"Sorry I'm—" But Harry's apology for having been late— even though he wasn't, really, having decided last minute to forego the changerooms in favour of flying right up to the castle's front doors—died on his tongue.

The scent of cloying, floral rot was the same, and he could also smell Draco; that was to be expected, since Umbridge had asked to see him, but it was extremely unexpected that he could also smell Lucius Malfoy in the room.

Had Draco and his father been here together? Or had Lucius visited Umbridge separately? And if so, why? As a member of the Board of Governors? As the Minister's confidant? Did he want something from Draco?

Or had he come on Voldemort's orders?

Could Umbridge be in league with the Death Eaters? And if she was, was it of her own volition, or was she being manipulated, or Imperiused?

"Take a seat, Mr Potter," Umbridge said, gesturing to the chair that had been Harry's during his previous detentions. There was something different in her tone, something almost angry.

Harry propped his Firebolt up against the wall of her office, and sat, mind still racing.

"We won't be talking about the curriculum today," she said.

"No?" Harry asked warily.

"No," she said. "I have been very patient with you this week," she said. "I have indulged your questions about the curriculum, and about O.W.L.s, as a sign of good faith. And now, I think it's time that you extended your own gesture of good faith."

"Right," Harry said.

"I wish it to be something that shows you are willing to work with me and with the Ministry," she continued. "Something that shows a level of trust."

"Do you have something in mind?" Harry asked, frowning.

"As a matter of fact I do," Umbridge said. "Two things, in fact, and I'll be happy with either." She held up one stubby, ringed finger. "A public declaration of support for the Ministry. Or—" She held up a second finger. "—the contents of the prophecy about yourself and He Who Must Not Be Named." Harry stared at her. "Well, Mr Potter? Which will it be?"

"What do you mean by declaring my support for the Ministry?" Harry asked.

"Exactly what it sounds like," she said. "You, as a public figure, endorse the Ministry's activities." Her eyes narrowed at Harry's blank look. "Our new curriculum, our efforts against You Know Who—"

"But I don't agree with the Ministry about either of those things," Harry said.

Umbridge's eyes bulged and Harry could smell the effort it was taking her to keep her voice level when she next spoke:

"We have discussed the curriculum at length this week, Mr Potter—"

"And I understand it perfectly now," he said. "So well, actually, that I don't just think it's a waste of time, I know it is." Umbridge opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again, and breathed in deeply through her nose. "You call talking to me about your subject and O.W.L.s a gesture of goodwill? You're my teacher. That's your job."

For a moment he thought Umbridge might actually explode; her face had gone a furious red that Harry hadn't seen since he lived full time with Uncle Vernon, and her breath was escaping from her wide, flaring nostrils in a hiss.

Then she took another deep breath and her face went back to a more normal colour.

"Would I be correct in assuming that since I did not see you at dinner and that you've arrived in Quidditch robes, that you've not had dinner, Mr Potter?"

"Er… yeah," Harry said, wary of the sudden change in her demeanour. Umbridge made a small sound and reached for a silver bell on the edge of her desk.

A blue-eyed house elf popped into the room dressed in a toga which looked to have been made from a very old, very faded Hogwarts banner.

"Mr Potter would like a sandwich and pumpkin juice," Umbridge told the elf without even looking at it. The elf shot Harry a look, bowed to them both, and popped away again.

Neither Harry or Umbridge spoke in the three or so minutes that they spent waiting.

It seemed like a long time for a house elf to fulfil what was a fairly simple request—Harry could have made himself a sandwich in that time, and service in the Hogwarts kitchens was usually almost immediate. Umbridge clearly thought so too; she had started to tap her fingers on her desk.

With a pop, two house elves appeared, fighting over a small tray. One was the same elf as before, and the other was a very familiar elf wearing one of Mrs Weasley's knitted jumpers with a large D on it, small enough that it must have been from back when Draco was a first year. He also wore a pair of Gryffindor socks, and had a Walpurgis stinks badge pinned proudly to his chest.

"Let— Dobby— be— taking—"

"Dobby is a bad elf," squeaked the other elf. "Dobby is going against a professor's orders!"

"Dobby is a good elf!" Dobby cried, still trying to wrest the tray free. The glass of pumpkin juice sloshed dangerously. "Dobby is trying to protect—" Harry frowned at that, trying to catch Dobby's eye.

"Quiet!" Umbridge snapped, and both elves went still and silent. "Give Mr Potter his dinner, and take your squabble elsewhere."

"Pearlie is being very sorry." The elf set the tray down in front of Harry and disappeared with a bow, ears quivering.

"Pearlie should be being sorry," Dobby said, puffing his thin chest out. "Dobby is seeing—"

"I said quiet!" Umbridge said, this time with an edge of panic to her voice. Harry gave her a sharp look, then looked at Dobby. "Out."

Dobby gave the glass of pumpkin juice a pointed look, Harry an imploring one, and Umbridge a rather dirty one, then popped away.

"Even the standard of servants here isn't what it was," Umbridge said, pursing her lips. "House elves should not be seen or heard. Still, hopefully their food is up to its usual standard." She waved a hand. "Eat. And while you do, consider what it would take for you to extend either of the gestures I mentioned before."

"A public statement or sharing the prophecy, you mean?" Harry pulled the tray over. There was something off about the juice; it looked normal, but the smell of it was… wrong.

Even water has a smell, Remus had told him, years ago, but Veristaserum smells like nothing.

Harry hadn't really understood that then, but he did now; he couldn't have explained it properly, but to his sensitive nose, the pumpkin juice didn't just smell like pumpkin juice and nothing else—somehow it smelled like pumpkin juice and nothing.

Harry peeled back the bread to have a look at what was in the sandwich—ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce—and gave it a sniff. Then he took a bite; he was actually hungry, and he was fairly certain the sandwich was not what he needed to worry about.

"Precisely," she said, and leaned back in her chair, watching him expectantly.

"Well," Harry said slowly, "I'd probably want to see the Ministry really trying to stop Voldemort—" She flinched. "—and his Death Eaters."

"We are making every reasonable effort to do that," she said. "But the information we have is limited—as you know, the prophecy has not been shared with us. But if we knew what it said, then perhaps we could better—"

"Dumbledore knows what it says," Harry said. "And so do I, more or less. But you still don't trust the things we've said about who's a Death Eater, or how to fight Voldemort." He raised his eyebrows and Umbridge's expression soured. "You want my trust? Show a bit of trust back."

"It's not you we don't trust, Mr Potter," Umbridge said, recovering her smile and sugary voice. "It's Dumbledore—"

"But if you trust me, and I trust Dumbledore…" Harry trailed off pointedly, and took another bite of his sandwich.

"He could be manipulating you."

"He's not," Harry said, swallowing his mouthful.

"You don't know that," she said.

"And you do?" he asked.

"You need to trust the Ministry, Mr Potter. You need to trust me—"

"I don't, actually," Harry said. Umbridge looked like he'd slapped her.

"But why wouldn't you?" she asked eventually, voice strained. "We're friends, Mr Potter—these last few nights, we've been building trust, haven't we? I am trying to help you in what's to come—"

"By putting Veritaserum in my juice?" he asked.

Umbridge flushed an ugly pink:

"You're being ridiculous," she said. "There's nothing wrong with your juice—"

"Have some, then," Harry said. He drew his wand and summoned a teacup from a table in the corner of the room. Umbridge watched him, frozen, and he filled it and slid the cup toward her. "Go on," he said, lifting his glass and what remained in it, as if in toast. "To trust, and our budding friendship."

The words came out mocking; he didn't think he could have helped that if he'd tried.

Umbridge made no move to take the cup. Harry set his own aside.

"Five points from Gryffindor," she said after a moment.

"For what?" he asked incredulously. "Not drinking spiked juice?"

"For using magic outside of your lessons!" she snapped, colour high on her cheeks. "You summoned that cup!" She straightened the awful, floral robes she was wearing, took a deep breath, and lifted her chin. "I will give you one more chance," she said, "to fall into line with the Ministry. I do not want to be your enemy—"

"No," Harry said, folding his arms. "You don't."

Umbridge opened her mouth then closed it, face turning pink:

"I will not be threatened by you, Mr Potter," she said, recovering. "And if you would spurn the help if the Ministry and its allies in favour of rubbing shoulders with undesirables like Dumbledore—"

"If those allies are people like Lucius Malfoy I'd rather keep my distance, thanks," Harry said coolly. "I'm working against Death Eaters, you see."

The words hung in the office for several uncomfortably long seconds.

"I regret to inform you that your pleasant detentions are at an end," she said, far too sweetly. "You have no one to blame for this but yourself." She flicked her wand, vanishing his half-eaten sandwich and juice. "You are to relocate yourself to the other desk—" She pointed her wand at a lace-covered table at the back, and several of the vases of dried flowers hopped aside to clear some room atop it. "—and you will be writing lines for me."

"Fine," Harry said shortly, and dragged his chair over, with no particular effort to stop it from scratching the floor. "Do you have parchment and a quill?"

"I do," she said, and there was something off about her tone. Harry frowned and twisted around to look at her; she'd just retrieved parchment and a black wooden box from her desk drawer, and walked them over to him.

The parchment she set on the table, and the box she opened and held out.

Inside was a long, thin quill made of some sort of black feather. The tip of it—cased in very fine silver—looked almost dangerously sharp.

"Take it," she said.

Harry did not, not right away, but when Umbirdge cleared her throat and wiggled the box, realised he didn't really have a choice.

Very reluctantly, he reached out to take it, and was a little surprised when it didn't sting or bite him. The quill was oddly warm to the touch, though, and not in a nice way. Umbridge snapped the box shut.

"I would like you to write 'I am responsible for the consequences of my actions'," she said, and there was a nasty gleam in her eyes.

"How many times?" Harry asked stiffly.

"I think you can just keep writing until we can be sure the message has had time to sink in," she said with a smile. "You may begin." She turned back toward her desk and Harry glowered at her back, then sighed and lowered his quill to the parchment—

"You haven't given me any ink," Harry said.

"You won't be needing it," she said, settling in her chair like a toad on a rock. She didn't pick up any marking or a book or paper to read, just watched him over the top of her desk.

Wary, Harry wrote I am responsible for the consequences of my actions and hissed quietly as pain flared along his left forearm. The words had appeared in shiny, red ink, and he could smell fresh blood in the room though there had been none seconds before.

Harry pushed back the sleeve of his quidditch jumper, taking great care not to angle his arm—or the pale Mark on it—toward Umbridge. The words had appeared on his skin—over the Mark—in his own handwriting. They weren't just scratched or inked on, either, they were cut in.

But then, even as he watched, the skin on his arm stitched back together as if the words had never been there at all.

Harry looked up to see Umbridge watching him, a wide, close-mouthed smile on her face.

"Yes?" she asked. Harry tugged his sleeve back into place over the Mark.

It couldn't be illegal or Dark—there was no way she'd risk that right under Dumbledore's nose, and not when she had to know Harry would tell Padfoot, an Auror—but that didn't mean it wasn't wrong.

Harry curled his lip at her and picked up the quill again. He wrote it smaller the second time, and, now that he was expecting the pain, braced for it; he refused to give her the satisfaction of any kind of response.

Just a few months ago, Voldemort had blasted him out a second-storey window, had tortured him with the Cruciatus curse, and burned him with Fiendfyre.

This was nothing compared to that.

I have shaped you, Voldemort said, and Harry shoved the memory away.

I am responsible for the consequences of my actions; he wrote it again and again. Each time he felt the sting as his arm was sliced open, and then the itch of it stitching back together, though it seemed to grow slower each time he wrote it, seemed to hurt longer and take longer for the scent of blood to fade. The only good thing was that his jumper was Gryffindor burgundy, and so while it was slowly soaking through with blood, it wasn't obvious, though he pitied the house elves who'd have to get it out of the gold banding near the cuff.

Umbridge kept him there until the parchment was covered from top to bottom in three cramped columns of his handwriting, some still of it still shining red, the rest dry and rust-coloured.

"That's enough,"Umbridge said at last. She smelled faintly disgruntled—perhaps she'd expected more of a reaction?—but mostly there was grim satisfaction. "Do you think it's begun to sink in?"

"Sure," Harry said dully. She held out a hand:

"Let me see," she said. Harry's stomach turned at the thought of Umbridge looking at—or worse, touching—his left arm, his stump, the Mark—

"See what?" he asked, as flippantly as he could, and strode out before she could say anything else, snatching up his broom and bundled up leathers and padding on the way.

A few minutes later, he was standing at the door to McGonagall's office and awkwardly half-punched the door to knock; he was still holding his broomstick.

He heard her stand, stride to the door, and then it opened to reveal her beady look.

"Potter," she said, eyes flitting over his Quidditch uniform. Her nostrils flared, and he was sure she could smell the blood on his sleeve. "Has there been an incident at tryouts?"

"No," he said, fighting to keep his voice level. "I've just come from detention, actually."

"I see," she said, though she clearly did not. "And…?"

"And we need to talk about it," Harry said tersely. She eyed him for a moment, then turned stepped back into her office:

"Mr Jordan, you are dismissed," she said. "But if I catch you selling poisonous sweets to the first years again, I will have you helping Madam Pomfrey clean the Hospital Wing and then we will see just how funny you think illnesses are."

"Noted," came Lee's voice from within.

"And tell Mr and Mr Weasley that I expect them here tomorrow night for their own detentions. Just because I want a strong Quidditch team does not mean they're getting off lightly." Harry could have sworn there was an undercurrent of fond exasperation in her voice, and Lee could clearly hear something similar:

He sniggered and stepped out, pausing when he saw Harry:

"All right?" he asked.

"Good night, Mr Jordan," McGonagall said pointedly, and returned to the door to wave Harry inside. "Well, Potter?"

Harry set his broom and other gear aside so he could pull up his sleeve. Her expression changed from suspicious to something that was a mix between horror and anger.

"My detention was writing lines," he said. "With a 'special' quill."

"May I…?" McGonagall extended a hand, and Harry hesitated, then nodded. Very gently—almost gingerly—she took hold of what remained of his wrist, and examined the red, not-quite healed words on his forearm. Harry fought the urge to squirm and pull away. "To be clear," she said, "the quill is responsible for the writing? Or the writing and the— this?"

"The Mark's from June," Harry said. McGonagall nodded, scent almost pitying, though none of it showed on her face; she looked afraid.

"Did Professor Umbridge examine her handiwork?" she asked.

"She tried," Harry said. McGonagall's lips thinned and Harry half-expected a reprimand, but none came:

"Good," she said, relaxing. "The last thing we need is the Ministry claiming you're in allegiance with You-Know-Who. For once I think it's for the best that you defied her."

"For once?" Harry asked, and this time she gave him an admonishing look. He didn't care; his temper was bubbling right under his skin, now.

"Continuously defying her is unwise, Potter," she said heavily. "Pick your battles—"

"I am," Harry said. "And tonight I decided not to agree to publicly declare my support for the Ministry, or give her the prophecy, or drink the Veritaserum she put in the juice she gave me."

"I— I beg your pardon, Potter?" Her scent was furious and he was positive it wasn't directed at him. Her eyes went back to his arm and narrowed dangerously.

Then she froze and fell silent enough that Harry could hear what she clearly had; footsteps.

Harry didn't recognise them—not the way he would have recognised Padfoot, or his friends—but McGonagall clearly did.

She jabbed her wand at him, and basic bandages wound themselves around his forearm from wrist to elbow, covering the words and Mark.

"Sit," she hissed.

A moment later, there was a prim knock on the door. McGonagall visibly composed herself and then pulled it open.

"Good evening," she said.

"Good evening, Minerva," came Umbridge's saccharine reply. "Do you have time for a little chat about one of your students? I'm afraid it's quite important."

"Would I be correct in assuming we are both talking about Mr Potter?" McGonagall asked.

"Yes," Umbridge said. Harry couldn't see her around McGonagall and the door, but she sounded less certain than she had before. Harry—much as he disliked her at the moment—couldn't blame her; anyone would be hard pressed not to doubt themselves when McGonagall sounded like that.

"I thought as much," McGonagall said.

"I'm extremely troubled by his attitude in our detention this evening," Umbridge said.

"Personally I'm less troubled by his attitude than your idea of what constitutes an appropriate detention activity," McGonagall said curtly. "Hogwarts long ago moved away from any forms of punishment which make students bleed."

There was a pause.

"I—" Umbridge cleared her throat. "Bleed, Minerva? Wherever have you got that idea?"

"From Mr Potter himself," McGonagall said shortly, and pushed the door open more widely. Umbridge's eyes locked on to Harry, narrowed, and then returned to McGonagall.

"I would caution you against placing too much trust in Mr Potter's word, Minerva," she said. "I've found he can be quite misleading."

"One learns very quickly as an educator that there are two sides to every story, especially where teenagers are involved," McGonagall said. "And while I must admit I struggle to believe Mr Potter's version of events, outlandish and barbaric as they are—" Umbridge lifted her chin. "—I struggle even more to believe he'd have willingly and deliberately carved lines into his own arm." Her voice had grown steadily sharper, and spots of angry colour had appeared on her cheeks.

Umbridge was silent.

"Off to the Hospital Wing with you, Potter," McGonagall said, though not unkindly. "Get that arm looked at. And Dolores, I believe we ought to continue this conversation in the Headmaster's presence. I imagine he, too, will be quite interested to hear your version of events."