I will always find you

OOTP 19

Ella turned to see Harry hurrying towards her as she stood in the packed entrance hall. Students had come flooding out of the Great Hall, where dinner was still in progress, to see what was going on. Others had crammed themselves onto the marble staircase. The onlookers had formed a great ring, some of them looking shocked, others even frightened. Professor McGonagall was directly opposite Harry and Ella on the other side of the hall; she looked as though what she was watching made her feel faintly sick. 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 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 at 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 Ella could not see but that seemed to be standing at the foot of the stairs.

“No!” she shrieked. “NO! This cannot be happening. . . . It cannot . . . I refuse to accept it!”

“You didn’t realize this was coming?” said a high girlish voice, sounding callously amused, and Harry, moving slightly to his right.

"Umbridge" Ella mouthed at him and he nodded.

“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, and the enjoyment stretched her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney sink, 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 backward and forward on her trunk in paroxysms of grief. Ella heard a sob to her left and looked around. Lavender and Parvati were both crying silently, their arms around each other. Then she heard footsteps. Professor McGonagall had broken away from the spectators, marched straight up to Professor Trelawney and was patting her firmly on the back while withdrawing a large handkerchief from within her robes.

“There, there, Sibyll . . . 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 in 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 alongside her.

“Yours, Professor Dumbledore?” said Umbridge with a singularly unpleasant 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 Ministry of Magic. I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch. I have dismissed her.” Dumbledore continued to smile. He looked down at Professor Trelawney, who was still sobbing and choking on her trunk, and said,