Note: Only one chapter this week and not a double length one, but all being well the double bills should return next Monday! Hopefully the pace should pick up a bit now. Having spent over twenty chapters describing a month and a half of summer, now that the beginning of term is approaching, things should start to go quicker. I do plan to have this finished before the final film comes out, amazingly enough.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Hallowed Halls of Hogwarts
CHANGES AFOOT IN THE MINISTRY
Only a day into its tenure and the new administration is already making considerable changes to the way in which our Ministry is run. Central to their plans are extensive reforms of the British magical education system.
"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has always fallen on the very periphery of the Ministry's jurisdiction," says the head of the new Ministerial Committee for Re-Education, Dolores Umbridge. "As a result of this, the standards of magical education in Britain may be falling dangerously below those in the rest of Europe. It is time for the Ministry to act to prevent this from happening. Naturally we will leave the day to day running of the school in the capable hands of Minerva McGonagall, but it is clear that Ministerial Intervention is once more needed…"
Minerva slapped the newspaper down on the desk, the vitriol in her head making the words swim on the page in front of her and rendering reading impossible. Not that she needed to read it of course. The list of new measures that it went on to detail had been sent to her that morning, special delivery, and now the words were indelibly printed inside her mind. She rested her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands. She had scheduled an emergency staff meeting for the next day in order to discuss the new measures, and she had said that she would put off thinking about them until then, but she could not seem to push the foreboding print from her consciousness.
The only good thing to come of these new measures was that she no longer needed to worry about justifying Severus's return to his post. As he had predicted, steps had been taken to ensure his tenure. The first measure on the list was that he returned to both his old teaching position and the post of deputy. In a way, Minerva felt a bitter sort of triumph with this announcement. No doubt the powers that be had done this in order to try and chip away at the school's confidence from the top of the pile, little knowing that their actions would in fact do nothing of the sort; that Severus's elevated position in the school would have no bearing on its running whatsoever. It was that grim satisfaction that had allowed her to read the rest of the changes that had been forced upon her beloved establishment without completely breaking down into an incoherent heap.
Defence Against the Dark Arts had ostensibly been removed from the curriculum as a subject. Whilst the new Ministry had simply renamed it 'Dark Arts and Self-Defence', Minerva had taken a look at the 'Committee-approved' booklist that had been sent out with the changes, and she knew from the nature of the works that there was going to be a lot more focus on the Dark Arts and a lot less on the defence. She could only hope that Severus would twist the rules to his advantage and continue to teach in much the same way as he had last year. Knowing that she was not going to be able to get any peace of mind until she confronted it, Minerva ran through the list mentally once more. Attendance at Hogwarts had been made compulsory, something that gave Minerva no end of unease. Should the unthinkable happen and Voldemort attacked the school directly, then all the magical children in Britain would be under her roof and under her care when it occurred. She was going to have to think up some kind of evacuation strategy, but at that precise moment in time she had neither the inclination nor the energy; not when there was so much else to think about.
History of Magic had been made optional for all years, as near as they could get to dropping it from the curriculum completely without actually being seen to do so. It was a clever technique: Minerva had to give them that. She knew that no-one would voluntarily take a subject that she herself admitted to be the most boring known to mankind, and in that way, they could guarantee that it was not taught. The only thing that puzzled her was why they would want to prevent the history being taught. At the very least, Minerva had expected them to change the curriculum to focus on the great triumphs of evil witches and wizards in the past (although thankfully these were few and far between), or maybe some twisted indoctrination that would show how wizards were superior to muggles.
She pushed this thought aside and continued on her mental list. The only other thing that truly worried her was the clause that stated all new teaching staff had to be approved and appraised by the Committee. Minerva had never given any thought to selecting someone as her replacement now that she had ascended to the headship and was doubly burdened, but now she knew that no matter what, she was going to remain as transfiguration teacher and headmistress if it was the last thing she did. She was not hiring any more staff; not when she knew that their replacements would simply quicken the demise of the school. Of course, there was no guarantee that the Ministry would not change their minds about this regulation in a few months time and she would find herself heading a staff of imposters that she had no idea who they were and whose actions she was completely unable to control. This resolve had been already been sorely tested, as Charity Burbage had been threatening to leave the school and go into hiding for the entire summer. Minerva couldn't really blame her, not when she thought of all that Charity had endured during the few school-free months. She sighed, it seemed that hardly a day went by without the young muggle studies professor receiving some sort of threat through the post; it was no wonder that she wanted to disappear, but after the headmistress had given her word that she would be safer at Hogwarts than she would be in hiding, Charity had agreed, however reluctantly, to return. The full quota of staff was returning with no new additions for the first year since Tom Riddle had applied for the Defence Against the Dark Arts job all those years ago, and Minerva felt that this was extremely significant somehow. At first she had thought that it might simply be a positive omen for the year to come – the fact that just maybe, the curse that Voldemort had placed on the position that he had coveted had been broken, and with it the iron grip of terror that he held the country in would also be broken. But thinking it over, Minerva was sure that there was a deeper meaning behind it, a deeper importance that made it so necessary not to allow any strangers into the staffroom this year.
She was pulled from her musing by a soft knock at the door.
"Come in," she sighed, praying that her visitor was not Filch, complaining bitterly about the fact that there were students in the castle before their time, running riot through his nice clean halls. Minerva had not heard a whisper from the three stowaways since their arrival at the school early the previous morning, and she wasn't sure whether she should be worried about this silence or relieved. It had never occurred to Minerva to question why students with no real home to go to were not allowed to remain at the school over the summer holidays, and it was only now that she was trying, without success, to think up a reason. Harry, of course, was a special case, his returning to his however unhappy 'home' was necessary for his protection, but for the other students who would prefer their term time abode to become full time… Minerva wondered as she heard her visitor enter and finally looked up. To her relief, it was Bathsheba who was standing in front of the desk, an expression of sympathy on her face.
"Minerva, you look worn down into the ground," she said. "Do yourself a favour and take the afternoon off."
"I was going to," admitted Minerva. "Well, I was going to go to Diagon Alley to see a man about some Defence Against the Dark Arts books."
Bathsheba cocked her head on one side to question and Minerva passed her the 'Committee-approved' booklist for the next year.
"There's nothing about advanced defence on there, Bathsheba. How are the seventh years ever going to pass their NEWTs without textbooks?"
Bathsheba raised an eyebrow as she looked over the list and set it back on the desk.
"I see that my subject is not deemed important enough to be subject to Ministry control. Thank heavens for small mercies. Besides," she added dryly, "how are the seventh years ever going to pass their NEWTs with Severus teaching them?"
Minerva felt a stab of guilt at this declaration but said nothing.
"You know, I really don't know," said Bathsheba suddenly. "Something's gone wrong somewhere along the line," she continued, and Minerva could see that she had the far away look in her eyes that she always wore when she was enthusing about a particularly good bit of knitting that she was in the middle of.
"Is this to do with Albus's knitting pattern by any chance?" she ventured. Bathsheba nodded.
"It's not unheard of for knitting patterns to contain some kind of spell that is activated as they are knitted and I'm half-certain that this one is no different," the ancient runes professor explained, and for a moment Minerva received a spectacular mental vision of Voldemort clad in a magical pullover of doom and all their problems being solved by a simple cable knit. "It would explain why Albus gave it to me to translate; if he suspected it had a spell within it and he wanted to find out what it was. The only trouble is, I have no idea what the spell is, what it does or even if I'm doing it properly because the language is so obscure and difficult to decipher. Even if I am doing it properly, the spell is redundant because although it is activated during the knitting process, it still requires another incantation to bring it fully into fruition." She sighed. "I'm not making any sense, am I?"
"I can follow," said Minerva quickly, wondering where Bathsheba was going with her speech. She was normally a very logical woman and it was unusual for the elderly witch to babble randomly, however much her name might have given the impression of incoherency.
"Well, that's not really important. Knitting is like life, and as I was puzzling through my pattern and wondering what was hidden beneath the surface…" Here Minerva briefly remembered the words that had flashed red on the page under Bathsheba's fingers when she had first touched the pattern. "… and I couldn't help but start comparing it to life. And inevitably, my thoughts came round to Severus. I think that there is most definitely more than meets the eye about that man. My personal feelings towards him aside, there is definitely something going on that the rest of us don't know about behind those eyes of his."
For a few moments, Minerva considered bringing Bathsheba in on the secret that currently only she, Severus and Poppy shared, but she forcibly dragged herself away from this thought. The fewer people who knew, the better, and who knew whether Bathsheba's knitting pattern might yet provide her with the truth. She brought her mind back to the present and the booklist that sat on her desk, seeming to mock her.
"Diagon Alley," she said wearily before looking up at Bathsheba once more. "Do you want to come? To be honest I'd appreciate the company."
Bathsheba nodded.
"Just let me get my cloak."
She hurried out of the office and Minerva set about making her own preparations for departure. The ancient runes teacher's words had unnerved her though; what possible power could this strange knitted item possess?
A few minutes later they were standing in Diagon Alley, and Minerva was having trouble keeping her jaw from dropping. Admittedly, it was quite a while since she had last been there, acquiring most of her magical purchases in Hogsmeade or through Owl Order catalogues, but still, she had never anticipated that the street should have undergone such a dramatic deterioration in such a comparatively short space of time. The number of shops with boarded up windows and barred doors was greater than those that still remained open for business, and even then, there was none of the joyful display of wares or the inherent happiness and bustle that the alley used to possess. The place was all but deserted, and the worn-down air of a place that had simply given up hung heavily and wearily in the air.
"It's like a ghost town," breathed Bathsheba, and Minerva could tell the genuine sorrow in her voice. The ancient runes teacher had lived a long time, and she had seen the alley blossom and develop over the decades as shops had changed hands, changed names, been handed down from father to son. Now, that glorious past that had marked Diagon Alley as the country's best wizarding commerce centre had been forgotten in their bleak and miserable present.
Just then, something caught Minerva's eye; a movement through the crack in a boarded up window. She looked again and could just make out the unnaturally pale eyes of Mr Ollivander in the dim light of the upstairs window of his shop. Whilst to the rest of the world, the wandmaker was still lost, the Order had reinstalled him in his home once he had been well enough to travel, and he was recuperating there with the minimum of disturbances. For all the twisted intelligence of their master, some of Voldemort's lackeys really were criminally stupid. They would never look for Ollivander in the one place that he was most likely to be because to the outside observer, the shop and the house above it were still abandoned. The eyes moved away from the crack, and Minerva averted her gaze quickly in case one of the slightly less mentally-challenged followers was watching.
"Flourish and Blotts, I suppose," said Bathsheba. "I could do with looking for a new lexicon myself if I'm ever going to get this… whatever it's meant to be, finished before I expire."
Minerva nodded and the two witches made their way quickly down the alley towards the bookshop. They were the only customers, something that unnerved Minerva even more. The start of term was two days away, surely the shop should have been swarming with students picking up last minute supplies, even though Minerva had done something wholly unorthodox and told her pupils in their Hogwarts letters that the school would be providing all their textbooks for that year. Ever since she had first met Severus on the night that Azkaban fell and he had warned her of the Ministry's impending fall, she had been in two minds about doing this, knowing that the school might well be in danger of regulations like the ones that had fallen on her desk that morning, and she was glad that she had. She looked around the shelves for a moment whilst Bathsheba spoke to the cashier about her lexicon.
It was only after she had stared at the shelves for the best part of ten minutes that Minerva realised what was wrong.
"Mr Flourish," she said to the man behind the counter warily, "where are all your books?"
That was perhaps a slight exaggeration; it was not that there were no books on the shelves at all, but they were nowhere near as plentifully stocked as they normally were, great gaps indicating where large volumes had been taken out.
"It was the Ministry, Professor," said Mr Flourish sadly. "They came yesterday and took the entire shop apart, ostensibly checking for unsuitable works. They took eighteen palletsworth. Nearly a thousand galleons of stock gone up in smoke." Mr Flourish didn't sound as if he was particularly worried about the money, rather he was feeling devastated at the loss of the books that he dedicated his professional life to. Minerva swallowed. Any books that they deemed 'unsuitable' were probably the exact same tomes that she was searching for herself.
"The Defence Against the Dark Arts section?" she enquired nervously. Mr Flourish shook his head.
"Gone, Professor McGonagall. All gone. Every last book."
Bathsheba looked at her nervously, and Minerva closed her eyes. Perhaps the creeping infiltration of the dark into the safe haven of Hogwarts was going to happen quicker than she had expected after all.
Note2: The knitting pattern is back, and it's more mysterious than ever! Ah, Voldy in an argyle sweater. Can't you just see it now?