A/N: Written by Chaser 1 of Montrose Magpies for QLFC Finals Round 2.

Prompts: C: Cornelius Fudge, Charms Classroom, Centaur, Cage

Optional prompts: (word) creature; (expression) disgust; (word) crisis

There are times when I drew on real-life political debates as inspiration for this, but that doesn't mean I agree with the conclusions Dolores reaches.

The title is a reference to a line from Buffy.

Thank you so much to Cookies-and-Ink and AlwaysPadfoot for betaing this for me.

Word count: 1784

Dolores was five when it happened. At the time, she didn't understand; all she knew was that her cousin was missing, and nobody was talking, and then, suddenly, he was home, but the silence remained. It was suffocating, filling every nook and cranny of her house until it was impossible to escape it.

The problem was that nobody was willing to tell her what it meant. They seemed to think that if they didn't talk about it, she wouldn't notice. But she couldn't do anything except notice it — it was always there, niggling at the back of her head as she ate, as she played, and even as she slept.

Her parents didn't like it when she asked questions, so for the first few days, she stayed quiet and waited for someone to explain it to her. When it became clear that nobody would, she drew together all her courage and asked her mother about it.

"What's wrong with Max?" Dolores asked as her mother was tucking her into bed one night. Her fingers were playing with her blanket as if she could draw confidence from it.

But she just shook her head and said, "He will be fine."

It took Dolores a few seconds to realise that her mother hadn't answered her question, but by that time, the witch had already kissed her forehead and left the room.

Sighing, Dolores hopped out of bed and walked over to where her cat was lounging on her bookshelf. Picking him up, she carried him back to her bed, slipping under the covers and pulling him into a tight hug. He wriggled for a moment before curling up in her arms.

The world might not make any sense, but at least she had Mr Fuzzy.

Over time, she pieced together that her cousin had been camping with two of his friends when they were set upon by a clan of trolls. Outnumbered and taken by surprise, they had barely escaped with their lives and limbs intact.

One night a few years after the attack, she finally convinced Max to talk to her about it. He told her about how the trolls had ranged from ten feet tall to fourteen feet tall, and how they had been the scariest things he'd ever seen, with cruel eyes and monstrous smiles.

"See this scar?" he asked, holding out his arm. A thin line of puckered skin ran from his elbow to his wrist.

Dolores nodded. The scar had always fascinated her. She knew that she shouldn't stare at it — shouldn't even look at it — but that just made her all the more curious.

"One of the smaller trolls got me with its club," he said. "There was a spike, and it tore the skin away. The wound got infected, and while the Healers were able to clean it out, they couldn't get rid of the scar."

Ever since then, Dolores' nightmares had been plagued by a horde of hulking beasts that always lurked just out of sight. She could never look at them directly — every time she tried, they moved that little bit further away — but they were there whenever she closed her eyes. The only one she could ever make out was a smaller creature that stood at the front with a malicious grin on its face and a spiked club held high in the air.

Her parents were right to keep it from her. She wished she had never learned the truth, and she regretted ever asking about it.

-x-

She didn't realise just how insidious the problem was until she was fifteen. Dolores was sitting in the Charms classroom at the time, staring down at her textbook as she tried to work out what she was doing wrong. The spell they had been assigned looked simple enough, but every time she tried to put it into practice, nothing happened. All around her, her classmates were chatting away. The professor had stepped out of the room to deal with an issue in the hallway, and they seemed determined to make the most of it.

Dolores was just about to attempt the spell again when an elbow nudged her in the side. Sighing, she lowered her wand and looked over at her best friend, who was sitting next to her and had a newspaper spread out on the desk in front of her.

"Dolly, do you remember that centaur that went on a rampage the other month?" Florence asked, staring at her with wide eyes.

"Of course." The girls in their dorm had followed the case closely, torn between horror and morbid curiosity.

"It's being released."

"What?" Dolores felt her stomach drop, and she swivelled in her seat so she could peer over Florence's shoulder at the paper. Sure enough, in big, bold print, the leading headline was 'Centaur that killed ten trots free'. "Why?"

"They don't have all the details yet, but they said there were 'mitigating circumstances'." Florence's face contorted in disgust. "I didn't know there were circumstances that could mitigate that, but apparently, it's possible."

"Dumbledore's doing, probably," Dolores muttered under her breath. For someone who claimed to be disinterested in politics, he sure liked to throw his weight around.

Florence nodded. "Probably."

"Look." Dolores pointed to the article. "It says the victims' families are planning to appeal the decision. Maybe they'll manage to overturn it."

"It won't change anything," Mabel said from her other side.

Dolores and Florence turned to look at the other girl. Mabel's parents were both involved in the political scene, so she knew more about the goings-on at the Ministry than anyone else in their year.

"It might," Florence said.

Mabel shook her head. "The Ministry is trying to keep this under wraps, but they're in the middle of brokering a deal with the centaurs. They won't want to do anything that might jeopardise that — it's probably why they let him off in the first place. A gesture of good faith."

"So the victims are, what, collateral damage?"

Mabel shrugged. "There's always collateral damage; that's how politics works. The question is just who and for what."

That didn't seem fair to Dolores. As horrific as what happened to Max had been, at least the attack had been treated with the gravity it deserved. Trolls were widely accepted as being stupid, large, and dangerous, so no one suggested negotiating with them. The closest anyone had ever come to it was when the Ministry made it illegal to actively hunt them. Centaurs, however, were a different story. Despite being just as deadly, the common folk were calling for tolerance and cohabitation.

It was ridiculous, and all it would do was get more witches and wizards mauled and killed.

The wizarding world was in a state of crisis, and nobody seemed to care.

-x-

The opportunity to actually do something about the situation didn't come until Dolores was forty. Since that conversation with Florence and Mabel, she had been making more of a point of looking beyond political announcements to try to work out the reasons and motivations behind them. So far, the results had been demoralising. Witches and wizards had locked themselves into a cage of their own making and were preparing to give the only key to the monsters that haunted her dreams. It was clear that the Ministry was more invested in pleasing the Malfoys and the Dumbledores of the world than they were in looking after the common folk — after people like her.

Even then, she had never considered getting involved in politics herself. She was perfectly happy with her secretarial job, even if it didn't pay as well as she would have liked. It was satisfying and stimulating, and her company was doing work that she believed in and could genuinely get behind. She was planning on staying there for the foreseeable future, and if her boss wasn't such a pillock, she probably would have. But then he started making advances, and nobody seemed to care, and she realised that she had little choice but to leave.

"Why don't you apply at the Ministry?" Florence asked one morning while they were out at a tea shop for brunch. "I've heard that Sylvie Forrester is about to resign, so there will be a position opening up in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes."

"They're probably looking for someone younger than me." It had become a common problem for her in recent years. In most professions, the experience that came with age was considered a good thing, but in hers, few people looked past the number.

But Florence merely shrugged. "Who cares? The worst they can do is reject you. You might as well try."

And so she did. Most people with designs on holding a political office wouldn't have applied, much less accepted the position; while the department in question was respectable enough, it wasn't usually associated with future Ministers for Magic. But she was looking for a way out, not a way in, and she was thrilled when she received a job offer that was not only competitive with her current role, but actually superior to it.

That was how she wound up getting a first-hand view of the inner workings of the Ministry, and it was how she met Cornelius Fudge. He wasn't much to speak of at the time, but he was friendly and willing to listen to her rant about politics. He rarely offered up his own opinions, but his willingness to listen without disagreement was part of his charm.

So when he was elected to the position of Minister for Magic — to, it seemed, everyone's surprise but hers — Dolores was his first choice for Senior Undersecretary. Without ever having intended it, she found herself on the brink of being able to have a real impact on how the wizarding world was run.

And she relished in the chance. Since she was a teenager, she had been wrestling internally with the fact that the Ministry was more concerned with appeasing the powerful than helping the everyman. That dynamic would never change, and even if it could, Cornelius would not be the one to do it. He was too desperate to please for that.

But there was one thing Dolores could change, and that was the person pulling the strings. Cornelius wasn't strong-willed enough to create and stick to a vision; at best, he would be a beloved figurehead, a puppet masquerading as a leader. The real power would rest with his advisers.

If she played her cards right, the real power would rest with her.

It was time for the wizarding world to break free.