Harry Potter: Thinking like a Thief.

Dolores Umbridge was angry. Her authority as the Senior Undersecretary of the Minister meant very little at Hogwarts, and she had learnt very quickly the other teachers neither liked nor respected her. Dolores wasn't bothered about the first part. She didn't care about being liked. When she had first formulated her plans for gathering power, Umbridge had realised she would be better off being feared by her fellow politicians. Why would it be any different at Hogwarts?

She had assumed it would be no different here. Unfortunately, the other teachers were barely cooperating with either herself or with the Ministry, and that was intolerable for her. She had been Defence teacher at Hogwarts for the past month, and while she had managed to solidify some of the power base she and Cornelius had both agreed on even if she believed the Minister was making a mistake focusing all of his attention on both Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter. Surely there were other conspirators as well?

But the problem was with the Dementor attack in the muggle world, Cornelius was unable to give her the kind of power that they had both discussed before she had come to Hogwarts. The ICW had been alerted to the attack, and now Cornelius was being investigated. Even those blasted pamphlets were being taken seriously.

But even if a few filthy muggles and nasty mudbloods were being tortured and used for sex, what of it?

After all, wasn't that why they were alive?

With the kind of scrutiny, the Minister and the rest of the Ministry were under, it could be months before she had the kind of power she needed to properly ensure the school was not plotting against the Ministry.

Even the Potter boy was not acting in the manner she had expected. Dolores had assumed he would. She had assumed as a Gryffindor and the hero he was would shout loudly You-Know-Who was back. She had been counting on it happening, and she had been looking forwards to the nasty little half-blood doing just that, to give her the opportunity to punish him for being the nasty little liar he was. But no. He seemed to have come to the castle prepared and he was just sitting quietly in her classes reading out from that book. Even worse, he seemed to avoid her whenever she tried to catch him out of her classes.

She had even gone as far as to cast tracking spells on the boy so she could catch up to him and…. nothing! How could that be? The boy was nothing special; his grades showed an average student, he shouldn't be able to detect her spell work. It simply never occurred to Umbridge she was dealing with a more powerful and smarter wizard who didn't want to have any attention.

However, Dolores Umbridge had never been bright. In her mind, if you didn't show off your grades and your worth, you were automatically retarded. It was that simple.

In any case, Umbridge was too busily reflecting on the other students' behaviour, how they refused to take her or the Ministry's message which she continually preached in the class. That was not on in her mind. She needed to find a way of getting the students to see everything the Ministry did was meant to ensure their future success, and that dissidents needed to be punished.

If only Cornelius wasn't under so much pressure with the ICW. So what if so many muggles died? It was no great loss. In any case, many wizards and witches around the world despised muggles for forcing them underground, a hatred stoked every single time a mudblood got too big for their station. While she knew Cornelius agreed with her views, Amelia Bones and the ICW were probing too deeply. She had assumed the boy would be trapped in that muggle neighbourhood when the Dementors had arrived.

It had simply never occurred to Umbridge that she should personally head to Little Whinging to see if the brat was there. She had no reason to. She had heard the boy had no other relatives, no great loss.

But even in hindsight, it never entered Umbridge's mind she should have checked to see if Harry Potter was at the Dursleys. It just was not wired into her brain to think along those lines.

Percy Weasley, always wanting to please his superiors and seemed to be the only member of that irritating family whose head was screwed on correctly confirmed the boy never left the muggle town he'd been brought up in, and he always took care of his school shopping near the end of the summer holidays. It was the perfect time to deal with the liar before he could sow any more seeds of dissent. Unfortunately, the plan had failed. Not only was the Potter boy not there, but he had also left days beforehand!

Because they weren't being supervised to minimise any chance of future reprisals, the dementors had then stupidly gorged themselves on all of the muggles they could find. Umbridge didn't care about that, and she knew many others didn't either, those of the right sort. She was just relieved she had managed to cover her tracks, or she would be facing a long prison sentence without any chance of parole, never mind release. The ICW had already made it clear they would discover the truth but she was hoping if she could keep her head down, the worst of the storm would pass.

X

Harry had to use all of his occlumency experience to keep his cool when he felt the magic of the spell wash over him. One of the benefits of practicing occlumency was being able to feel certain types of spells as they hit him. It had proven incredibly handy, especially when he had been in the presence of wizards like Dumbledore, who was simply too nosy for words.

But the good thing about Dumbledore was he presented a facade of amiability, and he didn't have a habit of casting a spell like this every chance he got. He had only cast one every once in a while. Umbridge, however, had an attitude and a voice that could curdle fresh milk.

For the last few weeks, Umbridge had been hitting him with one tracking charm after a while. She was desperate and it showed. Umbridge had been trying to get him into trouble for the last month, and when she had quickly realised it was not working she had taken to putting tracking charms on him. Harry had quickly realised what she was doing when Umbridge, clearly frustrated she could not get him into trouble in her classes, had jumped out on him once as he'd walked down the corridors to Charms, and tried to get him into trouble by beginning a casual conversation, although many of the questions were pointed and carefully thought through.

Harry had also been careful with how he replied to the questions, unfortunately, the stupid bitch had jumped on each of his answers as if determined to find something, anything she could use. She had been desperate to find some reason to put him in detention.

Unfortunately, because the stupid woman had cornered him outside the Charms classroom, Professor Flitwick had come out and brought him in. Umbridge's expression would be something he would cherish for good.

But after that, it hadn't stopped. Umbridge had been trying the same tactic every single day when they had free time, but thanks to his Marauder's Map and his own knowledge of the castle, it was pathetically easy to avoid her. Unfortunately, the toad was smart enough to try tracking charms. She had been casting spells subtly on him every lesson. And he had taken joy taking them off, mentally visualising underneath his occlumency barriers the joy he would feel when he found a way of killing the bitch although he knew he was likely to be the prime suspect.

But it was getting so annoying.

He lifted his eyes and sneered when she walked by, seeing that smug smirk on her face. Luckily Umbridge didn't see his sneer of disgust as she walked past him. He wondered how long it would take before she stopped smirking like that as if she had a thousand flies buzzing by her while she sat on a lily pad on a stagnant pond when she started to see the tracking chairs were not working.

He had toyed with the idea of simply letting her have her fun and letting her jump out on him…. Only to discover he had replaced the charm and put it on a suit of armour at the last minute while he left after seeing her reaction. But he decided not to, well at least for now. There was simply a lot going on in his life right now to play a game with a woman he didn't care about. In any case, there was bigger fish for him to fry.

Hogsmeade was coming up, and he had found thanks to Dobby and Winky that a group of young students from 5th, 6th and 7th Year were going to the brothel the Death Eaters had established.

The trip had been planned by several students who were on the road to becoming the next generation of Death Eaters. They had been patient, and subtle. They had sounded out other purebloods who could partake in the so-called fun. It was quite a large group of students, but as Harry looked at the list, which seemed to be growing every day and he conducted his research on them, the more he realised he was going to be very rich by the end of the year. Dobby and Winky had already scouted out the families. It would be easy to dispose of them, discover any skeletons in their closest and steal what they had.

The Malfoys were at the top of the list. He would not miss Draco, but what he had in store for the younger Malfoy was going to be worse than death.

When the lesson ended, Umbridge called out, "Mr Potter, please wait. I have something to say to you."

Harry caught Hermione's confused face. He knew what she was thinking. He had gone out of his way to keep his head down otherwise Umbridge would prove Fudge's point about him being insane and delusional. He was doing more harm to Fudge's image by keeping quiet, but there was nothing the toad could do about it.

So what was this about? Umbridge might be a teacher, but there was only so much he could be punished with.

Harry nodded reassuringly while he tensed at the possibilities of what Umbridge could want. When everyone was out, some of them sending smug looks his way, leaving just Harry and Umbridge, he decided to simply get it over with.

"Is there something wrong, Professor?" Harry had to hide his feelings of what it took to actually call her that, but if he could keep her sweet then perhaps he could get answers without getting her angry.

It seemed to work. "Why, yes, dear," Umbridge simpered in that sugary sweet, girlish voice that had already made people despise her. "I was hoping we could have a talk on this Hogsmeade weekend."

Harry raised a brow. "About what?"

"Oh, this and that," Umbridge giggled, shrugging casually.

"I'm afraid that isn't good enough, Professor. What were you hoping to speak to me about?"

"Don't use that tone with me, Potter!" For the first time, Umbridge became angry, but it disappeared quickly and she became sugary sweet again. "You will find out on the weekend, and not before. Now, go, go."

Cursing the toad in his mind but keeping his emotions from leaking out to the surface, Harry nodded and left the room. Harry walked and found an empty classroom. Once he silenced the place, he let his emotions out. After he was finished, Harry reinforced his occlumency and repaired the damage to the classroom. The venting of the rage he felt and the repairs to the room did him the world of good, and it gave him some time to think about the whole matter.

Truthfully he didn't care what Umbridge wanted, but he was going to need to find a way of getting into Hogsmeade. But then it struck him that he didn't really need to go to Hogsmeade; if he could give Dobby and Winky instructions for getting the people out of the brothel and ensure all of the Death Eaters and their allies were trapped, it would be a multiple victory. Not only would he be killing several full Death Eaters, several hopefuls would be killed as well, weakening their families and support for Voldemort, and while the doors to multiple places for him to burgle would be opened up they wouldn't be ready for some time, the biggest victory, however, would be many people outside of Voldemort's organisation would know of the brothel, but when the news of what it was got out and it would get out, it should hopefully shake the recruitment for the Death Eaters.

However, there was the camp to consider…

Just last night, Dobby had come to him with news about a Death Eater training camp on the Scottish moors. He could understand why there would be something like that on the moors; they would be quiet, the moors were remote and they'd grow without anyone noticing. But they were not difficult to find for a house-elf.

The moment he had heard about the camp, he had immediately asked Dobby to begin spying on it at intervals to see who was coming and going, but more important to find out what kind of defences there were, and how they could be brought down. Unfortunately, with Dobby and Winky so busy, Harry was forced to wait. In time he hoped to find other house-elves. It was the fact he only had two house elves to help him that was a major problem for Harry and a big reason why he expected his plan to take the whole course of the year.

But truthfully he wasn't in a rush. Fudge was still digging in his heels and denying the truth of Voldemort's return, but the Dark Lord was still biding his time and gathering his forces. The more intelligence he had would allow him to make short work of the whole thing. Unfortunately Dobby and Winky were only two elves, and while they were miracle workers, they weren't that kind of miracle workers. They could not be everywhere at once.

One of Harry's biggest questions was how Voldemort received his funding; he was sure while the Death Eaters provided a large chunk of it themselves, they were not solely Voldemort's full source of income. No, there had to be something else. He could not see Voldemort receiving funding solely from the vaults of people like Malfoy.

He was no fool, and the longer Harry had considered it, he realised Voldemort was waging a full-scale war. To do that, he would need money to formulate intelligence networks, and to pay them off. He would need money to supply his troops with wands, potions, and robes and masks. On and on it would go. It was simply too much for a collection of galleons from a few Death Eaters.

In the end, Harry had decided to shift his plans. He would kill off the Death Eaters, stealing what they had, and he would also gain access to the house-elves they owned. He had discussed the topic with Dobby, and his house-elf agreed with him.

Well, that could wait; with the number of people Voldemort was recruiting, the camps were likely to be even bigger in the coming months. Hitting them now would be a bad idea. He needed to be prepared, and sadly there was just too much for him to do like weaken Voldemort and show the wizarding public what the real world was like.