"Well, Miss Granger, I think the course aims are perfectly clear if you read them through carefully," Umbridge said, her voice dripping with a determined, nauseating sweetness.
"Well, I don't," Hermione said bluntly, slamming her palm lightly against the now open page of her textbook. "There's absolutely nothing written up there about actually 'using' defensive spells."
'I think that was the entire point of the curriculum, though, pet,' Lucifer thought to himself, a dry, mock swirling through his mind. A heavy, sudden silence descended upon the classroom. Dozens of students turned their heads, their brows furrowing as they squinted at the three stark course aims still written across the blackboard in Umbridge's neat, sloping handwriting. None of the bullet points mentioned anything about practical magic.
"Using defensive spells?" Umbridge repeated, letting out a soft, high-pitched little laugh that echoed gratingly against the stone walls. "Why, I simply can't imagine any situation arising in my classroom that would require you to use defensive spells, Miss Granger. You surely aren't expecting to be violently attacked during my class?"
"As I recall," Lucifer interjected smoothly, leaning back in his seat, "the fundamental purpose of Hogwarts is to prepare students for the reality waiting after they graduate, is it not?" He asked the question with an icy clarity, but Umbridge simply stiffened her shoulders and pretended he hadn't spoken at all.
"We're not going to use magic?" Ron ejaculated loudly from the middle row, his jaw dropping in absolute disbelief.
"Students raise their hands when they wish to speak in my class, Mr…?"
"Weasley," Ron muttered, thrusting his hand aggressively into the air.
Umbridge's plastic smile was very clearly becoming strained, the muscles in her jaw twitching as she forced herself to maintain. It widened even more, freezing into the most glaringly fake, artificial expression Lucifer had ever witnessed. Without offering Ron a syllable of acknowledgment, she pointedly turned her back on him. Across the room, Harry and Hermione both instantly raised their hands again.
Umbridge eyed Harry's messy shock of black hair for a tense, calculating moment before deliberately addressing Hermione instead. "Yes, Miss Granger? You wanted to ask something else?"
"Yes," Hermione said, looking directly at the woman as if she were an absolute idiot. "Surely the entire point of a class named 'Defense Against the Dark Arts' is to physically practice defensive spells? Professor Umbridge, if you could sign a legally binding guarantee right now, promising to take full personal responsibility for any physical danger I might face in my future career, then I would firmly support your theoretical course objectives."
"She's a professor, Granger, not a personal bodyguard," Dean Thomas muttered under his breath from two desks down, just loud enough for the surrounding Gryffindors to hear. Several students bit their lips, struggling to suppress amused smiles at the remark.
"Are you a Ministry-trained educational expert, Miss Granger?" Umbridge asked, her falsely sweet voice cracking slightly under the pressure.
"I could be," Lucifer chimed in casually, only to be ignored by the pink cardigan once again, though a few brave Hufflepuffs down the row snorted into their sleeves at his words.
"Well, no, are you—" Hermione retorted sharply, her eyes darting toward the Professor.
"Then, I'm afraid you are completely unqualified to decide what the 'whole point' of any Ministry-sanctioned class is," Umbridge interrupted triumphantly, her chest puffing out. "And, I believe I introduced myself yesterday. I am the newly appointed 'Head of the Department of Educational Decree'. I am quite literally the most qualified professional imaginable for this task."
"A department that's barely a month old?" Hermione scoffed openly, entirely refusing to back down to a self-given bureaucratic title.
"Miss Granger!" Umbridge's patience was visibly snapping. She jumped slightly on her heels, her short frame vibrating as she reiterated her position. "Witches and wizards much older and vastly cleverer than you have carefully devised our new program of study. You will be learning about defensive spells in a secure, completely risk-free way—"
"What earthly use is that?" Harry asked loudly, his voice booming across the room. "If we're going to be attacked out in the real world, it won't be in a—"
"Hand, Mr. Potter!" Umbridge said in a sharp, sing-song voice.
Harry thrust his fist into the air, his knuckles white. Umbridge promptly turned her back on him, ignoring his frantic gesture entirely, but several other students had already raised their hands in solidarity.
"And your name is?" she asked, pointing a stubby finger toward the back.
"Probably would've helped to take a proper roll-call before we got started," Lucifer remarked lazily, showing absolutely zero care in the world since he was being systematically ignored anyway. A fresh wave of students laughed openly at the commentary, further grating on Umbridge's raw nerves.
"Dean Thomas."
"Well, Mr. Thomas?"
"Well, it's exactly like Harry said, isn't it?" Dean said angrily, leaning forward. "If we are going to be attacked out there, it won't be risk-free. There's no point in just reading about it."
"I repeat," Umbridge said, her voice dropping into an infuriatingly smug, patronizing tone that made several boys instinctively clench their fists, "do you honestly expect to be attacked during my structured classes?"
"No, but—"
She ruthlessly talked right over him, a cruel, unconvincing smile stretching her wide mouth. "I do not wish to criticize the way things have been run in this school," she said, her eyes glinting maliciously, "but you have been exposed to some very irresponsible wizards in this classroom. Very irresponsible indeed. Not to mention," Then gave a nasty, high-pitched little laugh, "some extremely dangerous half-breeds."
"If you mean Professor Lupin," Dean piped up angrily, his chair scraping loudly against the stone, "he was the absolute best teacher we ever—"
"Hand, Mr. Thomas!" Umbridge shrieked.
Lucifer's eyes remained completely closed as he leaned his head back, tuning out the ridiculous circus playing out in the background. To his perception, the entire classroom was trapped on a horrific merry-go-round, walking backward in circles while chasing one another's tails. He took a slow, deep breath, executing a brief calming technique to keep his power from blowing the glass out of the castle windows. He tuned back into the conversation just as atmosphere turned lethal.
"This is a school, Mr. Potter, not the real world," Umbridge was saying softly, her tone dripping with mock pity.
"So we're not supposed to be prepared for what's actively waiting out there for us?" Harry fired back.
"There is absolutely nothing waiting out there, Mr. Potter."
"Oh yeah?" Harry asked, his temper reaching a violent, dangerous boiling point.
"Who on earth do you imagine wants to attack children like yourselves?" inquired Umbridge in a horribly honeyed, mocking voice.
"Hmm, let's think…" Harry said, his voice dripping with bitter sarcasm as he mimicked a thoughtful pose. "Maybe Lord—"
A sudden, deafening 'crunching' and 'cracking' sound cut him off mid-sentence. The entire classroom jolted. Hermione snapped her head to the left and gasped, her eyes widening in pure horror. Lucifer's heavy wooden desk was literally crumbling apart under the weight of an invisible, suffocating force. The solid oak was splintering, deep fractures spider webbing through the wood until the straining sound abruptly stopped.
She looked at her boyfriend, her heart hammering against her ribs. 'He was doing everything he could to hold back,' she realized, a cold sweat breaking out on her neck. 'He kept his anger focused entirely on his desk... to spare the room.'
Every eye in the class was glued to Lucifer. Umbridge stood frozen near the blackboard, her beady, toad-like eyes opened in a rare flash of genuine shock and terror as she stared at the fractured wood.
"If you should be afraid of anyone in this room…" Lucifer said, his voice dropping into a low, menacing growl as his chest heaved with heavy, labored breaths, "it should be me."
"Mr. Morningstar," Umbridge stammered, her voice shaking slightly before she desperately tried to regain her footing. "I--I do not know what kind of dangerous game you are attempting to play here, but if you could control your volatile temper before you damage any more school property—"
"I 'was' controlling myself," Lucifer interrupted coldly. His eyes snapped open, but the terrifying crimson Hermione had braced herself for wasn't there. His pupils were a deep, abyssal black. "It took every single ounce of my remaining restraint to not completely crush this entire classroom into dust. So I focused the force on my desk, instead of using it on 'you." He took a step forward, towering over the fractured wood. "If people out there should be prepared for anyone, it should be me. If they should be terrified of anyone, it should be 'me."
Hermione watched Umbridge closely. The woman's face scrunched up into a tight, ugly mask as though she desperately wanted to screech a threat, but a self-preserving instinct in her brain explicitly told her it would be in her best interest to remain silent. She swallowed hard, trying to brush off the threat. "So... you've finally decided to reveal your true, unhinged nature, have you?"
Lucifer said absolutely nothing, his breathing slowing back down to a rhythmic pattern. His eyes suddenly flashed a brilliant, vibrant red for a single microsecond, long enough for the shattered pieces of his oak desk to violently reassemble themselves, the wood seamlessly sealing back together with a sharp click until the surface was pristine once more. The crimson dissipated back into his natural color.
"What's the matter?" Umbridge snarled, emboldened the moment his magic receded. "Tucking your tail between your legs now that you've made your little scene?"
"How dare you!" Harry yelled angrily, completely snapping as he stood up quickly from his bench, his chair toppling backward. "If Lucifer wanted to, he could easily kill you where you stand right now! Your pathetic antagonizing is the only thing making it difficult for him to refrain from tearing you apart!"
Umbridge's wide mouth twisted into a sneaky, snarling grin as she saw the opportunity she had been waiting for. "Detention, Mr. Potter," she said with a malicious smirk. "And I shall see you in my office at five o'clock tomorrow evening."
Hermione looked at the Professor analytically, her sharp mind breaking down the bizarre interaction. 'That's exactly what she wanted to do to Lucifer, slap him with a detention or worse, but… why didn't she?'
The answer was painfully obvious. Umbridge was terrified. The pristine, magically repaired oak of Lucifer's desk stood as a silent testament to a power that completely bypassed her Ministry edicts.
"Tomorrow evening. Five o'clock. My office," Umbridge barked, her voice cracking as she quickly scrawled something onto a piece of parchment. She folded it with trembling fingers. "And take this to your Head of House, immediately."
Harry stomped over to the podium and practically yanked the rolled-up parchment from her hand, his green eyes flashing with rage. Without another word, he slung his heavy leather bag over his shoulder and stormed out of classroom, slamming heavy oak door behind him.
Hermione stared after him for a tight moment, her heart hammering against her ribs, before looking back at Lucifer. He was just staring down his desk, jaw tightly clenched as he executed every mental block he possessed to avoid completely losing his control again.
"As I explicitly said before Mr. Potter's uncalled-for outburst, there is absolutely nothing and no one to be afraid of outside this classroom," Umbridge said, attempting to smooth down her pink cardigan to regain her composure.
But the words had barely left her mouth when Lucifer stood up. His towering frame cast a long, heavy shadow over the front row, his dark eyes locked onto her with cold contempt.
"And where exactly do you think you're going, Mr. Morningstar?" she demanded, her voice rising into an anxious shriek.
"If I am forced to listen to your voice for a single moment longer today, I am really going to do something I'll permanently regret," Lucifer said, his tone dangerously calm. "See you later, Umbitch."

He gave her a lazy, mock, two-finger salute from his brow, turned on his heel, and walked straight out of the room.
xxxxxx
Author's Note
If you want to Read my Complete book, including 8th Year, Marriage and having kids, ahead of everyone.
Support this novel, join me on Patreon!
Link - patreon.com/SmutDxddy
We have a stockpile upto Chapter 1030 for you to binge-read! 😋
Playing Cards with Pregnant Hermione on a n*de beach, if you'd like to Read now! 🍼