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Chapter 9

The week after Halloween was rough but still smoother than Harry had expected it to be. The school was shocked that he would take Tracey into his house just like that, but then again most of the school thought they barely knew each other outside of sharing classes and the occasional group project. They hid the fact that she was one of his best friends so that Daphne and Tracey wouldn't be harassed in the Slytherin common room by certain elements, who were now against Tracey anyway because her parents had been killed by Death Eaters.

Malfoy had tried to give Tracey a hard time about joining Harry's house, but Harry had taken more than a little vindictive pleasure in reminding him that if he kept at it Harry could legally challenge him to a duel and would be more than happy to have someone to practice cutting curses on, to see how quickly he could make the bastard who had practiced the Cruciatus Curse on him beg for mercy. A stammering Draco had quickly decided to leave Tracey alone, as had nearly every other member of Slytherin. None of the heirs to Death Eaters wanted to risk getting into a fight with Harry, and the rest of them didn't want to risk getting on the wrong side of the wrong sort. The only ones in the house that still talked to her were people like Daphne, whose families were neutral and had enough power that no one wanted to push them to the other side.

Harry was in the runes classroom after the day's classes were over, working on his first test module of drying doorways. This one was only a test and was barely big enough to pass an apple through it, which was what he was planning on putting through it as soon as he finished assembling the pieces of wood into which he had already carved hundreds of runes. Luckily he tested it on the apple first, as the doorway vanished the water on the wet apple but also vanished the water within the apple. The result was something not all that dissimilar to a whole freeze-dried apple. If the wizarding world didn't already have preservation charms Harry might have accidentally made something useful, but the only use for this was in the mundane world and the Statute of Secrecy made that impossible. He would have to find a way for the doorway to differentiate between surface water and the water inside a living plant or animal. Harry packed up his notes and headed off to the library. If he was going to create some kind of targeting array that was that specific, he was going to need a few books.

He found Hermione, Daphne, and Tracey in the library, the former two apparently going over their Arithmancy homework. He set his stuff down on the same table they were using and went to collect a few books. When he got back Tracey was looking through his notes, a habit she had picked up recently. Harry wasn't sure if it was an attempt to help him/pay him back, or an aspect of her personality that she had suppressed until now because she had been hiding how close they were. For all Harry knew, it could just be an attempt to distract herself from what had happened. Whatever it was, Harry didn't really mind as Tracey had spotted a few mistakes he had made and pointed them out to him. It was almost impossible to draw out a whole array without making a few, and the doorways had five arrays already.

"How did your test go?" Tracey asked him as he set down his books.

Harry pulled the apple out of his bag and handed it to her. He saw the look of confusion pass over her face as she felt the weight of it. "It removed all the water from inside the apple as well, which is interesting but not something you want to walk through."

She frowned at the thought before suddenly grinning. "I can think of a few people I wouldn't mind pushing through it though. Think you can turn down the effect and only hit the skin? I'll push pugnacious Parkinson through it, we'll see how much she wants to brag about her perfect skin then." She finished with a somewhat sadistic giggle, but Harry counted any laughter from her as a win given that her parents funeral was in two days.

He smiled. "But then you'd have to listen to her whine and complain instead. Maybe you're better off as it is, or we could have a word with Fred and George. I'm sure they can help, give her a major case of warts or something." All three girls had a laugh at that, which proved to Harry that Daphne and Mione were listening to them rather than focusing on their Arithmancy.

-ϟϟϟ-

Harry and Hermione did not attend the Davis's funeral. There was some worry about whether Tracey should go, there was a chance that it would be attacked. However, Sirius asked Tonks to talk to Amelia and sent a squad of aurors to the service, thinking that if there was a follow up attack then the aurors could potentially catch the perpetrators. And with Sirius there to get Tracey out if something went wrong, she was allowed to go with one other person, and Tracey naturally needed Daphne by her side. Harry had worried the whole time she was away from the castle, but thankfully nothing unexpected happened. However, it was a few days later on Friday that the unexpected happened, and it had nothing to do with Tracey or Voldemort and his Death Eaters. It came in the form of the morning paper.

New Post of Ministry School Inspector.

Last night the Ministry announced that by using an Educational Decree they were creating the post of School Inspector. "The Inspector will be the Ministry's eyes and ears inside Hogwarts and will report back to the Ministry on anything that falls below the standards we expect from the premier magical school in Europe," claimed Minister Fudge as he delivered the press release. The documents the Prophet was supplied with listed the powers of this new position.

The appointed school inspector will be permitted to observe any classes

The appointed school inspector will be permitted to inspect all areas of the school accessible to students and staff

The appointed school inspector will be permitted to inspect any and all equipment used at the school.

The appointed school inspector will be permitted to interact with students on the same level as any other member of the Hogwarts staff, including to dock and grant house points and give detentions. They will also have the power to search students' belongings

The appointed school inspector will be housed at the school so as to be on hand to investigate any issues that crop up.

The appointed school inspector will be empowered to issue notices of improvement.

The Ministry also announced who they were appointing to this position, one Delores Umbridge. Delores Umbridge has been the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic for a number of years. She recently spent a few months as the acting Head of the Department for International Magical Cooperation, but her full appointment to the post was denied after it was found that she and her French counterpart (one Monsieur Delacour, father of Triwizard champion Fleur Delacour) had an impassable interpersonal disagreement.

Harry snorted at that wording, 'impassable interpersonal disagreement' was one way to say Sebastian was pissed off at Umbridge for trying to kill his daughter. He returned to reading the article.

"The safety and education of the future of our society is a core concern of witches and wizards, and it is high time the Ministry started to focus on something so near and dear to all of us. There has always been a danger in learning magic, it's an unavoidable fact of life. However, just because some danger is unavoidable doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to eliminate as much of that danger as possible. Some of our traditions have stood the test of time without change for a reason; however, that doesn't mean we shouldn't examine them from time to time.

"For example, the autonomy of Hogwarts from our ministry. Just recently certain changes by the new and inexperienced headmistress led to an altercation in the village of Hogsmeade during a day when the students visited. The alteration involved certain dangerous elements of the student body and several upstanding members of our community. Things like this need investing and the proper punishment carried out." - excerpt from a speech given by Madam Umbridge, the new school inspector.

The inspector is scheduled to move into the school over the weekend and begin her work on Monday…

Harry didn't bother to read any more, and Hermione had already finished reading the article. "That's just what we need, that racist bitch back in the castle." That Hermione swore like that said more about Umbridge than Harry could express without half an hour to give a presentation and a pile of charts.

"I'm more concerned that they are obviously using the incident in Hogsmeade to go after the lycanthropic students. Did you notice it never said that the students were to blame but certainly implied it?" Harry looked at the picture of Fudge and Umbridge that came with the article in disgust.

Hermione nodded. "Yeah I noticed that. And that they are trying to call Professor McGonagall inexperienced. Do you think we should tell Fleur?"

"Yes. I get that Fleur hates the woman after what she tried to do as a Triwizard judge, but we can't go around keeping things from her. She will probably find out anyway and she would be more hurt by us keeping things from her than by worrying about us," Harry said.

Hermione kissed him on the cheek. "When did you become the wise one in the relationship?" She asked teasingly.

"About the same time you started swearing like a regular teenager," Harry answered with a boyish grin plastered on his face.

-ϟϟϟ-

Umbridge was seen moving into the castle on Saturday, but Harry missed it as he was having his French lesson from Fleur. They had been at this for a few weeks now and Hermione had even been giving him a bit of help as they walked around the hallways for their Prefect rounds. Fleur said he was improving quickly, and Harry had to admit it was a lot easier than Latin. It helped that a lot of French words were just English words pronounced weird. Hermione told him that it was actually English taking words from French, but Harry had more fun playfully arguing with Fleur that the French were copying the Brits.

Harry had told Fleur that Umbridge was sticking her nose in at the castle, and Fleur hadn't liked that. She made a point to remind Harry that Umbridge was just as much against Hermione as she was against Fleur, and that while Harry needed to watch out for Hermione he was also to watch out for himself. Umbridge, apart from being seen alive at the castle with a pile of luggage, wasn't seen again until dinner Sunday evening. McGonagall obviously intended for there to be no introduction or announcement; after all, the toad-faced woman was supposed to be there to evaluate the staff and the school, not the students. Yes, she could give and take points and assign detention, but she wasn't meant to interact with the students all that much.

Umbridge, however, seemed to have other ideas and stood up and gave a speech. It was clear to everyone that the woman was in no way experienced in keeping the attention of teenagers, and if it wasn't for the fact that people still had their food to distract them Harry was sure that her speech would have the same soporific qualities as one of Binns's lectures. Some of the students had even turned to the group they were sitting with and returned to their interrupted conversations. Hermione was (of course) able to keep her complete attention on the speech, and Harry noticed all of the lycanthropes in the hall, and that included Moony, were staring at the woman and giving her their full attention. If they had ever looked at Harry the way they were looking at Umbridge, Harry was sure he would already be packing his trunk and looking to move himself and Hermione to France. The look they gave the witch was pure hatred. Umbridge appeared to be nothing but an ugly, bigoted, and bitter spinster with too much power in the Ministry. Harry wouldn't be at all surprised if he learned that the lycanthropes were all already well familiar with her and her work.

Harry listened as Umbridge basically admitted that she was looking for any reason to do away with any person at the school that didn't fit into her perfect model of how the magical world should be. Eventually she sat back down, and if she expected any applause she didn't get it. Any of the students who were likely to support her hateful rhetoric were too easily distracted by talking to the people they were having dinner with, or were so inbred that they didn't have enough of an attention span to listen to something so boring. Though in fairness, Harry thought that only about twenty students were still listening by the time she had finished.

-ϟϟϟ-

The inspection of the classes started the very next day. Harry and Hermione hadn't seen the toad woman in one of their classes yet, but she wasn't wasting any time proving what she was there to do. Hogwarts had 5 double periods every day, and by the end of that day she had been reported to be in the classes of Hagrid, Flitwick, and Lupin, two of whom were considered to be some of Hogwarts' better teachers. Flitwick was a favourite among all students as they all liked how fun he could make a class while still keeping it informative. Lupin was less fun, but he still had a way of captivating your attention as he explained things about magical history that the text books never covered.

Harry had to admit that Hagrid was more than a little hit and miss when it came to teaching his class. He knew his subject, and if you got a lesson on a magical creature that would come up in your exams then you would learn everything you needed. The problem was that Hagrid was just as likely to bring some other monster to class. Harry could easily see Hagrid being singled out by Umbridge and it sticking. Hermione decided that they were going to spend the evening at Hagrid's while she convinced him to "lay off the interesting creatures for a while and focus on what's going to be on the exams." It hadn't been working until Harry had reminded Hagrid that Umbridge was the same woman who had voted to execute Buckbeak, even after Harry had proven that he was safe. The argument that Umbridge would try to get any interesting creatures Hagrid brought to the school executed had Hagrid agreeing to tone down the lessons to strictly what was on the exams. Umbridge couldn't claim that Hagrid shouldn't be teaching them about something that was on the exam.

It wasn't only the teachers that Umbridge was targeting. One evening when Harry and Hermione were doing their Perfect rounds, Umbridge came storming up to them and tried to give them both detention for being out after curfew. They tried to tell the unreasonable woman that they were Prefects doing their rounds, but she accused them of stealing the badges so that they could sneak out after curfew to have "inappropriate relations", and had dragged them both up to the headmistress's office and demanded they be expelled. She wasn't happy when Professor McGonagall confirmed that Harry and Hermione were in fact Prefects and pulled a copy of the Prefect schedule from a file on one of the shelves behind her desk to show Umbridge that they were in fact scheduled to patrol that evening. The pink clad Ministry worker stormed out of the office in a huff muttering something about falling standards for prefects, leaving Harry and Hermione standing in front of their headmistress desk with a somewhat surprised-looking headmistress looking between them and the door. Harry and Hermione chatted with their Professor for a couple of minutes for politeness's sake before returning to their perfect rounds

Unfortunately, that wasn't the last time that Umbridge would harass a student. She would roam the halls of the school between lessons and would dock points whenever she could get away with it; only, she only took points from those students she considered undesirable. Undesirable was her code word for part humans and first generation students. She even went as far as docking Hermione five points whenever she saw Hermione with her ears and tail out, citing it to be a breach of the uniform standards. After it was explained to Professor Babbling why Hermione was suddenly losing so many house points, the professor started to keep track of it and Hermione was suddenly receiving points for any excuse she could find, and the points always seemed to add up to what Hermione lost just for being herself. The one advantage was that Hermione was getting to practice assuming her human form a lot. She may not have had the magical energy to hold her human form for more than a few hours a day, but for a couple of minutes between classes she could manage just fine.

Hermione wasn't the only student targeted. The lycanthropy students we docked points for 'threatening and intimidating behaviour', which seemed to mean breathing in the vacancy of any student unaffected by lycanthropy. And first generation witches and wizards and those raised in the mundane world were targeted for 'radical behaviour unbecoming of a witch or wizard', which meant having been spotted with anything of muggle origin on their person. By the end of her first week, Inspector Umbridge had become one of the most hated people in the school. Even some of the Slytherins were glaring at her, though it was mostly the immediate family of a lycanthropy student and their friends.

-ϟϟϟ-

November passed and turned into December, and with it came the predictable blanket of snow that covered the grounds of Hogwarts. For the most part, life at Hogwarts had settled into a routine. There were reports of people going missing in the Prophet and the Ministry was blaming the Death Eaters, though the paper was split on whether or not the one leading the group was a revived You-Know-Who or an impostor meant to scare the wizarding public. Rita Skeeter had even sent Harry a letter asking if Harry thought that it was an impostor or if he thought it was the real Dark Lord. Harry had been honest and replied that he was convinced that it was Voldemort, but that it didn't matter: impostor or not there was a man leading a group of half-crazed inbred nutcases around while they killed innocent people. Either way, whoever it was needed to be stopped and brought to justice.

Harry hadn't been thinking when he sent his reply to Rita, and his phrase 'half-crazed inbred nutcases' was quoted a lot. Harry couldn't even blame Rita, as much as he got along with the woman she had always been clear that her goal was writing stories that sell papers. He had given her a quote and she had, of course, used it. Predictably, a number of people hadn't been happy at being called such in the national paper, and Harry had received a pile of mail. Some of it was from first and second generation witches and wizards who praised Harry for saying what needed to be said, but a pile about three times bigger than that was hate mail that said Harry was spitting on the traditions of the wizarding world. Harry had waited until the evening and thrown them on the fire in the common room, helping warm the tower a little.

A number of the pure bloods at the school had questioned Harry about what he said, and he had given the ones who deserved it (such as Daphne) a more thought out explanation. "I didn't mean to come off as saying all purebloods were nutcases. I meant that you need to be a nutcase to believe that generations of marrying your cousins makes you better than other people. Rita took a four word quote from the letter that was mostly saying that it didn't matter if Voldemort was an impostor because either way whoever it is needs to be stopped. I won't say that I didn't say it, but I will say I could have worded it a lot better and probably should have before sending the letter to Skeeter when I knew she was looking for a quote for an article." His friends and some of the more reasonable purebloods had accepted Harry's explanation, but a lot hadn't. In particular, McLaggen had pushed to have him removed from the Quidditch team, Malfoy and his band of Death Eaters in training had stepped up their regular background harassment of Harry to the point where Harry couldn't just ignore it, and Umbridge had started stalking him looking for any reason to punish him.

It was all rather exasperating. Then Harry got a letter from the D.M.L.E. that arrived in the middle of the day instead of with the regular mail in the morning, interrupting his second lesson of the day. At first, Harry was just going to accept the letter and put it in his bag, reading it later to keep from disrupting his Runes lesson, but then he had noticed the Ministry of Magic seal embossed into the envelope and had ripped the letter open right then. He read the letter and abruptly felt that he had to get out of the classroom. He didn't bother with his stuff, he just stood up and walked right out of the room, ignoring the questions from the professor, Hermione, Daphne and Tracey. He didn't hear Hermione ask Tracey to collect their things and dart out of the classroom behind him either. He did, however, notice when about thirty seconds after he walked out of the class Hermione put her hand on his shoulder. "Harry, what's wrong?" The concern was obvious in her tone. Harry didn't say anything, he just handed over the letter for her to read. He really wanted to be alone without anyone crowding him, but Hermione was different; he slipped his arm through hers so he could guide her as she continued to read.

As they walked, Harry just letting his feet carry him somewhere, he thought about the letter he had just received from the D.M.L.E. Last night they had responded to a call about a Dark Mark hanging over a muggle house, which turned out to be the home of Harry's aunt and uncle. The letter went on to explain that they had gone in expecting to find bodies, but instead there was evidence to show that, while Petunia and Vernon were missing, they were still alive. There was a message left for Harry: he had one week to surrender himself or his aunt and uncle would be killed.

"I hope you're not considering handing yourself over to save those animals, are you?" Hermione's voice broke the silence once she finished reading the letter.

Harry laughed a little, which surprised him, before saying, "I may have a saving people thing according to you, but even I have to draw the line somewhere, and those two don't qualify as people." There was a hardness in his tone that told Hermione he was serious.

Harry's feet carried him and Hermione to the Room of Requirement. It probably said something about the state of Harry's mind that the room he conjured wasn't their date spot but what appeared to be a perfect replica of the cupboard under the stairs at Privet Drive, only everything was bigger, like it was proportioned so that his grown self would fit inside the same as he did when he was about five or six. The floor was a thin mattress that looked like it was for a baby's cot. Harry didn't even pause at the sight he just got in and sat on the floor. Hermione did hesitate for a moment, but she followed him in and sat down next to him resting her head on his shoulder.

"What am I supposed to be feeling, Hermione?" Harry asked suddenly after they had been sitting together in the cramped space for almost ten minutes. "I could understand being mad at Voldemort and his people. I would love to feel some vindictive pleasure at what has happened to Vernon and Petunia after how they treated me. I could even understand feeling responsible for bringing my relatives into the sights of that psychotic bastard. But I don't feel any of that. I don't feel anything. I spent hundreds of hours imagining the Dursleys getting what they deserve. But now it's like there's this hole where whatever I should be feeling about this should be," he explained.

Hermione was silent in the near darkness for a full minute, contemplating her anger before she said anything. "However you feel about this, Harry, is how you are supposed to feel. Those people did horrible things to you growing up, and if at the end of this you feel nothing, then I think you should be happy that they don't have enough hold on you to make you feel bad," she suggested. "I mean, I recognise what you made the room look like from what you told me about how you grew up. No one who did this to a child deserves any consideration at all."

The two of them sat there in silence for a while, Harry fingering the letter Hermione had given back to him. She was right, the Dursleys didn't deserve his energy. It still felt a little disturbing that he felt nothing for two defenceless people in the hands of a collection of homicidal maniacs, but he felt bad about not feeling bad so he didn't think he was broken. He just needed a few hours to clear his head before he made any decisions about what he was going to do. But then a thought struck him, causing Harry to curse: Dudley. Dudley was at school, not in Surrey. He now had nowhere to go and no parents to come home to. Marge was still in prison, so all Dudley had left was Harry.