The Hundred Acre Wood

Disclaimer & Warnings: See chapter 1

Timeline: Thursday, August 1st, 1991, even later in the morning

Chapter 20 – The Department of Wards, Waifs, and Werewolves

On the second level of the Ministry of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt was perturbed to say the very least. The normally stoic Auror crumpled up the copy of the document he'd been reading, tossed it in the air, and with a quick 'Incendio' turned it to ash. As the flakes started to fall lazily to the floor, he flicked out a quick 'Reparo' to restore the document. Catching it out of the air, he smoothed it out, a little singed around the edges, but still readable, then he crumpled it up again in frustration and tugged on his gold earring, as if somehow that would help things make sense.

"Merlin!" he swore under his breath.

'How could the man have been so… so… so careless?" Careless being a word that Kingsley never thought he'd use to describe the very severe and exacting Potions Master of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. However, what else could it be, but an error in brewing the veritaserum? Or… was the 'error' actually one done with purpose?

The paperwork that Kingsley had been able to locate on the case of Harry Potter was scanty at best, and all of it was a muddled mess.

In the fall of 1981, Millicent Bagnold had been Minister for Magic for just over a year. It was at a time when the war against the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters were at its zenith, stretching the Ministry's resources thin. For in the wizarding world any 'odds and ends' that needed to be handled always ended up the responsibility of the Ministry, and there were a lot of 'odds and ends' caused by the war. Everyone was doing double duty and filling in on jobs for which they hadn't received training. There were many gaps in the workings of the Ministry. These gaps resulted in Departments assigned tasks that they didn't know how to handle, simply because there was no one else to handle them, and thus the gaps grew into cracks.

It seemed that the Potter case had fallen haphazardly into several of these bureaucratically caused cracks. It also seemed to Kingsley Shacklebolt that Fudge seemed to be at the bottom of most of the cracks, even though he couldn't directly link him anywhere. The man was a slippery as gillyweed and twice as slimy.

Since Death Eater attacks rarely left survivors, there was no Department in the Ministry to handle any orphans left behind. The few children left without parents to care for them, such as Neville Longbottom whose parents had been driven insane by torture, had other blood relatives who readily took them in. There just wasn't the need for a dedicated resource for waifs and strays in a Ministry whose budget was already bare bones. The Potter case pointed out this unique gap in planning for magical children's welfare.

Because of the very real and imminent danger surrounding Harry Potter from Death Eaters, the child's residence needed to be secured by the strongest of wards. However, this too fell into another one of these cracks in the befuddled bureaucracy. Normally, wizards living in the residence were responsible for placing any magical enchantments required. However, as the last surviving member of the Potter family was only fifteen months old at the time, and the residence he was going to was a muggle one, there was no one to place and maintain protective wards.

The responsibility fell to the Ministry. The most likely department to handle both of these requests would've been the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, led at that time by Junior Minister Cornelius Fudge, as the loss of the James and Lily Potter and the orphaning of Harry was certainly a catastrophe for the wizarding world. That particular department also worked closely with the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee, so had some experience in dealing with muggles. But Fudge had claimed his department had an acute shortage of personnel to handle it, as he was busy cleaning up the mess left by Sirius Black, who'd killed Peter Pettigrew along with twelve innocent muggle bystanders, in the middle of a busy muggle street.

As time was critical, Millicent had done the practical and expeditious thing. Going down the list of departments at her disposal, looking for where 'wards' and 'waifs' would fit, she got to the end alphabetically and her finger landed on The Department for the Control of Werewolves. Thinking back to the last monthly budget meeting Millicent remembered that it was one of the least overstretched departments as many Werewolves had gone into hiding, or left the country entirely, because of the new Werewolf Registry laws enacted by Dolores Umbridge. That left that department with little else to do.

With a stroke of a pen, it was now the Department of Wards, Waifs and Werewolves, with the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes named as a consultant so Fudge could lend his expertise to the issues. Therefore, in the end it was Dolores Umbridge, Junior Assistant Secretary, of the new Department of W.W. & W., who on paper was the responsible party for placing Harry Potter and the wards at Privet Drive, at the direction of Albus Dumbledore as acting advocate for the magical child.

Kingsley could see why Dumbledore would have readily agreed to the Dursley placement, given the only alternative plan the Department of W.W. & W. had approved at the advice of the Department of Catastrophes, was for the baby's placement in Azkaban for his 'security and safety'. That alternative, while outlandish on the surface, had a budgetary practicality that couldn't be denied. It was the only alternative arrangement that the Ministry could control on such short notice, and it was uniquely affordable as the infrastructure was already in place. It wouldn't have cost the Wizarding world a Knut.

The Department of W.W. & W. for various technical reasons had turned down each of the wizarding families, who'd applied to take the baby. The reasons included: -too many children already in the household, -no other children in the household, -household already under stress due to family deaths from Death Eaters, -household a current target of Death Eater attacks, -household out of the Ministry's jurisdiction, -applicant's questionable allegiance to the Ministry, -applicant was in Azkaban, -applicant was a werewolf, -applicant was half giant, -applicant was part goblin, -applicant was a ghost, -applicant was single, -applicant was too old, -applicant was too young, -applicant wasn't stable financially, -applicant had health issues, -applicant was too busy, -applicant was too idle. The list of reasons went on and on, until the only two choices remaining was the Dursley's or Fudge's 'recommendation' of Azkaban.

'If I'd been forced to make the same choice, between placing a baby with muggle relatives or leaving him to the tender mercies of the Dementors in Azkaban, I would've made the same choice as Dumbledore.' Kingsley thought with a shake of his head. 'It really comes down to the fact that Dumbledore didn't really have a choice.'

'Funny though,' Kingsley reflected. 'Just one month after placing Potter at Privet Drive, Umbridge got an unexpected promotion from Junior Assistant Secretary of an obscure department, to Senior Assistant of one of the most influential departments in the Ministry. The result was that she was then working directly for Fudge, and the continuing responsibility for maintaining the wards came with her to Fudge's department. And since then, every time Fudge got promoted, Dolores followed on his heels.'

'Very funny… funny as a rampaging mountain troll.'

It was obvious to Kingsley who it was who'd been pulling the strings back in 1991. However, on paper Fudge's hands were clean. Even when it came to the wards - the documents that Kingsley uncovered showed that it was Albus Dumbledore acting as the child advocate, who made the request of the Ministry for the blood wards. Specifically, they were requested to 'protect from outside harm the magical child residing at Number 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England, until the child no longer calls it home, or until he comes of age, whichever comes first', and it was Umbridge's team that had placed them. If something had gone wrong with them, Fudge's hands were clean. Kingsley could guess who 'consulted' on that bit too.

Suspicious, Kingsley had checked the wards himself at Privet Drive just that morning. When he arrived in Surrey, he found all bloody hell breaking loose and momentarily wondered if there were any wards in place at all, as it seemed as though a Death Eater attack had taken place.

He'd apparated to a neglected neighbourhood park on Magnolia Road, and walked to Number 4 Privet Drive to find a police car out front with lights flashing and a crowd of pyjama clad neighbours on the sidewalk, craning their necks toward a huge commotion in the back garden. Arabella was there and recognized the Auror so drew him aside to fill him in on the incident. Apparently, Petunia Dursley claimed that a flock of rabid owls had attacked her, and she'd fired at them with a shotgun in self-defence, waking the entire neighbourhood.

Kingsley felt the incident was disturbing, normally owls don't just attack muggles for no reason, and there'd been no reports of rabid owls in England for decades, let alone an entire flock of them. In addition, why would Mrs Dursley be in her back garden at dawn with a shotgun handy? It wasn't normal behaviour, even for a muggle. Then he'd caught the look on Mr Dursley's face, as the Police car pulled away. It was one of indescribable malevolence, rather than one of concern for his distraught wife. None of it made any sense to the Auror unless…, he speculated, the Dursley's were both insane.

Kingsley placed a quick notice-me-not charm on himself as the crowd disbursed so he could stay behind and run diagnostics on the wards. There were several layers of complex wards in place. One layer prevented apparition in or out of the area, another layer prevented those who meant harm from entering, these two layers Kingsley surmised was to prevent Death Eaters from getting their hands on the saviour of the wizarding world, and he'd expected such. Yet still another layer Kingsley detected puzzled him, it prevented bursts of uncontrolled accidental magic. What possible protection could that be? It'd only affect the magical child. Kingsley could only surmise that it'd been put in place so that the Dursley's would be more comfortable raising the child if they didn't have to deal with magical eruptions, and to allay any misbegotten muggle notions that the magical child was dangerous to them.

However, the fact remained that the wards were in place and they were strong. Kingsley could find no weak spot in them anywhere. His scans registered a momentary surge in the wards as if something magical had happened but he couldn't tell what it was, and shortly afterwards Vernon Dursley came out of the residence, singing and looking pleased as he left for work. Surely if something had been wrong in the house, Dursley would've been looking worried at the very least.

To sum it up in Kingsley's mind so, as the wards were there then so was Harry Potter - no matter what Vernon Dursley and that damnable death certificate said. He didn't see how there could be any other explanation. If the magical child wasn't in residence, the wards wouldn't be that strong, the tie between the blood of the aunt and the blood of the magical child was what fed them. If either the child or the aunt were to be gone, for more than eleven consecutive months, the wards would dissolve. No child, no aunt, no wards. It was as simple as that.

Kingsley wanted to go in the house and find Potter for Albus, but the layer of wards that had been set up to prevent Death Eaters from entering, also prevented anyone else magical from entering unless they'd been specifically invited in, and he had not. This added security was overkill in Kingsley's opinion. Nevertheless, it was there, and the closest the wards would let him get was the perimeter of the property. Next Kingsley tried to scan to see what was going on inside the house, but the wards prevented even his scans from breeching the perimeter. These wards were top notch. The strongest he'd ever seen outside of Hogwarts. The ministry must be paying thousands of galleons a year to keep them up.

The only explanation Kingsley could come up with, to rationalize the whole scenario, was that the Veritaserum Snape used on Vernon Dursley hadn't worked, and the death certificate was bogus. Perhaps there was something nefarious going on. Maybe someone had bribed some muggle official to issue a false certificate. Perhaps that same someone, had helped to cover it up by purposely botching the potion, thus enabling Vernon Dursley to falsify his testimony.

Severus Snape knew how important Harry Potter was to the wizarding world. Kingsley wondered if Snape perhaps had an agenda of his own to mislead Dumbledore. Maybe he intended to spirit the boy away and then instigate some sort of plot to hide him for his own purposes, or even to turn him over to the Death Eaters. Snape was a Death Eater himself… well an Ex-Death Eater if you believed him. Nevertheless, just how far could you really trust him?

Dumbledore swore that Snape was loyal to the light, and that he trusted him implicitly, and Kingsley respected Dumbledore's opinion. So if he believed that Snape wasn't a traitor, then what else could've happened? Many a wizard depended on Snape's expertise and his services were in great demand - on top of a full teaching schedule, he was also working as a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. He was brewing almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for months on end. Could it have just been a matter of overwork and an accidental bad batch? You can't really blame him for an occasional mis-brew, could you?

'For something this important - bloody hell, yes I can,' Kingsley thought.

"Merlin, what do I do now?"

"Oi there Kings! What's got you in the mood?" Nymphadora Tonk's bubble-gum pink head popped up over the cubical wall with a quizzical expression on her pixie face.

"Nothing Tonks," Kingsley sighed. "At least nothing you can help with."

"Don't let the pink hair fool you I'm really quite adept at a lot of things," Tonks replied jovially as she tripped over her own feet on her way in and landed with an awkward thump in the chair across from Kingsley. "Give it a go. I might surprise you."

"I'm just following up on an old case. It really isn't anything I can talk about."

"Has it got anything to do with this?" Tonk's asked holding out a file folder.

"What's that?"

"I was just in Amelia Bones' office and she asked me to hand this to you personally - ASAP. That means 'As Soon as Possible' you know, so I hurried right over. She said it came in last night to be filed with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She said she hasn't had time to look at it, but thought you might be interested because the name on the file was the same as someone you asked her about earlier. She wouldn't tell me anything else. So what's up?" Tonks leaned in whispering conspiringly.

Kingsley's face was grim as he saw the file was clearly marked 'Dursley', and he reached out to take it.

"Ahem."

Kingsley and Tonks froze at the sound of someone clearing their throat and looked up to find Dolores Umbridge standing in the cubicle doorway, smiling a simpering little smile that immediately grated on both their nerves.

"Ahem. Excuse me. That is classified." Plucking the file out of Tonks outstretched hand before either of them could react, she singsonged a 'thank you very much' before turning on her heels and leaving as abruptly and she came.

"What was that all about?

"Merlin only knows with that one, she's one scary witch with a capital 'B'. But I do wonder why she wanted what was in that file. Damn… too bad Amelia didn't read through it first," Kingsley mused thoughtfully.

"Think the toothache wanted it?" Tonks wondered watching the squatty woman march off quickly down the hall.

"The who?"

"You know… the toad's boss… the Minister…. Fudge… the toothache… the sweet that'll rot your teeth."

"Tonks! Don't let them hear you call them that," Kingsley admonished her while he secretly agreed with the very fitting nicknames.

"Posh forget the old toad, now back to what's got you all twisted up, I saw the…"

"I'm sorry but I really can't have this conversation with you. As Umbridge said - it's classified."

"But I saw…"

"Tonks!"

"But I…"

"I said no and I'm the boss."

"But…"

"Haven't you got paperwork to finish up?"

"Fine Boss. Paperwork it is Boss. Right on it Boss," Tonks huffed as she stomped noisily back to her own cubicle, tucked in the corner of the department. Tonk's cubicle was littered with potted plants each one strategically placed to catch the drips from the leaky water pipe directly over her desk.

"So Tonks you had the file in your hands - did you look in it? he might've asked. But, noooooo… I can't have this conversation with you, he says instead. Well of course I did, I would've said, wouldn't be doing my job if I hadn't. I'm an Auror. We like to know things. What I'd like to know now is just who's this Dursley creep? And what does that old toad Dolores Umbridge got to do with it?"

Tonks flopped down in her chair and leaned her chin on her hands, blowing a stray strand of hair out of her eyes.

"But noooooo… they never listen to the pink haired girl."

Drip…

Splat!

A fat drop landed squarely on the top of her pink head.

"Figures. Got another leak."