Fighting Fate // Mattheo Riddle ♣️

Chapter Twenty-Seven - Leverage

Word Count: 3,148.

Warnings: None.

Class had started early the next morning, the students of Hogwarts finding themselves back in the repetitive schedule of school. The hour after hour of classwork and then the expected events of the evening before they would do it all over again.

That was what I found myself feeling the next week. There were many different words that you could use to describe it, but the one that I thought fit it best was that I was quite honestly, bored.

I had never been bored in Hogwarts and in turn it was never a word that I would use to describe the school but recently going to class had become a routine that I couldn't seem to escape.

My mind, although distracted by the new rules implemented by Umbridge and the ever darkening atmosphere of the school, seemed to be clear. In other words, I hadn't seen any dead people walking around.

Not that my mother was dead anymore. That was something I was still getting used to saying. My mother was alive. I had received many letters from her, as I had from both my father and Moony, but I had not seen my mother since Christmas, and it was starting to get to me. She was here, alive, and I was stuck learning about enchantments in a school being run by the Ministry.

Dumbledore was nowhere to be seen and when he was, it was only for a few moments at a time. A flash of his grey hair there and a blow of his purple cloak here. Never for long and never to stay.

After what Moody had said to me the night I arrived back at Grimmauld Place for Christmas, I found myself more interested in the man than I had ever been since starting at Hogwarts five years ago.

He must have had known Credence, or Aurelius as Made-Eye had named him and then maybe Dumbledore would be able to tell me if what I am is the monster that Credence had been painted to be or if I was something different entirely.

This need to speak to the Headmaster is what had me walking through the corridors of Hogwarts by myself on the way to his office at the top of the school. I didn't get very far.

"Lyra!" a voice called me from behind, turning my gaze to the group of people fast approaching my position.

"Pansy?" I asked, stopping myself.

It wasn't just Pansy. It was everyone. Mattheo, Draco, Blaise, Theo. They were all with her, all sharing the same worried look. Draco and Mattheo more than the others.

"I can't find her," Pansy told me frantically. There was something in her hand.

"Can't find who?" I asked the girl.

"I can't find –"

Her sentence was cut off by the sound of a ladder hitting tile. Turning, I found that Filch was climbing the rickety wooden thing, another one of Umbridge's Educational Decrees in hand. It read.

BY ORDER OF THE HIGH INQUISITOR OF HOGWARTS

Teachers are hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subject they are paid to teach.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-Six

Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge, High Inquisitor.

"What a normal middle name for such an odd woman," I commented, turning back to Pansy. She didn't acknowledge my words, instead rushing through hers.

"I can't find Nika," she told me quickly.