Dance of Fates

chapter 5

Harry’s eyes followed hers. They landed first upon Professor Dumbledore, sitting in his high-backed golden chair at the centre of the long staff table as his head was inclined toward the woman sitting next to him, who was talking into his ear. She looked like somebody’s maiden aunt: squat, with short, curly, mouse-brown hair. She was all decked in pink. Then she turned her face slightly to take a sip from her goblet and he saw, with a shock of recognition, a pallid, toadlike face and a pair of prominent, pouchy eyes. 

He knew her: it was the same woman Remus had talked about this summer. 

“It’s that Umbridge woman!”

"Who?" 

"She works for Fudge." Harry eyed her, thinking suspiciously about what the minister's employee could be doing here, at Hogwarts?  

"Nice cardigan," said Ron with a smirk. 

"She works for Fudge?" Hermione repeated, frowning. "What on earth is she doing here, then?" 

"Dunno..." he really didn't know despite Remus and Sirius’s filling him in on a lot of things.

Hermione scanned the staff table, her eyes narrowing. 

"No," she muttered, "no, surely not..."

Harry did not understand what she was talking about but did not ask; his attention had been caught by Daphne, who had just appeared, walking toward her table with an emotionless expression.

She didn't bother looking in his direction at all. 

A few seconds later, the doors to the entrance hall opened. A long line of scared-looking first years was led in by professor McGonagall. The whole school waited with bated breath. Then the rip near the hat’s brim opened wide like a mouth and the Sorting Hat burst into a song. 

While the hat was singing and everyone focused on watching it, the Slytherin princess was watching someone else across the hall—there, her lord husband was sitting. 'He looks better now than during our last encounter and he is no longer thin, that's good,' she thought and sighed with relief.

Before she could turn her focus to the hat, the same man—well, she referred to him as a man, for in her mind, any guy who was ready to do a heroic act for his family was a man—turned his head in her direction and looked at her, then shook his head toward the entrance without further explanation or signs. She understood: he wanted to meet her after the feast... She nodded back, then both of them turned their attention to the singing hat.

The sorting ceremony ended and Dumbledore stood up to give his speech and welcome the newcomers, then he announced the banquet officially open.

"What were you saying before the Sorting?" Hermione asked the ghost. "About the hat giving warnings?"

"Oh yes," said Nick. "Yes, I have heard the hat give several warnings before, always at times when it sensed signals of great danger for the school. The advice is always the same: Stand together, be strong from within."

"It wants all the Houses to be friends?” said Harry, looking over at the Slytherin table, where Draco Malfoy was holding court. "Fat chance." Then he looked to his wife, who was chatting with her comrades but didn't seem to really care, especially when Pansy Parkinson spoke. He smirked at that. 

"Well, now, you shouldn’t take that attitude," said Nick reprovingly.  "Peaceful cooperation, that’s the key. We ghosts, though we belong to separate Houses, maintain links of friendship. In spite of the competitiveness between Gryffindor and Slytherin, I would never dream of  seeking an argument with the Bloody Baron."