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Dolores Umbridge hates scruffiness.
‘SPLASH’ The small boy thudded into the muddy puddle. Dolores gasped as the filthy water splashed onto her brand new shirt. The boy laughed and ran away. Desperately, Dolores rubbed at the splashes of brown that now covered her white shirt like an unsightly disease. The brown marks would not budge. Dolores sighed angrily. Her mother was going to be so angry with her, even when she explained that it hadn’t been her fault. The shirt was ruined, and it was the first new shirt Dolores had had in two years. Her mother had been tight for money ever since her father had passed away over four years ago.
“Dolly!” Dolores heard a call from behind her, and turned to see her sister, Agnes, running toward her, a wide grin spread across her face. Dolores wasn’t surprised that the call had come from the girl. Agnes was the only person in the world to call her Dolly. Dolores began to smile, despite her mood, as the girl came closer. Dressed ridiculously in her mother’s old tee-shirt and her sisters too-long trousers, with a grin so big it rivalled the Cheshire Cat’s, she could have made anyone smile.
Agnes was the only person Dolores felt comfortable around. Dolores had never been a very popular person. With her second hand, too-small clothes and messy hair, she had always stuck out like a sore thumb wherever she went. When she was at school she spent most of her time in the library, or in the owlery sending countless letters to her sister. During the holidays, she would come home in order to spend time with her sibling, who was still too young for Hogwarts. The times when she was at home were the worst. Dolores’ mother was still in mourning, she had been for four years. She would barely speak; she just sat working all day every day, trying to scrape together enough money to pay the food bills.
The Muggle children in the village where the Umbridges’ lived found the family very strange. They had watched the youngest child playing alone in the park, talking to herself. The village was called Laterton, and it was a rather expensive place to live. All the children had neat, clean clothes and parents who could afford new shirts and trousers every time they spotted the smallest of holes. To see these two children in their village, wearing old, ill-fitting patched clothing was an alien concept to them; they couldn’t understand it, and so they came to the conclusion that the children were weird, and should be avoided at all costs.
Just outside the Village of Laterton, there was a huge forest. It was the kind of forest where parents banned children from entering, and the children were so scared of it that for once that actually obeyed. The village was formally called “Inconcessus Silva” But was commonly referred to as “Ink Woods” or “Silva woods”. The tales that had been told about this forest were enthralling. So many stories flew around the village, that even Dolores, who hadn’t been read a bedtime story since she was five, knew most of them off by heart, just by hearing whispers from the other children. They were tales of magic and mystery, death and destruction. Some of the stories involved people who “went in, but never came out” others involved Giants and Ogres. Of course being a witch, Dolores knew that there were no Giants or Ogres in that forest, but she preferred to stay away from it all the same. The Silva Woods always gave her a strange feeling, like she should stay away.
However, as Dolores and the other children around her age grew older, they also grew braver. The teenagers began daring each other to walk further and further into the forest. Most of them chickened out before going more than one hundred metres, but it still made Dolores horribly uncomfortable.
“Dolly?” Agnes questioned. “What happened to your new shirt?”
“It doesn’t matter Agnes, just forget about it.”
“But Dolly! Mummy bought you that shirt only yesterday!”
“I know,” Dolores said irritably. “Someone splashed a puddle at me, but I told you, it doesn’t matter.”
Agnes knew when to be quiet; her sister always used a certain voice when she was close to snapping, and Agnes could sense that voice now.
The two sisters continued in silence toward their small shabby home. They were about three minutes walk away when Agnes suddenly seemed to remember something.
“Dolly!” She squealed excitedly, “I made a new friend today!”
Dolores smiled, assuming her sister was referring to one of the many imaginary friends she had created to keep herself entertained during her sister’s absences.
“What shape did this one take?” Dolores asked.
Her smaller sister frowned up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Well, did this friend have wings like the last one? Or hooves? How about a spiky tail like Noretta?”
Agnes frowned again. “I mean a human friend, Dolly. A boy from the village.”
Dolores heart seemed to miss a beat. “A...a friend from the village?”
“Yes!” Agnes was grinning again, “We met in the park, he just...”
“He?” Dolores interrupted.
“Yes!” Agnes said, slightly irritated now, “His name is Thomas, but he said to call him Tom.” She grinned expectedly up at her sister.
Dolores frowned, “Thomas... Thomas Taylor? As in Edward Taylor’s younger brother?”
Agnes shrugged, “I suppose so, but why does it matter? I made a friend!
This was something, in any other situation, Dolores would have been happy about, but she had never liked Edward Taylor very much. Edward was the ‘ring-leader’ of the gang of Village children, who seemed to live to torment the Umbridge sisters.
Edward had been the one to yank a clump of Dolores’ hair out last summer. It had been he who had burnt and melted the plastic of Agnes’ favourite doll. And Dolores was sure that his brother couldn’t be any better.
Agnes looked disappointed. She had clearly been hoping that Dolores would take the news of her new friend as well as she had.
Dolores looked sadly down at her younger sister. She wanted Agnes to have friends, to have a normal life, more than she wanted anything in the world. Just not him. Not Edward’s younger brother. Not a Taylor.
“Come on then, let’s go and see what mother has made us for dinner.” Dolores said, trying her best to be cheerful. She glanced down at her sister’s face, but saw that the disappointment still remained.
Dinner was a run of the mill semi-warm tasteless meat stew. Yet both daughters made ‘mm’ sounds as they ate the meal their mother had so kindly prepared for them.
Mrs Umbridge smiled at her two young daughters, she was so proud of their kindness, and the love they showed one another. She only wished she could provide better for them. These girls deserved better than her. She frowned, and set to clearing away.
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The next day, Agnes awoke to sunlight streaming through her tattered curtains. She stretched and stepped out of bed, the wooden floor was cold beneath her bed-warmed feet. She pulled back the dull coloured curtain and looked out through the grimy glass.
Dolores’ room backed onto a large field. It was the middle of the summer and the sun was shining bright, rippling through the healthy green glass. There was a clear blue stream running through the field, four or five cows were stood by the river, drinking. Dolores smiled; she had the perfect idea of what she and Agnes could do that day.
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“I don’t want to.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to go fishing.”
“Oh... okay then. Well what do you want to do?”
“I want to see my new friend. I’ll go fishing, as long as he can come too.”
“Agnes...” Dolores sighed angrily. “Thomas,” she said the name with as much disdain as she could muster, “can’t some with us. He’s probably busy with his own brother. Besides, I’ve told you, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to hang around with him.”
Agnes glared up at her sister and muttered something under her breath.
“What was that?” Dolores asked sharply. She could sense this conversation turning into something more sinister. Today had started off so well... Thomas just had to spoil everything didn’t he?
“I said, you’re just jealous.” Said Agnes defiantly, although she was still looking at her feet.
“Jealous?” Dolores questioned incredulously. “What on earth do I have to jealous of?”
Agnes was getting angrier and angrier.
“That I have a friend and you don’t! I know it! You’re JEALOUS! That’s why you’re trying to spoil EVERYTHING with Thomas.”
Dolores stared at her sister. “I’m trying to protect you! Thomas is BAD for you, Agnes! I don’t trust his brother, and I don’t trust him!”
“He’s nothing like his brother! He told me he doesn’t even like his brother! They’re not the same person!”
Dolores rubbed her hand angrily across her face.
“Stop it, Agnes. Just... just stop it! You’re being stupid. We’re going fishing, and you’re going to enjoy it.”
“I WON’T!” Agnes cried. And with that, she turned on her heel and stormed toward the door.
“AGNES!” Dolores yelled after her, “AGNES, stop being such a horrid little girl! Come back here RIGHT NOW!”
But Agnes didn’t turn around.
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Dolores went down to the stream by herself. She didn’t catch any fish, she was too angry. Despite the glorious weather, Dolores had no fun. She hated fighting with her sister; why couldn’t Agnes see that she was right? This ‘friendship’ was going to end in tears. A sudden gust of wind ruffled Dolores’s messy hair. It seemed to have become quite cold all of a sudden. Abandoning her makeshift fishing rod by the side of the stream, Dolores pulled her tattered cardigan tighter around herself and stood up. She looked up into the now darkening sky. She should have known the good weather was too good to last; here came the thunder storm to make up for it.
Dolores reached the house before the rain began. Once inside,he went up to her room and tried to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. She hated being on bad terms with her sister, so she decided to put her pride to one side and go and apologise to Agnes. After all Dolores was the older sister, and so it was her place to be mature.
“Agnes?” she called softly as she knocked on her sister’s bedroom door. “Agnes?” There was no reply. Dolores pushed gently against the door and it creaked slowly open. The room was empty.
Dolores’ bare feet patted on the stairs as she climbed down them and into the kitchen below. “Mother?” she called. She heard a slight rustling coming from the living room and followed the sound.
“Mother? Have you seen Agnes?”
Her mother looked up from her needlework “Agnes...” She seemed confused. “I thought she was with you...?”
“She... I assumed she’d be back by now...” Dolores trailed off; she was starting to worry. This morning, her and her sister had fallen out because of her sister’s friendship with a dangerous Muggle child. Had Dolores really allowed her sister to run off and spend time with that child? Where was she? What if something had happened to her?
Dolores looked back to her mother. The woman had continued her needlework as though nothing had happened. Dolores was alone now; she couldn’t tell her mother she had allowed Agnes to run off all by herself. There was no one to help her, but she had to find Agnes before something went terribly wrong. Dolores glanced out of the grimy living room window; the storm was growing ever closer.
Dolores Umbridge hates children.
The wind was vicious as Dolores left the house. Where would her sister be? Where would her “friend” be? She decided to check the places she thought it most likely for the village children to visit. The playground, the bridge and the log cabin “ the places where they were most commonly spotted. The playground was empty; the swings creaked spookily in the wind that was now whipping up all around her. The old bridge stood by itself, alone and un-loved, and the abandoned log cabin was empty save for a few birds hiding from the tempest.
The old log cabin had been built by the edge of Silva wood. The company who had begun to build it had run out of money a few months into the holiday park project, leaving a single un-finished cabin stood solitary by the foreboding forest. It was a favourite haunt of the village children; it was spooky even without being on the terrifying scale of the next-door forest.
Dolores stood on the rotting balcony and looked around. Where could Agnes be? She was getting really worried now. Her heart was beating much faster now and the last words she had said to her sister played themselves over and over in her head. “Stop being such a horrid little girl!” Had Dolores really said that to her younger sister only this morning? It seemed a regrettable lifetime away.
Suddenly something caught Dolores’ eye. A scrap of bright blue fabric was fluttering on a nearby tree. Dolores jumped off the rotting porch and ran over to inspect it. She stroked it gently between finger and thumb. It was part of the tee-shirt her sister had been wearing that morning, she was sure of it.
Dolores stared up at the tree; it was towering above her, its branches whipping in the gale. It was the outmost tree of the Silva wood; there was a small gap between it and the next tree, footprints had been pushed into the damp earth. Dolores’ heart skipped a beat. Her sister was in the woods....
“AGNES?” Dolores called as she entered the forest. She shivered and goose bumps appeared on her pale skin, not just because of the wind. Her foot caught on a sticking up root and she stumbled, grabbing desperately at a nearby tree. Her hand caught on the rough bark and red blood seeped from her hand. She wiped it on her tee-shirt and stumbled on.
A drop of water splattered onto Dolores’ hair. She looked skywards, at the gaps in the canopy. The sky was deep black now; the moon was hidden behind the clouds.
Dolores walked faster and faster, the stumbles becoming more and more frequent. Soon her hands and arms, not to mention her knees, were covered in scrapes and mud.
“AGNES!” Her calls were getting more frantic now; she was desperate to find her sister. The rain was getting heavier, the damp floor beneath her feet was softening and her hair was sticking to her desperate face.
“Dolly?” Dolores was sure she heard a faint cry from the distance. This boosted her speed; she rushed on to where she had heard the voice, calling as she went, “AGNES? Are you there? AGNES?”
“Dolly!” The voice was getting clearer.
Suddenly, Dolores burst through the trees and into a clearing. In the middle of the clearing, rain pouring down her face and neck, sat Agnes.
“AGNES!” Dolores cried, she dashed over to her younger sister and threw her arms around her. “Oh Agnes, I’ve been SO worried!”
“I’m sorry, Dolly!” Dolores could sense the drops of water on her sister’s face weren’t just rain. “I thought he was my friend! His brother dared him to come in here, I didn’t want to look like I was scared... he left me here Dolly! I don’t know where I am!”
“It’s okay,” Dolores hugged her sister tightly, “I’m here now, we’re going to go home.” She stood up, preparing to leave, but then suddenly spun around. “What was that?”
A twig had snapped just out of the circle of trees. A ghostly voice emanated from the dark forest. The voice howled like a wolf, and from the other side of the clearing came the hiss of a snake, then the snarling of a dog, the spitting of a wild cat. The girls were surrounded by noises, and neither of them knew what was happening.
Dolores Umbridge hates lies.
Something flew out of the darkness and hit Dolores hard on the back.
Dolores looked at the damp forest floor; a small stone was lying on the ground, where it had bounced off her back. Then another one hit her, and another.
“OW!” She yelped as one hit her elbow. “Who’s throwing stones? Who’s there?”
She heard Agnes cry out as one of the stones hit the girl by her eye. Dolores gasped and crouching down next to the smaller girl, she put her arm around her. A trickle of blood was running down Agnes’ face from a gash on her head.
“It’s you isn’t it?” Agnes screamed furiously, “WILLIAM TAYLOR! You kids from the village!” Another stone hit her. Then the noises stopped, and Dolores heard a soft female voice.
“Will, you’re going to hurt them! We’re supposed to just be scaring them; I think you already hurt the younger one.”
“Stop being such a scardy cat Zoe! You were already scared to come in here in the first place!”
Another stone flew from the trees, but Dolores dodged it and stood, rooted to the spot, listening to the conversation.
“No, come on Will, you could seriously hurt them!”
“So what? They deserve it.”
Another voice joined in now,“Yeah, Will come on, let’s just leave it.”
“Oh shut up Emily!” Will growled.
“Whatever Will, we’re leaving.”
There was a rustling of leaves as the children walked back through the dark forest, it was clear that the woods gave them the same uneasy feeling as it gave Dolores.
A more timid voice could be heard now, as Dolores wiped the blood from her sisters eye.
“Will...I...I’m going to go too.”
“Of course you are, you coward. You nearly ruined the entire plan by wanting to stay friends with her.”
There were no more sounds as the rest of the children left. “Come on Agnes,” Dolores said, putting an arm around her sister and beginning to lift her to her feet. “Those horrid children have gone now...”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” A voice drawled from behind the girls.
William Taylor was standing in the clearing, looking at the Umbridge sisters.
As much as she would hate to admit it, she was scared. The forest scared her, with its trees towering above her and the terror of the storm hanging in the air. Every now and then thunder still sounded and lightning still flashed, illuminating the trees and casting shadows of horror onto the forest floor. This boy stood in front of her scared her too. She had never done anything to harm him, so why was he so determined he had to harm the sisters, no matter the cost? He was ruthless, as he had proved with the stone throwing; he could have blinded them, he could have caused serious damage and he knew that. He didn’t care if he hurt them or not, because as far as he was concerned, they had offended him by living in his village and they needed to be taught a lesson. They were different, they were wrong.
“Why?” Dolores asked the tall dark boy before her. “I never did anything to you!”
The boy opened his mouth to an answer, but was cut off by the noise of twigs snapping.
“Oh good!” Will called. “Someone was brave enough to stay with me.”
Dolores looked toward where the sound had come from, expecting to see another child from the village emerge. Nothing happened.
“Come on!” Will called.
Still nothing. Then a strange sound began. A sort of rumbling, growing louder and louder and closer and closer.
Hoof beats. Hoof beats? Were there horses in this forest? It had begun to rain, the heavy drops splashed down through the thin canopy and soaked into the soft, leafy floor.
“What the...” Will began, then without warning the trees began crashing down all around them.
Branches broke as half a dozen huge shapes came smashing through the clearings edge. Agnes screamed and the beasts coming at them screamed back in their own language; arms waved, legs kicked, and hooves shimmered in the chaos.
Centaurs. Dolores realised. The world appeared to slow. She desperately grabbed for her wand from her jeans pocket, but it wasn’t there. It must have fallen out in the forest. She began desperately scrabbling around on the forest floor, grabbing at anything wooden and wand shaped. She screamed as something hard slammed against her“ one of the Centaurs’ arms had hit her square in the face. Blood was flowing freely from her nose. It was broken, she was sure of it, but she didn’t care. The only thing that mattered now was her sister.
“AGNES!” she screamed, “AGNES, WHERE ARE YOU?”
She could hear screaming, her sister and Will. Her entire face was covered in blood; all she could see was red and black; she was blinded by tears.
Centaurs were attacking her from every side, arms flailed, bows swung and hooves clashed, as in their frenzy the centaurs began hitting each other. She couldn’t understand why they were attacking her, but she knew now why no one who went in ever came out of this forest. These centaurs were ruthless, probably outcasts from other tribes, they thirsted for blood. Dolores was running blindly through the clearing, desperately searching for her sister while dodging the blows of the giant beasts. It wasn’t until she ran out of breath that she realised she had been screaming aloud for the past few minutes.
Then, something heavy collided with her head and everything went black.
Dolores Umbridge hates Halfbreeds.
When Dolores awoke, it was still dark. She tried moving her legs, they still worked, her arms, they still moved. She lifted her hand to her head, when she drew it away it was covered in dark sticky blood. A centaur’s hoof had hit her head, it had knocked her out cold, they had left her for dead.
Agnes.
Dolores leapt to her feet, ignoring the searing pain in her head and the bruises that covered her body,looking desperately around the clearing. Then she saw her.
Agnes was lying about twenty feet away from where Dolores was standing. Her head was tilted to an awkward angle and her body was covered in blood.
Dolores screamed. She stumbled to the ground by her sister. “AGNES!” There was no reply. Her sister’s eyes were closed tightly, but her face was peaceful. Dolores could feel dampness soaking through her jeans. Blood. The leaves surrounding her sister were dark red in colour; the blood had seeped through into the ground.
Agnes was dead. The centaurs had killed her, she was gone.
Dolores Umbridge stumbled through the Forbidden Forest, following the two children, that filthy lying boy and that know-it-all girl. Suddenly they came to a halt as they stumbled onto a clearing, where they were surrounded by dark, towering trees. It was then that she realised, they had lied to her again. All these years later and she was still falling for silly childish lies.
They had led her here, just as the children had led Agnes to the forest all those years ago. So much had changed, but really, nothing had changed at all. Here she was, like all those years before. But this time, she was ready to fight, fight for herself like she never could for her sister.
Dolores Umbridge hates children.
Dolores Umbridge hates lies.
Dolores Umbridge hates Halfbreeds.
Dolores Umbridge loved her sister.
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