By this time, we were coming up to Christmas. While I was patrolling the corridors with Ron, or supervising the firsties and second-years who couldn't go out due to the weather, my mind was buzzing with schemes to get rid of Umbridge. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with anything that was both sure-fire and didn't have side-effects that were worse than the Umbridge régime, like getting me expelled. She had established her de facto ascendancy over the school, whipping out new Educational Decrees whenever she was thwarted, and I knew that I was seriously outgunned.