The Big Dipper

The Sneak

By mid-morning enormous signs had been put up all over the school, not just on House notice boards, but in the corridors and classrooms too.

— By order of —

The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts

Any student found in possession of the magazine The Quibbler will be expelled.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-Seven.

Signed:

Dolores Jane Umbridge

High Inquisitor

Ursula sighed and shook her head when she passed one of the signs outside of Charms.

"If there was one way to ensure everyone reads the article, it's a bunch of signs telling us not to," she said.

Ursula was quite right. By the end of that day, though she had not seen so much as a corner of The Quibbler anywhere in the school after Lilian disguised hers as a Muggle Studies pamphlet, the whole place seemed to be quoting the interview at each other; Ursula heard them whispering about it as they queued up outside classes, discussing it over lunch and in the back of lessons, while every occupant of the cubicles in the girls' toilets had been talking about it.

Meanwhile Professor Umbridge was stalking the school, stopping students at random and demanding that they turn out their books and pockets. She was looking for copies of The Quibbler, but the students were several steps ahead of her. The pages carrying Harry's interview had been bewitched to resemble extracts from textbooks if anyone but themselves read it, or else wiped magically blank until they wanted to peruse it again. Soon it seemed that every single person in the school had read it.

The teachers were, of course, forbidden from mentioning the interview by Educational Decree Number Twenty-six, but they found ways to express their feelings about it all the same. Professor McGonagall had more satisfaction in her eyes as she glared at Professor Umbridge, and Professor Flitwick was even more excited than usual.

Ursula was called to a meeting with Professor Umbridge that very evening, where she was asked to use the prefects to enforce the Educational Decrees. She relayed Professor Umbridge's instructions dutifully, but in a much more relaxed manner than Professor Umbridge would've liked, because to be honest, she was in favor of as many students reading the article as possible, so they could get a better understanding of what was going on.

She continued to host weekly League of Laurels meetings, where she taught her fellow Slytherins some of the darkest spells she knew. The meetings also turned into a safe place for discussions of the escaped and accused Death Eaters, where some of the students felt comfortable to share tidbits of information that they wouldn't dare advertise to the school. If any of it was particularly serious, Ursula relayed it to Professor Dumbledore in secret.

Ursula had also been writing to Sirius more and more frequently. Professor Umbridge wouldn't dare have anyone intercept her mail, so it was quite safe for her to do so. Agatha was kept exceptionally busy with her repeated trips to Grimmauld Place and to Hadrian, who had made a startling discovery about the mysterious meetings his father was holding.

Every letter she received from Lucius and Narcissa was normal, almost painfully so. She didn't find out anything from their letters, other than that the garden at Malfoy Manor was blossoming beautifully this year and that Narcissa had gone to tea with Hadrian's mother.

The Slytherins who had family members who had been named as Death Eaters were either upset or angry, but they couldn't confront Harry about it because they couldn't admit that they had read the article. That said, they still faced a considerable amount of opposition from the rest of the school. Ursula even had to step in a few times when she saw younger Slytherins whose uncles or cousins or even parents had been named being bullied by older students.