A/N: I apologise, it's kind of a filler chapter, but please let me know what you think. Next update might be slow as I'm going on holiday for two weeks on Saturday.
Thanks to Moon Lantern, SJ Iolanthe, grangergal101 for reviewing/following/favouriting :)

The rest of the first week passed quite quickly, leaving Ariella with not a lot of free time for herself. In fact, she ended up with a lot more homework than she thought possible on Sunday night and woke up the next morning on the common room table next piles of books and her two best friends, who were both still fast asleep.

Then she realised with a jolt that it was Monday and that they should be going down for breakfast. The fact the common room was empty showed that everyone else must already have gone. Nice for them to wake us up, she thought grumpily before yawning and getting up.

"Lottie, Archie?" Ariella moved round the table, shaking them both gently. "It's Monday. We need to get ready for lessons."

Arcturus was the first to stir, stretching and rubbing his eyes. "Wait, what?" he asked suddenly, looking around at his surroundings and then at his friend, looking for an explanation.

"We must have fallen asleep doing our homework last night. I woke here too. But it's Monday, we need to get ready and go down for breakfast otherwise we'll miss it and have to wait for lunch. I can't wait that long."

"Oh." He stood up. "Did we all really fall asleep down here?" His expression made his friend laugh.

"It seems so. Do you want to go and get ready and I'll wake Lottie. Meet you down here when we're ready, okay?"

"Yeah alright. Though, good luck with waking her up, she looks dead to the world!" And with one last cheeky grin, he headed up the stairs to the boys' dormitories.

It was down at breakfast when they were told. The three friends were discussing how on Earth they managed to fall asleep when they were interrupted by Hermione throwing down the newspaper in front of her sister.

"What–?" she started to say, but Hermione interrupted her.

"Just read it. Front page."

Ariella looked down. There was the sickly sweet woman herself; grinning at the cameras next to the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge. Above that was the massive title in bold proclaiming:

MINISTRY SEEKS EDUCATIONAL REFORM

DELORES UMBRIDGE APPOINTED

FIRST EVER HIGH INQUISITOR

"What on Earth is a High Inquisitor?" was Ariella's first reaction, turning round and looking at her sister, eyebrows raised quizzically.

"It gives her more power around the school. I just read the whole article out to Harry and Ron, I'm not doing it again. If you want to know more, then read."

So Ariella read and by the time she'd finished the article, her anger was boiling over, just like her sister's.

"How dare she? And that Malfoy! As if my expectation of them could fall even lower. This is utterly ridiculous!" She slammed the paper down on the table, making half the table jump.

"Ella, calm down," Arcturus tried to soothe. "Umbridge is bound to look over this way if you keep this up and even if you want another lot of detentions, I do not."

Ariella sighed. "Sorry, Archie. I… it just really gets to me because of what she's done."

It was then that Arcturus noticed that his friend was gripping her left hand subconsciously and realised why she was getting so uptight.

"What she made you write was wrong, Ella. She had no right to say she was your better. But don't let it get to you."

"Arcturus is right. You can't let it get to you," Lottie added, in-between a mouthful of toast.

"You know I won't, but I can still hate her for being such a dreadful teacher. We haven't actually used magic in her class. No one in our entire year has!"

"If it makes you feel better, I don't think anyone in the school has used their wands in her classes, including us," Hermione put in.

"But, this is your OWL year!" Lottie protested.

"Yes, well, the woman seems to think that we will be able to do the spells easily if we read over the textbook for the whole year."

"That's ridiculous!"

"However, there doesn't seem to be a lot we can do about it. Anyway, you three better be off to your first class. Wouldn't want to be late if Umbridge is there."

It turned out Umbridge was in their first class, watching Professor McGonagall in Transfiguration as they continued to try and turn their matches into needles.

"So, so far no one has managed to succeed in this class?" the toad-like woman asked as she trotted round behind the strict woman.

"They are all doing extremely well. Transfiguration is an extremely hard subject and takes most people the first half term to get the hang of it."

"So, I'll take that as a no then," Professor Umbridge said to herself and then scribbled something down on her bright pink clipboard.

Just at that moment, a cry of triumph erupted out of Ariella. Everyone fell silent and turned towards the young girl, who was holding her bright silver needle in the air.

"Ah, it seems Miss Granger has managed it." There was a smirk in her voice as she went over to Ariella and plucked the needle from her grasp to inspect it. "Yes, very good. It seems you are nearly as talented as your sister in this subject. Although, next time, I would appreciate it if you didn't call out in my class."

"Sorry, Professor." Ariella knew the strict woman didn't really mind as she was smiling and clearly partly only told her off due to Professor Umbridge being in the room.

"You may have to change your notes, Delores, it seems we do have a success in the class."

Ariella bit her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud, she could hear Lottie sniggering next to her as Umbridge held her head up haughtily and once more wrote on her clipboard.

"Well. I think that is all I need," she continued. "You will get your results of the inspection in ten days' time." And with that, she walked out of the classroom, her tiny heels clicking along the floor as she exited the room.

"This is getting ridiculous, you know. She's going to end up with more power than Dumbledore himself at this rate," Arcturus whispered as the door clanged shut behind the toad-like woman.

"Tell me about it," Ariella replied, rolling her eyes. "We need to do something. And fast."

"Like what, Ella? We're only first years, what are we going to do against the Ministry of Magic?" Lottie put in, still concentrating on attempting to turn her match into a needle.

"We need someone to teach us how to do the Defence Against the Dark Arts spells. We need to be able to defend ourselves. We know what's out there."

"Well, we can't ask Harry, we don't know him well enough."

"My sister can ask him. She won't mind, in fact, she'll probably support it as she'll want to use it to get good grades."

At that moment, Professor McGonagall clapped her hands to gain the attention of the class.

"That's it for today. You have all done extremely well, but your homework is to practice this spell as I would like for more of you to be able to accomplish it by half term. Class dismissed."

That evening, Ariella cornered Hermione in the common room to ask about Harry.

"Wait, so you want me to ask Harry to teach us defence spells?" the elder Granger asked, thinking it through in her head.

"Yes," Ariella replied. "I mean he has come across You-Know-Who and his followers more times than I can count on one hand and got away reasonably unscathed. Please, Mione, it will help with your grades too!" She knew pulling that out of the bag would help persuade her sister. She was right.

"I didn't say I wouldn't. In fact, I think it's a brilliant idea. I'm just annoyed that I didn't think of it before."

"So you will?"

"Yes, I'll ask him when I see him, alright?" Hermione said, turning back to the pile of books on the table in front of her. "I'm pretty sure I heard you complaining to Lottie about how much homework you had to do this evening, don't you need to be doing it instead of continuing to bother me," she added as Ariella opened her mouth to say something else.

Rolling her eyes, she nodded and strode off, heading towards where her roommates were crowding round a tiny piece of table, desperately attempting to finish their homework before their astronomy class that evening.

"She'll do it," she whispered into Lottie's ear she sat down next to her.

Lottie looked up, surprised. "Really?"

Ariella smirked. "Yes, but now all we have to do is wait for her to get round to it," she said.