Up at the high staff table, Albus Dumbledore didn't look even remotely troubled that the executive authority of the Headmaster was slowly slipping through his old fingers. In fact, he neither had the remaining time nor did he care about a lowly creature like Umbridge at all; his single biggest historical regret was supporting Cornelius Fudge to become the 'Minister for Magic' in the first place. However, he did quietly curse Horace Slughorn in his mind.
For some reason, the old Potions master had been such an excellent Head of House that his old students kept coming back to haunt Hogwarts, leaving Dumbledore with a massive bone to pick with the man.
Tom Riddle, Severus Snape, Dolores Umbridge, what in Merlin's name had Slughorn actually taught them in his Potions class?
So, Dumbledore was currently spending his free hours trying to locate his retired employee to force-feed him Lemon Drops and secure his memory. Horace's evasion trail had led Fawkes to all kinds of hazardous, ridiculous places over the autumn.
He had found himself trapped in a melting glacier in Antarctica the first time, where his sudden apparition was witnessed by two thoroughly confused Muggle scientists, forcing the Headmaster to quickly use 'Obliviate' on them.
When he tried a second tracking spell days later, the Headmaster had accidentally alerted the defensive wards of the 'Nurmengard Tower,' causing the system to send automatic distress signals to the Austrian Ministry for Magic for help. The mishap had almost caused a widespread panic amongst the international staff, making everyone think that Gellert Grindelwald had finally gone mad and escaped his cell.
Dumbledore was deeply tired, but during that brief magical friction, he had caught a mutual, lingering glimpse of his old lo---exchanged a few words.
xxxxxx
It wasn't until after the bell rang and they were leaving Great Hall that everyone truly realized how grave the situational landscape had become.
Angelina Johnson came sprinting toward their group, looking completely distraught, her eyes red. "Harry! Ron! Lucifer!"
"It's okay, Angelina," Harry said the second she was close enough to hear his whisper. "We're still going through with the—"
"You realize that pink cow is including Quidditch in this decree, right?!" Angelina interrupted, on the absolute verge of tears. She didn't care a single bit about learning practical Defense; her entire world revolved around the upcoming pitch matches, a focus that made their team Seeker's eyelid twitch violently behind his glasses. "We have to go straight to her office and ask for formal permission to re-form the team!"
"What?" Harry asked in barely a whisper, his jaw tightening.
"No way?!" Ron asked in alarm.
"Go straight to her office at lunch or when classes end and ask her for the approval form," Lucifer said at once. His advice was perfectly aligned with what he had calculated that morning when caught sight of Filch managing the line of student groups writing down their names.
"Yeah... yeah, I'll do that right away..." Angelina turned her face to look at Harry, her eyes pleading. "Harry, please, for the love of God, promise me you won't lose your volatile temper with her again today. If you blow up, she might permanently ban our team from playing any more matches."
"Okay, okay, I'll behave myself, I promise," Harry grumbled, looking away.
Angelina walked off down the corridor, feeling only slightly better about her captaincy.
"You know, Potter, you can easily avoid a lifetime of detentions by simply not talking about Voldemort in her presence at all," Lucifer said coldly, the forbidden name causing Ron to instinctively shudder beside him. "She will never accept the truth under Fudge's orders, and you should have realized that by now. She also favors Slytherins, used to be one herself during her school years... Had you argued back during 'Care of Magical Creatures', it would have just been miles worse for your house points."
"Yeah, Harry, she will favor them like Snape does, so don't say a thing around them that would be bad for your record," Hermione added, forcing her sharp tone harder as well so he would finally get the point to keep his mouth shut. She didn't think Umbridge possessed just one single blood quill in her velvet bag, and she didn't want him bleeding again.
"Fine, I understand," Harry grumbled, staring at the stone floor.
"Bet you anything she's currently hiding inside History of Magic. Professor Binns hasn't been inspected yet," Ron said with an ounce of giddy anticipation, hoping for a scene. But the ginger boy was wrong again, as Umbridge was nowhere to be found near the back of the room.
The only professor inside the space was Cuthbert Binns, who was floating an inch or two over his wooden chair, perfectly ready to drone on about the historic Giant Wars of the eighteenth century. Lucifer took the quiet time to reopen his sketchbook, continuing his freehand lines. His attention, however, was suddenly caught by a light, frantic tapping against the glass windowpane.
He turned his head and saw Hedwig landing on the stone ledge outside, but his sharp senses could tell immediately that something was deeply wrong with the bird.
He saw Harry sneak quietly over to the window to slide the glass open, letting the snowy owl inside, and carefully carried her back to his seat hidden behind Ron's back. "She's hurt!" He whispered, his face turning pale. "Look at her wings!"
Lucifer had been right; Hedwig had been attacked on her delivery route. His eyes glowed a vibrant crimson for a moment as he focused his power. He instantly stopped the blood pouring out from her feathers, patched up her deep wounds with a silent, wandless manipulation, and cast a 'Soothing Charm' over her form first, letting the snowy owl drift into a comfortable, painless sleep right inside Harry's bag.
"Thanks..." Harry mouthed to him urgently, cradling the bird closer to his chest as if she were his own flesh-and-blood child. "Professor Binns," he spoke up loudly, successfully getting the ghost's attention.
The specter looked up from his heavy book, looking thoroughly astonished to be actively called upon by a student named Potter. "I'm... I'm not feeling well, sir. Not at all."
"Not feeling well, you say?" Binns asked, his translucent brow furrowing.
"No, I need to go straight down to the Hospital Wing," Harry said, closing his bag and trying his best to appear dazed and faint.
"Yes... yes, of course... Hospital Wing. Well, off you go then, Peverell..." Binns said vaguely, looking straight back down at his text.
Harry stood up quickly and immediately left the classroom.
Lucifer almost got up from his seat to follow him out, but his mind realized he didn't know how to care beyond that baseline healing for a magical creature's long-term recovery. He figured he'd let Harry locate Professor Grubbly-Plank down by the paddocks; the experienced woman should be able to take care of Hedwig's dietary recovery with no problem.
He turned back around to face his desk and looked down at his sketches, his charcoal pencil tightening in his grip as a dark thought crossed his mind. 'Umbridge... you are starting to play a very dangerous game with post.'
xxxxx
Class had just ended, and as they filed out of the room, Lucifer explained his theory on what had happened to Hedwig. "So you think Umbridge attacked her?" Ron asked, his eyes wide.
"Hedwig is easily recognizable, and she is known to be Harry's owl... Umbridge probably saw her returning from her flight and tried to take her straight out of the sky. That's why she was so late to arrive for the morning Owl Post," Lucifer explained on the way outside. As he spoke, he thought of the name she had been given, Hedwig, which historically meant 'Protector of Orphans'. He didn't know whether Harry had chosen it symbolically or not, given his status.
The moment they caught the first sign of the raven-haired boy down by the lawns, they made a straight beeline for him. "Is Hedwig going to be okay?" Hermione asked anxiously the exact second she got right next to him.
"Yeah, I left her with Grubbly-Plank. Listen," Harry murmured, leaning in closely to explain the quiet warning and strategic advice Professor McGonagall had just conspired to give him in the corridor.
"Lucifer just said that Hedwig was probably attacked by the High Inquisitor," Ron too nodded thoughtfully. Their Head of House was incredibly intelligent and politically sharp, he noted, for offering Harry an alternative postal route.
"I just hope with all my heart that your letter wasn't actively read," Hermione said quietly, her brow furrowing.
"It was still sealed when I got her inside," Harry said, his voice flat as he clutched onto a discarded piece of hope.
"It's not hard for a Ministry official to magically reseal a piece of parchment," Lucifer said bluntly, crushing his optimism instantly.
"What does the letter say, Harry?" Hermione asked him, her face completely conveying a silent message that translated to: 'Oh my god, Lucifer, did you really have to put it that brutally to him right now?' Her boyfriend played the fool, staring blankly ahead and pretending not to understand her eye signals at all.
"Today. Same time, same place. And it's definitely from Snuffles---I recognize his handwriting," Harry said in a tight whisper as the four of them turned to head down the stone steps toward the dungeons for Potions.
"We can't even warn him to not contact us tonight," Hermione said reproachfully, her panic rising. "Not if the morning Owl Post is being heavily watched. The Floo Network inside the common rooms probably is too..."
The moment they walked up to the Potions classroom door, they saw a large group of Slytherins already gathered there, lazily waiting for Snape to show up and let them inside. That was the precise moment Draco Malfoy began loudly talking to his cronies, ensuring his voice carried down the hall. "Yeah, Umbridge gave the Slytherin Quidditch team official permission to re-form almost immediately," he sneered, shaking a rolled-up piece of parchment around in the air. "I mean, the approval was basically automatic from her desk. It'll be interesting to see if Gryffindor even gets to keep playing this season or not."
"Don't rise to the bait," Hermione whispered fiercely to Harry and Ron, her hand catching Seeker's sleeve. "It's what the git wants."
"I mean," Malfoy's grey eyes glittered maliciously as he turned his face toward Harry, "If it's a question of having real influence with the Ministry, I don't think certain people have got much of a chance... from what Father says in his letters, they've looked for a solid administrative excuse to sack Arthur Weasley for years... And as for Potter... My father says it's just a matter of time before the boy is carted off to a private ward in St. Mung—"
He abruptly stopped speaking the millisecond his eyes registered that Severus Snape had arrived down the corridor, looking thoroughly menacing as his black robes billowed.
Everyone filed into the dark room, talking only in hushed whispers, but the moment Snape shut the heavy oak door behind them with an echoing, booming 'thud,' a dead silence befell the class immediately.
"You will notice that we have a guest with us today," Snape said in a low, sneering voice, his eyes flashing in the torchlight.
Professor Umbridge was indeed sitting rigidly in a dimly lit corner near the back row, her leather clipboard resting on her knee, smiling sweetly at them all.
"Why on earth is she back in here again?" A Gryffindor whispered.
"Do you think she's actively investigating the professor a second time?" Another murmured.
"I doubt it. She only observed the other core classes once before writing her files."
"Maybe Professor Snape's department is different. He's not popular with the Board."
"Nonsense! Professor Snape is the best teacher in this school!" An indignant, sharp retort came, clearly originating from a front-row Slytherin.
Still, the atmosphere inside the subterranean classroom was incredibly thick with curiosity. After all, Umbridge had already observed Professor Snape's Potions class days ago before her lake incident. Why had she returned to repeat the process?
Even Umbridge herself seemed quietly perplexed by her surroundings. As she listened to the murmured student speculations and reviewed the blank notes on her clipboard, a faint, anxious frown crossed her pasty face. Why was everyone in the room insisting she had been present here before?
Her official clipboard files contained absolutely no historical record of Snape's classroom performance at all.
"Quiet!"
The sudden, sharp bark made the entire classroom fall silent instantly as Snape swept toward the front of the room, his dark eyes scanning the students before landing heavily on Umbridge's figure in the corner. His expression darkened further, a profound, irritated scowl tugging at his sharp features.
Lucifer had to manually clamp his mouth shut, though his shoulders shook as he stifled his sudden amusement, catching onto what must have occurred between the two staff members.
Hermione turned an icy, sharp glare onto him in an instant, her eyebrows drawing together. "What's so funny?" she whispered, glancing at his shaking chest curiously.
He leaned his head closer to her ear and whispered back, "It's absolutely hilarious, pet. Looks like Professor Snape's private plan backfired on him." Lucifer knew exactly what was happening. Umbridge's second unannounced visit to the Potions classroom could only mean one thing: the woman had absolutely no active memory of being here before. Snape must have cast a targeted 'Obliviate' or Memory Charm on her, erasing not only her critical findings but also her total recollection of the entire class period.
However, he suspected the spell hadn't gone quite as the Potions Master had intended. The charm had worked a little too well, making Umbridge forget the date so that she had unwittingly returned to repeat her evaluation from scratch.
'If it were me doing the charm,' Lucifer thought to himself with a dry smirk, 'I would have modified her internal memory just enough to forget the key negative details, like her post-class interrogation questions, rather than wiping her memory of the room entirely. That would have been a much cleaner, elegant solution.' Still, he couldn't help but wonder what Umbridge had originally said or done to provoke Snape into using an illegal Memory Charm on her in the first place.
It must have been something truly, exceptionally irritating; he would definitely have to chat with Susan Bones again to gather the common room gossip.
He was just about to share his ideas with his girlfriend when he glanced up at the front podium. Snape's gaze was completely frigid, his pale expression hard, looking like he was contemplating a clean murder.
"Today we will be brewing something new, and it will take the duration of the class time to properly make. It will be the 'Invigorating Draught.' The instructions," Snape stated, waving his black wand sharply toward the stone wall as he took a deep, steadying breath as though nothing unusual had occurred, "Are on the board. The raw supplies, in the corner cupboard. Begin."
Everyone immediately gathered what they needed after reading the written ingredients list and began brewing the potion, completely forgetting about Dolores's presence for the time being. The process wasn't inherently hard, but it required three hours to mature, and because it was a 'Double Potions' period, it would consume the entire class time.
"Alihotsy leaves, dried Billywig stings, peppermint, stewed Mandrake, and honey water..." Hermione murmured to herself under her breath as she double-checked her ingredients against her notes. Satisfied that her measurements were perfectly correct, she began grinding the materials with practiced, fluid precision, long since accustomed to mutilating components of Toads at her desk.
Umbridge spent the first half-hour of the class silently jotting down basic notes on her clipboard, her quill scratching against the parchment.
"Harry, focus on your cauldron," Lucifer whispered from the side as he noticed the raven-haired boy's attention was wandering toward the pink cardigan again. "I can brew this draught in my sleep, mate. I'll listen to her and tell you what's said later."
Harry grumbled under his breath but gave a firm nod, focusing his eyes back on his copper pot.
As though an invisible, internal alarm had suddenly gone off in her head, Umbridge stood up from her chair exactly thirty minutes into the period and began pacing slowly between the rows of desks. She cast quick, calculating glances at Lucifer's cauldron, her eyes widening slightly. "Well, this specific class certainly seems exceptionally advanced for its current year level."
"You cannot compare Morningstar's potions to anyone else in this room, Professor Umbridge," Snape said begrudgingly from the front, his voice tight. "The boy is, regrettably, miles ahead of even my N.E.W.T. seventh years..."
Umbridge made a rapid note of that assessment on her clipboard and walked over to Seamus Finnigan's desk, secretly hoping the boy would explode his mixture so she could rule a permanent fault down in her files. But Mr. Finnigan had been given an advanced warning by Snape in the corridors right before the bell which was precisely why the professor had been late to the class in the first place.
Failing to be satisfied by a disaster, she made her slow way toward the Potions Master.
"The students in this class seem to be quite talented at their practical tasks," she said in her usual, simpering tone, her head tilting. "The Invigorating Draught is such a delightful, useful potion. After all, it could thoroughly energize the drinkers, and grant them immense focus for strategic spells during active battles."
"But that specific boost is artificial, Dolores," Snape replied coolly, his arms crossing over his chest. "And excessive use of the mixture results in highly undesirable, permanent side effects to the wizard's underlying magical core."
"I would still question whether it is truly advisable to teach young children a potion such as the 'Invigorating Draught," Umbridge retorted briskly, her smile tightening. "I think the Ministry would like it removed from the school syllabus entirely."
Snape straightened his shoulders, letting out a sharp, derisive snort as he turned his body to face her.
"Now... how long have you been teaching at Hogwa---" she asked, her silver quill poised over her clipboard. But she was already sharply cut off by Snape, who replied curtly, his brogue razor-sharp.
"Fourteen years." His dark expression remained unfathomable.
Umbridge faltered for a brief microsecond, her eyes blinking, then she quickly resumed scribbling on her clipboard as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
From his desk, Lucifer observed the mechanical exchange out of the corner of his eye while crushing his Mandrake petals with the flat back of silver knife. When Umbridge set her clipboard down to turn her back, he leaned sideways and muttered quietly, almost to himself under his breath, "Did you apply to teach 'Defense Against the Dark Arts' first?"
A brief moment later, as if on perfect cue, Umbridge turned back to Snape and asked the professor the exact same question, word for word. Lucifer smirked. This confirmed his theory: Snape had indeed used a sloppy 'Memory Charm' on her after Susan Bones had told the other houses what had undergone during their joint Potions class with the Slytherins.
However, the brewing process was rapidly reaching a critical structural stage, and most of the surrounding students were far too focused on their bubbling cauldrons to notice the peculiar, repetitive nature of the dialogue. Only Hermione seemed fully aware of what was happening. Having heard her boyfriend's quiet muttering a second before the professor spoke, she was momentarily left speechless by his foresight.
But she kept her jaw set, continuing to look after her copper cauldron lest the liquid turned an irreversible green midway through the hour.
Snape, clearly intensely irritated by the redundant, looping question, bristled under his dark robes but managed to keep his composure. To avoid drawing any unwanted student attention to his memory modification, he reluctantly indulged Umbridge's repetitive questions, no matter how trivial or redundant they seemed to his ears.
The remainder of the class period proceeded completely predictably. After finishing her interrogation with Snape, Umbridge wandered slowly around the dark room, pretending to expertly inspect the students' potions, eventually stopping by Daphne Greengrass's desk.
Her performance was painfully obvious to anyone with an advanced eye; Umbridge's severely limited, mediocre understanding of potion-making became glaringly apparent when she loudly praised Daphne's cauldron because the liquid inside was a bright, vibrant pink.
In truth, the Invigorating Draught was structurally supposed to be a light, clear yellow at this specific intermediate stage, right before the final addition of the peppermint essence. The bright pink hue in Greengrass's pot was the direct, disastrous result of mixing the ingredients completely incorrectly, specifically, adding pure Mandrake saps into the fire instead of utilizing its petals.
A quiet ripple of muffled laughter quickly spread through the Gryffindor rows. The embarrassed Slytherin student turned a violent, bright scarlet, staring fixedly down at her desk in deep humiliation, while even Professor Snape allowed himself a faint, rare smirk, clearly highly amused by Umbridge's total, uneducated ignorance of the craft.
Only the High Inquisitor herself remained oblivious to the error, her expression perfectly blank as she tried to understand exactly what the children were giggling about.
xxxxxxx
As the lesson concluded, the students bottled their potions. Most of them had achieved the desired light yellow or orange color, but Greengrass whom Umbridge had praised so highly earlier, handed in a potion that stood out starkly from the others as a murky, swirling magenta.
Finally realizing her mistake as she saw the other perfect vials, Umbridge's face tightened momentarily with profound embarrassment. But she quickly masked the slip, puffing out her chest, and acted as if nothing had happened.
She marched toward Snape once more, clipboard clutched firmly in her short hand, ready to begin her final post-class grilling.
Lucifer's eyes lit up with anticipation. He leaned forward, his mind clicking. 'This is it,' he thought, his calculations locking into place. 'This must be the moment where Snape used the Memory Charm during their private conversation last time.' He was certain that, whatever the trigger had been, she would repeat her actions and her redundant questions word for word.
Eager to observe the magic unfold, he deliberately lingered behind as the rest of the class packed up, letting a few sheets of parchment slip from his fingers onto the stone floor to create a flawless excuse to stay.
He had used this same trick to eavesdrop during 'Transfiguration' before. But this time, before his fingers could even touch the fallen parchment, Snape swept his black wand sharply through the air with a preemptive irritation. A sudden, focused gust of localized wind gathered the sheets off the floor, including Hermione's stray notes and violently whisked them both straight out of the open doorway.
'Snap!'
The heavy oak classroom door slammed shut right in his face, the latch clicking with a finality that brooked no argument. After being thrown out of the room by Snape's magic, Lucifer didn't leave the corridor immediately. Instead, under Hermione's thoroughly dirty, unimpressed gaze, he leaned his ear right back against the cold wood of the door.
All he could hear, however, was a faint, distorted buzzing sound, like a swarm of Billywigs flying about in a jar. It was the unmistakable, vibrating audio effect of the 'Muffliato' Charm.
"Honestly, no trust in the youth at all," Lucifer frowned, his jaw tightening as he realized there would be no thrilling revelations or dark spells to witness today. With nothing else to do, he resigned himself to leaving the dark Dungeons alongside a wild, cross Granger. As they walked the damp corridor, he shared his firm suspicion.
"It's unlikely..." Hermione hesitated, her brow furrowing as she adjusted her bag. "But why would Professor Snape risk using an illegal 'Memory Charm' on a senior Ministry official like Umbridge?"
Though Snape was universally known for his sharp tongue, particularly with defensive professors he deeply disliked, such as Lupin or Quirrell, Hermione simply couldn't imagine him crossing a severe legal line like memory modification.
Despite his clear animosity toward the High Inquisitor, Snape had always strictly kept their conflicts to professional, verbal sparring.
Attacking someone outright with mind magic, especially behind their back in an empty classroom, seemed unthinkable for a Hogwarts staff member.
After all, they were educators. There were established institutional boundaries, and even if political tensions ran high, a certain degree of professional restraint was always maintained between colleagues.
"I don't think I'm wrong about the magic, pet," Lucifer said, practically spouting evil advice right beside her as they walked, whispering good-for-nothing commentary straight into her ear to intentionally lead the law-abiding, bushy-haired girl astray. "You must have noticed the signs too. Umbridge's questions today were identical to the lines Susan told us she asked during the first evaluation... That means she has no memory she has already sat through this class before..."
As the dark Dungeon grew more distant behind their heels, he glanced back over his shoulder and added, "As for why Snape would choose to do it... well, maybe she said something deeply offensive about his department or heritage. It certainly wouldn't be shocking if a major confrontation happened with a toxic woman like her."
Lucifer had considered lingering by the threshold longer, highly curious to see if Snape would be forced to use the 'Memory Charm' on Umbridge a second time just to clear his tracks, but no one came out of the room for a long while.
On the long way up to the Great Hall for lunch, Hermione was now grumbling to herself, but her sharp words were directed at her boyfriend. "You didn't even pay a single shred of attention to your cauldron for half of the class period, Lucifer, and yet your Invigorating Draught still came out perfect again..."
"Hermione, I just love the class," Lucifer explained, feeling a bit sorry for her academic frustration. "I hate Severus Snape with a vigorous, passion, but I genuinely love the science of the subject."
xxxxxx
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