CHAPTER 6: ENDING A LEGEND TO BEGIN ANOTHER
The tired shoppers returned home to find the whole family in counsel for strategy to handle Harry's foray into enemy territory. It warmed his heart when he realized that Grandfather was so agitated and antsy from worry about his safety. He settled down with Neville and Luna, and watched as his grandfather, Great Aunt Cassie, Uncle Algie, Aunt Dora and Uncle Xeno shouted themselves hoarse, figuring out plans, moves, counter-moves, offensives and defensive strategies. In a way they were indeed gearing up for a battle - Dumbledore, he already understood, wasn't an opponent one ignored or underestimated without cost.
Grandfather had organized a celebratory dinner and invited the whole group he planned to consolidate in their fight to win freedom from Dumbledore's machinations. As the evening approached, they all felt the waves of anxiety Harry harboured as they waited for the final guests. Harry had many years to fly under the radar, so to speak. He had become content to avoid all attention and scrutiny and was sore pressed to accept the fact that any and all semblance of privacy would soon become a distant dream. By nature, Harry was a shy and introverted boy but his life was destined to be lived out in the limelight - he was painfully aware of that fact, not that he liked it one whit.
This dinner party with new faces like Neville's grandmother, the dowager Lady Augusta Longbottom, Uncle Algie's partner and head of the DMLE, Regent Lady Amelia Bones, Cousin Andromeda Tonks Black, and her husband Edward "Ted" Tonks Black and their daughter Nymphadora "Tonksie" Tonks Black, along with Cairn Greengrass and his daughter, Daphne were invited to dinner tonight, to help him in more ways than one. If all went well, they would be a team working to protect his interests and curb the machinations that Dumbledore seldom could resist resorting to. So he sat and internally pouted even as he practiced smiling and small talk and creating excellent first impressions. Soon, it was time and Aunt Cassie moved into the floo chamber to receive the guests and usher them into the Dining Hall.
Harry got up to stand next to Grandfather in the receiving line and was hard pressed to push past the annoyance he felt with each guest expressing abject shock noting his presence and his place in the receiving line. Grandfather merely introduced him as the Heir Primus to the Black Lordship, confusing everyone and throwing Andromeda Tonks into a second phase of shock. Andromeda was finally seeing the reason behind her re-absorption into her birth family and the rather stringent secrecy oaths. There were going to be a lot of unhappy witches and wizards all over Wizarding England when this particular news made out.
The dinner turned out to be a rather serious and introspective affair where mostly everyone held their own counsel and watched Nymphadora Tonks entertain Luna, Daphne, Neville and Harry with her metamorphic skills. The shock factor rose even higher when a few minutes after observing Nymphadora, Harry and Luna began to morph their own faces to match her while Neville laughed his face off; even the rather reserved Daphne had begun to smile in genuine merriment. Harry being a metamorphmage was expected; it was a Black Family magic and Harry did share the blood through Dorea. Luna had been a surprise.
Dinner ended and the group moved to the music room to settle down with tea to discuss the future. When the guests expected the children to be ushered off, Arcturus waved them back to their seats, informing the company at large that all the children present were quite capable of holding their tongues and offering intelligent contributions to the coming discussions. Amelia Bones was asked to leave the DMLE behind and join the the discussions as Regent Bones. The portraits of Melania, Dorea, Charlus, James and Lily joined the conversation, as well.
Arcturus took the helm of the group and directed the tone of the conversation with an epic rant. He laid bare and without any kind of window dressing, every single wrong committed against the life, family, person, assets and reputation of Harry James Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived and the savior of their wizarding world. Many things couldn't really be spoken about to the full extend without revealing many family secrets; and there was absolutely no advantage to exposing the Potter family secrets. Although the Apartment box was a Potter Family secret, as were many of the stolen artifacts, Arcturus explained every other aspect that did not touch a family secret; he had a lot of anomalies to list out.
Arcturus frankly let off all the steam he had been building up for decades. He had a beef to pick with how this community functioned and and he wasn't mincing words or holding back. He raised all his suspicions surrounding the prophesy, the death of the Potters, the missing Pettigrew and the barely acceptable evidence of Pettigrew's purported death, the subsequent illegal incarceration of Sirius Black, the attack on the Longbottoms, and the placement of the last Potter and Black heir in a muggle family despite having wizarding families with better claims to raise young Harry. It was nothing short of suspicious that all the legitimately eligible folks who could have claimed guardianship of Harry had been neatly eliminated.
He revealed the recovery of Potter family Grimoires from the Headmaster's office two years ago. He discussed the anomalies in the fact that Dumbledore had been the one to put the fidelis charm in place for both Longbottoms and Potters and personally knew the secret keepers. He mentioned the Potter Vault Audits and the discovery of missing and misappropriated funds. He discussed the strategic publicity around the moniker of Boy-Who-Lived, the savior of their wizarding world. He noted the curse scar, the coincidence of the cleansing of that scar combined with many known death eaters losing their magics.
He then pointed out that both the Potter and the Black seats in the Wizengamot are being controlled by Dumbledore and his lackeys. He pointed out the absolute lack of a formal or even an informal trial for Sirius Black; his grandson had been conscripted to the vilest prison for ten years without even offering him a chance to defend himself, when the likes of Malfoy, Nott, Goyle and even the Carrows had gotten off with nothing more substantial than hefty bribes.
The odd coincidences and implausible inconsistencies did not end there. He pointed out that despite Harry growing up in a muggle neighborhood, with no known contact with wizards to speak of, it had been Hagrid who had been sent to collect him and present his admission letter. Nor had he been provided the typical muggleborn introduction packet. His trust vault keys had been in Hagrid's possession, who in turn had obtained it from Dumbledore. Over the many years of displaying accidental magic in a muggle neighborhood, not one ministry employee had attempted to make contact with Harry while he stayed with his muggle relatives.
Each incident separately merely seemed either unfortunate, tragic or innocuous, but when laid out collectively, sounded sinister and pointed dark, unsavory fingers on the one man who orchestrated it all - Albus Dumbledore. It almost seemed like a blood-feud at work. But there were no records in the archive about any feuds for anyone with any of the Potters; Potters had always been a much loved family, neutral in their magics and politics for centuries before the name of Dumbledore became more than a newblood clan. Arcturus admitted that he and Harry were aware of the reach and Influence of the man who was headmaster, chief warlock and supreme mugwump. Neither were the Blacks aiming for a political re-haul or a bloody coup or a bloodless political conquest. All they wanted was to survive long enough to ensure the continuity of Potter and Black Lines.
Harry Potter was the child who had singlehandedly ended a bloody civil war at great personal cost, Arcturus pointed out, and now all he wanted was to be safe for the next seven years till he grew into adulthood. It would be a great shame if the society failed this young wizard now. Arcturus snidely remarked that each person sitting here had lost significantly at the hands of the manipulative old man like so many others but those present here had the power to do something about it. They all held positions of significant power in their community to provide the necessary checks and balances to reign in the old codger.
Murmurs of disapproval, shock, disbelief, and discontent had begun to spread through the gathered witches and wizards soon after Arcturus started talking; they fell into uneasy silence now, as they struggled to match their perception of the Leader of the Light with what they had learned here today. But both the Blacks and the Potter present here knew that it was a significant step towards a more independent minded society.
A place where there wasn't much scope for men like Voldemort or Dumbledore. Now that their stone had created a ripple in this pond, they felt a little more ready to face Hogwarts.
The dinner at the Black's and the startling revelation of the true perfidies of Albus Dumbledore had begun to change many minds about the man behind the legend they had all known so far. It had lead to the gradual but steady unravelling of many of Destiny's threads. Destiny smiled as she continued to spin and weave her astounding tapestry of life.