1

The Ministry of Magic, as it was wont to be, was abuzz with activity. The Floo Passages were flooded with workers arriving to start their day, while simultaneously allowing the nigh shift workers to exit. The Department of Magical Maintenance had evidently decided that a nice thunder and lightning storm would be the order of the day, filling the main hall with the crackling sonic booms to augment that chatter of busy workers as they went about their daily routines.

It was days such as this that Dolores Umbridge loved coming to work.

She strode purposefully through the hall, walking as she always dead in a straight line—daring other Ministry employees not to move out of her way. As usual they parted for her, her flowery attire setting her apart from the humdrum busy bodies of the Ministry. She held her chin high to exude authority and dominance over those around her. Everything about her appearance and the way she conducted herself was carefully planned and methodically executed to show that, in spite of her position as a Junior Clerk in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, she was a force to be reckoned with.

She boarded the elevator and requested Level Two, noting with annoyance that several of the Ministry peons held back and refused to board the elevator with her, pretending to get stuck in idle conversation with their fellow colleagues whom—Umbridge knew well—they had never spoken to before. But she paid it no further mind as the elevator doors shut and she began her ascent; she knew the changes that were coming within the Ministry, and she knew that before long these people would no longer be able to merely hide and avoid her—they would be reporting to her directly.

In the previous year, the Ministry of Magic had suffered severe losses. A Dark Wizard calling himself Lord Voldemort was gathering strength and an alarming number of followers. This did not sit particularly well with Umbridge. She had spent her career to this point learning and mastering the political system of the British Ministry of Magic. While she found herself quite sympathetic to some of the Dark Lord's ambitions, she was not altogether keen on the idea of serving under a dictator that wasn't her. Indeed, she had her eye on the position of Minister for Magic as her ultimate end game, and Voldemort's gathering strength and popularity was posing a threat to her carefully laid plans.

But for the moment, he had actually done her a favor. He had single handedly caused the almost complete annihilation of the Auror Office, the Ministry's first and most feared line of defense. This had stretched the Ministry to a near breaking point as they were now hideously understaffed. Millicent Bagnold, the Minister for Magic, had subsequently come under fire from the Magical community for not doing enough to replace the Aurors. While it was quite obviously a simple matter of there being a lack of willing applicants, Umbridge was quite content to watch the Minister scramble to accommodate the cries of the community which she served.

Her own supervisor, Bartemius Crouch, was set to offer her a new promotion. True, she was up against Madam Bones for the position, but Umbridge had paid her dues for a good length of time, whereas Bones' biggest claim to fame was being released from her responsibilities as a professor at Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for teaching James Potter the Unforgiveable Curses to use in life threatening situations.

James Potter…

An ugly frown crossed Umbridge's face as the elevator opened onto the second level. Never before had she come across an obstacle quite like the impertinent son of the former Auror. Brash, exceedingly arrogant and rather unfortunately charismatic, James Potter had developed something of a cult following in the Magical Community. His extraordinary good fortune in evading the grip of not only the fugitive Gilles Rochefort, but Lord Voldemort himself, had earned him the nickname 'Untouchable Potter'. A reputation that Umbridge had positively salivated at the thought of crushing.

It was with that in mind that she—as a member of the Wizengamot—had endeavored to send James Potter to Azkaban Prison after his failed attempt to cast the Killing Curse on Rochefort. But, most unfortunately for her, she had found herself unable to convict him. Bartemius Crouch had convinced the rest of the Wizengamot to let them go, and—worse—to enact what was now being called 'Potter's Law', which would allow the Auror's Office to use Unforgiveable Curses against Lord Voldemort's followers if it was able to make it through Millicent Bagnold's rigorous approval process.

And thus, James Potter's star continued to grow. Umbridge thought that perhaps she had found an in to smear his name that very Spring, when James Potter had once again been whisked away by Rochefort. James Potter had been in Godric's Hollow the night that the Aurors were all but destroyed, and she had attempted to question him on the matter. It was then that the unspeakable event had occurred—the little red haired girl, the filthy Mudblood—had sullied Umbridge's face in a display of Muggle fighting tactics that Umbridge had neither anticipated nor expected. Lily Evans had punched Umbridge, and to add insult to injury, she had been allowed to get away with it.

All because Dumbledore's assertion that Potter shouldn't have been questioned…and Evans was just defending him.

Umbridge strolled into her office and exhaled heavily. No matter. James Potter and Lily Evans had made it to the very top of Umbridge's personal revenge list. They had crossed her one time too many, cost her both personal and professional humiliation, and she had made a solemn vow to herself that one day—perhaps not today, perhaps not for years—one day, she would exact revenge upon those two arrogant fools for all of the grief they had caused her.

She sat at her desk and received her first clue that something was amiss. She kept a small, hand-written calendar on her desk, a calendar that only she ever wrote on. But there was something else on it—handwriting that was completely foreign to her. She squinted to make out the words, so crudely composed that it looked as though a child had written it.

'Enervate office?' she murmured to herself.

The result was instantaneous—her chair lurched up off the floor, catapauling her up towards the ceiling. She cried out, throwing her hands over her face to protect herself, but she then bounced off the ceiling with astonishing force before hurtling back towards her desk. She cowered again, but as if she was bouncing off a large rubber ball, she rebounded back towards the ceiling—this continued over and over again as she bounced around her walls, ceiling and floor. It quickly dawned on her that all of the surfaces in her office has been bewitched to bounce her, and she was rapidly gaining velocity. She tried to aim herself back towards her desk where her wand sat neatly next to her notebook. She finally grasped it and cried 'Finite!'

Rather than cease the insanity, however, more things happened. A raging cacophony of noise filled the office and her desk clattered to life and began dancing as a bizarre song met her ears.

'HELP!

I need somebody,

HELP!

Not just anybody,

HELP!

You know I need someone,

HELP!'

'WHAT IS THIS?' Umbridge roared as she bounced off the floor and rocketed back towards her desk, ricocheting off of that and smashing up into the ceiling once more. 'Finite! Finite! FINITE!' she screamed.

As suddenly as the bouncing began, she crashed back to the floor in a heap. Groaning, she looked up as her tap dancing desk began marching towards her, the absurd song continuing to play from an unknown source. The desk's legs reached out and grabbed her, causing her to cry out as it spun her in an absurd dance move.

'Madam Umbridge?' came a voice from behind the door. 'Is everything alright?'

'NO IT BLOODY WELL ISN'T!' Umbridge screamed.

'Help me if you can, I'm feeling down…' the song sang.

'Open the door!' came the voice from the other side of it.

'I CAN'T! MY DESK HAS ME TRAPPED!'

'…and I do appreciate you being 'round…'

'Your what has you trapped?' the voice asked incredulously.

'MY DESK!' Umbridge roared as it tossed her into the air effortlessly, causing her to shriek in fear as she crashed into the ceiling of her office once more.

'…help me get my feet back on the ground…'

Another voice sounded outside the door. 'Open it up, already, will you?'

'I can't! It seems to be bewitched!' came the first voice. 'Nothing's working!'

'…won't you please, please help me!'

'JUST BLAST IT OPEN!' Umbridge roared.

'But we need approval to do that—' came one of the voices.

'DAMN THE APPROVAL! JUST BLAST THE BLOODY THING OPEN, I AM ORDERING YOU!'

'Ordering, who does she think she is?' said a female voice.

'Doesn't matter—get back, I'll do it,' said the first male voice.

The door exploded inwards off its hinges and Umbridge saw a number of Ministry officials there. Before they could so much as move, however, the rest of Umbridge's office furniture came to life—a filing cabinet leapt forward, battering the first man back by opening and closing its drawers in rapid succession. Umbridge's chair tried to shove the door back into place to block the Ministry officials from coming in, and they began using their wands to try and beat them back—but each time they tried to use a curse or hex, the furniture simply multiplied and converged on them.

'Merlin's Beard!' cried one of the men.

'What do we do?' shouted the woman who had squeezed herself into the office, doing her best to avoid a painting of a cat that was hopping up and down on her head.

'Get Crouch! Now! Somebody!' shouted another man from the hallway was he tried to keep more bits and pieces of furniture from escaping the room to wreak havoc elsewhere.

'WILL SOMEONE TURN OFF THAT BLOODY RACKET!' Umbridge hollered as she was bounced up and down over and over again by her desk, her rapidly multiplying office furniture dancing furiously to the music, the clunking and clattering of their racket drowning out all but the loudest of shouts from their crew.

'Won't you please, please help me! Help Me! HELP MEEEEEEEeeeeeeeOooooohhh…' the voice crooned as one of the men grabbed the source, a strange looking little record player.

'How do I turn it off?' he shouted helplessly, looking desperately for some sort of guidance.

'It sounds like it's ended,' the woman said in a relieved tone of voices as she swatted futilely at the painting hopping on her head.

'THEN GET ME DOWN!' Umbridge shouted.

Bartemius Crouch appeared in the door and stared in slack-jawed amazement—at that exact moment, all of the furniture in the office stopped exactly what it was doing and promptly saluted him. He frowned as Umbridge crashed to the ground, her desk having dropped her as it turned to salute him as well. He motioned for Umbridge to come to him. 'Quickly and quietly,' he said and everyone inched backwards out of the office. 'Close the door,' Crouch whispered and one of the men rushed forward to do so. The second he touched the door, he was launched backwards into the hallway, the door slamming into place back in its door frame. The name printed on the door changed before their eyes—where before it had said 'DOLORES J. UMBRIDGE, JUNIOR CLERK, DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT' it now read something different entirely.

'What the hell does that mean?' asked one of Crouch's assistants tentatively.

'I've no idea,' Crouch said as he squinted at the sign. 'Dolores? Any theories?' he asked.

Umbridge stared at the new sign—she could not be sure. She had no proof, and the list of fail safes, security features, and personnel that they would have had to have gone through in order to breach her office was utterly alarming. But as she stared at the sign, she was filled with a sense of certainty that she knew exactly who had done this to her.

The new sign read;

'Official Ministry of Magic Headquarters of the Marauders. Dumbridge can bog off.'