The previous didn't seem to be appreciated much. Anyways I have written this chapter in the three hours that was spare today. Dramione come soon :) Maybe even in the next chapter! Yipeee! I am so happy. Hope you like it.
Harry Potter is not mine.
Chapter 9
The inhabitants of number twelve were never seen by anybody in the surrounding houses,and nor was the number twelve itself. The Muggles who lived in Grimmauld Place had long since accepted the amusing mistake in the numbering that had caused number eleven to sit beside numberthirteen. And yet the square was now attracting a trickle of visitors who seemed to find the anomaly most intriguing. Barely a day passed without one or two people arriving in Grimmauld Place with no other purpose, or so it seemed,than to lean against the railing facing numbers eleven and thirteen, watching the join between the two houses. The lurkers were never the same two days running, although they all seemed to share a dislike for normal clothing. Most of the Londoners who passed them were used to eccentric dressers and took little notice, though occasionally one of them might glance back, wondering why anyone would wear such long cloaks in the heat. The watchers seemed to be gleaning little satisfaction from their vigil. Occasionally one of them started forward excitedly, as if they had seen something interesting at last, only to fall back looking disappointed.
Half a dozen men in long cloaks stood silent and watchful,gazing as ever at houses eleven and thirteen, but the thing for which they were waiting still appeared elusive. As evening drew in, bringing with it an unexpected gust of chilly rain, for the first time in weeks, there occurred one oft hose inexplicable moments when they appeared to have seen something interesting. The man with the twisted face pointed and his closest companion,a podgy pallid man, started forward, but a moment later they had relaxed into their previous state of inactivity, looking frustrated and , inside number twelve, Remus Lupin had just entered the hall . He had nearly lost his balance as he Apparated onto the top step just outside the front door, and thought that the Death Eaters might have caught a glimpse of his momentarily exposed elbow sent a shiver through hurried along the gloomy hall way toward the room that led to the basement.
"I have got news" he said.
The kitchen was almost unrecognizable. Every surface now shone copper pots and pans had been burnished to a rosy glow; the wooden tabletop gleamed the goblets and plates already laid for dinner glinted in the light from a merrily blazing fire, on which a cauldron was simmering. Nothing in the room,however, was more dramatically different than the house-elf who now came hurrying toward Harry, dressed in a snowy-white towel, his ear hair as clean and fluffy as cotton wool, Regulus's locket bouncing on his thin chest.
"What is it?" asked Molly apprehensively. Everyone were poring over a sheaf of scribbled notes and hand drawn maps that littered the long ornate kitchen table.
"Dolores Umbridge has been appointed the Head Of the Muggle Born Registration Commission."A collective groan resounded from the table."She now not only conducts the trials with sadistic pleasure, she heads it" Remus spat.
Kreacher came bustling to the table with a large tureen in his hands, and ladled out soup into pristine bowls, whistling between his teeth as he did so. His cooking skills had increased dramatically ever since he was given Regulus's locket. Molly's workload had decreased considerably as the elf constantly insisted on helping the woman.
"This complicates things" exclaimed Hermione. "How are we to..."
"I think we should do it tomorrow," said Harry. Hermione stopped dead, her jaw hanging, Everyone stared at him.
"Tomorrow?" repeated Hermione. "You aren't serious, Harry?"
"I am," said Harry. "I don't think we're going to be much better prepared than we are now even if we skulk around the Ministry entrance for another month. The longer we put it off, the farther away that locket could be. There's already a good chance Umbridge has chucked it away; the thing doesn't open."
"Unless," said Ron, "she's found a way of opening it and she's now possessed Wouldn't make any difference to her, she was so evil in the first place"
"We cant be so sure, Harry especially with this new improvement." said Ginny. Harry shrugged turning to Hermione. She was heading the mission after all.
"I don't know, Harry, I don't know. . . . There are an awful lot of things that could go wrong, so much relies on chance. . . . "
"That'll be true even if we spend another three months preparing," said Harry. "It's time to act."
Hermione was biting her lip, deep in thought.
The heavy silence broke as Lupin spoke. "I think we should go ahead and do it tomorrow too." Harry smiled at him.
"But..."
"Hermione, you said it yourself every day we get new information. Today we find out she heads the commission. Two days later she might be minister." Fred and George sniggered. Hermione's eyes widened."What then?! We will change plans. Again a drastic change. They will keep moving as we stay hidden. Its time to strike."
The tension in the room was so thick that you could touch it. He could tell by their faces that they were scared and sighed.
" We already know what to do. Arthur has nicked a few hairs and robes for the polyjuice. Moody's stash of polyjuice is with need those funny coin like tokens to enter the Ministry. We know roughly where Umbridge's office is. We know everything important."
"This wont be a cake walk"
"I know. But we can't wait and watch forever."
Silence dawned again as everyone turned towards her. "Alright." she table bustled with the adrenaline and excitement as everyone continued drinking their soups.
Hermione felt something smack her gut. Her mouth went dry and she lost her appetite. Everything felt rushed. Heading this mission wouldn't be easy. Lives were at stake. She had a queasy feeling about this. Though everyone felt confident, her intuition said otherwise. Something was going wrong. She clutched the little flower on her chest and shut her eyes letting all the noises around her escape.
They joined the stream of witches and wizards moving toward the golden gates at the end of the hall looking around as surreptitiously as possible, but there was no sign of the distinctive figure of Dolores Umbridge. They passed through the gates and into a smaller hall, where queues were forming in front of twenty golden grilles housing as many lifts. This was precisely where they would split. On each level a small band of Order members left the lift.
"Level one, Minister of Magic and Support Staff."
The golden grills slid apart again and Hermione gasped. Four people stood before them, two of them in deep conversation: a long-haired wizard wearing magnificent robes of black and gold, and a squat, toad-like witch wearing avelvet bow in her short hair and clutching a clipboard to her chest.
Ah, Mafalda!" said Umbridge, looking at Hermione. "Travers sent you, did he?"
"Y—yes," squeaked Hermione.
"Good, you'll do perfectly well." Umbridge spoke to the wizard in black and gold. "That's that problem solved, Minister, if Mafalda can be spared for recordkeepingwe shall be able to start straightaway." She consulted her clipboard."Ten people today and one of them the wife of a Ministry employee! Tut, tut. . . even here, in the heart of the Ministry!" She stepped into the lift beside Hermione, as did the two wizards who had been listening to Umbridge's conversation
The dark passage outside the courtrooms was packed with tall, black hooded figures, their faces completely hidden, their ragged breathing the only sound in the place. The petrified Muggle-borns brought in for questioning sat huddled and shivering on hard wooden benches. Most of them were hiding their faces in their hands, perhaps in an instinctive attempt to shield themselves from the dementors' greedy mouths. Some were accompanied by families,others sat alone. The dementors were gliding up an down in front of them,and the cold, and the hopelessness, and the despair of the place laid themselves upon them like a curse. . . .
Two dementors appeared in the doorway of the courtroom, their rotting,scabbed hands clutching the upper arms of a wizard who appeared to be glided away down the corridor with him, and the darkness they trailed behind them swallowed him from sight.
"Next—Mary Cattermole," called Umbridge.A small woman stood up; she was trembling from head to foot. Her dark hair was smoothed back into a bun and she wore long, plain robes. Her face was completely bloodless. As she passed the dementors, she shuddered
There were more dementors in here, casting their freezing aura over the place; they stood like faceless sentinels in the corners farthest from the high raised platform. Here, behind a balustrade, sat Umbridge, with Yaxley on one side of her, and Hermione, quite as white-faced as Mrs. Cattermole, on the other. At the foot of the platform, a bright-silver, long-haired cat prowled up and down, up and down, up and down. It was warm and comfortable here. The Patronus,was Umbridge's,and it glowed brightly because she was so happy here, in her element,upholding the twisted laws she had helped to write.
"Sit down," said Umbridge in her soft, silky voice.
Mrs. Cattermole stumbled to the single seat in the middle of the floor beneath the raised platform. The moment she had sat down, chains clinked out of the arms of the chair and bound her there.
"You are Mary Elizabeth Cattermole?" asked Umbridge.
Mrs. Cattermole gave a single, shaky nod.
"Married to Reginald Cattermole of the Magical Maintenance Department?"
Mrs. Cattermole burst into tears.
"I don't know where he is, he was supposed to meet me here!"Umbridge ignored her.
"Mother to Maisie, Ellie, and Alfred Cattermole?"Mrs. Cattermole sobbed harder than ever.
"They're frightened, they think I might not come home—"
"Spare us," spat Yaxley. "The brats of Mudbloods do not stir our sympathies."
Mrs. Cattermole's sobs masked Harry's footsteps as he made his way carefully toward the steps that led up to the raised platform under the invisibility cloak.
Umbridge laughed a soft girlish laugh that made Harry want to attack leaned forward over the barrier, the better to observe her victim, and something gold swung forward too, and dangled over the void,the locket. Hermione had seen it; she let out a little squeak, but Umbridge and Yaxley, still intent upon their prey, were deaf to everything else.
"No," said Umbridge, "no, I don't think so, Mrs. Cattermole. You are not a witch. I have your responses to the questionnaire that was sent to you here—Mafalda, pass them to me."
Umbridge held out a small hand: She looked so toadlike at that moment that Harry was quite surprised not to see webs between the stubby 's hands were shaking with shock. She fumbled in a pile of documentsbalanced on the chair beside her, finally withdrawing a sheaf of parchment with Mrs. Cattermole's name on it.
"That's—that's pretty, Dolores," she said, pointing at the pendant gleaming in the ruffled folds of Umbridge's blouse.
"What?" snapped Umbridge, glancing down. "Oh yes—an old family heirloom,"she said, patting the locket lying on her large bosom. "The S stands for Selwyn. . . . I am related to the Selwyns. . . . Indeed, there are few pure blood families to whom I am not related. . . . A pity," she continued in a louder voice,flicking through Mrs. Cattermole's questionnaire, "that the same cannot besaid for you. 'Parents processions: greengrocers."'
Yaxley laughed jeeringly. Below, the fluffy silver cat patrolled up and down,and the dementors stood waiting in the was Umbridge's lie that brought the blood surging into Harry's brain and obliterated his sense of caution—that the locket she had taken as a bribe from a petty criminal was being used to holster her own pure-blood credentials. He raised his wand, not even troubling to keep it concealed beneath the Invisibility Cloak, and said, "Stupefy!"
There was a flash of red light; Umbridge crumpled and her forehead hit the edge of the balustrade: Mrs. Cattermole's papers slid off her lap onto the floor and, down below, the prowling silver cat vanished. Ice-cold air hit them like an oncoming wind: Yaxley, confused, looked around for the source of the trouble and saw Harry's disembodied hand and wand pointing at him. He tried to drawhis own wand, but too late: "Stupefy!"
Yaxley slid to the ground to lie curled on the floor.
Harry whirled around, throwing off the Invisibility Cloak: down below, the dementors had moved out of their corners: they were gliding toward the woman chained to the chair: Whether because the Patronus had vanished or because they sensed that their masters were no longer in control, they seemed to have abandoned restraint. Mrs. Cattermole let out a terrible scream of fear as a slimy, scabbed hand grasped her chin and forced her face back.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
The silver stag soared from the tip of Harry's wand and leaped toward the dementors, which fell back and melted into the dark shadows again. The stag's light, more powerful and more warming than the cat's protection, filed the whole dungeon as it cantered around and around the room.
"Get the Horcrux," Harry told Hermione. "we're surrounded by dementors!"
"I know that, Harry, but if she wakes up and the locket's gone.I need to replicate it..Geminio! There . . . That should fool her. .."Hermione came running downstairs.
They managed to get up the stone steps without being intercepted, but as they approached the lifts Harry started to have misgivings. If they emerged into the Atrium with a silver stag, an otter soaring alongside it, and twenty or so people, half of them accused Muggleborns, he could not help feeling that they would attract unwanted attention. He had just reached this unwelcome conclusion when the lift clanged to a halt in front of them.
Ginny entered."Shit...Harry, they know there areintruders inside the Ministry, something about a hole in Umbridge's office door.I reckon we've got five minutes of that..."
Hermione's Patronus vanished with a pop as she turned a horror struck face to Harry.
"Harry, if we're trapped here—!"
"We won't be if we move fast," said Harry
"Level eight," said the cool witch's voice, "Atrium."Hermione knew at once that they were in trouble. The Atrium was full of people moving from fireplace to fireplace, sealing them off.
"What is this?" bellowed Rowle.
"Seal the exit! SEAL IT!"
Yaxley had burst out of another lift and was running toward the group beside the fireplaces into which all of the Muggle-borns but Mrs. Cattermole had now vanished. Hermione saw Rowle's face turn saw an inkling of truth dawning on his brutish face.
"LET'S GO!" Harry yelled. He seized Hermione by the hand and Ginny by the arm and moved.
Darkness engulfed them, along with the sensation of compressing hands,but something was wrong. . . . Hermione's hand seemed to be sliding out of his grip...He wondered whether he was going to suffocate..he could not breathe or see...but before he could draw breath, there was a scream and a flash of purple light. Hermione's hand was suddenly hard on his back and everything went dark again
Yaxley fell to the ground with a loud thud just as she pushed both Harry and Ginny towards the fireplace. She didn't have to look around to know she was in deep trouble. There was no blood on her hands and plucking her courage she faced Rowle who was looking at her like she was a piece of meat...
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