B.Q. Book Two: Black Princess Ascendant

Chapter 21: Unwitting, and Unwilling, Allies

Disclaimer: Did Umbridge spend so much time looking for reasons in the present to discredit Dumbledore when his actions in book 1 alone would be sufficient to have him and half the faculty arrested?

If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.

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Dolores tapped her quill impatiently as she perused her notes.

For the past couple of weeks, ever since the the final course reviews – bar one – had been sent out, she had looked for other ways to undermine Dumbledore's authority.

The inspections, which she thought would be the perfect strategy, had unfortunately proven less useful than expected.

Oh, she had made some progress in her secondary goal, ridding the castle of undesirables, but that had translated into little she could use against the man himself.

Snape, for instance, was just as abhorrent an individual as she had been told, treating everyone as if they were something he would wipe off his boots.

It was one thing for him to be rude to a bunch of mudbloods, but he forgot his own station when he directed his ire at the Purebloods in his class, Hufflepuffs though they may have been.

The Halfblood treating his betters in such a callous manner had incensed her, and even had he not been on her list of targets for being one of Dumbledore's charity cases, she would have done what she could to throw him out then and there.

The tenuousness of her own position meant she was unable to do as she would with him directly, but given his apparent temperament and the information she had charmed out of Burbage and Sinistra, probation would accomplish the same task, just over a longer time frame.

Her next target, of course, was Flitwick; half-breeds had no business teaching human children, and if she were in charge, that goblin wouldn't even be allowed to wield a wand as if he were a real wizard.

Unfortunately, the creature was a decent teacher – better by far than either Potter, a known sycophant of Dumbledore's, or that fraud Trelawney – so while she would keep an eye on him, her current authority did not give her the reach to strike out at him.

The same was true of McGonagall, the witch much too loyal to the headmaster to be worth keeping, especially in a position of importance like Deputy Headmistress.

Considering the backlash Cornelius was still facing after the Azkaban guards rebelled and stole away all the Dementors and high-security prisoners, likely in a misguided attempt to depose the rightful Minister of Magic, the lack of progress she was currently facing rankled.

Still, while she could not lash out at those oh-so-deserving targets yet, she still had a few options she could put into play in the meantime.

A quick addendum to the original Educational Decree that made her the Curriculum Inspector submitted a few days earlier had expanded her oversight to include reviewing how the school was run during times of danger or turmoil; over the past month of keeping her eyes open, listening to the rumors of the staff, and reading the transcripts generated by a few enchanted quills linked to listening charms she had placed in the ladies' lavatories, she had been astonished at just how lax the Hogwarts faculty seemed to have taken internal security and had promptly forwarded the details to the DME and Cornelius.