Through The Veil「 The Veil Trilogy Part Ⅱ 」✔

[36] Inquisitorial Swamp

After a painful and almost an hour-long lecture, I was finally dismissed from Umbridge's office with a warning letter dispatched to the Burrow as well. She had threatened to expel me even though I had no evident hand in Fred and George's stunt.

Thank goodness I had already warned Mum and Dad not to take Umbridge's word seriously. Also, it was a relief that Professor McGonagall found out what she was going to do and put a stop to it. 

I can't even begin to explain how grateful I am to her for taking my side and putting Umbridge in her place. She made sure that I would be allowed to attend my NEWT exams as well.

However, I have noticed that in the past few days, the enmity between Umbridge and Professor McGonagall has increased to an alarming extent. Both of them hold powerful positions in the school's faculty so a feud between them could cause a lot of damage on either side.

I just hope the pink toad doesn't use any foul tricks to get rid of our brilliant Queen McGee.

All my hopes went in vain when just a few days later, word spread through the school that Professor McGonagall had been hospitalized in St. Mungo's as she had taken four stunning spells directly to the chest.

We were all so shocked and guess who turned out to be behind that attack?

Headmistress Umbitch, of course...

She had gotten Hagrid captured by the Ministry officials and sent to Azkaban for questioning. And she had to do it all in the dead of the night so that she would get away with it without anyone finding out.

But Professor McGonagall found out and obviously, she stepped in to stop Hagrid from being taken away. And that was when those so-called Ministry officials blasted her with four stunning spells. At her age, that could have been fatal and I seriously doubt that those Ministry people weren't actually from the Ministry but were Umbridge's cronies instead.

I hate that woman...

It seemed as if my reasons for hating her were only going to increase with every passing day. But as we were all occupied with the pressure of the NEWT exams, I forced myself to concentrate on my studies.

I knew Mum would be disappointed if I didn't pass my subjects and Percy would grill me with hours and hours of lecturing. 

Percy... Well, he would grill me too whether we are on talking terms or not.

With the twins no longer in school as well, the days had gotten very dull for me. I only ever spent time with Katie and Angelina because they were my best friends and Roger because we shared a common room and had most of the Prefect duties together. 

We didn't get time for any fun activity because trips to Hogsmeade were also very limited and even there, most of us would be busy studying.

However, I was most worried about how the NEWTs would be designed that year. With Umbridge as headmistress and her love for keeping everything strictly theoretical, I doubt that the exams would follow the same pattern as last year.

We were scheduled for our advanced herbology exam that took a really long time to end and I hope I did well on it. By the time I was returning to the common room, I paused seeing that there was quite an outbreak in the corridor of the headmaster's office.

Being Head Girl, I had to make sure that everything was in order and no one was causing any ruckus. So I told Katie and Angelina that I'd join them later and went to check what all the noise was about.

Much to the lack of surprise, I found the darned Inquisitorial Squad stuck in a swamp.

"Really? And you three couldn't have thought of a better place to camp in?" I asked, seeing them struggle to get out of the slime.