Chapter Eleven: Ministry Meddling
I made myself unobtrusive to that horrid Professor Umbridge, especially after she was made Hogwarts High Inquisitor and created that evil Inquisitorial Squad, made up entirely of Slytherins who docked us Gryffindors points if we even looked sideways at them. I just kept out of the way of anyone wearing a Slytherin patch, even if they didn't have the extra Inquisitorial Squad insignia.
I couldn't avoid Potions, taught by Slytherin's Head Professor Snape, but I could and did make quite sure that he couldn't call me out for exceptionally good or dismally bad work. I didn't want him taking out his hatred of our father or Harry on me if he ever found out I shared their blood. My plan worked perfectly: in Umbridge and Snape's classes, I seemed to be invisible.
Meanwhile, my weekly visits to Madame Pomfrey were working wonders on my wisdom, as each time I remembered more things out of my past. I recalled when Harry was born, though I was not even three yet. I brought to mind the happy times we had had as a family, with "Uncles" Sirius, Remus, and Peter near at hand. I finally recollected the girl who was with me on the night of the purple flash: my nanny and a good friend of Mother's Agatha Agnes Bones McKinnon (her sister is Amelia Bones and her niece Susan). She gave her life to protect me, and I will be eternally grateful to her. (As the Memory Charm finally snapped at last sometime near the end of May, I remembered that Agatha Agnes had cast it, in a last-ditch effort to save my life before she fell atop me dead. Made more powerful by her dying desperation, it encompassed not only me, but the six Death Eaters as well; but since I was the closest, I received the brunt of it. There are not so powerful, but since they now have no reason to believe Harry has or has ever had a sister, I am eternally safe⦠unless Voldemort remembers I'm not dead.)
I also saw the faces of the people who killed her, though only one meant anything to me before New Year's. It was the same face as the head of the Inquisitorial Squad, Draco Malfoy. Obviously it wasn't him, but his father at a younger age, but it still chills me to this day. The rest of the faces I saw weeks later in an edition of the Daily Prophet, five of the ten Death Eaters who escaped from Azkaban. Since then, I've always wondered why it took six Death Eaters to kill one young woman and (attempt to kill) one little girl, but I don't think I'll ever know. The ways of the Dark Arts are mysterious, and not for good witches and wizards to understand.
