star shopping ✰ d.m.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The first week of term had finally ended. On Friday, Ron had tried out for Keeper on the Gryffindor Quidditch team and succeeded, becoming Oliver's successor. In celebration, Fred, George, and Lee stole food and drinks from the kitchens and brought it up to the common room, throwing a small party that Arabella and Hermione had joined in on.

"Do you two ever stop eating?" Hermione asked in exasperation on Saturday morning, watching as Ron and Arabella ate rather noisily, acting as if they hadn't eaten in weeks.

"What? We're hungry," Ron defended.

"Have you ever considered that maybe we're not the problem, Hermione?" Arabella questioned. Hermione's eyes narrowed at her.

Suddenly, everyone shifted their attention to the person that had just arrived.

"Harry," Hermione greeted him.

"Can I join you?" he asked.

"Well, of course you can, Harry," Arabella said, wondering why he would ever feel the need to ask his friends if he could sit with them. "Don't be silly."

Before he could sit down, however, there was the sound of arguing outside of the Great Hall. The students fell silent and moved to the Entrance Hall, watching the two women trying to keep things civil and professional.

"Pardon me, Professor, but what exactly are you insinuating?" asked Professor Umbridge.

"I am merely requesting that when it comes to my students," said Professor McGonagall, "you conform to the prescribed disciplinary practices."

"So silly of me, but it sounds as if you're questioning my authority in my own classroom, Minerva."

"Not at all, Dolores, merely your medieval methods."

"I am sorry, dear. But to question my practices is to question the Ministry, and by extension, the Minister himself. I am a tolerant woman-"

Arabella scoffed.

"-but the one thing I will not stand for is disloyalty."

"Disloyalty," McGonagall repeated quietly.

Noticing the students that had crowded around, Umbridge turned to face them all. "Things at Hogwarts are far worse than I feared. Cornelius will want to take immediate action." After standing in silence for a few moments, watching McGonagall and the students take in her words, Umbridge walked off, smirking slightly at the unnerve she had brought upon.

As the whispering started, Arabella found Draco in the small crowd. "Still think she's not that bad?" she asked, remembering what he had said after he had had his first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson of the year. She walked away, not allowing him to give her an answer.

"Don't say I didn't warn you, Draco," Pansy told him as he sighed.

By the next morning, it seemed that Umbridge had been right about Fudge wanting to take immediate action. As Ginny and Arabella walked to the Great Hall together for breakfast, they saw Mr. Filch standing on a tall ladder, hammering something into the wall. It looked like a plaque, but seeing as it was really high up on the wall, Arabella couldn't read what it said.

"What does it say?" she asked Ginny.

"'Dolores Jane Umbridge has been appointed to the post of Hogwarts High Inquisitor,'" Ginny read aloud.

"The hell is a High Inquisitor?"

"I'm not sure, but it doesn't sound good."

Arabella glared up at Filch. "Of course she's gotten Filch on her side. They're both horrible, they're perfect for each other."

"Should we shake the ladder? He hasn't noticed us yet, he won't know what happened as long as we run away really fast."

The sisters looked at each other for a few moments before allowing smiles to cross their faces, imagining how it would play out. They shook their heads. "No," they said slowly.

"I suppose it's a bad idea. Knowing our luck, someone would see and snitch."

"It is really tempting though," Arabella said. She glared back up at Filch again. "Pathetic."

The two entered the Great Hall and separated to sit with different people at the Gryffindor table. Arabella sat next to Hermione, who had a copy of the Daily Prophet in her hands, and an angry expression upon her face.

"Have you seen-" she began, noticing the redhead arrive.

"Yeah. Filch is putting up the plaque out there."

"Of course he is. I can't believe this. She's been teaching a week and already she feels she doesn't have enough power."

"What does the High Inquisitor do, exactly?"

"According to this," she straightened out the newspaper, "she has the power to evaluate the staff and decide whether they're fit enough to teach."

"And if she decides that they're not?"

"They get sacked, I would assume."

"Bloody fantastic. I can already see how this is going to go. She's going to try to sack any teacher that actually teaches properly and believes that You-Know-Who is back, but when Filch admits publicly that he would like nothing more than to torture children, she won't even bat an eye."

"That's because they share a goal."

"What?"

"Have you not seen Harry's hand?"

"No, I don't look at Harry's hands. Why? What's wrong with Harry's hand?"

"She's been making him write lines, but she's enchanted the quill so that it cuts whatever's being written into the writer's hand. Harry will be lucky if he doesn't have 'I must not tell lies' scarred into his hand forever."

Suddenly overwhelmed with fury, Arabella growled, "Oh, that evil troll! I could strangle her, you know! I could! Oh, now I want to. I really want to. How is someone like her allowed to hold a position of power? We need to do something about her, and fast."

[word count: 931]
[written: 6/27/20]
[published: 7/11/20]