"Good morning, students. My name is David Greider. I have come to Hogwarts on direct orders from the Minister for Magic to investigate the source of certain rumours — specifically, the claim that You-Know-Who has returned."
Monday. The Great Hall. Every student in the school packed in along the four long tables, teachers ranged across the high platform at the front. The usual morning noise had died the moment the stranger stepped up.
David Greider was middle-aged, sharp-featured, with close-cropped grey hair and the kind of posture that had never learned to relax. He surveyed the hall the way a general surveys ground he intends to take, and the pressure of his gaze was enough to send most of the younger students staring at their plates.
"I am disappointed," he said. He let the word sit for a moment before continuing. "You are meant to be the future of the wizarding world. Yet thanks to negligence within this institution, rumours and deliberate falsehoods have been allowed to spread unchecked. It reflects poorly on all of you."
A visible ripple moved through the professors' table. It was a direct insult, and they all knew it.
Dumbledore did not react at all. He was turning his goblet in his hands with an expression of mild appreciation, as though it had just occurred to him what exceptionally fine craftsmanship had gone into it.
"Fortunately," Greider continued, sweeping his gaze across the hall, "the Minister is not prepared to let this legendary institution continue to decline. I have been sent to put things right. I expect full cooperation from all students. For the future of Hogwarts — for the future of British wizardry — you will not stand in the Ministry's way."
Whispers broke out. Not everyone dismissed it out of hand; the Ministry had governed wizarding Britain for centuries, and plenty of the younger students still held that institutional weight as something real.
The older years, though — Harry's group, the fifth-years who had been watching Voldemort's shadow lengthen since last year — looked uniformly unimpressed. This was Fudge's scheme dressed up in someone else's suit. Greider was here to manufacture a counter-narrative, to split the student body, to give Ministry loyalists a target and a sense of mission. If he could pin the rumours on Dumbledore and paint him as a conspirator angling for power, eviction became politically viable.
In Fudge's imagination, it was a clean play.
"Hmm." Kevin glanced at the clock mounted above the entrance arch. "It's half past eight already."
He said it as though to no one in particular, stood up, tucked his Potions textbook under his arm, and walked calmly off the platform, passing the podium without sparing Greider a glance.
Greider's jaw tightened. He opened his mouth.
From the Gryffindor table, several chairs scraped back simultaneously. Hermione, Harry, Neville, Ron — the usual crowd — gathered their bags.
"We'll be late for Potions," Hermione said pleasantly, to nobody in particular, and they filed out.
That was the end of it.
Once one group had moved, others followed. Dumbledore loyalists, students who had believed the Voldemort rumours from the start, practical-minded sixth-years with no particular attachment to Ministry politics. Even a handful of Slytherins drifted toward the doors — not out of affection for Dumbledore, but because they understood Voldemort better than most, and the Ministry's current position struck them as dangerously naive.
Only a thin scatter remained — the genuinely undecided, and a few who hadn't quite finished breakfast.
"This is rebellion!" Greider's voice cracked slightly on the word. He swung toward the head table. "Dumbledore, is this what your school produces? Arrogant, lawless children who simply ignore authority when it inconveniences them?"
Dumbledore set down his goblet at last. He looked at Greider with an expression of patient, unruffled calm — the expression of a man who has weathered considerably more frightening things than a Ministry inspector at breakfast.
"Easy, Mr. Greider," he said. "Students' primary purpose here is to learn. I think you've already taken more of their time this morning than is strictly warranted." A brief, warm pause. "Children are growing up faster than we sometimes realise. They form their own judgements. I wouldn't push too hard, if I were you."
Greider stared at him. Whatever he had planned to say collapsed somewhere between his throat and his mouth. You did not cross Dumbledore directly — not in his own castle, not when everyone in the room knew perfectly well who would come out of it worse.
Dumbledore rose unhurriedly, nodded to the table at large, and left the hall. The other professors scattered to their lessons.
Dolores Umbridge stayed where she was, hands folded around her teacup, expression pleasantly blank.
Once the hall had emptied enough for privacy, Greider crossed to her table and stood over her. The two of them were colleagues of a sort — rivals, more accurately. She had the title of Senior Undersecretary, but as far as Greider was concerned, her weeks at Hogwarts had produced precisely nothing. A position that soft could be taken.
"Umbridge. You look very settled in. I'm not sure the Minister shares your enthusiasm for this particular posting."
"Greider." She took a sip of tea. The smile didn't waver. "I'm Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. You'd do well to remember who you're speaking to."
"And I'd observe that Hogwarts' problems don't solve themselves overnight." She set the cup down with a precise little click. "You saw Dumbledore just now. He doesn't take Ministry interference seriously. He never has."
"Then issue a new Educational Decree," Greider snapped. "Bring him to heel. Those students as well."
"Go ahead." Her voice was utterly serene. "You'll get polite smiles, formal compliance, and nothing will actually change."
"Arrest them, then, if they step out of line. Azkaban for the whole lot. That'll—"
"And then Dumbledore will appear before the Wizengamot and deliver a very thoughtful argument about academic freedom and the Ministry's lack of jurisdiction, and you'll come out of it looking like an overreacting bureaucrat with a point to prove." She tilted her head. "Which, to be fair, is not entirely inaccurate."
"That's nonsense!" The word came out louder than he intended, driven by a week of collected frustration. Every student who'd walked out, every professor who'd watched Greider work and said nothing, every time Dumbledore had looked at him with that infuriating, unimpressed patience — it all sat behind that single word. "Ministry orders are law. Even Dumbledore can't simply ignore them. If he tried, we could charge him with — with obstruction, insubordination, treason if it came to that — drag him to Azkaban if we had to—"
"How thrilling," said Umbridge. "You should also consider challenging You-Know-Who to a duel while you're feeling brave."
She stood, collected her teacup, and left him standing alone at an empty table.
Greider's first day at Hogwarts had not gone the way he'd envisioned.
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