Never Is Our Always

"May I introduce you? This is Firenze." 5

(Minnie pov) (March)

"And, so, anyway-" suddenly, we heard a woman scream from somewhere.

The screams were indeed coming from the Entrance Hall; they grew louder as we raced into the 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 on to the marble staircase.

Professor McGonagall 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.

"No!l she shrieked. "NO! This cannot be happening... it cannot... I retuse to accept it!"

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

"You c-can't!" Professor Trelawney howled, 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," Professor Umbridge said, and I was revolted to see the enjoyment stretching her toadlike face as she watched Professor Trelawney sink, sobbing uncontrollably, on to one of her trunks, "until an hour ago, when the Minister for Magic countersigned your Order of 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 forwards on her trunk in paroxysms of grief.

Then I 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, 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?" Umbridge said 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 oaken front doors had swung open. Students beside them scuttled out of the way as Dumbledore appeared in the entrance. What he had been doing out in the grounds I could not imagine, but there was something impressive about the sight of him framed in the doorway against an oddly misty night. Leaving the doors wide open behind him he strode forwards through the circle of onlookers towards Professor Trelawney, tear-stained and trembling, on her trunk, Professor McGonagall alongside her.

"Yours, Professor Dumbledore?" Umbridge said, 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 for 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 to the standards required by the Ministry of Magic. I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch. I have dismissed her."