Elle Potter

Umbridge

~ Elle ~

I sat in the great Hall in between Fred and George, conversing with Ginny across the table while Fred clutched my hand in his, engaged in a hushed conversation with George.

There was the usual start of term chatter as students greeted their friends from theirs or the other houses until Mcgonagal walked into the hall, an ancient hat in her arms and followed by many frightened first years.

As the line of new students got smaller and each house applauded on cue with the arrival of new kids to their house, I sat with the rest of Gryffindor, until finally they had all sat down and Professor Dumbledore began the start of term notices.

There were the normal notices about staying out of the forbidden forest, what items Mr Filch had banned the students from using and introducing our new teachers, but when he was half way through explaining when quiddich trials were, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher stood up - though few noticed because she was a very small woman - she cleared her throat and Dumbledore fell silent, watching her as though he'd rather do nothing more than listen to what she has to say. Many of the other teachers though were not as smooth at covering their surprise.

I looked directly across from me and exchanged a dark look with Ginny. Nobody had ever in all of my time at Hogwarts, interrupted Dumbledore.

As she spoke many of the students around the hall fell into half doses with their eyes glazed over or continued to whisper to their friends throughout the speech, but I continued to listen and the more I heard, the less I liked this woman. Who did she think she was walking into this school and saying things like that. 'perfecting what needs to be perfected' 'pruning practices that ought to be prohibited'. Out of my friends, I wasn't surprised to see that Hermione and I were the only ones listening to the speech, and by the time she was finished I smiled when I saw that half the school forgot to clap for her because they didn't know it was over.

I walked up to Gryffindor tower with Fred, George and Lee without seeing any of my other friends, and being to tired to socialize with anyone tonight, I went straight up to bed after my goodbyes with the boys.

It was a while before I was joined in my dorm, first by Lavender Brown with Pavarti Patil, and then Hermione. I put my pajamas on and was about to get into my bed when I heard a conversation between Lavender and Pavarti that rubbed me the wrong way.

"Please you don't think he could really be telling the truth, it's preposterous" Lavender screeched to her friend.

"Oh, no! That's not what I'm saying at all. Please it's all just so he can stay famous, since the whole 'boy who lived' thing is getting old. It says so in The Daily Prophet, the Minister himself says it's all for attention." she says a matter of factly.

Hermione is clutching her book angrily, possibly to keep her under control, but I explode at the pair.

"Oh you you two would believe something they put in the paper to make a fifteen year old boy look foolish while there is an extremely powerful dark wizard at large, over the better judgement of your headmaster who told you what really happened that night?! You think that you're better than him because you're too scared to have your own opinion on something and have to go with whatever the Minister says. He's more likely to lie to people than Dumbledore and Harry, please he's lying to himself if he doesn't believe it. He just like you, are all just too scared to admit it to yourselves because you're cowards." I spit out at them.

Pavarti looks like I've slapped her across the face and Lavender looks up at me defiantly.

"You don't know what you're talking about. When it's proved that he's wrong you're all going to come back to the rest of us crying us to forgive you" she sneers.