The Weasley of Slytherin: The Order of the Phoenix

Chapter 10: Detention

As the bell finally rang students picked up their bags and hurried out of the class room.

"Mr. Riddle a word if you please." Umbridge called to me as I made to leave the room.

"No I don't particularly please so I'll be going." I said to her.

"I am not asking Mr. Riddle."

"Well it sounded like you were." I told her.

"I have sent a note to Professor Snape regarding your detention, I expect you will be hearing from him soon." She told me with a smile.

"Fine." I told her simply before leaving the room.

...

Dinner in the Great Hall that night was annoying. The news about Harry and my shouting match with Umbridge seemed to have traveled exceptionally fast even by Hogwarts standards.

I heard whispers all around me as I sat eating between Ron and Harry. None of the whisperers seemed to mind Harry overhearing what they were saying about him — on the contrary, it was as though they were hoping he would get angry and start shouting again, so that they could hear his story firsthand.

Me on the other hand, they seemed a little more careful around me. They seemed to talk only about Harry when I got near, I assumed they were a little scared around me.

"He says he saw Cedric Diggory murdered. . . ."

"He reckons he dueled with You-Know-Who. . . ."

"Come off it. . . ."

"Who does he think he's kidding?"

"What I don't get," said Harry in a shaking voice, laying down his knife and fork "is why they all believed the story two months ago when Dumbledore told them. . . ."

"The thing is, Harry, I'm not sure they did," said Hermione grimly. "Oh, let's get out of here."

She slammed down her own knife and fork; Ron looked sadly at his half-finished apple pie but followed suit. People stared at us all the way out of the Hall. I simply glared back at them, my magical eye rolling around in its socket to watch them. I was starting to get more used to it.

"What d'you mean, you're not sure they believed Dumbledore?" Harry asked Hermione when we reached the first-floor landing.

"Look, you don't understand what it was like after it happened," said Hermione quietly.

"You arrived back in the middle of the lawn clutching Cedric's dead body. . . . None of us saw what happened in the maze. . . . We just had Dumbledore's word for it that You-Know- Who had come back and killed Cedric and fought you."

"Which is the truth!" said Harry loudly.

"Oh stop being a prick Harry we're on your side!" I told him angrily.

"I know it is, Harry, so will you please stop biting my head off?" said Hermione wearily. "It's just that before the truth could sink in, everyone went home for the summer, where they spent two months reading about how you're a nutcase and Dumbledore's going senile!"

Rain pounded on the windowpanes as we strode along the empty corridors back to Gryffindor Tower. A dull pounding pain was developing over his right eye.

"Mimbulus mimbletonia," said Hermione, before the Fat Lady could ask. The portrait swung open to reveal the hole behind and the four of us scrambled back through it.

The common room was almost empty; nearly everyone was still down at dinner. Crookshanks uncoiled himself from an armchair and trotted to meet us, purring loudly, and when Harry, Ron, Hermione, and I took our four favorite chairs at the fireside he leapt lightly into Hermione's lap and curled up there like a furry ginger cushion.