Have a chapter to celebrate my birthday tomorrow! :)
Harry sat up in his bed, carefully reading a passage of the book that he'd set on his lap.
Defensive Magical Theory was indeed a boring textbook compared to the others he'd had over his years at Hogwarts.
However, it did carry some good points.
Points that could be useful in the future, should he find a way to apply them to practical experience.
He chuckled to himself, finding it ironic that Umbridge had picked a text that she thought wouldn't help them learn any practical magic, yet if one read it carefully enough, you might be able to learn a thing or two to translate into the practical side of the subject.
Just a thing or two was pretty literal in this case.
The book was probably, in his opinion, ninety-nine percent useless.
Hermione, being Gryffindor's resident genius, had read the book cover to cover several times and could probably write several feet of parchment's worth of pros and cons of the book.
Mostly cons.
"Maybe I should ask Hermione what she thinks of the book. It's always refreshing to have a different perspective on things. At least, so they say..."
Harry sighed, closing the book and putting it aside.
Checking his watch, he sighed again.
"I'd better get going if I want to have time for a chat with Hermione before that ruddy detention with Umbitch. Hermione said that she would be in the library today, so I should probably just head straight there..."
Swinging his legs out of the bed, he neatened his robes, stuffed the book into his nearby rucksack and left the dorm.
"Wait... you actually want to have a discussion..." Hermione looked at him incredulously as they sat together at a desk in a far corner of the library.
"Yes." Harry said.
"...about a textbook..."
"Correct." Harry nodded.
"...that even I find lacking?!"
"That sounds about right." Harry agreed.
"Why?" Hermione's air of incredulity immediately turned to suspicion.
"I just want to get ahead on my education." Harry spoke with an expression that might have fooled Ron, but Hermione wasn't fooled in the slightest.
"And it's such a coincidence that this is the same textbook for the same class that a certain professor who rivals even Snape in your level of hatred for them teaches." Hermione was having none of it. "What are you up to this time, Harry?"
"I simply wish to have a bit of a friendly academic debate with the lovely professor during our meeting later. That's all." Harry shrugged, indifferent to Hermione's rising levels of concern for the state of his mental health.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "If our escaping the perilous situations that you've gotten Ron and I- and occasionally others- into in the past few years depended on your ability to lie, we would all be long dead by now."
Harry stared her down.
Hermione stared back at him.
"I don't know what you're planning for her this time," she admitted. "or how you could possibly cause trouble for her by studying the book that she set, but I'll humour you this time."
"Great!" Harry said cheerfully. "I knew you'd come through on this!"
Hermione resisted the urge to face-palm. "Oh shut up and let's just get on with this before you have to leave..."
"Right on time, Potter," Umbridge spoke in her sickly sweet voice. "I was concerned that you might have earned yourself another detention..."
"I don't know why you'd want to give me another one," Harry's tone was completely flat. "as I can think of quite a few things that I would rather be doing than being stuck in your presence once again and I'm sure you can think of something else you'd prefer to do as well..."
He slid into his customary chair and awaited Umbridge's instructions.
However as he did so, he brought out his copy of Defensive Magical Theory and began to read.
"Potter," when Harry glanced up from the book, it was to see Umbridge looking at him with an eyebrow raised. "what are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Harry asked. "I'm reading a book. I figured that you'd know that what with you being a professor and all..."
"Don't sass me, Potter. You need to learn respect for your elders!" Umbridge scolded him.
Harry looked at her with the air of someone who thought that she was a complete idiot.
"You've certainly got the elder part down right, but the respect part? Old or not, you haven't earned it from me and you never will." Harry leaned back in his chair slightly as he returned his attention to the book.
Umbridge seethed.
Harry looked at her with one eye over the book, to see her taking deep breaths in an effort to calm herself down.
He smirked to himself, his expression half-hidden by the odious textbook.
"If it's so easy to rattle her with the small stuff, then how will she take it when I pull out the bigger wands, so to speak?" he thought.
"Well then, if you really are so interested in that book, then why don't you prove your knowledge of it?" Umbridge asked sweetly.
Harry shrugged. "As long as I don't have to write a test in my own blood like some sort of academic masochist, then sure, why not?"
Umbridge looked as if she was greatly tempted to do so.
"I'm fairly sure that torturing children by forcing them to repeatedly cut their own hand open and writing with aforementioned blood is against some sort of law..." Harry said his eyes still not leaving the book- which was much more pleasant than the alternative of looking at Umbridge's face.
"Laws can be changed," Umbridge reminded him.
"So the British Ministry of Magic is going to change the laws so that torturing children is legal?" Harry gasped overdramatically. "My, my! What would the International Wizarding Council think of that? They'll think that Britain is getting even more backwards than it already is! I can only imagine what the French and American wizards would have to say..."
Harry was rather proud of his theatrical performance.
"They would be absolutely horrified that Britain is going back to the fifth century, while they move ahead! Damn, we'd be the laughingstock of the world- after they put lot of restrictions on us in order to get us to comply with international standards on magical child protection laws which are another matter in and of themselves. I could write an entire book on that myself-"
"Shut up, Potter. Get your quill, ink-"
"Not ink made of blood or other bodily fluids, right?" Harry asked pointedly.
"and parchment out of your bag." Umbridge ignored him. You have half an hour to write two feet on the contents of Chapter Three: The Case of Non-Offensive Responses to Magical Attack."
"Right away Madam Umbridge, Sir!" Harry exclaimed! "I meant, Ma'am..."
He rummaged around in his bag for the required supplies, taking his own sweet time to do so.
Laying them out neatly onto the desk, he began to write.
"He makes an argument in this chapter that when under attack, one does not have to go on the offensive to defend yourself. Using solely defensive techniques..." Harry thought, chewing the top of his quill idly and he wrote.
"The Shield Charm, for instance..." Harry started speaking aloud as he wrote. "...can be used..." the sound of Harry's quill scratching the parchment as he wrote filled the room, along with the sound of his voice as he sounded out his thoughts. "...in a way..."
Umbridge finally looked up at him from the cup of tea and plate of biscuits she was having.
"...that is both offensive and defensive..."
"However, that would not work... against certain spells..."
She put down the biscuit she was eating.
"...for... example..." Harry paused to chew the top of his quill some more. "...the Killing Curse..."
"Instead, you could place a thick, solid object between yourself and the Killing Curse, although even that is no guarantee. The best way to do that... is.. of course..."
Umbridge put down the teacup as well.
Imagine her.
Having the nerve to be sitting there and relaxing while he was forced to write complete and utter rubbish and pass it off as treasure...
He sniffed the air slightly.
And were those chocolate biscuits she was eating?
He spotted some boxes of them on a shelf behind her desk.
They were chocolate biscuits- and his favourite brand of them too! How dare she!
"...get out of the situation as fast as you can..."
A few minutes later, Umbridge announced his time was up.
Harry checked his watch.
She was a whole two minutes early!
Why that awful b-
Harry watched Umbridge's various facial expressions play out as she read through his essay, which in Harry's opinion was written quite well if one considered the factors under which he was being forced to write it...
Scepticism... surprise... anger...
There it is.
"Potter, what is this rubbish?" she asked him.
"Your biography?" Harry asked, his face completely straight.
Umbridge gave him a look that could have rivalled one that the Basilisk would have given him during the climax of the Chamber of Secrets fiasco.
"No, Potter." she spoke with great effort, as if it took all her willpower not to take out her wand and hit him with a Crucio.
"Oh. It's the essay that you asked for. I wrote about precisely what you asked for, didn't I?" Harry asked.
"These techniques would be mostly useless against someone whose current greatest ambition is to kill you. Although it is theorised amongst some circles that on October 31st, 1981, Lily Potter managed to cast some sort of shield over her son Harry which, while it failed to protect her death, did indeed manage to prevent his... no one has been able to reproduce such a potential shield." Umbridge read, her voice seemingly raising in octaves as she did.
"That is the truth, as much as you don't want to believe it." Harry shrugged.
He glanced up at the (cat-shaped) clock on the wall.
"Well, would you look at that? It's time for me to be going. Wouldn't want me to be out of bounds and breaking the rules tonight or any other night- now would you?"
Harry stood up, and as he ignored Umbridge's stuttering, he snatched an unopened box of chocolate biscuits off the shelf and stuffed them into his bag before he left.
As Harry told Ron and Hermione what he had done this time, the three of them snorted with laughter that filled the otherwise empty Gryffindor Common Room.
Hermione had checked the box of biscuits with several spells, and once finding them safe to consume, was the first to open it and take one.
"I swear, she's going to want to do you in pretty soon if you keep that up..." Ron spoke between mouthfuls of biscuits.
"That's just the beginning, Ron." Harry chuckled, before taking another biscuit. "I was just testing the waters, finding out the little things that annoy her. Now that I've got a bit of a baseline for how she really is, now I can truly plan effectively to make her life here a miserable one. I haven't even really gotten started yet."
"I can't believe you had the audacity to just dismiss yourself from her detention like that!" Hermione exclaimed.
"Like how you dismissed yourself from Divination back in our third year?" Harry raised an eyebrow.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "That was different- and you bloody well know it!"
It was Harry's turn to roll his eyes. "Whatever you say, Hermione. Whatever you say..."