Room 308, Thursday afternoon

[smartestone]

Sometime after her little meeting with Umbridge, Hermione went back to her room and started on a mental to-do list.


1. Call Harry.
With no instructions from Dumbledore not to, Hermione was able to pick up the phone and call the Dursley house. She'd tried calling him before, then realized that the Dursleys kind of didn't want wizarding types calling their house, and pretended to be a neighbor who wanted to yell at Harry for something. Horrifyingly, that got them to give him the phone right away. He couldn't do anything about it, but at least she got to share an omgwtf moment and assure him that she was not letting this happen at two of her schools if she could help it.

2. Call her parents.
Umbridge had mentioned them a little too much for Hermione's comfort, so if they happened to get a little push towards taking that vacation they'd been talking about, well.

3. Call Alec.

4. Write letter to the school board.
It was long and detailed, telling all about what she knew of Umbridge's issues at Hogwarts and all the decrees she'd instated and the scars on Harry's hand. Of course, Hermione totally didn't realize that the school board might not take a sixteen-year-old who disliked her principal seriously, especially with some of those claims.

5. Feed Crookshanks.
Because pets needed to eat.

6. Get back to work on her knitting.
Because this Umbridge had no idea what had been done with the dildo cozies, so it would be a nice surprise when they charmed themselves right into her office.


#6 was what Hermione was working on for the rest of the afternoon. She was terrible at it, but she was determined. And she'd left the door open on purpose.


[Open! Especially if you want to see Hermione bitch like a bitching thing that bitches.]

Comments

[smartestone]

"Oh, so will I," Hermione said, wide-eyed. "And she is a witch. She can use magic right back. I hope people realize that."

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

"And she's been at it a lot longer than we have," Luke said with a nod. He let out a small sigh. "There are going to be a lot of people who have to learn that the hard way, huh? Where did your friend's scars show up? We can find out if she brought the quill that way."

[smartestone]

"His hand," she said. "It cut into his skin while he was writing. I know what'll help it, though. And I should get some, actually, just in case..."

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

Luke winced sympathetically. "Yeah. What excuse did she use for punishing your friend?"

[smartestone]

"He needed to be," Hermione said with an eyeroll. "He witnessed something that proved Voldemort was back. She refused to believe it, and he must have been telling lies."

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

"Wow," Luke said, frowning. "Why didn't she want to face that truth?"

[smartestone]

"She works for the Ministry of Magic, who couldn't admit Voldemort was back because it would mean they had been ignoring the signs of his return for a while. And no one wanted to admit that someone as horrible as Voldemort could return," she explained. "But in order to save face, especially in light of our headmaster, Dumbledore, and his views on the situation, they put Umbridge in the Defense Against the Dark Arts position in order to keep Dumbledore in line and keep the closest eye on what they thought was an army he was starting against the Ministry."

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

Luke looked positively floored. "But stopping it as early as possible is better than losing face!" he exclaimed. "Short-sighted idiots."

"If someone had noticed warning signs, my galaxy wouldn't have exploded spectacularly twenty years ago, I wouldn't be the only Jedi left in my dimension and Alderaan would be a planet still and not an asteroid field."

[smartestone]

"That's exactly it!" she said, a little too overexcited by someone getting it. "They didn't realize that Harry had been telling the truth until we'd taken matters into our own hands, and Ministry workers actually saw Voldemort for their own eyes. By that time someone they'd wrongfully accused of working for him was dead."

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

"That's beyond ridiculous," Luke spat.

[smartestone]

"Since then they've been trying to backpedal, making Harry out to be the hero in the Ministry-approved paper. Which he is, but they just spent the last year slandering him," Hermione said. "It's a horrible situation and now she's here."

The mental grrrrrr might have been a little obvious.

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

"Fantastic," Luke said flatly. "At least we know what we're in for. Do you think Hades...never mind. He'll probably be selling popcorn, huh?"