Disclaimer: Minerva McGonagall belongs to JK Rowling.

A/N: Don't worry, I'll still be updating my regular stories, on schedule, although Lady Archimedes might go back to bi-weekly. Most chapters of this story will be short and easy to write, and it won't have a fixed update schedule, so it won't be taking too much of my time.


Chapter 2: McGonagall

The Vanishing Glass

Minerva took a deep breath. She could feel the shock permeating the Great Hall. Her feline sensibilities made her hair stand on end at the sheer tension in the air. Albus Dumbledore had been nearly arrested—for kidnapping—and fled the school in front of the entire student body. And worst of all, she wasn't entirely sure the Minister was wrong.

Her hands were shaking as she looked down at the book. How was she supposed to respond to this? Dumbledore had been a fixture at Hogwarts since the Great War, Headmaster for four decades. True he'd been forced out for a few weeks during the Chamber of Secrets debacle, but nowhere near so publicly. She might not be safe herself right now, and worse, that woman was forcing them to read out all of poor Harry Potter's secrets to the world. She didn't want to know how the boy would react.

"Well, Professor McGonagall?" Umbridge said.

"J-just…orienting myself, Dolores," she managed. Minerva looked at the cover of the book. With Albus gone, it fell to her and eventually Severus to learn as much as they could about it. The illustrated dust jacket was present; it showed a young Harry standing in front of the Hogwarts Express at platform Nine and Three-Quarters, but nothing else remarkable. The author wasn't a name she recognised and was probably a pseudonym. The publisher was supposedly Bloomsbury, which she vaguely recognised as a muggle firm, but that wouldn't make sense, would it?

She flipped the pages as slowly as she dared without annoying Dolores. Hopefully, the front matter would have some useful information. It didn't tell her much, except that it appeared professionally printed with all the minutiae of a muggle book. Perhaps it was meant to be printed as fiction? Or perhaps it was a disguise to throw them off the author's scent.

Then, she saw the copyright page, and she nearly fainted from shock. The copyright date was 1997: next year. Normally, she would have simply said the date was a hoax, even with her being one of the few people authorised to know about Time Turners. But the author knew so many things she shouldn't have been able to know, it seemed like it might be a more likely explanation that the book was written in the future.

"Hem hem. Is there a problem, Professor?" Dolores asked.

"N-not at all, Dolores," Minerva choked out. "I was just finding my place." Sadly, there was no table of contents to see the chapter headings, so she turned back to the second chapter and began to read: "Chapter Two: The Vanishing Glass.

"Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all."

The Dursleys, it seemed, were as boring as ever, but Minerva grew nervous as signs of trouble quickly appeared. "The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house too."

Whispers circled the Great Hall again. After the first chapter, people could start putting the pieces together, but most of them weren't happy to hear it confirmed. Harry paled quickly. He just knew his home life was about to be revealed in the worst possible way, and with Umbridge watching over the Hall, he was powerless to stop it.

Aunt Petunia soon woke up the ten-year-old Harry in the book and ordered him to help cook breakfast for Dudley's birthday. "Dudley's birthday—how could he have forgotten? Harry got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and, after…pulling a spider off one of them…?" McGonagall's bad feeling suddenly got a lot worse. "…put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cu…Albus, you senile old buffoon!" she shouted in spite of herself. The Great Hall collectively gasped. Professor McGonagall had just insulted Albus Dumbledore in front of the entire school. Umbridge's and Fudge's eyes widened, and they grinned with anticipation. "Dammit, you had to drive him off, didn't you? We needed to talk to him, not throw him out of the school."

"Oh?" Fudge said with a knowing smile. "Talk to him about what?"

"Minister, I must protest again," she said. "This is material of an extremely private nature, and it should not be revealed in public."

"And I'm afraid I must again overrule you, Professor McGonagall," Umbridge said. "This material is essential to proving the disturbed state of Mr. Potter's mind." And then, to Minerva's horror, she opened up a second copy of the book, found her place, and finished the sentence: "Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept."

The Hall was in an uproar. Harry himself sank down in his seat in shame. His friends tried to surround and protect him, but even they were only partially helpful because they were also staring at him in horror. He had never told anyone that aspect of his life. He wanted to evaporate on the spot.

"Harry, is that really true?" Hermione whispered with an uncomfortable look on her face. Harry could only nod. The reactions from the rest of the school were varied. Many of the Slytherins and sadly a few of the other houses started shouting anti-muggle comments. Snape was frozen, staring at Harry with wide eyes. The snippets of memories he'd picked up in Potter's Occlumency lessons hadn't been enough to piece together the pattern, if he had even wanted to see it.

Umbridge, however, was loving it. She was feverishly taking notes, and she looked over to Fudge and said, "Looks like we'll have a few more counts on that neglect case, Cornelius. I wonder, Professor, did Dumbledore know Mr. Potter was sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs? Oh, don't try to deny it. Just look at him. It's written all over Mr. Potter's face." Harry sank even lower in his seat.

"I…I don't know," Minerva said weakly.

"Did he ever send someone to that house?"

"I don't know."

"Did he ever once check on the boy he placed there himself? In ten years?"

"I don't know, Dolores!" she shouted. "He said he was keeping an eye on Harry, but I don't know what that meant…I don't know if I know anything anymore."

"Well, then, I think those are questions that will need to be answered, don't you? Shall I continue?"

"I can't stop you, can I?"

"Certainly not, but it would be in your interest to cooperate," Umbridge said. In other words, she meant, put yourself on record reading it or else.

McGongall sighed and considered her options. She was very close to refusing to participate in ruining Harry's life on principle, but it was so easy to rationalise. It was going to happen anyway, and her other students needed her. And maybe, just maybe, if she was the one reading, she could keep control of the discussion. She looked down at Harry and she was surprised by what she saw: determination. There was a look in his eyes that said, Do it!

Harry was mortified by all his dirty laundry (literally, in the case of the socks) being aired out to the world like this, but as he thought about it again, he realised that maybe it was worth it. If these mysterious books stayed accurate up through the end of first year, they would prove that Voldemort wasn't dead. If they were accurate through third year, they would prove Sirius's innocence. And if they were accurate through the end of last year, they would announce Voldemort's return to the world and show Fudge for the incompetent he was. And with that thought, he collected himself and glared up at the High Table. He glared at Umbridge and Fudge, the great schemers who thought they were winning, and he did his best to communicate his intent to McGonagall. The truth will out, he thought, and it will destroy you. You'll be caught like rats in your own trap.

Minerva hadn't expected that reaction from Harry Potter, but she was smart enough to connect the dots. She only hoped it would work. Slowly, she raised the book from her lap and started reading again: "When he was dressed he went down the hall into the kitchen…"

"Harry, why didn't you tell anyone?" Ron said.

Harry was grateful that Ron, his siblings, and Hermione were clustered around him, shielding him from the frantic questions of the rest of Gryffindor, but he could tell they were bursting with questions themselves. He shrugged. "They moved me to the spare bedroom after I got my letter. It wasn't so bad after that."

"Except when they locked you in your room," George pointed out.

"Yeah, but that was the worst of it, and it was just the one time."

"Harry, I'm so sorry," Hermione said tearfully. "I don't know how I didn't see it."

"Well, it's not like I was trying to let anyone know, Hermione," he replied.

"Harry, you don't understand. My parents are dentists," she said. "They're mandatory reporters. People like me are supposed to be able to spot abuse."

"It wasn't really abuse."

"It was at least emotional abuse, Harry. Don't you try to deny it."

"Fine, fine, but it's in the past," he protested. "This is a good thing."

Ron gawked at him. "Are you mad?" he said. "Dumbledore's gone! They want to lock him up for kidnapping you."

"Well, yeah, that's not, but if the book is accurate, it won't be for long."

"Why?"

"Because it's gonna talk about Voldemort being back."

Harry's friends' eyes widened, and they turned back to the High Table. Ginny and the Twins got wicked grins on their faces. At the High Table, Harry noted that Percy was staring at him, looking uncomfortable (as were many of the other teachers). Meanwhile, McGonagall was still trying to take control of the situation.

"Dolores, if we're going to play this game, perhaps you should be more concerned with arresting Mr. Potter's relatives," she said. "They're the ones who actually abused him, after all."

"That is a good thought," Fudge said. "Muggles abusing a magical child? Bad business, that. They boy's lucky he didn't suffer damage to his magic. Make a note of that, Weasley. We'll have to do something about them, too."

"Yes, Minister, I quite agree," Percy said enthusiastically. "We can't allow criminals like them to roam free. Good idea, Professor."

"Don't think you're off the hook either, Mr. Weasley," Minerva said just loud for him to hear.

"Very well, we can deal with that when we're done here," Umbridge said. "Please continue, Professor McGonagall."

Minerva grunted in acknowledgement and kept reading. Albus would have tried to stop her doing that, she thought, but she didn't regret it. She knew about the blood wards, but if they could get Potter legally removed from his relatives, she was confident the Order could keep him safe. Unfortunately, this chapter painted a grim picture. Harry was regularly punched by his fat, spoilt cousin, was told that his parents had died in a car crash. ("And don't ask questions.") And he was regularly berated for the hopeless state of his hair, though he apparently liked his scar.

"You actually liked your scar?" Hermione said.

"Before I knew what it meant, yeah, I did," Harry replied. "I thought it looked cool."

"Huh…" Hermione was starting to wonder how much she really knew her best friend.

Dudley's birthday party was, to put it succinctly, a debacle. To start with, Dudley, who looked like a "pig in a wig" (that line got plenty of laughs), was disappointed to "only" receive thirty-six birthday presents—"two less than last year".

"Ha! And you say I'm bad, Potter!" Draco Malfoy called out.

"That will do, Mr. Malfoy," Umbridge said before Minerva could take points. Minerva glared at both of them, but she resigned herself and continued reading. A temper tantrum from Dudley was quickly averted as Petunia showed her parenting skills left much to be desired by upping his presents to thirty-nine.

"Atrocious parent," Minerva said loudly enough for the students to hear. "Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work. Finally he said slowly, 'So I'll have thirty…thirty—' Dear Merlin."

"He cannot be that stupid," Ron said.

"No—well, he's pretty stupid," Harry said, "but I think that was mostly laziness and working himself into a fit to get his way." Indeed, the book soon explained directly that Dudley was smart enough to manipulate his parents to get anything he wanted, but just the same, Harry got to go to the zoo with the rest of the party since the Dursleys couldn't find a sitter.

"What's a zoo?" one of the younger Gryffindor's asked.

"A menagerie," Hermione said absently. Many of the muggle-borns were already having to explain Dudley's muggle presents to their pureblood friends.

"'I'm warning you,' he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Harry's, 'I'm warning you, boy—any funny business, anything at all—and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas.'"

"They didn't!" Hermione gasped.

"Not literally," Harry assured her. "He meant I'd have to stay there whenever I didn't have to be somewhere else. They couldn't keep me out of school or anything. It wouldn't look good."

"They let you out to use the bathroom, right?" Ron said.

"Of course they did," he said, rolling his eyes. "They did try giving me a bucket once, but they couldn't stand the smell after two days."

That didn't instill his friends with confidence.

Fortunately, it appeared that the young Harry was experiencing a healthy level of accidental magic, which was a concern for abused magical children: regrowing his hair when it was cut, shrinking an ugly sweater so he couldn't wear it, and Apparating onto the school roof (which impressed Minerva and the other teachers). Although it didn't help that Umbridge hemmed and told Percy to make a note of each incident. Harry was also, surprisingly, not afraid to speak his mind.

"'I had a dream about a motorbike,' said Harry, remembering suddenly. 'It was flying.'

"Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beetroot with a moustache, 'MOTORBIKES DON'T FLY!'"

Fred and George laughed. "Man, you had guts as a kid, Harry," Fred said.

"Maybe not brains, but guts," George added.

"Yeah, well, it's how I dealt with them without going mad," he replied. "I just had to be quick enough to get out of their way."

The book reported that trip to the zoo went fairly well, to Harry's own surprise, until they came to the reptile house, where Harry began talking to a large snake.

"Interesting, isn't it?" Umbridge interrupted. "The Daily Prophet reported last year that Mr. Potter is a Parselmouth, but I'd say it's rather worrying that he was already using a dark ability before he was formally introduced to magic."

"Yes, worrying," Fudge agreed. "Definitely not normal."

"Honestly, Dolores, he was a ten-year-old boy. Ten-year-old boys aren't evil," Minerva said. Well, maybe You-Know-Who was, but she didn't say it.

"Oh, you'll see soon enough, Professor McGonagall," Dolores replied. "Read what he did next."

"Well, I won't keep us in suspense, then, Dolores," she grumbled. She really hated the woman's smug face when she apparently already knew what was about to happen. After interacting with the snake for a minute, Dudley came back and shoved Harry out of the way to look at the snake again, but then, she smiled to see what the boy had done. "Harry sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor—people throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.

"As the snake slide swiftly past him, Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, 'Brazil, here I come…Thanksss, amigo.'"

"Well, Minerva, what do you think about that?" Umbridge demanded.

"A very impressive display of accidental Vanishing," she said unflinchingly. "It's too bad I can't give points for it."

Umbridge fumed, but didn't say anything. Unfortunately, in the story, Piers Polkiss outed Harry to the Dursleys and got him thrown back in the cupboard: "Go—cupboard—stay—no meals."

"No meals?" Hermione said in horror.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Harry said. "That would only last a day or two. They were scared of doing anything to me that other people would notice."

Hermione harrumphed and crossed her arms. "You're too accepting of these things, Harry," she said.

The mood in the Hall grew more subdued when it was revealed that Harry could remember the green light from his parents' deaths, although he didn't understand it. That would at least get sympathy for him, though. It turned out that he wasn't quite as isolated from the wizarding world as they thought, too. Witches and wizards would occasionally approach him in the muggle world (perhaps by chance) and shake his hand, including one man who sounded suspiciously like Dedalus Diggle. But that didn't help him the rest of the time, when his "family" never had a good word to say about him, and Dudley's "gang" (What ten-year-old had a gang?) discouraged any other children from befriending him. It was quite a depressing picture.

Fudge smugly stood up and made a show of approaching Minerva with his hands behind his back once she finished the chapter. "And now we see the consequences of Dumbledore's failure," he said. "The Savior of the Wizarding World treated like a common house elf. It's no wonder he turned out so unbalanced."

"Harry Potter is one of the sanest people I know," Minevra replied. "He has thrived despite his unfortunate upbringing."

"But you can't deny the mismanagement, can you?" Fudge shot back. "After all, the DMLE gives home visits to vulnerable magical children, and Mr. Potter clearly never received one. Dumbledore wouldn't tell anyone where he was, and he clearly never looked in on him himself. And you gave him strong evidence that it was not an idea home environment. That's criminal negligence in my book. Dolores, was there anything else?"

Merlin's beard, when did Fudge get that smart? Minerva wondered. But she knew the answer: Umbridge was behind everything.

"In terms of criminal charges, I think we've covered the main points, Minister," Umbridge said. "However, the ensuing chapters will reveal further evidence of the Headmaster's mismanagement here at Hogwarts, so I'm sure this will continue to be very enlightening. Professor Flitwick, would you be so kind as to read the next chapter for us?"

"Are we really continuing with this farce?" Flitwick demanded.

"Certainly, Professor," Fudge said. "This has been very informative so far. We should keep it going."

And he was cornered. But Minerva had gone ahead and kept reading. That didn't seem like her. He gave her an enquiring look, and she jerked her head towards the Gryffindor Table. He looked down and saw the look on Harry Potter's face. The boy actually wanted it? Filius Flitwick couldn't understand that, but for the moment, he was willing to trust Minerva's judgement. "Oh, very well," he conceded.