When Sherlock brought up the Vanishing Charm and the mountain of homework piling up, Hermione took it more or less in step.
Her fingertips merely paused for a moment on her slice of bread before she went back to spreading jam, unbothered.
After all, she carried the glory of four consecutive years as top of her year on her shoulders and judging by how things were going, this year, next year, and even through to graduation, the top spot would most likely remain firmly hers.
But those same words landed on Harry and Ron like two hammer blows to the chest.
Both boys' hands seized up around their forks and knives, and even the peas on their plates trembled at the impact.
They exchanged a look, both thinking, unprompted, of that stubborn snail in Transfiguration that absolutely refused to vanish no matter what they did.
They thought of the essay on the Giant Wars for History of Magic, which alone would take days of research just to gather the material.
Then there was the moonstone essay for Potions, no better than the rest, twelve inches of parchment, and just thinking about the length gave them a headache.
And Professor Sprout's essay on dragon dung fertilizer, on top of everything else—
Then they looked at Sherlock, so composed in this very moment, and even Umbridge's earlier ugly expression was flung to the back of their minds in an instant.
Right then, both boys felt a heaviness settle in their stomachs, and the roast potatoes they'd been enjoying moments ago suddenly lost all flavour.
They went back to listlessly poking at the peas on their plates with their forks, just as they had minutes before, the metal tines clinking faintly against the porcelain.
Just then, a flutter of wings sounded from up near the ceiling of the Great Hall.
A tawny owl spread its grey-brown wings, sweot past the brass candelabra hanging from the rafters.
The candle flames guttered in the breeze it stirred up, dim shadows rippling faintly across the stone walls and even the pumpkin juice on the long tables seemed to shiver in sympathy.
The tawny owl swooped down toward the Gryffindor table, and the moment its talons loosened, a scroll of parchment tied with a pink ribbon fluttered down.
The parchment spun once in the air, its edge grazing Sherlock's silver dinner knife with a faint clink, before landing beside his plate.
Sherlock glanced at the garish pink ribbon.
The colour was, unmistakably, identical to the pink cardigan Umbridge habitually wore.
And the Ministry of Magic seal stamped in the upper right corner of the parchment was more than enough to confirm the sender's identity.
Only someone like Umbridge would still cling to her title of "Senior Undersecretary to the Minister" even after becoming a professor at Hogwarts.
Sherlock frowned slightly at the sight but did not open it right away.
Instead, he picked up his napkin and dabbed calmly at the corner of his mouth, the motion was as elegant as if he were attending a formal dinner party.
"Sherlock, don't you think you should read it?" Harry swallowed hard and couldn't help but speak up.
"Then—let me see it?" Hermione said carefully.
Sherlock shook his head. "No need. I already know what it says."
"Go ahead," Sherlock said with a light laugh.
Once he'd given his consent, Hermione nodded at once, her fingers carefully untying the pink ribbon and slowly unrolling the parchment.
In truth, from the moment she'd seen the ribbon, she'd already had her suspicions.
But when her eyes swept across the words, she still couldn't help pressing her lips into a thin line.
Just as she'd expected.
The letter itself wasn't long, its wording harsh as it reiterated Umbridge's order for Sherlock to attend detention.
Worse still, the letter closed with a warning that: "failure to comply will result in more severe disciplinary action, including but not limited to loss of points, suspension, or even expulsion."
Hermione's fingers stilled on that line, her eyes darkening, and she passed the parchment on to Harry.
Harry and Ron huddled together, heads bent, reading it through as quickly as they could, their faces going pale in an instant, hearts leapt into their throats.
In that moment, they were too tense to even move their forks and knives.
Even though Sherlock had already said what he'd said, now that Umbridge was showing such an uncompromising stance, the two of them couldn't help but grow anxious all over again.
Hermione, too, furrowed her brow tightly and looked to Sherlock. "Sherlock, what do we do now?"
But there wasn't a ripple of emotion on Sherlock's face Or anger at the threat and no worry about the punishment.
"It's simple."
As he spoke, he took the parchment back from Harry's hands, and under the astonished gazes of his friends, calmly folded it in half.
Then folded it again.
Then again.
Then riiip!
The sharp, clear sound of tearing paper cut jarringly through the relative quiet of that corner of the Hall.
The air went silent for an instant, and students at several nearby tables glanced over on reflex.
In that moment, nearly every eye in the vicinity was on Sherlock.
But Sherlock seemed entirely oblivious to those stares. He stacked the torn halves of parchment back together, pinched the edge between his fingers, and tore it again with force—riiip!
Riiip!
A few more tearing sounds followed quickly, and the order from the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister and defence Against the Dark Arts professor was reduced to a small heap of pink scraps scattered at the edge of Sherlock's plate.
Next, Sherlock picked up his water goblet and poured a little water over the torn pieces.
The black ink bled and spread in the water, the once-clear writing blurring until it was completely illegible.
Then he used his fork to casually scrape the sodden pulp into the corner of his plate, mixing it in with his leftover peas.
As though it were nothing more than a pile of worthless rubbish.
"There we are."
Sherlock set down his fork. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly to everyone nearby who had their ears pricked, laced with a certain matter-of-fact calm: "Rubbish belongs where rubbish belongs. Harry, dear, would you pass me that pudding?"
Harry and Ron stared at Sherlock, dumbstruck, mouths hanging open wide enough to fit an egg, their own forks and knives had long since dropped onto their plates.
Hermione, startled at first, raised a hand to cover her mouth and when her eyes met Sherlock's, they were shining with a startling brightness.
Beyond the three of them, the young lions nearby had also caught on to what had just happened.
They exchanged excited glances, their eyes were bright with a mix of nervous, determined excitement.
In this moment, it was clear to all of them: the war against Umbridge had just had its first shot fired by their Lion King, in the most direct, most uncompromising way possible.
Sherlock smiled faintly, his gaze drifting, seemingly by chance, toward a particular direction.
In the shadows of the Great Hall's entrance, a short figure in a pink cardigan stood staring intently at that corner of the Gryffindor table.
It was, of course, Dolores Umbridge.
At that very moment, her toad-like eyes were bulging with the sheer intensity of her fury.
Her plump cheeks heaved violently, and the carefully applied pink powder couldn't hide the ashen colour beneath, her lips were trembling with rage.
She had taken in every single one of Sherlock's movements as he destroyed her order, her nails were digging deep into her palms, leaving behind several red marks.
Only, what churned inside her now wasn't only soaring fury, there was also a thread of cold fear, struck right at her most tender spot.
She had heard every word of what Sherlock said earlier, perfectly clearly especially his remarks about how the Ministry would abandon those who failed, which chilled her straight through.
Lies cannot wound. Only the truth cuts like a blade.
Only Umbridge herself knew that reality might genuinely unfold exactly the way Sherlock had described.
And the odds of it were, in fact, quite high.
Even so, she'd sent the owl to Sherlock with a letter, willing to at least give it a try.
After all, she was still a Hogwarts professor, still the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, surely, if she simply presented a firm enough front, Sherlock would surely—
But she'd never imagined that her own bluster, hollow beneath, would be seen through so easily by a fifteen-year-old boy.
In this moment, all she could do was glare at Sherlock from where he sat, her eyes brimming with venom.
Like a serpent lurking in the shadows, quietly waiting for its chance at revenge.
Over the following days, the pressure of O.W.L. year rose like an incoming tide.
One wave hadn't even settled before the next came crashing in.
Every professor seemed to have made some silent pact among themselves, piling on mountains of homework:
Transfiguration continued to demand progress on the Vanishing Charm; Muggle Studies required an essay examining magic from a Muggle perspective; Astronomy called for a star chart; and then there was Ancient Runes—
These assignments ate up every spare moment of their time.
From morning to night, every day, aside from classes, nearly all their time was spent in the library or the common room.
Even dinner became something to be bolted down in a few hurried bites before rushing back to their work.
Still, it wasn't all bad news.
The young lions had initially worried that Sherlock's refusal to attend detention would provoke immediate retaliation from Umbridge.
After all, she hardly seemed like a woman of generous spirit.
And yet, when their second Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson of the week rolled around, it wasn't Umbridge in her pink cardigan who walked through the door, it was Karkaroff cloaked in black robes.
Umbridge seemed to have vanished into thin air. She hadn't so much as appeared in the corridors, and so, naturally, there'd been no opportunity for her to make trouble for Sherlock.
The former headmaster of Durmstrang's teaching style caught the vast majority of the Gryffindors off guard.
He didn't, like Umbridge, begin the class by having everyone pull out Wilbert Slinkhard's Defensive Magical Theory and copy out passages on "identifying situations in which the use of defensive magic is lawful."
Nor did he, like Lockhart, spend most of the lesson simply boasting about his own heroic exploits.
The moment class began, he tapped the blackboard with his wand.
A name appeared instantly.
[Gellert Grindelwald]
What followed was a lecture stretching on nearly into monologue.
Unlike Professor Binns's dry, sleep-inducing History of Magic, what Karkaroff had to say kept the entire class leaning forward, ears pricked.
He spoke of Grindelwald's days as a student at Durmstrang, of how he'd drawn followers to him with a single phrase: "for the greater good" of the unrest he'd stirred up across the wizarding world.
Throughout the telling, his tone carried a complicated undercurrent of emotion as though he were condemning Grindelwald's brutality, while at the same time betraying a faintly unsettling familiarity with it.
Especially when he touched on the extent of Grindelwald's dark magic abilities, his voice would occasionally tremble without his seeming to notice, a flicker of poorly hidden fear was crossing his eyes.
Had it stopped at simply recounting history, that would have been one thing.
What truly caught the Gryffindors off guard was that Karkaroff's teaching didn't stay confined to theory alone.
After finishing his account of Grindelwald's "glorious" exploits (Karkaroff spoke of him, in his own way, with no small amount of admiration), he actually demonstrated something.
Right in front of everyone, he cast a textbook Dark spell.
As everyone knew, Durmstrang had never prohibited the teaching of the Dark Arts to begin with.
One might even say that, among the three great European wizarding schools, it had built its reputation precisely on the Dark Arts.
Even so, the young lions had never imagined that this former headmaster would bring that particular habit with him to Hogwarts.
"Don't look at me with those shocked expressions."
Karkaroff noticed the students' reactions, a flicker of displeasure was crossing his face.
He gave his wand a light flick, and the traces of Dark magic vanished without a trace.
"I'm not asking you to master the Dark Arts. Dumbledore wouldn't allow it, either—"
He paused there, the corner of his mouth curling into a self-mocking smile, a complicated look flashing through his eyes. "But then again, if you don't even know the Dark Arts, how are you meant to defend against them?
Even if Hogwarts won't permit you to learn the Dark Arts, we at least need to understand them."
He drew a deep breath, his chest rose and fell faintly, then raised his voice, addressing the whole classroom: "I'll say it again, this is not a spell I am teaching you to use!
This is so that you can feel its evil nature, feel the way it tries to break down your will!
Think about it, if you meet an enemy on a battlefield who casts this kind of magic at you, and you don't even know what it is, how could you possibly react in time?
Only by having felt its presence yourselves will you understand just what kind of malice your enemy carries!
Only then will you know how to banish it, defend against it, or interrupt the caster, as quickly as possible!"
His voice carried an unmistakable firmness, his eyes swept over every student in the room: "Remember how it feels!
The way this magic corrodes the spirit is unique, it is the hallmark of the Dark Arts!
Understanding it isn't about imitating it, it's about being better equipped to fight it!
Deterrence isn't only a matter of strength, it's also about letting your enemy know that you recognize his methods, and that you are not afraid of them!"
The moment the bell rang for the end of class, Karkaroff didn't linger even a second longer, hurrying out of the classroom as though something were chasing after him.
The young lions immediately burst into chatter, the classroom filling in an instant with excited discussion.
"Honestly, I think he's got a point!" Neville said cautiously. "At least it beats Umbridge just making us copy out of the book!"
"Beats it? It's not even close!" Seamus said, thumping the table excitedly. "This is a hundred times better than Umbridge!"
"Not just better than Umbridge, better than Quirrell, too!" Parvati said, sounding rather thrilled.
"And Lockhart!" Dean chimed in immediately, his tone was dripping with disdain.
"Lockhart actually did have real skill," Lavender argued, "it's just that his teaching style was a bit... unconventional."
As she said it, she glanced over at Ron.
Ron didn't notice her looking his way at all, only murmuring, "Unbelievable. He might genuinely be the best DADA professor we've had, besides Professor Lupin."
"Well, he was the headmaster of Durmstrang, after all—it's only natural he'd be at that level," Hermione said, frowning slightly. "It's just, openly demonstrating Dark magic to us, right in front of everyone—"
Listening to his friends' chatter around him, Harry couldn't help but turn to Sherlock beside him with a trace of curiosity in his voice. "Sherlock, what do you think?"
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