Always and Forever

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Hermione POV

Dread filled her chest in the Great Hall during breakfast. Her copy of the Daily Prophet had just been delivered by the morning owl post and on the front page was the moving images of nine dark wizards' faces and one witch face sneering at the photographer. They were all wearing Azkaban prisoner uniforms and holding up their prisoner information for the photo. The headline read, "MASS BREAKOUT FROM AKZABAN MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS "RALLYING POINT" FOR OLD DEATH EATERS". The Gryffindor girl shook her head as she tried to force herself to nibble on a slice of buttered toast, she lost her appetite from the news.

Harry and Ron sat down across from her at the table and she simply tossed the paper over to her messy haired friend who looked at her with confused, green eyes. "Read the headline, Harry."

"Black?" said Harry loudly after he read the paper. "What would he have to do with this?"

"Shh!" The girl urged her friend as she turned around to see if anyone had noticed his outrage. "Not so loud, just read it."

Harry shook his head angrily after he finished reading the article. "I can't believe that Fudge is trying to blame Sirius for breaking out all of these death eaters. He would never do that. He's being framed."

"What other option does Fudge have? He can hardly say, 'Sorry everyone, Dumbledore warned me this might happen, the Azkaban guards have joined Lord Voldemort and now the worst supporters have broken out.' I mean, he's spent a good six months telling everyone you and Dumbledore are crazy liars, hasn't he?" The girl shook her head as she took her newspaper back and ignored her friends glare.

She went through the rest of the day just going through the motions. None of the trio felt like talking about the Azkaban break out and talking about anything else seemed wrong. The next day, there was a new Educational Decree posted on the wall outside of the Great Hall. This one read; 'Teachers are hearby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach'.

Hermione shook her head in disbelief. Now, Umbridge was preventing the spread of news and help to the students. She thought back to her second year and remembered that McGonagall was the reason they knew about the Chamber of Secrets. She shuddered to think what would have happened to young Ginny if her Transfiguration teacher had not been able to talk to the students and unknowingly give clues to Hermione on how to solve the issue.

George laughed at the Decree in the Great Hall as Umbridge walked by the Gryffindor table. "Professor!" He called to her, stopping her in her tracks. "With this new Decree, you can't tell Fred and I off for playing Exploding Snap in the back of your class because that has nothing to do with Defense Against the Dark Arts, can you?" He smirked at the short professor and Hermione wanted to hit him from across the table.

"Well, Mr. Weasley. For that attitude of yours, how about I see you after school today at 6 pm in my office for detention. You can rethink talking like that to your Professors." She sniffed before continuing her walk up to the staff table.

"Why would you provoke her like that?" Hermione asked once the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was out of ear shot. "You had to have known she would give you detention."

"I'm not afraid of her." George shrugged. "Besides, it's just detention."

"You're going to get hurt. You know what detention means with Umbridge." Hermione gestured to his scar on the back of his hand.