Hermione Granger

It was late in their 5th year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and Delores Umbridge was ruining the greatest magical school in Europe.

Hermione could not let this stand.

Hermione granger was an interesting study of duality. On the one hand Hermione generally abided by all the rules no matter how minor and irrelevant, and expected others to do so.

However she would disregard rules, laws and authority in a heartbeat if she felt she had a reason strong enough. This is what led her to assaulting and petrifying Neville during her first year.

This is what led her to burglarizing Snape's potion stores and brewing polyjuice to knock-out and replace other students for information gathering during her second year.

This is what led her to punching out Draco Malfoy and breaking his nose (well, and she admitted that she enjoyed doingnit) in third year. Not to mention that her use of a Time-turner that was borderline illegal, and her aiding and abetting two capital fugitives in an escape from the law was certainly a high crime.

All leading to this, her 5th year. She had tried to organize a legal study group, which she would have had Harry lead. But now that Inquisitor Umbridge had made the concept illegal, action had to be taken. The problem is that Harry was many things, none of those things involved the word subtle.

Hermione occasionally imagined Harry dressed in a tuxedo working as a secret agent "Potter, Harry Potter"... "Butterbeer please, neither shaken nor stirred." Hermione would be lying if she didn't swoon at the idea of a dapper confident Harry in a tuxedo. (Indeed his Yule Ball-Robes were very nice despite robes being less flattering than a Tuxedo.)

Unfortunately such daydreams inevitibly led to an epic battle where Harry was trying to explain himself to reinforcements. (Led by M, played by Hermione herself in a wonderfully cut tactical outfit akin to Emma Peel from that avengers movie her father liked so much.)

Hermione imagined that she would arive with her troops and in a stern voice ask "What's all this then?" Harry would start to answer confidently only to be interrupted by an evil minion running by in the background screamingwhWhy is everything on fire? Why is the water on fire?"

Secret agent hHarry would wince and with a chagrin that he would only show Hermione, would respond: "well, it all seemed like a good idea at the time."

And then she would wake up.

Oh Harry could sneak IN to places with no difficulty. The problem is that his exit strategy seemed to be "leave a smouldering pile of rubble"

So the idea of having him teach the DA clearly runs up against the flaw that at some point he would default to destroying umbridge or the school. Now, as Umbridge was actively interfering with her education, an act Hermione considered worse than being murdered, Hermione actually had no problem with Umbridge being left a smouldering pile of ash.

But there had to be a better option. First of all, if she could find either a qualified licenced educator to take the position, they could partially oust Umbridge from the DADA professorship. Or in the alternative, she could find a licenced professional to act as a tutor under laws that supercede the executive edicts issued by Umbridge.

So Hermione had used her Carte Blanche access to the Restricted Section, (odd that they never retracted any of Lockheart's permission slips,) and researched a Ritual to summon meeting seven (7) specific criteria.

1. The person had to be an experienced and credentialed educator with more than 2 years experience
2. The person must be capable of decreasing or removing the Umbridge problem from Hogwarts
3. The person must be capable of teaching them things involving DADA that would be useful to stopping Voldemort.
4. The person must be capable of avoiding or preventing beiing controlled by Umbridge or the ministry's agents.
5. The person being summoned must be someone willing to come to this place and time, to This Hogwarts, as there is no guarantee that they could ever return to their origin.
6. The person must be someone who would side against Voldemort and be willing to fight him and his **** eaters.
7. The person must be good hearted and have no problem with muggleborn.

Hermione had tried other criteria, but she lacked the ability to go beyond the magical number of 7 criteria.

Once Hermione had the planned ritual drawn up, she needed a ritual room.

Initially, Hermione had asked Harry if he knew of a ritual room. He had not but he had asked his friend Dobby, who apparently did. After some discussion Dobby was willing to lead her to the long abandoned underground ritual room adjacent to the old collapsed tunnel to Hogsmeade.

Harry had offered to come along, but Hermione asked him to prepare a distraction, and watch the map in caee Umbridge left her office in the middle of the night. )

Hermione set up the runescript with sidewalk chalk, along with a 7-pointed star with an offering related to each criteria suspended in a jar of flamible oil.

Hermione lit the oil in the jars, and at rhe stroke of midnight began her chant. Standing at the tip of one if the 7 points, as she chanted, the fire in the 7 jars began to shoot up like a roman candle, and the chalk lines ignited as the chanting continued.

Just as she was reaching the end of the chant, when the room shook like a small earthquake hit, and the report of a distant explosion on the other side of the school.

Hermione continued her chant, but noticed to her horror that some dust and debris fell from the ceiling. To her left, a rock fell down and barely missed the jar, but the dust following it extinguished that point of the star. Hermione continued chanting. If she stopped without a definitive ending, the ritual could continue until it self-destructed.

To Hermione's right, a number of bricks and rubble fell from the roof, and crushed out the jar to her right, and extinguished that point of the star.

Hermione could feel the stress of the deformed ritual focus pulling on her mind, magic, and soul in a now painful fashion. And just before she passed out, she completed the ritual, then she collapsed to the ground.