McGonagall looked up and opened the door and tried to maintain her neutral expression as Dolores Umbridge entered. That woman had not done a single bit of teaching in her class so far, simply forcing the students to read the horrible textbook by the Ministry.
McGonagall had managed to take a copy to inspect it after hearing so many complaints from the students in the great hall. It was as bad, if not worse, than what she had heard. This being taught to first years was practically sabotage of their magical careers. McGonagall quickly reminded Umbridge of the standard texts those lower year students should be using after she learned that. Something that made the woman severely displeased.
“Professor McGonagall,” Umbridge said in a smug tone, “You have been dismissed as Headmistress by order of the minister.”
The toadish woman shoved a piece of paper as she shoved a piece of paper in her hands. McGonagall read it and raised an eyebrow. It was exactly what Umbridge claimed it was, an order from the minister and nothing more. It was the board of Governors that made that decision, not the ministry.
“Is that so,” McGonagall drawled, “I do not see the signatures of the governors on this order. The ministry has no authority over Hogwarts, we both know that. Is there even a reason for my dismissal?”
Umbridge looked furious, but calmed herself after a moment.
“Haven’t you heard the news?” Umbridge said, “The madman Dumbledore ran this school with impunity for years and left you, his longtime ally, behind to rule in his place. Only yesterday, a law was passed to bring this ancient school under the purview of the Ministry as it always should have been. We can not allow the ideals of such a fugitive to influence the next generation!”
“I don’t believe you,” McGonagall said flatly, “At least come up with something more plausible. I did not think Minister Fudge to be that dense.”
“Do not speak of the minister that way!” Umbridge screamed, “Let’s go to the ministry then, then you will see the truth of your situation!”
“Fine!” McGonagall snapped and stood from her chair. Really, of all the lies for the woman to tell her. The Minister wouldn’t make a power play this obvious… would he? McGonagall felt a sliver of doubt as the two of them walked through the fireplace to the Ministry.
— — —
Minister Fudge was indeed that stupid. McGonagall had listened in shock as the man himself gave her a whole speech about how it was for the good of the students and how she was under suspicion due to her ties to Dumbledore. How it was lucky that she hadn’t been arrested already.
She alerted the board of Governors immediately afterward to fight it after she returned to her office, but it was clear that the Minister’s path was set. He wanted control over Hogwarts, no matter how obvious he was being about it. She looked at Umbridge's terrible textbook that was still sitting on her desk. In a bout of spite, she burned it to ashes with a single spell.
They wouldn’t even let McGonagall be a teacher again. It was clear that they wouldn’t accept anything less than her total expulsion from Hogwarts, her home for decades. Slightly depressed she started planning for her next job for cheap private tutoring for muggle borns that had graduated from Hogwarts. It had always been floating at the back of her mind as something she wanted to do, but if she was to leave Hogwarts that didn’t mean she would have to stop teaching.
Many Muggle borns and half bloods had trouble finding jobs after graduation unless they were exceptional in some way, having a hard time overcoming the bigotry of the purebloods in power. Helping increase their skills would help her do some good in the world even if she had to leave Hogwarts. She could only hope that whoever the Minister picked to replace her was at least half way competent. She doubted that would be the case though. Not if Umbridge was someone they thought could be a teacher.
Even if her tutoring didn’t work out, she still could still retire. She was getting old and she had saved enough over the years to do so. But she didn’t want to, she still enjoyed teaching when she could.
A few days later it was decided. Despite putting up the good fight, the board of Governors was disbanded by another law pushed through the Wizemgamot by the Minister and McGonagall was told to pack her bags. They were appointing Umbridge of all people as her replacement. What was the world coming to?
McGonagall took her bags and left Hogwarts for the wider wizarding world, expelled from her home.
— — —
“Potter,” the Gryffindor prefect said dryly, “You’ve been called to the new Headmistresses office.”
Harry stood and followed behind him. Just his luck that he had made enemies with the Umbridge just before she gained almost full authority over the school. Although since McGonagall had been unable or unwilling to hand over control of the wards to Umbridge before McGonagall left, Umbridge was locked out of the Headmistress’ office.
Right now he was heading to Umbridge's office in the old Defense against the Dark Arts classroom. Harry wondered what she wanted to talk to him about. Even if she disliked him, surely she didn’t think she could just randomly punish him?
Harry looked around as he entered, the room as bright pink as he remembered. The woman herself sat at her desk looking rather smug.
“Mr. Potter. I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here,” she said sweetly, “So I’ll get straight to it. I believe you stole a certain quill of mine earlier this year. I would like it back, or you will not like what will happen now that I am your headmistress.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“I can’t,” Harry said blandly, “I already gave that quill to someone else, I don’t have it anymore. And I’m not sure why you still think that it was yours, I paid in blood for that thing.”
Heh. Harry had spent a while trying to think of that response if she ever asked him for it back again and her ugly expression made it all worth it.
“Who?” she spat out, “Who’d you give it to?”
“Not a student,” Harry replied, “They were very interested in it, I don’t think they’ll ever give it back even if I ask for it,”
All very true, Salazar’s painting wouldn’t give him that quill if Harry wanted it, especially as he still had years left before he could draw another item from the Chamber.
“That quill was not. Yours. To give away!” Umbridge said, turning an interesting shade of purple.
Harry shrugged.
“Detention! For disrespect,” she said.
“Is that all?” he replied.
She seemed to hunt for anything else, but eventually gave up. “Yes, that’s all,” she said, "You may go."
Harry left.
— — —-
The atmosphere of the school was gloomy among the students. Umbridge had been unpopular from the beginning, and now she was passing all sorts of rules seemingly at random. Boys and girls couldn’t sit closer than a certain distance from each other in the hallways. Something that Neville and Luna didn’t like too much.
Everyone was going to detentions for ‘disrespect’ and breaking one of the endless new rules constricting their conduct. People were constantly complaining and Fred and George had begun to slowly turn the war machine that was their pranking business to solely point at Umbridge as she drew the whole school’s ire.
It was more than Fred and George running the pranks now. They had five or six younger years that they were ‘assisting,’ in their own efforts, much like how they had helped Harry and his friends in getting the Ravenclaws.
One of the pranksters even managed to slip something in Umbridge’s goblet during the dinner feast. It caused her to immediately break out into big red rash over her face and made her face swell alarmingly large like she had been stung by a venomous insect. Harry thought he saw Snape about to say something as she had brought the goblet up to her lips, but closed his mouth again after a moment. It seems he didn’t like her very much either.
For good reason it seems. In the following days, she was furious at the potions master, openly stating that she thought he was behind the incident with the goblet. A week later to everyone's shock Snape was fired. He left without any fanfare, seeming almost relieved to be leaving the castle. Harry had complicated thoughts on the man and his connection to Dumbledore and it felt odd that after all of that the man just walked away from the school without another word. To Harry or the rest of the school.
Most of the students were neutral on the decision to fire Snape. On one hand, nearly everyone seemed to hate Snape except the Slytherins. But the replacement they found from the ministry was obviously incompetent, frequently misremembering many of the recipes. His stirring technique was terrible and it was obvious he hadn’t brewed any potions in a long time. So people disliked him as well, even if it wasn't as much and with the same emotion as they had all hated Snape.
Harry was still in detention nearly every day writing lines. Umbridge was getting more and more upset by the day as Harry continued to be unfazed by the punishment. He just spent more time in his mindscape than usual. Most of the time he helped Mind Harry in organization or read a book or two while he was there. Knowing the situation with Harry’s detentions, his friends just did their studying right after their classes so they could spend more time together after he got out of his detention.
There was nothing Umbridge could really do to him besides give him more detention. They both knew that if she managed to find another blood quill or something similar to punish him with then Harry would just steal it again.
One day as Harry was walking down the seventh floor corridor, he saw an unfamiliar boy in Slytherin robes down on the other end of the hallway. Harry frowned and peered closer. The boy wasn’t familiar in sense of Harry not knowing him that well. He was unfamiliar in that Harry had literally never seen this person before, something that was practically impossible with how everyone ate together at the great hall.
Harry sped up his pace and the boy’s widened and he ran away from Harry at top speed after spotting him. Harry slowed his pace and came to a stop. Was he that scary? How strange. The boy probably was a first year student that preferred to eat alone. If you asked for it the house elves would deliver the food to their room. The boy might just be shy.
That reminded Harry of the gift that he’d been preparing for Hermione over the last year or so. It had been a lot of work, but Harry had researched all the available places with high amounts of magic he could find. He knew how much the situation with the house elves as slaves still bothered her despite her trying to hide her discomfort from everyone else. If she went to an unbound place of magic and claimed it as her own, then she could set the terms of the contract bound to it to whatever she wanted within reason. Or at least that's what Harry thought was what would happen.
That was how the house elves of Hogwarts bound themselves to the grounds rather than each individual headmaster when they came here. Salazar had confirmed to Harry that in his time that several of the places Harry had found had been fully unbound. That usually happened because places that didn’t have a being bound to the relevant contract for a while then eventually reverted to a neutral state and became unbound again.
It was only a numbers game now that Harry had a list of two or three hundred possible locations. He would give it to Dobby who could check everywhere and when he had found safe ones he could bring Hermione with him to check if she could claim it and set the terms. Then any house elf that wanted freedom could go there and agree to Hermione’s contract and live sustained off of that location for their magic.
But most of that was a gift to Dobby. His real gift to Hermione was a hefty book he had been forced to handwrite that contained the exact instructions for initiating and modifying the contract required to do all of this. He had to transcribe the book from one of the books in the Sanctum's library. It was hard magic, but Harry was sure she would be able to learn it given how smart she was. She was about at a third year’s level of magic with her wandless spells by now. Her actual wand casting was almost at a seventh year level.
Even if she wasn’t interested in the book just to help the house elves it was complicated and unique magic, he was sure she would want to learn about it either way.
By next year, Salazar had said that Harry might even be competent enough to teach her in dark magic too. There was always more to learn for dark magic under Salazar. As the spells grew bigger and more complex the emotional blowback became more severe and the consequences of doing something wrong grew larger. But Harry was still steadily progressing under Salazar’s careful instruction.
Harry kept walking down the hallway. He was going to hang out with Hermione and Neville in an abandoned classroom up here. They would just goof around and cast a few fun spells while talking. It was always pretty fun, but they didn’t want to get caught by Umbridge. Harry was sure she would ban what they were doing if she found out just to spite him, so they often switched rooms for it. So that's why Harry was all the way up here on the seventh floor to meet them rather than somewhere more convenient.