AN: We're back to Hogwarts and right in the midst of things after the summer, and I still own nothing here.
CHAPTER 26 – Unimpeded trespasser
Chandra's first meeting with Dolores Umbridge happened at the end of August, in occasion of a staff meeting. The pyromancer would have happily skipped it, but Dumbledore had insisted that as a professor she had duties to attend to.
Since she had arrived earlier –there had been an Order meeting in the morning so she had hitched a ride with the elderly headmaster rather than subjecting herself to the floo– she had been waiting in the staff room along a number of other professors for the last stragglers, occupying her time with reviewing her proposed lesson plan. She might have taught an elective subject open to first years only –since the vast majority of the older students had followed her lectures the previous year– but Dumbledore hadn't let her shrink on her duties, if nothing else to save the appearances. It was simply impossible to miss the pink-clad, squat woman that sauntered into the room scant minutes before the meeting, just as she was sure to notice the teenager in red, even if she hadn't been a celebrity.
Professor Umbridge got closer and, after clearing her voice with an obviously fake "hem hem", demanded what Chandra was doing there in what the pyromancer found to be the singularly most saccharine and irritating tone she had ever heard. The fact that the woman had called her dearie might have also rubbed her the wrong way.
"Reviewing my lesson plan," she replied looking up from the parchment she had been perusing "I'm unsure if I shouldn't bump Innistrad later on in the year or avoid mentioning it at all."
This had apparently stolen the professor's thunder, but she soon got it back when Flitwick badly faked a cough to hide his laughter.
"You shouldn't lie to your betters, miss Potter," hissed the pink woman trying to cow her into submission.
"First of all, I'm not lying: we are colleagues. Second, my name is Nalaar as it has been for the past fifteen years, try remembering it dearie," said Chandra suppressing the need to punch the irritating woman before adding in a low whisper "And last but decidedly not least, drop the superiority act or..."
Whatever threat the pyromancer had been about to deliver was cut short by the headmaster's arrival and the beginning of the meeting. The two antagonists shot each other vitriolic glares and went to sit as far as they possibly could from each other.
By the end of the mercifully short meeting, around ninety-nine percent of the present people had developed an intense dislike for Dolores Umbridge, who had felt entitled to openly criticize anything and everything in the lesson plans of everybody save , who still obviously didn't like the other woman beyond the barest minimum required of polite society. Chandra could swear she had heard McGonagall mutter under her breath about cats hunting frogs.
Sooner than Chandra would have liked it was time to go back to Hogwarts. Not that she disliked life in the castle, nor she was particularly attached to her new house either, but she had grown fond of Kreacher and leaving him alone felt simply wrong.
Something else that felt wrong at Hogwarts were its grandiose meals: she had found them excessive the previous year, and after two months of Kreacher's cooking –tastefully simple, just like she preferred– she rediscovered her dislike for the wastefulness of the school's welcoming feast. The experience was made even worse from the professors' table since she was sitting close to Umbridge. Thankfully she had Hagrid on her other side to talk to or she might have gone mad, or sent the woman to the infirmary. Or more likely both.
Dumbledore got up and gave his customary start-of-the-year speech, much like he had done at the closing feast some months prior, and presented both the new members of the faculty. Chandra stood to receive a short applause then sat again, while professor Umbridge instead held her own unplanned speech and shot any doubt or illusion anyone might still have had about her motives.
Subtlety, the pyromancer decided, was not the woman's strong suit, despite what she herself seemed to believe.
It was late in the night and Chandra, who had hoped for much needed sleep, sat in front of the headmaster's desk in his office.
"I apologize for the hour my dear," said the man steeping his fingers and leaning back in his throne-like chair "But I thought it better to put you apart of the latest developments."
"I can be pretty impatient, yes," surmised the girl nodding her head, not at all perturbed by her shortcomings.
She knew them well, she's faced the problem and had accepted it was part of who she was. No sense in sugarcoating things.
"I only meant to say that I respect your opinion," chuckled Dumbledore before sobering up "Voldemort keeps laying low, but he's set his sights on the record of the prophecy held in the Department of Mysteries. We've organized surveillance rounds."
Still the waiting game, thought the planeswalker tapping a finger on her crossed arms Wars cannot be won by waiting.
"Can't we get it before him?" she said instead of voicing her opinion.
She didn't doubt Dumbledore valued other people's thoughts, but he hardly ever followed up on them. It was a big liability for a political leader. Still, he asked for it and that's exactly what she would give him.
"It would undoubtedly force his hand," he explained shaking his head slowly "And we're not ready to face him yet. On that note, I believe I localized one more horcrux."
"Good news at last. When do we deal with it? Or did you move already?" she asked leaning back and uncrossing her arms.
"Tomorrow night."
"What are you doing here Hermione?" asked the pyromancer cocking her head sideways in confusion.
She was about to have her first lesson of the year and had stepped into her appointed classroom to find her friend waiting by her desk.
"Good morning to you too, professor Nalaar," replied the witch smirking "Professor McGonagall asked me to remind you to avoid traumatizing your students."
"For the last time Hermione, I'm not your professor," said the planeswalker heaving a tired sigh.
They had had that argument already multiple times during the summer. Of course it was all in good fun, but Chandra had slept too little and was in no mood to discuss that point any further.
"And I didn't plan on showing any Eldrazi at all in this course. I'll keep to the sunshine and rainbows approved by the Board."
That too had been a tiring meeting: a group of strangers with no cognition about planeswalkers or the Multiverse telling her how to teach. It hadn't went over well, but she had managed to keep to herself what she thought of the Board of Governors and her job; that was a win in its own.
"Also I'm here as your apprentice," continued Hermione choosing to ignore her friend's reply.
Chandra quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. There was a hint of smoke in the air though.
"The Board apparently decided your course is too precious to lose once you'll go back to Kaladesh or wherever you'll go next –professor Dumbledore made it clear it was a given fact– so they asked him to find someone to learn from you so that the knowledge won't be lost, but that could also translate any too distant concept you might bring up. I'm that someone."
Whatever the pompous prats ask, the pompous prats get. The nerve of them... privately though Chandra heaving a sigh.
"I guess you're as close to an expert they'll get short of an actual planeswalker... Welcome on board Hermione," she said in a far brighter tone than what she felt like.
It wasn't her friend's fault, so she wouldn't burden her with the guilt. Chandra was even glad to have her near and for the excuse to keep their bond alive, but her spirit fought instinctually against constraints and dictats from above. She decided to let the whole thing go; as Ajani often said: chose your opponents and battles wisely. No need to make an enemy of the Board over such a thing. Her resolve arrived right on time since students started trickling into the room scant moments later.
In a bout of vindictiveness about the professor thing, the redhead presented her friend not as assistant but as trainee Granger. The look on the witch's face had no price.
Side-along apparition was much like her planeswalking, as in it was near instantaneous and pretty uncomfortable; unlike planeswalking though, she wasn't used to the feeling. Chandra hadn't liked it the first time around, and her opinion hadn't improved any, but at least she somehow managed not to land on her face.
She and Dumbledore had met in his office and then had apparated in front of a dilapidated hovel that barely held together. By the looks of it, it was abandoned and had been for a long time.
She appraised the moulding wood, the thatched roof, the overgrown lawn and the surrounding forest before asking if the horcrux was inside.
"Yes dear, but do avoid burning the place down," was Dumbledore's flippant answer "We don't want Voldemort knowing that we know his secret."
"No problem, I'm super sneaky," she said confidently before calmly strolling ahead.
Despite the fact that she wore red clothes and her particular brand of magic, for some reason, the headmaster felt the claim to hold a certain measure of truth. He followed her, wondering if it was just luck that she had avoided all the spell snares on the ground.
Chandra walked over the honestly amateurish traps hidden amid the tall grass, reached the door, which was the only visible access to the hovel, and wrinkled her nose at the dead snake nailed to it. After Dumbledore had agreed that there were no more traps and that the snake was simply some twisted kind of decoration, the pyromancer carefully opened the door and peered in.
The room was simple, almost barren, with a small stove on one side and three straw beds on the opposite. It was also stupidly dark and disgustingly untidy, far more than simple abandonment could do. Whoever had been the inhabitants, they surely had liked living in filth and darkness. One thing that piqued her interest though was the dust.
"There's tracks in the dust," she pointed out to Dumbledore "Some kind of snake."
As if summoned by her words, the ground exploded upwards as countless snakes crawled out of the mouldy planks while the sparse furniture transformed into larger specimens.
Chandra pushed the headmaster out of the way with one hand as the snakes surged towards them. Her free hand molded as much mana she could muster in an instant –not nearly as much as she would have liked, unfortunately– into a stream of brilliant orange flames.
It was too little, too late.
The wave of writhing bodies slammed into her, pushing her back into the front lawn. She felt the sting of many small bites on her exposed skin and let her magic surge. The overgrown garden exploded into crimson flames as the snakes and grass turned to cinders in mere instants.
Dumbledore, who had dispelled two of the larger snakes and was aiming for the third, saw his charge getting up amid that destruction with a pained grimace.
"Come back in a minute," she ordered as a rivulet of blood escaped her lips "Bring a medic."
That said she donned her glasses and started pumping her reserves for all the mana she could muster.
She had been good as a thief for hire, and she could do sneaky if needed, but she was never subtle. Subtlety was Jace's job. She could try, sure, but it always ended badly, no exceptions. She should have gone with her first instinct and burned everything inside the clearing into fine ash. That always worked.
The remaining snakes, having lost their target when Dumbledore apparated away, coiled up and sprang towards her, fangs poised to strike.
She ignored them and focused on the darkening sky overhead.
The closest snake clamped its fangs around her unarmored arm just as the first tongue of fire and molten matter fell from the sky, removing a good chunk of its body. The other reptile didn't get that close but died almost in the same moment. Six more meteors hit the hovel and reduced it to a burning pile of rubble, while five others fell on apparently random points of the clearing, destroying the still active traps.
Chandra stood still, gasping for air as more blood dribbled down her chin. Her hair extinguished and fell limp on her shoulders, then she started falling to she side as her legs buckled. She had already passed out before her body hit the ground and a loud crack resonated in the silent clearing.