Chapter six- Mistrust in The Boy Who Lived
Potter evidently expected the Wizarding Community to continue to fawn over him when he returned to Hogwarts that year, but something stopped that before he got anywhere near the place. Claiming a Dementor attack, Potter performed a Patronus Charm in front of his Muggle cousin, Dudley Dursley. Obviously, Potter was trying to either impress or scare his cousin, who had very little experience of magic before that day.
Dudley was badly scarred by that day, curiously unwilling to talk about the experience despite my most convincing charms. The Patronus Charm can be terrifying to young magical children, so imagine how poor Dudley felt when Potter showed him a fairly impressive piece of magic. The only other person who was there at the night, and who gave evidence at the trial, was Arabella Figg, a squib who claimed to have seen the Dementors as they attacked Potter and his cousin. Top magical researchers are still unsure as to whether squibs can see Dementors, and as Figg was a member of Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix, and completely batty to boot, one has to wonder why Fudge and the Wizengamot decided to believe her alongside our evidently disturbed subject. I would have reported the hearing myself, but I was unable to work at the time, due to a stress-related illness.
Unfortunately, Dumbledore managed to get Potter off on the charges, somehow (probably some loophole Fudge missed...again), and Potter was allowed to return to Hogwarts. A Hogwarts that was, quite rightly, against him, with his classmates scared of him, and his two idiotic best friends being made prefects. Evidently, even Dumbledore had his misgivings about Potter, and by making his friends prefects, he was able to find a way to keep an eye on the boy. However, these friends of Potter's weren't going to go behind his back and tell Dumbledore about the strange and often illegal activity that he was involved in. Cornelius Fudge decided that Potter and Dumbledore being loose on the school was dangerous, and passed a Decree allowing him to put any person into Hogwarts as Staff, providing Dumbledore could not find a "suitable candidate"
It is unknown where Potter spent the remainder of the holidays, as Dudley stated to me during our interview that he did not return to their house in Little Whinging after his mysterious disappearance during the absence of the rest of the Dursleys to attend an awards ceremony. It is suspected that Potter spent the rest of his time with his godfather, Sirius Black, which would not have helped his obviously frail state of mind, spending time with a convicted killer; alternately, he may have stayed at the headquarters of Dumbledore's ridiculous club known as the Order of the Phoenix. It may be important to note that the house belonging to the Weasley family was notably empty during this summer, although again it is not completely clear where they were hiding.
Obviously, Fudge had a small moment of insight, enforcing the employment of his Senior Undersecretary, Delores Umbridge, arguably one of the best teachers that Hogwarts has ever seen. She took the job of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, and set about teaching the theory behind Defence. Evidently, Fudge was worried that the students of the school were learning the wrong kind of magic, and with the dangers involved with their previous two Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers, it is hardly surprising, and Delores Umbridge, no matter what rumours Potter and his friends tried to spread, was not dangerous in any way, and was probably the best thing to happen to the school in a very long time. Potter did not agree. According to Pansy Parkinson, Potter received a number of detentions from Delores Umbridge for spreading malicious rumours about the Ministry of Magic, Madame Umbridge herself, and of course he added a few of his own delusions in there. According to Pansy, Umbridge was acting in Potter's best interests, as she was attempting to stop Potter from scaring the rest of the school, and the Wizarding population in general, as well as stopping Potter for his own good. Umbridge settled easily into Hogwarts, well liked among the majority of students. But our favourite young troublemaker decided that he didn't like her, and set about making her life a misery.
"Potter insisted on lying to me at every available moment" says Delores, as we sit in her stunning pink kitchen, drinking tea. "I was forced to put him in a number of detentions, which made no difference whatsoever to the way that he acted. I'm not ashamed to say that he made my teaching job a misery. He put me off working with teenagers for life, which is a shame, because there are lots of lovely young people out there, yet Potter had to spoil things."
In time, Delores Umbridge became "High Inquisitor" of Hogwarts, a position that has not been held before or since, which allowed her to go above the heads of every other teacher in the school, including Dumbledore himself. This was evidently because Dumbledore, as a believer of Potter's lies, was a danger to the school. This was shown later in the school year when Dumbledore, using a loophole that the Ministry had not forseen, employed yet another dangerous "teacher", the centaur known as Firenze. At the time, the Daily Prophet, quoting Percy Weasley, brother of Potter's friend Ron, said that Madame Umbridge was an "immediate success", and also stated that certain members of the Wizengamot, who were known friends of Dumbledore's and involved in dubious groups themselves, to quit.
Potter must have known what a fiasco his lies and claims were causing, but made no attempt to stop. I myself was duped, with the help of that Granger girl, into writing a ridiculous piece for that tripe passing itself off as a newspaper, the Quibbler. As I said earlier, I had stopped writing earlier that year due to stress-related illness, but Granger and Potter took full advantage of that and I ended up writing a shameful piece repeating every single one of Potter's claims. Granted, some of them turned out to be true, like the naming of many Death Eaters, but whether Potter actually knew this or just read old reports from the earlier Death Eater trials, I am still unsure. However, the Wizarding community of Britain decided that the Quibbler piece was truth, because (undoubtedly due to my absence from the paper) the Prophet had many glaring omissions from the news.
In amongst his lying to authority and furthering his media presence, Potter was also scheming right underneath Delores Umbridge's nose. Although it was never proved, Potter build up a secret organisation called "Dumbledore's Army", teaching fellow students banned spells and curses under the guise of teaching Defence. As this was not just against the rules of Hogwarts, but also, since the appointment of High Inquisitor, against the law, Fudge got himself involved yet again. Dumbledore claimed to have set up the organisation, which would have made it strictly legal, yet within a grey area, but he also claimed that there was a six-month gap in between the first meeting in that fleapit The Hog's Head and the meeting where Potter was caught teaching spells by Professor Umbridge. Nobody is entirely sure how, not even Delores Umbridge herself, who was there at the time, but Dumbledore vanished from right under their noses. Potter was undoubtedly involved, but again, he's keeping his silence.
Rumours were rife during this year of Potter's friend, Hagrid, who was absent at the beginning of the school year. A favoured idea is that Hagrid, known for his dangerous obsession with large and unpleasant creatures, found his long lost half-brother, a terrifying, sixteen foot giant with the apparent name of Grawp. Hagrid's first action after stowing his brother in the woods was, naturally, to inform Potter and his friends, whose responsibility was to report Hagrid to the relevant authorities, as giants are dangerous and bloodthirsty, and storing one in the Forbidden Forest was a danger to every single teacher, student and Hogsmeade resident. But did Potter do that? Of course not. Potter and his friends kept this a secret, supposedly to protect Hagrid. But with Potter's obsession with war on the Ministry, he evidently felt that keeping a giant secret was an important backup weapon if things weren't going his way. It goes to show exactly how deluded Potter was during this year- he was hated throughout the school, he had a personal vendetta against Fudge and Umbridge, and it was evident that he was desperate to get his own back- and all of these added up to him feeling as though he could control a full-grown, illegal, war-loving giant who apparently couldn't speak English. In fact, the very night that Potter lured The Dark Lord to the Ministry, he made his way into the Forbidden Forest with Hermione Granger and Madame Umbridge, and left Umbridge to be attacked by centaurs before trying to enlist the giant to help them with their plan. Luckily for everyone, the giant didn't want to come with them, leaving Potter and his friends to make their way to London without him.
The rumour was that Harry and his friends became obsessed with a prophecy made about Harry and the Dark Lord that would allow Harry to overthrow the Ministry under the orders of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. This did not go entirely to plan, however, as bumbling Fudge appeared before Harry was able to complete his orders. You Know Who did appear at the Ministry that night, but it is unknown whether he was resurrected soon before, or whether Potter was telling the truth about him returning the year before. You Know Who was able to kill Sirius Black before he vanished with the Death Eaters who did not get captured by bumbling Dumbledore, who reappeared just in time to stop You Know Who from securing his position within the Ministry, conveniently. One has to wonder how he managed to return to the public eye at the time that he was needed, when he had been in hiding for half the year. We have to assume that Potter was in constant contact with Dumbledore, as he would have had no idea had he been really hiding.
Potter succeeded in convincing the Wizarding World that he had been right all along concerning You Know Who, but certain members of the community still had their doubts. Why would Potter have been letting the community know that You Know Who had returned if he had been working with him, unless it was an elaborate double-bluff? What did Potter have planned next if his plot to overthrow the Ministry had failed so catastrophically. It is true that Fudge was sacked not long after this, but Potter went about his schooling as usual afterwards. Overall, Potter's fifth year at the famous school was a mixed bag.