Chapter 236: Second Wave, First Firing

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Sheets of parchment hung pinned to the wall.

Eddie frowned, glancing up at the matt brown bulletin board as people gathered around him (well, he was part of the crowd), whispered in buzzing discussion about the words printed on the sheets of parchment — titled in angry red and with content body punched out in bold black — that hung high above their head, as if looking down on them as plebians that needed to follow the words like royal or even divine orders.

"This again?" he said. "What got her knickers in a wad again? I thought we were doing fine." He would have preferred more displeased, but after experiencing it so many, he had been dulled to it — desensitized was the term his best friend (the smart one) would use.

The bulletin board that Eddie stared up at was covered with newly-minted Educational Decrees fresh out of the printers, printed on tan parchment. On every decree, Dolores Umbridge's name was bolded out; in some ways making the name more important than the contents, and Eddie didn't know if it was just him, but her signature seemed angrier, rougher, brasher than the older ones as if Umbridge had penned them with the nip digging into the parchments.

This was the second Umbridge had decreed a wave of orders. The first time she had done this was a day to remember; the bulletin board had needed to be changed to a bigger one because of the sheer amount of Educational Decrees that were decreed to be posted permanently (ordered in another Educational Decree) had left no space for other notices.

Even the new one was already looking like it would need to be replaced. After all, Umbridge decreed a couple of them every week, sprinkling them like they were diary entries. It was an apt comparison as people had begun speculating Umbridge's mood by the numbers of decrees she issued in a week.

"She must be really pissed for a second dump of this shit," Eddie snorted. "What do you think? Has she finally gone bonkers?"

Marcus, standing by Eddie's side, didn't reply. His eye perused across the board, carefully browsing every word, thinking what changes would this wave bring to Hogwarts and his along with his friend's life. He wanted to be the first to know if there were going to be any big shifts in Hogwarts, would there be any significant threats to DA that would require adjustments to counter.

"Number fifty.. . bans from Hogwarts all literature written by non-wizards or half-breeds

Number fifty-two.. requires students to consent to allow their owl post to be checked for illegal contraband.

Number fifty-five.. . requires any complaints about Hogwarts or its staff to be made in writing to the High Inquisitor.

Number fifty-six.. . confines pets to common rooms and dormitories and owls to the owlery.

Number sixty.. . imposes restrictions on the usage of the school library and common rooms

Number sixty-three.. . encourages students to be forthcoming regarding suspicious or outlawed activities from their professors and peers.

Number sixty-four.. . allows the establishment of the Inquisitorial Squad.. . what is the Inquisitorial Squad?

Number sixty-seven.. . gives the High Inquisitor the power to confiscate any unauthorized book from students.

And, number sixty-eight.. . forbids the use of red howlers inside Hogwarts.. . that's for the Weasley twins, I guess, "Marcus sighed after reading through the decrees. Some of them weren't going to hinder him anyway, but there were some outright annoying to him as a Ravenclaw — banning books by half-breeds and non-wizards was poppycock and highly insulting to the name of an institution of learning.

Marcus was pulled out of his thoughts when he heard a muffled commotion coming from what he thought might be coming from outside the entrance hall.

"What's that?" said Marcus.

"I don't know, but let's go take a look, shall we?" Eddie said, looking at the oak door.

The crowd gathered at the bulletin board began moving towards the door, attracted to the commotion.

The screams were indeed coming from the entrance hall; they grew louder as Eddie and Marcus ran toward the stone steps leading up from the dungeons. When he reached the steps leading outside, they found the front of the oak gats packed. Students had come flooding out of the Great Hall, where dinner was still in progress, to see what was going on. Others had crammed themselves around whatever seemed to have caused the commotion. Eddie pushed forward through a knot of tall Slytherins, Marcus following after him. They saw that the onlookers had formed a great ring, some of them looking shocked, others even frightened. McGonagall was directly opposite them on the other side of the hall; she looked as though what she was watching made her feel faintly sick.

Trelawney was standing in the middle of the entrance hall 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. Trelawney was staring, apparently terrified, at something that Marcus and Eddie could not see from their position but that seemed to be standing at the foot of her.

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"No!" she shrieked. "NO! This cannot be happening.. .. It cannot. .. I refuse to accept it!"

Just when Eddie and Marcus reached the front, they heard a high girlish voice, sounding callously amused, and instantly they knew who Trelawney was afraid of.

"You didn't realize this was coming?" said the voice which could only belong to 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 you would be sacked?"

"You c-can't!" howled 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 m-my h-home!"

"It was your home," said Umbridge, and Marcus was revolted to see the enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Trelawney sink, sobbing uncontrollably, onto one of her trunks, "until an hour ago, when the Minister of Magic countersigned the order for your dismissal. Now kindly remove yourself from this hall. You are embarrassing us."

But she stood and watched, with an expression of gloating enjoyment, as Professor Trelawney shuddered and moaned, rocking backward and forward on her trunk in paroxysms of grief. Marcus heard a sob to his left and looked around. Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil were both crying silently, their arms around each other. Then he heard footsteps. McGonagall had broken away from the spectators, marched straight up to 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. .. ?"

"Mine," said a deep voice.

The crowd around the oak door parted, students scuttled out of the way as Dumbledore appeared in the entrance. What he had been doing out in the grounds, Marcus could not imagine, but there was something impressive about the sight of him framed in the doorway against an oddly misty night.

"That's really fucking cool, init," said Eddie with a toothy grin on his face, "I want to do that, definitely."

Leaving the doors wide behind him, he strode forward through the circle of onlookers toward the place where Trelawney sat, tearstained and trembling, upon her trunk, McGonagall alongside her.

"Yours, Professor Dumbledore?" said Umbridge with a singularly unpleasant little laugh, her eyes acidly glared at Dumbledore. "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 of 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 up to the standard required by the Ministry of Magic. I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch. I have dismissed her."

To the great surprise of many, 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. However, you do not 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, Trelawney gave a wild little laugh in which a hiccup was barely hidden.

"No — no, I'll g-go, Dumbledore! I sh-shall l-leave Hogwarts and s-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. . ."

Sprout came hurrying forward out of the crowd and grabbed Trelawney's other arm. Together they guided her past Umbridge and up the marble stairs. Flitwick went scurrying after them, his wand held out before him; he squeaked, "Locomotor trunks!" and Trelawney's luggage rose into the air and proceeded up the staircase after her, Flitwick bringing up the rear.

"Awesome," said Eddie, clapping lightly, "they are like a team with Dumbledore as the captain! I also want to do that! Marcus, you can be Sprout. We will give Flitwick to Luna. Quinn can be McGonagall. I, of course, will be Dumbledore."

Umbridge stood stock-still, staring at Dumbledore, who continued to smile benignly.

"And what," she said in a whisper that nevertheless carried all around, "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; we have ample space," said Dumbledore pleasantly, pointing to the grand castle behind him. "Also, Dolores?" he said in a voice tinged deeper. "It seems that you are forgetting the authority of the headmaster — MY authority — don't forget, that while you might be the High Inquisitor, but I am the headmaster. This is my school. I am in charge of the Professors. In charge of the house-elves. In charge of the students. Do not forget that," in the end, Dumbledore was standing tall and his background, the students of Hogwarts were all staring at Umbridge with the ancient castle lit up in the night sky.

Eddie's eyes sparkling with a starry light: "Complete son of the wand this man is!"

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Umbridge's tight smile twitched. She clasped her hand at her front. "Well, then, you would be happy to meet the new Divination teacher."

"That won't be necessary," said Dumbledore, smiling merrily as if thinking of joyous, "This time around, I didn't fail to find a new teacher," pointing out the reason why Umbridge was here, "you see, I have already found us a new Divination teacher, and he will prefer lodgings on the ground floor."

"You've found — ?" said Umbridge shrilly. "You've found? Might I remind you, Dumbledore, that under Educational Decree 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?"

"Ooh! he's on a roll!" said Eddie feeling the vibe.

Dumbledore pointed behind Umbridge, and for the first time, everyone noticed that the area was covered in a drifting white mist.

Everyone heard hooves.

There was a shocked murmur around the crowd, and those nearest to the mist hastily moved backward, some of them tripping over in their haste to clear a path for the newcomer.

Through the mist came a face that could be seen in the Forbidden Forest: white-blond hair and astonishingly blue eyes, the head and torso of a man joined to the palomino body of a horse.

Dumbledore smiled happily to a thunderstruck Umbridge. "I think you'll find him suitable," he said.

From a hallway window on the first floor, looking down at the area outside the front oak door, a pair of stone-grey eyes watched everything unfolding away from everyone.

He had just exited the vault for the day, and seeing that it was still time for the feast, he was going down to the great hall to get some food. On his way, though, he saw a crowd moving out of the castle, so he went to see what it was all about to come across a familiar scene.

"Shit," said Quinn, his voice filling the hallway, "I forgot about the centaur."

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"I bet you wish you had Divination, now, don't you, Quinn," asked Eddie, smirking.

It was evening time a couple days after the sacking of Trelawney, and Eddie was doing some regular maintenance on his broom and carefully moving his hand as not to make any mistakes — in the air, his broom was his greatest asset after himself.

"Not really," said Quinn indifferently, who was reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a fiction book for a change. It was a treat; the second room was almost over, only a couple material blocks remained. "I've never really liked horses."

He turned a page, reading the beautifully written words.

"He's not a horse; he's a centaur!" said a Ravenclaw girl, sounding shocked. They were in the common room.

"A gorgeous centaur. . ." sighed another girl, a fifth-year.

"Either way, he's still got four legs," said Quinn coolly. In no way was he discriminatory against centaurs, but Firenze was a problem — he was the one last year when Quinn was exploring the Forbidden Forest who figured out that there was a child under the Noir transformative suit.

That was the problem.

If Firenze could figure out that, who knew if he could figure out his identity. Quinn didn't have much expertise in Divination and the predictive arts. He didn't have the gift of sight, and as such, Quinn didn't see any use in learning about that subject because it wasn't any use to him. Moreover, Quinn had absolutely zero ideas about the Centaur Culture's Divination. He had no idea what level of predictive powers they had their hands in.

'I'm going to stay away from the divinating horseman. As long as Firenze is concerned, Quinn West doesn't exist,' thought Quinn.

"When do you think she's going to can Hagrid?" asked Eddie.

"Soon, very soon. I am surprised that she didn't can him with Trelawney."

"That bitch probably wanted to stroke her sadistic desires by kicking them out one at a time."

"That sounds like her."

"What do you think about the Inquisitor Squad?"

"What about them?"

"I mean, most of them are glorified Umbridge's dogs. All from Slytherin."

"I won't put it that way, but you're correct."

"You worried about them?"

"No, I am not. I am a Prefect; they can't order me around."

"What about the cluster?" said Eddie. As per the extended rules, DA wasn't to be mentioned outside, and words like group, organization, society, club weren't to be used. That's why members started to use words like cluster, bunch, pack when mentioning DA.

"Marcus and other leads will take care of it. They have been doing a great job keeping all of it under wraps," said Quinn, lightly pinching the top corner of his book's page to turn it over.

However, the next second, his eyes stopped on the first sentence of the page. Eddie's words had started a chain of thought in the coils of his brain. He sighed and glanced at the page number on the bottom before closing the book — he didn't need bookmarks — and set it between his leg and the armrest of his armrest.

He stared into the air. While the DA representatives were indeed doing a good job, there was one problem threatening the anonymity of DA, which hadn't their minds. 'It's a perspective problem,' he thought. The possibility of external factors influencing the DA members not entering their minds wasn't strange. None of them were thinking outside the walls of Hogwarts that kept the ugly and complex real-world out.

'I guess I would need to talk to the original sneak,' thought Quinn. After all, she was still in DA and, from his memories of DA session, observing the members, she was as dissatisfied about being involved as she was in the original.

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Quinn West - MC - Has decided to subtract horse from his life.

Eddie Carmichael - Taking notes - That was legit cool. Old man has style.

Marcus Belby - Is still an introvert - Working to keep secrets the way they are.

DA - We are not a group - We don't exist.

Dolores Umbridge - High Inquisitor - Horrified at the new teacher.

Albus Dumbledore - Headmaster - I hired before you fired.

FictionOnlyReader - Author - Please recommend published novels that you think are beautifully written, as in the style of writing — wordsmithing. I'm trying to improve my writing style.

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