The beginning of her 6th year came with a new DADA professor, Madam Dolores Umbridge. Her style of teaching was all theoretical, with no physical application in a class that relied on application. Petra had always done well in her defense classes and was having a hard time adjusting to such a flawed system. Apparently the ministry did not think they needed to defend themselves, especially in a time of "peace". The woman was a walking pink handbag, one that her mother and grandmother Fiona would have gawked at because of its obvious poor quality.

She also had a habit of harsh judgments. As the months passed, more and more students returned from her detentions bleeding and ashen faced. Cuts on their hands stained with ink and so deep not even magical remedies seemed to help. Petra made sure to stay well under the radar.

She had been having visions again, nothing clear but the emotions that bled through some of them had her worried. She could see fire and smoke; she could hear inhuman screams and feel the pain all around her. Her dreams were plagued with terror.

This went on until early December. It was after her latest dream, after seeing Dumbledore fall to his death, that Petra went to Severus Snape's office a little after his office hours. The dreams felt like visions but she couldn't be sure, especially with how Dumbledore had treated them in the past. After lifting her hand to knock, she heard voices coming from behind the door. The voice of her potions professor was familiar, but the other voice, a woman's voice, she was having a hard time identifying. That was until an ugly girly giggle resounded off the stone walls. Her blood ran cold and she retreated into a shadowy alcove down the hall to steady her breathing. Her anxiety was peaking and all she wanted to do was curl up on the floor and hyperventilate.

The heavy door opened and out stepped the little pink toad, who touched Snape's arm in a familiar manner, and started to hobble down the hall and up the steps. Petra didn't dare move until she couldn't hear the footsteps for at least a minute. She emerged from her hiding place and Snape's head whipped around to look at her.

"I'm sorry, professor, I came to talk to you and I might have, um, panicked when I heard Umbri- Professor Umbridge leaving your office." She swallowed hard, ready for him to chastise her for being out in the halls listening to doors but he just sighed and waved her into his office after him.

"I'm so sorry professor, I really should have come during office hours, but-" he cut her off with a wave of his hand. She immediately went silent.

"It's alright, miss Strider. What is it you have come to talk about a half hour before curfew."

He looked exhausted. His normally drawn face was stretched tight and he looked much thinner than before.

"I've been having strange dreams, sir, more often than before, but with Dumbledore being backed into the corner by that- by the defense professor I was concerned about going to him." It seemed the most diplomatic way of saying that she couldn't trust Dumbledore with Umbridge and the Ministry breathing down his neck.

"And what have you been seeing? Anything as clear as the graveyard?" She shook her head, looking down at his desk instead of into his obsidian eyes.

"No, nothing quite so clear, but I can feel it clearly, a kind of terror I've only felt once before when I had the vision of you-know-who returning. I'm also concerned about the lack of media on that particular subject."

"Put it from your mind, miss Strider, there is nothing to worry about on that part, especially with Umbridge around. You'd do well to focus on your studies and getting through this year." he drug a hand over his face and sighed again. "Now, you need to get back to your common room before curfew."

"Yes, sir, thank you for seeing me and for the advice."

He nodded his head absently. She started to leave his office when a vision started to surface, accompanied by a migraine. It almost dropped her. It was so intense. A large cabinet in a room full of clutter. She could see books and jewelry and brooms piled high, almost as high as the ceiling. A stuffed grizzly bear stood near the cabinet, and below it was a boy with almost silver hair. He put an apple inside and closed the doors, before muttering something and opening them again. The apple had vanished.

And just like that she was spit back out of her head, where she finds her head of house glaring at the door, with a curl to his mouth that suggests he just sucked on a lemon.

"You are dismissed Miss Strider, return to your dorm at once."

She nodded her head fast and practically ran back to her dorm. That night she slept terribly, never being able to stay asleep for more than an hour at a time. By morning she was a wreck, with bags under her eyes and a heaviness in her heart.

Her Christmas came with a few surprises. The first was a letter from her Mother informing her that she would be spending her whole break in London at the family estate.

The second surprise came upon her arrival to the ugly manor.

"Petra, dear girl, are you almost ready to leave?" Her grandmother Fiona had been calling every two minutes for the last half hour. They didn't need to leave until 7, and it was only 5:45 at the moment, but Fiona was anxious to be perfectly on time and wanted everyone ready so they could wait in silence in the sitting room until it was time to apparate to Malfoy Manor. Petra was nervous about what kind of soiree this would be, and about side along apparition with her brother, who was always trying to scare her. She would kill him if he ruined her hair and brought their mothers wrath upon them.

It was unlike any party she had ever been to, and not in a good way. It was not lively, to begin with, but subdued and filled with a lot of people she had never seen before. Petra and Alice were both introduced to eligible bachelors, when only her sister was usually subjected to that kind of attention. Petra was only 16 had been sure she had at least 1 more year until her parents started to do this to her.

She recognized some of the men, the ones that had been associated with the death eaters during the first war like her parents had. The older of these men gave Petra odd looks that made her extremely uncomfortable, and she was using all the etiquette she had ever been taught to simultaneously politely excuse herself from their company and not run out the door. It was a terrible night.

The third surprise was her parents emerging from a drawing room down the hall from the ball room where everyone was, and her mother had a malicious glint in her eyes as she found Petra across the room. Petras' heart was racing when her mother and father found her and Alice and Jacob and told them they were ready to leave. Her father kept giving her backwards glances as they strolled down the driveway to the apparition point.

The rest of Christmas wasn't enjoyable to Petra. She missed her grandparents in America and was ready to go back to school and away from the tension that had filled the manor.

Around march Petra received two letters; One from Alice and the other from Jacob.

She opened Jacobs first. Inside was a picture of him on a beach somewhere she didn't recognize. He wrote that he had left London to find a place untouched by war that he could find adventure. He was sorry to leave without saying goodbye, but he was afraid of their parents plans for the future and wanted to leave before things started to get bad again. He urged her to stay safe and to go to America for the summer, even if it meant a big fight in the family.

Alice's letter was similar in urging her to go to America, but she was not lucky enough to leave. Their parents had paired her with a Lestrange who she would be marrying in early July, Once her mediwitch apprenticeship was over.

This was disturbing news for Petra to receive and she was unsure what to think about any of it. Things had been getting worse at Hogwarts. Trelawny had been dismissed, and Umbridge's detentions were getting worse each time she passed one of her new educational decrees. Dumbledore was losing power fast.

April wasn't any better, with Dumbledore's departure leaving a somber presence in the school. The Easter holiday came and went, and May turned into the worst month so far. Fred and George created a portable swamp in the school and left to start their joke shop before Umbridge could punish them for it. Petra received her first detention with the pink toad for laughing out loud when she lectured her class about the disrespect the twins had shown her.

June took an upswing with Umbridge's "surprise" resignation. Petra heard rumors about a chance encounter with centaurs in the forbidden forest, and spent a whole afternoon laughing and crying and trying to wrap her head around the year.

And then the second wizarding war officially began.