The next class they had inspected wasn't until four weeks later, on the first Monday of October.
Walking into Snape's dungeon for Potions class after the Snake had opened the door to let everyone in, they found her lurking in a dark corner, ever-present clipboard on her knees ready to be written on. And for the first half hour of class she remained there, scribbling down notes as Snape did his normal stalking through the Gryffindor half of the classroom to sneer at their potions and tell them what horrible scum and garbage they all were, and occasionally walking over to the Slytherin half to sing their praises. But after thirty minutes or so, Umbridge finally stood up and walked over to where Snape was bent over Thomas's cauldron to find every last imperfect bubble.
She talked to Snape for a several minutes, and though FitzSkimmons couldn't hear the conversation from where they were hiding in the back corner, from occasional glances up while they were waiting for their potion to do its thing on its own, they could tell that he seemed even angrier than normal, which was really saying something. At one point they did hear Umbridge say 'Defense Against the Dark Arts', and assumed that she must be asking him something about his interest in the DADA position, and the fact he was still in Potions despite everyone in the school knowing that he would give his left nut to be in DADA despite the fact that no one lasted there for more than a year — but as long as the Ministry spy was tying up Snape so that he couldn't abuse any of the students, the two pathetic excuses for humans could be having a previous-DADA professor bashing party for all FitzSimmons cared.
Sadly, Umbridge apparently wasn't interested in keeping him distracted until the bell rang to end the class, and the moment she left his side and started walking around the classroom talking to a few of the Slytherins about how great their Head of House was, Snape came sweeping over to FitzSkimmons' table to glare down into Fitz's cauldron as if hoping he would be able to take his own failings in life out on Harry Potter — but as Fitz's potion was as perfect as Simmons', he was stymied. He then turned to look at Daisy's, but it was still the third best potion in the room behind FitzSimmons' and there was nothing wrong with it to bitch about, so he swept away without a word of praise, to go torture Neville and the rest of the Gryffindors for a while.
The rest of the class passed no worse than any other Potions class did, with Umbridge spending most of her time talking with Slytherins about the class, and occasionally just walking through the class looking down at various students' potions, never once talking to a Gryffindor about what they thought of Snape's lessons. She did at one point wander back to FitzSkimmons' corner of the dungeon, looking down into Fitz's bubbling cauldron, but she as well turned away without a word. Instead, she was sporting a sour look that made it obvious she'd been hoping to find something Harry Potter could be expelled from Hogwarts for, or at the very least heavily abused with her Ministry power for his still existing after not playing ball and letting himself be found guilty at his trial over the summer.
When the bell did finally ring, just like the other class she'd inspected that they'd been in, Umbridge was the first one out the door, though in this case the Gryffindors weren't far behind, none of them wanting to be nearer to Snape than they absolutely had to be. FitzSkimmons packed up their things at a more reasonable pace before following everyone else out to head up to lunch.
Once outside and assured that they were out of Snape's earshot, Fitz asked Simmons quietly, "So where do you think Snape lands on Umbridge's friends list? Any chance she'll actually do what the Prophet article said the High Inquisitor is for, and fire his arse?"
"Not talking to only Slytherins, she won't," interjected Daisy in a grumble.
"That is true, but I think he's a very low risk anyway," answered Simmons. "Regardless of Snape's work for Dumbledore on the Riddle front, I don't think the Ministry sees him as a big threat, if nothing else because how much can you really overthrow the Ministry with potions? Now, I'm not saying you couldn't, because I'm sure you could, especially if bomb potions exist — in fact, between Neville melting cauldrons and Seamus blowing them up, you could probably take down the Ministry using just their 'expertise'. But wizards don't think like that, on any of the three sides — Dumbledore, Riddle, or Ministry. Plus, the hatred of Snape in this castle is well-known, and I think Umbridge is likely to see that as a positive, as how can Dumbledore teach everyone that Riddle is back and a threat when they're all too busy hating Snape? House divided and all that. He's a convenient distraction for the three Houses who might start believing Riddle is back — Slytherin knows it for a fact since it's all their parents, but obviously have no reason to say anything.
"And that's just Umbridge's side of this equation. There's also the Dumbledore side to remember. Snape is clearly protected by Dumbledore, regardless of how many atrocities he commits, so I think Dumbledore would fight tooth and nail to keep Snape, and while I don't know how much of that Umbridge knows, I do think she'll consider him a hard target, and just play the bluffing game like she will with Professor McGonagall, and Professor Flitwick, and the other professors she knows would be too much work to try firing without a really solid reason."
Trelawney, however, it seemed, didn't fall under that classification, as that afternoon, when they were standing outside the door to the DADA classroom, Lavender and Parvati walked up, sniffling and looking like they'd shed a few tears during the Divination class they'd just came from.
"Think Umbridge made her first strike?" Fitz asked quietly, but not so quietly that Lavender and Parvati couldn't overhear him.
He hoped it would make them volunteer information about what had happened without him having to ask, plus, if he could turn them against Umbridge, and have them stir up enmity against the Ministry spy while the three of them and especially 'Harry Potter' kept their noses clean, that couldn't be a bad thing, either.
"Sounds likely," answered Simmons, but that was as far as she got.
"That — that — hag put Professor Trelawney on probation!" Lavender exclaimed in a watery, angry whisper. "It's an insult to the noble art of Divination!"
"We're sorry," said Simmons gently to Lavender. "Did Professor Trelawney say what happens now?"
Lavender shook her head, but before she could say anything, the door opened and Umbridge ushered them all in, Lavender and Parvati glaring daggers at her as they walked in to find their seats.
~FSK~
That evening, as FitzSkimmons sat around the table in their private dorm working on their homework, Fitz suddenly flinched slightly and rubbed Harry's scar.
"Babe? You okay?" asked Simmons, before turning on Daisy and saying sternly, "And don't say it's because he's working too hard so you need a break, or that your head is hurting as well and you need a break with him."
As Daisy stuck her tongue out at her wife, Fitz said, "Harry's scar just hurt, and once again, I'm getting some extra feeling, but for once the echo effect is being a detriment. I can only feel that Harry's feeling something not of himself, I'm not getting enough of it to feel what Harry is actually feeling."
"So it wasn't just your glorious cock you were feeling last time," smirked Daisy, making Simmons roll her eyes.
"When you've fished your mind out of the gutter, I was going to suggest we go try to tell Dumbledore," she said. "There's still almost an hour before curfew, we could go find one of the professors to see if Dumbledore is in."
"And tell him what?" replied Daisy. "Harry's scar is hurting again, exactly as expected…oh, and yeah — he might have a stomach ache as well. That he's feeling 'something' isn't going to help a lot. Dumbledore's a wizard, not a mind reader."
"Okay, okay, fine, so we don't," sighed Simmons. "But if it keeps happening, I think we should at least mention it."
"If it happens several more times, if I get a vision with it one of these times, or if I can actually determine the feeling, we'll go tell him," said Fitz. "How does that sound?"
"Satisfactory," replied Simmons, before saying to Daisy as she returned to her homework, "And no, you can't take a break because Fitz's scar hurt."
~FSK~
The following morning, as they walked down to the Great Hall for breakfast, Fitz asked his wives, "Do you think it's odd that I keep traveling down the Ministry hallway to the Department of Mysteries in my dreams?
"The end result is never the same, nor how I get there, and more than once the hallway's been somewhere completely random like alone in the middle of some field, or the entrance to the cave Jemma lived in for a while on Maveth, and once I actually skydived with Jemma without parachutes down through the corridor, and when we burst through the door at the far end, we splashed down in the lake on Maveth and immediately had to start fighting for our lives against the squid thing, but it keeps popping up ever since we got here."
"The trial was a pretty traumatic experience for Harry, maybe that corridor is what Harry's brain latched onto out of the ordeal, and is now supplying as nightmare material?" suggested Simmons. "I don't really know — brains, and nightmares, and hallucinations, and other mind-related sciences have never been my speciality, despite our relatively frequent encounters with them."
"Are they bothering you at all?" asked Daisy.
"No — I just found it odd that some random hallway in the Ministry would keep popping up, when most of my dreams and nightmares are from our world," answered Fitz. "It's really just a location more than anything else, there's nothing scary about it itself. It's just a hallway."
"Yeah, no clue, sorry dear," said Simmons. "We could ask Madam Pomfrey if she thinks there's anything to a single location constantly showing up, but I really doubt it's anything. Our minds just do strange things sometimes, and latch on to completely meaningless things — just be happy you don't dream in song lyrics like Daisy complains about."
"Okay, true, a corridor is a lot better than lyrics," Fitz smirked to Daisy as they walked into the Great Hall and found their normal seats at the Gryffindor table.
Hagrid had just returned from the mountains when there came a sharp rapping on the door of his cabin.
As Fang began barking madly, a thoroughly confused Hagrid walked to the door and opened it to see who was visiting him so late at night. On the other side stood a short, fat woman in a green tweed cloak, more closely resembling a toad than a lady.
Leaning back to look up at Hagrid's face, she said slowly and loudly, "So…you're Hagrid, are you?", before rudely barging into his home without asking, unfortunately not getting punched in the face and flying clean past the end of the garden for it.
Instead, Hagrid let her trespass without making any move to stop her, which she took full advantage of by whacking Fang in the nose with her handbag when he came over to say hi, and nosily looking all around the room that she had no right to be in.
Eventually, Hagrid did finally say, "Er — I don' want ter be rude, but who the ruddy hell are you?"
"My name is Dolores Umbridge," answered Umbridge, eyes continuing to search the room for any excuse to fire him on the spot.
"Dolores Umbridge? I thought you were one o' them Ministry — don' you work with Fudge?"
"I was Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, yes," answered Umbridge, now helping herself around the cabin, inspecting every tiny detail she could lay her eyes on, even peering under his bed, opening his cupboards, and looking inside his enormous cooking cauldron. "I am now the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and Hogwarts High Inquisitor."
"Wha's that?" asked Hagrid, as clueless as everyone else had been when they'd first read in the Prophet that she'd been named such.
"It means that it is my unfortunate, but necessary duty to inspect my fellow teachers," answered Umbridge with a well put-on air of deep regret that it had come to such drastic measures in the life of the hallowed school of Hogwarts.
"You're inspectin' us?" Hagrid repeated blankly, staring at her.
"Oh, yes. The Ministry is determined to weed out unsatisfactory teachers," replied Umbridge, stopping her snooping for the time being and instead turning to take in his appearance.
Which did not look good, to be perfectly frank.
His hair was matted with congealed blood, his left eye had been reduced to a puffy slit amid a mass of purple and black bruising, there were cuts all over his face, arms, and hands, some of them still bleeding, and he was moving gingerly like he had broken ribs.
"What has happened to you?" she asked. "How did you sustain those injuries?"
Hagrid shuffled guiltily for several seconds, before finally saying lamely, "I...had a bit of an accident."
"What sort of accident?"
"I - I tripped," stuttered out Hagrid.
"You tripped," Umbridge repeated coolly.
"Yeah, tha's right. Over...over a friends broomstick. I don' fly, meself. Well, look at the size o' me, I don' reckon there's a broomstick that'd hold me. Friend o' mine breeds Abraxan horses, I dunno if you've ever seen 'em, big beasts, winged, yeh know, I've had a bit of a ride on one o' them an' it was —"
"Where have you been?" asked Umbridge, cutting off Hagrid's babbling.
"Where've I —?"
"Been, yes," she said. "Term started two months ago. Another teacher has had to cover your classes. None of your colleagues has been able to give me any information as to your whereabouts. You left no address. Where have you been?"
There was a long pause in which Hagrid just stared at her, but finally he said, "I - I've been away for me health."
"For your health," repeated Professor Umbridge. Her eyes travelled over Hagrid's discolored and swollen face. "I see."
"Yeah, bit o' - o' fresh air, yeh know —" said Hagrid, making a bad situation worse.
"Yes, as gamekeeper fresh air must be so difficult to come by," Umbridge replied sweetly. The small patch of Hagrid's face that was not black or purple, flushed.
"Well — change o' scene, yeh know —"
"Mountain scenery?" Umbridge asked swiftly.
"Mountains?" Hagrid repeated, stalling for time as he tried to think of somewhere else he could have been. "Nope, south o' France fer me. Bit o' sun an'...an' sea."
"Really?" said Umbridge, unimpressed. "You don't have much of a tan."
"Yeah...well...sensitive skin," said Hagrid, attempting an ingratiating smile that only served to reveal that two of his teeth had been knocked out.
Umbridge looked at him coldly, clearly not buying any of it, and his smile faltered.
Hoisting her handbag a little higher into the crook of her arm as she walked to the door, she said, "I shall, of course, be informing the Minister of your late return."
"Righ'," replied Hagrid, nodding along as if he had any clue what that meant.
Pausing at the door, she added, "I daresay we shall meet again soon enough. Goodbye."
And with that she left, closing the door she never should have been allowed through in the first place behind her with a snap.
~FSK~
Two morning's later, on the first Monday of November, FitzSkimmons saw Hagrid return to the staff table.
So the following afternoon after lunch, they followed the rest of the Gryffindors down to Hagrid's hut, instead of heading to the library like normal. When they arrived, walking through the path in the snow that Simmons melted for them as they walked, they saw that Hagrid looked even worse up close than he had at a distance in the Great Hall that morning. They thought he'd looked rather beaten up, but up close he looked absolutely dreadful.
But before Simmons' doctor instincts could kick in, Hagrid shouted out to them and the rest of the approaching students with a jerk of his head towards the Forbidden Forest behind him, "We're workin' in here today! Bit more sheltered! Anyway, they prefer the dark."
Behind them, FitzSkimmons heard Malfoy panickly ask his thugs (as if they paid any more attention to Hagrid than their leader did), "What prefers the dark? What did he say prefers the dark — did you hear?"
Turning around to face Malfoy, Fitz sneered, "He didn't say, you idiot. He said 'they'. Which if you'd been paying attention, you'd know."
Malfoy was only take aback for a second, before sneering himself, "Yeah, well…where were you in the match Saturday, huh? Too scared to face me? Is that it? Harry Potter's a big ol' chicken?"
"I'm concentrating on school this year," Fitz answered calmly. "It's OWL year, and I want to get an O on all ten subjects I'm sitting for, and honestly quidditch just doesn't really interest me all that much any more. Too boring for my tastes. It's not like I haven't been there, done that, won all the trophies — and after winning the TriWizard Cup last year, quidditch just seemed like a letdown."
Malfoy gaped like a fish out of water at Fitz, having no clue how to answer that, but was saved from having to by Hagrid saying cheerfully, "Ready? Right, well, I've bin savin' a trip inter the Forest fer yer fifth year. Thought we'd go an' see these creatures in their natural habitat. Now, what we're studyin' today is pretty rare, I reckon I'm probably the on'y person in Britain who's managed ter train 'em."
Attention redirected somewhere he was more comfortable at, Malfoy sneered, though with a bit of returned panic detectable in his voice, "And you're sure they're trained, are you? Only it wouldn't be the first time you'd brought wild stuff to class, would it?"
Hagrid replied angrily, "If yeh've finished askin' stupid questions, follow me!", before turning and stalking off into the forest.
Ten minutes later they had come to an extra-dark patch of forest, Hagrid had deposited the cow carcass he'd been carrying over his shoulder onto the forest floor, and given an odd, shrieking call to whatever creature it was that they were to be studying that day.
As Hagrid gave the call for a third time, Fitz spotted one of the lithe creatures they must be studying that day step out of the shadows and walk up to the carcass, and exclaimed, "Ooh, thestrals!"
As everyone, including Hagrid, turned to look at him in shock, Simmons said, "Guide me to them, Harry."
So Fitz took his wife by the shoulders, and steered her from behind to within two feet of its neck. Then reaching down and taking her wrist, he placed her hand on the beast's neck, before stepping back to let her study the creature by feel, and memory from the end of the previous year. As he stepped back next to Daisy, who was happy not to pet the weird beasts, he noticed that a few more thestrals had shown up for the party, along with the fact that other than himself, his wives, Neville, and a Slytherin boy he didn't know the name of, everyone else was staring around cluelessly, clearly unable to see the creatures.
Once there were three thestrals eating off of the carcass, Hagrid asked, "Now...put yer hands up, who can see 'em?"
As expected, Fitz, Neville, and the Slytherin were the only three to raise their hands, the only three (besides Simmons and Daisy, of course) who hadn't been staring around cluelessly before noticing the meat being invisibly torn off the carcass.
"Yeah...yeah, I knew you'd be able ter, Harry," said Hagrid. "An' you too, Neville, eh? An' —"
But Malfoy sneered, "And what exactly are we supposed to be seeing?"
Before Hagrid could try to answer, Fitz retorted superiorly, "The thestrals, obviously. They can only be seen by people who have seen a person die, which obviously excludes you, as the only thing you've ever seen die is your human decency."
Malfoy snarled at Fitz, but before he could do anything more, Parvati exclaimed in alarm, "But they're really, really unlucky! They're supposed to bring all sorts of horrible misfortune on people who see them. Professor Trelawney told me once —"
"No, no, no," waved off Hagrid with a chuckle. "Tha's jus' superstition, that is — they aren' unlucky, they're dead clever an' useful! Course, this lot don' get a lot o' work, it's mainly jus' pullin' the school carriages unless Dumbledore's takin' a long journey an' don' want ter Apparate. But like Harry jus' said, thestrals can only be seen by people who have seen death. Ten points ter Gryffindor. Now, Thestrals —"
But at that moment, he was interrupted by an annoying, high-pitched cough.
"Oh, hello!" greeted Hagrid with a smile once he'd finally located the source of the interruption while he was trying to do his job and teach.
"You received the note I sent to your cabin this morning?" asked Umbridge in a loud, slow voice. "Telling you that I would be inspecting your lesson?"
"Oh, yeah," answered Hagrid brightly. "Glad yeh found the place all righ'! Well, as you can see — or, I dunno — can you? We're doin' Thestrals today —"
"And...he started out so well," sighed Fitz into Daisy's ear, as Umbridge cupped her hand around her ear and asked frowning, "I'm sorry? What did you say?"
Predictably, Hagrid looked at her in confusion — was she partially deaf? No one in his classes had any trouble understanding him.
"Er — Thestrals!" he said loudly, thinking that maybe she needed people to yell for her to be able to hear them. "Big — er — winged horses, yeh know!"
Then, thinking that maybe she didn't understand English very well, he flapped his gigantic arms in a visual representation of wings. But rather than thank him for his inclusiveness, Umbridge simply raised her eyebrows at him and muttered loud enough for everyone to hear as she noted on her clipboard "Has...to...resort...to...crude...sign…language."
"Oh, dear God," sighed Simmons quietly to her spouses, having just walked back over to them. "She's going to fire him in a week."
"But how did he ever become a teacher in the first place if he falls apart like this every time something goes slightly off track, is what I want to know," replied Daisy quietly. "You want to talk about giving someone a job for some reason other than merit — or was this to meet some diversity quota? You have to have at least one half-breed, one child abuser, and one complete fraud — that's Trelawney — on your staff at all times. And if you can add a Ministry cunt, double the points and you get bingo," she finished, nodding over to where Umbridge was still treating Hagrid like a mentally retarded person.
After insulting Hagrid for a while longer, Umbridge began walking around, talking to intentionally selected students like she had in several of their other inspected class, asking them leading questions.
Walking up to Parkinson, she asked in a carrying voice, "Do you find that you are able to understand Professor Hagrid when he talks?"
"No...because...well...it sounds...like grunting a lot of the time…" Parkinson managed to get out in short bursts, doubled over laughing as she tried to talk through her giggles.
"Surprise, fuckin' surprise — who could have possibly seen that answer coming?" Daisy muttered sarcastically under her breath, as Umbridge wrote down Parkinson's answer on her clipboard as nothing short of a sworn statement in a courtroom. "Also, do we know if Umbridge was a Slytherin?"
"She certainly belongs there, and hasn't every bad wizard come out of Slytherin?" replied Fitz.
"That's every Death Eater except Pettigrew, but I would definitely say she's very snakelike, and most likely a Slytherin," answered Simmons.
As Hagrid tried to continue on with his lesson, though he'd already lost it nearly as badly as his very first lesson when Malfoy had insulted Buckbeak, Umbridge walked over to Neville and asked brusquely, "You can see the Thestrals, Longbottom, can you?"
Neville nodded.
"Who did you see die?" she continued on, completely indifferent to the fact that she was badgering a student about having seen another human being die before their very eyes, or otherwise being intentionally cruel, and also proving that she knew exactly what thestrals were despite her earlier behavior towards Hagrid insinuating that she didn't.
"My...my grandad," answered Neville in a tone clear enough for a blind person to see that he didn't want to talk about it.
Unsurprisingly, Umbridge completely ignored his pain, and continued on insensitively, "And what do you think of them?"
Like most unexperienced people who were put in a tight spot when they were nervous, Neville glanced over at the only (known) adult and authority figure in the area, Hagrid, and nervously answered, "Erm…well, they're...er…ok…."
"Students...are...too...intimidated...to...admit...they...are…frightened," Umbridge muttered loud enough to make sure everyone in the class could hear her, as she made another note on her clipboard.
"No!" exclaimed Neville, looking hurt at how she had twisted his words into something polar opposite to what he'd actually said in order to fit her political agenda. "No, I'm not scared of them!"
"It's quite all right," said Umbridge saccharinely, patting Neville on the shoulder like he was a scared child, with what she had doubtlessly deluded herself over the years into believing was an understanding smile, or else what was an attempt to fool Neville into believing was a caring smile from someone with no soul, but in reality looked more like a leer than anything else.
Turning to Hagrid, she resumed her loud, slow voice and downright insulting hand motions, and said, "Well, Hagrid, I think I've got enough to be getting along with. You will receive the results of your inspection in ten days' time," before bustling away, leaving Malfoy and Parkinson behind doubled over in fits of laughter.
"How long do you think he'll last?" Fitz asked quietly as they walked away from class half an hour later.
"As much as I don't think he's a teacher, I'm actually hoping he will last," answered Simmons. "Because if he gets fired and Grubs returns, we have to attend enough of her classes to make sure Umbridge doesn't notice that we quit coming and use that as an excuse to try to do something to Harry. Grubs clearly won't say anything to anyone, we've got months of proof of that, but if Umbridge catches wind we're skipping class to learn, she'll be all over it like a toad on flies."
"So what do you actually think his chances of surviving are?" asked Daisy.
"I don't know," answered Simmons. "Yeah, Umbridge made a big deal out of trying to make him look retarted, playing up Skeeter's revelation last year that he's half giant, and yeah, he lost his focus quickly like every time adversity strikes, but it really wasn't a bad lesson, and while it's true what Umbridge said, that thestrals normally aren't introduced until NEWTs, they aren't illegally bred like screwts, they aren't as temperamental as hippogriffs, and not as dangerous when they are provoked, and they're not dragons, Ungoliant and Shelob's heirs, or larger than normal dogs with two spare heads. So from a lesson standpoint, even for her I don't think she has enough to fire him yet, especially if she remains distracted with Trelawney. Whatever he's into that's causing all those cuts and bruises, however, could be a problem. Because that does look like dragon, acromantula, three-headed dog territory."