Of Wizards, Akuma, and Exorcists

Nine: Detention With Dolores

Disclaimers: I do not own any D. Gray-Man or Harry Potter characters/settings. They rightfully belong to Mr. Hoshino (D. Gray-Man) and Ms. Rowling (Harry Potter). Also, some conversations between the Harry Potter characters are direct quotes from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and that also does not belong to me!
"Food, food!" Allen was cheering as they neared the Great Hall. "I'm starving!"

Harry walked quickly in front of eveyone else, eager to shove something in his stomach before he went off to Umbridge's for detention. Just as he was about to enter the large room though, a loud, angry voice yelled, "Oy, Potter!"

"What now?" he groaned, looking longily at the food for a moment before turning to see the angry face of Angelina Johnson, the Gryffindor Quidditch team captain, who was glowering at him murderously.

"I'll tell you what now," she said, toweing over him and poking him hard in the chest. "How come you've landed yourself in detention for five o'clock on Friday?"

"What? Why..." Harry said, raking his brain, and then it hit him, "oh yeah, Keeper tryouts!"

"Now he remembers," Angelina moaned, rolling her eyes. "Didn't I tell you I wanted to do a tryout with the whole team, and find someone who fitted in with everyone? Didn't I tell you I'd booked the Quidditch pitch specially? And now you've decided you're not going to be there!"

"I didn't decide not to be there!" Harry retorted, feeling hurt and offended. "I got detention from the Unbridge woman, just because I told her the truth about You-Know-Who-"

Angelina wasn't willing to listen. "Well, you can just go straight to her and ask her to let you off on Friday," she said in a final voice, "and I don't care how you do it, tell her You-Know-Who's a figment of your imagination if you like, just make sure you're there!" She stamped her foot angrily and stormed away, leaving Harry to gape after her in silent fury.

"You know what?" Harry said to Ron and Hermione as he caught up with them inside the Great Hall. "I think we'd better check with Puddlemere United where Oliver Wood's been killed during a training session, because she seems to be channeling his spirit."

"What d'you reckon are the odds of Umbridge letting you off on Friday?" Ron asked as they sat down. On the other side of the table, the Exorcists sat, one of them eating his dinner like a hungry pig, the other two exchanging stories about their day.

"Less than zero," Harry replied. "Better try, though, hadn't I? I'd offer to do two more detentions or something, I dunno..." Swallowing a mouthful of potato, he added, ""I hope she doesn't keep me too long this evening. You realize we've got to write three essays, practice Vanishing Spells for McGonagall, work out a countercharm for Flitwick, finish the bowtruckle drawing, and start that stupid diary for Trelawney?"

Ron groaned and, looking up at the ceiling, said, "And it looks like it's going to rain."

"What's that got to do with our homework?" Hermione asked.

"Nothing," Ron answred quickly.

"I could help you with homework," Allen offered from the table, wiping his mouth clean. "You too, Lenalee?"

"Oh, of course," the girl nodded. "We'll help you with homework when you come back, Harry, not to worry."

"And if Allen's asleep, you could always ask Timcampy to wake him up," Lavi added.

"Oh, please! Not the ear biting again!"

Watching the seventh year redhead poke fun at Allen, and seeing the cute girl giggling happily, Harry smiled. He wondered why, after seeing so many deaths and destruction and tears, these three could stay so cheerful and even have some left to share with others.

Harry bid the others good-bye at five minutes to five and set off down the hall to Umbridge's office. He wondered what she had in store for him as he knocked on her door andher sweet voice answered, "Come in." He entered with caution, looking around for possible danger.

He almost fainted at what he saw.

Harry had seen the office three times, occupied by three different Deense Against the Dark Arts teachers. In second year, Gildroy Lockhart had plastered it with his narcisisstic collection of photographs of himself; third year, Remus Lupin, Harry's godfather's childhood friend, had an office where it was likely anyone entering would encounter an interesting Dark creature in a cage or tank; in fourth year, the ex-Auror, Alastor Moody, had been an imposter, but the room had been packed with instruments and artifacts for detecting Dark magic, wrongdoing, and concealment. But, now occupied by Umbridge, the room looked more like what his neighbor, Mrs. Figg, would be expected to live in. But even her wouldn't've decorated her room this horribly...

Every surface in the room had been draped with lace. There were several potted dried flowers sitting in vases; a collection of ornamental plates decorated with images of technicolor, bowed cats adorned one wall. They made Harry stared at them in appalment until Umbridge spoke again.

"Good evening, Mr. Potter."

Startled, Harry spun around and looked at Umbridge, who was very well concealed as her robes camoflauged with the tablecloth on the desk she stood in front of. "Evening," Harry replied stiffly.

Pointing toward a small table draped in lace, Umbridge told him to sit down. There was a piece of blank parchment, waiting.

"Er, Professor Umbridge?" Harry said, fidgeting. "Er- before we start, I-I wanted to ask you a...a favor."

"Oh yes?" Umbrige asked, her eyes narrowing.

"Well I'm...I'm on teh Gryffindor Quidditch team. And I wa supposed to be at the tryouts for the new Keeper at five o'clock on Friday and I was- was wondering whether I could skip detention that night and do it- do it another night...instead..."

Looking at Umbridge's pleased, aggravating, toady smile that, even before he finished his sentence, his pleading would be of no use.

"Oh no," the teacher cooed. "Oh no, no, no. This is your punishment for spreading evil, nasty, attention-seeking storied, Mr. Potter, and your punishments certainly cannot be adjusted to suit the guilty one's convenience. No, you will come here at five o'clock tomorrow, and the next day, and on Friday too, and you will do your detentions as planned. I think it a rather good thing that you are missing something you really want to do. I ought to reinforce the lesson I am trying to teach you."

Harry gritted his teeth and thought, Don't lose your head; don't lose you head or it'll make life more difficult, trying his hardest not to yell at Umbridge and smash in that sneaky, annoying face of hers. So he told nasty, evil, attention-seeking stories. Of course, why should she care that those stories were actually hard, cold fact, that she could do as much denying and disbelieving and hating as she could, but it was going to change the fact that Voldemort was back- and possibly much, much stronger than before with an ancient evil on his side this time.

Umbridge cocked her head to one side, a smile cutting her face cleanly in half, as though she'd read his mind and was expecting him to yell once more so that she could punish him more. Harry wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of letting his temper erupt, and so he sat down with massive effort and unneccesary noise in the hard chair behind the table.

"There," said the teacher in her sugarly voice, "we're getting better at controlling our temper already, aren't we? Now, you are going to be doing some lines for me, Mr. Potter. No, not with your quill," she said hastily as Harry made to open his bag. "You're going to be using a rather special one of mine. Here you are." She handed Harry a long, thin black quill with a very sharp point, so sharp that it was slightly unusual.

"I want you to write, 'I must no tell lies,' " she said softly.

"How many times?" Harry asked, faking politeness while inside he boiled with the desire to get it through her skull that he was not telling any lies, whatsoever.

"Oh, as long as it takes for the message to sink in, "Umbridge answered. "Off you go."

Harry set the quill on the parchement as Umbridge sat down at her desk; he paused. "You haven't given me any ink," he said.

"Oh, yo won't nedd ink," she answered with the faintest hint of a laugh in her voice.

Confused, Harry placed the quill back on the parchment and wrote: I must not tell lies.

And he gasped, nearly droppingthe quill, as a searing pain shot through his hand. He stared at the parchment; on it, the words had appeared in bright, shining red ink. At the same time, the words had appeared in his hand as a cut, as if an invisible hand a written it there with an equally invisible scapel- and the cut healed immediately. He gawked at Umbridge this time, who was watching him with her broad, toady smile.

"Yes?" she said innocently.

"Nothing," Harry replied quietly.

Harry went back to writing his lines, and the cut appeared over and over again and again every time he wrote on the paper. He soon realized that the ink wasn't ink, but his own blood. Thoroughly disgusted but unwilling to show his pain, he continued his lines until darkness fell outside the window. He never once asked if he was alloweed to stop, for he felt Umbridge's eyes watching him, waiting for him to show a sign of weakness. Fat chance, Harry thought stubbornly, ignoring the pain in his hand. I'll stay here all night and cut my hand, but I won't ever let you think I'm some weakling liar!

It seemed as if hours had gone by before Umbridge said, "Come here." Harry stoof up, his stinging hand hanging by his side. The skin was red and raw, and he suppresed a shiver and a shudder as his least favorite teacher took his hand in her chubby fingers on which she wore a number of ugly old rings.

"Tut, tut," she clucked with a smile, "I don't seem to have made much of an impression yet. We'll have to try again tomorrow eening, won't we? You may go."

Silently, Harry left her office without even saying good-night, not that he would have if someone's chained him to a wall, broken his treasured broomstick in half, killed Ron...well, he wasn't that heartless, Harry thought with a chuckle, he wouldn't let Ron died just because he was refusing to bid good-night to the world's biggest toad...

But Harry was disapppointed. Despite what Lenalee and Allen'd said during dinner, it was surely past midnight, and he didn't have the heart to wake up a probably slumbering Allen just to practice homework, or Lenalee, just to borrow her notes. He blamed it all on Umbridge, and as he turned the first corner and was sure she couldn't hear him, broke into a run towards the Gryffindor Tower, knowing he should catch some sleep at least, for he didn't expect tomorrow to be any better than the past two days.

In the common room, Allen was snoring away in front of the fireplace, a blanket draped over his rather scrawny figure. Allen was small, Harry noticed, when he wasn't wearing that long coat of his. Despite his job fighting large monsters, the boy was quite skinny and scrawny...

And still a kid, Harry thought, the same age as me.

Harry sat down in the armchair across from the Exorcist and spotted a stack of papers sitting on the table in front of him. In neat, clear handwriting, someone had written a note:

Dear Harry,

If you're reading this, that probably means that Allen had fallen asleep. He said he wouldn't mind if you wake him up, but knowing you, you would rather cram in the morning, right? Hermione insisted I go to sleep (she said something about you and Ron not doing your homework when you had time, but don't mind her, please; she's just saying what she thinks is best), so I had Ron help me copy my notes from Binns, Snape, Sprout, and the other classes. If need be, I had Allen jot down some ideas for your dream diary as well, although I'm sure it's filled with his longing for eating Jeryy's cooking again soon. (Jeryy is the cook at our headquarters, by the way.) I hope these notes would be of some help for you, and good night. See you tomorrow morning.

Sincerely yours,

Lenalee

Harry looked at the rest of the papers and saw that Lenalee had, indeed, made Ron help her make a copy of her notes. His squiggly handwriting was hard to miss compared to that of Lenalee's, and as she had predicted, Allen had written a lot about the person named Jeryy and his wonderful cooking. Harry looked at the sleeping boy and laughed softly. "Thanks," he whispered, and pulled out his quill and some parchment, determined to get started on his homework.

But his eyelieds drooped. He was so tired. He tried to shake off the fatigue and bent over the parchment, but the next thing he remembered was the sun shining down on his face and Allen shaking him awake gently.

Hello readers!

First of all, I must confessed I mooched the chapter title from the Harry Potter book, and I do not hold any credit for coming up with it. This chapter was, more or less, just a filler. I wanted to write about Harry gettin frustrated during the day, going back to the common room feeling depressed, and I wanted himto feel eased by Lenalee and Allen's help with homework because...well, I though it'd be nice to have good friends like the Exorcists. Yes, it's just me being me and wanting to put the D. Gray-Man characters in a good light!

Hope you've enjoyed this story so far (it's not done yet!), and thanks for all the support!