On the day the wizarding world was to be set to right, Delores Jane Umbridge wore pink. Others would wear pink as if it were only another colour, but Delores Umbridge wore pink with intent. A Half Blood witch sorted into Slytherin, she knew from growing up with a muggle mother and squib brother that only magical blood made someone fully human. Muggles were just animals that were too stupid to know it, and muggleborns were mistakes at best, and thieves at worse, because they had the magic that was the birthright of good and noble pure bloods who were increasingly infertile, or produced squibs everyone at least knew not to talk about.
Sorting into Slytherin as a half blood taught Delored Umbridge about the power of pink. You could not ever be allowed to forget your blood status in Slytherin, nor in the Ministry she joined after Hogwarts. Purebloods were stronger than she was, they were privately tutored and had access to magics denied those of lower birth like herself, but that very privilege robbed them of Delores Umbridge greatest strength. Her intent.
Delored Umbridge did not wake up during the first blood war and choose violence. She woke up and chose pink. To dress in pink so purely and potently, to behave with the absolute perfection of pure blooded manners is to make yourself unassailable. To dress demurely in pink made it clear to all of those who were male that she was being properly submissive and acknowledging her place in the social order. To dress demurely in pink is to make it clear to those who were female that she was not seeking to steal their social position or marriage prospects. It made it clear that Delores Jane Umbridge stood for traditional values, even as the cruelty wielded inside that perfect social mask made it clear that Delores Umbridge was willing to get her soul dirty, even if her hands remained clean.
Those of high status found her willing, oh so very willing, to do the unpleasant things needed to preserve the good order of their society. You didn't have to tell her to make properly filed permits from the wrong sorts of people your superiors tried hard to discourage somehow get misfiled, or suffer inexplicable mixups. You did not need to tell her to make embarrassing evidence from generous and well connected benefactors disappear. You simply had to express your displeasure at some violation of the proper order to her, and those same problems would magically solve themselves. Delores was far too well mannered to ever bring it up, and her superiors were too wise to mention it themselves, but those who were prone to problems of discretion made sure to keep Delores with them as they rose.
Today, there were no more superiors to coddle, no more weaklings who lacked the stomach to do what needs to be done. Lord Voldemort had showed the way. Violence was not a threat to proper order in society, it was the foundation. Manners, etiquettes, even law itself existed to make sure people could be kept from forcing the powerful to dispose of irritants themselves. For that, they had the Ministry. Delores Jane Umbridge had the ministry, and thanks to the irritants that were even now on their way to the Ministry with some foolish notions of reform, Delores Jane Umbridge was about to teach them the meaning of power.
Her power.
Delores Jane Umbridge woke up today, and chose pink. The children would submit or die. Perhaps at least one ought to die, purely to convince the rest of the saviours of magical Britain that right and wrong, good and evil, justice and crime were simply values assigned by Ministry officials as and when they chose, for the maintenance of a properly ordered society. By her, in fact. Delores giggled, then covered her lips in embarrassment. She adjusted her hat, and wondered what that odd rumbling was from outside. Surely simply relieving four children of their wands didn't require that much noise?
(Break)
"Isn't this breaking the statue of secrecy?" Neville asked, as a parade of centaurs, unicorns, goblins, hags, wizards and serpents strolled past Westminster Sation and the famous Scotland Yard.
Hermione stroked Noodle's head as the two of them rode their unicorn down the center of Downing Street and corrected Neville.
"We aren't violating the statute of secrecy. We have Unicorns with us. A unicorn can, and sometimes have, wandered through Buckingham palace during a press conference just to poke a particularly odious official in the unmentionables, or step on noble toes." Hermione frowned. "Usually breaking them."
Milicent pointed to the press on brooms, and the wizarding crowds gathering and following the odd mix of light, dark, and wild creatures that accompanied the Hogwarts Four as they wanting to call Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Milicent, and pointed out. "We have at least as big a crowd as the fall of the Ministry. You have to think that will put the Ministry flunkies on edge."
Harry grinned and fingered his beater bat. "Good, I hate having to repeat threats. It makes me feel like a muggle movie villain. Then there is the whole urge to explain my whole plan, and devise some overly complicated way to destroy my enemy, that I will leave the room before finishing."
Milicent looked at Harry in alarm. "We have a plan?"
Neville looked up in concern. "Should I know it?"
Hermione shook her head. "No plan. Harry said something about getting back to his roots."
Milicent and Neville looked confused, until Harry pulled out his beater bat, and slapped it against his hand with a SMACK.
"What is the golden rule of beaters?" Harry roared.
"If it didn't work, hit it harder!" Neville and Milicent roared happily, clashing their own beaters bats together.
Hermione and Noodle shared a long suffering look. The goblins grinned, the centaurs nodded as if they had herd wisdom from a great sage, the Hags chuckled, and Hermione sighed and muttered softly to Noodle. "Jocks. You can't really reason with them."
Four Aurors, well one looked like a retired Auror, two looked like recruits, and one had only one arm and a wide smile on his face, blocked their path at the Ministry entrance. Twenty wizards picked for their very impressive appearance backed the four like a wall of magical muscle.
The old Auror lifed up his head and sneered. "Your wands please. Only sitting Lords and Ministry officials are allowed their wands inside the Ministry.
Hermione Granger eyed the one armed Auror and frowned. "Auror Dawlish, I thought you retired. Are you hear to disarm us too?"
Dawlish opened his robes to show a row of brushes rather than magical tools and weapons inside his Auror robe. "Not a chance. I am here to get inspiration for the followup to my Lady of Flame series."
Hermione smacked her head, Noodle laughed, and Neville offered a less than welcome opinion.
"Gran says his Lady of Flame series was really well received in the gallery. We bought one for Longbottom manor. I tried telling Gran that you never used a sword, but she thinks your muggle pistol thing isn't grand enough for truly heroic art." Neville offered happily.
The two armed senior Auror tried desperately to regain command of the situation. Drawing his wand, he shouted.
"Hand over your wands, and dismiss your animals or we will fire upon you!" The senior Auror screamed, and the two junior Aurors drew their wands in trembling hands.
Hermione counter proposed "Or perhaps we could violence?"
Harry broke the senior Aurors arm, then opposing collar bone with two swift strikes of his beater bat. Milicent hung off the side of her unicorn and swung up at one of the junior Aurors, catching him in the baby makers, making it decidedly unlikely he would get to indulge in that activity with any success, and utterly impossible that he would even contemplate spell casting for several hours.
Neville wandlessly summoned a crystal ball that one of the Ministry officials was using to record the attempted arrest and gave it a fairly powerful line drive that took the last Junior Auror in the solar plexus, leaving him to do a very good impression of a salmon on dry land.
Auror Dawlish was pounding his shoulder with his remaining hand shouting "Bravo, bravo!"
He raised his fingers to his lips and made a kissing motion. "I cannot wait to see how Hufflepuff gold and black, Slytherin Green and Silver, and the bright red of the huge amounts of blood you are about to shed contrasts with the abyss of pink that awaits you." Dawlish gushed, his artists sould already nearly orgasmic.
Harry winced. "Abyss of pink?"
Neville shuddered. "You don't think?"
Milicent winced. "On behalf of Slytherin, I apologize. I mean a few hundred Death Eaters can be overlooked, but one Umbridge..."
"Is already too many. I call her. She is mine." Hermione insisted firmly. The muggleborn witch had seen too many of the Muggleborn deal with Umbridge's presence when she had power during the early tournament.
They rode their unicorns into the Ministry office itself, right down to the chambers of the wizagamot itself. The wards on the door barring entry fell when Milicent Bulstrode, Lady Selwyn by manifest right of Conquest, raised her Lord's ring. Hermione's unicorn nudged it open and pranced cheerfully into the half empty chamber floor. Hermione noted the stands for viewers were packed to the point the banisters only held through the powerful enchantments woven into their stone.
Delores Umbridge was in conversation with Rufus Scrimgeour, the former DADA professor who was now standing beside Delores Umbridge, apparently frustrating that worthy by refusing something she wanted.
Delores Umbridge saw Hermione Granger, the mudblood, ride a Unicorn into the most sacred heart of Wizarding Britain, the wizagamot chamber, and she lost her cool.
"Seargent at Arms, remove those animals, the mudblood, and the other ones." Delores shrieked.
Hermione swung down from her Unicorn, and taped her wand in her hand.
"I really dislike that word. I am already three times the witch you will ever be, and I have yet to sit my first OWL exam" Hermione said, with a calm that should have terrified anyone with an understanding of her body count to this point.
"You dare threaten me with a wand, in the middle of this sacred chamber." Delores said, fumbling in her purse for her own wand.
Hermione tossed her wand to Harry. "Hold this. I have to clean up some trash."
"Look, see, she is threatening me. I am the Acting Minister of Magic, and she is threatening me. Arrest her." Delores Umbridge shouted, but no one in the chamber, looking at half a dozen hissing basilisk, drawn bows of a dozen centaurs, some fairly angry looking Unicorns, and the wizard who took out both Voldemort and Dumbledore and decided to watch and see how Umbridge handled things on her own.
Hermione raised her hands, showing them open. "I have not threatened you. I have voluntarily given up my wand, and stand here without weapons." Hermione said , turning slowly to show the whole of the chamber that she was not visibly armed.
Delores pointed her wand at Hermione, and smiled like a poisonous pink predatory toad. "So, you are surrendering yourself for judgement?"
Hermione looked startled. "Oh no. I just wanted everyone to be clear I was unarmed when I said this. Delores Jane Umbridge, you gave up to Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters the parents or siblings of more than twenty of our Hogwarts students for torture and execution. For that crime, I sentence you to death."
Hermione leaned forward. "This is the part where I threaten you. You have a wand. You are a witch. Understand, I am about to cross the floor and kill you so hard your bones will be part of the floor forever. I encourage you to resist."
Delores Umbridge blinked. "What?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "I, a muggle born witch, am going to kill you, right now. It is going to hurt the entire time you are dying, and I am going to enjoy every second of it. Would you like to defend yourself, even a little bit first?"
Hermione paused. "And pink is not your colour. You look like something a poodle pooped." She concluded.
Delores Umbridge snapped. Her wand, wobbling in an excess of rage and mediocre skill pointed at Hermione Granger, symbol of all she found wrong in wizarding Britain, and she struck.
"Avada Kedavera!" Delores screamed, and a jade beam of death struck Hermione Granger, who folded soundlessly to the floor.
Delores paused in shock. "I killed her?" The thought boggled her mind. She had watched it done, ordered it done, but this time she had done it herself. "I killed her! I killed her!" Delores shouted, raising her wand to the sky, then looking at the shouting gallery, before a light behind her caused her to turn.
Hermione Granger's body burst into flames. From the ashes of those flames, a phoenix of pure fire, easily the size of a harpy eagle, rose from the corpse, and struck Delores Umbridge in the chest.
The phoenix screamed, and Delores Umbridge caught fire. Delores screamed as she fell back, the phoenix riding her down. She screamed loud and long, so long that it was impossible to tell when she stopped screaming and the bones and stone started to scream as the phoenix fire melted the skeleton of Delores Umbridge into the stone of the wizagamot floor.
Harry Potter strode forward. His voice beat the air like thunder.
"Voldemort is dead. His Death Eaters are dead. Dumbledore's power is broken. The war is over, and a new age begins.
We are all magic's children. Witch and wizard, Veela and hag, goblin and centaur, dragon, basilisk and unicorn. All who took part in the conquest of the Voldemort shall have a seat in this chamber. Those families that fought, those that lost sons and daughters, their heirs will have a seat in this house. Those that raised wand, blade or bow, those that stood in the circles and opened their soul to magic so powerful it reshaped the earth and sky, they shall have a seat here."
Harry raised his hands, and the bright Soweillo rune, the goblin silver embossed sign of the killing curse that marked the beginning of Harry Potter's war, shone like the sun itself.
The stone thrones of dozens of lords retracted into the floor, as those who dared not fight, lost their seats. New seats with their sigils rose. Some couches were clearly meant for centaurs to kneel upon, or for short goblin legs. Others bore the names of Muggleborn, or lowborn half and true bloods whose only claim to nobility is they gave their magic and sometimes their lives to throw down the dark.
Turning to Rufus Scrimgeor, Harry Potter spoke at last.
"You asked me for my endorsement as Minister of Magic when Voldemort was rising, and I turned you down. I knew you could be the Minister we needed, but you did not yet have a Ministry worth defending. I give it to you now. See that you find a way to work with all of our magical kin. We were never meant to be more than first among equals."
Harry Potter watched as Noodle went over to the burning phoenix and head butted it, causing a somewhat confused looking Hermione Granger to reform from the flames and ash of the fading phoenix, and take up Noodle's long serpentine form almost reflexively and stroke his scales.
Lord Parkinson, the seventh of his name in recent months, still a lord only because Pansy Parkinson took part in the circle, shook his fist at the new Minister for Magic and shouted.
"These vermin have murdered Lords of the Wizagamot, they have slaughtered whole houses, they have spilled the most ancient blood of Wizarding Britain. Is the Ministry to do nothing about it! I want warrants issued for their arrest. I demand it!" Lord Parkinson screamed, most others were backing away from the fellow, in case what ever happened next was catching.
Rufus Scrimgeour looked alarmed, then dug in his bag. "Merlin's knobby wand, I almost forgot."
Pulling out papers from his bag, he gave two to each of the Hogwarts Four. "Here you go. A set for each of you. My last act of one job, first of the next. Bit of both really."
Hermione opened one scroll and blinked. "This in a Defense Against the Dark Arts OWL. With Outstanding!" Hermione said in shock.
One of the lords who had lost his seat, having sat out the war in comfort and now being stripped of land and titles both protested. "You cannot give them a DADA OWL for genocide of their political opponents!"
Rufus struck a pose that looked remarkably like an old Roman Senator giving a speech in the Roman Republic, and intoned seriously.
"Indeed not sir. The OWL outstanding is for the genocide of Dementors. That is OWL level magical dark creature mastery beyond all expectations. For the slaughter of Death Eaters and the Dark Lord, they got their NEWT." Rufus Scrimgeour, former DADA instructor and now Minister of Magic noted.
Neville rolled his second parchment open, showing it to the room. It was indeed a DADA NEWT, also outstanding. Milicent and Harry exchanged a high five, while Hermione hugged Noodle and seemed to be crying.
The new Lords being summoned by the Ministry Owls to take their seats, and proxy's appointed for those underage to take their seats, and the new races arguing with the surviving wizagamot members about how power in the new mixed race house would be shared, the Hogwarts Four, and attached serpents slunk off to the Ministry Floo for a less public ride home.
Neville frowned as they walked to the fireplace Floo. "We beat the Dark Lord, the Headmaster, the Ministry. What do we do now?"
Hermione got behind Neville and began pushing him to the Floo. "Study. OWLS are coming up. We got outstanding on DADA, but do you know how many classes we missed in everything else? We have an Outstanding in not only our OWL, but the NEWT as well. Do you have any idea how much harder we are going to be graded on the rest of them?"
Milicent sighed, and Harry nudged her shoulder.
"Back to work Bulstrode. Notes to note, potions to brew, exams to prep, and Gryffindors to drag into broom closets." Harry cheered.
Milicent smirked, then looked at Harry. "How about you and Hermione?"
Granger leaned over her shoulder and shouted back. "Only if he gets all O's!"
The two beaters grinned at each other and sped up towards the floo and Hogwarts. The war was over, but exams remained. It was oddly reassuring.
The End