Ink and Parchment ~ blood and bone

42

“Miss Potter did you organise or help organise this article?” Umbridge questioned jabbing one stubby finger at the quibbler.

That bitch.

She must have slipped Veritaseum into Eliza’s tea in hopes of gaining a confession. Lucky for Eliza her ever constant paranoia had once again saved her arse. It wasn’t even paranoia at this point, Eliza just knew to expect the worst in any given scenario.

“No professor Umbridge” Eliza replied in a slightly dazed voice and pretended to take another sip of the tea feeling sweat bead on her forehead. Banishment was a sixth-year transfiguration topic. Eliza could do it non verbally without a fuss but to also do it without a wand? That was a lot harder. She was just glad she had kept up with her meditation.

A look of blatant fury crossed across Umbridge’s face and the toad almost snarled out her question.

“Are you conspiring against me?”

“No professor Umbridge” Eliza replied in the same polite dazed tone and set down her now empty teacup.

A look of unhinged fury swept over her face.

“Tell me who did this” she demanded “tell me now”

“I don’t know professor Umbridge” Eliza said perfectly neutral and did her best to smother her growing satisfaction.

The toad dismissed her with a shriek, and Eliza left the office quietly. And as she closed the door she heard the sound of a teacup shattering and grinned madly.

By the end of the week The Quibbler was officially declared propaganda by the minister himself. And when he released the information to the Daily Prophet about ‘death eaters hidden among our ranks’ nobody believed it. According to Tom everyone thought Fudge was a witless desperate man trying to make himself looking like a hero. Nobody supported him and instead The Quibbler had to be reprinted as they had sold out of all copies.

Just as they had predicted.

Check.

~

Hearing that professor Trelawney had been sacked honestly wasn’t that much of a surprise. The woman was a fraud anyway and had also recited the prophecy that had somewhat ruined her life, so Eliza wasn’t particularly sad about her going. She was sad that she had missed the send off though.

She had been in the chamber with Jormy practising her necromancy when Umbridge had tried to evict Trelawney from the castle. She had a feeling watching her ex divination professors failed eviction would have been a lot more entertaining than staring at a rat skeleton for the past hour fanatically trying to breathe life into it.

Draco had been more than happy to tell her what had happened however and Eliza had listened indulgently. But it seemed that Draco had left out one crucial detail in his narration, probably on purpose, about her new divination teacher.

Because her new divination teacher was a centaur.

Exiled from his herd and teaching divination at Hogwarts, the class was everything Eliza knew it would be the second she stepped in through the doors.

Mind boggling.

The classroom itself had been transformed into a woodland area with no chairs or desks, the ceiling was coated in a projection of the night sky which made Eliza wonder why they even bothered with the astronomy tower. It was quite calming really, if it wasn’t for the fact that the centaur seemed to block out her whole existence.

Eliza had no problem with centaurs, she even found their planetary studies quite fascinating and was enjoying a fresh perspective on divination. She just didn’t know why her new teacher was eyeing her like she was the devil incarnate (some would argue that Eliza was the devil incarnate but at least those people usually had evidence) So when her new class came to an end Eliza loitered behind to try and ‘smooth things over’ with her newest teacher.