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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8180 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the story. Thank you for reading along!
Chapter Thirty-Six—Victory
“Albus Dumbledore is henceforth stripped of the Headmastership of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
There was a part of Dolores that she thought would probably carry those words all her life. And a part of her that would always remember the frozen, incredulous look on Dumbledore’s face, as he looked about for someone to save him, or a way to cast the Imperius Curse on them, or the Elder Wand soaring towards his hand.
Something.
Not this time, old man, Dolores thought, and the satisfaction pounded in her like an iron gong being struck. This is the point where you finally have to admit that you made a mistake, and you can’t count on people you charmed to show up and bail out your arse.
“But that leaves the school without a Headmaster,” said Dumbledore suddenly, elevating his chin as if he believed that he had found his way out of this difficulty. He was shaking his head and smiling a little. “You can’t do that. Hogwarts must always have a Headmaster. It’s in the Charter.”
“And there will be one,” said Madam Greengrass, thumping her cane on the floor so hard that Dolores thought the chairs in the gallery with her shook. “The Charter also says that the Deputy Headmistress or Headmaster assumes the office immediately upon—”
“The death of the old one,” Dumbledore interrupted. Dolores cocked her head. She thought there was something in his voice, something thick and powdery-dry. Desperation? “I am not dead!”
“You are dead to your office,” said Madam Greengrass, and from the way she seemed to be withholding an urge to cackle, Dolores could imagine how very much she relished saying those words. “You repeatedly violated the sanctions that this body imposed on you. Do you imagine, Albus, that any member of the Hogwarts teaching body would be allowed to get away with defying us for so long?”
The scorn in those words made Dolores blink in admiration. She would like to learn how to say them like that, she thought. Not even withering, simply charring, passing over the ground of Dumbledore’s objections and leaving nothing behind.
“You do not have the authority to command—”
“Yes, I do,” Madam Greengrass said. “Invested in me by the Wizengamot, not you, Albus. I see why you’re having a bit of a hard time coping with it. But I want you to know that the school will be in good hands.” She turned her head. “Minerva?”
Dolores jumped. She hadn’t realized anyone else was in the room on the level of the witness chairs. But, of course, she’d been caught up in the interplay between Dumbledore and the Wizengamot, and the fact that Harry sometimes tensed next to her and she needed to shift towards him to calm him down. It made sense that she wouldn’t have seen someone else enter.
The woman who walked towards the front looked older than Dolores remembered. Of course, she’d been at the school for decades now. She wore plain black robes other than a slight sheen of scarlet and gold around the collar.
“Is that Minerva McGonagall?” Harry asked, soft enough not to be heard even as the woman passed right in front of them.
“It is,” Dolores said, passing into teaching mode despite her shock. “Tell me what you know about her.”
“She’s Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts and Head of Gryffindor House,” Harry said at once. “She teaches Transfiguration.” He named the positions in order of their power, just as she’d taught him. Then he paused. “If she becomes Headmistress, they’ll have to find someone else to teach Transfiguration, won’t they?”
Dolores nodded, rapt as she watched McGonagall halt in front of Madam Greengrass and nod to her. She remembered the woman as sinfully loyal to Dumbledore. It was possible that she would still try to enact some of his policies even now that he was gone, and that would be a problem. Dolores wouldn’t let Harry attend Hogwarts if he was going to be ruled by Dumbledore’s proxy.
But then Dolores saw the way McGonagall averted her face a little from Dumbledore, and spoke only to the Wizengamot members who questioned her. At one point, Dumbledore leaned forwards as if he thought he could reach out and touch her sleeve even with everyone watching. McGonagall promptly moved a step further away.
Dolores nodded and listened to the words.
Madam Greengrass was asking McGonagall if she understood the ramifications of taking over the school, and that they included not having any contact with “the former Headmaster” except under supervision by the Wizengamot. McGonagall nodded. She kept her head turned away from Dumbledore when he stepped deliberately to the side, when he spoke her name softly, and when he reached out again.
At that point, the Aurors interfered, making Dolores relax.
“I don’t understand,” Harry muttered to her, and Dolores leaned down. She could always ask Ernest if she could view his memory of the conversation later. “Why does he keep doing that when he has to know that he lost?”
“Do you think he knows he’s lost?”
Harry frowned and studied Dumbledore a minute. Then he said, “He doesn’t, does he? Why?”
Dolores had to smile, although she kept her own head bowed so that Dumbledore wouldn’t see it and accuse her of interfering in the trial somehow. Of course Harry wouldn’t understand why she was smiling. “I think, if you win often enough and for long enough, it can be hard to realize you aren’t anymore.”
“But that’s stupid.”
“What have I told you about using such poor language, Harry?”
“Sorry, Miss Dolores. I mean it’s irrational.”
Dolores shrugged as she watched the Wizengamot wrapping up the last of the trial, instructing Dumbledore as to the date that he had to move out of Hogwarts. “It’s happened for Dumbledore for years. Decades. He had people listening to him in the last war even though he never fought except through vigilante means, and it had already been thirty-five years since his defeat of Grindelwald. His reputation was never allowed to die.”
“Now?”
Dolores permitted herself a thin smile as she watched Dumbledore being escorted out of the courtroom by Aurors. “Now, I think it is suitably tarnished, if not dead.”
Dumbledore did pause in the doorway to glare at her. Dolores only raised a single eyebrow before she turned away, one hand poised over Harry’s shoulder. Harry smiled at her and walked beside her, not turning to look back himself.
Good. Dolores saw no reason to let Dumbledore attempt any last-minute Legilimency on her ward.
*
“What are you going to do now that you have the most powerful wand in the world?”
Harry had said that to her before he went to sleep, dozing off in his bed almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Dolores could understand that. Today had been a wonderful release of tension for him, ensuring that when he went to Hogwarts, he could enjoy the experience without Dumbledore plaguing him.
Or Snape, either, Dolores thought, and lifted her head to the stars. She was sitting on top of the Potter house’s short turret, which had no shelters over it except a thin, shimmering dome that would turn aside gentle rain. Dolores had cast Warming Charms over her robes before she ventured up here, because she wasn’t irrational. And the Elder Wand lay in her hand now, as she turned it over and over.
Truly, it might have been tempting if it had somehow come into her grasp before she found Harry. Then she would have wanted to carve a path to power.
But now, she had learned how much better it was when someone’s eyes weren’t fixed on her at all times, or when people saw her as an accessory to someone else powerful. Besides, the Elder Wand could not force its possessor to go to war. Dumbledore had held it in peace for years.
And Dolores prided herself on having both more self-control and less of a need to prove herself than the famous Albus Dumbledore.
The wand resonated in her grasp as if dissatisfied with that. Dolores looked at it and gave the equivalent of a mental shrug.
The wand could be sulky all it liked. Dolores was still not going to use it.
*
Dolores smiled as she read over the letter from McGonagall. It hadn’t arrived until more than a week after Dumbledore’s trial, and it was written cautiously. Obviously McGonagall wanted Harry at Hogwarts, but she was hardly going to scold Dolores into sending him. She made sure Dolores and Harry knew he was welcome, instead.
“I think you were right.”
Sirius stood in the dining room doorway. Lately, he had mostly avoided having meals alone with her, but Lupin was in his room after a hard full moon night and Harry was flying. Dolores laid down the letter. “Which of the many things I am right about are you referring to?”
Sirius came in and sat down at the table. One of the house-elves appeared with butter and bread for him. Sirius nodded thanks instead of saying it the way he usually did, broke off a piece of the bread, and dipped it in the melted butter. By this point, Dolores was watching closely. It wasn’t like Sirius to act like this.
Sirius swallowed and said, “You were right that Harry couldn’t go to school the way he would have under Dumbledore.”
“No.”
“And I think Minerva will be a better Headmistress anyway,” Sirius went on, almost rambling to himself. He was building up to something else, Dolores was sure, something he wanted to ask or tell. She raised her eyebrow politely and folded her arms.
Sirius sighed and said to the wall or the door more than to her, “He’s going to be Slytherin.”
“Yes.”
“I really did think there was a chance…” Sirius trailed off, and broke and dipped his bread again. “Probably not for Gryffindor—maybe that got destroyed the minute you picked him up from the Dursleys—but maybe for Ravenclaw.”
“Harry does like learning,” Dolores said, and when Sirius looked at her hopefully, had to explain something she’d thought he would have noticed by now. “But he doesn’t love learning for its own sake. What he reads about are methods to exploit what he already knows. He wants to know political history to learn what he should and shouldn’t do in politics. He wants to know spells so he can win a duel.”
“And he wanted Dumbledore gone so he can go to school and manipulate people.”
“He would not have held such resentment against Dumbledore if he had not abandoned him with abusive Muggles.”
Sirius dropped his eyes and sat without saying anything for long minutes. Dolores turned back to McGonagall’s letter. She would write a genuinely polite answer to it. The only thing she absolutely insisted on was that McGonagall report any attempt by Dumbledore to get in contact with Harry to her immediately.
“That really is the crux of everything, isn’t it?” Sirius said softly, tapping his fingers next to his plate. A house-elf appeared, looked around, squeaked, and left again. Sirius didn’t seem to notice. “If Dumbledore hadn’t left Harry there, nothing else would have happened.”
Dolores shook her head. “I would not have encountered him. Harry would not care as much about rescuing Muggleborn children from abusive families and would probably be much more Gryffindor. Of course, it would depend on who had had the raising of him.”
Sirius braced himself and lifted his head. “That could have been me.”
“It could have been.” Dolores said nothing else. She had never interfered or inquired what Sirius was telling Harry about why he had rushed off after the Potters died. It was between them, and Harry was the one who would make his peace with it and forgive Sirius, or not.
“But it wasn’t,” Sirius finally said, and stood as though his bones hurt him. “He’ll go to Hogwarts. And he’ll change the world.”
Dolores smiled at him. “Yes, he will. For the better.” And she would find some means to deal with the Horcrux, as she had dealt with the Elder Wand. That knowledge would become a weapon for Harry, not against him.
Sirius finally smiled back. “I think you’re right,” he repeated, and left her.
*
“You’ll let me know if you left anything behind or if you want anything sent to you.”
Harry looked away from the Hogwarts Express, which he had been staring at as if hypnotized, and smiled at her. “Careful, Miss Dolores. Or someone is going to start thinking of you as motherly.”
Dolores narrowed her eyes, but over the last few months, as Harry prepared for Hogwarts, it had largely lost its effect. Dolores thought that was probably because Harry knew one of the enemies he couldn’t have hoped to combat on his own was gone and his school experience would be more peaceful.
Two enemies, actually. Snape had moved into his new apothecary at last, and was, by all reports, terrorizing most of his customers and having a grand time of it.
“I know who you are,” Harry said softly, and Dolores snapped her gaze back to him. “I’ve always known who you are.”
“That right,” said Dolores, a little unnerved by the look in those green eyes. “Dolores Umbridge, your guardian.”
Harry tilted his head at her and stepped close enough that Dolores knew no one else would be able to hear him beyond the chatter and the shouts and the hooting of owls surrounding them. “You were the one who wanted to use me,” he murmured. “You were raising me, at one point, so that you could take power in the wizarding world and no one would ever suspect you.”
Dolores said nothing, and found she couldn’t move. But Harry wouldn’t have been irrational enough to cast a spell in front of other people, where they could see and might realize he had no Trace on his wand. She knew it was simply the tension in her own muscles, the gleam in Harry’s eyes, that held her still.
“I don’t know when exactly that changed,” Harry went on, thoughtfully. “Maybe when you needed to take down Lucius Malfoy, or when Dumbledore started becoming more of a threat. But I know it changed.”
Dolores found her voice. “Do you?” Harry was not Sirius, to think that simple reassurances were sincere ones.
“Yes. Of course I do.” Harry looked up at her and smiled. The expression wasn’t a child’s, wasn’t a politician’s. Dolores had no idea who Harry was, at that moment. “I know that you would have given up at some point if all you cared about was power. It was too difficult to get it. You would have found some other way. Or you would have kept me but kept crawling up in the Ministry. Sirius was there. He could have taken care of me.”
Dolores said nothing. In truth, it had been years since she thought about her old ambitions of rising in the Ministry. She suspected that she might think about them now that Harry would be at school much of the time—but achieving the position of assistant to the Minister, as she had once wished, seemed boring now. What challenges could that position offer her that raising Harry couldn’t? It wouldn’t even be as exciting to govern behind the scenes as it would be to stand behind Harry and pretend she was harmless and maternal.
Of course, that assumed Harry was going to let her keep seeming that way instead of exposing her.
“You didn’t do that.” Harry reached out and caught her hand, holding it in a grip so firm that Dolores began to believe, at last. “You kept me and you guarded me and you trained me. You weren’t always kind. But I—” Harry paused, and the steam from the Express billowed around him. Dolores waited. She knew the train would leave soon, but nothing had ever seemed less important.
“I prefer the person I am now,” Harry said at last, so softly that Dolores could barely hear him. “I want to be who I am. And you’re the one who made me that way.”
He flung his arms around Dolores and held tight. And he did add, in a whisper, “That means that I won’t let you get away with using the Elder Wand stupidly—excuse me, irrationally—or doing something based on blood purity. But I don’t think you would do that anyway. You’re too smart.”
He pulled back and smiled at her. “Good-bye, Miss Dolores.”
The train whistle blew, which meant he had to leave. Dolores did nothing but bow her head and kiss him on both cheeks, and wave when he hauled his Lightened trunk onto the train and smiled again at her.
As the Express pulled away, Dolores felt her face break out into a helpless smile.
I’m hardly the only person who’s going to bow my head to him.
*
She received a letter that night, carried by Harry’s new, magnificent snowy owl, and containing only a single word.
Slytherin.
Dolores toasted the air with her wineglass. She had thought about pulling out her repaired scrying bowl to watch the Sorting, but she trusted Harry enough to know he would tell her the truth. It was other people she would have to use that thing to watch.
Harry was off and flying now. To have played some part in raising him to the point where he could take wing…
There were certain words she could never say. That she might never be able to say.
But that she was grateful to be part of his life?
Yes. Oh, yes.
The End.
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The Daring Win