Chapter Thirty of 'The Daring Win'- The Next Crisis
Chapter Twenty-Nine.
Title: The Daring Win (30/36)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Angst, violence, torture, Umbridge POV
Pairings: None in foreground; background canon pairings. This is a gen story as far as the main characters are concerned.
Rating R (for violence)
Summary: The year: 1987. The place: Muggle London. The situation: The Boy-Who-Lived is being treated horribly by his Muggle relatives. A young witch must take him in for the Ministry’s good and his. The witch’s name: Dolores Umbridge.
Author’s Notes: This will be an Umbridge-raises-Harry story. It will be pretty fucked-up because of that. The whole thing is in Dolores’s POV (she would hardly tolerate any others), and will update every Saturday.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-The Next Crisis
Dolores sighed as she slid into her chair and picked up her cup of tea. She’d had late nights twice in a row now-soothing the row between Snape and Sirius the first night, and then conducting a quiet interview with a hand-picked reporter about some of the things she wanted to release.
But, as she realized when she saw the headline splashed across the front page of the Daily Prophet, she was about to be repaid for at least one of them.
ALBUS DUMBLEDORE: REVERED HEADMASTER OR REPULSIVE HIRER?
Dolores snorted. Not the best alliteration in the world, but about what she expected out of the Daily Prophet.
She scanned the article, and nodded. She’d given her own impression of Dumbledore having Snape read Harry’s mind, of course, and also confirmed that Dumbledore had known the man was a Legilimens and would make use of that Legilimency when he hired him. The article also contained some quotes from people who had been at Harry’s birthday party, as Dolores had suggested. Except for the Greengrasses, all of them had spoken on the condition of anonymity.
That didn’t matter. Dumbledore had a lot more to contend with now than either trying to pursue Snape or trying to get Harry under his thumb.
“You look satisfied. Who went down?”
Dolores eyed Harry mildly as he sat down in the chair across from her. She still had some reservations about the way he had listened to Sirius, but she didn’t see the need to hold back the good news. She extended the paper.
Harry read the headline with a blink, and then the full article. His face was blank as he folded the paper and put it in front of Sirius’s place. Dolores sipped her tea and watched him. His insights were more valuable when they weren’t influenced by something she’d said.
Harry took a deep breath and asked, apparently as neutrally as he could, “What happens now?”
“Dumbledore is confronted with a lot of bad press and a lot of questions,” Dolores said, and savored one of the chocolate-filled biscuits that the house-elves had put out with the plates. She allowed herself exactly one a day. “He may or may not be removed as Hogwarts Headmaster. He’s regained some power in the Wizengamot in the last few years. But he’s going to have to give up this delusion that he can concentrate on you and nothing else.”
“He is delusional.”
Sirius had sulked in to breakfast late, as usual. Dolores gave him a nod and ignored the other two empty places. Lupin had avoided breakfast until after she’d left lately, which at least told Dolores she had not misjudged his guilt over what he and Sirius had “taught” Harry.
Snape would come down when he wanted to come down. The same elves who set five places because they insisted on it would keep the tea warm for him and fetch him whatever food he wanted when he finally showed up.
“Dumbledore is the one you’re talking about, I hope?” Dolores asked Sirius as she slid the platter of chocolate biscuits towards him. It was just as well to get them away from Harry, who had started to eye them over the lip of his porridge bowl.
Harry sighed mournfully and went back to his porridge. Dolores quirked her lip to him and turned to Sirius, who was nodding vigorously enough to make crumbs fly everywhere. At least he swallowed the biscuit he was chewing on before he tried to start talking.
“Of course! He’s made all these stupid moves, and he’s counted on his reputation to save him.”
Dolores nodded. That would make sense of something she’d been wondering: why Dumbledore had been so obvious. She would have moved more cautiously herself and tried to do more behind the scenes. But Dumbledore had become used to deference and people doing what he wanted for so long that it made sense that he couldn’t give that up right away. He still thought people would go along with his wishes because they’d done that for decades.
“Do we need to do anything about him at the Ministry or in the Wizengamot?” Harry asked abruptly.
Dolores looked at her. “Not right now. If we’re summoned to testify or something, it will be different, of course.”
Harry nodded. He had finished his porridge now, and he gave Dolores a glance out of the corner of his eye before he took a biscuit. She nodded. When he had broken it and eaten it, he said, “I’m going to be in the library.”
“All right,” Dolores said. She had canceled his lessons for the next few mornings while she determined if she could trust Lupin as a teacher again, but it was unusual that he didn’t want to spend it flying.
She thought of asking him, as he turned and marched away from the table, if something was wrong, but at that moment she heard the Floo flare, and she went to answer what turned out to be the first of many calls on her time and energy.
*
Dolores sighed and stretched kinks out of her back. She would have to invest in a cushioned kneeling pad for that Floo. She didn’t use it that often most of the time, so this hadn’t been an issue before.
She went into lunch, and wasn’t surprised when Snape was the only one who was there, eating a late breakfast. He gave her a harsh look and went right back to reading the article in the Daily Prophet. He had a smirk, at least, which meant he might not be overly disagreeable.
Lack of surprise became surprise when Harry didn’t turn up. Dolores frowned and asked Snape, “Have you seen Harry today?”
“The menace was in the library the last time I looked,” Snape replied, not bothering to glance up at all.
Still? It was unlike Harry to miss meals, even if he’d got caught up in a topic he loved. He still kept count of every piece of food he ate and acted, sometimes, as though she might take it away if he was late to the table.
Dolores ate only a few distracted bites of her roast before standing up and going in search of Harry. She could feel Snape staring at her back. She suspected his eyes were full of contempt. But unless he started another fight with Sirius, then she doubted she needed to worry about what he thought of her.
When she opened the door to the library, Harry jumped. He was sitting with an enormous book spread in front of him, one that Dolores knew they didn’t regularly study from.
She walked across the bright carpet of blues and reds that the house-elves had insisted the old Potters had wanted in this library-well, one couldn’t count on people like them having taste everywhere-and sat down on the other side of the table from Harry. Harry promptly bowed his head. Dolores watched the back of his neck flush.
She checked on his book. It was a law book, she determined after a few moments of staring. A huge one, so big that she didn’t think Harry could have lifted it off the table. Her eyes went back to Harry’s face.
“You’re missing lunch.”
Harry rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand, a childish gesture he didn’t make often. “I know. But-I wanted to check on the laws against what Dumbledore did.” He waved his hand at the book.
“You know I will handle this for you,” Dolores said. “Of course you’ll be involved, and you’ll know what’s going on. But I’ll tell you what laws Dumbledore broke, and what he’s trying to do, and what appearances you need to put in.”
Harry hesitated for a second. Then he said, “I know.”
Dolores waited. She had learned the value of silence from her years in the Ministry. Some people would ignore an underling and talk about sensitive gossip in front of her. Some people just didn’t close their doors, or at least not all the way. Some people assumed her polite pretense of not listening was the reality.
And some people could be manipulated by silence into blurting out a secret. Or three.
Harry looked at her, shivered a little, and then murmured, “I wanted you to know why I-went along with Sirius and Remus for so long.”
Dolores smiled a little. “And I’d like to hear it. But that doesn’t explain what shutting yourself up in the library has to do with it.”
“It was a habit,” Harry said, and looked out the one window in the library, framed between curving dark shelves, towards the garden that Sirius had turned mostly into a Quidditch pitch. “I was really young when they told me about Remus being a werewolf. And they also told me why I couldn’t tell you.”
Dolores’s lips twitched in spite of herself when Harry referred to being “really young” three years ago. But she held her silence and listened.
“It was fun. A secret.” Harry traced a swirl on the table that seemed to be formed entirely of thought in his own head. “And I wanted to know something you didn’t know.”
“Why, Harry?”
Harry looked up at her, his eyes direct and much too old. “I kept secret from the Dursleys all the time. Back then, I thought you might be the same. I wanted to have at least one secret from you.”
Dolores reached out and squeezed his hand, saying nothing. Harry swallowed and went on. “And then years went by. And I realized that werewolves were more dangerous than I thought they were, but I still didn’t think Remus deserved to be kicked out to starve. He was starving, you know, before you let him live here,” he added, with a sudden defensiveness that made his hand tremble in Dolores’s. “He didn’t have a job. I couldn’t let him face that.”
Dolores let her nostrils flare. It didn’t matter, since Harry wasn’t looking at her. So Sirius and Lupin had played on Harry’s compassion, the same driving force that made him want to rescue Muggleborns from abusive homes.
For that, she despised them more than their lie to her.
But she had to soothe Harry now. That was more important than all the small-brained plans Sirius and Remus could come up with during their lives. She smiled and asked, “Do you know why I let him stay here? When he’d lied to me and made you keep secrets from me?”
Harry looked at her, his eyes huge and shrewd and bright and wary. He shook his head silently.
“Because I think that Sirius would be upset if he was kicked out,” Dolores said. “And so would Lupin. He might go running to Dumbledore-”
“He wouldn’t do that!”
Dolores waited for the echoes of Harry’s voice to die, and said gently, “I disagree. But truly, Harry, he might do it the same way that I think he decided to keep this secret from me: a moment of panic he regrets later.” She’d already had the conversation with Lupin where he explained about how he’d panicked at the thought of losing his job. Avoiding her eyes the whole time, of course. “But by then, the damage would be done.”
Harry pulled his hand back from hers and trained his eyes on the book. “You think that it’s the same sort of thing he did here.”
Dolores nodded. “He would regret it. Sirius would, too, but Sirius would do it out of spite and outrage, not panic.” Harry gave her a faint smile that heartened her to see. “So. I can understand why you kept the secret-”
“But you’re not letting Remus stay out of the kindness of your heart.”
“Exactly.”
“Why did you tell me that, though?” Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at her pensively. “You could have got away with telling me that you’d changed your mind about werewolves, and that would make you sound better.”
Dolores laughed quietly. “Would you have believed me? Or do you think Sirius or Lupin would have?”
“No.”
“Correct. That’s not at all effective as a tactic.”
Harry stared at her. “So you believe all werewolves should be cast out of the wizarding world and have no jobs?”
Dolores shook her head. “Most of the time, I don’t care about them. But they do have a disease, and they could give someone else their disease if they aren’t careful. I find it objectionable that Lupin did not take the proper precautions.”
“But you might have thrown him out before you knew him. You know, if he’d told you about being a werewolf before you changed your mind.”
“What makes you think I have changed my mind?”
Harry hesitated for one moment, then visibly squared his shoulders and jumped in. “Sirius found some of the memos that you wrote when you were working in the Ministry. He said that you were in favor of pretty harsh restrictions on werewolves.” He looked her straight in the eye. “And he said that he only went looking for them because he wanted to know what kind of person you were.”
Dolores controlled her anger. In truth, her anger would avail her little here, except perhaps to turn Harry against her in ways she didn’t want. “I have changed.”
“He didn’t know that yet.”
“He should have cared more about your safety than about his friend’s.”
Harry paused. Then his hand drummed an odd pattern on the law book. “Because he’s my godfather? Or because he’d been in prison for six years?”
“Neither of those have much to do with it. Because he is the adult, and Lupin is an adult who should have been able to take care of himself, and because you are a child who could have been in danger from the disease.”
“Oh,” Harry breathed.
“Yes.” Dolores sighed and continued, “I wouldn’t want any other werewolf to move in with us. I’m not going to start campaigning for their rights. I’m not going to put money towards those cures for lycanthropy that sometimes pop up. They’re always scams.”
Harry watched her.
“But I’m not going to campaign against them, either. I want to make sure that werewolves who live around us have their Wolfsbane, because it makes them less dangerous. And I’m not going to kick Lupin out.”
Harry nodded. There was an odd little smile on his lips.
“What is it?” Dolores asked, because she couldn’t actually think of a reason for him to look like that.
“Just that sometimes you make decisions because they benefit you and sometimes you make them for other reasons.” Harry stood up and came around the table to touch her cheek. “And sometimes I can’t tell the difference.” Then he turned around and went to the dining room.
Dolores remained sitting where she was. She didn’t worry for Harry in Snape’s company. He could handle himself more than well enough. But she did sit pondering in wonder.
He doesn’t see the reasons? But I trained him to see the reasons. Would he see mixed motives in others, and feel sympathy for them, when in reality they only have the motive to make his life difficult?
Before Dolores could wonder further on that, she heard the tap of owl talons. Sirius must have opened the window for the bird, because a second later, he yelled, “It’s for you, Umbridge!” It sounded as if his voice was coming from the largest sitting room.
Dolores didn’t hurry. By the time she made it, Sirius thrust the letter, which had an official Ministry seal on it, at her and turned away so his hair masked his face. Lupin, playing the other side of their game of chess, ducked his head.
Dolores ignored their antics, more interested in the owl, which was waiting for a response instead of flying away the minute the message was delivered, as was par for the course with Ministry owls. She looked at it and offered her arm. The owl hopped up to her shoulder, and Dolores started to walk out of the room.
“Are you going to kick me out?”
Dolores blinked and turned around. Lupin had initiated a conversation for the first time in two days. He still sat with his head hunched and his shoulders higher than his chin, but he’d done it. Silently, Dolores acknowledged that she’d started to think he was incapable of it.
“No.”
He was still gaping at her when she left. Dolores opened the letter as soon as she was private, and smiled a little as she read it.
Dolores Umbridge, your presence is required at an inquiry to be convened into the doings of Albus Dumbledore and his treatment of Harry Potter in the largest Wizengamot courtroom at 9 AM on Wednesday.
Dolores nodded to the owl and set about writing back.
She was ready.
Chapter Thirty-One.
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