lets out an involuntary squeak before she sees that he's only going for her decorative kitten plates. She'd prefer he not smash them, but everything can be repaired.
Dolores, somehow, cannot draw her wand. She sits there frozen at her desk as Harry reaches for her third favorite plate and hurls it at the ground.
It shatters. Where there once was a scene of a gray spotted kitten frolicking in a meadow, there is dust. And still, Dolores cannot get up to defend herself. She's never been put in a body bind before (all her combat training was theoretical), but she imagines it would feel something like this.
"We're done here," Harry says, trembling with rage. Never has Dolores felt so afraid in this castle, not even when the Bloody Baron cornered her in the staff room late one night. But maybe this will be it. Perhaps Harry will be content with destroying her possessions and storm out of her office.
He turns back towards the wall. "We're done forever."
Dolores watches, paralyzed, as Harry smashes another plate, and another. It's not clear what he's looking for until he finds it.
Triumphantly, he holds up a jagged shard. It's cut his hand slightly, and the blood mixes in with that from the lines. He doesn't seem to notice or care, his green eyes ablaze.
Harry takes a step toward her. "What, don't know how to defend yourself, Professor?"
All Dolores can think of is Cornelius, watching from his picture frame. Watching her be terrorized by a teenager.
"Wizards," Harry says, shaking his head in disapproval and stepping closer, brandishing the jagged and now bloody shard. "Always forgetting about the Muggle way of doing things."
Harry is closer now, less than a meter from Dolores. She starts to tremble. This was never the way she thought she would die. She'd always imagined more of an audience, and perhaps centaurs, or a woods setting. And she certainly hadn't imagined Cornelius would be watching.
She refuses to look at Harry, even as she can feel the sharp shard of pottery pierce through her blouse. Dolores watches the Minister and his bowler hat, and her final thought, before the pain becomes too excruciating to think through, is Cornelius. I did try.