Yeah, I know I told some people I'd be finishing off other stories next, but this idea got stuck in my head when I was trying to decide which story to get onto first, sorry. I'll try to get some chapters done on the other stories.

This will be AU (wow, me writing an AU story, who'da thunk it? ;^), based on a witches' coven bringing back Lily Potter and Alice Longbottom on Samhain seven years after Voldemort's attack on the Potters. Those of faint heart be warned, it may involve rituals with Minerva McGonagall, Pomona Sprout, Augusta Longbottom, Griselda Marchbanks and Bathilda Bagshot dancing naked around a fire. Be afraid, be very afraid... ;^)

I also give warning that I will almost certainly make use of many of the same mechanisms as I've used in my other stories, as they're what makes sense to me, and the manipulative old (insert invective of choice here) and the other characters I love to hate will get the usual treatment. If you don't like that, please do yourselves and everyone else a favour and ignore this story. There is a slight change in the timeline in that Fudge became Minister in early Eighty Eight instead of Ninety here.

Usual disclaimers, no rights to anything from JKR's stories.

In the last week of October, Nineteen Eighty Eight, nine women across Britain received letters that triggered their memories of the magical vow they'd all made, and the fact that their memories relating to the subject of the vow had been taken from most of them by someone. Two were in a castle hidden from the non-magical world in Scotland, three were located in the West Country of England and the other four were in and around London, but they all knew why they needed to be in the cemetery in Godric's Hollow in the West Country for the ritual on Samhain. There was over a century's difference between the ages of the eldest and the youngest of these women but they were all regarded as being among the most powerful witches of their generations and were part of a witches' coven that had existed for over two thousand years. However the sender of the letters was the supposedly Squib… non-magical…. sister of a previous member of the coven who was killed with the rest of the magical McKinnon family in July Nineteen Eighty One.

While the Wizarding world refused to accept it though Jane Granger, as her name was now, had quite a lot of magic in her, she just couldn't use it the way normal witches and wizards did. However whatever this was only stopped her using wizarding magic, she had no problem using goblin or elf magic and was quite proficient with them. Jane's husband Roger was also classified as a Squib in the Wizarding world and his contribution apparently cancelled out whatever prevented Jane using wizarding magic, because their nine year old daughter was already a witch of quite notable power.

Minerva McGonagall and Pomona Sprout quietly made arrangements with their friend and colleague Filius Flitwick to cover for them and one of their students when they disappeared on what was referred to as Halloween at the magical school of Hogwarts in Scotland where they both worked and the other seven made their preparations as well. Pandora Lovegood would be bringing her effectively eight year old daughter Luna along with her to take part in the ritual, Jane would be bringing her nine year old daughter Hermione and Minerva and Pomona would be bringing along fifteen year old Nymphadora Tonks, the daughter of another coven member, Andromeda Tonks…. because the forms for the ritual they were to perform required a coven of thirteen witches. The three young witches were already showing quite a bit of magical power, which would hopefully be enhanced by their links to their mothers, and they knew that they'd need all the help they could get to draw Lily Potter's soul back whatever realm it had been sent to on Samhain seven years before by the protection ritual she'd used to save her son. They were also hoping that, as Alice Longbottom had been part of the vow made to bring Lily back, the ritual would manage to draw her mind back from wherever it had been banished by her torture at the hands of the Lestranges and Barty Crouch Junior a couple of weeks after Lily was supposedly killed.


On Samhain, the thirteen witches gathered at Bathilda Bagshot's cottage in Godric's Hollow. All they were wearing was robes which would be removed for the ritual, none of them really believed that they needed to be naked for the ritual, but being naked was written into the forms for the ritual and they were prepared to do anything they had to to make it work. As the time for the ritual grew near they proceeded to the cemetery beside the church, casting wards to hide the cemetery from anyone else and keep everyone else out before casting spells to remove the marble slab covering Lily's grave and the lid of her casket. They were heartened to see that there were no signs of corruption visible on Lily's body, because that hopefully confirmed that what Lily had done to protect Harry had gone as expected.

They formed a ring around Lily and her husband James' graves and conjured a magical fire on the slab that still covered James' grave to begin the ritual. Bathilda, as the coven's High Priestess, stood at the foot of Lily's grave. As Lily's best friend, Pandora stood to Bathilda's right, with her daughter Luna beside her, then Griselda Marchbanks, Jane and her daughter Hermione, Minerva, who was like a beloved aunt for Lily, Patricia Rakepick, Augusta Longbottom, Emmeline Vance, Pomona Sprout, and finally Andromeda Tonks and her daughter Nymphadora to Bathilda's left.

At what the formulas said was the optimal time, they began chanting and channelling their magic into Lily's body and they kept it up until she suddenly drew a gasping breath and sat up. It didn't take her long to recognise what had happened….. but then the fact that she was sitting in a casket and looking up at the naked members of her coven who had obviously just performed the ritual to bring her back was rather a big clue…. and she burst into tears as there was no question who she'd been buried beside.

She wasn't happy about what she was seeing on the faces of the ones in front of her when she forced a question through her tears "Harry?", but Pandora knelt down to reassure her.

"He survived that night Lily, your protections worked, but the old bastard had him disappeared and wiped our memories of what happened. We're only now getting our memories back because they were triggered by the vow we made to bring you back. All the old bastard would tell Magical Britain is that Harry is safe with relatives in the Muggle world…."

That had Lily struggling to get out of her casket. "Safe? The only relative Harry has in the Muggle world is my bitch of a so called sister and if he's with her and that fat pig of a husband of her's he certainly isn't safe!"

She kept getting tangled up in her formal robes as she tried to climb out of the casket, until she spat out "Fuck this!" and apparated directly out of the casket. The others wanted to follow her, but none of them could remember where her sister lived.

Augusta was looking conflicted and when Minerva told her "Go! We need to know whether we have Alice back as well!" she nodded gratefully, quickly pulling on her robes and apparating away as well. After putting the lid back on Lily's casket and replacing the slab over her grave, the others took down the protections around the cemetery and departed as well. Minerva, Pomona and Nymphadora went straight back to Hogwarts, hoping that they hadn't been missed yet so they could pretend that they'd never left, they were also eager to tell Filius that Lily had been returned safely because it had hurt him deeply when she was taken away from them. The rest of them returned to Bathilda's cottage, reasoning that as soon as Lily calmed down she would work out that that was where they would be.


Lily arrived on the doorstep of a boring suburban house in a boring suburban street in Little Whinging in Surrey and blasted the door in, the power radiating from her in her rage making her hair writhe about her head like a gorgon's snakes as she stormed into the house. Her adopted sister's fat pig of a husband keeled over with a heart attack when his freakish dead sister-in-law stormed into their living room like an avenging Valkyrie, but Lily didn't give Petunia a chance to help him as her magic was holding her a couple of feet off the floor as she thundered. "Where's my son?"

Liquid was dribbling down Petunia's leg as she shakily pointed out to the hall and stuttered. "Cup… Cupboard… He's in the cupboard...", because she was sure that she would be killed too as soon as Lily saw how they had treated her son.

The fact that she was cast aside to smash into the wall as Lily spun around and rushed out into the hall supported Petunia's belief, as did the sound of wood splintering as the cupboard door was ripped off and Lily whispering Harry's name and crying that she heard as she lost consciousness.

When the police arrived about twenty minutes later, after being called by the neighbours about hearing a lot of shouting from 4 Privet Drive and then a woman in strange clothes hurrying out of the house with what looked like a dead child in her arms and disappearing, Vernon Dursley was dead from a heart attack and Petunia Dursley was in a bad way, with a fractured skull, numerous broken bones and other injuries from hitting the wall hard enough to almost go right through the plasterboard, she probably would have if the supporting framework hadn't been in the way.

Eight year old Dudley Dursley was nudging his mother with his foot, telling her to get up and make him something to eat because he was hungry, but when they told him to stop that because she was hurt he just said. "Why? The Freak's been hurt worse than this heaps of times and Mummy and Daddy never let him off doing his jobs because of it."


St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was in an uproar, because Lady Alice Longbottom, who'd been laying insensible there in the bed beside her husband, Lord Francis Longbottom, ever since they had been tortured into an apparently mindless state by the Lestranges and Bartemius Crouch Junior nearly seven years ago, had suddenly gasped, sat up and screamed out. "What the fuck?"

While the healers were examining her, trying to work out how she could have suddenly returned to a functional state like this, her mother-in-law the Dowager Longbottom ran in, barefoot and apparently naked under the robe she was wearing, anxiously asking her daughter-in-law. "Did it work?"

It was obvious to the healers that Lady Longbottom and her mother-in-law knew what had done this but they both refused to answer any questions, the most anyone could pick up from what they were whispering to each other were the words 'ritual' and 'Lily'. What the ones capable of putting two and two together got from that was that there had been some form of ritual and it probably related to Lily Potter, who'd been killed along with her husband just before the Longbottoms were attacked, but that didn't really tell them anything.

After a bit, Lady Longbottom must have mentioned something about the Dowager Longbottom's state of dress, because she suddenly looked down and blushed, but she didn't bother doing anything about it, she just took some objects from the pocket of her robes and used them to portkey Lord and Lady Longbottom and herself away, taking her son and daughter-in-law straight out of their beds. No-one had the faintest idea where they had gone to, which pissed off a certain meddling old bastard no end when he arrived soon after they disappeared.


The other witches in the coven were mistaken about where Lily would go to when she left her sister's, but then they had had no idea how badly Harry had been treated. What Lily did caused more upset in the Goblin Nation than it had seen in centuries though, because she popped straight into the personal office of Ragnok the Third, Over Chieftain of the Goblin Nations and Director of the Gringotts Banks, and screamed. "Over Chieftain Ragnok, The Potter needs you!"

This of course resulted in the office quickly filling with Clan Gringott's elite goblin warriors, but there was no bloodshed because half of them recognised her as Duchess Potter, wife of the previous Potter, mother of the current Potter and acknowledged friend of Over Chieftain Ragnok. When Ragnok arrived, he could see what Lily was upset about in Harry, so he grabbed her arm to pop the three of them to the Healers' Hall where their best healers for humans were waiting to treat her if the ritual worked.

Augusta arrived in the Healers' Hall with Alice and Frank while the healers were examining Harry, and Ragnok explained to Lily that the Longbottoms had been attacked a couple of weeks after she and James were. By then Lily had calmed down enough to realise that the rest of the coven would most likely be at Bathilda's, so she popped back there to fill them in and they all used the goblin portkey that Ragnok had given them to bring Lily to the Healers' Hall in Gringotts after the ritual. While they were doing that, Augusta was given another portkey to go collect her grandson Neville from Longbottom Hall and return to Gringotts with him.

Within twenty minutes of Lily and Alice being returned, they were all in the Healers' Hall, but there was a lot more going on than they'd expected. The plans that they'd put together in the days since the letters activated the vow and they all remembered that they were going to perform the ritual to return Lily on Samhain centred around taking Lily, and hopefully Alice and Frank if Alice was returned as well, to the Healers' Hall in Gringotts to treat them for whatever had happened to them since Samhain in Nineteen Eighty One. The one who needed the most intensive treatment though was Harry, and the most of them also needed treatment to release bindings and remove compulsions, memory manipulations and other curses from them.

Lily didn't leave Harry's side through his treatments, and what she was muttering about what she was going to do to her sister and that old bastard for what they did to her son was disturbing the goblins who heard it, which was unheard of. Between malnutrition, being overworked to the point of his body breaking down and tearing ligaments and muscles from their attachment points and the physical abuse which resulted in damage to just about every bone in his body, most of his major organs and his eyes, his physical reconstruction essentially amounted to progressively vanishing every part of his body and regrowing it, the physical reconstruction alone would have taken over six months of intensive treatment if it hadn't been done in a runic time chamber with a massive time acceleration factor.

Before any of that could be done though, they had to remove severe bindings on his life force, magic, intellect and memory, nasty blood wards that changed his magical signature and leached his magic and compulsions which should have left him hardly able to move, think or speak and with no magic or free will at all, not to mention a powerful soul anchor attached to him that was leaching even more of his magic and actively trying to possess him. What they got from his memories though showed that he'd been a bright, active boy who'd had more than a few incidents of significant accidental magic and no evidence at all of possession by the soul anchor. He had been miserable, to be sure, but the hell he was living in would have caused that without any outside influence.

None of the healers could understand how the child had managed to shrug off everything that had been done to him, and they actually were a little afraid of what he'd be capable of once all those restrictions were removed. The time chamber compressed over nine months inside the chamber into two days outside the chamber, and the only reason anyone recognised the boy who walked out with Lily was that he had her eyes. Without the stunted growth caused by malnutrition and being permanently hunched over because of the physical damage inflicted upon him, he was now at least a foot taller and moved with the easy grace and quickness of a fit and active child a few years older (well he was over nine months older, as was Luna who had stayed in the time chamber with him and Lily the whole time, Pandora, her husband Xeno and Ragnok had all seen the bonds between Harry, Luna and Hermione when they were babies so it had been agreed back then that it would help to even up their ages, and after this time in the chamber there was no more than a month or so between them).

Most of the adults and Dora (not even Andromeda had to ask why her daughter hated her given name), had had bindings, compulsions, memory manipulations and other manipulations placed on them, so Gringotts' healers were busy for a few days. Being able to look into Alice's memories and see how she had been brought back by the ritual they performed to call Lily back gave them the pointers they needed to bring Frank back as well, and Alice and Frank spent a day in the time chamber with Harry being brought back to physical and mental health.


Another one they had in the time chamber with them was Sirius Black, Harry's godfather. Sirius had been framed for betraying the Potters and then murdering another of their friends and a dozen Muggles. He'd been thrown straight into Azkaban for that without a trial or even an investigation into his crimes due to Albus Dumbledore's machinations to try and get control of the House of Potter's power and fortune. Dumbledore had also done a deal with Lucius Malfoy to remove Sirius from contention to take control of the House of Black by the time the current Duke Black, Sirius' grandfather Arcturus Black the Third, died because as far as they knew that would leave Malfoy's son Draco as the only male of the Black bloodline capable of claiming the Black title.

With Dumbledore controlling the so-called 'Light' Houses and the Death Eaters controlling the so-called 'Dark' Houses, all Arcturus' attempts to get a trial for his grandson and heir over the last seven years had been blocked, so Sirius was still in Azkaban and after seven years there, Dumbledore and Malfoy were confident that if Sirius ever did manage to get out of Azkaban, he would have lost his mind to the Dementors like all the other long term inhabitants of Azkaban had. They'd also been arranging for his cell to be 'accidentally' left open as often as possible to let the Dementors get to him to suck his soul out.

What they didn't realise though was that Sirius had been staying in his animagus form as much as possible to reduce the effect the Dementors had on him. He'd also found that the Dementors tended to ignore him in his animagus form, so any time his cell door was left open he changed into his animagus form and stayed that way until the human guards returned.

Even with the amulets which repelled the Dementors to a degree, none of the human guards liked being around them, so unless they were escorting prisoners to or from their cells (or going to open Sirius' cell door as they'd been paid to), they didn't go down to the levels that the Dementors patrolled. This worked out in Sirius' favour, because once Lily, who could testify in court that he was innocent of most of the charges against him, returned the goblins used their own form of apparation to pop into his cell and remove him. This retrieval attempt happened to coincide with one of the times his cell door had been left open to let the Dementors to get at him, so they quickly created a simulacrum of him in his human form, using his and others' memories to make it look like someone who had lost their soul to a Dementor's kiss, then popped back into his cell to leave it in his place. Amelia Bones (Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement) still had some loyal people planted in the staff of Azkaban, and one of them reported that no-one had questioned that the simulacrum was anything but Sirius' soulless husk when it was found. It was buried as soon as it 'died' a few hours later and they were all ordered not to say a word about it to anyone.

This meant that they could take the time to get Sirius back into a state where he was fit to stand trial. They had someone else that they planned to track down and capture first though, Peter Pettigrew, the one who had actually committed the crimes that Sirius had been thrown into Azkaban for, but Pettigrew had been 'posthumously' been awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class, for supposedly standing up to Sirius.


While everyone was recovering from what had been done to them over the past seven years, Dumbledore was doing everything he could to find out what had happened to Harry Potter and the Longbottoms. When he heard that the boy had been taken away from the Dursleys by a woman in strange clothes who might have had brown or red hair, he'd apparated straight to the cemetery in Godric's Hollow to check the Potters' graves, but they appeared to be undisturbed.

When he stopped to think about it though, it seemed more likely that either Alice or Augusta Longbottom had been the one who took the boy, because his people at St Mungo's had told him that Alice Longbottom had suddenly awoken and then disappeared around the same time as Potter disappeared. The fact that the Potters and the Longbottoms had been close with the two boys playing together quite often as toddlers and neither Augusta or Neville Longbottom had been seen since Alice and Frank disappeared from St Mungo's seemed to add weight to that theory.

He hadn't managed to question Petunia Dursley about the woman either because she was still in hospital under heavy police guard, but the gossip he heard in the hospital was that the reason she was being guarded was that she was being held on suspicion of being party to the abuse and murder of the boy who had been taken from the Dursley house. Apparently the neighbours had repeated all the stories the Dursleys told about him to the police, and reported that he had always been very small, frail and damaged looking little boy, made to work all the time and flinching away from anyone who came near him as if he expected to be hit. The gossip at the hospital also said that there had been quite a lot of blood evidence found in the house that didn't match any of the Dursleys, especially in the locked cupboard under the stairs which someone had obviously slept in, but aside from a suspiciously bare school record for a supposed nephew there were no legal or medical records for any child residing in the house other than their son Dudley Dursley.

Dumbledore wished he could find a way to claim the Longbottom votes and gold while they weren't in a position to stop him, but he had to concede that he had nothing that he could use to justify doing so in the Wizengamot and the other Druid Houses would almost certainly oppose him. The war wards that had been raised at Longbottom Hall would have given him cause if it were a younger house, but the thrice damned Druid Laws specified that the Most Ancient Houses had a duty to provide sanctuary to less established magical people and therefore had the right to raised war wards if they believed that there was danger about. He couldn't get through the Longbottoms' war wards, but he didn't think that they were at Longbottom Hall.

The fact that all of the monitoring and locator charms he'd linked to the blood wards for the Potter brat had suddenly died was more worrying though, if the Wizengamot's records weren't still showing the Potter line as extant he would have taken that as evidence that the Dursleys had managed to kill him, but he was alive, so someone had somehow managed to remove what he'd linked to the boy's very blood, and the list of wizards with the power and ability needed to do that was very short.


They were amused when Minerva suddenly portkeying into where they were staying in Gringotts, swearing and calling herself a daft old cow, but they quickly became excited when she explained what had set her off. What it came down to was that she'd suddenly realised that she'd seen a rat that looked like the memories Sirius had shown them of Pettigrew's animagus rat form, and it was missing the same toe on its front paw as the finger that Pettigrew had cut off to frame Sirius for killing him and those muggles! She'd been grading assignments in her free period when she realised that she'd seen it at Hogwarts, as the pet of Percy Weasley, the son of some of Dumbledore's strongest supporters!

None of them believed that even his most faithful followers would have knowingly agreed to have a man in his late twenties sleeping in their pre-teen son's bed, but the probability that Dumbledore knew all about it and chose to keep that information from them was disturbingly strong. The only thing that helped settle their stomachs about that notion was the fact that none of them who knew Pettigrew believed that he had the skill to convincingly manipulate the memories of anyone enough to cover up any hint of what he was doing at night, not even a child, so they were fairly sure that he'd be staying as a rat when he shared a bed with the boy. He might be getting Dumbledore to cover up night time activities, but Minerva hadn't heard any hint of dodgy occurrences in the Gryffindor tower, so they were hoping that that was evidence that he was limiting whatever he was doing to self help.

Pettigrew wouldn't have a chance to get up to anything for much longer anyway, because now they knew where to look for him, he'd be out of there pretty damned quick. The mind healers' work with Sirius offered them something to help speed this process up too, because with his memories released and his mind clear Sirius remembered that the Marauders' Map, which they'd created to help them avoid Filch, the Prefects and the Professors when they were sneaking about Hogwarts pulling pranks, had been confiscated from Pettigrew by Filch in their Seventh year and unless Filch had changed his ways in the last decade (anyone who had gone to Hogwarts snorted at the idea of Filch ever changing), it would still be sitting in the confiscated objects in his office. Minerva and the others were looking dubious about how useful this would be until Remus Lupin, who the goblins had just located and brought in, explained that the nature of the charms they used to create the Marauders' Map reliably identified everyone shown on the map, even if they were in their animagus form or polijuiced as someone else.

That was enough for Minerva so she went straight back to Hogwarts, and as soon as Filch and Dumbledore were well away from Filch's office she ducked in to look for the map. The map responding to an 'Accio Marauders' Map' made enough noise to lead her straight to the filing cabinet it was being kept in and she had it and was out of the office in under ten minutes. A couple of Ragnok's best goblin warriors had come back with her and were hiding in her chambers and with the map was the work of minutes to pinpoint Pettigrew's location in the Gryffindor Second Year Boys' dorm room, pop in, stun him, grab him and take him straight to Gringotts before anything could interfere with them getting him out of there.

It didn't take long to get Amelia Bones, Alastor Moody (the legendary Master Auror who would have been the Head Auror if he hadn't told Amelia to shove the job up her arse because he had real work to do) and Saul Croaker, Director of the Department of Mysteries, into Gringotts to question Pettigrew under Veritaserum and take copies of the memories of all significant events that could be used to prosecute him and other Death Eaters, then they just had to work out how to stage his and Sirius' trials without giving Dumbledore a chance to interfere.


They actually had an advantage here because Dumbledore didn't bother attending most Wizengamot sessions during the school terms, usually making excuses about being too busy at Hogwarts and calling for someone else to act as the Chief Warlock or Chief Witch in his place, and Fudge only tended to turn up when one of his sponsors was trying to get something pushed through. Therefore they just had to make sure that the Acting Chief Warlock or Chief Witch wasn't a Dumbledore or Voldemort supporter and Fudge and his toad of a 'Senior Undersecretary' weren't present and then slip a couple of minor trial items into the schedule just before the session started.

Something else that worked in their favour was the fact that the rules stated that the Acting Chief Warlock or Chief Witch should be the most senior Wizengamot member present, and if Griselda was present, that would be her... and then they had their god hammer. This was made up of two parts, the fact that as the last of the Potter blood, Harry had become Duke Potter-Peverell and Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses the moment his father died, and he had done the inheritance tests and claimed all houses that were rightfully his at Gringotts.

The biggest surprise there had been the fact that on top of the titles associated with the Potter line, he was also Earl Slytherin, this had come down through his mother but like the House of Black, only males could claim the Slytherin title. For the Most Ancient Houses, this overrode any Wizengamot rules of succession so Harry could use the magic of the Wizengamot to acknowledge his claim, void any and all voting proxies that anyone had managed to get assigned since his father died and then declare his mother his Regent with all voting rights for his houses. This would strip a large voting block off Dumbledore's 'Light' House faction, and Sirius' grandfather was planning to do the same to the 'Dark' House faction. Ragnok had given them proof of who Voldemort really was years ago, but they'd been waiting for the best time to make use of that, and Arcturus had decided that this was that time.

The 'blood war' that had ravaged Magical Britain and parts of Magical Europe through the Nineteen Seventies was fought between Pure-Blood supremacists who followed 'Lord' Voldemort because they believed that the only ones who had the right to have magic were those whose parents had both been magical, going back several generations, and those who believed that it was wrong to wage genocide on the basis of magical parentage. The most rabid of 'Lord' Voldemort's followers were called Death Eaters, the ones who more his Dark Mark as a sign of his favour and were enslaved to him through the Dark Mark.

The proof the goblins had provided, and which Dumbledore had apparently known all along but never shared with anyone even though it would have quite possibly ended the war earlier, was that their so-called 'Lord' Voldemort was no Pure-Blood Lord. Tom Marvolo Riddle's father was the non-magical son of a wealthy but common local land owner and his mother, though from a Pure-blood background, could only have qualified as a witch if someone really wanted to be generous. To all intents and purposes, Merope Gaunt was a Squib who had far less magic inside her than Jane Granger did. Tom Riddle Senior may have been from a Squib background as well, because his son was certainly a powerful wizard, but by the official classifications he was a Muggle. He left Merope Gaunt and had their marriage annulled as soon as she stopped using love potions to enthral him in the early stages of her pregnancy and Merope Gaunt died following her son's birth so Tom Marvolo Riddle was born a bastard and raised in a Muggle orphanage. This meant that the so-called 'Lord' Voldemort (which was in fact an anagram of his name that he created as a teenager to cover up his true origins) was in fact a common Muggle-Born (or Muggle-Raised Half-Blood if you wanted to be generous) orphan bastard, and this was what Arcturus was planning to use to strip quite a few of the titles and votes and a lot of the gold away from the Dark Houses and swing the vote in Sirius' favour when they had his trial.


Everything panned out the way they wanted at the next Wizengamot session, the Clerk of the Court announced that Chief Warlock Dumbledore couldn't get away from Hogwarts due to pressing business at the school and requested Lady Marchbanks to act as Chief Witch and preside over the session, which she accepted. There was a Ministry flunky there to represent Fudge and the Ministry so Amelia added the two criminal trial items to the schedule and once the Clerk of the Court confirmed that they had enough Wizengamot members present for a criminal trial he announced the session started and Griselda called for the chamber to be sealed. This was the first sign most in the chamber had that this was anything but a routine boring Wizengamot session, but there was nothing that could be done about it once the chamber was sealed.

The Clerk of the Court Eugene Fawcett had decades of experience at being the Wizengamot's major-domo and he preferred it when Lady Marchbanks, Lord Ogden or one of a handful of other senior Wizengamot members presided as Chief Witch or Chief Warlock because most of them had far more competence, integrity and professionalism than Dumbledore, but he could see something in Lady Marchbanks' eye that told him that this was going to be an interesting session so he smiled to himself, it would be fun to see these idiots shaken up a little. He called for notice of any matters of import that should precede the scheduled items and smiled as a woman and boy in the gallery stood and waited to be recognised, this was definitely going to be interesting, because Duchess Potter was supposed to have been killed seven years ago!

Eugene pressed a rune to silence the members benches and gallery and waved to the 'Stone of Truth' (actually a very large crystal that was the interface to the magic of the court) quietly suggesting that if Lily was identified by the magic first it may help to cut some of the arguments short. Lily smiled at him and nodded, making her Potter and Peverell House rings visible and placing her hands on the crystal. A voice rang out through the chamber. "The Dowager Lily Rose Potter Peverell, Verified." She gave Eugene a wry smile as she stepped back and waved Harry forward, as being identified as a Dowager when she was still effectively twenty three wasn't something a girl really wanted to hear.

Harry also made his Potter and Peverell House rings visible and put his hands on the crystal so the voice rang out again. "Duke Henry James Potter Peverell, Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses, Verified."

Harry kept his hands on the crystal as he clearly stated. "I, Duke Henry James Potter Peverell, Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses, hereby request that my mother, the Dowager Lily Rose Potter Peverell, accept the position of Regent for the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses."

He took his hands off the crystal and stepped back, with Lily taking his place and saying. "I, the Dowager Lily Rose Potter Peverell, mother of Duke Henry James Potter Peverell, hereby accept the position of Regent for the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses." She stepped back and the voice rang out. "The Dowager Lily Rose Potter Peverell, mother of Duke Henry James Potter Peverell, has been accepted as Regent for the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses."

Harry once again placed his hands on the Stone. "I hereby cancel any and all voting proxies relating to the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses and assign any and all voting rights relating to the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses to the Regent for the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses."

When he stepped back, the voice rang out. "All current voting proxies relating to the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses have been cancelled. All voting rights relating to the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses have been assigned to the Regent for the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Potter and Peverell and their Associated Houses."

Harry bowed and Lily curtsied to the Clerk of the Court and then the Chief Witch, but they stopped when they turned to proceed to the Potter box, because there was someone sitting in it. This was just a bit of theatre really because they knew that one of Dumbledore's supporters had been voting the Potter proxies, but he was obviously a stubborn old fool because he was refusing to vacate the box, even though he must have already received a stinging hex to prompt him to vacate and everyone knew that the intensity would keep increasing until he did so. Harry turned to Eugene. "Sir, it would appear that someone is refusing to vacate the Potter box even though the Magic of the Court has verified that it is rightfully ours."

Eugene turned to look up at the Potter box and made a show of looking surprised. "You are quite correct Duke Potter…. Mister Smith, what are you doing in the Potter box? Did you not hear the Magic of the Court verify Duke Potter's identity and decision?"

The old fool winced as he received a stronger jolt from the seat. "I am acting under the Chief Warlock's orders to vote for the House of Potter and I will not stand down until I have received confirmation of the change from him!"

Eugene had to cover up a smile. "Perhaps you should see a healer to have your eyesight and hearing tested Mister Smith, because as you should have seen and heard, Lady Marchbanks is the Chief Witch for this Wizengamot session and Magic has confirmed Duke Potter and his Regent's rights, please vacate the Potter Box immediately or we will be required to take action."

"I am not going anywhere without word from the Chief Warlock that his orders for me have changed!"

Eugene looked at Griselda and she nodded grimly, so he waved to the DMLE Patrol Officers who were serving as the Officers of the Court. Smith's insults and language as the Officers of the Court dragged him out of the Potter box and threw him into a silenced restraining area earned him a few hundred Galleons in fines and quite possibly lost him his Wizengamot seat permanently. Acceptable etiquette in the Wizengamot was clearly defined in its regulations and behaviour of that nature went way beyond what was acceptable.

There was an upside to the show he put on though, because no-one else wanted to risk setting anyone off in the tense atmosphere that now existed and they gave up on most of the petty arguments and questions that had been expected about how Lily could have returned from the dead and where Harry had been for the last seven years.

Eugene cleared his throat and asked whether there were any other matters of import. At that, Frank stood in the gallery and when he was recognised he had his identity verified, revoking Augusta's position as Regent for the Senior Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Longbottom and its Associated Houses and making her Steward instead, then he cancelled any and all voting proxies for the House of Longbottom and its Associated Houses and assigned them to Augusta (like Harry, as Head of House he could vote them himself but Regents and Stewards had to have voting rights assigned).


It was Arcturus' turn next, and Eugene could tell by the gleam in Griselda's eye that this was going to be something special. Arcturus was getting more than a few worried looks from the Dark House seats because he hadn't bothered attending a Wizengamot session in years and hadn't changed anything to do with the House of Black's voting proxies for even longer. There was no surprises when he was verified as "Duke Arcturus Sirius Black Glynn, Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Black and Glynn and their Associated Houses", but there was when he cancelled any and all voting proxies for the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Black and Glynn and their Associated Houses, because that meant that no-one but him could cast any votes for any of their houses.

Little did they know that that was his little surprise. He looked up at Lucius Malfoy and some of the others on the Noble House benches and gave them an evil smile, then spoke up with his hands on the crystal. "I have been presented with proof of a great stain on the honour of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Black and Glynn and their Associated Houses. The creed of the House of Black, which has primacy over all of our houses, is that with the sole exception of the accepted monarch of Britain, we do not submit to any other. I have sighted incontrovertible proof that sons and daughters of the House of Black and its Associated Houses and their spouses have not only submitted to the authority of the one who falsely styled himself as Lord Voldemort, some of them have willingly allowed him to mark them as his branded slaves, forced to serve him in any way he demanded! I have also seen incontrovertible proof that this so called Lord Voldemort, who they followed so slavishly in the mistaken belief that he was the true Heir of Salazar Slytherin and epitomised everything that a proper Pure Blood Lord should be, is no Pure Blood and no Lord! His true name is Tom Marvolo Riddle and he is in fact a common Muggle Born Orphan Bastard! His mother was Merope Gaunt, she may have been from a Pure Blood family but she was a Squib, and his father was nothing but a common Muggle! His mother used love potions to enslave his muggle father, but once she was pregnant she stupidly stopped giving them to him and as soon as he was of his right mind he left her and had the marriage he'd been tricked into annulled. She died in childbirth and Tom Riddle, your vaunted Lord Voldemort, was born out of wedlock and raised in a Muggle orphanage. The very name of the one you enslaved yourselves to is a joke, it is no more than an anagram of his muggle name Tom Marvolo Riddle, and as for his claim of being the true heir of Salazar Slytherin? The magically accepted Earl of Slytherin has been verified by the Magic of the Wizengamot and I can assure you that the names Gaunt and Riddle do not appear anywhere in his family tree between himself and Salazar Slytherin."

"All marriage contracts with the House of Black and its Associated Houses require the explicit acceptance of the creed of the House of Black and the promise to abide by its creed, therefore any spouses of sons or daughters of the House of Black who have allowed themselves to be marked as slaves of the common Muggle Born Bastard Tom Marvolo Riddle or otherwise served Tom Marvolo Riddle are in breach of their contracts with the House of Black and I call for the dissolution of any and all marriages between the marked slaves and servants of Tom Marvolo Riddle and sons or daughters of the House of Black and its Associated Houses. Any and all titles, holdings, properties, monies and heirlooms that formed any part of the wedding gifts or dowries of any son or daughter of the House of Black and its Associated Houses and any and all monies accruing from what was given as part of wedding gifts or dowries of sons and daughters of the House of Black and its Associated Houses is hereby reclaimed!"

"In addition to this, any son or daughter of the House of Black and its Associated Houses who has allowed themselves to be marked as the slave of Tom Marvolo Riddle or otherwise served Tom Marvolo Riddle has brought shame on the House of Black and is hereby cast out of the House of Black! Any titles, holdings, properties and heirlooms representing part of the House of Black and its Associated Houses and any monies accruing from these holdings and properties is hereby reclaimed!"

Arcturus let go of the crystal and stepped back as the voice rang out. "The dissolution of any and all marriages between sons and daughters of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Black and Glynn and their Associated Houses and marked or other servants of Tom Marvolo Riddle is confirmed. The reclamation of any and all titles, holdings, properties, monies and heirlooms that formed part of the wedding gifts and dowries of sons and daughters of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Black and Glynn and their Associated Houses and monies accruing from these wedding gifts and dowries is confirmed. The casting out of any and all sons and daughters of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Black and Glynn and their Associated Houses who have been marked as servants of Tom Marvolo Riddle or otherwise served Tom Marvolo Riddle is confirmed. The reclamation of any titles, holdings, properties and heirlooms representing part of the House of Black and its Associated Houses and any monies accruing from these holdings and properties is confirmed."

This announcement was confirmation that Magic had accepted Arcturus' decree and the Magic of the Court was interfacing with the Black and Associated House Family Magics and judging everyone who met the conditions.

Everyone was just staring at Arcturus in shock, because with that decree he'd just stripped over half of the votes away from the Dark Houses, reducing the number of Dark House seats by a notable amount in the process because more than a few of them had lost their status as houses along with their titles, and probably took well over two thirds of their gold to boot. A number of Wizengamot members and people in the gallery had collapsed because of the shock of losing the Black Family Magic. Griselda signalled to the Officers of the Court and had the ones who had collapsed taken down for healers to look at, as she'd rather not have any Wizengamot members die in a session she was presiding over if she could help it…. She was also glad that most Wizengamot members didn't qualify as Ministry employees, because more than a few of them looked as though they would have tried to curse Arcturus if they had their wands.


Eugene looked around and asked if there were any other items of import, taking their on-going stunned silence as a no and quickly announcing the first scheduled item on the agenda, but he realised that the Dukes and Lord Longbottom weren't the only ones stirring the pot today, as while the full name hadn't shown up before, the first item he had to announce was the trial of Death Eater Peter Pettigrew for betraying the Potters, being an accessory before the fact to Duke James Potter's murder and a number of other instances of rape, torture, murder and other crimes. The Officers of the Court forced Pettigrew to verify his identity with the Stone before they questioned him with Veritaserum. Between Lily, Frank, Arcturus and the other Druid Alliance proxies they held, they probably had enough to carry the vote by themselves, but just about everyone went along with the guilty vote. They had less support for execution via the Veil of Death, but it was still a clear majority.

After everything else, the next scheduled item wasn't much of a surprise for Eugene, and he announced the trial of Lord Sirius Orion Black. There were actually requests for clarification on that because some of the members asked whether it shouldn't have been listed as the retrial of Sirius Black, trying to force it to be rescheduled, but Amelia answered them. "No, that's the problem, because when we were checking our records we discovered that Lord Black has been held in Azkaban for seven years without ever having received the mandatory trial to determine his guilt or innocence. Other discrepancies discovered in his case were that there is no record of Lord Black ever being officially questioned or having his wand checked to confirm the spells he was accused of casting, so it was determined that Lord Black had to be brought to trial…. The fact that the supposedly dead hero Peter Pettigrew was discovered to in fact be a live Death Eater and captured came after Lord Black was collected from Azkaban, but it was agreed by all parties that Pettigrew's trial should occur before Lord Black's."

Sirius' trial took less time than Pettigrew's, once his identity was verified he was willingly questioned under Veritaserum and the details confirmed what they'd gotten out of Pettigrew so Sirius was cleared of all charges. The determination of suitable compensation for the confirmed Heir to two Most Noble and Most Ancient and a number of other Houses and a fully qualified and active Auror employed by the DMLE who had been wrongfully imprisoned for seven years without a trial was tabled for the next Wizengamot session and the Ministry flunky was looking green, because he managed to work out that the compensation would be more than the Ministry could afford to pay without the Minister and others coughing up a fair whack of what had gone into their own pockets.


Arcturus stood up as soon as Sirius' trial finished and when he was recognised went down to the Stone, calling Sirius to join him. Sirius tried to say 'No' because like a number of others in the chamber, he had a good idea what his grandfather was doing, but Arcturus wouldn't take 'No' for an answer and officially abdicated the titles of Duke Black Glynn, Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Black and Glynn and their Associated Houses to his accepted Heir, Sirius Orion Black. Sirius was pissed off about that, so when he saw Harry grinning as he was accepting the titles, he asked the Stone to confirm who the accepted Heir to the titles was now that he was Duke Black Glynn. Harry's face fell when he said that, because he had all his memories back now so he knew that he was Heir to all Sirius' titles.

Harry wasn't the only one Sirius got back at though, because he also made Andromeda accept the position of Steward of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid Houses of Black and Glynn and their Associated Houses and assigned her voting rights for their houses.

The rest of the scheduled items on the agenda went fairly quickly, but when the session finished and the chamber was unsealed they managed to escape most of the expected grilling from the press because most of them rushed off to cover the first official execution in decades. Dumbledore had always refused to even discuss the option of executions and no cases had come up while others were presiding were they could obtain enough evidence to justify execution (which was why the Death Eaters put so much effort into blocking the use of Veritaserum), so a clear case where there was plenty of evidence to justify execution was big news.


Harry and the others weren't complaining though, there were only a few reporters who stayed to interview them so they managed to get through it and disappear before the others came back from the Death Chamber. Lily gave a brief description of the ritual that allowed her to protect Harry with her willing sacrifice and an even shorter one of the ritual they used to call her soul and life force back after seven years, explaining the first ritual had essentially placed her lifeless and soulless husk in stasis, which allowed her to be restored by the others' willing sacrifice of magical power in the ritual on Samhain seven years later. She also made a short statement that her son had been illegally placed with a Muggle relative who she and her husband had explicitly stated in their wills was never to have custody of their son by someone who sealed their wills to cover up his illegal action and also illegally manipulated the memories of anyone who knew enough to rescue her son from her relatives to prevent that happening. She recovered him herself after she was returned to her body and it had taken over nine months in a time chamber to heal what had been done to him. She finished by saying that the Muggle Law Enforcement people were charging her relatives for their crimes against her son.

Frank stepped up then and told them that Lady Longbottom had been part of the vow to return Duchess Potter and the ritual to return Duchess Potter had also brought her out of the state that they had shared since they were attacked by the Lestranges and Bartemius Crouch Junior. His mother, the Dowager Longbottom, had recovered both of them from St Mungo's and took them to another facility where they were given several months' treatment in a time chamber to allow them to recover from the attack and being essentially left without treatment for seven years.

Finally Sirius told the press that he had been framed by the one who had engineered his godson's abuse and with the collusion of two other powerful figures, he'd been thrown into Azkaban without a trial. This was done with the obvious intention of having him die in Azkaban to prevent him rescuing his godson or taking up his own role as Head of the House of Black.

When the press asked who they were referring to he just smiled at them. "You already know who, look up who sealed the Potters' wills and has been telling everyone that my godson was safe and happy with his muggle relatives. Look up who it was who told everyone that I was the Potters' secret keeper and betrayed them to Lord Voldemort when it's been proven that it was Pettigrew, and look at the signatures on the order sending me to Azkaban without a trial. The only part of that he may be able to cover up is the order sending me to Azkaban as the rest was in all the papers for years."

With that they all left before the rest of the reporters could return.

A/N: Hmm, guess this one came out of the gate at full bore, didn't it? ;^)

The rest won't be pushed this hard, but it was logical to get everyone out of harm's way before Dumbledore and the others could do anything to them. Everything in this chapter happened within a couple of weeks or so, as soon as Lily told them who the secret keeper was they grabbed Sirius out of Azkaban and threw him into the time chamber with Harry, Lily, Luna, Frank and Alice to recover. That's when they started looking for Pettigrew and the Wizengamot session came up about a week later.