Purple Rain.

Chapter Fifty-Seven.

Two weeks after The Quibbler had been banned, (Y/n)'s walk alone had been interrupted by a woman's scream. She hurried off towards the entrance hall, believing she as a prefect would need to break up a fight.
This had not been the case.
Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the entrance hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad. Her hair was sticking up on the end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other; her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart by the seams. Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upside down; it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her. Professor Trelawney was staring, apparently terrified, at something (Y/n) could not see from her place on the stairs.

"No!" Professor Trelawney shrieked. "NO! This cannot be happening... It cannot... I refuse to accept it!"
(Y/n) rushed down the stairs, nearly bumping into Harry in the process. She worked her way through the crowd. Upon reaching Professor Trelawney, she took a handkerchief out of her blazer's breast pocket.

"You didn't realize this was coming?" said Umbridge's high girlish voice, sounding callously amused. 'Incapable though you are of predicting even tomorrow's weather, you must surely have realized that your pitiful performance during my inspections, and lack of any improvement, would make it inevitable you would be sacked?"

"You c-can't!" howled Professor Trelawney, tears streaming down her face from behind her enormous lenses, "you c-can't sack me! I've b-been here sixteen years! H-Hogwarts is m-my h-home!" 

"It was your home," said Professor Umbridge, enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney, sobbing uncontrollably, onto one of her trunks, "until an hour ago, when the Minister of Magic countersigned the order for your dismissal. Now kindly remove yourself from this hall. You are embarrassing us."
But she stood and watched with an expression of gloating enjoyment as Professor Trelawney shuddered and moaned, rocking backwards and forward on her trunk in paroxysms of grief. (Y/n)'s eyes teared up with the same sadness Lavender and Parvati held as they cried, their arms around one another. She crouched down, comforting her favourite teacher. She then looked to Professor McGonagall, who had broken away from the spectators and marched straight over to her and Professor Trelawney. Professor McGonagall patted Professor Trelawney's back firmly, offering (Y/n)'s handkerchief down to her.

"There, there, Sybill... Calm down... Blow your nose on this... It's not as bad as you think, now... You are not going to have to leave Hogwarts."

"Oh really, Professor McGonagall?" said Umbridge in a deadly voice, taking a few steps forward. "And your authority for that statement is...?"

"That would be mine," said a deep voice.

The oak front doors had swung open. Students beside them scuttled out of the way as Dumbledore appeared at the entrance. There was something impressive about the sight of him framed in the doorway against an oddly misty night. Leaving the doors wide behind him, he strode forward through the circle of onlookers toward the place where Professor Trelawney sat, tearstained and trembling, upon her trunk, Professor McGonagall and (Y/n) beside her.

"Yours, Professor Dumbledore?" said Umbridge with a singularly unpleasantly little laugh. "I'm afraid you do not understand the position. I have here—" she pulled a parchment scroll from within her robes, "—an Order of Dismissal signed by myself and the Minister of Magic. under the terms of Educational Decree Number Twenty-three, the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts has the power to inspect, place upon probation, and sack any teacher she— that is to say, I— feel is not performing up to the standard required by the Minister of Magic. I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch. I have dismissed her."