For those who came in late:
As well as claiming Potter House and its contents, including a magical portrait of his birth parents, Harry has some largesse to bestow. One of which is going to Hogwarts. But something else has been revealed. It's going to be a lousy morning for two strong-willed magi.
In the Arch-Mage's quarters, Black Plateau:
"I," Ra'jirra declared to the ceiling over his bed in a flat tone, "am getting sick of these bloody wizards."
In the interests of honesty we should point out that some pungent terms have been removed for reasons of decency.
With a groan the Khajiit hauled himself out of bed; sensing he wouldn't make it to the jakes he availed himself of the chamber-pot. Some wit had purchased one painted with a picture of Mehrunes Dagon on the bottom, but Ra'jirra's eyes went to the mirror.
For someone in his late forties, Ra'jirra couldn't help but feel that his adventures, repeated near-death experiences, and decades of horse-trading with assorted wizards, politicians and arse-lickers, had piled on a few extra years. Like my wife piling on extra spoonfuls, he almost smiled, but it faded as he absently licked one hand and swiped it over some unruly mane. He looked like sixty and felt like seventy. He felt like calling off the whole shebang and just bringing Harry home and let the whole lot of those wizarding dullards go hang themselves.
He sighed, shuffling his feet and bumping the po. He looked down over a stomach swollen by too much sitting (his wife's cooking was certainly not to blame) into the poorly reproduced eyes of a Daedric prince glowering up from beneath the night's worth of urine. "Better get you emptied," he mumbled before someone snapped their fingers and the contents disappeared.
"What the hells!" The Arch-Mage spun, grasping automatically for Destruction, and saw a house elf standing on the bed, cool as a cucumber. "Zespy is emptying the potty," it declared in a feminine tone, "for Lord Harryjames' Dad Arch-Mage Rajerry."
Ra'jirra just stared at the creature in complete shock.
Meanwhile, in Hogwarts' Great Hall:
"I hope Dad's enjoying having a house elf," Harry grinned impishly at his plate of bacon, sausage and toast.
"House elf?" Hermione looked confused.
"Cor!" Ron was staring at Harry. "But how? They can't survive without a wizarding family."
"Can't survive?" Hermione looked more confused.
"My, ah, mother and father, put them in stasis wards, until a Potter returned to their house," Harry explained. "Actually, having Zespy follow Dad and serve him was Benny's idea, Dad wasn't all that sure about it but Benny..."
"Will you please explain what you're talking about?" Hermione only just managed to keep her voice level. Being left ignorant was a state of affairs she simply could not tolerate.
Draco took a deep breath and turned to the tomato-hued muggleborn. "Consider them a kind of magical servant for now," he said easily, "I'll explain it some more this –"
The word he wanted to say was obliterated by a Belch. Not a belch, mark you, that is too plebian a term, unfit for such a magnificently profound, resonant, downright arresting eructation – excuse me, Borboryghmus – as that which passed the lips of the Malfoy scion. It also smelled slightly of onions.
The silence which fell was punctuated by Draco clapping his hands over his mouth.
"I hope there is a reason for such ill manners, Mister Malfoy," McGonnagall's expression was hard.
It became clear that Draco desperately wanted to explain himself, but every time he opened his mouth, another monumental Borboryghmus came out instead. His expression was split between mortification, panic, and increasing gastric distress.
McGonnagall was occupied escorting a humiliated Draco off to the Medical Wing, so she didn't notice Lee and the Weasley twins grinning and nodding at each other.
A short time later, in the Headmaster's office:
"Thanks for seeing me," Ra'jirra grunted as he settled himself, "First off, the bequest. When's the Board of Governors meeting again?"
"Two o'clock this afternoon," Dumbledore replied, then his eyes twinkled. "Somehow I suspect such a rich bequest managed to free up some of their precious time."
"I wonder why," the old Khajiit rolled his eyes, "after all it's only one-sixth of the Potter fortune."
Dumbledore's eyes widened. He'd known the Potters had entered some hard times, and they had been staunch supporters both personally and financially in his attempts to defeat first Gellert and Tom, but... "Sixty million galleons?"
"According to the portraits in the manor, the last three Lords including James were a little, ah, spendthrift, and also they threw quite a lot of money into fighting your bad guys."
The old man was stunned. He knew that the Order of the Phoenix had always had enough money to cover its needs, but that the Potters had been so generous...
"Anyway," Ra'jirra rolled on, "I'd like you to humour me and invite the staff and myself to the meeting, since this involves them, and it'd probably sound better if the bequest was read by a reasonably neutral party, right?"
Dumbledore blinked. "You surprise me," he said at last, "I was of the impression you had little time for, ah, social niceties."
Ra'jirra grimaced. "I'm getting too old for running around the landscape bashing people, and when you're Arch-Mage you tend to spend more time wielding words than anything else. Also, on the Imperial Council I'm known to be a staunch supporter of the Empire and Chancellor Ocato, and I don't mince words with that. So – I'll read the bequest, no doubt there'll be a lot of screaming, there always bloody is, and it gets approved afterwards – and it doesn't look like you're forcing it through." He tapped the side of his nose and winked.
"I don't see any problem with that at all," Dumbledore finally admitted. Originally he'd intended reading out the bequest, then presenting it later to the staff as a fait accompli, but this way would be better. Some of the Board – one Slytherin in particular – really wanted him gone so they could enact their Pureblood doctrines. But Ra'jirra's way...
"Now, before we give 'em the good news, I've some questions," Dumbledore's spirits fell. "First off, what's wrong with, ah," the old Khajiit fished out a parchment, "Remus Lupin, Sirius Orion Black, or Frank and Alice Longbottom?"
"Well..." Dumbledore thought quickly. "First off, Remus is a werewolf. It wouldn't be safe for a baby to be in the care of one who turns into a dangerous creature every full moon, and besides werewolves are officially Dark Creatures."
Ra'jirra just grunted. "Understandable, I suppose. We get people gonged by Hircine at home too, they're never happy about it either. What about Sirius?"
"Ah – Sirius is in prison. He was caught red-handed you know, a terrible incident. He was the Secret Keeper for the Potter family's location, you see –"
"Wrong." Ra'jirra's voice was flat.
"What?"
"The portrait of James and Lily Potter informed me that the Secret Keeper was Peter Pettigrew."
Dumbledore's brow furrowed. "But the Aurors who captured Sirius stated quite unequivocally that when they did, he was laughing and repeating, 'I killed them'."
"Not to mention that Sirius apparently took the Godfathers' Oath. If he had, he should have dropped dead on the spot, right?"
The old man stared at the old Kahjiit, completely at a loss. That night had been a whirl. When he realised what Severus had done, and was trying to make right, he had moved with all due haste. He had raced to the Potters, explained as much as he could, time was of the essence, Sirius had offered to be Secret Keeper and...
...something else had happened. He couldn't remember; between Sirius' offer and his performing the rather draining Fidelius, there was the sense of a memory forgotten. So much had happened so fast that night.
But most importantly, if Sirius had taken the Godfathers' Oath, and broken it, not only would that be recorded in the Ministry's records, but also he should have dropped dead right in front of Tom.
But he'd signed off on Sirius' conviction, he remembered that much...
"Dumbledore?" A finger gently rapped his forehead. "You all right?"
"Eh? Ah... sorry, you raise... a good point, I think... I'll see if I can check the Ministry's records to set your mind at ease," yes, that would also set his own mind easy as well. "But that will take a day or two. Now, as for the Longbottoms, they succumbed to a... terrible spell, and are basically hospitalised for life."
Ra'jirra just nodded solemnly. "Which just left these Dursley people?"
"The wife, Petunia, was Lily's sister, thus a blood relative of Harry's. It was my intention to erect wards based on that relationship to ensure Harry's safety and also that he had as normal a childhood as possible, far away from the celebrity and..."
"You know Petunia and Lily hated each other?"
"Ah, but Petunia and Harry are family, I was sure such ties would win out. After all, Harry was just a baby, and certainly not Lily."
The old Kahjiit blinked at Dumbledore in amazement. This nong... this epic nong... thought that a sister who'd come to hate and fear magic because of how it effectively took her sister away... would accept said sister's son?
No wonder Akatosh had stepped in, he thought, and his respect for Earth-2's wizards dropped further.
He made his excuses, saying he had some work waiting back in Cyrodiil, and left before he let his fists add their opinion to the conversation.
Around lunchtime, in Black Plateau:
"So let me get this straight," Brucellus Vito, pilus prior of Black Plateau Magickal Research Centre, asked the still fuming Ra'jirra. "This Dumbledore, whose titles are apparently so heavy they've squashed his brains out of his head..."
"That's a good way of putting it," Ra'jirra glowered his khave mug.
"...Decides that due to some magic shield he knows of..."
"Wards."
"...that Harry was to be given to his mother's sister, who hates his family and anything magic."
"Damn right!" Ra'jirra snagged a plate of sweetrolls and tore into one. "And yet there was a perfectly good manor house, run by a family who I'm told were really good at wards, and the evidence was right around the place. Not a stone touched, just some pretty gruesome corpses about thirty feet at the closest. But no, he had to do everything himself."
"It's wearing all those titles all the damn time," Brucellus grunted, taking a sweetroll himself, "He probably thinks he's the only one who knows best."
"Well I disabused him of that, I hope." There was a glottal sound as Ra'jirra drained his mug. "Good old Black Plateau khave, crap as always."
"What's wrong with Legion khave? I drink it every day, and you don't hear me complaining."
"That's because you think hard-tack and maggoty biscuits is fine dining."
"The maggots give you protein," the ex-Legionnaire shrugged, and once again the two got into one of those stupid arguments that is less about proving one side right than blowing off steam.
That same lunchtime, Hogwarts:
"It was my brothers, dead certain," Ron declared. Draco had returned from the Hospital Wing after a rather vile purging session, and was rather thoroughly chewing his food and washing it down with a lot of pumpkin juice. His gullet, apparently, was still a little tender.
"How do you know?" Harry frowned at him. "Experience?"
"Yeph," Ron nodded, not a good thing to do when attempting to stuff a second mouthful into an already occupied mouth. "They're really good with potions, not that you'd know it, and the dinner table is the best place to test things. Ginny's a terror when she's pranked, so it's usually either Percy or me."
"And they always prank you?"
"They love pranks," Ron shrugged, "apparently there were these people at Hogwarts known as The Marauders, and my brothers want to be as good as them or better. Mum wants them to go into the Ministry, but they want to open up a joke shop."
Harry just looked thoughtfully at his lunch. "Can't get good without a little competition," he finally remarked, looking sideways at Draco.
"There's some truth in that," Draco said in an equally neutral tone, but his eyes said that he saw what Harry was getting at and wanted in.
"You're not thinking of pranking them back?" Hermione looked aghast. "What happens if you get caught? What if you end up hurting them? You could lose House Points! Detentions! Or –"
"May I have your attention please?" Dumbledore's voice stopped Hermione before her rant really took off. "All staff are required to attend an important meeting in the Governors' Chamber at two o'clock this afternoon. As such, all afternoon classes are cancelled. After all," he twinkled, "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!"
The other Hogwarts professors all looked at him with varying degrees of shock, Snape and McGonnagall with some annoyance. Naturally the secretive old coot couldn't have warned them this morning, could he?
This and the next-up was going to be a single chapter, but the wringle-wrangle's actually pretty drawn out. Expect internal monologues, inter-House feuding, and expressive nasal hair.