"Very good," she said, and Neville breathed a huge sigh of relief. "I would have picked Formulda's spring ivy flowers, but those are rarer in England. Less oily, though. Mind how the texture of the vines affects the potion's boiling point. You'll need a lot of ivy, a few yards at least. Cut it as little as possible, and it must be straight from the vine. Go grab some - the rest of you, get started, chop-chop."
"Yes, professor."
Alabasandria made a lap around their workstations as the room was filled with the gentle white noise of page-turning, quills scratching on paper, dicing and chopping of ingredients, murmurs of chatter, and the screams of dying rabbits. Umbridge interrupted the peace when she gave a loud squeal as she watched Dean Thomas calmly gut and quarter his rabbit.
One of the other inspectors patted Umbridge on the shoulder and motioned the professor over towards them.
"Do the children acquire their own animal components often?" She asked diplomatically. "It isn't required in their OWLs."
"Oh, it's usually just toads and salamanders. We don't often need larger creatures. The next time they'll have to slaughter something is for the Nine-Tails Invisibility Potion just before Yule. I know it isn't required, but as I've explained to the students, it increases the quality of their brews tenfold and I want them to learn how to brew the way a professional potioneer would do."
"Nine-Tails requires the tail of a black cat," Umbridge said in absolute outrage. "This is disgusting! This violence is going to traumatize the children."
"They're fine!" She protested. "None of them are complaining. Besides, Longbottom and at least two dozen others across my classes utilize non-sacrificial recipes. I'm not having them hunt down unicorns for their horns, am I? It's all perfectly safe and legal."
The calmest of the officials wrote that tidbit down. "If you don't mind, I'd like to ask the students a few questions. Dolores, perhaps you'd better rest for a moment?"
Umbridge rushed over to speak with the Slytherins, hoping, surely, for more of their crying and complaining. But all Draco Malfoy could muster in defense was a shrug. They'd been fond of Snape, sure, but even if their new professor was Potter's mum, she was plenty Slytherin-y for them and they weren't about to complain.
.....
The Hogwarts Inquisitors had a busy term. Luckily, there were four of them to split up the tasks, but there was a mountain of work to be done, and they were already behind schedule. It was very likely they'd be at Hogwarts the whole year at this point. They had gone to inspect each of the classes for any serious safety and educational concerns, as well as a full inquiry into the financial and business aspects of running the school, and completed a safety inspection of the castle and grounds. This left them with a mountain of data to discuss changes that needed to be made.
"Your tea, dear." Dolores simpered to Jasmine Yaxley, who was hard at work organizing all their notes for the meeting. "Care for a biscuit? Just the one, I hope. You'll not find a husband with that sort of figure." She giggled a horrendous sound that grated everyone's ears.
The group was not headed by Dolores Umbridge - the other three would like it to be known - but that did not stop her from acting like their boss. (Jasmine Yaxley had ignored her blood supremacy-toting cousins, but at that moment, she truly regretted not learning an undetectable poison or two.)
They were in fact, an equally important quartet of people picked by the Minister himself as those best suited to handle the largest overhaul in Hogwarts' history. Jasmine was the head of the very small and usually underappreciated Department of Magical Health and Safety. Jasper Pickerington was from the Department of Magical Education. Hermapheus Spoonmen was a retired member of the Board of Governors and an excellent financial advisor, and Dolores… well she was a politician.
Surely her merit would be proved at the meeting, although based on the number of times she'd written half-breed and other such slurs on official reports, Jasmine was not feeling particularly hopeful.
"Shall we begin?" Spoonmen asked politely. The two exchanged eye contact which displayed their mutual dislike for the annoying woman. Jasmine took a handful of biscuits and began to chew angrily. They let Spoonmen get the most boring items out of the way first. The minutiae of the business and finances - the staff's compensation, the budgeting, the house elves, and the school structure - the student-to-staff ratio, rules, etc.
"The most major concerns I have at this time are the inconsistency in which house points may be rewarded or deducted and the teacher-to-student ratio - which is dangerously low. We have over 600 students and only 17 teachers."
They poured over the data for a few minutes. The truth was that Hogwarts was heavily supported by unpaid labor - between the house elves performing all the maintenance, cooking, and cleaning - and the ghosts and prefects taking the majority of patrolling and supervision outside of class. There was a single staff member who was available as a regular substitute (Madame Hooch) and poor Professor McGonagall was doing the work of three witches as Transfiguration professor, Head of Gryffindor, and Deputy Headmistress. If there was any sort of emergency or even if more than one professor fell ill at a time, then the Hogwarts staff would feel the strain in numbers.
"We should, at least, get four teaching assistants for the Heads of House," Pickerington decided. "Although I would recommend at least ten more additional staff. I'll interview the professors about who else would benefit from further support."
There were murmurs of agreement.
"Thank you, Hermapheus," Jasmine said. "That sounds like a good segue into our evaluations of the professors and curriculum. I believe we have an obvious point of interest. Binns, the ghost."
"He's been there since I was in school," Spoonmen said, and he was at least a hundred. "Who has allowed that man to continue teaching?"
"I interviewed all of the six, yes, six NEWT level History students, all of them are self-studying, there is not even a scheduled class time for them," Pickerington complained.
....
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