IWSC
Durmstrang
Writing School
Year 5
Word count (+10%): 962
Prompt: dialogue: Give me an opportunity to fail," X said. "I promise my corpse won't interrupt your 'I told you so' speech."
The young witch was sitting on her swing when her father came up.
"How's my bestest little princess?" he called.
"I'm very well, Father." she responded, all giggles and smiles. Her father gazed down fondly on her, curly brown hair with little freckles dotting her cheeks.
"Well well, Dolly, what should I say?"
"You needn't say anything," she murmured, suddenly forlorn.
"Well? What do you mean by that?"
"I-I mean, Mother won't be pleased to hear you call me 'Dolly'."
"Well, 'tis your name is it not?"
"Mother thinks you should say the whole thing. Never be 'pertinent, she says."
"Impertinent?" Mr. Umbridge asked. "Well I shall have words with her, if that is what she thinks of your nickname."
"Please don't, Papa."
"Why shouldn't I? You ought to be able to have a nickname, especially one I gave you. Your mother needs to let you be a child. You aren't a soldier, after all."
Dolores would long remember the seemingly trivial little exchange with her father, and what thereafter he did to try to make her happy. Happiness was an odd thing for her. So seldom did she find this ephemeral creature that it seemed almost legend. As a diplomat, Mr. Umbridge was often away at work, and it just happened that the bulk of her hard-won happiness was to be had with him. Her mother was...well, her mother. Her father was a kind man, though as a diplomat to the Magical Republic of Turkey, and was rarely home. Consequently, Mrs. Umbridge was the primary parental figure in her life, certainly the enforcer of her own draconian expectations.
When she must have been about six, Dolores, or Dolly, as Father called her, was busy playing with her toys one lovely fall afternoon. Her elder brother's hand-me-down toy Hogwart's Express drove itself about the parlor, leaving little tracks of smoke hanging in the air. She was playing with her toy witches, who were doing dances atop the train cars, when angry footsteps came into the room.
"Dolores Jane Umbridge! What in Merlin's name are you doing!" It was Mother. Dolly cowered a bit behind the flying toy hippogriff that hung in the air between them.
"N-nothing, Mama." She whimpered.
"Nothing? That does not look like nothing to me!"
"I-I playing goes-to-Hawaps, Mama." The tiny witch couldn't yet pronounce the name of the school, but she already knew it was where she most desperately wanted to be.
"Oh, are you now? Well, we shall see about that."
Mother drew her wand, sneering. "Go stand in the corner. But face this way. You shall watch."
Dread mounting, little Dolly went to the far corner of the room by the settee, watching nervously.
With a curse the diminutive train exploded into a thousand pieces. Dolly would have cried, if fear hadn't prevented her. If this was what Mother did to her favourite toy, what might she do to Dolly if she caught her crying over it?
"Now you will clean this up." Mother summoned a child-size brush and dust-pan, and barked "Clean it up. Now."
Dolly spent the next two hours finding every last bit of twisted blue metal and glass from the beloved toy train where it had been strewn in the rug, struggling not to cry as the Mother's words replayed in her head.
"Now you will remember to be always ladylike in all things. No boys' toys. Always mind your decorum. Always ladylike."
Always ladylike...always ladylike…. It was a lesson taught with cruel harshness that wouldn't depart her until her dying day.
As an older teen, she again incurred her mother's wrath. By now Mr. Umbridge was deceased, leaving her alone with her mother, as her elder brother had long ago moved away. She was currently trying to explain her plans for after Hogwarts to her mother.
"I shall do a year abroad studying at Durmstrang, to learn the unique ways of the Nordic Wizards," she said, eyes flashing with enthusiasm at the idea of studying such power.
"You shall do no such thing!" Mrs. Umbridge shouted. "No daughter of mine shall be gallivanting off in foreign lands in search of such absurdities as that. You shall find a husband and be married as soon as you turn 17. And that is the end of that."
"I shan't marry, I can't! Mother, I'm hardly 16!" She cried.
"A woman's place is in the home. Anything less is failure. I shall not stand by while you entertain such notions of far-flung power."
"Oh, please! Give me an opportunity to fail," Dolores said. "I promise my corpse won't interrupt your 'I told you so' speech." She rolled her eyes.
"If you must I suppose you may go ahead and fail on your own terms," her mother said harshly. "Get your trunk. Hogwarts can have you back early seeing as you so disrespect me. I shall not suffer being dishonoured by an ungrateful wretch the likes of you. Out of my house, never come back!"
Shock gave way to dread as she watched Mother summon her trunk and traveling cloak, throwing them at her. She put on her cloak before leaving the house, tears streaming freely now. Her mother summoned the Knight Bus, and she barely managed to hold back tears as she told the driver "Hogsmeade."
Dolly never saw her childhood home again; her mother stood firm in this. She was no longer Dolly, a little girl.
Now, she was just Dolores, who was forced to go to work for the Ministry immediately upon graduation. She clawed her way up the bureaucracy, growing ever more bitter with each passing day.
Never would the world know the person she might have become, if she had only been allowed to remain Dolly.
