Chapter 4: Horrors uncovered

Having defeated Dumbledore, Flitwick was now headmaster, and as such was no longer bound by the orders of the previous headmaster. He was running through the halls to where he knew his student had been stuffed in a cupboard, intent on rescuing her, until he felt a nudge at the edge of his consciousness and remembered that the headmaster could apparate within Hogwarts. He did so, only to find the cupboard empty except for plates with biscuit crumbs and mugs with hot chocolate residue.

House elves were the only one likely to provide food, so Flitwick did the logical thing and called a house elf to question them.

"Do you know where Miss Lovegood is? I need to apologise and explain why I wasn't able to help."

"Hokey is thinking that Miss Luna is already knowing this. Hokey is reassuring Master Flitwick that Miss Lovegood is being with friends. Hokey is thinking that Master Flitwick has other problems to be solving and Hokey will be asking Miss Luna to come to the Great hall at dinner."

With that, Hokey popped away, leaving Flitwick reassured, but wondering what friends Luna had found. Flitwick then realised he did indeed have significant problems to solve, given that he was likely to need to sack half the staff.

He realised that he now had control of the Hogwarts wards, and the first thing he did was to ask for the location of McGonagall. This was personal, and he'd enjoy it more than he perhaps should.

McGonagall was, as usual when not teaching or at meals, in her office, ignoring her responsibilities to both the students of her house and the entire school. She had just settled in for a glass of the Glenfiddich 50 year old whisky that had been illegitimately obtained using school funds. However, before she had the chance to mix her drink with some Coca-Cola her door burst open to reveal an extremely angry Filius Flitwick.

It had been so easy to forget that the jovial man was one of the most dangerous wizards in the world when she could use his oaths against him. Now though, he was headmaster and he was out for revenge.

"Minevra McGonagall, you have failed your house, and you have failed the school. You are henceforth stripped of all positions of authority in Hogwarts and banished from the grounds. Your possessions will be returned to you once the goblins of Gringotts have completed an audit of the school accounts and determined if there is any malfeasance for which you are liable."

McGonagall tried to activate the wards she had set on her office, but nothing happened. Hogwarts would not let any wards set within her act against the legitimate headmaster! She then went to draw her wand, only to be disarmed before her hand even touched her wand.

Flitwick called a house elf to throw McGonagall out the castle. Dobby had practice in interpteting orders in a creative fashion, and so McGonagall found herself naked and wandless in the middle of Hogsmeade. She was soon arrested for public indecent, and the obliviation squad was kept busy with the many requests from the residents of Hogsmeade to have their memories of the event removed.

After having the ex-deputy headmistress thrown out, Flitwick saw the bottle of whisky and the can of Coca-Cola on her desk, he began to wish that he'd engaged in some old-fashioned torture first. After all, after seeing the reason for it, no Scottish jury would ever convict him.

The flames from Fawkes disappeared as quickly as they appeared. Luna was completely unharmed, but there were scorch marks on the floor and her clothes had burnt to ash.

Harry quickly spun around, whereas Hermione could not look away from Fawkes who was now blue and bronze. Hermione's reverie was soon interrupted by Luna

"Hermione could you get a new set of clothes from my trunk for me? I think it will be easier for Harry to look at me if he's not repulsed by naked body."

Harry could not let Luna continue to feel like this, and so without thinking he blurted out "No! I think you're very pretty. But it's making me react in a bad freakish way."

Hermione embraced Harry in a hug then and went "Oh! Harry, that's normal". Whilst Hermione was comforting Harry and promising to explain further later, as well as offering to lend him a book on the subject, Luna had retrieved a new set of clothes and gotten dressed. Unfortunately, Hermione was not going to overcome years of abusive conditioning in less than a minute, and her embrace was not helping with the reaction that Harry viewed as bad and freakish.

Luna began explaining "Dumbledore caught Fawkes and bound him using some vile magic requiring the ritual slaughter of a new born baby. Dumbledore forbid Fawkes from leaving Hogwarts, so he couldn't flame to anyone who could help him. However, when this room was created to remove any exterior influence, it gave him a location within Hogwarts he could go to where the influence would be suppressed and then he bonded with me to remove the bond completely. Fawkes would have been happy to bond with either of you as well, but he didn't want your current familiars to be jealous."

Hokey popped in and quickly summarised what had happened. "Dumbledore is not being headmaster any more. Hokey is thinking that Master Flitwick would like to be seeing Miss Luna at dinner. Hokey is thinking that Miss Luna will be liking the changes."

Next on Flitwick's list was Severus Snape. Although Flitwick was in no need of help to deal with the scum, there were two witches who would appreciate the opportunity to help. Andromeda Tonks had been the other applicant for the position of potions professor, but Dumbledore had decided she was a dark witch and tried to her arrested as she had used lethal curses to defend herself from Voldemort. Since this rejection Andromeda had spent most of her time outside the UK becoming a renowned potions mistress and inspector of magical schools. Amelia Bones would appreciate the chance to quiz the man who was strongly suspected to have committed the murder of Susan Bones' parents, and now now that Flitwick was free to share his concerns with her would no doubt also want to investigate why her red headed niece had more detentions than average with the greasy bat.

Severus Snape was in his office, preparing to flee after removing the schools most valuable potions supplies when his office splintered into a million pieces. Flitwick entered, flanked by two angry witches. Snape saw who was with Flitwick and promptly pissed himself in fear.

"Severus Snape, you are henceforth stripped of all positions of authority in Hogwarts. As soon as these two lovely ladies have finished their interrogation of you to determine the extent of your crimes, you will be banished from the grounds of Hogwarts never to return."

Flitwick left Amelia and Andromeda to their interrogation to head to the hospital wing to conduct an interrogation to see if another member of staff would need to be banished.

After finding out that Flitwick's suspicions about the reasons her niece had more detentions than average with Snape, and that it was in fact worse and the detentions had involved forcing her niece to answer to Lily, Amelia had decided that this man would not be allowed to leave this room alive, and proceeded to use everything she knew about torture to maximise the amount of pain he suffered before he died, with the useful side effect of wring some information out of him.

Being a fair and honest women, torture did not come easily to Amelia, and Andromeda looked on at the amateur attempts with some amusement. Soon, Amelia was out of ideas beyond just beating the man, and Andromeda smoothly stepped in, using what she had learned growing up to make the man truly suffer. Amelia looked on with a mixture of horror and fascination at the expert at work. It was so terrible, she almost felt sorry for Snape. When Snape revealed that he had slipped a clumsiness potion to Tonks at the request of McGonagall because the metamorphagus was in danger of becoming better at transfiguaration, than the old witch Andromeda did not miss a beat and commented. "We know already. Nymphadora fakes her clumsiness to avoid suspicion. Even though Britain believes that potion to be irreversible, it was easy enough for me to reverse it. We suspected you, but of course you had protection. We thought it was done at Dumbledore's request, but now Nymphadora has a bitch to hunt down and practice her skills on." Amelia shivered at the though of her most cheerful auror having these sorts of skills, and wondered just how much she'd underestimated the metamorhphagus by, and was reminded just why the Black family had been so feared.

Andromeda forced Snape to write out a confession of all his major crimes using a blood quill. It took up forty feet of parchment, and there was not enough parchment in all of Hogwarts to list all his more minor crimes, but there was an extra four feet for the summary of them.

Andromeda knew torture well, and Snape expired mere seconds after signing the confession. Amelia took the confession and made several copies for the ICW, the ministry, Hogwarts, the daily prophet and the Quibbler. She would keep the original safe.

The two women felt Hogwarts will them to go somewhere, and so they followed the prompting and ended up at the hospital wing.

Flitwick was on his way to the hospital wing when he almost ran into Alastor Moody, but the wards were screaming at him that the man was heavily disguised, so he whipped out his wand and stunned him, and then dragged him into an unused classroom, and locked the doors and set up various security charms.

As he was stripping the man to remove any potential surprises, the man's features began to morph, and they soon became recognizable as the features of Barty Crouch Jr., a man long thought dead, condemned to Azkaban by his own father. This was something best turned over to Amelia to look at, but since polyjuice required the supplier of the hair to still be alive, he had high hopes that the real Alastor Moody would still be alive. With the luck, he might even be fit enough to teach, saving Flitwick from having to find yet another new teacher.

Flitwick reached the hospital wing without any further interruptions. When Flitwick called upon Pomfrey's oath to the school to force her to start answering questions, she promptly fainted. Concerned, Flitwick lifted her into a bed and began casting detection charms. It seemed that fainting had been the way her magic reacted to the conflicting pulls of various pieces of magic in order to prevent from being torn apart. Flitwick began the careful work of unweaving the net of spells. After an hour and a half of work, he had made significant progress when Amelia and Andromeda walked in.

"It is done" said Amelia, handing Flitwick a copy of Snape's confession.

"Thank you. I need more help from you still. On the way here, I ran into who I thought was Alastor Moody, but turned out to be Barty Crouch Jr. under polyjuice. I believe the DMLE will want to question him, and you can pick him up from the kitchen where he is currently being watched over by house elves before you leave. However, you want to search his office to see if you find a clue as to the whereabouts of the real Alastor Moody. If you do find the original please try and convince him to stay and teach. I have enough staff to replace as it is."

Amelia left to do just that, throwing a comment over her shoulder "I may be able to arrange for Nymphadora to be posted here for the year. She should be able to be of some help with defence against the dark arts or transfiguration."

After Amelia had left, Andromeda commented quietly but forcefully "My daughter will not be teaching anything here until the entire heap of rubble has been scoured by a competent curse breaking team."

"Indeed. If you don't mind, I could do with your help removing the rest of these charms and checking for potions involvement."

When the two were finished Pomfrey awoke and immediately said "Where is Harry Potter? I need to treat him. There are other that I must also treat, but his case is the most serious and most urgent."

Flitwick reassured the healer "I'll bring him her after dinner" and then proceeded to interrogate her to ensure that she was trustowrthy.

Andromeda and Flitwick left the hospital wing and proceeded to the Great Hall for dinner.

Amelia Bones had recovered the original Moody and dropped off Barty Crouch Jr. in a high security holding cell and was also heading towards the Hogwarts great hall, intent on seeing her niece.

With the death of Severus Snape, the charms he had placed on Susan Bones broke, and as soon as Amelia entered the great Hall, she ran into her aunt's arms, and then broke down and cried.

Harry, Luna and Hermione met Flitwick and Andromeda outside the great Hall. Flitwick presented the wand he had taken from Dumbledore. "Miss Lovegood, this wand is yours now. I would like to invite you and your friends to dine with me at the staff table for further explanations."

Author's note:

Thank you for the reviews! I read and appreciate all of them, but unfortunately do not generally have time to respond to them.