The Plague Ship

Synopsis: What might have happened if Sirius had been a bit more proactive after the dementor attack on Harry and Dudley? AU, and Hermione had not gone to Grimmauld Place, deciding to spend time with her family. No super-powered Harry.

Timeframe: Starting early August 8, 1995, then continuing afterwards

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Potterverse, so quit asking for loans or donations.

Chapter 4: Annoyance

Delores Umbridge was furious. Somehow, the brat had escaped her plan, and her beloved Tom was irate.

As a student at Hogwarts, she had been a very plain of face and a bit chubby but with a very well developed figure, and had found that sex was a very effective way to gain the 'popularity' that otherwise eluded her. By the time she was fifteen, she was adept at the contraceptive charms and potions, as well as numerous abortion spells. She had lured in other students (male and female) who had a gross sense of entitlement, low morals and fewer scruples (most of whom had naturally been sorted into Slytherin House, given what it had become over the years) and in due course, they found that at vulnerable moments she had planted a subtle but pervasive compulsion charm of her own invention which in time made them virtual slaves – not quite the Imperius, but close enough to be quite effective.

She had been the first woman that Tom Riddle had ever slept with, when she first seduced him in her seventh year at Hogwarts. He had been a third year student, but she could already see the potential for greatness and that his lust for power was as great, or even greater, than her own. She was also the only one of his followers who knew his birth name, and was allowed to address him by it.

In later years, Tom had had other young women, as power is said to be the ultimate aphrodisiac. Few came back for a second encounter, because he was violently abusive. Those who did come back for more fell into two types, the masochists and the sado-masochists. The former, he rejected out of hand after their first time together (where is the fun in abusing someone who actually enjoyed it?). The latter, he recruited as followers.

Delores was the only one that could be said to have 'made love' with him. The two of them soon found that their lust for power was far more important to them than their more physical drives. As he turned more and more to the Dark Magics, she had not followed in his technical studies, but turned more to the political side of the wizarding world.

Once she left Hogwarts and the need to climb multiple flights of stairs many times a day, and started worked at the Ministry taking the floos and the lifts, what had been a propensity to chubbiness became all-out obesity. This, combined with years of malice, turned her into the ugly horror she had become.

When necessary, she slept with the powerful wizards in the Ministry, and then blackmailed them into assisting her advancement. As she had told Tom when they discussed tactics and strategies, opening her legs opened doors. As the years passed, she still found that she could use sex to further advance her place at the Ministry, but more and more, this was done under subdued lighting.

When she and Tom had talked about their plans to take over the world, he had explained his discovery of the leech charm which would steal magical power from the bearers. She had pointed out that branding his followers with such a mark would be the ultimate abuse of the pure-blood bigots who were gradually becoming his chief minions. His half-blood status, if known to them, would have driven them away in disgust, but marking them in such a way that they were permanently bound to him and would also reinforce his own power at their expense, would be an exquisite way to express his contempt for them personally, their attitudes and everything they stood for. Even when those attitudes would serve his purposes very well. The power was to be his, not theirs.

Her pushing through the passage of the anti-werewolf laws was a stroke of genius. It bolstered her position as a champion of pure-blood rights, reinforcing the bigotry of the Wizengamot, and undermining any attempt by law-abiding werewolves (really the ultimate victims) to better their lot. As a matter of their own survival, it pushed the werewolf population into Voldemort's waiting and welcoming arms, out of sheer desperation.

She and Tom found that their interests complemented each other's desires and needs, and they were allies more than lovers. When Tom became Lord Voldemort, Delores never took the Dark Mark (as he called it) of his servants, but did indulge in a discreet tattoo in a location where he was the only one who ever saw it. She knew that, until he had attained his 'true' position in their world, wearing the Mark could hold her back from attaining her position beside him. Until that time, she worked behind the scenes, flattering and scheming (and screwing) as she consolidated her power in the Ministry until she was second only to the fool who sat in the Minister's office.

She became well known, in certain circles, for knowing 'where the bodies were buried', often because she was the one who had buried them. Those who assisted her were 'rewarded', and those who crossed her were destroyed.

And now Potter had escaped her clutches.

Voldemort insisted that he be the one to finally kill the boy who had somehow escaped his killing curse years before, and his machinations year after year. When he and Delores formulated the plan to send the dementors to Little Whinging, they had laughed about the fact that Harry did not require his soul for the final execution, as long as the body was still warm.

And Potter had escaped her clutches. And Tom was very unhappy about it.

And worse, Potter had disappeared, possibly even leaving England entirely because her tracking devices at the Ministry could not locate him. She had sent some aurors over to France to look for him there, but strangely enough, they had been kicked out of the country. After that happened, Tom had sent a team of Death Eaters over to find Potter and to let the French know who was really in charge, but they had vanished without a trace and even sending a recall order through the Dark Mark had no response.

Delores decided that the matter needed her personal attention. She did not get out of the Ministry building often, but obviously her subordinates were incompetent, and she needed to bring her skills (and her proficiency with mind-reading and Imperius charms) to bear.

Delores knew that when Voldemort's other minions displeased him, they suffered. And suffered. And then suffered some more! She also knew that he did not dare hurt her physically, because he needed her influence behind the scenes, while Lucius Malfoy played the more public lobbyist. Should the Ministry, by some highly unlikely event, become less corrupt and Lucius' activities meet with official displeasure and he became a target of the do-gooders, Delores would be hidden in the background making sure that things progressed as they should.

She needed to find Potter. She summoned her Ministry passport, and boked an international floo journey.

Lucius Malfoy noted that, when Madame Umbridge left the Ministry building, the whole place seemed to give a sigh of relief, but just thought this was because the vicious bitch was out of earshot. He never understood her true power.

Malfoy had always known that his Dark Lord had other servants or contacts within the Ministry, and he had tried to discover them during the years when Voldemort was discorporate. He had wanted to make sure that, if the Dark Lord had been truly vanquished, he could use these resources to his own advantage. If he could not turn them to his benefit, he would eliminate them. Lucius knew about Hieronymus Yaxley and his function in the DMLE, but knew the man did not have the capacity for the long-term very deep cover that Malfoy knew had to be in action – the man was just too impatient for it.

However, for all his scheming, he had been unable to discover Delores' true allegiance and function – to him, she was just another power-hungry Ministry hack among many, and being female and ugly, not at all worthy of his consideration. Being a generation younger than her, he had not been trapped in her web, although he had all the personal failings that she had normally preyed upon.

Delores Umbridge awoke sitting in a darkened room, feeling like her head was enclosed in some kind of bubble. She grabbed for her wand, but found nothing. She reached for her hidden portkeys (some in intimate locations) and found none. She started to panic. She had not felt this helpless since she was nine years old – she was always the one in control!

A cultured voice with a London accent spoke.

"Ah, Madame Umbridge. Awake at last. I suppose that taking six simultaneous stunners when you tried to use the Imperius curse on my gendarmes would take a while to wear off. In a way, I should thank you for making my job that much easier – you see, attacking a national police officer with an unforgivable is an offence under our National Security Act, and we take national security very seriously."

"I am afraid that you have committed the most fundamental error in the intelligence, or shall we be honest, the espionage business. You have assumed that you are more clever than anyone else anywhere. I must admit that you are probably more intelligent than me, which is why I am an administrator and not an agent. However, the magical arm of our 'Deuxieme Bureau' has some extremely bright people – I guess when you have been at war off and on for two thousand years or so since the Romans wandering through raping and pillaging, you pay attention to these things. Anyway, Office 2¾ has been watching you and your subversion of the British magical population for some time."

"When you sent your aurors over here to conduct illegal searches, without permission from our Ministry, and I might say in violation of several treaties between our two countries, they were unceremonially sent home without their wands."

"When your self-styled Lord Voldemort sent his minions over and they started using unforgivable curses on our people, we moved to apprehend them. When they tried to use the killing curse, they were executed on the spot. You see, we take the unforgivable curses much more seriously than your Ministry seems to, especially under your own guidance and that of your Mr. Malfoy. Where you use spell-tracking devices to harass underage muggle-bornwitches and wizardss, we use them to track unforgivables. Your Death Eaters were not very discrete in their use."

"When you arrived, carrying an illegal locator device and several unregistered and untrackable wands, you presented a passport which you claimed gave you diplomatic immunity and exemption from inspection. However, magical passports issued by the ICW show the intent of the bearer when read by the appropriate authorities, and yours showed that your intent was an illegal abduction. When refused entry, you tried to seize mental control of my officers, and that is why you are here now."

Delores started to scream "You can't do this to me. I am the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic. I will have you fired and sent to Azkaban!" Her voice sounded odd with her head surrounded by whatever it was.

The voice sounded like the owner was smiling. "You forget yourself, Madame. You are a felon who committed acts endangering our national security. You lied to our National Gendarmes, and tried to prevent them from carrying out their sworn duties, by the use of illegal means. You. Have. No. Authority. Here. And we have our own equivalent of your Azkaban."

"As I said earlier, your actions made my job much easier. When dealing with a threat to national security, we are not bound by the normal legal limitation of three drops of veritaserum, and you were given a dose of twelve drops, twice. We now know all the subterfuges which you have in place in the British Ministry, and all the plans that your Tom Riddle and you have cooked up. We know the names, we know the places, we know your safe houses. And we know you for what you truly are, and we are sharing this information with our allies."

"We also now are aware of your skills with wandless magic, your abilities with legimancy, and your tattoo which allows you to communicate with your Dark Lord telepathically. That is why the rooms along this hallway has been shielded to prevent accidental or wandless magic, and any telepathic contact. I assure you, you are now quite isolated."

The voice sounded like the owner was rising to his feet, and moving across the room. It sounded to Delores that a door was being opened.

The voice continued. "We have provided you with some reading material so that you have some way to pass the time. You are going to be here for quite a while. I can recommend the writings of Alexandre Dumas to your attention. He was one of ours, and his stories occasionally touch on what might be thought of as sensitive matters, even though his writings were 'approved' after some careful editting."

Delores shrieked, "Why would I want to read anything by some Frog writer?"

The voice responded. "Ah, the arrogance of entitlement. A common flaw with the British upper classes, and more especially, the English pure-blood wizarding community. I suggest Dumas as it may shed some light on your current whereabouts, and your current fashion accessory. You and your Lord Voldemort seem very fond of masks. Farewell, Madame Umbridge."

The door closed behind him, and his footsteps could be heard walking away down a stone floor.

Delores' screams of rage and demands for release went unanswered, and in all likelihood, were completely unheard.