Poison Pen

Chapter 9: Fools or Slaves?

Dolores Umbridge quickly established her power base within the school. Everyone was terrified of her, even the professors seemed to fear for their jobs. They seemed to be oblivious to what was going on, but Harry doubted that. Come on, from what Harry knew the portraits and ghosts were terrible gossips. All one had to do was listen.

Harry knew, with his continuing insistence on Voldemort's return and the Ministry's strident denial of the same, it would only be a matter of time before she tried to have him expelled.

She'd had him in detention for over a week now and term had just started. His hand really hurt. The quill she made him use to write his lines didn't use ink. It actually gouged the lines into the back of his hand magically as he wrote on the parchment, causing the words to appear in his own blood. The writing was now etched so deeply into the back of his hand that Harry left each detention with a bloody rag tightly wrapped around it, trying to stem the flow of blood until he could get to his dorm and bandage it properly.

Harry knew he wasn't the only one to have detention with her and he was furious to think that other, possibly younger, students were being tortured as well. She seemed to be targeting anyone who wasn't a pureblood. Well, e would see about that. He needed to do some very discrete research before he could take steps.

'Wonder just what the wizarding world would think?' he mused painfully. 'A Ministry appointed teacher using an instrument of torture on sweet, innocent students? Maybe Oliver will have to question it.' His smirk was hidden by the shadows in the hall as he made his way to the Gryffindor dorm.

~~

Three weeks later, he was in the back of the library, beside him was his invisibility cloak and the Marauders Map. Harry was in hiding. Since the first day of the new term almost a month ago, someone was always with him. He rarely got any time to himself and the only way he could was to sneak away.

It was only very late at night or when he could sneak away that he could work on some papers that Lord Peter had sent him, plus look over his bank statement from the goblins. Like he was doing tonight. He really wished he didn't have to sneak but what else could he do? His 'minders', usually Ron and Hermione, stuck to him like lint on black wool. It was driving him crazy, and if they thought their clinging presence would drive him to forgive them, not bloody likely! If anything it was pushing them even further apart. Still, there was an upside...he had a ready made alibi when people went looking for Oliver Twist! One supplied by the Headmaster himself!

Harry knew his mail was being screened. Thankfully, he had arranged that mail drop with Dobby as courier last spring. Harry would've been screwed otherwise.

He was still peeved that Dumbledore was keeping him ignorant of Wizarding Customs. However, the young wizard was no fool even if he was forced to play one. Lord Peter was filling that gap in Harry's education quite nicely. The Sorting Hat knew what it was doing when it said Harry would do well in the House of the Snakes.

It was going on midnight when Harry finished up his paperwork. He just had one more thing to do. Rubbing gently across his freshly scarred hand, Harry wrote a complaint to Lord Peter and one to the goblins. It was illegal to use a dark artefact, such as a blood quill, on anyone under the age of seventeen and even then it was only used to sign very important documents. Madam Dolores Umbridge was a Ministry Official and as such she should know the law better than most. Harry also provided date, time and incident documentation to further his complaint.

Picking up another blank parchment, Harry began to work on his column for this week. He was thankful his column came out only once a week. He didn't think he could, at this time, handle a daily one – too many ways for him to get caught. Thankfully, his deadline was Tuesdays, with a copy of the column from Xeno going to the Prophet for publication a day late.