Harry wasn't quite sure how it all happened.
The event happened after his session with Snape which was both an Occulemency lesson and over an hour of being forced to make an 'acceptable' Draught of Peace. Snape had even higher standards than Hermione in regards to Potions. Harry was glad that the two didn't get along better.
After that Harry had been attending to some insignificant task or other, which required him to pass through the hallways of Hogwarts with nothing particular on his mind. He wasn't spacing out, which is why he was confused about how things ended up.
Professor Umbridge was coming down the hall from the other direction, carrying a stack of papers and books. Harry didn't pay too much attention to her; there were occasions where he and Snape passed each other with only ritual glares exchanged. Umbridge may have been the new problem for the year, but she hadn't quite gotten under Harry's skin yet. Thus he wasn't concerned with the new DADA teacher's presence. Maybe if he had been in a bad mood then he would've paid more attention to her and avoided what happened next.
Right before they passed each other Umbridge stepped directly in front of Harry, who didn't react in time. He stumbled into her, spilling papers and books onto the floor. Umbridge performed an unconvincing fall backward. Harry just stood blinking in confusion.
"Mr. Potter," Umbridge scolded in a faux out-raged tone, "you need to watch where you're going! Detention tomorrow!"
"What?" Harry replied, too bewildered to know how to respond.
"Manners, Potter!" Umbridge pretended to snap, as if she hadn't engineered the whole situation. "Make that detention for every evening this week."
"What?"
"Quit pushing your luck, Mr. Potter," Umbridge told him. "Now run along back to your common room before you get in more trouble." She slipped into her usual sickly sweet tone during her last sentence. She quickly gathered up her things and scurried off down the hall.
"What the bloody hell?!" Harry asked the world at large. Wasn't he supposed to have avoided something like this?
"What's she getting off on?" Ron asked the world at large.
"I can't believe she's doing this," Hermione muttered, mostly to herself. "What's her game?"
Danny was just starting to shift his thoughts from possible activities he could be pursing with Sam if the two of them shared geographical proximity and thus he needed to get a quick refresher on the situation.
"What exactly did she do?"
"Tracked down Harry, ran him over, blamed him, and then gave him detention for a week," Ron said, who knew what it was like to not be paying attention.
"Oh," was Danny's reply as he sat back in one of the comfy common room chairs. He forced his mind to quit thinking about how the chair could fit another person and just what person would make the experience much greater. "Sucks when teachers have it out for you."
"Happen to you before?" Harry inquired, fuming in his own chair. It was hard to control his anger about the whole unfairness of the situation, both the recent one and the big picture. Rage filled his whole body, muscles tightening, teeth clenching, eyes glaring, and a growl sneaking into his voice. He wanted to-
No! He couldn't take umbrage at Umbridge! He ignored the anger, shoving the emotion out of the way, and tried to focus on turning it into a joke.
He didn't notice when a table leg snapped and spilled a student's homework into one of the common room fires. Harry, trying to distract himself from his emotions with humor, turned back to the conversation.
"Never quite that bad," Danny admitted. "Well, there was the ghost that pretended to be a psychiatrist who seemed to have it in for me, but she was torturing the whole school-"
Though, Hermione thought, the psychiatric specter was trying to get to Phantom through Danny and went after the rest of the school to hide her true motives or as an attack of opportunity. Hermione wondered if Danny and his friends had guessed the same thing and were hiding it, or if they were unaware of what else might have been going on. She reminded herself to find a time to ask them. It would be nice to swap stories and notes with people who had been in similar situations.
"-so I don't think it was personal," Danny continued. "Lancer can be cool at times, the rest of the time he acts like he's got it in for me. The rest just liked the football team more than me."
Had Dean or some other European soccer fan been in the conversation a humorous misunderstanding about the difference between football and American football would have commenced. Sadly, this was not the case, as the West Ham fan was nowhere to be found.
"Any advice?" Ron asked.
"Don't draw attention to yourself, hide when you need to, and stay away from lockers big enough to fit you," was Danny's sage answer.
"And when they're actively hunting for you?" Harry asked.
Danny almost said 'kick Skulker's butt', but managed to stop himself. He simply shrugged instead.
"I only dealt with jocks hunting me," Danny said aloud.
"I've already dealt with Draconian measures from students," Harry replied with a smirk. Ron and Hermione rolled their eyes. "So why's she doing this?"
"I don't know," Hermione admitted. "She might be trying to force Harry into something..."
"Like detention?" Ron snarked.
"You know what I mean," Hermione snapped back. "Detention's just a tool. I don't know what her endgame is."
"So what's my game then?" Harry slumped back into his chair. "Chess? Checkers? Parcheesi?"
"Just endure it," Danny told him, weighing the pro and cons of using a duplicate to find the Ravenclaw common room. Considering how exhausting his summer ordeal had been, he decided on doing it later.
"We should go to McGonagall," Hermione suggested as she usually did.
"When has that ever done anything?" Harry shot back, eyes narrowing. "She's never done anything about Snape? Or anything else really. Why should she start now?"
It should be pointed out that Harry was being unfair to his head of house. The situation with Snape was... complicated, to say the least. Her hands had been tied by international treaties during the fourth year. They hadn't ever gone to her during their second year. She had been right about his Firebolt being from Sirius Black during his third year and had taken action then.
(Though she had thought Sirius was trying to kill Harry with bodily or magical harm rather than attempting to assert the sacred right of all uncles/aunts/godparents/grandparents to kill via affection and spoiling.)
Her only real failure had been during their first year, and even then she had good reason to be skeptical of their claims. And in a way she had been correct to dismiss said claims; Snape hadn't been trying to steal the Stone.
But from Harry's point of view, McGonagall had never been able to help. No adult really had. It had always been up to him to endure and save everybody. Always him.
"Well it was nice to know that all my nice behavior worked so well," the boy-who-lived muttered. No matter what he did or didn't do, he couldn't escape. His whole bloody life had been a ruddy comedy of some of the most unlikely misfortune. His anger flared back stronger than ever-
No! Harry pushed those feelings away.
"We should give up and start trying to give Fred and George a run for their money," Harry told Ron and Hermione, suppressing his emotions. A window cracked and burst, briefly drawing everyone's attention before they confirmed that nothing had come through. Things like that usually happened from mis-cast spells, nothing out of the ordinary for a school of magic.
"You don't need to get all the other professors angry at you," Hermione countered. "We'll just have to wait and see how things develop from here."
"I already know how it's going to go," Harry informed her. "Badly."
Danny was more careful in using his powers to traverse the school the next morning. He waited until a while after Ron and Harry had left the dorm before getting up and flying down to the ground floor bathrooms to avoid the awkward questions of yesterday. Once again he made a duplicate, this time knowing to avoid Binns, and headed out with the intention of meeting up with Sam.
Once more, the breakfast was extravagant. Danny was amazed that everyone wasn't fat as pigs at Hogwarts. He sat down next to the trio again and started to load his plate.
The morning owls flew into the hall carrying their burdens. Danny ignored them until an ancient great gray owl dropped one on his head.
"Who?" Danny grabbed the letter and looked at it. The only indication of whom it had come from was the material; a modern day muggle envelop. He shrugged and tore it open.
Jazz had written him a letter. Danny sighed and started to read through it.
Most of it consisted of mundane updates, the doings around the house, of their parents, of what Tucker had been doing to keep himself occupied. Danny was only interested in the part about his friend. At least until he read the final item in the document.
His parents had gotten their new portal up and running! This gave him an excuse to go back to headquarters and pick up the Fenton Phones and set up some relays if he needed. Of course he'd have to track down his prior duplicate first so he wouldn't be wasting energy.
And then he'd have to make the flight back to London... he groaned when he thought of how tiring it would be.
"What's the matter mate?" Ron asked Danny. "Bad news?"
"No," Danny replied, "just thinking about some of the work I have to do later."
"I know the feeling," Ron returned. "What's your schedule like today?"
"Same as you, but I've also got Ancient Studies," Danny sighed. "I'll have to figure out where the classroom is."
"We can help with that," Hermione said.
"Thanks," Danny listened as they gave him a quick set of directions. He was especially thankful when Hermione wrote them down so he'd remember which doors to tickle and so on. With their aid he was sure he was going to be only ten minutes late instead of the twenty he had initially assumed.
"Ugh," Harry moaned. "This reminds me, I've got Healing again today."
"Two days in a row? At least you've got most of it out of the way-" Ron began.
"I've got Intro to Healing every day but Wednesday," Harry informed his red haired friend. "By Merlin's trousers this is going-"
"Why are you swearing by an old dead guy's pants?" Danny asked, giving the scared boy a befuddled look.
"It's a habit I've gotten into because everyone else is doing it," Harry answered. "I got into the same bad habit with Voldemort's name- Ron, it's just a name!- for a while, but I got that fixed after my first year."
Danny simply shrugged.
"Makes sense," he said, before turning back to his breakfast.
Danny suffered through double Charms, where he not only got an earful about O.W.L.s, but had more trouble with casting spells. He really did not care about O.W.L.s, he wanted to be an astronaut. Wizarding careers didn't really matter, as he planned to return to Amity Park as soon as he could.
Angelina accosted Harry to inform him that they were having Keeper tryouts that Saturday. Harry was glad that they were Saturday instead of Friday, with Umbridge's bizarre and severe punishment tying up his weeknights. He couldn't imagine getting a day off from detention when the toad lady had deliberately engineered them.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione, on the other hand, were forced to start being nervous the big tests early. Well, Ron and Harry that was, Hermione had already been worried about them. Flitwick's lecture had done nothing but fan the flames there.
Next came double Transfiguration. Out of all the magic Danny had done this far, most of it had been transfigurations... and most of it was supposed to have been something other than transfiguration. He was starting to be able to guess the disastrous results of people's attempts early. It saved him from getting a badger bite. Which was doubly enjoyable because it reminded him that he didn't currently have to put up with Vlad!
It was unfortunate that Harry and Danny's year's group did not have classes with Sam's group. Danny would've liked to talk to her. And get some help during class since Hermione had her hands full with her friends. The Fenton boy wished that Tucker could've been there- he had a better head for things like the theory behind transfiguration than Danny.
After Transfiguration Danny split ways with Ron, Harry, and Hermione. He went off to get lost on his way to Ancient Studies. He didn't really feel like using his ghost powers while he had a duplicate off running errands. Ancient Studies turned out to be a typical history class. Danny struggled to stay awake, as per usual.
Harry had to endure an even more grueling anatomy lesson in Intro to Healing. He stuck through it with almost nary a pun.
Next Harry, Ron, and Hermione rejoined for Care of Magical of Creatures. Harry knew that Hagrid probably wouldn't be there, but his heart still fell when he saw Professor Grubbly-Plank instead of Hagrid awaiting them. His heart sunk further when he saw Draco and company approaching; evidently the Slytherins hadn't revolted and killed off their new Prefect.
Their lesson consisted of bowtruckles and Harry getting annoyed with his classmate's thorough enjoyment of the lesson. As if Hagrid had never given them any enjoyable, safe, and interesting lessons. What Harry failed to remember was that Hagrid's enjoyable, safe, and interesting lessons tended not to contain all three of those characteristics at the same time. But then again, it wasn't that unusual for a Hogwarts lesson to be like that so maybe the students were simply enjoying the novelty.
Not that the Slytherin's constant mocking of Hagrid helped Harry's temper.
"Maybe," said Malfoy in an undertone so that only Harry could hear him, after Harry had asked the temporary professor about Hagrid's whereabouts, "the stupid great oaf's got himself badly injured."
"Maybe you will if you don't shut up," Harry said out of the side of his mouth. "It'd be a shame to ruin such a pretty face for your future husband."
"An assuredly better fate then marrying some muggle tramp like your mother," Malfoy shot back with a glare. "And I wouldn't have to worry about meeting a sudden end like that whore and the oaf." A couple of electric blue sparks dribbled off of his fingers.
"No, you merely have to worry about your dad meeting a sudden end and then you can't snog his arse anymore," Harry smirked, his hand finding his wand in his front pocket.
"At least I have parents, Potter. Parents who were smart enough to pick the right side, unlike you and yours." Draco shot before walking away.
Harry felt disappointed that he didn't get a chance to hex Malfoy and voiced that thought after the lesson ended.
"Harry, don't go picking a row with Malfoy," Hermione chided. "He's a prefect now, he could make life difficult for you..."
Harry's are you kidding me? stare said it better than his mouth ever could.
"You know what I mean," Hermione snapped back, flushing slightly. "Just let my minion and I handle him."
"So I'm a minion now? Does that mean I get to recruit goons?" Ron inquired.
"No, but if you're very very good I can give you a couple for Christmas."
"You never let me do anything fun," Ron complained.
Next came Herbology. More O.W.L fearmongering occurred (though Neville didn't seemed that worried for once; instead he seemed almost eager). Harry wondered if the professors were actively trying to drive Hermione over the edge.
After that, classes were over and Harry had detention with Umbridge to look forward to.
Harry arrived at the Defense Against the Dark Arts office after grabbing a quick bite. The professor was the latest occupant to leave her personal imprint on the office. Gilderoy Lockhart had turned the office into a shrine for his ego. Remus Lupin had filled it with a collection of interesting dark creatures, possibly as a statement about himself. Barty Crouch Jr. had filled it with objects of paranoia and objects relating to Dark Magic. Dolores Umbridge had...
Lacy covers and doilies had consumed every surface like a creeping sickness. Vases of dried flowers stood sentinel over the office, each on its own personal doily. Overlooking it all, on one wall, was a set of ornamental plates decorated with technicolor kittens wearing different bows around their necks. It seemed that their creator had only heard in vague terms why people liked kittens, how colors went together, and what consisted of good taste in decorating.
"Good evening Mr. Potter," a voice spoke up, startling Harry. Umbridge was wearing a flowered set of robes that blended in with her tablecloth and decorations, like she was a camouflaged lizard or a crawling insect. It was enough that Harry had missed her the first time looked.
"Evening Professor Umbridge," Harry replied stiffly. "I assume you know what I called this meeting?"
"What?" Harry's non sequitur derailed Umbridge's train of thought. "Mr. Potter, have you forgotten that this is a detention?"
"No, just felt like making a joke," was the boy's reply.
Umbridge smiled a smile like poisoned honey. One could tell that there was nothing good in the smile, no warmth, or affection, but it was hard for one to pinpoint way. It might have been subtle clues in the eyes that one saw but didn't consciously note, such as the lack of dilation of the pupils. Or it might have been subtle movements in the corners of the lips during the formation of the expression that didn't seem natural.
"There's no time for such childish pursuits at the moment," Umbridge said in a sickeningly sweet voice. "We're here on account of a matter of discipline."
Harry rolled his eyes.
"Mr. Potter," snapped the professor, "I will politely ask you once to refrain from such blatant signs of disrespect."
Harry almost made a smart remark, but remembered the quidditch tryouts that Saturday. He didn't want to tempt fate and get chewed out by Angelina for missing the tryouts. So for once he held his tongue and simply nodded.
"Good," Umbridge stated. "Now onto tonight's activity. You'll be writing lines, Mr. Potter. No, not with your quill, you'll be using one of mine." She handed him an unnaturally sharp, thin, and black quill with a band of red near the tip, as well as a blank sheet of parchment.
"Now I want you to write, I will not cross my superiors. It will hopefully teach you to avoid incidents like the one in the hallway earlier. Maybe one day you can become a quiet, well behaved child who doesn't like to stir up trouble."
Blood rushed to Harry's head and he heard a thumping sound. She was worse then Snape! The greasy bat at least usually waited for Harry to misbehave in some manner before using punishment to send a personal message. If what Hermione, Ron, and himself guessed was true, then this was because of an outside agenda for an entity that didn't want to deal with an inconvenient truth. One that was doing its best to turn his classmates like Seamus against him.
"How many lines?" Harry asked in a terse voice.
"As many as I feel as necessary," Umbridge answered. "You may start now."
Harry angrily set the quill to paper and started to write the first letter, quill leaving a glowing orange mark. As he did so he felt a line of pain erupt in his hand, as if the bacteria within had managed to cast the Cruciatus Curse there. It was pain, simple pure pain, with no other sensation.
Harry hissed and looked round at Umbridge.
"Yes?" She asked, smiling.
"Nothing," said Harry quietly.
He glanced back down at his hand. There was no mark; no easy evidence. The mark on the paper was quickly dimming and fading when he looked there next. Harry flexed his hand and then began writing again.
Harry's anger and pride burned within him like a dying phoenix, suffusing him with a terrible and yet wonderful feeling. This toad faced hag thought she could just waltz into Hogwarts and break him with a little pain? This patronizing buffon thought he was crazy or an attention seeking brat like so many others had before her? No. He would show this creature no weakness. He would give her no satisfaction.
Umbridge watched in satisfaction as Harry struggled with the cursed quill and parchment. The suggestions that one of the Minister's trusted confidants had passed her when he was making a 'donation' looked like they were going to prove their worth in assisting her with handling this attention seeking brat. With any luck she'd soon have him just where she had wanted him since before the year began.
Harry wrote, endured, and wrote again. Seconds ticked away in painful slowness, turning into agonizing, crawling minutes, that turned into torturous glacial paced hours while Harry wrote and endured. The sun fell beyond the horizon chased by darkness as the day died and Harry still wrote and endured.
Umbridge glanced out the window and at her watch.
"That's enough," she said. "I've got more important matters to attend to."
Most likely sleep Harry thought as he left. It seemed to be after midnight, so there was nobody to notice when he fell against a wall two hallways away from Umbridge's office, clutching his hand to his chest. The bloody appendage hurt. There was no direct damage from the quill, but the odd muscle contortions both from the pain and from forcing himself to keep writing could not have been good for it.
Air escaped his lungs in a hiss. He massaged his injured hand with the other, trying to get it back to normal. Harry closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then got back up. He would have to ignore his hand the best he could; he had the rest of the week to get through after all.
Danny held back his yawn until he had turned off the Fenton Phone. It had been a busy day helping his parents with the final bits of set up for their new portal. The part where they pretended to lock him in the Ghost Zone didn't help matters (he was pretty sure that they were joking, it wasn't like Dumbledore would let them get away with it, and they were officially on the same side for once, but he sometimes couldn't tell with his parents). Then he had to covertly help Jazz set up a relay for the Fenton Phone so that it would work at Hogwarts.
On the bright side he could talk to Tucker again in real time and his parents hadn't been told that the phones were working. On the other hand Jazz could call him at any time. One couldn't have everything he guessed.
After that he looked at the scroll Dumbledore had given him. There was a message requesting a meeting for Sunday at his office plus a list of minor tasks that members of the Order could use some of his help with. Danny figured that he probably try to help with as many of those tasks as he could.
Of course that meant less time with Sam...
For some reason his tired mind decided that it would be a good idea to rejoin physically instead of just dispelling himself. That was why he was doing his hunched over, silent, and invisible float into the Gryffindor common room. He instinctively froze when he heard portrait door open.
The halfa turned to find a tired Harry Potter climbing through the hole. The way the boy carried himself, his right hand in particular, seemed off to Danny.
"Why you getting in so late?" Danny let up on the invisibility as he spoke. Harry jumped, hand plunging into his robes for his wand. The wizard boy fumbled with the implement and had to catch it with both hands before it hit the floor.
He pointed it at the halfa for a moment before he realized who had been speaking.
"Gave me a start there," Harry admitted, putting his wand back in his pocket. "What are you doing here?"
"Just passing through," the ghost boy replied with a shrug. "You?" Danny barely remembered in time that while Danny Fenton knew of Harry's detention there was no reason for Danny Phantom to know.
"Detention," Harry informed the halfa. He noticed the glowing green eyes looking at his right hand. "She had me writing lines till just now." He offered that incomplete truth as an answer to the spirit's unspoken question.
"That sucks," Phantom said to Harry. "Well anyway, I should get going."
"Sure," Harry replied. "Goodbye."
"See you later." And with that the two boys parted ways, neither one gaining any understanding of the other.
AN: Short chapter. I apologize, but hey, it beens you get it sooner. I'd like to thank PhoneixLyric for betaing this chapter.
You know, I found writing Umbridge to be difficult. Actually scratch that, it would be better to say that I found that trying to write from Umbridge's point of view was difficult. I know what she'll generally do and what she generally believes, but I don't know the syntax of her thoughts or the lies she tells herself, or how often she needs to lie to herself. Or if she even knows that she's lying to herself. My initial attempts at this ended up too simple, too bland, too generic, and generally unsatisfying. So I just re-wrote the scene from Harry's point of view, with only a brief dip into hers. I think it works better.
Remember to REVIEW. Tell me how my writing has caused you irreparable harm and indescribable agony.
Seriously though, REVIEW