Okay, I admit it; the one-shot where Harry snapped at McGonagall was originally planned to be a one-off. But I found it intriguing to do more. I hope you enjoy it.
Hermione's Accident.
In truth, he hadn't planned on doing anything like this mostly because he hadn't really thought the effort was worth it, but for the last few months, Harry had been growing more and more frustrated by how Hermione was metaphorically clawing at his throat so he could barely breathe. He had more than enough on his mind without some arrogant little girl nagging him and deriding him 24/7.
Four months ago, Dolores Umbridge had put him in detention with her for arguing the validity of his claims Voldemort had returned; the stupid woman and the rest of the stupid school thought he was lashing out, an unstable attention-seeking bastard who was lying his head of about things they genuinely hoped were not real, and not happening around them. Their willful blindness worried him, but it was soon not going to be his problem when he left. But in truth, Harry had been seeing for himself just how far Umbridge was willing to go to silence him.
And in that detention, Harry discovered how far.
The woman was using a Blood Quill for her detentions, and she was gleefully and sadistically putting students into the detentions and torturing them with the Quill, enjoying herself as she witnessed students cut themselves with the torture implement. Harry had no idea who was being tortured in this manner, but he had seen more than a few kids cradling their hands, including - and this was the ironic and morbidly funny part - some of the Junior Death Eaters and some of the kids Harry knew supported the Ministry although he doubted they even realised how incredibly stupid Fudge's administration was, and judging from the expressions of three out of the four Heads of House, there had been some resistance in getting Umbridge away from the kids.
They hadn't gotten very far, and he wasn't surprised by that; Umbridge was supported and likely protected by Fudge, although Harry was uncertain if that incompetent egotist even knew what the bitch he'd sent was doing here.
But that didn't stop them regarding the toad bitch with disgust, and judging from the expressions of them all they wanted to (in one case) throw Umbridge at the Whomping Willow, (in another) poison the toad in such a way that she would die a painful death while her insides dissolved, and lastly be levitated high, so high when the levitation charm was lifted she would fall to her death as gravity asserted its hold over her.
Tragically, Dumbledore would likely try to save her.
And by the three, Harry meant Flitwick, Sprout, and Snape. Heaven help us if Minerva McGonagall does anything to help. Harry had noted the woman's sour expression recently, and judging from the outraged looks he had seen on the faces of a few of the Gryffindors, they hadn't gotten any further than he had in getting her to get off her arse and do something constructive.
It was a disheartening lesson, and sadly it only reinforced his own beliefs that authority figures were useless. Another reason why Hermione's philosophy failed in the long run.
But truthfully, any other Gryffindor along with Harry could have told the younger Gryffindors, especially the first years they were wasting their time in going to McGonagall for help. McGonagall never helped any of her students and he couldn't even remember a time she did anything for anyone (the Nimbus 2000 he'd gotten in the first year did not count; she had forced him into the Quidditch team, and while he'd had a swell time and made friends out the team, she merely wanted him to win the matches and hadn't provided the broomstick out of kindness).
But with that detention and the outcome that came with it convinced Harry the magical world was simply not worth it, and he found he didn't care enough about the school to stay and fight, never mind do anything about Umbridge. If they wanted help, they needed to learn to help themselves. The teachers couldn't/wouldn't do a thing. He had learned the lessons he'd learnt the hard way at primary school when Dudley and his idiots had bullied him.
Yeah, at Hogwarts he had assumed things would be different, but they weren't.
Even worse some of the kids were like Dudley and his friends, bullying him and anyone else who raised their voice. And the teachers aided and abetted them.
Unfortunately, what neither Harry nor McGonagall had realised at the time until later was a student had overheard McGonagall raising her voice once or twice and listened to the argument outside the office. Harry did not know how long the student had been out there, but he knew the student had heard enough and told the rest of the school of the argument although not a great deal about it.
Somehow, and Harry had no idea how, some of the other students had twisted and misinterpreted the story, so now there were dozens of versions; some were saying without Umbridge being mentioned at all how he had threatened McGonagall, one other version had him repeating his story of what happened in the graveyard. In fact, there were two versions of that particular account, although one of the conspiracy nuts in the castle, a rumour monger, was claiming he had accidentally confessed to McGonagall he had murdered Diggory himself.
The story wasn't original either.
He had been hearing the theory ever since the mess in the graveyard, and he had long since stopped trying to convince anyone of the truth. It was similar to the business in his second year since everyone believed he was attacking the muggle-borns. The only good thing about the whole 'Harry Potter killed Cedric Diggory' thing was there was not an ounce of proof to back up the lie, and there were just too many rumours surrounding his confrontation with McGonagall that nobody tried to get him arrested.
There were moments though where he wondered why nobody had bothered to come and speak to him about the whole mess in the graveyard, and by nobody, he meant nobody other than Dumbledore, whose approach to such things was to set up the Order of the Phoenix, and Fudge, whose own approach was to bury his head in the sand and claim he was a liar.
It didn't bring any actual kind of closure to the Diggory's, and lord alone knew what they were going through with this entire mess.
Umbridge was enjoying the whole thing, but it was marred with the fact she no longer had him in detention. She kept baiting him, but the stupid woman hadn't yet worked out nothing was going to happen. He wasn't taking any kind of bait from her anymore, and she hadn't realised he had fallen into the trap before to get an idea of what she was going to do, and now he did know what she would do to him, he wasn't going to fall for it anymore.
She wasn't happy, but truthfully her happiness was magnificently irrelevant.
It was bad enough many of the Hufflepuffs - Bones, McMillan, Finch-Fletchley, Abbot, and many others - were taking the rumour and spinning it all into something much worse and claiming he was deranged and needing to be taken away, but frustratingly Harry had found a new problem in the shape of Hermione Granger. His so-called best friend had been harassing him a great deal ever since the year had begun, demanding he tell her how he was feeling every day, riding roughshod into every aspect of his life and using her new prefect position to justify her nosiness. Unfortunately, all it did was drive him closer to madness.
That was bad enough.
He needed a clear head for what was coming; he had the OWLs to worry about and he needed to concentrate on them, and he needed to focus on his plans to escape the magical world and let them tear each other apart.
The confrontation with McGonagall had only worsened the whole matter.
Harry knew Hermione's opinion of his intellectual ability was low, and somehow McGonagall had caught wind of her pet student's opinion of him and instead of forming her own opinion of him herself, the weak-willed bitch believed the same without question. Hermione believed him to be nothing more than a simple idiot simply because he refused to study and how he let her go through his essays and papers for homework. She didn't realise he always studied hard in the dead of night. If there was one thing being mentally abused by the Dursleys had taught him and what he had always been thankful for even if he despised the Dursleys and their quest for normalcy without realising what they wanted was unattainable, it was how good he was at being sneaky.
Hermione also didn't realise he ignored her attempts to destroy his work; that was how he saw her help whenever she underlined and made notes on his essays and how he copied his essays and turned in the undamaged copies without her knowing it.
But now…Hermione Granger was one of the few people he knew he actually took the time and the trouble to dislike - Fudge, Umbridge, Snape, Dumbledore, McGonagall, the Dursleys were in that list - and the sad ironic part was he had once thought they'd be great friends. But he quickly realised it was never meant to be despite what she thought of their relationship, and only Hermione knew what was in her mind and he had no intention of learning what it was.
He had thought his own love for books and literature and learning albeit from behind the scenes so as not to attract undue attention to himself would make them friends and kindred spirits, but he had quickly been proven wrong. Hermione liked to think of herself as intellectual, but in truth, she was nothing more than a sponge who soaked up knowledge by the bucketload and then regurgitating it. But there were two things about Hermione Granger that repulsed him the most about her; the first thing was how Hermione formed opinions about people and situations without once investigating the matter or even making logical conclusions herself. He had grown up with a woman with the same attitude, and he had learnt to hate how judgemental his aunt was.
The biggest example of that was how she had flung herself into that House-elf crusade. While Harry, who hated slavery himself considering how the Dursleys had made it their life mission to break him and turn him into a slave (he definitely had plans to make them pay the price for that), agreed with her in part of some of it, he had actually seen how Winky reacted when Crouch senior got rid of her. It made him ask the Hogwarts elves about their own opinion.
Dobby, it turned out, had been desperate to escape from the Malfoy's. House-elves bonded with their wizarding masters, and the Hogwarts elves - thanks to the castle and Dumbledore - received a large amount of magic a day which kept them alive. Dobby had been on the point of insanity because the Malfoys, while powerful, had only established a partial bonding with their elves in order to ensure they remained with the family. Starving and sickly slaves, their opinions, were not a threat.
Unfortunately, Hermione hadn't gotten that little tidbit, and now she was regarded as the house-elf version of Voldemort. They spoke of her in fearful whispers, and none of them would work in Gryffindor tower in case they freed by her. Harry had mitigated the worst of it by secretly summoning the hats, scarves, gloves, and other pathetic examples of knitwear and then setting it all alight. He had tried time and again to make her see she wasn't helping them, but Hermione believed she knew best and she refused to listen to him even once.
The second thing that pissed him off was her hypocritical nature. For all her harping on about obeying teachers and respecting their every order like the puppet she was, Hermione regularly defied them. She added more to her essays than she should, and Harry had caught sight of more than one teacher wince at the essays they got back.
But during that confrontation in McGonagall's office, Harry had decided it was way past time Hermione pay for her beliefs he was an idiot. However, since he had bigger fish to fry compared to a petty, arrogant girl with delusions of grandeur, Harry had decided to forget her. Unfortunately, Hermione had pissed him off when she had heard of the confrontation with McGonagall; Harry genuinely did not know which story Hermione had heard, but he had tried to tell her what happened and he quickly regretted it.
She didn't believe him.
Instead, she paid more attention to a rumour and she lashed out at him, nagging and deriding him, telling him to go back to McGonagall again and apologise to her without once thinking for one moment Harry would rather die than do something like that. He had no idea what effect his meeting had with McGonagall, but the regretful looks he received from the useless old biddy told him volumes. He wasn't going to apologise to her. No way. McGonagall needed to face reality for a change.
It was all "how could you threaten Professor McGonagall?" "what's going on with you, Harry? Why is it you can't respect the teachers?" Never once did it occur to the little cunt he would respect a teacher if he was respected in turn. Harry didn't respect anyone blindly, it took a lot more than that. However, on top of the other grief he'd been getting from her, Harry had had enough. Tonight she was going to have an accident. Hermione always came this way from the library late at night, always before curfew. He had snuck out of the Tower, using the Marauder's Map and their knowledge of the secret passageways in the dorms and the tower to avoid the Fat Lady and had cast a disillusionment charm over himself.
All he needed to do was hide in a place where he had a good view of the staircase - one of those which did not move around -and just wait. As he waited he thought about his plan and if he felt any guilt over what he was going to do. He didn't. Hermione wouldn't suffer any permanent damage, and while the staircase was quite long, it wasn't long enough to do any serious damage. With luck, she would just break her legs, although he would make sure she didn't die.
Finally, Hermione came up the stairs, a book in her hands reading away while she deftly walked up the stairs with practice. Harry couldn't see what the book was, but he didn't care. This was going to be easier than he'd first thought.
When she stepped closer to him, Harry got ready but he didn't move until she was firmly on the top step, and he hooked his foot around her leg. Alerted to the touch, Hermione looked around fearfully, realising where she was and what was happening. "Who-?"
But it was too late. Harry slammed his hand into Hermione's chest as hard as he could while his foot tripped her up and she lost her balance.
X
The next morning, Harry and Ron were escorted to the hospital wing by Professor McGonagall who was looking tearful by what was going on. Harry had schooled his expression into one of fear, while he hid his thoughts behind his invisibility cloak inspired mental barriers thanks to a book on occlumency he had found.
"We found her not far from the Gryffindor common room entrance," McGonagall was saying as she led the way into the hospital wing.
"Hermione!" Ron cried out when he saw her on the bed, unconscious instantly making Madam Pomfrey shush him.
"Not so loud, Mr Weasley!" The nurse snapped. "She's in a potion induced coma to repair the damage."
"Damage? What damage?" Ron shouted, ignoring or completely disregarding the nurse's orders.
"What happened to her?" Harry asked when he saw how Pomfrey looked ready to curse or disembowel Ron.
"She apparently tripped and fell down the stairs. We found her unconscious with a concussion but she also suffered through a broken leg," Pomfrey explained.
"Will she be okay?" Harry asked.
"She will," Pomfrey assured him.
It was over a week before Hermione woke up, and when she did she reported someone had deliberately attacked her. McGonagall took the matter seriously and instigated an investigation to discover what had happened, but unfortunately in a magical environment, evidence had dried up and any magical signature left behind was long gone. Harry was questioned, but thanks to his occlumency barriers he had managed to hide the truth from everyone and truthfully there was no evidence he was behind it. The Fat Lady was questioned and she informed McGonagall and Dumbledore nobody had passed through her for the entire night.
While he was in a way happy the girl was okay although he felt she deserved it, Harry was even happier that Hermione left him alone for a short while. It seemed her accident had made her more careful, and she was the equivalent of a frightened mouse when she was let out, and while he was thankful she had learnt something from the fall she'd had, Harry was even more pleased the girl was quiet.
He had gotten away with it. Now all he needed to do was to survive his OWLs and get away from the wizarding world and let them finally take care of themselves for a change.