Umbridge was foaming at the mouth.
Her small, squat form trembled with an incandescent fury that radiated from her like heat from a furnace. She stomped through the halls of Hogwarts like a troll in lace, her polished pink heels clicking a furious rhythm against the ancient stone, her every movement a testament to her boiling rage.
'How dare they. How dare these insubordinate children and their equally insubordinate professors undermine the authority of the Ministry, the very foundation of wizarding law and order.'
She was the High Inquisitor, appointed by Minister Fudge himself, with a divine mandate to restore order, and she would see this school purged of the poison that Dumbledore had planted over the years, root and branch.
The Ministry were the only ones fit to control Hogwarts, and she would make it so, no matter the resistance. But every time she tried something, every step she took to assert control, she was blocked or refused, her authority challenged at every turn.
She had been making progress—had made progress. Sibyl Trelawney, that unqualified hack of a divination teacher, was gone from the classrooms, a disgrace of a teacher, in her opinion, all false prophecy and teacup drivel.
But then McGonagall had to swoop in and undermine her, hosting the useless seer in the castle even after she'd been officially fired, a blatant act of defiance. And worst of all in this infuriating situation was that damned Harry Potter.
The boy who had the audacity to blatantly disregard the Ministry, to lie to the wizarding world, to claim You-Know-Who had returned, a preposterous, attention-seeking delusion.
She scoffed, her lips thinning into a venomous line. She would not stand and watch as he plunged their society into chaos with his lies. Those half-bloods and mudbloods all just wanted attention, that's why he was making up lies like this, trying to destabilize the pure-blood order.
She wanted to punish him, to break him, it was one of the primary reasons she came to Hogwarts, to teach that arrogant boy a lesson he would never forget. But every single time, she was foiled, her efforts thwarted by his inexplicable luck or the infuriating defiance of the staff.
Of course, while she didn't get him, that didn't mean she didn't get others to correct their behaviors, to instill discipline with her blood quill. But she was getting tired of this, tired of the subtle resistance, tired of his evasions.
That's why she had been tailing him for a few days now, keeping a close eye on his movements, waiting for him to slip up. She had thought he had noticed something when he hardly did anything or went anywhere, but yesterday, yesterday, she saw it, the opportunity she craved.
He had sneaked out of the castle and headed towards the Forbidden Forest, a blatant violation of school rules. She wasn't able to follow him in immediately, but she had finally gotten something concrete, irrefutable proof.
So today, as she followed him and saw him whispering to his friends, she pressed closer, straining her ears, and she heard the words "weapon" and "Dumbledore." That was it.
That was all the proof she needed. She knew this was it, her chance to expose him. To prove that both he and the headmaster were trying to overthrow the minister.
So she made sure she was ready at any given time, in case he decided to go to the weapon they spoke of. She followed them, cloaked beneath her Disillusionment Charm like a predator stalking prey, her heart thrumming with gleeful anticipation.
She should have been suspicious when he didn't look back, when he didn't even cast a single concealment charm, when the students following him seemed too... casual, too unconcerned.
But she didn't care. Her prey was near, and her desire for vengeance blinded her to any warning signs.
Half an hour of sneaking through thick underbrush, branches tearing at her robes, brought her deeper into the forest than she'd ever dared venture, far beyond the familiar, domesticated paths. And then it happened.
The world began to twist.
At first, it was subtle. Shadows lengthened unnaturally, stretching into grotesque shapes. The air grew heavy, still, oppressive. Then the trees began to bend in impossible ways, gnarled bark writhing like skin, the underbrush whispering with inhuman voices, a cacophony of unseen horrors.
And then she saw them, creatures like nightmares given flesh, monstrous hybrids of man and beast, emerging from the gloom with eyes like molten gold, their forms shifting, indistinct at the edges.
She screamed, a high, shrill sound of pure terror, and fired spells wildly into the dark, her wand lashing out indiscriminately. She hit one, it roared, a guttural sound of pain and rage, and suddenly she was surrounded.
Their hooves pounded the earth like thunder, shaking the very ground beneath her feet. Her screams grew shrill and broken, her hexes more desperate, more panicked, as she realized the futility of her resistance. She turned to run, but a heavy, muscular body slammed into her from behind, sending her tumbling down, her head hitting the hard earth with a sickening thud.
The last thing she saw before unconsciousness claimed her was a ring of hooves and spears closing in… and a distant silhouette watching from the trees, unmoving, a silent, damning witness.
The area shifted like reality changed.
Harry stood there in silence, the shadows wrapping around him like a cloak, concealing him perfectly. He watched as Umbridge's prone form was surrounded, then dragged deeper into the forest.
The monsters she saw were centaurs. He had used his authority to bend her perception to make her view what he wanted, to lure he here without her seeing where she was being led to, and not the usual centaurs that were closer to the entrance of the forest, the ones who occasionally parleyed with Hagrid.
These were the wild ones. The ones who never parlayed with humans, who rejected Hogwarts, Hagrid, and all semblance of diplomacy. They lived deep within the forest and played by no one's rules but their own, ancient, brutal ones.
He'd found them during a night of exploration, seeking out the most untamed parts of the forest, and had asked Hagrid about them.
Harry had immediately decided that Umbridge had to suffer this fate. He remembered what happened to her in canon, she was taken by centaurs and dragged into the woods, and no one really knew what happened to her, but it's said that later in the books, Dumbledore rescued her, and she was traumatized by them.
But in actual myths, centaurs were known for taking women and raping them, having fun with them before breaking them, and after they were done, and the girls and women were useless, they killed them.
He wanted to make sure that was her fate, but he had a feeling that the usual centaurs wouldn't, because they were close with Hagrid and Dumbledore. But finding out that there were multiple tribes of centaurs in the forest had got him to finalize on the plan.
Was it cruel? Absolutely. Anyone else, he wouldn't have gone this far, wouldn't have subjected them to such a horrific end. But her she just pissed him off that badly.
He had seen the bloodied hands of children, watched the fear in their eyes, and heard their suppressed sobs. She was a cancer in this school, a purveyor of pure, malicious cruelty, and he had no room in his heart to feel pity for her.
He had forgotten that it wasn't just him she had tortured in the movie and books, and that she targeted half-bloods and muggle-borns too, and others were left to suffer.
As they dragged her away, fading into the rustling leaves, he felt a flicker of unease, a faint echo of his former self. But then he remembered the tears of that first year, the trembling hands, the carved words.
His eyes hardened. And if somehow she survives this?
Well, let's just say that the next plan would be worse than this. He turned as he headed back to the castle.
Far away, in a darkened manor, Voldemort was smiling. A thin, cruel curve of his lips, one that his followers rarely ever saw. Why? Well, the plan's success.
His followers were returned—broken, scarred, but loyal, their numbers swelling his ranks. The Azkaban breakout had gone smoother than expected. No resistance, no interference, no sign of the Ministry or the Order. He had braced for Dumbledore, perhaps even the Aurors, a desperate stand, but none came.
Why?
Because Dumbledore had not been around at all. He was finding out why now. The old goat had suffered a curse. A powerful one. And now he was weakened, an incapacitated, no longer a threat.
Severus had informed him of this. The traitorous spy knelt before him, delivering the news with calm on his face, a mask of subservience, but something about it, the situation, and timing... unsettled him.
It stung his pride a little that he wasn't the one to do it, but he was happy regardless. That was until a whisper from the corner of his mind said that Snape was lying, or at least withholding information.
He narrowed his eyes. What timing. Just a while after hearing that Dumbledore wanted to take Potter to get the prophecy in secret, Snape comes and tells him the old man was dying.
No doubt hoping he would take the bait and shift his attention to him, not seeing Potter as he went to get it.
'So it was true after all. ' Then his mind shifted to the spy. So does that mean Snape had betrayed him, or was it that he was no longer trusted by Dumbledore, deemed expendable? The man had finished speaking and was waiting for him, his head bowed. He could see Snape shaking a little, no doubt in fear, as he stayed silent, awaiting his master's judgment.
"How," Voldemort asked, his voice cold and sharp, cutting through the silence like a blade, "did Dumbledore get cursed, Severus? Provide me with the full details."
Snape hesitated—barely—before replying, his voice tight, "I do not know, my Lord. He returned from a trip, in profound pain, and immediately summoned me. The curse is unlike anything I've encountered, resistant to all known counter-curses and antidotes."
Voldemort's eyes narrowed, more suspicious. The lack of detail, the slight hesitation, spoke volumes. He then said to Snape, his voice a silken command, "Show me, Severus. Show me the memory."
That got a pause out of the spy, a flicker of pure terror in his eyes, before he stuttered, "My… My Lord? Are you implying… You wish to enter my mind?" They both knew that Snape was good at the mind arts, a master Occlumens, and while not as good as the Dark Lord, he could hide things that Voldemort could miss, so he didn't trust what he saw in their minds most of the time.
That's why he avoided entering his mind, preferring to rely on his reports. But now he was asking, demanding.
Snape forced himself to calm down, to regain his composure, as he answered, his voice tight but obedient, "Of course, my Lord." He opened his mind, dropping his Occlumency shields, revealing the memory.
Voldemort plunged into the man's mind, tearing through his defenses, and found the memory. The cursed blackened hand. The writhing veins. A magic older than modern tongues, etched into flesh, consuming it. Ah. Yes. He remembered this. An ancient Egyptian curse, a vile, irreversible affliction.
He had learned it once, during his search for immortality, a forgotten piece of dark knowledge. It had no cure, so far that he knew. But this was proof that the man was cursed, at least, genuinely afflicted.
The old man must have touched a cursed object or something to have had this inflicted upon him.
He pulled back from Snape's mind, his gaze unreadable, a faint smile playing on his lips.
"Leave me," he commanded, his voice dismissive.
Snape bowed deeply and exited, his steps steady despite the sweat on his brow, the fear still a cold knot in his stomach.
Alone, Voldemort let his lips curl into a wide, triumphant grin.
Dumbledore, the eternal meddler, the thorn in his side, was dying. And once Harry Potter was dead, there would be no one left to stand in his way. Now he just had to let his loyal followers heal and regain their strength, and then Britain was his, ripe for the taking.
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