The Girl With the Black Book

Bambi Rose sat in the Great Hall, enjoying her meal. She hasn't eaten this much since her Aunt Midge told to eat whatever she wants at her house. Whenever she spent time with her parents, they starve her, they starve her to become more skinny and beautiful. Bambi Rose already did that once, and found it to be quite difficult, so she stopped. Now she eats what she can. She's still trying to hide her right eye with her bangs, which was working fabulously. She was already stuffed. Dumbledore called for everybody's attention and introduced their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Dolores Umbridge. Bambi Rose thought she wore too much pink for her liking. She was especially rude when she interrupted Dumbledore.

The speech sh gave was mostly about how the Ministry was taking over Hogwarts. Bambi Rose found it unfair. She doesn't want a couple of sod off Ministry workers to be taking over Hogwarts. Her father worked at the Ministry. She never liked it, though. He was top ranked. That was why they were so rich, yet Bambi Rose looked like she was too poor to even feed herself. Bambi Rose ignored the Queen of the Toads speech and quickly finished eating. She wanted to go to her dorm room and play with her guitar. She knew what to play, and she wanted to play when she got up there.

The woman in pink finished her speech. She sat back down in her seat where she belonged and let Professor Dumbledore finish her speech. She finished her dinner and was the first to leave. She never liked staying until the end. When she knew she was safe, she removed her bag from her right eye. She gently touched it and winced. She sighed. She walked off and went to the Ravenclaw dormitories. At least she knew she was safe, out of her mother's and father's reach. Bambi Rose kept thinking that she was unclean, filthy. She wanted to get rid of the filth. She still shuddered at the thought of her father's touch, the screams of pleasure that he had. She shook her head and went up her Ravenclaw portrait.

"The hungry dog howls
For crust of bread
His cry goes unheard
It's far overhead," the portrait said.

"The moon," Bambi Rose answered.

"Excellent answer," the portrait said.

It swung open to reveal the Ravenclaw common room. She found it absolutely stunning. She went up the stairs and into her room. She wanted to be left alone right now. She tucked her bang behind her ear and brought out her guitar. She strummed a light melody and began to pick up the beat. She stopped playing her guitar and set it down on the stand. She changed out of her robes and into a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a loose pajama shirt. She crawled into bed and slept, feeling the darkness and nightmares taking over.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She walked into the Defense Against the Dark Arts room. She sat down in the far corner of the front and kept drawing invisible marks on her arm. She made sure that her bang wasn't showing her eye.

"Well, good afternoon!" Umbridge said when the whole class came in.

A few people mumbled a 'good afternoon,' in reply. Bambi Rose wasn't one of them. She despises the Ministry.

"Tut, tut," Professor Umbridge said. "That won't do, now, will it? I should like you, please, to reply 'Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge.' One more time, please. Good afternoon, class!"

"Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge," the whole class chanted back at her. Bambi Rose still didn't say anything to her.

"There, now," she said sweetly that it almost made Bambi Rose vomit. "That wasn't too difficult, was it? Wands away and quills out, please."

Many of the class exchanged gloomy looks; the order 'wands away' had never yet been followed by a lesson they had found interesting. Bambi Rose put her wand away and didn't take out a quill, but a ball point pen. She found pens and pencils to be more enjoyable than quills. Bambi Rose saw her professor take out a very short wand and tapped the blackboard sharply with it; words appeared on the board at once:

Defense Against the Dark Arts
A Return to Basic Principles

"Well now, your teaching in this subject has been rather disrupted and fragmented, hasn't it?" stated Umbridge, turning to face the class with her hands clasped in front of her. "Th constant changing of teachers, many of whom do not seem to have followed any Ministry-approved curriculum, has unfortunately resulted in your being far below the standard we would expect to see in your O.W.L. year.

"You will be pleased to know, however, that these problems are now to be rectified. We will be following a carefree structured, theory-centered, Ministry-approved course of defensive magic this year. Copy down the following, please."

She rapped the board again; the first message vanished and was replaced by something else. Bambi Rose simply ignored it. For a couple of minutes the room was filled of the sound of scratching quills on parchment. Bambi Rose neglected to even write down what she was supposed to write and ignored it.

"Has anyone got a copy of Defensive Magical Theory by Wilbert Slinkhard?" Umbridge asked.

Bambi Rose looked outside the window and saw the substitute for Care of Magical Creatures class. She wished she was down there right now. She despised this woman and wishes her gone. A couple of minutes has gone and Bambi Rose hasn't even cracked open her book. She simply day dreamed of flying and being her aunt, wondering what she's doing right now.

"Did you want to ask something about the chapter, dear?" she heard Umbridge asked when she snapped out of her day dream.

"Not about the chapter, no," she heard Hermione say.

"Well, we're reading just now," she said, showing her small, pointed teeth. "If you have other queries we can deal with them at the end of class."

"I've got a query about your course aim," Hermione said.

"And your name is-?" Umbridge asked.

"Hermione Granger."

"Well, Miss Granger, I think the course aims are perfectly clear if you read them through carefully," she said in a determined sweetness voice.

"Well, I don't," Hermione said bluntly. "There's nothing written up there about using defensive spells."

By then, everything was a blur. Of course, everybody started making a fuss about it. Bambi Rose rose her hand.

"And your name is?" Umbridge asked.

"Bambi Rose Swan and I find this lesson unfair. What's the point of reading the book if we're not going to learn anything?" she asked.

"I repeat, as long as you have studied the theory hard enough-"

"And what good's theory going to be in the real world," Harry asked.

"This is school, Mr. Potter, not the real world," she said softly.

Bambi Rose wanted to stab this woman right now. She envisioned her like her father. When Harry said Lord Voldemort, almost everybody gasped. Bambi Rose did nothing but sit there. Umbridge tried to get it into his head that Voldemort hasn't returned, and that he is clearly dead.

"How do you know he's dead? Where's the proof? There's proof that he's been alive, hasn't he?" Bambi Rose remarked.

"Ten points from Ravenclaw, Miss Swan. You know, I heard a lot from your father, how strange and very unusual you were. And I can't help but agree with it. He is not back. It is simply a lie," Umbridge told her.

She noticed that Harry wasn't there anymore. She probably ignored it when she told Umbridge what she thought. Bambi Rose didn't like this woman. Not one bit. The bell rang, meaning that class was over. She was glad for it, too. She didn't want to be anywhere near that woman right now. She packed up her stuff and left the room. She walked over to her Potion class, but she accidentally bumped into someone, but she didn't drop her books this time.

"Watch it, Swan," she heard Malfoy snarl.

She just rolled her eyes. At least he didn't see the bruise on her right eye, as her bang was forcing it to be shown.