Yes, I realise that portraying the worst terrorist attacks as magic attacks spilling over into the Muggle world is the easy way out, but JKR used the terrorist angle too…. And no, I don't believe that people in the Appalachian Mountains are all inbred, but I don't think it really hurts anyone to use the old stereotypes once in a while in jest…. I promise not to make Luna's animagus form a golden retriever though, I'm steering clear of blonde jokes in this. ;^)
Usual disclaimers, no rights to existing characters, this is not JKR's HP, the real world or a Disney Princess story and there will probably be a few changes in the first hour or so after it's posted because things invariably look different in the published version and I don't always like the way it came out
Harry, Hermione and Luna spent quite a bit of time revisiting the so-called Rules of Time Travel, among other things, after they turned Magical Britain upside down. The key one was the Butterfly Effect mandate that had been used in just about every time travel story they'd ever read or watched, saying that you couldn't change anything if you went back in time because it could have catastrophic effects as time progressed.
But the thing was, the world had already seemed to be set on the path to Hell on Earth by the time they were sent back. In the twenty years since the magical world believed that the infant Harry Potter had destroyed Lord Voldemort and ended his and his Death Eaters' reign of terror, the vast majority of Voldemort's Death Eaters had not only bought their way out of Azkaban twice, the gold that they'd stolen from their victims had secured their places as the pillars of magical society so they were dictating the direction the magical world was going in. In the timeline they were sent back from, this meant that any evidence of the Death Eaters' trademark rape, torture and murder of anyone they deemed to be beneath them (most notably Muggles, Muggleborn and other magical beings) being on the rise had been covered up by the Ministry of Magic until they struck at the Quidditch World Cup, just before the Triwizard Tournament where Dumbledore set up Harry to be Voldemort's sacrificial goat so that the Great Albus Dumbledore could give his waning star a boost by once again becoming the supposed vanquisher of the Dark Lord.
Voldemort's Horcruxes had all been destroyed by the time Harry faced him for the final confrontation in the Battle of Hogwarts in May Ninety Eight, which made it possible to actually kill him, but once again the Pureblood bigots in the Wizengamot ensured that their ex-Death Eater (they stopped being Death Eaters when Voldemort died but their actions didn't change) relations had no trouble buying their freedom and maintaining their place in society. After that, it was even worse than it had been in the war because the ex-Death Eaters and their like minded Pureblood associates did whatever they wanted without fear of retribution from anyone… and what they did when they stopped fearing what Voldemort may do to them if they interfered with any of his plans was terrible.
They just kept growing stronger and nothing stopped their on-going orgy of rape, pillage, torture and murder, because most who tried were either killed by them or demoted, framed and imprisoned or set up to be killed by those in power who were determined to maintain the status quo. Harry and Ron had been accepted as Junior Aurors and Hermione and Luna were snapped up by Saul Croaker for the Department of Mysteries as soon as they finished sitting their NEWTS a few weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts, and both Harry and Ron had been promoted to Senior Aurors by the time Harry and the girls were poisoned in September Two Thousand and One. Harry was the only Auror who ever got away with actively going after the ex-Death Eaters and other Pureblood bigots who were attacking those of lesser blood status, and the only reason he did was only because he was the Great Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, Hero of Hogwarts and Magical Britain's Saviour. Hermione and Luna helped him track down the ones he was going after in his free time because the official workload his bosses in the DMLE kept him tied up with was all inconsequential crap intended to keep him well away from the ex-Death Eaters and other Pureblood animals.
In retrospect, the way that Ron had always been going on and on about the fact that Harry should be at home with Ginny, his wife, instead of running off on wild goose chases just because some stupid Muggles got themselves hurt should have been told them something was going on, but Harry and Hermione had just put it down to him being sick of being nagged by Molly and pissed off that Hermione wasn't waiting at home for him, ready to do whatever he wished of her… for that matter the fact that their dear mother-in-law was keeping both of them potioned up to their eyeballs had no doubt effected their reasoning abilities as well. Luckily Saul Croaker was still in charge of the Department of Mysteries after the war, so he had set up Hermione and Luna in their own research office reporting to directly him and made them available to help Harry whenever he needed.
Part of the reason for Hermione and Luna having their own office was that many Purebloods were outraged that a mere Muggleborn (not the word they usually used) like Hermione had been awarded the Order of Merlin…. (Even though it was because Harry had refused to accept his unless she and Ron were also rewarded and she only got the Order of Merlin Second Class like Luna, Ginny and most others who fought in the final Battle of Hogwarts while Ron, who'd deserted them because he was missing Mummy's cooking and hid in the fighting, received the Order of Merlin First Class and was proclaimed Hero of Hogwarts like Harry) So she'd been the subject of more than a few attacks in the last three and a bit years before they were sent back. Needless to say their office was well warded and the only place Hermione and Luna didn't wear their dragonskin robes (Luna had been clipped in one of the cowardly sniping attacks on Hermione so the next day Harry took her to get her own dragonskin robes made)…. The sad fact was that the only happy memories they had of that time were from when the three of them were working together in Hermione and Luna's office to bring the ex-Death Eaters and their ilk down, because they and Saul Croaker were the only ones who could get into the office so it was the only place they could let their guards down.
By the time the three musketeers were sent back, the ex-Death Eaters and other Pureblood bigots' reign of terror had spread right across both the Magical and Muggle Worlds, culminating in the event that was referred to as Nine Eleven in the Muggle World just before they left that timeline, because the Muggle American government had been supporting MACUSA in its fight against the ex-Death Eaters, or Terrorists as they were being called in the Muggle World.
(They'd agreed within days of their arrival that this had to have been the trigger for sending them back, because they'd been sent back on the very next significant date in their lives. The only thing Harry and Hermione were really upset about in regard to this was the fact that Luna appeared to have been forced to share their inevitable deaths at that time so that her birthday could be used to tie the events together but Luna argued that being sent back with them had allowed her to save her mother and have the life she was meant to have with them, instead of the lonely, miserable existence she was doomed to in that future.)
The ex-Death Eaters and their Pureblood associates and Muggle Minions were looking unstoppable by that point, and it was deemed only a matter of time before they took over completely, that was why Harry, Hermione and Luna had decided that even if their intervention did bring about a catastrophic event, that would most likely cause less suffering than living in a world under the heels of the ex-Death Eaters and other Pureblood bigots did. It was beginning to look like the time travel stories might have had it arse backwards though, because from what Luna could see in regard to the changes they had made so far was that they had not changed the amount of death and suffering in the world, but they had flipped the identities of those who would be dying and suffering. In the new world that Luna could now see, they still had almost as many hidebound Pureblood bigots who looked down on any they deemed to be beneath them, but the difference was that those bigots no longer had the wealth and power they would need to dictate the direction of the Magical World and hence the Muggle World, in fact their lives were becoming increasingly difficult. That was an outcome that they would all be happy to see.
That was why Hermione had formed her new time travel theory, the 'Fates' Time Travel Constant', where changes just made magic redirect the outcome of events along the timeline to new victims. Considering that he had supported this theory of her's wholeheartedly, Harry thought that it was quite unfair of Hermione and Luna to tell him that his maxim was just wrong, even after he had changed its name from the 'Appalachian Cockroach Rule' to the 'Pureblood Bigot Rule'…. This maxim was that bigoted inbred idiots were like cockroaches, impossible to stamp out, so all you could do was hope that they didn't take too long to die out on their own.
It was frustrating to discover that even after they'd eradicated all those Death Eaters' and other malcontents' Houses and allocated their seats and votes to their victims' Houses, the hidebound so-called Purebloods and their minions could still outvote the Druids' Alliance in the Wizengamot if they managed to out their differences aside and aligned themselves against them, unless the 'Grey' Houses supported the Alliance. Apparently, all it took to make the traditional enemies in the 'Light' and 'Dark' House put their differences aside and work together was to have someone oppose their belief that they had the inalienable right to do whatever they felt like to anyone they deemed to be beneath them with impunity. They'd achieved quite a bit by outmanoeuvring the 'Traditional' Houses in that minor scheduled session, but the Traditional Houses could still control the vote if they really wanted to by pooling all their votes and swaying or pressuring enough of the Neutral Houses to support them.
Another thing that was frustrating was that Flint's attempt to kill Harry had driven the question they'd wanted to be asked, why Harry didn't look anything like he did on the book covers, from everyone's minds, but Luna came up with a way to get that question back in front of people. When the initial flurry of headlines about the trial started to die down, Xeno published an interview with Harry about what he'd used to bat that killing curse back at Flint, and manoeuvred the question about his appearance into the interview. Another benefit of doing it this way was that it let them publicly rub the Johnny-come-lately Noble and Minor Houses and the few Ancient Houses which began as Noble Houses that made up the so-called 'Traditional' Pureblood Houses' noses in the fact that the thirty seven Most Ancient and Ancient Houses that had begun as the Druid Houses that Magical Britain arose from all had enchanted Goblin silver Heirloom weapons like the half-sword that Harry had called and used to bat the killing curse away, but they didn't. This would hopefully make the people of Magical Britain start wondering how 'Traditional' they could be if they hadn't begun as British Druid Houses.
The questions about how the half-sword had flashed into existence in his hand and how he'd moved so fast to bat the curse back at the caster allowed Harry to segue into how he'd been forced to learn how to move fast to dodge or fend off attacks in the six years he spent in his Muggle so-called relatives' home being treated more like a House Elf who was constantly being punished than a child who was related to them. The only form of retaliation he'd ever gotten away with to any degree was when he accidentally sent the hard and sharp cornered objects his whale of a cousin was always throwing at him straight back at him occasionally, he still got beaten of course, but not as badly because they didn't believe that he was smart enough to do it on purpose and even they conceded that it was only natural to try and stop things hitting you.
Xeno tossed in a sceptical question at that to give Harry a chance to talk about how often he'd been burnt, beaten, starved and injured by those people, and how almost dying from the beating he received in Mid-September had somehow made his magic break through enough of the blocks that had been placed on his memories and magic for him to suddenly have a clear memory of feeling safe in his mother's arms and pop away to the location in that memory. The fact that he arrived in the Gringotts banking chamber in the middle of the night had Gringotts' Security Goblins charging into the chamber, but when he said his name they had called for the Potter Account Manager, who immediately had Harry taken to one of their Healing Facilities under Gringotts to heal the life threatening injuries that had been inflicted on him.
He'd been told that the Goblin healers had had to remove many layers of dangerously restrictive bindings on his growth, memories and magic, as well as what they called an abomination that had been placed on him before they could heal him and they had convinced him to accept his Head of House rings to assist his healing and recovery. Some of the Family Knowledge that came with the Family Magic had shown him how to call and use the Potter Heirloom weapons and that, combined with the six years he'd spent constantly dodging and fending off attacks and things being thrown at him by the people he was left with was how he'd fended off the curse thrown at him in the chamber.
Xeno's question about why he didn't look like his image on the cover of the Harry Potter books was easily answered by the fact that he had changed back to what he was told was his natural appearance when all those blocks and bindings and compulsion and glamour spells cast on him were removed…. He'd never even heard of the Harry Potter stories before he suddenly appeared in the Magical World in Mid-September and up until then he'd been living the life of the lowliest House Elf, so he certainly didn't have any of the wonderful adventures that were described in those stories. Someone had obviously been writing and selling those stories to make money off the Harry Potter name, and the fact that they knew what he'd looked like before the blocks and spells were removed and were confident that no-one would come forward to challenge them meant that they had to have been involved in placing and reapplying the glamour spells on him, and leaving him with those people.
The compulsion spells were something Xeno hadn't heard about before so he asked Harry about them. Harry explained that from what he was told, he had been compelled to be lazy and forgetful, and to believe that he deserved to be treated the way he was because he was stupid, lazy and useless. But those compulsions, the glamour spells and blocks and bindings had apparently been reapplied at least a dozen times so his magic must have been fighting to overcome them.
The 'Traditional' Houses and Dumbledore tried to stop these stories getting out, but as Dumbledore had found when he went to the Rookery where the Lovegoods had lived and Xeno Lovegood had been publishing the Quibbler to threaten him into retracting the 'Coming or Going' story, the older Wizarding couple who had bought the Rookery off the Lovegoods claimed to have no idea where the Lovegoods had gone and the new wards placed around the house had brought Amelia Bones with a team of her picked Aurors. When she caught him trying to use Legilimens on the old couple Bones threatened to arrest him, and her response when he said that she couldn't do that had sent a shiver of fear shooting up his spine. "No Dumbledore, you're wrong! I may not be able to prosecute you, but there's nothing at all to stop me arresting you and locking you away in one of our facilities until your friends manage to find you and get you out. We have facilities that would take years to find, and we can easily move you around to keep you hidden longer." He'd left immediately and hadn't gone near the old Lovegood house since then.
One thing was certain though, wherever Lovegood was producing the Quibbler now was much bigger than their old house, because with that first story about Dumbledore trying to stop Lord and Lady Longbottom being taken out of St Mungo's it had gone from a light hearted Magizoology hobby periodical that very few people read to a serious news periodical that rivalled and possibly exceeded the Daily Prophet's distribution.
As well as the interviews with Harry to try and make people start thinking about what was really going on in Magical Britain, Xeno interviewed Frank Longbottom to get his reaction to Albus Dumbledore attempting to prevent the Longbottom Regent and Steward moving him and his wife to another Healing Facility where they were in fact healed in a matter of weeks after spending over six years in St Mungo's without any improvement. He also started a series of articles to educate people on the real history and traditions of Magical Britain, and in an unprecedented move for news periodicals in Magical Britain, named the accepted texts on the matter and encouraged readers to check the facts themselves. Dumbledore and the Ministry tried to stop this, but the Hogwarts Board had already moved to stop Dumbledore removing those books from the Hogwarts Library and recover other texts that he'd already removed, and they found that the major book sellers and publishing houses in Magical Britain had all recently gained major stakeholders who didn't bend to threats, and who could and did put security witches and wizards in their places of business to stop the Ministry people sent in to forcibly remove these books. While they hadn't done this for money and the majority of the sheeple in Magical Britain refused to consider checking the facts, the third or so who did made for record sales of history texts, and it only increased when the Daily Prophet, which most of Magical Britain believed unquestioningly, started saying the same thing.
Half of the Ministry heard Amelia when she was raging at the ones who sent DMLE witches and wizards with the Ministry officials to try and threaten the book sellers into backing down without her approval, and then faced down Minister Bagnold when she tried to save face by dismissing her for refusing to reinstate the senior DMLE people who'd ordered Hitwizards, Aurors and Law Enforcement Patrol Officers out on raids on the book sellers. As soon as Bagnold backed down because Amelia demanded that the matter be taken to the Wizengamot, as was her right, Amelia issued a directive that any and all DMLE personnel who acted on any order that had not originated from her would be dismissed, and quite possibly charged with a criminal offence as well. Two days later she expanded on that, demanding that everyone in the DMLE give unbreakable oaths that they would comply with this order, and anyone refusing to give the oath would be dismissed. It wasn't until they gave the oath that they discovered that she had slipped more than that into the oath and quite a number of them lost their magic because they were Death Eaters or supported similar Pureblood bigot beliefs.
That was when Bagnold began to discover just how dangerous Amelia Bones could be, because Bones used the official Ministry rule book and specific donations that had been made to the DMLE to replace all those Pureblood bigots with people who actually met the DMLE's requirements, irrespective of their blood status, and to double the size of the DMLE. Bagnold tried to order her to get rid of any new personnel who didn't meet the Ministry's standard requirements in regard to blood status and hand over the money that had been donated to train, equip and pay for the extra personnel, but Amelia stood up to her with proof that she was working within the official Ministry regulations, rather than the Pureblood bigots' practices that had been allowed to rule the roost in the Ministry without ever having been approved by Wizengamot vote, pointed out that nothing in the official Ministry regulations required department size to be restricted to only what the Ministry budget allocations provided for… She stopped at that point to inform the Minister that if the DMLE's budget was further reduced because external donations had been made to assist the DMLE in getting back up to its proper strength, she'd be demanding that the Wizengamot intercede, and also demanding a formal investigation into where all the money that had been taken from the DMLE's budgets over the time that she'd been the Director of the DMLE had actually gone to. She also showed her copies of the magical contracts for the new donations which specifically stated that these donations could only be used to train, equip and pay the personnel who were being hired to replace the ones the DMLE had lost because of budget cuts, so any attempts to misappropriate these donations would not only result in the donations recalled, they would also result in the contributors demanding official investigations to be made into who was attempting to restrict the DMLE's capability to protect the people of Magical Britain.
Between that, the fact that Bones knew that she could force any attempt to dismiss her to be a Wizengamot matter and most of the ones who'd paid her to hamstring the DMLE having lost most of their gold and power, Bagnold decided to steer clear of the DMLE from now on…. In fact she'd give them back much of the budget that had been diverted from them to other departments in recent years because the Druids' Alliance had already pulled the teeth of most of the supporters of the Heads of the Departments that their budget had gone to, while Bones' supporters were obviously on the rise.
But Bagnold and the rest of her ilk had another problem. They'd always used the Daily Prophet to make the people of Magical Britain believe whatever they wanted them to, but just after that disastrous Wizengamot session, Rita Skeeter, Barnabus Cuffe and a number of Ministry officials and other worthies were arrested. Skeeter was charged with being an unregistered animagus and using that ability to spy on people to get dirt on them for Daily Prophet and Witch Weekly articles and blackmail and she'd had her magic bound before being sent to Azkaban for ten years. Cuffe and the others were charged with failing to notify the DMLE of Skeeter's status as an unregistered animagus and making use of her ability to obtain information illegally for financial gain and other nefarious purposes. Their sentences ranged from fines of Fifty Thousand Galleons to life in Azkaban with his magic bound, eradication of his House and forfeiture of everything belonging to his House for the one who'd used the information she obtained for him to commit line theft on a Noble and Ancient House.
It had also been reported that both Bagnold and Dumbledore had been using Skeeter's animagus form to get information on others for them for nefarious purposes, but the real problem came out when they went to the Daily Prophet to instruct them on what stories to put out to show them in a better light and discredit members of the Druid's Alliance. The new editor of the Prophet seemed to be fighting to keep a smile off his face as he informed them that the majority owners of the Prophet had given him strict instructions to ensure that the Prophet was fair and honest in its reporting from now on, and warned him that if he failed to deliver on this, he may well join Cuffe in Azkaban.
Bagnold began to tell the man that she knew the Prophet's majority owners quite well and was confident that they would have given him no such instructions when she suddenly realised that the Prophet's majority owners she'd known had lost everything that day in the Wizengamot. From the new editor's expression she realised that it would be highly unlikely the new majority owners would have any inclination to her any favours, because they were most likely Witches, Wizards or Houses that she'd used her power to attack more than once, so she just turned and left his office without another word.
Dumbledore, Bagnold and their associates' problems didn't end there though…. The Druids' Alliance had destroyed the strongest of the Pureblood bigots on the Hogwarts Board and regained control of the Board, so Dumbledore only hung onto his position as Hogwarts' Headmaster by the skin of his teeth, and that was in name only. While still officially the Deputy Headmistress, Minerva now ran Hogwarts. She controlled Hogwarts' wards and shared the authority to hire and fire staff, make decisions about courses, finances and punishments with Pomona Sprout and Filius Flitwick.
Their first actions were to fire Argus Filch, Sybill Trelawney and the Pureblood Muggle Studies teacher. Banish Cuthbert Binns and replace him with Bathilda Bagshot, Cancel the Divination course and replace it with a Magical World course taught by Augusta Longbottom, who had a lot of free time now that Frank had taken over the reins of the House of Longbottom again, Rename Muggle Studies to Muggle World, hiring a Muggleborn wizard to bring the students up to date on what was really going on in the Muggle World... And hiring another potions master to replace Snape... the new potions master may not have been Snape's equal at brewing potions, but he was easily ten times the potions teacher Snape was. Minerva made the new Defence Against the Dark Arts master, Julius Selwyn, House Master of Slytherin, He was an ex-auror, and coming from a grey branch of an old Noble House, he had enough background in the subtle political manoeuvring that Slytherin was traditionally famous for to start shaming the thugs who ruled the roost in Slytherin into behaving like proper Slytherins.
Filch was replaced by Arabella Figg, who it turned out was actually a witch, just not a very strong one. When she started at Hogwarts, the new Headmaster Albus Dumbledore had been determined to show that the students would perform better under him than they had any previous Headmasters, so he interfered with the weaker students like Arabella to make them drop out to prevent them dragging Hogwarts' results down. He'd bound Arabella's intellect and magic enough to ensure that she failed her classes so her parents pulled her out of Hogwarts, but kept contact with her so that he could refresh those bindings when necessary. Just about anyone would have been better than Filch and Arabella's life had been ruined by Dumbledore, so they offered her a choice when they removed the bindings he'd put on her, they could set her up to live a more comfortable existence in the Muggle World, or she could take over from Filch as Hogwarts' Caretaker, with assistance from Hagrid, and they'd give her the education in magic that she'd been denied. When she tried to say that she didn't want charity they pointed out that it wasn't charity, because she could do her job better with magic, that was enough to get her to accept.
They had also set up a family emergency to call Hagrid away from Hogwarts so that the Goblins could remove all the bindings, compulsions and memory charms Dumbledore had placed on him. When he was able to think and remember again, Hagrid was furious about what Dumbledore had done to him and Harry, and wanted to tear the old bastard limb from limb, but they managed to calm him down enough to get him to agree to go along with the plan. The Board had also voted to overturn Hagrid's expulsion and return his right to learn and practice magic, so the Goblins dug up the half-sword and other Heirloom weapons that had been made for the Half-Giant son of a currently extinct Druid family. The half-swords were compatible enough for him to use them as wands when he took up his magical education again along with Arabella.
They'd forced Dumbledore to make the announcement that the Hogwarts Board had decided that it was time for a few changes at Hogwarts, so Professor McGonagall would have a lot more authority in school matters as she shared his duties as Headmaster, he turned things over to Minerva at that point and she really threw the kneazle in among the pigeons. She got a fair degree of vindictive pleasure out of announcing that due to her taking on more of the Headmaster's duties, effective immediately, Professor Dumbledore would be sharing the Transfiguration teaching duties with her, as he had been Hogwarts' Transfiguration Master before he became Headmaster and watching Dumbledore trying to control his anger as she told the students that as he was a teacher again, Hogwarts had moved Professor Dumbledore to more appropriate office and quarters that were accessible to the students like the other teachers. He'd been furious when Hogwarts not only refused him access to his old office and quarters, but when he demanded that the rest of his things be moved to his new office and quarters (obviously expecting that they'd expand to take everything), she told him through Myrddin (the Sorting Hat) that most of them had been returned to their rightful owners, and other personal luxuries that were paid for by Hogwarts had been sold to return money to Hogwarts' vaults under Headmistress McGonagall's orders.
Most of the students were up in arms to hear that the three easiest courses, Divination, Muggle Studies and History of Magic, were all no more. Divination was gone, being replaced with a new course called Magical World, Muggle Studies was replaced with a new serious course called Muggle World and no-one was under any illusion that they would be able to sleep in class any more, now that History of Magic was being taught by the witch who wrote the History of Magic text.
Minerva's announcement that Mr Filch had decided to retire and that he was being replaced by Mrs Figg was met by cheers, but the ones looking forward to having fun tormenting the new Squib changed their minds quick smart as Minerva went on to say. "Mister Hagrid will be assisting Missus Figg in her duties..." Because Hagrid had been looking angrier than anyone had ever seen him since he came back from that family emergency he was called away from, and none of them thought that pissing off an angry half-giant would be a much better idea than pissing off an angry giant. "And the Hogwarts Board has agreed that Mister Hagrid and Missus Figg will be able to do their duties more effectively with magic, so Mister Hagrid's unjust expulsion and ban from using magic from over forty years ago has been revoked and both he and Missus Figg, who was also unfairly prevented from completing her magical eduction, will be given every support by the staff to become the properly accredited Wizard and Witch they were meant to be... I expect everyone here to support them in this." No, no-one wanted to have anything to do with upsetting an angry half-giant Wizard!
"And that leads us to another long neglected issue, discipline here at Hogwarts! For far too long, inappropriate and even criminal behaviour has gone unpunished at Hogwarts..." No-one missed the looks of disgust that she and the other teachers shot Dumbledore's way at that. "But that ends today! From this point on, any and all inappropriate behaviour will be punished to the full extent of the Hogwarts rules, and the Laws of Magical Britain if it comes to that. If anyone here believes that they can continue doing whatever they wish with impunity and receive no penalty beyond house points being deducted or detentions, you are sorely mistaken. I can assure you that you will not like what happens to you if you test me on this!"
Raucous laughter broke out at the Slytherin table at this and Minerva turned to look at Professor Julius Selwyn, who was the new Potions Master and House Master for Slytherin House at Hogwarts and he nodded grimly. Seconds later a Bombarda spell hit the Slytherin table where most of the laughter was coming from and he was on his feet. "Are you deaf or merely stupid? Headmistress McGonagall just told you that this type of behaviour would not go unpunished any more!"
Dumbledore went to object to him calling Minerva Headmistress McGonagall but shut up and sat back when he saw who was holding the wand that had been jammed into his ribs. He'd used his power as both the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Hogwarts' Headmaster and Filius' status as a Goblin half-breed to ridicule him with impunity over the past few decades, but the look in the half-Goblin's eye reminded him that he had been the European Duelling Champion at least four or five times and he was an extremely powerful Wizard. The Goblin wouldn't stand a chance against the Elder Wand, but that was tucked away in his robes while the Goblin's was sticking into his ribs.
Professor Selwyn went on. "I would suggest that you all pay attention to Headmistress McGonagall because she is trying to stop you making mistakes that would prove very costly for yourselves and your families!"
With that he turned and bowed to Poppy Pomfrey. "I apologise for making work for you Madam Pomfrey, I do not believe that there are any serious injuries there but I felt it necessary to get their attention."
Poppy nodded to him. "That is quite alright Professor Selwyn, you certainly got their attention and if they pay attention to what Headmistress McGonagall is trying to tell them, it is possible that you may have relieved my workload down the track." With that she stood and proceeded to the Slytherin table.
Minerva smiled grimly as she nodded to him. "Thank you Professor Selwyn… Now as I was saying…. From this point on any and all misbehaviour will be punished. You were all supposed to have read the Hogwarts rules before you started here, but copies have been placed in every common room and I strongly suggest that you make yourselves aware of what is in them because you will be punished according to those rules… And if anyone believes that they will not be caught….."
She stopped and turned to Pomona. "Professor Sprout, could you do me a favour please?"
Pomona nodded. "Of course Headmistress McGonagall." (It was so much fun watching Dumbledore almost bursting a blood vessel whenever anyone called Minerva that and she wanted to make sure she got a few in.)
"It would be appreciated if you could move around the castle for a while and fire off spells in the halls and classrooms, and perhaps in the Hufflepuff common rooms and dorms as well?"
Pomona got another one in as she stood. "It would be my pleasure Headmistress McGonagall. This should be quite interesting actually, as I've never witnessed this capability of Hogwarts being utilised…. Actually, Madam Hooch, could you assist me please? This can reportedly be used to prove who fired off what spell first in an altercation, so it would be useful to add that to the demonstration."
Rolanda tried to cover her smile as she nodded and stood up. "I would be delighted to Professor Sprout." They both curtsied to Minerva, chorusing "Headmistress McGonagall." before they left.
Minerva cast the spell to display a large three dimensional image of Hogwarts in the space between the Head Table and the students as Dumbledore looked on, angry and confused. He was furious that they were all behaving as if McGonagall had taken over from him, but they were talking as if this was something that had always been available to the Headmaster, and he'd never heard anything about it before…. Perhaps Dippet was supposed to tell him but he had refused because he was angry about being turfed out?
They weren't about to tell him, of course, but this hadn't been available before now. Harry, Hermione and Luna had used their authority as the Founders' Heirs to transfer control of Hogwarts and its wards to Minerva McGonagall, so to Hogwarts she was the Headmistress now. Then, as soon as they turfed Filch out, they recovered the Marauders' Map that he'd confiscated from Pettigrew and Sirius and Remus Lupin, Sirius and James' partner in crime at Hogwarts who they'd tracked down while Sirius and Harry were going through the re-constructive therapy, explained how they and James had created it. This was combined with a wealth of other information that Hogwarts' wards recorded and passed on to the person in charge of the wards and they and through Myrddin Hogwarts worked together to create this amazing display.
They and the students watched as Pomona Sprout and Rolanda Hooch were shown walking around the castle, firing off spells in the halls, classrooms and dorms. Pomona and Rolanda also staged a number of altercations and as Pomona had said, this amazing display showed who fired what spell and when, so most of the students decided then and there that they would be following the rules from here on in. Of course there would always be some who were sure that they could outsmart it, and those seven or eight Slytherin Seventh Years were in the Infirmary with Poppy so they weren't seeing this, but the brighter students just smiled at that because they knew that at least half those ones were likely to be expelled within a week or two.
Their predictions were soon proven correct, and word soon got around that the DMLE officially accepted the evidence of Hogwarts' wards display, because anyone who had reached their majority was charged, tried and sentenced on the basis of that evidence (anything severe enough to justify a student being expelled from Hogwarts qualified as a crime for adults). The DMLE's only complaint about the display was that the current Minister for Magic would never let them implement something like this in the Ministry building, because it would resolve a great many of the problems they had in the Ministry.
While they couldn't implement it in the Ministry though, Gringott had had it implemented at Gringotts as soon as he saw it, and when the broom went through the Pureblood Houses after their Wizengamot session, the St Mungo's Board saw the same changes as the Hogwarts Board, so many changes were going on at St Mungo's too. Most of the Board there could see the value of being able to have something like this to show dangers to their vulnerable patients so it was voted in straight away. It took them longer to accept that the Ministry's Pureblood hiring and promotion bias had no place in an institution where their patients' very lives depended on the capabilities of their healers, but after being forced to wade through all the death and suffering caused by leaving patients' lives in the hands of Wizards and Witches who's qualifications as Healers came purely from their families' influence and blood status, the Board eventually conceded that point as well, and hiring and promotions practices at St Mungo's were amended to be based soley on the healers' qualifications, not their blood status. One of the other Board members confided to Amelia that they'd been trying to get rid of the healer in charge of one department at St Mungo's for nearly thirty years, ever since their incompetence lost him his first Wife and Heir, so he was glad to see these changes go through.