AN: I still own nothing.
CHAPTER 29 - Martial law
Since no more clues were available on where to look for the last two of Voldemort's horcux, Chandra went back to teaching with Hermione; Liliana tagged along whenever she felt like it. There wasn't much else the two planeswalkers could do: they hardly knew how Voldemort thought, so the help they could offer was marginal at best.
Unfortunately, Umbridge had apparently decided that she had been kept from Hogwarts' secrets one time too many and on the last day of October she had Educational Decree number twenty-three released, which elevated her to the rank of High Inquisitor. Despite not being fluent in legalese –being on the wrong end of the lawmages weapons hardly made her an expert– even Chandra immediately understood it meant the Toad had made an even bigger nuisance of herself. Case in point, every other day a new Decree came out, enforcing some rule about the students' behaviour, school decorum, or giving the odious woman more power to lord over her colleagues. If before her career advance she had had to abide to McGonagall's rules, after becoming High Inquisitor only Dumbledore himself still stood above her, and even he had his hands tied since the Toad acted as an envoy from the Ministry and treated every slight against her person or her position as an act of treason.
And then it got worse.
Part of her new role as High Inquisitor, in fact, was reviewing the teaching standards at the school, which translated into the Toad appearing at random during other professors' lessons to "evaluate" them. Or rather, to harass them with a deluge of questions more often than not only tangentially pertaining to the lesson at hand or their subject in general and more to their private life, ancestry and political agenda. And if what she found wasn't to her complete satisfaction, the pink-clad witch also had the power to sac them, a thing she never missed to remind them.
So it came to no surprise when Chandra opened the door to her Friday classroom to let her students in and found the High Inquisitor with a clipboard in her hands and a malevolent smirk on her face.
"Good morning professor Umbridge," she said reigning in her default first impulse of roasting the woman "Inspection?"
"Of course dearie, but don't mind me, do go on as planned," replied the witch in her most saccharine tone.
Chandra nodded and let everyone in. She didn't feel particularly worried about being sacked –she was essentially the only one who could actually teach the class if one excluded Liliana, and the necromancer had made it clear she would contribute only when she felt like it– but the pyromancer had to admit to being a tad nervous nonetheless, if nothing else because there was a pretty high risk of things turning sour with her, Hermione and the Toad in the same room.
"So, last time we viewed Lorwin in all its sunnyness," the redhead began once her students had sat down "But you should remember I mentioned that plane is unique in its cycling between a happy, sunny mode and a darker one. Anyone remembers what the dark aspect is called?"
She was leaning against her desk, arms crossed under her bust, while Hermione sat behind her alternating between taking notes for herself and managing the pensive to project the prepared memories, like she did at that precise moment to show an image of a dark, dreary forest with close to no leaves and claw-like twisted branches.
A boy in Hufflepuff colours raised his hand, and answered correctly to Chandra's question.
"Shadowmoor, that's correct. Five points to Hufflepuff. As you might guess from the name, Shadowmoor is constantly dark and pretty much completely barren apart from near the Kithkins' Clachans, where they cultivate thistles. Even the elves' dense forests are twisted into a collection of dead husks by the Aurora, which you should remember I described as a planar spell of cataclysmic proportions. Who have I mentioned is the only native individual wholly unaffected by the Aurora?"
The next memory was very blurry and depicted a secluded glenn where fairies flitted around, gleaming droplets kept in their tiny hands. In their midst sat a much taller individual with drab blue skin dressed in blooming flowers, her exact features lost to the blurriness.
A Slytherin girl answered the question.
"Right: as your friend said, Oona, the queen of the fae, is the only being that not only knows of the existence of both aspects, but is also immune to the Aurora and can actually manipulate the spell to limit its effects on her subjects. Unfortunately, Oona lives in seclusion in Glenn Elendra and even this small snippet did almost cost my friend life. Nobody can gain audience with the queen in her domain and she never leaves, so nobody can actually investigate the Aurora in its fullness. Now, five points to Slytherin for the answer and let's see how the other races of Lorwin got-"
"Hem hem," Umbridge fake-coughed to gain the class' attention, cutting the planeswalker short "While fascinating, what would you say is the benefit of this lesson, dearie?"
The pink-clad witch of course knew the moniker irked Chandra, so she used it as frequently as humanly possible. The pyromancer ignored the jab and focused on the question.
"While we can agree that it's improbable –not impossible though– that anyone else in this room might be a planeswalker," explained Chandra in a slow, measured voice, almost as if she thought Umbridge to be particularly stupid "It is far more probable though that someone else out there might come around here. Knowing other cultures and customs might prevent an incident or could give them an edge should the planeswalker in question be hostile. Moreover, knowledge is good in and on itself."
"A pretty remote chance, wouldn't you say?" insisted the Toad purpling up.
"I'm standing in front of you, am I not?" replied the redhead, causing a smattering of snickers to surge through the room.
"Silence!" thundered the witch looking wildly around the room before focusing back on Chandra "This is all well and good, but there is. No. Proof! This course is completely worthless, and as such I'll disband it!"
Silence descended on the room. It was a tense motionlessness, the kind that preluded to something big happening.
Then Chandra closed her eyes and sighed.
"Do as you like," she said fixing her gaze back on Umbridge and waving a hand in a dismissive gesture "See what I care."
"What?" asked not the pink-clad witch –who had apparently de-evolved from toad back to fish– but Hermione.
"You can cancel the course, forbid me to speak of the subject, and even banish me from the castle," clarified the pyromancer, her stare boring holes into the woman in front of her "It won't change who I am nor what I do. It won't magically erase the rest of the Multiverse out there, nor the dangers that inhabit it."
She marched closer to the Toad as her hair slowly ignited.
"So do go on, try to shackle me with your petty decrees," she hissed leaning in the woman's face, who took a step back "But don't cry when your cute illusions topple like the house of cards they are."
She straightened back up and let her gaze roam over the dozens of surprised, awed and scared eyes of her students.
"Class dismissed," she said before walking towards her office.
Nobody moved until she had slammed the door behind her. It was Umbridge the first to regain her wits.
"Well, she's obviously unsuited to teach young impressionable children. The course is officially disbanded," she announced to the class before waddling away, a self satisfied smirk on her face.
Some students cried in protest, others hung their heads as they gathered their things, but everyone soon left the classroom for the last time, leaving Hermione still sitting behind the teacher's desk and the still active pensive. She too stood up after some more minutes, but she went after her friend instead.
"Chandra?" she asked knocking on the office door.
She couldn't hear a sound but it didn't mean much: the offices were all silenced according to Hogwarts, a history.
The door was unlocked so she decided to try her luck and open it. Inside the office was absolute mayhem: broken furniture, scorched marks on almost every surface, and in the midst of it stood Chandra, hair and fists ablaze with orange flames, her shoulders raising and falling in time with her ragged, panting breath.
"Oh Chandra..." she muttered, but apparently in the tense silence it was loud enough for the redhead to hear her.
The pyromancer turned sharply to stare at her, the absolute rage in her eyes immediately melting away as she recognized her friend. She heaved a deep sigh and brought herself back in control, extinguishing her flames.
"Sorry," she simply said between gulps of air, her eyes closed "I lost my cool."
Hermione nodded, entered the room and closed the door behind her back. She deftly sidestepped a ruined chair and got closer.
"That woman just lives to rub people the wrong way," she said giving her friend one of her patented bear hugs "I should have intervened."
"You can still be given detentions, it's better if she focuses on me. Still, Dumbledore won't be happy. The Toad is sure to cancel the course now."
"She did," confirmed Hermione releasing Chandra "That doesn't mean she has the last word. I'm sure this time professor Dumbledore will not take it lying down like with Trelawney the other day."
"Take a seat Chandra," said McGonagall waving at the chair in front of her desk "Tea?"
"No thanks professor," replied the redhead nervously.
It had been almost a week since Umbridge's disastrous inspection to her lesson, and she had a strong suspicion what the discussion was going to be about.
"Minerva please, we're colleagues," said the older woman fixing a cup for herself "I'm sure you can guess why I asked you here."
"A new Educational Decree is coming to disband my course?"
"Indeed," replied the witch nodding sharply "The headmaster is in London trying to have the decision repealed, but it looks glum with a large part of the Wizengamot behind Fudge."
"I see," sighed the pyromancer leaning back as much as the straight-backed chair permitted "It was fun while it lasted."
"It was pleasant working with you Chandra, but I'm not sure this is the end of your teaching career just yet."
The planeswalker arched an eyebrow in silent question, both at the unambiguous statement and at the badly faked casual tone Minerva had used.
"It seems that some students are unsatisfied with the Ministry-approved course plan for defense this year, with our esteemed High Inquisitor too... And that they are all in your corner, as they say, after your altercation with her," explained the woman in the same tone before adding in an even more clearly faked serious tone "By the way I cannot absolutely endorse you talking back to such an upstanding Ministry official. I would have been even more cross had it escalated."
"You want me to teach defense to the students?" surmised the redhead feeling a bit flat-footed by the conversation "Or are you asking me to eliminate Umbridge?"
"Merlin no!" replied McGonagall sitting up straighter "While I absolutely loathe her, I would never ask such a thing!"
"Good, because I don't kill needlessly," commented Chandra, smirking at the woman's shocked expression "So, enough circling the subject: what do I need to know to help?"