Disclaimer: Firenze belongs to JK Rowling.

Chapter 15: Flitwick

The Forbidden Forest

"Chapter Fifteen: The Forbidden Forest," Professor Flitwick read.

"And just what were you doing in the Forbidden Forest this time, Mr. Potter?" Umbridge asked.

"Detention," Harry called smugly, shutting her down at once.

"Oh, dear, I remember that," Flitwick said.

"Unfortunately," McGonagall agreed with a groan. "Lucius Malfoy raised such a stink, half the staff were lucky to get away with our jobs."

"Oh?" Umbridge said with interest. "I don't remember hearing about this. Just what happened?"

"Let Filius keep reading, Dolores. I'm sure you'll hear all about it. It was kept quiet at the time. And most of the people he accused had nothing to do with it, but it was still a bad week."

"Yes, it was…Things couldn't have been worse…" Flitwick read quickly, but Harry's assessment was soon proved wrong when he and Hermione met with Professor McGonagall, who also produced Neville—who had been caught trying to warn them about Malfoy.

"'I think I've got a good idea of what's been going on,' said Professor McGonagall. 'It doesn't take a genius to work it out. You fed Draco Malfoy some cock and bull story about a dragon, trying to get him out of bed and into trouble. I've already caught him. I suppose you thought it's funny that Longbottom here heard the story and believed it, too?'"

"I'm sorry Minerva, but I really need to stop a moment there," Flitwick said. "That seems oddly uncharitable of you. Even in their first year, I wouldn't have believed Mr. Potter and Miss Granger would treat Mr. Longbottom like that. A prank like that on Mr. Malfoy is one thing, but both of them have always been kind to their friends. And besides, if that was what they were doing, there would be no reason for them to be out of bed, too."

"I suppose that was a bit unfair, Filius," McGonagall admitted. "I remember that night myself. It was right after the unicorns started being found dead in the Forest. I was worried about that and the safety of the Philosopher's Stone, and I was frustrated by having to deal with three separate incidents in a row that night. I admit my temper was running a bit shorter than it ought to."

"I'm rather more concerned about your dishonesty with your students, Minerva," Filius replied. "Listen to this: 'I'm disgusted,' said Professor McGonagall. 'Four students out of bed in one night! I've never heard of such a thing before!' Really, Mr. Potter's own father and his three friends did that on a monthly basis." There was some scattered laughter in the Great Hall, along with an unsettling dark giggle from Umbridge.

"Well, I certainly didn't want to give them any ideas," McGonagall said. "I was hoping that one really harsh talking to and a concomitant punishment would scare them straight. It does often enough with the younger students."

"Not with Potter, though," Umbridge cut in.

"Through no fault of his own most of the time. It was a fair strategy."

"I'm still not sure I agree with your methods, Minerva," Flitwick countered. "'All three of you will receive detentions—yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it's very dangerous—' 'Especially these days?' that sounds like a fair justification, but did the students actually know that? I don't think we ever told them that things were more dangerous than usual. The whole affair was supposed to be secret."

McGonagall frowned as if she didn't quite understand the question. "But I thought…" she started. "I…I was thinking about the dead unicorns, I think. I would have thought the infamous Hogwarts rumour mill would have had it all the way around the school by then. If Mr. Potter didn't know it—"

"If he had been preoccupied worrying about his friends, perhaps?" Flitwick asked. The answer was obvious. "Well, this is a fine kettle of shrakes. A harsh talking-to is one thing, but if the children don't understand why they are docked fifty points apiece, they won't learn very much." And fifty points apiece was exactly what they lost, as well as receiving detention, much to the childrens' horror. "'Don't tell me what I can and can't do, Potter. Now get back to bed, all of you. I've never been more ashamed of Gryffindor students.' Ooh. That had to hurt."

"Perhaps I was laying it on a bit thick," McGonagall admitted.

"A bit?" Professor Sprout jumped in. "Even by your standards, that's more than a bit, Minerva. And you were especially unfair to Mr. Longbottom in particular. You're not normally prone to favouritism."

McGonagall furrowed her brow: "What do you mean, Pomona?"

"Well, you yourself said he wasn't acting maliciously, while you believed Mr. Potter and Miss Granger were, and I seem to recall you only took twenty points from Mr. Malfoy under similar circumstances. Shouldn't Mr. Longbottom's punishment have been the same as his?"

She opened her mouth, but closed it again, hanging her head. "You're right," she said. "I was worried and angry, and I took it out unfairly on those three students, Mr. Longbottom in particular." She looked down at her fifth-years. "I apologise to all three of you. And Mr. Longbottom, Professor Sprout is right: that deduction was inappropriate, even given what I thought I knew at the time. Unfortunately, it's too late correct that error, although Gryffindor won the House Cup that year regardless."

Umbridge giggled again. The effect was unsettling. "And that is yet more evidence of your own mismanagement, isn't it, Professor McGonagall?"

At that, McGonagall drew herself up again. "Dolores, if you are referring to your assertion that I should be taking on less work here at Hogwarts…I decline to make a statement until after we finish the book."

There was some laughter at that, but Hermione was frowning down at the Gryffindor Table. "What is it?" Ron said.

"Guys…I think maybe she actually agrees."

"What?" Ron hissed.

"What does that mean?" Harry said.

"I don't know. With Dumbledore maybe not coming back…I don't know, but I think she might give up one of her jobs if she can."

"But who'll replace her then?" said Ginny.

"I don't know."

"Hopefully with Umbridge and Fudge gone, we won't have to worry about it," Harry said. "It won't be so bad, then."

"'Harry didn't sleep all night. He could hear Neville sobbing into his pillow for what seemed like hours.'"

Neville blushed deep red and tried to sink under the table. "I'm sorry I never said anything, Neville," Harry muttered. "It was worse for you, and it was my fault."

"I cried all night, too," Hermione said comfortingly. "I couldn't stop thinking about what my parents would say about me getting a detention."

"For me, it was Gran," Neville said, so softly they could barely hear him. Parvati gently patted his hand. "And the rest of Gryffindor hating me, too, but Gran sent me a Howler…It was ugly."

"'Only Ron stood by him.'"

"Because I was too distraught to do anything but finish my homework," Hermione said. "Sorry."

Professor McGonagall winced, as from what the book said, the punishment seemed to have broken Hermione's spirit, which wasn't at all what she intended. At least the girl had recovered since. Meanwhile, Harry tried to resign in shame from the Quidditch team, but luckily, Wood stopped him.

This sad state of affairs ran on for several weeks—an unusually long time to stew between assigning a detention and administering it, students and teachers alike noted. About a week before exams, Harry, by sheer coincidence, overheard Professor Quirrell apparently being threatened by someone. He couldn't actually hear the other person, but he interpreted it to mean that Snape had finally forced him to give up the secret of his protection on the Philosopher's Stone, leaving only Fluffy—hopefully—to guard it. Hermione said they should tell Dumbledore, but Harry—somewhat uncharacteristically—refused, saying they didn't have a strong enough case, and he was done poking around and getting in trouble.

"Huh. I forgot how…timid, I guess, you could be your first year," Hermione said.

"Growing up with the Dursleys," Harry replied. "But I try to avoid trouble regardless. I just doesn't usually succeed."

The next night, Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Malfoy finally had their detention—at eleven o'clock at night, in what turned out to be a foray into the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid. Many of the students who didn't know about the incident gasped. A detention in the Forest? At night? The place was supposed to be far too dangerous for that. And their horror only grew as their task was described. They were to track down a wounded unicorn—when there was a beast in the Forest killing unicorns—creatures that were nearly impossible to catch, let alone kill, and normally had no natural predators. Filch seemed positively gleeful at the prospect that the children might be killed out there. And Hagrid—he seemed to think he was being an appropriately stern authority figure and casually downplayed the risk.

"That's quite enough!" Umbridge snapped, standing up.

"Child endangerment. Possible child abuse. Conspiracy," Fudge said. "Really! Going into a forest where there's known to be a beast that could kill unicorns? How could you possibly approve of this, McGonagall?"

"I didn't know until Lucius Malfoy came into my office spitting fire and demanding answers, Minister," she said. "And I'm surprised you didn't hear about it at the time with him involved. All I knew was that they served their detention with Hagrid. I assumed it was something mundane—or at least sane."

"At eleven o'clock at night?" Umbridge pressed.

"That isn't unheard of, Dolores. Professor Sinistra does it, too. I thought being out late whilst supervised when they didn't want to be would be a fitting punishment for being out late un-supervised. Night detentions are hard to schedule; that's why it took so long. But there are sufficiently menial groundskeeping tasks that have to be done at night to keep a few first-years busy. In any case, a thorough enquiry was made, and the only people found to be at fault were Hagrid and Filch."

"Aha. Both employed by Dumbledore, I believe?" Umbridge said triumphantly.

"Yes, for what it's worth, but that applies to most of the staff."

"And Hagrid has a long enough record against him," she pointed out. "As for Mr. Filch…we'll talk later."

"Excuse me, Dolores?" McGonagall interrupted. "I think we can talk now. Mr. Filch, I find some of this material very interesting. Not all of it came out in the enquiry, did it? You allowed four young students to go on a dangerous assignment in the Forbidden Forest where you claimed to believe they would be seriously injured or worse? You taunted them with this fact and never reported the danger to the staff?"

"No one gave me lip for it then," Filch said. "Little brats had it coming. Never learn, do they, 'less you try the old punishments."

"No. That's it," McGonagall snapped. "I should have done this long ago. Filch, you're fired."

The Great Hall erupted in cheers. Even the Slytherins were glad to see him go, and not just because he was a squib.

"NO! NO!" Umbridge's voice finally came through when the students quieted down. "I'm overruling that!" There were shouts of indignation, but the teachers all joined together to quiet them again.

"Dolores, I will appeal your overruling to the Board," McGonagall said. "Even without Lucius Malfoy, I suspect they'll take my side. You can use corporal punishment on the students, even have them whipped like you and Filch seem to want so much, and unfortunately, I probably can't stop you. But I draw the line at wilfully sending them into the Forbidden Forest with a dangerous creature that clearly has them outclassed. And you can be sure the next time I see Hagrid, I will be having a long talk about this with him, too, but he at least has the excuse of being a lovable fool. Filch is neither."

"You—you can't do this to me!" Filch shouted, shaking his fist at her as he turned red-faced.

"I can and I will, Filch. Now sit down, and shut up."

He did.

There was silence for a minute before with nothing else to be said, Flitwick started reading again. When they got into the Forest, Hagrid made them split up.

"Clearly never seen a horror film," Dean Thomas said.

"'I want Fang,' said Malfoy quickly, looking at Fang's long teeth.

"'All right, but I warn yeh, he's a coward,' said Hagrid."

Hermione smacked her forehead hard. "He just said Fang was supposed to be adequate protection. You know, I hate to admit it, but that really was bone-dead stupid of Hagrid," she said.

"I hate to admit it, too, but I think you're right," Harry agreed.

"I mean, I understand why he did it," she continued. "I think he really didn't see the risk."

"But something that can kill unicorns?" Parvati said in horror.

"Hagrid's huge, Parvati. And half-giant, so he's magically tough. People joke about him wrestling trolls, but he really can, while one nearly killed three of us. I think it's just not obvious to him what's dangerous to other people."

Hagrid was responsible enough pay serious attention to protecting Harry and Hermione as they made their way through the Forest, so it wasn't a total mess. They ran into a couple of centaurs who noted that Mars was "unusually" bright (which was astronomically meaningless according to Hermione) and gave cryptic, incomprehensible answers to all of their practical questions.

Then, Hagrid left Harry and Hermione alone to help Neville and Malfoy when they sent up red sparks.

"Yep, definitely never seen a horror movie," Dean repeated.

"Though to be fair, it's Hagrid who would get killed in a horror movie going off to investigate something, not us," Hermione said, earning disturbed looks from the rest of her friends, including Harry.

But it turned out that Malfoy had scared Neville as a joke, causing him to send up the red sparks. Hagrid solved this by rearranging the groups and having them split up again.

"Remind me never to get detention with Hagrid," Dean said. "The black guy always dies first."

Hermione giggled, which got the two of them even more disturbed stares. "Scary stories that muggles tell," she explained. "They always follow a weird patterns like that."

Harry, Malfoy, and Fang went off and soon found the dying unicorn bleeding out on the ground. Many of the students audibly moaned, knowing how horrible the crime of slaying a unicorn was. The tension rose like something out of the horror movies Dean kept referencing as he described a shadowy, hooded figure crawling across the ground and bending down to drink the creature's blood, and then…

"'AAAAAAAAAAARGH!'"

Half the school screamed this time, not just McGonagall. Several people retched at the thought of someone or something actually drinking unicorn blood. Then, Flitwick revealed that it was actually Malfoy who screamed, not Harry, and he and Fang bolted. Harry was paralysed by the blinding pain shooting through his scar as the dark figure ran towards him.

But then a centaur appeared and chased it off. The students sighed with relief.

"I'm surprised a centaur was enough to stop You-Know-Who," Ginny pointed out.

"He was still possessing Quirrell, and he was pretty weak," Harry said. "Looking back, I'm more surprised Quirrell could fight as well as he did at the end."

"'You are the Potter boy,' he said. 'You had better get back to Hagrid. The forest is not safe at this time—especially for you. Can you—'" Flitwick choked suddenly. "'Can you ride?' Merlin's beard. A centaur offered to give him a ride? Unsolicited?"

"Well, the boy does like to consort with creatures of near-human intelligence," Umbridge sniffed. "I shouldn't be surprised."

"I'll be sure to tell the centaurs you said that, Dolores," McGonagall said with a smile, causing sniggers from some of the older students.

The centaur—Firenze—did give Harry a ride back to Hagrid, drawing the ire of the other centaurs, both for behaving like a "common mule" and for interfering with "what has been foretold"—something that Harry now noted with dismay would make them pretty unreliable in a war. It was too bad. A good archer had more range than most wizards could aim their wands.

Firenze explained why the creature in the Forest was such a heinous monster—what many of the older students had already been whispering to the younger ones—that unicorn blood could save one's life, but only at the cost of falling under a dark curse—a curse so horrible that the drinker must be desperate to get their hands on the Philosopher's Stone in order to get something stronger.

"That's awfully vague," Hermione whispered. "What does the unicorn blood actually do to you?" Harry only shrugged in response.

"'Do you mean,' Harry croaked, 'that was Vol—'"

"Excuse me?" Umbridge said imperiously.

"I'm afraid he was cut off, Professor Umbridge," Flitwick said, "but it was obvious that he meant…V-Voldemort—and it would fit the evidence, too."

"That is a lie!" she snapped. "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is dead!"

"I'm only telling you what your book says," Flitwick replied. "Perhaps if we continue, it will explain. Ahem…" He continued before she could cut him off again. In the story, Hagrid found Harry again, and Harry returned to the school and told Hermione and Ron everything. He had concluded, he said, that Snape was secretly working for Voldemort and trying to get the Philosopher's Stone to restore him to power.

"You know, Severus," Flitwick said, "even though we now know he was wrong, it's eerie how much sense that conclusion makes, especially since, at the time, I believe Mr. Potter did not know you were a turncoat Death Eater."

Snape didn't answer, but looked like he'd bitten into a lemon.

"So Potter was wrong?" asked Umbridge.

"Wrong about Severus being involved. I won't speak to the rest of it."

"He was wrong about that, too!"

"Something killed that unicorn, Dolores," McGonagall spoke up. "That's in the records for you to see anytime. And not many people could, much less would."

"He is dead!" Umbridge hissed.

"Regardless, you agreed to finish the book. So Filius, please continue."

Flitwick nodded and finished the chapter. Hermione pointed out that Voldemort couldn't make a move while Dumbledore was at the school ("Famous last words," muttered Harry), and finally, Harry found that his invisibility cloak had been returned to him "Just in case."

"Just in case you needed it?" Hermione said in confusion.

"Well, things were getting really dangerous," Harry pointed out. "And anyway, it was a family heirloom, so Dumbledore ought to have given it back regardless."

"I suppose. Boy, this book really is saving everything for the last minute, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but remember, we didn't have a clue ourselves till after exams," Harry pointed out. "And we didn't get the full story till Dumbledore told us after it all happened."

"Hmm…" Hermione pondered that. Some didn't quite seem to fit. She wrote down another pair of questions.

6. Did Dumbledore know anything about the detention in the Forbidden Forest?

7. If so, why did he allow it?

"That doesn't make sense," Harry said, reading off her parchment. "Why would he have done?"

"I don't know. Harry, remember how after everything, Dumbledore said Voldemort never could have got the Philosopher's Stone out of the Mirror on his own? And we never would have even suspected Voldemort if Firenze hadn't told you."

"So? If we hadn't got that detention, everything would have been fine because we never would have gone down there and thrown a spanner in the works."

"Yes, that's the simplest explanation," she agreed, "but that doesn't explain what that business with the Mirror was about over Christmas."

Harry frowned: "What are you saying?"

"I don't know. Something doesn't add up, though…I'll get back to you after the next chapter."