Chapter 4
Distribution
“Orla, have you finished the layout for page three?” Mandy called out as she sliced piece of typing paper apart with a scalpel-like cutting tool.
“Nearly,” the younger girl told her as she stifled a yawn.
It was almost morning, and the paper’s final layout still wasn’t finished. If they had wanted to have any hope of sending the original copy to Mandy’s brother in London to be printed, they would probably have to work all through today as well.
The weekdays had been not nearly as busy as the past couple of days had been. The three fifth-year girls wrote two more stories each, even needing Stewart and Orla to contribute their own writings as well. But aside from listing some more story ideas in the margins of their composition books, no strenuous work had been done on the new newspaper. This was not a mistake they would make in their next issue.
The fifth-year girls’ dormitory had been converted into their central news office over the course of the weekend. Stewart had been able to join in the work (there was not a girl in Ravenclaw who did not know how to lift the boy-blocking charms on the girls’ staircases) without drawing attention when he snuck upstairs, Orla was faking sick with a bundle of dirty robes under her covers as her alibi, and with their O.W.L.s coming up in a matter of weeks, no one thought anything of the fifth-year girls not coming out for days on end.
The entire process had been draining: both physically and emotionally. First was the actual writing the stories, in addition to research and looking over their shoulders at all time. Then, they had needed to get their hands on a typewriter, smuggling it out of the Muggle Studies classroom without Professor Burbage seeing them. At The Daily Prophet, they had dozens of typewriter: magically charmed ones that would type out stories in no time at all without making a single mistake. The Ravenclaw staff, however, was limited to only one, which they would have to use the Muggle way; meaning lots of time, lots of typos, and sore fingers.
After that came the process of creating the layout, the single copy that Mandy’s brother would use to create the copies on his university’s printing press. This was the part that took longer than anything else. Cutting, planning, pasting, re-planning, re-pasting, and starting all over again. The whole process went through a shocking amount of paper for such a small end product.
But when it was finally done, when the staff were all covered in paste, paper bits, and cuts, the end product was perfect: well worth the time and lack of sleep that had gone into making it. The baby was crisp, lined over near-pure white, the paper not yet having the chance to age. Stories, photographs (Lisa wonder whether or not the pictures would still move in the new prints), bylines; it looked every part the way a true newspaper should.
Soon enough, Lisa became aware of several sets of eyes looking over her shoulder, scanning over the numerous stories. The title spread over the front page in bold ink calligraphy: The Fourth Estate. Mandy had come up with the name. It was a Muggle term she had learned from her brother. It came from the fact that most Muggle democracies contained three branches of government, but that a free press was also needed to make sure the government was working to serve the people, making it the ‘fourth estate’ of the government. Lisa liked this concept. It seemed like quite an enlightened perspective, she thought, yet it was one that the wizarding world had yet to embrace.
It was a bit odd, considering how those in charge of wizarding society considered Muggles to be some primitive creatures still dragging their knuckles and people to associate for the phrase, ‘Bless them’.
One of the girl’s hands stretched over Lisa’s shoulder to trace her finger along the byline giving her credit for writing the story. No one used their real names to sign their stories; that would have just been idiotic. Lisa was Mr. A, Morag was Mr. E, Mandy was Mr. I, Orla was Mr. O, and Stewart was Mr. U. It didn’t really matter to them that the rest of the school knew who they were. They all knew who one another was, and that was enough.
And then, before anyone was really ready to have it taken away, Mandy snatched the paper out of Lisa’s. “Now we send it off!”
Everyone else in the room groaned, but Mandy was already pacing the floor, working out the fine details of the next phase of the plan. She didn’t even seem to notice the others there.
“Two hundred copies will be more than enough,” she said. “People can share. Having too many would be dangerous anyway.”
“Will an owl be able to carry all those?” Stewart asked her, mentally calculating how much all the copies would weigh.
“It won’t be that heavy,” Mandy assured him as she tucked the layout into a book bag. “We’re hardly circulating throughout the whole country.”
An Undetectable Extension Charm had already been cast on the bag so the two hundred copies of The Fourth Estate could actually fit inside.
“Will he even need magic to fill the bag up, though?” Lisa asked.
“No,” Mandy told them. “I’ve made a point of learning which spells can be used by people without magic as well.”
Lisa was sure that she could have found at least a dozen other potential problems with this plan, but she didn’t have time to point any of them out before Mandy dropped the layout into the book bag and nearly shoved the waiting owl out the window. There was most definitely no going back now.
On a Friday afternoon, most of the students of Hogwarts were relaxed and thinking nothing of schoolwork. Lisa Turpin, Morag MacDougal, and Mandy Brocklehurst, however, were sitting up in their bedroom, waiting for a certain owl to arrive with a certain book bag for them. They had been doing this for days now. The three older girls had only just now succeeded in getting the junior members of their staff to relax and quit pacing the floors of the fifth-year dormitory. Besides, if those two spent too much time in their room, someone would eventually begin to notice.
Especially since not everyone who lived in this bedroom was among the inner circle of The Fourth Estate. The girls were given a very strong reminder of this when their bedroom door was thrown open with a bang.
“Padma!” Lisa found herself involuntarily gasping in the manner that most people might scream.
The entire cast of Ravenclaw girls was surprised; no one in their room could confidently say that they had seen their fifth-year prefect late at night for more than a few moments, even before the Christmas holidays. It was how they had been able to write a newspaper in this room without anyone noticing. And certainly they were not going to ask Padma where she had been so late every night, even without the secrecy of The Fourth Estate. The four girls all got along well enough, but they were hardly touchy-feely bestest friends. They just lived together.
All the same, no one was going to allow the prefect to know what was going on in their room when she wasn’t there.
“Hello, Padma,” Mandy and Morag said, trying to keep their tones far calmer than Lisa had been.
Padma waved to her roommates, breathing a slight, exhausted groan. She made her way straight to her bed and dropped face-first onto the covers, legs dangling over the edge and shoes and socks still on her feet.
Padma had been coming to bed increasingly later and later for many nights now, and it was clearly affecting me. As loosely-defined journalists, the girls had to become increasingly observant. They had been watching her in class, and it had been becoming a battle for the girl to stay awake through the day, except for in Defense Against the Dark Arts, where she and the rest of the boys were just as vigorous in their campaign against Umbridge as ever. Still, most every night, she would come back to the dormitory and crash onto her bed, her roommate bearing witness to all of it.
“Should we be at all concerned about her?”
“Owl!” Morag shouted over her shoulder, just before a large tawny owl swopped in to land on their window ledge, dropping a rather heavy-sounding book bag onto the floor.
Concern could wait.
Late at night, the Ravenclaw common room was completely devoid of life. Still, a dim fire glowed in the hearth, offering just enough light to see by, and the staff of a newspaper that no one knew existed sat huddles around it, thumbing through the hundreds of copies of their first edition. It was the most beautiful thing Lisa had ever seen; black and white columns lined neatly, all fitting together perfectly. In the back of her mind, she wondered if this was the exact same feeling a mother had when she held her child for the first time.
“So how exactly are we going to pass these out?” Lisa pondered aloud. “We can’t very well pass these out ourselves. That is just begging to get caught.”
“We could just leave copies around the school,” Orla proposed, flipping through as stack of papers as though it were a deck of cards. “In places where students would find them, but teachers wouldn’t.”
“But what if a teacher does manage to get their hands on a copy?” Morag said, who cradled a stack of papers as though she held the same feelings towards the edition that Lisa did. “Shouldn’t we have some kind of charm in place just in case that happens?”
“Like what?” Mandy asked. This was most certainly an important thing to consider, and Lisa scolded herself for not thinking of this sooner. The paper certainly wouldn’t last for very long once a copy of these stories was turned over to Umbridge.
“I know a Spontaneous Combustion Spell that could be placed on the papers,” Stewart offered. “It’s really wicked! You can set it so that if a certain person picks it up, it will burst into flames.”
Orla began to giggle. “That would be hilarious, wouldn’t it? And then the Slytherins from the Inquisitorial Squad could think they made some big discovery, but if they try to show it to a teacher, it will just start on fire! Wouldn’t that be just so funny?”
Stewart’s head went up a little bit higher and his cheeks took on a bit of a red tint.
“And maybe some second degree burns on their fingertips will make them think twice about turning in their own,” Morag joked in a snarky manner.
The girls all snickered at the mental image as Stewart cast the charms over the stacks of newspaper. They even spoke of other possible hexes to place on members of the Inquisitorial Squad, not all of them ones that would be placed on the paper. Lisa suggested they should find a way to fix their silver badges to their cheeks, if they were so proud of them!
The joking and games, however, stopped the moment Stewart cast the last of his series of combustion charms. At the same point in time when handing The Fourth Estate stopped being an abstract plan and was about the be a very real action. In silence, the paper stacks were split into five equal piles, one for each member of the staff to hand out. They helped one another fill up their book bag, hoist the straps onto their shoulders, and walked together, probably a little closer than was necessary, down the staircase of their tower and into the main castle. This was finally where they were forced to part ways, though they linger together for as long as they possibly could.
All by herself, though, the castle corridors were disturbingly quiet, dark, and almost sinister. The torches flickered shaky shadows along the walls and Lisa found herself flinching at ever small movement. She tried to shake her head and try to get a hold of herself. At this rate, she was going have a heart condition before she even got back to bed.
“Miss Turpin!”
Lisa jolted, feeling as though her heart might stop.
It was Professor Snape, the absolute worst teacher that could have caught her out of bed (Umbridge didn’t count, for Lisa didn’t consider her a real teacher). Besides being one of the sternest and most ill-tempered of all the teachers Lisa had ever had, he was also the Head of Slytherin house, the exact house that every member of the Inquisitorial Squad was from. Forget the trouble Lisa would be in behavior-wise; what would happen if he asked to search her bag and found all her copies of The Fourth Estate?
“Would you mind telling me exactly what you are doing out of bed at such an ungodly hour?”
Lisa had to be quick. “I was…um, going to the bathroom.”
Oh, that was pathetic! The bathroom? Could she possible have thought of something less original if she’d tried?
“The bathroom?” Professor Snape repeated. “And would you mind explaining why you found it necessary to bring your book bag along with you?”
“I have…um, ‘girl things’ in it.”
It took a few moments for the Potions professor to realize what Lisa’s tone was implying. But it was clear when he finally did understand, as his features went blank and Lisa was certain she could see a faint blush in the dim light.
Perfect! Lisa thought smugly to herself. Search my bag now!
“Well, then…” Professor Snape began, “you can just do…what it is you were going to do, but I expect you to go straight to your dormitory afterwards. I will still be in the halls, and I expect not to see you again for the rest of the night!”
Professor Snape stormed off, though Lisa suspected it was more out of a desire to get away from her than catching more students out of bed. Lisa smirked to herself. She has never felt quite as powerful as she did at this moment in time.
She also still had a limited amount of time to get back to the Ravenclaw dormitories and a book bag still filled with copies of The Fourth Estate.
Heavy distribution was not going to happen tonight.
Rustling through the corridors, Lisa made her way to the bathrooms, just to be certain that Professor Snape wouldn’t have a reason to punish her. And a chance to catch her breath and splash some cold water on her face would do her a world of good.
Once the bathroom door was shut behind her, Lisa did feel a lot safer in the closed-off environment. She sidestepped her way to the corner and slid down to the floor, closing her eyes. She just needed a few quiet moments to get her heart rate back down to normal, where no one would be sneaking up behind her at any second.
Maybe she really wasn’t cut out for the life of a journalist. It was supposed to be a job where people were under constant stress for one of a thousand reasons. Or maybe she would just never work as a paperboy. At least not one for an illegal newspaper.
Taking up her book bag when she pushed herself up off the floor, she made her way over to the sinks, turning the taps on and off again, just because she wasn’t quite ready to leave yet. But even after she was bored with the sinks, she still didn’t want to leave what she perceived as a safe environment, so she moved on to the toilets, flushing them one by one.
This was absolutely pathetic! Here she was, nearly sixteen years old, and still hiding from the Boogieman in the bathroom! Ravenclaw may not have been the house of the bold and the chivalrous, but she should have at least had enough sense to know she would not be snuck up upon just because she was afraid it might happen. But she could not ignore the screaming voice in her head that would not shut up until she locked herself in her bedroom.
Before she actually did leave the bathroom, though, she made the decision to at least hide a few copies of the paper for somebody to find. Folded into thirds, Lisa stuck copies of The Fourth Estate into the toilet tanks, the heading poking out just enough so for people to be able to see.
“How could you have only distributed five copies of The Fourth Estate?”
As Mandy counted her way through the leftover newspapers and Morag slid the neat stacks under her bed, Lisa sat hunch on her covers, grasping her sides as her stomach cramped. Stewart and Orla were sleeping safely in the second-year dormitories, with their own bookbags left at Lisa’s bedside, each still not seeming to be any less empty than they had been when they set off earlier that evening.
Morag and Mandy had had their own troubles in the corridors. Mandy had been tormented by Peeves when she was literally five feet from the library entrance, and then tortured all the way back to Ravenclaw. Morag, on the other hand, had been unfortunate enough to meet up with some of Umbridge’s newly acquired pets: three girls trying to work their way into the Inquisitorial Squad, who became very interested in Morag’s late-night activities the moment they saw her Ravenclaw badge. Since it was only Slytherins who came under Umbridge’s wing, students who used the current political turmoil within the school to their advantage, and all the student who thought otherwise were becoming increasingly harassed. Lisa could only imagine the fate that might have met a younger, less experienced student than Morag that wander the school corridors without the silver badge people were beginning to call ‘The Mark of the Beast’, nor the ability to defend themselves with magic.
Orla and Stewart had never left one another, even after the older Ravenclaws had parted ways. This should have offered them a bit more courage than lone girls had had, but then they ran into the Bloody Baron. Despite all the stories the Slytherins had whispered, just within earshot of the other Houses, Lisa had not heard of anyone being harmed by the ghost in all the years she had attended Hogwarts. Granted, all the blood on his robes, combined with the cloak of darkness, it was somewhat more understandable that the two second-years had taken off running the moment they saw him.
“What are we going to do with all these in the mean time?” Lisa had to bring up. Nearly all two hundred copies of The Fourth Estate were still in the possession, and still just as capable of getting them all expelled.
“We’re just going to have keep them hidden,” Mandy said. “Very, very well-hidden until we can think of a better method of passing these out.”
There were very few places that a student could hide a large amount of anything in this school. And up until this year, no one had really had reason to. But circumstance had led to the extended need for creativity, and luckily, the very un-magical space underneath the beds held the exact same number of papers that a charmed book bag did. Maybe creativity wasn’t the right word for it.
“Is there enough room for all of them?” Lisa finally asked, though she still felt slightly ill.
Morag kicked one last stack under her bed, which ended up falling sideways. “Yes, plenty. But I am not keeping those things under there for the rest of the term.”
“But how are we going to hand these things out now?” Mandy had to bring up once again.
“Maybe we could hire paperboys to do it,” Morag suggested, though it was clearly not a serious phrase. “We could reach out to other houses, and meet them wearing masks. We could go on writing and no one would ever know it was us!”
The girls all groaned and let their heads droop backwards as they wallowed. But as Lisa’s mind wandered through self-pity, her thinking moved to more abstract notions in Morag’s suggestion…
Maybe reaching out to the other houses was exactly what they needed to do!
Lisa shot to her feet, eyes darting around the room. “Where’s Padma?”
In unison, the other two girls pointed to one of the rumple-sheeted beds where Padma lay completely tangled up and completely unnoticed by Lisa up until now.
Padma had been staying out later and later, still for reasons the other Ravenclaw girls did not care to guess. But her sleep was now truly beginning to suffer. No matter how many late nights the staff put in on their secret project, they were still nothing to stand out against with Padma falling asleep in near every class she took. They had been able to carry out this entire conversation with any disturbances from her. The only real challenge would be waking the prefect up and getting her to the point where she was actually capable of having an intelligent conversation.
“Padma?” Lisa shook the sleeping prefect’s shoulder. “Hey Padma, wake up!”
The prefect grumbled about being awoken, although the way she had been positioned, would most likely have been torture to spend the whole night in.
“Padma?” Lisa finally asked. “Your sister is in Gryffindor with Fred and George Weasley, aren’t they?”
Padma nodded, rubbing at her eyes, trying to blink them into alertness.
“Would she know where we could find them if we wanted to buy some of their products?”
“This is Tacky Snack,” Lisa said as she finished applying the last coat to Orla’s stomach. “The Weasley twins originally made it just to be a very sticky sweet, but then they learned it could also be used to smuggle things against one’s body.”
Mandy had managed to snatch up a paintbrush from somewhere, and now Lisa was using it to keep a messy job from becoming even messier.
“Things can stick to it strong, but they can actually be peeled off rather easily,” she went on, demonstrating by sticking one of the papers across Orla’s abdomen and then pulling it off again. “It doesn’t even smudge the ink, see? This is just so perfect!”
Stewart was sitting outside their bedroom door with his ear against the crack so he could still participate in the conversation. It must have been horribly isolating, but Lisa was most defiantly not going to allow a twelve-year-old boy to sit and stare at a room full of girls in their knickers.
With the last of the girls covered in the Tacky Snack, Lisa then set about covering their stomachs with copies of The Fourth Estate. They would most likely have to come back to their room between classes and repeat this process several more times today, but it was one of the few ways where they wouldn’t have to worry about being discovered.
“So who’s going to stick the Tacky stuff to me?” Stewart asked from the staircase.
“No one, Stewart. It’s just going to be us,” Lisa told him. “I don’t think the teachers or the Inquisitorial Squad would search under a girl’s clothes and risk a scandal.”
Horribly sexist, Lisa could hear it herself, but that didn’t change the fact that it was most likely a correct assumption. The moment members of the Inquisitorial Squad started using their authority to look under girls’ jumpers, parents would stop thinking all these new Ministry reforms were so wonderful.
Maybe the girls should even dare the boys to do it. The papers would burst into flames the moment they tried to show anyone, and Professor Dumbledore would probably be more than happy to expel them for the offence. He might never get another chance like this again.
Even though Lisa never actually saw anyone reading a copy of The Fourth Estate, it wasn’t difficult to see that word of the paper was spinning around the school. Through the corridors all the next day, she would hear the occasional whispers of ‘Mr. A’ or ‘Mr. U’, see students point something out to one another hidden behind a textbook, and everyone seeming just a bit jumpier than they had been the week before. Despite all this, Lisa could not help but notice one key detail: students were talking to one another, they were discussing, and it was about nothing that had been pre-approved by the Ministry.
At last, Lisa was finally beginning to feel the rush of excitement Mandy must have been feeling all along. For the entire school day, she jittered and tapped her fingers against her desk, leading Professor Babbling to ask her several times if she needed to use the bathroom during Ancient Runes, and in Potions, Professor Snape asking her to stand up in front of the whole class and tell everyone what she was so excited about. But when Lisa started spouting off about an imaginary letter she had received from a boy, she was quickly asked to sit back down again.
“Mandy, Morag!” Lisa exclaimed, rushing across the courtyard to meet her roommates. “People have really been reading The Fourth Estate! I’ve been hearing about it all day! I’ve been seeing it all day! Have either of you been noticing…”
But Lisa’s voice trailed off as she noticed the mass of students to rise from their seats and start moving. It didn’t take more than a few seconds after that for students to start rushing at the Great Hall doors. And like sheep”though Lisa preferred to think investigative journalists”Mandy, Morag, and Lisa made their way to the doors as well.
The amazingly loud whispers between the dozens of students made it impossible to clearly make out what was being said, but from between the legs of the students in front of her, Lisa could at least see. Professor Trelawney was standing the entryway with what looked like a near-empty bottle of sherry gasped in her hand and trunks carelessly tossed around her as though they had been thrown from the stairs.
“What’s going on?” Lisa asked.
“Trelawney is being sacked,” a seventh-year Hufflepuff whispered. “Umbridge is actually kicking her out of the school.”
Lisa couldn’t believe it. Up until now, Umbridge had only had power to make the students’ lives miserable, but to the teachers, she had only been an annoyance, sitting in on their classes. This was the first sign of any real power from the toady woman from the Ministry. Lisa didn’t take Divination, and none of her roommates in Ravenclaw did either. Truth be told, it might have been a much more respectable subject if it hadn’t been for the class’ joke of a teacher.
All the same, even Professor Trelawney didn’t deserve this.
Professor McGongall squeezed her way through the crowd that had gathered at the doors, making her way to the emotionally distraught (and likely drunk) Divination teacher. “There, there, Sibyll…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 sauntered over to the woman. The astonishing difference in height really would have been quite humorous if this weren’t such a potent situation. “And your authority for that statement is…?”
“That would be mine.”
He seemed to float down the staircase and made his way regally to the cluster of emotional women, while he himself remained calm and collected. It was really quite impressive.
Umbridge did not seem quite as impressed, though. “Yours, Professor Dumbledore? I’m afraid you do not understand the position. I have here an Order of Dismissal signed by myself and the Minister of Magic.” Umbridge reached into her robes. “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 up to the standard required by the Ministry of Magic. I have decided that Professor Trelawney is not up to scratch. I have dismissed her.”
But, of course, Professor Dumbledore had a prepared answer for this.
“You are quite right, of course, Professor Umbridge. As High Inquisitor you have every right to dismiss my teachers. You do not, however, have the authority to send them away from the castle. I am afraid that the power to do that still resides with the headmaster, and it is my wish that Professor Trelawney continue to live at Hogwarts.”
Even in the wake of being rescued, Professor Trelawney was still a blubbering, stumbling mess. Lisa knew the woman was upset, but please, have a little dignity!
“No”no, I’ll g-go, Dumbledore! I sh-shall l-leave Hogwarts and s-seek my fortune elsewhere””
“No,” Professor Dumbledore insisted. “It is my wish that you remain, Sibyll.” He turned to Professor McGonagall, ignoring the purplish tone creeping into Umbridge’s cheeks. “Might I ask you to escort Sibyll back upstairs, Professor McGonagall?”
“Of course,” Professor McGonagall replied, helping the somewhat tipsy Professor Trelawney to steady herself. “Up you get, Sibyll…”
Eventually, more of the school’s teachers moved through the crowd to help the dismissed Divination teacher, all under the watchful eye of the headmaster. In a lot of way, Professor Dumbledore reminded Lisa oddly of a four-year-old. Yes, allowing Professor Trelawney was the ‘right’ thing to do, but Lisa almost felt that it had more to do with the fact that it was something that it was something that would truly annoy Umbridge. Good for him! she thought all the same.
“And what,” Umbridge asked him in that menacing way of hers, “are you going to do with her once I appoint a new Divination teacher who needs her lodgings?”
“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” Professor Dumbledore said with a slight twinkle in his eyes. “You see, I have already found us a new Divination teacher, and he will prefer lodgings on the ground floor.”
“You’ve found”?” Umbridge stammered before shock finally turned to anger. “You’ve found? Might I remind you, Dumbledore that under Educational Degree Twenty-two””
“”the Ministry has the right to appoint a suitable candidate if”and only if”the headmaster is unable to find one.” Professor Dumbledore face had the very slightest hint of a smirk. “And I am happy to say that on this occasion I have succeed. May I introduce you?”
Lisa couldn’t help but be certain that it was the sound of hoof-steps. She had heard of an expression that had to do with a person hearing hooves and either thinking horses or zebras. But when she saw the school’s new Divination teacher, she wondered how it was that centaurs would fit into that saying. Because that was exactly what she saw: a rather young-looking centaur with a pale palomino body. Despite the fact that he wasn’t exactly human, Lisa couldn’t help but notice he was quite handsome.
“This is Firenze,” Professor Dumbledore introduced the teacher. “I think you’ll find him suitable.”
Lisa doubted that Umbridge could have been more stunned if Professor Dumbledore had simply pulled a student out of the crowd to teach the class. Her shoulders twitched uncomfortably, and she turned her nose up as though the school already smelled like a stable. Professors scatter around the scene in various stages of shock and awe. Even the students seemed to be at a loss for words.
“Well, then, it has been a trying evening for all of us,” Professor Dumbledore went on, trying to end the conversation with a more pleasant tone. “I’m sure Professor Fizenze would like to be shown to his lodgings so that he may settle in for the night. Please follow me, Professor.”
The headmaster seemed to be using the word ‘Professor’ when addressing the centaur as much a physically possible. He must have notice the slight twitch in Umbridge’s posture whenever he said the word. After Dumbledore and Firenze left, and even the gathered student had lost interest, Umbridge was still standing dumbstruck in the middle of the floor. If she were someone less intimidating, a few more curious students might have stayed behind to poke the toad-like woman with a stick, as though she were some strange animal.
“I almost wish I took Divination now,” Mandy rambled excitedly. “That Firenze has to be the first non-wizarding teacher in the history of Hogwarts!”
Lisa had to nod in agreement. What exactly would a centaur have to teach about magic, if they couldn’t even practice it for themselves?
“It not as though he has very far to work his way up to,” Morag whispered with a slight snicker in her voice. “Trelawney aspires to be a subpar teacher.”
Suddenly, the two girls walking in front of them spun around to face them. One of the girls, a rather ditzy-looking blonde, was a stranger, but her friend was the mirror image of Padma Patil in red and gold, meaning she could only be Parvati. Her eye were still red and shiny; she had been one of the girls who had been crying when Umbridge had announced Professor Trelawney’s dismissal.
“And, of course, I mean that in the nicest possible way,” Morag finished quickly, even if it wasn’t very sincerely. It was a good thing no one knew that she was one of the staff writers for The Fourth Estate, because according to Padma, her sister was one of the biggest gossips in their years, and Lisa couldn’t think of anything that would kill their sales (though they weren’t technically making any money off the paper) faster.
On the way back to the Ravenclaw tower, Mandy leaned over to whisper in Lisa’s ear. “Am I a bad person for think of what a wicked story this will make?”
“I don’t think so,” Lisa assured her. Truth be told, she had been thinking the exact same thing.
The Fourth Estate by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: The first edition of The Fourth Estate is finally finished, but distributing it to the people proves to be more of a challange than the staff antisipated it to be.
Thank you to Fresca, my oh so wonderful beta!
Chapter Endnotes: The dialogue from Trelawney being fired comes from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.