Chapter 8
Advocacy
“Commalong in Australia and Queen’s Cay in the Bahamas would be possible choices. They are both English-speaking schools,” Lisa’s dad read off a list. “Then there is also one English-speaking school in Canada and the four schools in the States.”
“I would go with the United States,” her Uncle Tom suggested. “Wizards there observe the Muggle constitution, and freedom of the press is the first thing they’re promised.”
Lisa laughed as she leaned over to read over the list of American schools. It had been a month since her expulsion from Hogwarts. After she and her housemates’ meeting with Umbridge that had led to their expulsions, the girls had packed up their trucks, and had woken up the next morning to go back to the headmistress’ office to wait for their parents to come and get them.
The girls had waited until Padma and all the other Ravenclaws had left for their first classes before gathering up the last of their possessions in their trunks and beginning the solemn march through the empty corridors. Umbridge had been waiting for them at the door of her office, using all the restraint she had to keep from jumping up and down and giggling like a little girl watching another child being scolded. The staff of The Fourth Estate did their best to keep from giving the woman any further sense of satisfaction, though once or twice, Lisa and Mandy had to keep Morag from trying.
They had waited barely ten minutes before their parents were allowed in and attempted to collect their daughters without any sort of ceremony. There were a great many looks of sadness and loss. But what surprised Lisa the most was that her parents hadn’t appear the least bit angry with her; neither did Mandy or Morag’s parents. Not that Umbridge hadn’t done her best to rile up emotions when the girls were collected. At every turn, she had attempted to remind the parents that their daughters were never going to be allowed to come back to Hogwarts, they would not be able to take their O.W.L.s, and even if they did manage to get into schools in other countries, they would likely never find work in Britain, just because their educational degree was ‘not British’.
What their parents all seemed most interested in was getting their daughters out of the school as quickly as possible without exchanging any words with the headmistress.
Even after, the Turpins had arrived home, Lisa’s mother and father didn’t say a word to her. They had eaten dinner staring into their plates and Lisa went to bed in her old room after reading her little cousin several bedtime stories. In many ways, it just seemed as though the summer holidays had come early. But the past editions of The Fourth Estate lining the bottom of her trunk that served as Lisa’s own bedtime reading stopped that feeling from taking over completely. Lisa was determined to keep herself reminded of why she was not sleeping at Hogwarts that night.
And that was the way it passed for weeks. It had only been a few days ago when her parents had started bringing home information about wizarding schools But none of them even mentioned the word ‘Hogwarts,’ as though they wanted nothing more than to forget Lisa had ever even attended school there. In a way, the mad desire to forget about Hogwarts made sense to Lisa. If she never attended Hogwarts, then she was never expelled from Hogwarts either.
Lisa hadn’t spoken to her former roommates aside from letters they sent one another fairly regularly. Now that they had no classes and nothing to study, they had very little else to do with their time. Morag seemed intent on attending school in the Bahamas come autumn, and she was determined to get Lisa and Mandy to join her there. And Lisa, truth be told, was strongly considering it. A sun-filled winter will attending school on the beach sounded absolutely lovely, especially given all the bad memories here in Britain. That and all the cold and the rain; that would be nice to leave behind as well.
Though aside from this school planning, and the letters she received from Mandy and Morag Lisa found that her life had become really very boring. She would wake up, have breakfast with her family, then she would have the house to herself for the next eight hours of the day and very little to occupy herself with. There was really no point in studying because if she would be starting at a new school, she would be given an entirely new set of textbooks to learn from, so studying her old ones would just be a waste of time.
When Lisa had been younger, she had felt that the worst fate that could possibly befall her would be to be expelled from Hogwarts, never allowed to return. Now that it had actually happened, though, she couldn’t help but feel slightly indifferent to the whole thing.
More time passed. The dates of the O.W.L. exams came and went, taking The Fourth Estate staff past the point of no return. She couldn’t help but feel slight pains whenever she did see a newspaper. Though, it was almost impossible to ignore it lately, given the headlines that had been splattered all over the Prophet as of late.
Weeks after her leaving Hogwarts, after the O.W.L.s had come and gone, and after Lisa knew for certain she would be in another country come September, a very disturbing story began flashing over the headlines of the Daily Prophet: YOU-KNOW-WHO RETURNS.
The stories terrified Lisa’s parents and Uncle Tom, who were all old enough to remember the horror of the Dark Lord and how he had terrorized the wizarding world. They knew better than anyone else what lay ahead for British civilization now. Lisa knew she should be scared, but she just couldn’t force herself to feel the fear she knew she should be feeling.
It might have been because of those headlines, that the wizarding world now knew that Cornelius Fudge was wrong and that Harry Potter was right. Headlines over the next few weeks called for Fudge’s resignation, and, although none of the papers said so specifically, Umbridge’s removal from any sort of power.
When Lisa read these stories, she could help but feel a small sense of hope that maybe, just maybe, with the system that had expelled them gone, she and her roommates might be allowed to come back to Hogwarts. She kept these hopes, even though she knew that even if they were let back into Hogwarts, their chance to take their O.W.L.s for the year was long since gone. Even if they were allowed back into Hogwarts, they would no doubt have to repeat their fifth year, even though their grades were nowhere near poor enough to merit such a disgrace.
She did find herself wondering about how little Stewart and Orla were coping with these stories and all the chaos that must have been going on at Hogwarts because of them.
Though there was a part of Lisa’s mind that said she wouldn’t mind the embarrassment and the boredom of repeating her fifth year as long as she could go back to Hogwarts and just have everything go back to the way it was before all this mess had turned her life upside down.
But then, of course, she would just go back to studying information about schools on tropical islands, dense mountains, and isolated open meadows, knowing once autumn came, she would find herself learning magic at one of these places instead.
“LISA!” she suddenly heard a very loud voice scream. “GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!”
Lisa scrambled as hard as she could to escape from her tangled sheets, but she could still feel tiny little feet jumping on her legs, as well as her stomach and her back. And all her shrieking did nothing to deter the activity until she manage to kick the invader off her bed, signaled by the loud thud she heard at her side.
When Lisa finally managed to look up from the comfort of her pillow, she could see her little cousin, Jacob, Uncle Tom’s boy, flat on his back on the floor, pretending to be more hurt than he clearly was. Lisa snorted and shook her head at the boy, showing him that she was not about to fall for it.
When Uncle Tom had moved into Lisa’s home after his wife, Lisa’s Aunt Wendy, died, Lisa’s now five-year-old cousin, Jacob, had along with him. Lisa had always loved the little boy, but before, her cousin’s visits were always in small doses. Once he was living with the Turpins full-time…well, Lisa was very thankful for the sanctuary that Hogwarts offered.
Lisa’s sheltered life as an only child soon came crashing down once she began sharing her domain with the little boy. If something wasn’t locked, protected with a password, or sealed down, Jacob was going to get into it. For the most part, Lisa felt that she had adapted to the little boy living in her home, and she even felt secure in leaving her possession at home while she had been away at Hogwarts.
But right now, at this moment in time, Lisa found herself much more focused on the fact that the little boy was interrupting her beauty sleep.
“What?” she turned to ask him. One of the only benefits of being expelled from school was getting to sleep in, and Lisa was ready to attack anyone intent on taking that away from her.
Little Jacob scrambled to his feet, slipping on his sticking feet, eyes wide from trying to hold in what had to be the most amazing news.
“Your teacher, Professor Flitwick is downstairs talking with Uncle Ben and Aunt Jennifer!” he exclaimed. “The scary teacher, Professor Snape, is there too!”
It was that statement that brought Lisa snapping up into attention. Uncle Ben and Aunt Jennifer were Lisa’s parents, and Lisa couldn’t even begin to imagine what her teachers could be doing talking to them, seeing as she was no longer one of their students. In fact, upon first hearing this, Lisa had to keep from believing this just for the sake of her own sanity. To believe that what her cousin was saying was true was to destroy the foundation upon which everything she knew and believed in had been built.
Despite no longer being a Hogwarts student, however, her natural Ravenclaw curiosity was still perfectly intact. It took mere seconds for her to throw the covers off and spring to the floor, sprinting for the doorway.
“Get dressed first!”
Lisa stopped herself just short of the doorframe, her cheeks beginning to tint red. She could not believe she had almost let her teacher see her in her pajamas.
Once Lisa considered herself properly dressed, she made her way out the door with Jacob tailing at her heels and then racing ahead of her to the beginning of the steps downstairs. In a perfect mimic of her cousin, Lisa scooted down the staircase, step by step, until she was just barely able to peek through the banister. Sure enough, there in the living room, chatting with her parents were Professor Snape and Professor Flitwick, though the Ravenclaw Head of House had to be propped up by several thick books just to be given a suitable line of vision over the coffee table.
Lisa rubbed at her eyes again and again, but the picture in front of her eyes never changed: her teachers were in her house, Professor Snape sipping tea out of her mother’s violet-laced teacups! Lisa suddenly thought back to her earlier years when she thought she would die of laughter if she ever saw the surly professor drinking out of such a dainty-looking cup. But instead now, Lisa just felt confused and slightly disturbed.
“Miss Turpin,” the Potions professor suddenly said without looking up, “for as lovely a hostess as your mother is, Professor Flitwick and I really did come here to see you. I suggest you come down here.”
Startled, Lisa jumped back, bumping into her cousin, Jacob, who was staring aghast at what had just happened. “Wow! You weren’t lying about him!”
Not knowing what else to do, Lisa stood to her feet, leaving her cousin alone with his astonishment, and made her way down the stairs with as much dignity as possible after what had just happened. Lisa parents both got up and left the room, as though to give their daughter privacy to talk to her teachers, but out of the corner of her eye, Lisa could clearly see both her mother and her father lurking from behind the kitchen doorframe. Lisa took a very stiff seat in the armchair opposite her teachers and cleared her throat before attempting to speak.
“Professor Flitwick, Professor Snape,” she said in as respectful a tone as she could manage while in her state of surprise. “What are you doing here?”
Her two former teachers appeared to be almost as uneasy as Lisa was. There was just something so unnatural about seeing her teachers in her home, and they seemed to believe that just as much a Lisa did. But all the same, she was desperate to know what they were doing here in the first place.
“I’m sure you have learned Dolores Umbridge is no longer a member of the Hogwarts teaching staff, and Cornelius Fudge is stepping down as Ministry of Magic.”
Truthfully, she hadn’t been paying nearly as much attention to the British news as she had before, mostly because she was quite certain that she would not be spending most of the year in Britain for much longer. She knew that the wizarding world had reached the consensus that the You-Know-Who had indeed returned, but that was more or less the extent of her knowledge.
“Then you must be aware of what has become of her school policies.”
Truthfully, Lisa was not aware of this, so she waited to be told.
“They have been disbanded, of course,” Professor Snape said in a condescending sort of way. “Every decision that woman made at her post.”
Professor Snape refilled his teacup. “As you can imagine, the expulsion cases of you and your housemates come under that discretion.”
Lisa could feel her eyes growing wide.
Professor Flitwick took his turn to speak. “There is a completely unanimous verdict that were in not for the sudden new policies Professor Umbridge implemented, the paper you and your housemate chose to publish would hardly have been of interest to the facility. It is likely that it wouldn’t have even existed if it weren’t for Dolores Umbridge.”
Now Lisa’s heart was starting to beat faster and it was taking all her restraint to keep from jumping up and down like an over-excited five-year-old.
“As such,” the tiny Charms professor finished, “we have decided that Professor Umbridge’s decision to expel you was, at the very least, highly unjust. As such, the staff and the school governors have decided it would be in the best interests of everyone for you, Miss MacDougal, and Miss Brocklehurst to return to Hogwarts this coming autumn.”
This time, Lisa did leap up to her feet, although she was able to suppress a squeal of delight. After all the mental preparation she had done in these past beeks, getting herself ready for the fact that she would not be attending Hogwarts next term, and would never be back there again. To hear that all that was no longer true…, it was as though hearing that the people who wrote the calendar had decided Christmas would now come five times of year.
Then, a familiar and dreaded thought came in Lisa’s mind. “What about our O.W.L.s?” she spoke of a sudden snag in the offer. “Will we have to repeat our fifth year?”
Professor Flitwick took a thoughtful bite of his biscuit. “Well, that hardly seems fair,” he said. “You have all been such diligent students in the past, and I don’t see why you should be punished because of one ruling from an unjust regime.”
Professor Snape elaborated further. “The teachers have all had a meeting with the Professor Dumbledore, and we have come to a decision,” he told Lisa as he help himself to a pink flower-shaped biscuit. “In order to take your N.E.W.T. level classes, all you will need is the approval of the professors who are teaching the class.”
Before taking a bite, though, he made sure to point an accusing finger Lisa’s way. “But do not, believe that this leeway will give you a pass on any lackluster effort in terms of your studies!”
“I understand perfectly, sir,” Lisa acknowledged. At this point, Lisa was so excited, she was willing to do just about anything to be going back to Hogwarts. She would let Professor Snape have tea in her house and serve him pink biscuits until the man burst.
“And Miss Turpin,” the Potions professor added after taking a bite of the biscuit, “upon returning to Hogwarts, you will also be expected to comb your hair before coming to class.”
Lisa’s hand drifted subconsciously up to her hair, causing her to shudder when she felt the knotted locks. “That’s fair,” she relented, looking down to hide her blushing cheeks.
Slowly beginning to step backwards, Lisa made her way for the staircase and was miraculously able to make her way to her bedroom without ever needing to look over her shoulder. The last thing her mind could remember seeing before she shut the door were her two professors drinking tea off her mother’s violet china and, for whatever reason, eating pink biscuits.
August came like so many years before, and the Turpin family went to Diagon Alley so that Lisa could get her school supplies. And thanks to a late growth spurt, a new set of school robes were in order as well. Shopping for textbooks felt a bit odd, seeing as Lisa didn’t share the problem many of her classmates had in worrying about having or not having the grades to make it into the class. She even felt confident in buying Advanced Potion-Making.
On the platform at Kings Cross, it only took a few moments for Lisa to spot Mandy and Morag, hanging off one another as though they were best friends, a scene that Lisa knew she never would have seen last year.
“Lisa!” Morag exclaimed, rushing over and attacking her housemate in a tackling hug. Were it not for the brick wall so conveniently located just behind her, Lisa was convinced she would have fallen over, although the wall did cause a rather nasty bump on the back of her head.
Neither girl spoke a word about the paper or what had happened because of it, or how it was what had brought them so close together. They didn’t even breathe a word of it when Stewart and Orla joined in with the pointless chattering. All their words seemed like the same shallow, blathering nonsense that Lisa would have expected coming into Hogwarts the year before. But now, it was all just too strange for her.
Then, it suddenly occurred to Lisa that maybe they didn’t want to remember. They didn’t seem to want to remember either. As exciting as publishing the paper had been at the time, to remember what they had done would have been to also remember all the terrible things that had gone along with it. It would be to remember the up-all-nights, the constant looking over their shoulders, and always expecting the world to come crashing down on their heads and just waiting for it to happen.
In an odd way, it all made perfect sense. Not that Lisa agreed with it, but she could admit that it made sense.
They all stuffed themselves into the same compartment, ignoring the looks of other students who saw N.E.W.T. students associated with soon-to-be third-years and the insanity of everyone trying to fit into the same car. It was rather cramped with everyone in the one compartment, but no one complained. They just all laughed, chatted, and joked together as though there had never been a time when it hadn’t been this way.
Lisa turned her head to look out the window and sighed thoughtfully. She wasn’t ready to forget just yet.
The Fourth Estate by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: While Lisa waits for fate following her expulsion, the wizarding world becomes frozen with fear after Voldemort truely does return. But Lisa and the former staff of The Fourth Estate are given a miraculous oppurtunity to have an odd sort of power.
And thank you to Fresca for beta-ing a chapter I'm pretty sure I wrote on Nyquil!