Screams were coming from the Entrance Hall; they grew louder as you ran towards the stone steps leading up from the dungeons. When you reached the top he found the Entrance Hall packed; students had come flooding out of the Great Hall, where dinner was still in progress, to see what was going on; others had crammed themselves on to the marble staircase.
You pushed forwards through a knot of tall Slytherins and saw that the onlookers had formed a great ring, some of them looking shocked, others even frightened. Professor McGonagall was directly opposite, on the other side of the Hall; she looked as though what she was
watching made her feel faintly sick.
Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the Entrance Hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad. Her hair was sticking up on end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other; her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart at the seams. Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upsidedown; it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her.
Professor Trelawney was staring, apparently terrified, at something you could not see but which seemed to be standing at the foot of the stairs.
"No!" she shrieked. "NO! This cannot be happening... it cannot... I refuse to accept it!"
"You didn't realize this was coming?" said a high girlish voice, sounding callously amused, and you, moving slightly to his right, saw that Trelawney's terrifying vision was nothing other than Professor Umbridge. "Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow's weather, you
must surely have realized that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable that you would be sacked?"
"You c - can't!" howled Professor Trelawney, tears streaming down her face from behind her enormous lenses, "you c - can't sack me! I've b - been here sixteen years! H - Hogwarts is in - my h - home!"
"It was your home," said Professor Umbridge, and you were revolted to see the enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney sink, sobbing uncontrollably, on to one of her trunks, "until an hour ago, when the Minister of Magic countersigned your Order
of Dismissal. Now kindly remove yourself from this Hall. You are embarrassing us."
But she stood and watched, with an expression of gloating enjoyment, as Professor Trelawney shuddered and moaned, rocking backwards and forwards on her trunk in paroxysms of grief. You heard a muffled sob to his left and looked around. Lavender and Parvati were both crying
quietly, their arms round each other. Then you heard footsteps.
Professor McGonagall had broken away from the spectators, marched straight up to Professor Trelawney and was patting her firmly on the back while withdrawing a large handkerchief from within her robes.
"There, there, Sibyll... calm down... blow your nose on this... it's not as bad as you think, now... you are not going to have to leave Hogwarts..."
"Oh really, Professor McGonagall?" said Umbridge in a deadly voice, taking a few steps forward. "Is there anything you'd like to say?"
"Oh there are a lot of things I'd like to say." Said McGonagall, while holding a crying Trelawney in her arms.
"And your authority for that statement is...?"
"That would be mine," said a deep voice.
The oaken front doors had swung open. Students beside them scuttled out of the way as Dumbledore appeared in the entrance. What he had been doing out in the grounds you could not imagine, but there was something impressive about the sight of him framed in the doorway against an oddly misty night. Leaving the doors wide open behind him he strode forwards through the circle of onlookers towards Professor Trelawney, tear-stained and trembling, on her
trunk, Professor McGonagall alongside her.
YOU ARE READING
One Of A Kind ||A Fred Weasley Fanfiction||
Fanfiction(Y/n) Black, the daughter of Sirius Black, was nurtured by the Weasley family, forming strong bonds with all of its members. However, her affection ran particularly deep for Fred Weasley, the older twin. As time went on and their lives became intert...
