"Well, you've looked better..." George said, staring at Tori. She was scowling, covered in mud with her hair soaking yet after a long quidditch practice. "Don't you dare." She glared at Fred, who opened his mouth to make a joke.
The tree of them took a seat down at a table with Harry and Hermione. Harry took one look at her and hesitated. "How was Quidditch practice."
Tori grunted in response. "You guys didn't do that bad..." Fred said cautiously. Tori glared at him and he broke. "Alright. We were watching your practice. You're going to be slaughtered. You're complete rubbish without us."
''Come on, Ginny's not bad," said George fairly, sitting down next to Fred. "Actually, I dunno how she got so good, seeing how we hardly ever let her play with us."
''She's been breaking into your broom shed in the garden since the age of six and taking each of your brooms out in turn when you weren't looking," said Hermione from behind her tottering pile of Ancient Rune books.
''Oh," said George, looking mildly impressed. "Well- that'd explain it."
''Has Ron saved a goal yet?" asked Hermione, peering over the top of Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms.
''Well, he can do it if he doesn't think anyone's watching him," said Fred, rolling his eyes. "So all we have to do is ask the crowd to turn their backs and talk among themselves every time the Quaffle goes up his end on Saturday."
He got up again and moved restlessly to the window, staring out across the dark grounds.
''You know, Quidditch was about the only thing in this place worth staying for."
Hermione cast him a stern look.
''You've got exams coming!"
"Told you already, we're not fussed about NEWTs," said Fred. "The Snackboxes are ready to roll, we found out how to get rid of those boils, just a couple of drops of Murtlap essence sorts them, Lee put us on to it."
George yawned widely and looked out disconsolately at the cloudy night sky.
''I dunno if I even want to watch this match.
If Zacharias Smith beats us I might have to kill myself."
''Kill him, more like," said Fred firmly. "No offense, Tori."
Tori, who was slouched down in a chair, letting her hair hang off the back of it, scowled at him. "I'll kill all of you."
"That's the trouble with Quidditch," said Hermione absent-mindedly, once again bent over her Runes translation, ''It creates all this bad feeling and tension between the houses."
She looked up to find her copy of Spellman's Syllabary and caught Fred, George, Tori, and Harry all staring at her with expressions of mingled disgust and incredulity on their faces.
''Well, it does!" She said impatiently. ''It's only a game, isn't it?"
''Hermione," Harry sighed, shaking his head, ''You're good on feelings and stuff, but you just don't understand about Quidditch."
''Maybe not," She said darkly, returning to her translation, ''But at least my happiness doesn't depend on Ron's goalkeeping ability."
And though Tori would rather have jumped off the Astronomy Tower than admit it to her, by the time she had gotten ready for the game the following Saturday she would have given any number of Galleons not to care about Quidditch either.
The very best thing you could say about the match was that it was short; the Gryffindor spectators had to endure only twenty-two minutes of agony. It was hard to say what the worst thing was: Tori thought it was a close-run contest between Ron's fourteenth failed save, Sloper missing the Bludger but hitting Angelina in the mouth with his bat, and Kirke shrieking and falling backward off his broom when Zacharias Smith zoomed at him carrying the Quaffle. The miracle was that Gryffindor only lost by ten points: Ginny managed to snatch the Snitch from right under Hufflepuff Seeker Summerby's nose, so that the final score was two hundred and forty versus two hundred and thirty.
"You made a few good plays." Fred complimented her while they sat in the common room and Tori wrapped up her hand with she had bruised. She raised an eyebrow at him. "I nearly fell off my broom, and missed a shot by three feet."
"Well... I still think you did amazing." Fred told her, leaning his head on her shoulder with she finished bandaging up her hand. Tori grinned, kissing his cheek.
The following morning Tori arrived in the Great Hall with Fred only to see Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Harry ripped off the brown packaging and out rolled a tightly furled copy of the March edition of The Quibbler.
He unrolled it to see his own face grinning sheepishly at him from the front cover. In large red letters across this picture were the words:
SPEAKS OUT AT LAST:
THE TRUTH ABOUT HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED
AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN
''It's good, isn't it?" said Luna Lovegood, who had drifted over to the Gryffindor table and now squeezed herself onto the bench between Fred and Ron. ''It came out yesterday, I asked Dad to send you a free copy. I expect all these," She waved a hand at the assembled owls still scrabbling around on the table in front of Harry, ''Are letters from readers."
"That's what I thought," said Hermione eagerly. "Harry, d'you mind if we -?"
''Help yourself," said Harry, gesturing towards the large stacks of envelopes. Tori helped quickly, grabbing a few letters and opening them.
"This one's from a bloke who thinks you're off your rocker," Ron sighed, glancing down his letter. "Ah well..."
"This woman recommends you try a good course of Shock Spells at St Mungo's," said Hermione, looking disappointed and crumpling up a second.
"This one looks OK, though," Harry began slowly, scanning a long letter from a witch. "Hey, she says she believes me!"
"This one's in two minds," said Fred, who had joined in the letter-opening with enthusiasm. "Says you don't come across as a mad person, but he really doesn't want to believe You-Know-Who's back so he doesn't know what to think now. Blimey, what a waste of parchment."
"This one believes you, she says the Ministry is mental," Tori spoke up, setting the letter down and opening another.
''Here's another one you've convinced, Harry!" Hermione waved it excitedly. "Having read your side of the story, I am forced to the conclusion that the Daily Prophet has treated you very unfairly... little though I want to think that He Who Must Not Be Named has returned, I am forced to accept that you are telling the truth... Oh, this is wonderful!"
''Another one who thinks you're barking," said Ron, throwing a crumpled letter over his shoulder "... but this one says you've got her converted and she now thinks you're a real hero — she's put in a photograph, too — wow!"
''What is going on here?" said a falsely sweet, girlish voice.
Tori looked behind with her hands full of envelopes. Professor Umbridge was standing behind Fred and her, her bulging toad's eyes scanning the mess of owls and letters on the table in front of Harry. Behind her, Tori saw many of the students watching them avidly.
"Why have you got all these letters, Mr. Potter?" She asked slowly.
''Is that a crime now?" Fred demanded loudly. "Getting mail?"
''Be careful, Mr. Weasley, or I shall have to put you in detention," said Umbridge. "Well, Mr. Potter?"
Harry hesitated, but he did not see how he could keep what he had done quietly; it was surely only a matter of time before a copy of The Quibbler came to Umbridge's attention.
''People have written to me because I gave an interview," said Harry. "About what happened to me last June."
''An interview?'' repeated Umbridge, her voice thinner and higher than ever. "What do you mean?"
''I mean a reporter asked me questions and I answered them," said Harry. "Here—"
And he threw the copy of The Quibbler to her. She caught it and stared down at the cover. Her pale, doughy face turned an ugly, patchy violet.
''When did you do this?" She asked, her voice trembling slightly.
''Last Hogsmeade weekend," said Harry.
She looked up at him, incandescent with rage, the magazine shaking in her stubby fingers. "There will be no more Hogsmeade trips for you, Mr. Potter,' she whispered. "How you dare... how you could..." She took a deep breath. "I have tried again and again to teach you not to tell lies. The message, apparently, has still not sunk in. Fifty points from Gryffindor and another week's worth of detentions."
She stalked away, clutching The Quibbler to her chest, the eyes of many students following her.
By mid-morning enormous signs had been put up all over the school, not just on house noticeboards, but in the corridors and classrooms too.
BY ORDER OF THE HIGH INQUISITOR OF HOGWARTS
Any student found in possession of the magazine The Quibbler will be expelled.
The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven.
Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge, High Inquisitor
By the end of the day, though Tori had not seen so much as a corner of The Quibbler anywhere in the school, the whole place seemed to be quoting the interview with each other. Tori heard them whispering about it as they queued up outside classes, discussing it over lunch and in the back of lessons, while Hermione even reported that every occupant of the cubicles in the girls' toilets had been talking about it when she nipped in there before Ancient Runes.
Tori herself had read it, shocked to find that Harry had mentioned some like Lucius Malfoy. She was even more shocked to see Harry hadn't mentioned her family at all, instead, he said two other death eaters, whose faces I couldn't see.
Meanwhile, Professor Umbridge was stalking the school, stopping students at random and demanding that they turn out their books and pockets: Tori knew she was looking for copies of The Quibbler, but the students were several steps ahead of her.
The pages carrying Harry's interview had been bewitched to resemble extracts from textbooks if anyone but themselves read it, or else wiped magically blank until they wanted to peruse it again. Soon it seemed that every single person in the school had read it.
The teachers were of course forbidden from mentioning the interview by Educational Decree Number Twenty-six, but they found ways to express their feelings about it all the same.
To cap it all, Luna told him over dinner that no issue of The Quibbler had ever sold out faster.
''Dad's reprinting!" She told Harry loudly, her eyes popping excitedly. "He can't believe it, he says people seem even more interested in this than the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks!"
Harry was a hero in the Gryffindor common room that night. Daringly, Fred and George had put an Enlargement Charm on the front cover of The Quibbler and hung it on the wall, so that Harry's giant head gazed down upon the proceedings, occasionally saying things like "THE MINISTRY ARE MORONS" and ''EAT DUNG, UMBRIDGE" in a booming voice.
Tori had to admit that the poster was not quite as funny after an hour or two, especially when the talking spell had started to wear off, so that it merely shouted disconnected words like ''DUNG" and ''UMBRIDGE" at more and more frequent intervals in a progressively higher voice.
"Hey, Harry." Tori pulled him aside eventually. "I... I want to thank you. I don't know if you did it intentionally or not, but you didn't mention... my father or brother."
Harry nodded. But Tori kept talking. "They deserved to be imprisoned, don't get me wrong. It's just... hard."
"Look, I get it, Tori. I didn't mention them because I didn't want it to fall on you."
Tori smiled weakly, messing up his hair. "You really are the best little brother."
It felt like they were all finally winning, until breakfast that very next day. There were loud screams coming from outside in the courtyard, and all the students rushed towards it, flooding the sides.
The screams grew louder as Harry ran towards the stone steps leading up from the dungeons. Tori pushed forwards through a knot of tall Slytherins and saw that the onlookers had formed a great ring, some of them looking shocked, others even frightened.
Professor McGonagall was directly opposite Harry on the other side of the courtyard; she looked as though what she was watching made her feel faintly sick.
Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the courtyard with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad. Her hair was sticking up on end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other; her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart at the seams. Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upside-down; it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her. Professor Trelawney was staring, apparently terrified, at something Tori could not see but which seemed to be standing at the foot of the stairs.
"What's going on?" Lee asked, pushing in next to Tori. She quickly shushed him and watched.
''No!" Professor Trelawney shrieked. "NO! This cannot be happening... it cannot... I refuse to accept it!"
''You didn't realize this was coming?" said a high girlish voice, sounding callously amused, and Tori, moving slightly to her right, saw that Trelawney's terrifying vision was nothing other than Professor Umbridge. "Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow's weather, you must surely have realized that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable that you would be sacked?"
''You c - can't!" howled Professor Trelawney, tears streaming down her face from behind her enormous lenses, ''You c - can't sack me! I've b - been here sixteen years! H - Hogwarts is in - my h - home!"
''It was your home," said Professor Umbridge, and Tori was revolted to see the enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney sink, sobbing uncontrollably, on to one of her trunks, ''Until an hour ago, when the Minister for Magic countersigned your Order of Dismissal. Now kindly remove yourself from this courtyard. You are embarrassing us."
But she stood and watched, with an expression of gloating enjoyment, as Professor Trelawney shuddered and moaned, rocking backward and forwards on her trunk in paroxysms of grief. Tori glanced around to see some students crying, some looming sad, and some looked to be in pain.
Then she heard footsteps. Professor McGonagall had broken away from the spectators, marched straight up to Professor Trelawney, and was patting her firmly on the back while withdrawing a large handkerchief from within her robes.
"There, there, Sybill... calm down... blow your nose on this... it's not as bad as you think, now... you are not going to have to leave Hogwarts..."
''Oh really, Professor McGonagall?" said Umbridge in a deadly voice, taking a few steps forward. "And your authority for that statement is... ?"
"That would be mine," said a deep voice.
The oaken front doors had swung open. Students beside them scuttled out of the way as Dumbledore appeared at the entrance.
What he had been doing out in the grounds Tori could not imagine, but there was something impressive about the sight of him framed in the doorway against an oddly misty night. Leaving the doors wide open behind him he strode forwards through the circle of onlookers towards Professor Trelawney, tear-stained and trembling, on her trunk, Professor McGonagall alongside her.
''Yours, Professor Dumbledore?" said Umbridge, with a singularly unpleasant little laugh. "I'm afraid you do not understand the position. I have here—" She pulled a parchment scroll from within her robes "— an Order of Dismissal signed by myself and the Minister for Magic. Under the terms of Educational Decree Number Twenty-three, the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts has the power to inspect, place upon probation and sack any teacher she — that is to say, I — feel is not performing to the standards required by the Ministry of Magic. I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch. I have dismissed her."
To Tori's very great surprise, Dumbledore continued to smile. He looked down at Professor Trelawney, who was still sobbing and choking on her trunk, and said, ''You are quite right, of course, Professor Umbridge. As High Inquisitor, you have every right to dismiss my teachers. You do not, however, have the authority to send them away from the castle.
I am afraid," He went on, with a courteous little bow, "That the power to do that still resides with the Headmaster, and it is my wish that Professor Trelawney continues to live at Hogwarts."
At this, Professor Trelawney gave a wild little laugh in which a hiccough was barely hidden.
''No- no, I'll g - go, Dumbledore! I sh - shall - leave Hogwarts and - seek my fortune elsewhere —"
''No," said Dumbledore sharply. "It is my wish that you remain, Sybill."
He turned to Professor McGonagall.
''Might I ask you to escort Sybill back upstairs, Professor McGonagall?"
''Of course," said McGonagall. "Up you get, Sybill..."
Professor Sprout came hurrying forwards out of the crowd and grabbed Professor Trelawney's other arm. Together, they guided her past Umbridge and up the marble stairs. Professor Flitwick went scurrying after them, his wand held out before him; he squeaked ''Locomotor trunks!" and Professor Trelawney's luggage rose into the air and proceeded up the staircase after her, Professor Flitwick bringing up the rear.
Professor Umbridge was standing stock still, staring at Dumbledore, who continued to smile benignly.
''And what," She said, in a whisper that carried all around the courtyard, ''Are you going to do with her once I appoint a new Divination teacher who needs her lodgings?"
''Oh, that won't be a problem," said Dumbledore pleasantly. "You see, I have already found us a new Divination teacher, and he will prefer lodgings on the ground floor."
''You've found -?" Umbridge demanded shrilly. "You've found? Might I remind you, Dumbledore, that under Educational Decree Number Twenty-two—"
"The Ministry has the right to appoint a suitable candidate if — and only if— the Headmaster is unable to find one," said Dumbledore. "And I am happy to say that on this occasion I have succeeded. May I introduce you?"
He turned to face the open front doors, through which night mist was now drifting. Tori heard hooves. There was a shocked murmur around the Hall and those nearest the doors hastily moved even further backward, some of them tripping over in their haste to clear a path for the newcomer.
Through the mist came a face with white-blond hair and astonishingly blue eyes; the head and torso of a man joined to the palomino body of a horse.
''This is Firenze," said Dumbledore happily to a thunderstruck Umbridge. "I think you'll find him suitable."
be honest.
you wanted hated voldemort
but you wanted umbridge to die more