A/N: Previously published under my old pseud MuseAmusant on TPP. Edited. This is the first HP fanfic I ever posted.
This drabble is based on a prompt by HermioneWeasley1972, and I'm a bit nervous... I really hope she likes it. I had intended to go with something humorous, but Dolores had other ideas. This is her story, after all.
Her Little Secret
There are many secrets in us, in the depths of our souls, that we don't want anyone to know about.
Charles Durning
Fourth year Slytherin Dolores Umbridge had just entered the prefect's bath and was about to undress when a hand abruptly seized a handful of her baby-pink cashmere bathrobe and slammed her hard against the wall. Stunned and dizzy, it took a few moments before her vision cleared enough for Dolores to recognize her assailant as Lydia Davis, the raven-haired sixth year who was Slytherin's top candidate to become next year's Head Girl.
"You vile little cow, you didn't think anyone would ever find out, did you?" the girl snarled, her delicate features warping into a caricature of hate and disgust. "How you managed to trick that ridiculous Sorting Hat into allowing you to befoul the house of Salazar Slytherin for three years, I don't know, but it ends tonight, Mudblood!"
Dolores slid down the wall but kept her face carefully blank even as she trembled inwardly with mingled terror and fury. NO! If everyone finds out that my parents were really Muggles, I'm as good as dead!
Lydia grabbed a handful of Dolores' mouse-brown curls and twisted, dragging the smaller girl towards the bathroom door, inexorably closer to the Slytherin common room.
"You just wait until I tell Tom, Abraxas, and the others all about your filthy, muddy little secret," Lydia growled, stopping to get a better grip as Dolores began to struggle in earnest. "You won't live long enough to..."
Lydia let out a startled cry as Dolores kicked out hard, sending the older girl careening off balance. An instant later, there was a sickening thud as Lydia's head struck the edge of the bathtub, her body crumpling into a heap at her would-be victim's feet.
Dolores stood over the other girl's body for several seconds, panting and trying to catch her breath.
Then she noticed that Lydia was still breathing, if only just barely.
How inconvenient, she thought.
A few judiciously applied towels, Dolores found, remedied the problem in a minute or two.
Later, as Dolores prepared for bed, she contemplated what she had learned that day. For a long time, she was afraid that she might have made the wrong choice when she asked the Sorting Hat to put her in Slytherin. The Hat had balked at first, telling her that old Salazar would never have tolerated a Muggleborn child in his house, and that she was too pink and pretty to fit in with the likes of them. She belonged in Hufflepuff, according to the Hat.
But Dolores had wanted to be in Slytherin, where she could rub shoulders with the children of the wealthy, Pureblood elite and build herself a future among them. But was she ruthless and cold enough to really pull it off?
Dolores considered that for a moment. She had killed a witch and convinced her Head of House, a Healer, and the headmaster himself that she had heroically tried to save her life, had cried into her handkerchief as convincingly as any Muggle cinema actress.
Only a true Slytherin bitch could have pulled that off, she realized.
Smiling with smug satisfaction, Dolores rolled over and drifted off to sleep.
Finis