Chapter 574: Fish is a competent prefect (Edited).

After walking out the door, the two kittens soon reached Professor McGonagall's office, and this time, without knocking, Fish jumped up and grabbed the door handle, then hung on to it and slowly walked in with the door open.

"What are you doing here?"

Professor McGonagall, who was sitting at her desk flipping through her papers, looked at the two kittens that had snuck in.

She still hadn't been able to sleep and had only put on black and white plaid pajamas.

Good thing Professor McGonagall's Animagus form is a cat and can use her feline habits to fall into a short, deep sleep and rejuvenate herself, otherwise she would have been unable to continue.

Dumbledore had left her with most of the work, in fact, for that very reason.

"Minerva~ good night nya~"

?●ω●?

Fish transformed back into his human form and swooped down to hug Professor McGonagall, he rubbed against her cheek vigorously before explaining his purpose.

"It's Hermione who wants to see you."

"Hermione?"

Professor McGonagall raised a surprised eyebrow and looked at her future daughter-in-law, who had approached the table, and asked quietly, "What's the matter? Is the little rascal up to mischief again?"

As she said this, she tugged gently on Fish's cat ears.

"No! Fish has been very good lately!".

(`ω)

Fish protested with a snort, he was planning something, but he hadn't done it yet!

To prove his innocence, Fish aggrievedly continued, "Fish has also been doing his job as Prefect! And he helped Hermione with George and Fred."

"Hmm... huh?!" Hearing two impossible-to-ignore names come out of Fish's mouth, Professor McGonagall immediately followed up with, "What about George and Fred?"

"I think they're opening a joke store, they've been working on a new product over the summer...".

Fish didn't think there was anything to hide and didn't hesitate to tell Professor McGonagall all about how the twins had gotten someone to test their new product, with his help.

Hermione, who already disapproved of the twins' experimentation, wasn't going to stop Fish, and was eager for Professor McGonagall to intervene and forbid their dangerous behavior.

As she had predicted, Professor McGonagall, upon hearing Fish's story, immediately slapped her hand on the table and shouted, "Nonsense! Is this something you can just try?!"

"So Fish went to help" asked Fish, beating his chest proudly. "Isn't Fish a cool Prefect?".

(`)

Professor McGonagall looked at him blankly and said, "Great at what? Aren't you supposed to be stopping them?"

"But George and Fred aren't going to be great," replied Fish, shaking his head, "It'll be worse if they run off to experiment on their own and something goes wrong."

Fish then reasoned with Professor McGonagall, "It would be better to have Fish keeping watch, as he has done this afternoon, so that, if there were any danger, he could be rescued in time. Fish can sense his physical state so clearly that he will be able to see what is wrong at first."

Professor McGonagall looked at Fish in surprise and then at Hermione.

Hermione, however, waved her hand gently, indicating that she had not taught her those words.

So Professor McGonagall looked at Fish with a quizzical look on her face and asked, "Did you come up with those?"

"Of course it did! Don't treat Fish like an idiot!".

(`н)

Fish protested with a pout.

"All right, all right, I'm sorry." Professor McGonagall rubbed Fish's head, apologized with a smile and praised, "It was Mom's mistake, Fish is doing a great job as Prefect, you're great."

"Eh heh heh~"

(?ω?)

Fish immediately stopped sulking at the compliment, narrowed his eyes and rubbed his head against Professor McGonagall's palm, purring.

"By the way, what did you want to see me about, Hermione?"

Professor McGonagall asked, remembering that Hermione had something else to do, having spent some time petting Fish.

"It's about Professor Umbridge..."

Hermione told the story of today's Defense Against the Dark Arts class, what she had found out about the other years and the other Houses, and her suspicions, then asked worriedly, "Are we really going to learn something like this? How could Professor Dumbledore allow this to happen?"

"Fudge and Umbridge... Have they really gone this far?"

Professor McGonagall didn't seem surprised after hearing Hermione's account, but she sighed heavily.

Dumbledore and the members of the Order of the Phoenix had already understood the purpose of Fudge sending Umbridge to teach at Hogwarts, and had prepared for it.

What they had not expected was that Fudge and Umbridge would go to the extreme of not teaching Hogwarts students even minimal knowledge.

"I will discuss this with Dumbledore." said Professor McGonagall solemnly.

As a teacher, Professor McGonagall took these matters very seriously, and after learning about the situation in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, she had to deal with it anyway.

"Didn't Dumbledore... expect this to happen sooner?" Hermione frowned, seemingly unsatisfied with the answer. "Didn't he hire Umbridge on purpose?"

"How do you know?" Professor McGonagall showed her surprise again, but was quick to respond, the corners of her lips twitching slightly. "Another accessory of the twins, isn't it? can't those two put their wits about them?"

After grumbling, Professor McGonagall answered Hermione's question, "Dumbledore didn't exactly hire someone from the Ministry of Magic to work at the school on purpose, it was a combination of circumstances that he thought would be the best solution...."

She briefly explained Dumbledore's reasons for doing so, then shook her head. "It's just that we didn't expect Fudge to be crazy enough to even try to teach a little spell."

"Why would they do that?" asked Hermione curiously. "Even if they were targeting Dumbledore, it wouldn't have much to do with us, would it?"

Fish, who had already adopted his cat form and was playing with his tail in Professor McGonagall's lap, also pricked up his ears.

She had caught something of what the two were talking about and to sum it up from her point of view, it went something like this.

Fudge and Dumbledore were fighting and they wanted everyone to think that Dumbledore was a mean old man.... (Fish wondered: wasn't Dumbledore always a mean old man?).

So, Fudge sends Umbridge to the school, to bring in the students who support the Ministry, to crack down on the students who support Dumbledore, and to gather evidence that Dumbledore is a mean old man. (Fish still wonders: does it even need to be proven?).

Dumbledore, however, didn't want to pick a fight with Fudge and, faced with the difficulty of finding a new teacher and problems with Harry, let Umbridge into Hogwarts.

But now Hermione discovered that Umbridge, the bad one, was not going to teach the rest of the class to fight.

Professor McGonagall smiled wryly and said, "According to Percy's latest news, Fudge seems to think that Dumbledore plans to use Hogwarts students to build an army of his own, to separate himself from the Ministry of Magic."

"Huh?!"

Hermione was a bit dumbfounded by this answer, not even sure how she should react at that moment.

Fish, however, was so excited that he whirled back into his human form and asked with a twinkle in his eye, "We're going to fight the Ministry of Magic nya?!"

(?ω?)