IMPOSSIBLE RISKS // Drarry

35) THE WEAPON!

"I'm warning you!" says Harry, fully aware that his scope for inflicting punishment upon Kreacher is almost nonexistent in this position. "What about Lupin? Mad-Eye? Any of them, are any of them here?"

"Nobody here but Kreacher!" says the elf gleefully, and turning away from Harry he begins to walk slowly toward the door at the end of the kitchen. "Kreacher thinks he will have a little chat with his Mistress now, yes, he hasn't had a chance in a long time. Kreacher's Master has been keeping him away from her -"

"Where has Sirius gone?" Harry yells after the elf. "Kreacher, has he gone to the Department of Mysteries?"

"Master does not tell poor Kreacher where he is going," says the elf quietly.

"But you know!" shouts Harry. "Don't you? You know where he is!"

There is a moment's silence, then the elf lets out his loudest cackle yet.
"Master will not come back from the Department of Mysteries!" he says gleefully. "Kreacher and his Mistress are alone again!"
And he scurries forward and disappears through the door to the hall.

"You - !" But before he could utter a single curse or insult, Harry feels a great pain at the top of his head. He inhales a lot of ash and, choking, finds himself being dragged backward through the flames until, with a horrible abruptness, he is staring up into the wide, pallid face of Professor Umbridge, who has dragged him backward out of the fire by the hair and was now bending his neck back as far as it would go as though she is going to slit his throat.

"You think," she whispers, bending Harry's neck back even farther, so that he is looking up at the ceiling above him, "that after two nifflers I was going to let one more foul, scavenging little creature enter my office without my knowledge? I had Stealth Sensoring Spells placed all around my doorway after the last one got in, you foolish boy. Take his wand,"
she barks at someone he can not see, and he feels a hand grope inside the chest pocket of his robes and remove the wand.
"Hers too . . ."

Harry hears a scuffle over by the door and knows that Hermione has just had her wand wrested from her as well.

"I want to know why you are in my office," says Umbridge, shaking the fist clutching his hair so that he staggers. "With whom have you been communicating?"

"No one -" says Harry, trying to pull away from her. He feels several hairs part company with his scalp.

"Liar!" shouts Umbridge. She throws him from her and he slams into the desk. Now he could see Hermione pinioned against the wall by Millicent Bulstrode. Draco is leaning on the windowsill, smirking as he throws Harry's wand into the air one-handed and then catches it again. There is a commotion outside and several large Slytherins enter, each gripping Ron, Ginny, Luna, and - to Harry's bewilderment - Neville, who is trapped in a stranglehold by Crabbe and looks in imminent danger of suffocation. All four of them have been gagged.

"Got 'em all," says Warrington, shoving Ron roughly forward into the room and Harry remembers that he was the one to come up with the 'Weasly is our King' song,
"That one," he pokes a thick finger at Neville, "tried to stop me taking her," he points at Ginny, who is trying to kick the shins of the large Slytherin girl holding her, "so I brought him along too."

"Good, good," says Umbridge, watching Ginny's struggles. "Well, it looks as though Hogwarts will shortly be a Weasley-free zone, doesn't it?"

Draco laughs loudly and sycophantically, clearly over-selling the act, Harry could tell. Umbridge gives her wide, complacent smile and settles herself into a chintz-covered armchair, blinking up at her captives like a toad in a flowerbed.

"So, Potter," she says. "You stationed lookouts around my office and you sent this buffoon," she nods at Ron, and Draco laughs even louder, almost comically so and Harry has a hard time not grinning at him, "to tell me the poltergeist was wreaking havoc in the Transfiguration department when I knew perfectly well that he was busy smearing ink on the eyepieces of all the school telescopes, Mr. Filch having just informed me so. Clearly, it was very important for you to talk to somebody. Was it Albus Dumbledore? Or the half-breed, Hagrid? I doubt it was Minerva McGonagall, I hear she is still too ill to talk to anyone . . ."