Harry's Armada
Wanda: Sweet Merlin, why is it whenever I decide to focus on something I'm immediately distracted by a million other ideas? I'm really sorry, I know I said I was going to focus on finishing this but I was promptly ambushed by a bunch of other ideas because I've been working on the same three for so long. I haven't abandoned anything, I'm just going to work with a larger variety of stories to (hopefully) keep that from happening again. I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter 10: Rain of Fire
To say that Voldemort didn't respond well to the declaration was like saying that the Sahara desert is a little sandy.
His minions in the ministry had dithered quite a bit before bringing the information to him, correctly guessing that they would suffer for bringing him such news directly after the sudden and severe losses in his army. In a single night, Voldemort had lost three of his principal finances – Lucius Malfoy, Amycus Carrow and Bellatrix Lestrange. All killed by the fiery explosions.
The mansion had been wrecked beyond repair, leaving only molten slag behind. It was as if the magnificent mansion had been erased from history.
Narcissa Malfoy was so distraught she had to be committed to St Mugos for treatment. Draco Malfoy was left in the winds, forced to take permanent residence in Hogwarts until either his mother recovered enough to take care of him or other temporary housing could be decided. If that wasn't enough, the spoiled heir had his crack about St Mugos having a floor for people with brain damage was thrown back in his face by fellow students who were laughing over his change in fortune.
Because suddenly, Draco had no daddy to wreak havoc on anyone who disagreed with him, no money to bully people with, and most of his possessions had been destroyed. He had gone from the top of the social rung to a total disgrace.
It wasn't just him, either. Pansy Parkinson's father had been killed as well, leaving her in the lurch since her mother, who had been forced to marry him by their parents, took this opportunity to take most of the money and flee to Australia, leaving her poisonous daughter behind with little inheritance. Franklyn Rosier and Theodore Nott were also in disgrace, forced to fum in silence because none of their usual targets were there to blame for this change in fortune.
Voldemort, both struggling with resurgence of memories where he had been weak and the sudden losses right when he should have scored a great triumph, immediately threw a violent temper tantrum and killed both messengers. He had known the legend of Elysium, but had scoffed at it much like the concept of love based magic. To see both the kingdom alive in modern day as well as declaring vendetta against him, the man had a good idea who was responsible for the attack last night and was swearing retribution.
Of course, he wasn't the only one who reacting to the shock of Elysium's reappearance. Across magical Britian and indeed, the rest of the magical world, the whole world was rocking with the reappearance of the legendary city.
Politicians went to work and didn't come home for the evening, newspapers and broadcasts would talk about nothing else, and people would gather in parks just to gawk at the thing they had believed to be a myth which was now there for all to see.
The Ministry of Magic was in pandemonium ever since the declaration had been delivered. No one had the time to try and fix the place – they were busy attending emergency meetings trying to decide whether or not they should surrender to the upcoming monarch, or indeed how they were planning to respond at all.
The smoking ruins of one of the most powerful families in Britain had been part of it. The fact that the Malfoys had been destroyed by Elysium had been a clear indication of what the great city was willing to do to right wrongs, and that they had no intention of letting any death eater escape justice the way they did in the corrupt ministry.
The members of said ministry realized that they were being judged as well, and they responded the only way they could – denying everything and sticking their heads in the sand. Or finding someone to blame at the same time.
Of course, while the majority of the members refused at the very idea – the fact that Harry Potter was 'undesirable number one', ie the nation's scapegoat being a large part of that – Amelia Bones and many others with anything resembling intelligence were advocating submitting to Elysium and the clear moral authority they wielded.
The rest, of course, refused to see the writing on the wall. They claimed that the attack had been 'unwarranted', calling Elysium's military strike 'the act of cowardly terrorists' instead of simply being a forward and methodical attack upon vicious wizards who had been planning to attack the city a bare few days before they themselves had suffered from the assault. And the fact that this spared them a bloody attack from Voldemort, who had been planning to re-establish himself now that his army had been fully recreated.
Imagine their surprise when hundreds of wizards, muggle born half blood and otherwise, poured into the atrium to transfer their allegiance to Elysium and its princess.
"What on earth is the matter with these people?" Fudge sputtered, watching as yet another family ran into the atrium to accept the papers of acceptance and obtain their portkeys.
The envelops containing chain portkeys had been sent down with other propaganda posters not long after the proclamation had been sent, and they were charmed to only work for anyone who was seeking the sanctuary of the city. Any attempts to break the protection charm had resulted in veteran curse breakers being turned into cabbage heads.
Fudge had initially laughed it off, but after more and more families and individuals rushed into the Ministry for passage to the city, his confidence had melted into uncertainty and then alarm when the number swelled from dozens to hundreds and further.
"They can't possibly believe that!" Fudge ranted. "Salazar Slytherin a good man...our perfectly stable and just Ministry a pack of vipers...this is all ridiculous! We've only done things as they've always been done!"
"Such as accepting bribe money, abusing muggles and committed blind ignorance of facts?" Amelia Bones asked, giving the Minister a glare that could melt steel and make Draco apologize to a muggleborn for cursing them.
The Head of the DMLE was well beyond furious. Upon reading the declaration, she had sent an investigation through Ministry files to see if anything had been true. She had come across reels of documented abuse of obliviate, used not to protect muggle but cheat and scam them. Her rage had only grown when she discovered that the word of what had happened to muggle women – violation that was wiped from their memory – was also not only true, but widespread among the 'cream of society', ie the purebloods who made up a large chunk of the Wizamgot.
An audit of fiances revealed that many 'charities' were, in fact, vaults that were owned by the Ministry. Characters like Lucius Malfoy had donated quite generously to them, and the dates matched up with legislation in favor of acceptance – once again, just as the proclamation had stated. Not to mention she discovered that Fudge had only poured so much of this into the Ministry itself – the rest he had put in his own pockets.
Amelia dearly wanted to arrest him and everyone mentioned on the list into the deepest, darkest pits that Azkaban had to offer, but given her limited authority (and the fact that a number of said people were dead) she couldn't right now. There was more legislation 'protecting the purity of magic' then anything else, which was a large contribution to the widespread belief in pureblood right.
"Especially in the light of what I've discovered," She said with the barest traces of a snarl, causing Fudge to wince and Umbridge to glare hatefully at her. "They're not wrong. Declaring Vendetta was what Merlin did when young witches and wizards were killed by muggle fires. Elysium's princess intends to reclaim this country!"
"She has no right!" Umbridge screeched.
"If you're going by your own rules and logic, she has every right," Amelia responded.
She smiled coldly when Umbridge gaped. "Don't you know, Madam Undersecretary? Helena Ravenclaw was the ancestor of Elysium's High Queens. Rowena Ravenclaw was a co creator of both this Ministry and Hogwarts. Effectively, she was a queen here and one of the single eldest pureblood lines in existence by default, since Elysium is an all-wizard country. That would make her family far older then the Malfoys, the Blacks, the Potters and all the families generally considered 'old'."
'That's impossible," Umbridge sputtered, looking as though she had woken up to discover that the sky had always been red instead of blue. "No one could be older then our blood!"
"And yet its the truth," Amelia responded coolly. "I'm surprised you don't know this, Madam Undersecretary, given how obsessed you people are with lineage. By your own beliefs, Princess Rachel Jackson is entitled to Britain's rulership. And if she sees it to be morally corrupt...she has the right to purge it."
Fudge went white at the implications. "She wouldn't dare."
"Oh?" Amelia said, raising her eyebrows. "And why wouldn't she? It isn't as if she's a princess of a kingdom, with an army lead by the only one to drive off the darkest wizard we have seen inside our borders. The attack on Malfoy Manor was a deliberate gesture, a sign of what she intends to do. The family is destroyed – the patriarch dead, the matriarch infirm and confined to St. Mugos, and the son an heir to nothing but rubble."
"Her army attacked a man who was high in Voldemort's esteem, who was one of the most feared figures both in the first war and today, and utterly destroyed them while sustaining no casualties that we know of. It wasn't just him either – the Crabbs and the Goyles have been utterly destroyed, and the Carrow family wiped out except for the daughters who were clearly moved to Elysium beforehand."
"Voldemort is not back!" Umbridge cried, her face turning purple. "Potter stole our children away!"
"Is that what you tell yourself, woman?" Amelia snapped with all the contempt she felt towards the woman in front of her. "It was in the proclamation. Those children left willingly with mister Potter when he offered them sanctuary. Traces of Voldemort's presence have been everywhere for the last several months, however much you tried to deny it. The proclamation we received condemns him, which leads me to believe that Potter was telling the truth all along."
"And now we know why those children left. The Carrow daughters were tortured by their fanatic parents, and your 'just' Ministry and school did nothing to protect them. A brilliant student is harassed and slandered because she has muggle parents. You told them all they were unwelcome and unwanted so they left! Why should they stay, when the privileged used them as punching bags? Clearly Harry didn't take them away by force, he merely offered them a choice to be free and equal! When choosing between that and being crushed under the 'pureblood' boot, what do you think they would have chosen?"
Umbridge sputtered wordlessly while Fudge, if possible, turned even whiter then before. Amelia growled in disgust and stormed out of the room. It was useless to try and reason with fanatics. Perhaps it was time for her to join her niece Susan in Elysium.
But what she would rather remain behind just long enough to ensure that any other of Voldemort's potential victims were able to escape before she herself left for safety. She had taken this job in order to be a protector of the helpless, and it seemed that only now was she truly being allowed to do so instead of pandering to those with more then they needed.
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"...Why am I not surprised?" Harry remarked with a short sigh.
"Shall we send in the both fleets?" Rachel asked. "With all the people going through customs right now, I doubt there will be a lot of unwanted collateral damage if we move in soon."
Harry examined the portal pensive for another moment before saying "Yes, I think it's time. We've given them the chance to turn back and they've ignored it."
"Susan," He turned to the other girl, who had been distributing orders and directions between Ginny's wing of fliers and those in customs. "Send a message to Daphne and Blaise; tell them to start planting the false information. Once we've lured Voldemort to the Ministry, we can kill two birds with one stone."
"Understood, Captain-General." Susan responded, her voice clipped and professional.
"Hermione," Harry glanced over at his friend, "Go and tell the Weasleys to scramble, and then tell Tracey that she and her unit are to head to the ground and lie in wait until the track is sprung. Bring plenty of ammo along with your wands." Pausing, he quickly added, "And I meant all the Weasleys who mastered the flight tests. I'll be sending Fred and George in first."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "I didn't realize you hated Fudge that much, but I can't say I'm surprised. I'll get right to it."
Harry smiled dryly while Rachel outright laughed. "Duly noted."
"I've got contact," Susan called. Harry strode over to her side and looked down into her portal pensive. Daphne and Blaise were wearing their Death Eater robes, but the masks were discarded.
"Good to hear from you," Harry said, smiling as he deduced that neither were injured in any way. "How is your mission?"
"We've gotten into the ranks with little issue." Daphne said. "But Merlin and Nimune I hate this place and everyone in it. Thank you for the fireworks yesterday."
Harry chuckled. "I'm sorry it's been so frustrating." He said.
"How are the damages for Voldemort's side?" Rachel enquired.
"He's lost his principal finances." Blaise reported. "The Malfoy's estate was totally ruined. Narcissa's in St Mugos. The Carrows were both killed, along with Bellatrix Lestrange."
Rachel snorted. "Rather anticlimatic for someone so vicious, but frankly it was more then she deserved."
"Many others have died," Daphne continued, "But Voldemort seemed to recognize the form of attack. I suppose he was a muggle at one point in his life. He escaped immediately, and there are a sizable number of his forces still alive. Likely he'll be calling on the werewolves and giants now to replace the forces that he lost."
"Great," Harry muttered. Straightening up, he said, "Hermione, haul my last order. Get Ron and the tanks to head down to the surface with Tracey's platoon. We're going to need them."
End Chapter
Lots of stuff is going to blow up next chapter...like trolls...and maybe Fudge and Umbridge...ha, I haven't blown up one of them since Trouble. That would be fun.