Chapter Twenty: A Spark in the Tinderbox
"Professor, are you understanding the implication of my words?" Umbridge's voice was a sugary snarl. She stood a step below Minerva McGonagall on the grand staircase, trying to inflate her diminutive frame with bureaucratic menace.
McGonagall stood ramrod straight, her expression carved from Scottish granite. "I understand perfectly. I am suggesting you adhere to educational standards, not political ones."
With a huff, Umbridge climbed one step, bringing her to eye level with the Transfiguration professor. "Forgive my confusion, but it sounds as if you are criticizing the methods in my classroom."
McGonagall's lips thinned. She ascended a single, deliberate step, once more looking down on the witch in pink. "Not at all, Dolores. I am suggesting you adapt. Hogwarts is not a Ministry memo."
Umbridge's simper vanished, replaced by a hard, glassy stare. "To question my methods is to question the Ministry's mandate. To question the Ministry is to question the Minister himself. I am a tolerant woman, Professor. But disloyalty is the one thing I cannot abide."
The invocation of Cornelius Fudge and the full weight of the Ministry was a bludgeon. McGonagall's shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. She took a single, reluctant step back down, conceding the rhetorical high ground. The students watching held their breath.
A triumphant gleam lit Umbridge's small eyes. She climbed another step, now looking down on McGonagall, and addressed the gathered students, her voice dripping with false concern. "The situation at Hogwarts is even more concerning than I feared. The Minister will need to be apprised."
She preened, soaking in the stunned silence, the palpable frustration from McGonagall, the wide-eyed fear of the students. It was a victory, petty and political.
Then, a voice cut through the quiet, clear and unwavering.
Elian Thorne stepped out of the crowd, his black socks silent on the stone floor. All eyes swung to him—the tall first-year, barefoot, his expression calm but his eyes burning with a cold light.
"Professor Umbridge," he said, his voice carrying in the vaulted space. "If your teaching is beyond reproach, perhaps you could explain what, precisely, we have learned in Defence Against the Dark Arts these past weeks? Or is the Ministry's goal to turn Hogwarts into a factory for theoretical bureaucrats? Forgive me, but that sounds an awful lot like producing… rubbish."
The silence that followed was electric. Umbridge's face underwent a grotesque transformation, her forced smile twisting into a rictus of hatred before she wrestled it back into something resembling composure. She looked like a toad that had swallowed a wasp.
"Mr. Thorne!" Professor McGonagall interjected sharply, a complex mix of warning and something akin to pride in her eyes. "This is a discussion between staff. It is not a student forum."
Elian gave her a slight, respectful nod but kept his gaze locked on Umbridge. He had lit the fuse.
His words were the spark the student body needed. A murmur swelled into a roar.
"He's not wrong!"
"We haven't learned a single spell!"
"My dad says the Ministry's meddling is a disgrace!"
"Just cancel the class if we're not going to learn anything!"
"Yeah! Cancel it!"
The dam broke. Weeks of frustration with the pointless booklets, the simpering lectures, the cruel detentions, erupted in a chaotic chorus of agreement. The Entrance Hall became a cacophony of teenage rebellion.
Elian raised his voice over the din, speaking directly to Umbridge as if they were the only two in the room. "If the Ministry sees no value in practical defence, Professor, why not just cancel the subject? Spare us the charade. Or is the charade the entire point?"
"Cancel it!" a sixth-year Hufflepuff bellowed.
"Send her back to the Ministry!"
"We want a real teacher!"
Umbridge's face drained of all colour, then flooded with an ugly, purplish red. Her hands clutched at her fluffy pink cardigan. The orderly world of decrees and dismissals was collapsing into anarchic noise. Professor McGonagall's shouts for order were lost in the tide.
"ENOUGH!" Umbridge shrieked, her voice finally shedding its girlish affectation for a raw, piercing shrill. The sound cracked through the hall, momentarily stunning the crowd into silence.
(End of Chapter)
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