Now I'm standing where I never really thought ever be standing in; waiting in line to get into men's underground bathroom. There are surprisingly many people in here. Each of them going in a stall, flushing them in, then next one comes in. Urgh, it stinks in here. Can already smell the awful smell all the way here, even I'm in five men away from the stall. Who ever even thought it'll be great idea to travel down to the Ministry by flushing yourself from a toilet?! Must be someone who doesn't own a sense of smell... Little bit nervously watching over my shoulder here and there, since I left Neville to deal his own traveling to the women's bathroom. But I'm sure he'll be alright. At least it'll be a lot cleaner than in here...
A man in a suit behind bumps into me as a sign 'move it', so as my an instinctive reaction I'm just about to apologize to the man that I wasn't paying enough attention, but as soon as I glance over the shoulder to look at him, the look on that man's face falls - like a Muggle seeing a ghost. "F-forgive me, Mr. Carrow..! Had no idea it was you!". Oh? It's really hard to keep in mind I'm one of the cruelest man in Wizarding World. The man really is in panic even he tries so hard to stay calm. Had to hold my tongue not to say something like:'Oh, that's alright. Don't worry about it.', so I just glare at them and went into the stall. Phew! Then, my focus goes on to the toilet in front of me. Can't even begin to describe how nasty it all looks. Urgh... While holding my breath - so I wouldn't vomit, I step onto the toilet, put the legs in and look at the lever. The lever itself hasn't avoided being ruined from filth. Oh, Merlin's sake... Desperately, I pull some sleeve over my hand and hold onto it, then flush myself in.
Right away, a soft whoosh can be heard and greenish light quickly flashes as I appear thru one of the many gilded fireplaces. Having no time to just stand still and wonder, I step into the very long and splendid hall with a highly polished, dark wood floor. Here we are then. Needed to take a quiet, long inhale and exhale thru my nose. All of this does bring some memories back when I was a child and needed to visit here for whatever reason time to time. Sometimes it was because of my father when he worked here. Later on it was because of the custody battle between my aunt and my parents before they were actually pleaded guilty and send to Azkaban. To think they still tried to keep me even they were under the investigation of torturing and using Unforgivable Curse on me. Quickly, I shook my head. Don't really wanna be thinking too much of those times right now.
Every few seconds there are either a witch or wizard emerging from one of the fireplaces and then starts heading wherever they needs to be. Everyone here are dressed up in fancy suits and carrying some shiny bags with them. My head keeps turning, trying to spot Neville as Alecto in over all of these people. Where are you, Neville? Soon, I see how guards grabs a man out of the blue and starts leading him away. "W-what?! What did I do?" the man looks confused, but the guards won't say anything. They just keep on walking with him. Oh, they really have people here to pull aside anyone who looks suspicious - even just a little bit. Just then, someone grabs me by the arm and my heart jumps up in my throat, thinking it's one of the guards. Shit!! Automatically, my head snaps right behind me to see who it is, ready to bubble something out. But it's Neville as Alecto. Huge relieve washes over me and my shoulders goes down:"Nev-Alecto. Hahh... You found me.".
He looks way more nervous than before. "There are guards everywhere." he whispers while keeping an eye on what's ahead of us. My gaze goes to the guards as well. They really are watching intensively after everyone. "Just... Follow my lead and we'll be fine." I whisper back and start walking. By every step we take, my heart starts raising. Calm down, (Y/N). Act normal. Don't look anyone right in the eyes. Just keep walking, like you belong here. While walking side by side with Neville, I can feel how he presses himself more against me as we're getting closer the guards. We both are basically holding our breaths when we finally get to really close to them. And... Nothing. None of them even looked at us twice when we walked pass them. Phew..!! Can feel my heart and shoulders relax again.
Without stopping, we got into one of the elevators. Luckily, no one else got in with us, so I got the time look at the floors that are on the lever. Hmm... There are nine levels in total this elevator can go. '8. - Atrium' that's where we are now. I try make a mental note on that. My eyes keeps going quickly back and forth the lever, trying to see if any of these would give away which floor Umbridge's office might be. "(Y/N)..." Neville whispers to me quickly makeup my mind since there is higher risk someone will enter in the elevator with us if we keeps just standing here. Urgh..! Panic hits and I pull the lever to go to the first floor. Right away - instead of going straight down, the elevator moves backwards in quite high seed, making both of us almost loose our balance. "Wah..-!" we both let out at the same time out of surprise. Really forgot that little detail there.
When we get to the first level, the elevator's door opens and Neville and I get out of it. "Okay, here's the plan: we'll quickly walk this floor around and if we don't see the door to her office, we come back here and go to the next floor to look for it. Got it?" I whisper before continuing any further. He nods couple of times. Giving him a quick, nervous lip tight smile:"Alright... Let's get going.". After all, we can't waste too much time so the Polyjuice won't worn out. Don't want that to happen. After walking a bit, we finally come to an area where there are multiple tables, women sitting behind them as they are all wiping their wands in systematic sync to float some papers to another person. When we come closer, I notice they are magazines of somekind. And soon enough, I get a quick glimpse of the headline of them:'Mudbloods And The Danger They Pose'. Right...
Suddenly, 'Alecto' nudges side of my arm to get my attention. Immediately, my head snaps to look at him. He shifts his eyes onto a black door near us. And there it was... Umbridge's office. There are two golden plates that says:'Dolores Umbridge - Senior Undersecretary To The Minister' and 'Head Of The Muggle-Born Registration Commission' Who would have guessed Umbridge's office would be on the lowest floor - closer to hell. But what got my attention is the eye between those plates. My eyes widens a bit and heart sinks. That's Mad-eye's eye! The fact I never got to meet the real Alastor Moody and properly thank him for saving me from my parents gives me this great sadness in my heart. But I had to push that away and think what's important in here.
A man with books in his hands happens to walk right past us, and I stop him:"Hey, um... Do you happen to know if Umb..- Mrs. Umbridge is in her office?". The old man looks at me in slight terror, but keeps his composure:"N-no. She..- She left only couple minutes ago.". Perfect. "Alright. Thank you." I give him a quick pat on the back as a sing he can go now. The man flinches a bit and continues to walk where he was heading, little bit confused how casually I just acted. Damn it! I always forgot I can act more cruel. Then, I turn to Neville and give him a nod. Without anyone's notice, he pulls one of the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes's product from his pocket, that the twins gave me as a Christmas present back at the Burrow. Back then I thought it was just out of their silliness and a way 'trying to market their new products' of their new shop in Diagon Alley, but... Something tells me this present actually would help us in the long run.
Neville drops the small black ball onto the carpet, and it immediately grows tiny legs and starts heading towards the tables where the women are doing their job like zombies. The tiny ball - that I like to call a 'Toot-ball' multiplies by every few seconds, and soon enough - the room is filled with these little ones. After they all got under the tables, they grew a tiny trumpets on top of their heads and started tooting. Very thick, brow - yellowish clouds shoots out of them that smells like awful farts. Immediately, all the women shoots up from their seats and began to scream and run around the room. The whole room gets filled with the smoke. Still not as bad as the men's bathroom back there. Quickly, I pointed my wand at the door next to us and whisper:"Alohomora.". And with that, without anyone's notice, Neville and I got in Umbridge's office.
After closing the door behind, we can still fadely hear the toot sounds and women's screams. Neville and I look around the room. It's empty and the lights are out. Neville pulls out his wand:"Lumos.". Then, we walk deeper into the room, away from the entrance. As expected, the room is full on pink, just like when she was D.A.D.A. teacher. Only there are way more cat plates hanging on the walls than before. For a moment I look around, then pointed my wand:"Accio, locket.". Nothing. Damn it. "It's not here?" the fake twin sister next to me asks. With gritted teeth, I walk behind the desk that's in middle of the round room and start pulling some of the drawers just in case. Wonder if she has stored it in somewhere in jewelry box that is sealed with..- My thoughts cuts off when I pull one of the drawers open, only to see familiar face on paper. Harry Potter.
It's an actual black and white wanted-poster of the boy. Hope he and his friends are alright. After taking the picture in my hand, I notice there are more familiar faces underneath it. Files even. "Neville, come look at this." I lift up the files and start browsing them. "What is it?" he comes to stand beside me. There's a file of Arthur Weasley. Hermione Granger... All personal information about them. What in the world..? Even Alastor Moody is in here, whose picture has been crossed over with red marks. My heart began to beat faster as I keep going. There is Sirius. Remus. Tonks. And... Albus Dumbledore. He also has red lines crossed over his moving picture. Seeing his face breaks my heart. The evening at the Astronomy Tower creeps in my mind. How I wasn't able to do anything to safe him. Then, I remove his file out of the way, only to see... Me.
There is a black and white moving picture of me that has been taken without my notice during class. Everything about me is in here. Name, height, profession, blood type... Everything. Even the House where I'm sorted in. How did it all turn out like this? Neville looks at me worried. Just when he's about to say something, I gasp. "Wh-What is it?!" Neville asks. "They got my weight wrong! Bastards." I hiss at the file in my hands. Neville sighs:"(Y/N)..-", our heads snaps towards the door when we hear how someone other side of it speaks with the staff:"Alright! Alright! Let us all calm down..!". Shit. "What do we do now?" the boy next to me asks. Quickly, I shove the files inside my chest pockets. Knowing they must have other copies of these files, but at least I have something to show the rest of the 'Dumbledore's Army' when we come back.
Soon enough, we both got out of the office very quietly. Right away, we see how the women are gathered around a man who seems to be their boss. "Please, get back to work. It's alright." he tires to keep everything under control while some of the staff is still running after the little Toot-balls. "Go. Go. Go..!" I start shoving 'Alecto' to keep on walking towards the elevators as fast as he can without raising any suspicions. The wave of relief washes over both of us when we get out of the area without anyone's notice. We keep walking fast side by side towards the elevators. "We must find her quickly! According to my knowledge, the potion should start worn out in twenty minutes." I whisper hiss to 'my twin sister'. "How we're going to do that? This place is huge..!" Neville frowns worried. He's right. Fucking hell... Just when we both got into the elevator, all we get to do is turn around, ready to pull the lever again, when we see a man standing right in front of us. "Ah, Mr. and Miss Carrow." the man smirks with unpleasant smile. My heart drops somewhere in the deep and quickly comes back up as we both flinch out of surprise. Corban Yaxley!
Not only is he a Death Eater, he works for the Ministry and used to be Harold's trusted drinking buddy back when I was a child. Bet he's the one who introduced Harold of the Death Eaters world - so to speak. Yaxley had this weird habit of coming right outside of the doorway to my bedroom, just to stare at me while leaning against the door frame with drink in his hand before he and Harold were about to go to the pub... He never really did anything to me. But he always had this wistful smile on his face anytime he laid those chilling blue eyes on me. One time, he did actually say something about how he can't wait to see me when I'm older - to see me as a young woman. Back then I didn't know what to think of it, but now that I'm older... That's pretty creepy thing to say to fourteen year old girl. Right? "Where are you two heading?" he asks which brings me back from my thoughts. I'm too stunned to even speak normally:"W..-", "We're looking for Umbridge." 'Alecto' answers in pretty tight tone which got me off guard a bit. But I'm proud of Neville he managed to pull that off.
"Oh, really? Well, lucky for you, I'm just about to go see her." Yaxley steps into the elevator with us. Immediately we take a step back to avoid getting in touch with him. He then closes the door and pulls the lever to the ninth floor. Again, the elevator whooshes backwards, then starts to go up. Luckily this time Neville and I were more prepared for the impact. Yaxley starts talking to us, asking why we are here to see her etc. We both did our best to keep our composure and answer as bluntly and 'Carrow twins' - like as possible. My heart can't take this too long! After getting to the ninth floor, we climb up some stairs to get to the tenth floor. To the Courtroom Ten. As soon as we walked up the stairs I get a flashback how I indeed have climbed these stairs up when I was seventeen. By every step I take, I can feel my heart raising. Calm down, (Y/N). Just focus what's important in here. The thought of that gives me the power to calm down and keep my composure.
Right away when we enter the Courtroom, I see there is a woman with short blonde hair sitting on the chair in middle of the room. She seems stressed. As we walk deeper to the room, I see familiar woman in all pink, sitting in the podium. Umbridge Dolores. Instinctively, my eyes narrows on her. Umbridge lays her eyes on us:"Ah, Mr. Yaxley. You brought... Carrows with you?". "They said that they were looking for you, Mrs. Umbridge." he answer. She starts saying something how she doesn't have the time right now, so we can sit on aside and wait until she's finished. Her annoying voice sounds like a fade hum as my focus goes to the locket around her neck. Slytherin's Locket. Soon, I feel 'Alecto' giving me a nudge to go sit where we were asked to wait. Yaxley goes sit pretty much across from us, spreading his arms and legs as he sat down like he's already bored what's coming next. Now that we have sat down with Neville, I got some time to look around. There are five other people in the room here with us - plus Umbridge, Yaxley and the woman on the chair. Wonder what she has done to 'deserve' to be here?
Then, my focus goes back to Umbridge. She has a cat sitting on the desk she's working on. But not just any cat. It's her Patronus. I notice that the cat has its focus to the above, so I carefully raise my gaze up to see what's so interesting up there. My heart stopped for a quick second. Dementors! There are like ten of them! I've never seen one - only in books. Thanks to the cat, they can't come thru the magical barrier it has created. But they keep floating around it. Patiently waiting to get thru. Oh, dear Merlin... Neville noticed them too. His palms are sweating way more than mine does. Can't blame him. This is all so intense. And we are running out of time! We need to come up with something to snatch the locket from her. Umbridge then starts, having her eyes narrowed to the woman on the chair:"Emma Maria Woods. Twenty-seven years old. Mother to (Y/N) and Jules Woods.". "Yes." the woman nods with timid voice. Wait... "Wifed to Edward Woods... A Muggle." Umbridge gritted her teeth out of disgust. The woman nods again:"Yes.". My heart drops when the realization hits. That's Edward's wife!!!