Detention with Dolores
That night Harry went to the DADA teacher office. He’d been there before but each year it looked very different due to the changing teachers.
He was expecting the hallways to be empty apart from Filch and Mrs. Norris. He was wrong. As he was walking to Umbridge’s office, dreading whatever punishment he’d be getting, he saw another figure coming from the other direction. Whoever that was, they were going to the same place Harry was.
It was Percy. Turns out their hair isn’t the only thing that’s similar.
“Hey,” Harry said. “Did you get detention, too?”
“Yep,” replied Percy. “Only the first day and I’m already in trouble. This has got to be a record or something.”
Harry laughed. “You’re right. What did you do?”
“She told me to demonstrate my powers and I did that. She did not like it.” Percy said.
“What is your power?” Harry asked.
“I can manipulate water,” said Percy. “I took the water from a jug on her table and made a little personal rain cloud for the Professor.”
“You’ve got some nerve, Percy,” said Harry. He opened the door to Umbridge’s office.
“Welcome, dearies,” came a sickly sweet voice from inside.
They went in and were told to sit down on the two chairs near a table in the corner. Umbridge gave them both a piece of parchment and an unusual quill each.
“What about ink?” Harry asked, confused.
“Oh, you’ll find you don’t need any of that,” said Umbridge. “Mr. Potter, you must write ‘I must not tell lies’. And Mr. Jackson, you must write ‘I must not be a nuisance’.”
“How do you spell nuisance?” Percy asked. He sounded genuinely confused.
“Are you stupid, child?” Umbridge’s voice was completely devoid of any sweetness whatsoever.
“No,” said Percy. “I’m dyslexic.”
“Oh right,” said Umbridge. “I forgot.”
She took a normal quill, dipped it in ink, and wrote ‘nuisance’ on it. She gave it to Percy.
“Why have you not started yet?” she asked Harry, who had been distracted by this whole thing.
“Right,” he said and started to write. He wasn’t expecting the quill to work but it did. There was red ink spewing from it. Harry’s hand started bleeding. He let out an audible gasp. He saw Percy flinch as well.
Umbridge simply smiled at their discomfort. Harry realized that the ink was actually his own blood. The wound closed as fast as it had opened. He slowly started to react less which each line written.
Percy stopped reacting completely after a few lines. He was not very good at using a quill, though. He stopped every few minutes to adjust his grip on the feather. He seemed to have never used one before.
Maybe they use pens in America, Harry thought. But then he remembered that Percy didn’t go to a magic school. Percy went to camp and Harry was pretty sure that you don’t write much at camp.
After a few hours (it seemed like years to the raven haired boys) Umbridge told then to get up. She inspected their hands. They were red but had no visible scars.
“Well,” she said. “It’s a start, we’ll need to let the message sink in some more tomorrow.”
The boys left quickly.
“How is this legal?” Percy asked Harry. “Are punishments here always like this?”
“Each teacher has different punishments,” Harry explained. “This one is just very extreme.”
They reached a fork in a staircase and bid goodbye to each other.
Harry went back to the Gryffindor common room and went up to bed. He thought about what Percy said. There was no way that it was legal to make your students cut themselves with magic quills.
Percy went to the Hufflepuff common room and saw Hazel sitting by the fire. She was waiting for him to come back. Will was there too, he was talking to some random kids. The half-bloods were going to sneak out at midnight and it was already 11 o’clock.