Chapter 20 Award Ceremony

On the days leading up to the award ceremony, Ministry aurors began patrolling the grounds. This forced Hermione to remove the attraction spell on Draco, Ron and Neville as the unlikely trio were highly likely to be discovered by the patrols on one of the trio's nightly escapades, which would probably lead to discovery of the charm she had placed on them and raise some rather inconvenient questions. She used the Marauders' Map to track them, following closely behind with the aid of Harry's invisibility cloak. As soon as they were all in the classroom, she stunned the lot of them and swiftly removed the charms she had placed on them. Hermione was tempted to strip them naked and stick them together in a very compromising position, but it would lead to the questioning of the effectiveness of the auror patrols, which was something she really didn't want. Over the next few days, the trio started to drift apart, much to Hermione's relief.

The day of the ceremony was extremely hectic for the Hogwarts staff. Dumbledore's supporters were boycotting the attendance of the ceremony but they still had to greet arriving guests, help organise the food, help set up the canopy and decor for the event and guard the third floor entrance. Harry launched another debilitating mental attack on Quirrell that afternoon, taking care to make sure that Voldemort would be too exhausted and disoriented to take advantage of the situation.

Many students wanted to attend the event but only the really well-connected students such Draco, Pansy, Daphne, Neville, Susan, Nott, Flint, etc. were permitted to attend. The Weasley twins had made many attempts to get into the canopy area to set up pranks but were repeatedly caught in the act by Professor Snape, who had made a point of following them around all day until he finally had enough and warded them in an empty classroom. Other students also made attempts to sneak in including, surprisingly enough, Percy Weasley. But they all failed to get by the aurors who had been posted to thwart any such interlopers.

As this was to be the event of the season, the entire Wizengamot would be present (even the members who voted against giving Harry and Hermione the award) along with the Hogwarts Board of Governors, all Ministry department heads and the most prominent and influential citizens in wizarding society. The sheltered area was decorated in classiest décor the Ministry and Hogwarts could manage. A band started playing as soon as guests began arriving. At 5:30 p.m. Harry and Hermione entered the sheltered area as directed by a ministry official after being checked by aurors for weapons. All of the attendees who were already there applauded loudly at Harry and Hermione's entrance. Lucius Malfoy immediately went over to greet them, closely followed by an avid gaggle of reporters.

"Welcome, Mr Potter, Miss Granger. I am Lucius Malfoy." Malfoy said.

"A... pleasure to meet you, Mr. Malfoy. Thank you for all your hard work to ensure that we received the awards," Harry said, angling his body to hide the fact that Hermione was palming an alternate wand that Dobby had brought her.

"No need to thank me. I adore children and I wanted to reward the people who were looking out for the students' best interests at Hogwarts."

"We did what any responsible person would do and happened to get lucky. Isn't that right, Hermione?"

"Of course it is."

"Why don't I introduce to you some of the people who helped me get you this award?" Lucius said.

Lucius then introduced them around with Hermione subtly inflicting the diarrhea curse on any Death Eater that Harry happened to meet. About halfway through the guests, Harry and Hermione were surprised to see Sirius and Remus trailing behind. As Lucius was about to introduce Sirius, Remus interrupted him.

"Harry, I really am sorry about what happened. I swear I will pay you back."

"Shut up, you thief. I have nothing to say to you."

"Don't speak to my friend like that." Sirius said angrily.

"Who are you?" Harry said, pretending not knowing him.

"I am Sirius Black, your godfather. Remus would never steal from you, he is not that kind of person." Sirius said, rushing to his friend's defence.

"Then he's not a very good friend if he left you to rot in prison all these years without lifting a finger to help. Just like he did nothing to help the child of a friend who was being abused on a daily basis," Harry growled while glaring at Remus, which made the werewolf flush and glance away,his face filled with guilt.

"I seem to be missing quite a few details." Sirius said, eyes narrowing at Remus who hadn't bothered to deny Harry's claims.

"We should talk later, preferably without this thief around," Harry suggested.

"After the ceremony, then. We can talk while taking a walk around the grounds."

"See you then."

A little before the dinner began, the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, turned up with Undersecretary Dolores Umbridge in tow. Harry and Hermione hated having to be polite to people he hated but they knew this was a necessary evil.

"Good Evening, Minister. You reputation proceeds you. I am Harry Potter and this is my best friend, Hermione Granger." Harry said as he indicated Hermione.

"Nice to meet such respectful and responsible members of society," Fudge simpered, shaking Harry and Hermione's hands in turn as cameras flashed all around them.

"Thank you for hosting this event." Harry said politely, even though he wanted to tear him a new one.

"No problem. This is my senior undersecretary Dolores Umbridge, She is my right hand and I don't know what I will do without her." Fudge said, gesturing to the little toad of a woman in garish pink who stood at his side.

"Nice to meet you." Harry and Hermione said in greeting.

"I heard great things about both of you." Umbridge said sweetly while doing her best to hide her dislike for the young Gryffindors..

"Well, we need to move on, so many people to meet tonight, you know," Fudge said quickly, leading Umbridge away.

Harry and Hermione sighed in relief as they left.

The dinner went slowly for the pair as they were forced to endure pointless conservations with people they did not like. Even the constant stream of people going to the toilets due to the hexes that Hermione had fired didn't do much to relieve their utter boredom. Instead they created a game of firing various curses at Umbidge without being detected. First it was a farting curse, then an itching hex and grew worse until a miserable Umbridge was forced to leave.

Minister Fudge gave a long and boring speech before presenting the Order of Merlin, Third Class to Harry and Hermione, followed by a short speech from Professor Dumbledore gave a short speech designed to downplay their achievements before reluctantly handing them the award for Special Services to Hogwarts. As soon as the ceremony was over, Harry headed off to find Sirius while Hermione snuck back into the castle with the Marauders' Map. Professor Dumbledore was busy attempting to gather more support from the more influential guests and so missed seeing Harry walk off with Sirius for their talk.

"How are you, pup?" Sirius asked.

"Good. Sorry about your incarceration. I'm hoping your recovery is going well."

"Alright. My healers say I can leave soon but that I won't be able to return to work as auror. That is, if I wish to return to work as an auror, which is very doubtful considering what happened to me."

"I can certainly understand where you're coming from."

"Who are you staying with now?" Sirius asked.

"The Dursleys." Harry said knowing that this would make Sirius mad.

"Lily's sister Petunia and her family? What idiot made that decision? You were never supposed to go to the Dursleys!"

"Dumbledore decided to leave me with those bastards and he never once checked on me." Harry said angrily

"How did they treat you?"

"My room was a cupboard under the stairs until I moved in with the Grangers. I was forced to do all the chores as soon as I could walk. The healers say I was severely malnourished." Harry told him, his eyes filling with tears.

"I should have never I left you with Hagrid to chase after Peter Pettigrew," growled a furious Sirius.

"I don't blame you. I blame Dumbledore, he put loyalty charms on me and other people. If you want I can check you for loyalty charms and remove them if you have them?" Harry asked.

"Go ahead, Harry," Sirius told him. Harry performed the detection charm and immediately removed a few recent loyalty charms which were keyed to both Dumbledore and Remus.

"You had them too, Sirius, and they were placed on you recently. They were keyed to Dumbledore and Remus."

"Harry, I am so sorry about Remus. I spoke to him earlier tonight about what happened. You have a right to be mad. Just please don't file charges against him, his life is hard as it is and Snivellus and Dumbledore should be the ones paying. He will pay you back but it's going to take him some time."

"Then force him to go find work and stop hanging around you at the hospital. Those are my terms, I won't press charges if he stays away from all of us unless we initiate contact."

"I need someone to help me through this period of recovery, Harry."

"How about the Tonks family?"

"How do you know about them?"

"My parents wrote me a letter telling me that you're my godfather and that you were innocent. When I tried to find you to get away from the Dursleys, I came across their name."

"I will write a letter to Andy tonight and ban Remus and Dumbledore from seeing me at St. Mungo's. I am sorry again for going after Peter instead of taking care of you."

"Just please help Hermione's parents get legal custody of me and apply for magical guardianship over Hermione and myself. I really don't trust Dumbledore at all."

"I don't think I'm in a fit state to be your guardian right now, Harry."

"I am not saying immediately, but soon. Why don't I give you some material about why I think you should never trust Dumb as a Dork." Harry said, just as Hermione emerged from hiding under Harry's invisibility cloak.

"Is that your father's invisibility cloak?" Sirius asked.

"Yes. By the way, Dumbledore tried his best to keep it from me. That's another reason why I don't trust him. Why don't you look through those newspaper articles, legislation voting records and memories we gathered about Dumb as a Dork. Do this as a favour to me as your godson."

"Okay," Sirius said, clearly not looking forward to any more unpleasant revelations.

"Can you come to the Granger house on Sunday? There we can talk much more privately," Harry whispered to Sirius.

"How can you get out of school?"

"We'll tell you if you agree to meet with us on Sunday."

"Okay."

"Without Remus."

"Yes. I can come and go as I like as long. Well, just as long as I return before dark."

Hermione then gave Sirius her address.

"We'll see you on Sunday then. Make sure you look at the material we gave you before you come."

"Okay," Sirius said reluctantly.

Harry and Hermione headed to their dorms and to bed while Sirius returned to St. Mungo's to begin looking through the information. The more he read, the more angry and betrayed he felt. Dumbledore was responsible for Voldemort's uprising along with the deaths of so many innocent people, including his dear friends Prongs and Lily.

The most damning memory was taken from Voldemort. It showed Dumbledore forcing Tom Riddle to go back to the orphanage year after year even though he could have easily placed him with a magical family because several of his classmates families had offered to take the orphan in. The abuse Tom suffered at the orphanage during these times was truly atrocious. His inability to us his magic to defend himself probably made things worse and was probably what led to his utter hatred of Muggles.

When Sirius found out that Snape was the one to tell Voldemort about the prophecy and that Dumbledore knew all along, he was ready hunt both of them down and kill them on the spot. The only thing stopping him was the knowledge that if he did so, he would promptly end up back in prison, leaving Harry on his own again and that was something that he would never do if he could help it. The fact that Snape had gone unpunished for so long proved to him exactly how powerful Dumbledore was and that his fake grandfatherly persona had most of the wizarding world completely fooled. From the articles, Sirius was able to see what Harry and Hermione had been trying so hard to do. They were trying erode Dumbledore's massive power base but it was a slow progress with limited success. When went to sleep that night, he planned to go to the Ministry to confirm the information, Hermione had given him. If it was confirmed, he vowed he would do whatever it took to help Harry and Hermione take down Dumbledore.

Harry and Hermione went straight to the Granger house the next morning to show off their rewards. They were greeted warmly by everyone before a private meeting with only Harry, Hermione, Dan and Emma present.

"We are so proud of you two." Dan said as Emma hugged Hermione and Dan shook Harry's hand.

"Can we get down to business now?" Hermione asked.

"Alright." Emma agreed.

"I finally met Sirius last night," Harry told them.

"How was it?"

"It was alright. I found out that Sirius had loyalty charms placed on him, just like me."

"Do you think he's really on our side?" Emma wondered.

"Yes. He is coming here tomorrow. That is, if it's alright with you two."

"That'll be fine. What time will he be here?"

"I really don't know."

"You asked him over without suggesting a time and we're expected to stay home all day to accommodate him?"

"I am sorry. He probably here in the morning."

"What if we had plans? Someone really needs to teach you a little social etiquette."

"Hermione was there too," Harry defended, while Hermione looked away guiltily.

"Hermione, what did we teach you?" Emma said.

"Do you want us to move the meeting to a different day?" Harry said, attempting placate Emma.

"No. Next time talk to us before setting up a meeting, please."

"Okay. We promise." Harry agreed.

"Do we need to do anything to prepare for this meeting?" Emma asked.

"No, not really."

"What issues do you want to cover at this meeting?"

"We want Sirius to agree to be our magical guardianship instead of Dumbledore, with you two as our guardians in the Muggle world."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"The next step in our plan to take down Dumbledore and Voldemort."

"That is your prerogative. In that regard, we are happy to announce that we were able to purchase 15% of the largest wizarding newspaper in the United States. The Outcast organisation has agreed to act as our representatives in the US."

"That's great, when did this happen?"

"It's still not completely finalised because we still have to pay for our share, but the contracts were signed yesterday."

"How much did it cost us?"

"Ninety-five thousand Galleons or four hundred seventy-five thousand pounds."

"Can we really afford that?" Harry asked, remembering Dan's speech about money.

"Definitely. The income we are generating from the Basilisk shite, the potions business, the partnership with the Weasley twins and the acromantula product sales are generating more than enough to cover all of the employee wages and the other expenses we have going out. Plus, we got a great deal of money from the raids you and Doug did last weekend."

"How much did we get on those raids anyway?"

"Wait right here, I'll find a summary of what was recovered," Dan said, rummaging about for the copies Alice made of the items confiscated from the stashes they had found.

Hogsmeade had only twenty thousand galleons but they had heaps of medical supplies, potion ingredients, spare wands, auror uniforms, badges and weapons. There were no books, muggle money or other valuables at that site. Everything was jumbled together making it impossible for Alice to count until she sorted everything. The site was a staging area for an attack on Hogwarts that had never occurred.

Nott Manor had thirty-five thousand galleons and thirty-five thousand pounds. It had some valuables, both muggle and magical in origin, including several rare tomes. There was the usual assortment of potion ingredients, medical supplies, spare wands and weapons.

The Carrow estate and the Avery family's holiday home had the same as Nott Manor except it had only twenty thousand galleons and twenty thousand pounds each.

Hepzibah Smith 's old home and Borgin & Burke's had only ten thousand galleons and ten thousand pounds each. They also had a spare wand for Voldemort and some fake identification documents.

The castle in Albania was the best of the lot in terms of monetary value. It had fifty thousand galleons and fifty thousand pounds in various muggle currencies including US dollars, French francs, etc. It was filled with valuables both magical and muggle including three pensieves the size of the one Dumbledore had. There were rare muggle books that would be worth a fortune in the open market.

In total they had netted one hundred sixty-five thousand galleons and one hundred and forty-five thousand pounds in muggle currencies. So a grand total of nine hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds or one hundred and ninety-four thousand galleons. Doug's cut was nineteen thousand galleons, Emily's cut was ten thousand galleons, another ten thousand galleons was going to be shared by the other employees but they did not need to know that. Also, the Outcast School would recieve twenty-nine thousand galleons for R&D and their new library. The Grangers were left with ninety-seven thousand galleons and one hundred forty-five thousand pounds to use for their other projects.

"Are we going to give it now or are we going to wait until later?" Harry said after looking at the figures.

"We are going to wait until at least Christmas for Doug. We'll give Emily her share today because she has successfully made the first full-size vanishing cabinet with the professional cabinetmaker on Thursday. So it would be like a bonus for her successes. In regards to the Outcast school, we will give it to them today as well but we are withholding part of the money to pay for the blank books and Alice's work. All the rest can be dealt with at a more convenient time."

Harry and Hermione went to check out the new vanishing cabinet under the watchful eye of Alice, who had created it. After Harry and Hermione were satisfied with it, it was was shipped off to a the international port for priority delivery to a US warehouse owned by the Outcast Organisation. It would take a fortnight to arrive as no magical means of transport could be used for the transportation as it interferes with the natural magical field of the cabinet itself.

For the rest of the day, Harry made up more darts for the acromantula hunters with Doug's help while Hermione went off to try out the mining techniques she had developed from all of her research in the Room of Requirement and Alice worked on another copy of the vanishing cabinet. While Hermione's parents was meeting the Outcast Leadership to give them the money for the Outcast school, Sirius was busy at the Ministry verifying the information he had been given. Sirius was outraged to discover that every bit of it was true.