Harry Potter One Shots (Vol. I)

In The Face Of Adversity (Terry Boot)

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was a magical place. It was the place I went spent almost nine months of the year in, it was where I felt as if I belonged. Simply put, Hogwarts was home. Arriving at the school five years ago had opened my eyes to a world of literal magic that I had never seen before and had quickly become my haven. Every year since my first was better and better.

Or rather they had been better and better. This year however was a stark disappointment and that was all because of a pink wearing toad that had taken the disguise of the new Defence against the Dark Arts teacher. Umbitch.

She was a pain, a pain that had made it her personal mission to ruin the year. She had set out to take everything good about the school and eradicate it. She had even ousted Dumbledore from the school. And now the bitch was had the audacity to stand above an entire hall full of students that she was inflicting this medieval torture upon as if she had the moral high ground.

I glared mutinously up at her as she stood smirking evilly down at us. We were all sat, row by row, clutching a quill in our hands. Not just any quill though. A blood quill. We were all being punished for being members of Dumbledore's Army. We were being punished for being in a club of all things! Here we were, in a school, and we were being punished for learning.

The ministry's paranoia was certainly extreme.

I screwed my eyes shut in pain as I continued to write my lines, the inscription etching itself deeper into my skin with each stroke of my quill. How many more lines did I have left?

If you really gave this entire thing some thought, you'd realise that this was all Umbridge's fault. The club had been set up for the purpose of learning everything that she refused to teach us. If she had done her job, as a teacher, then we wouldn't have thought it necessary to go behind her back. If she had actually taught us then there would have been no reason for the DA to have been formed. Therefore, this was all her fault.

She gave a small cough, snapping me out of my musings. We all looked up at her, "I believe that will be all for tonight."

Slowly people started to leave the great hall one by one. I rose from my chair and cast a glance down at my hand. The wound was deep but because it had been magically inflicted it was already beginning to heal. I stretched my hand slightly and whimpered at the pain as I reopened the wound. Letting out a stuttering breath I turned and followed my fellow members of the DA out of the hall.

I kept my head down as I walked in the direction of the common room. Against my will I could feel the tears well up in my eyes and no matter how hard I tried to stop them from falling, one did. It raced down my cheek and I raised my uninjured hand quickly to wipe it clean. That woman was not worth it.

Padding up the stairs to Ravenclaw Tower I made my way through the portrait to be greeted with absolute silence. The common room was full but for once there was no whispered words from the first years who were too scared to talk aloud in case they disturbed some of the older students and no raucous conversations from the elder kids either.

Someone had taken all of the life out of the students and that someone was a toad with a fetish for all things pink. It was as if there was an invisible line keeping the first years away from the older students. They were sat on almost opposite sides of the common room.

The first years were looking at all of us weirdly. But why shouldn't they have been?

It was definitely a strange sight to see. We were sat, some of us clutching our hands in pain and others glaring seemingly into absolute nothingness. Letting out a small sigh, I winced at a twinge of pain in my left hand and cradled it against my chest. How long would this take to heal properly?