The Daily Prophet was running stories about house-elves turning into gorgeous models overnight and being freed from their enslavement bonds as front-page news for the next month. Officials from the Ministry arrived at Hogwarts to arrest Iris, but Dumbledore refused entry, as they had no grounds to throw Iris into Azkaban as what she had done, wasn't actually illegal. A fact they were sheepishly forced to admit was actually true.
Amelia Bones eventually stepped in and blocked further harassment of the first-year student.
Rita Skeeter wrote a balanced report for Iris. Once all the hue and cry was over the fact that much employment had arisen for people all around the country was seen as a positive for most of the population. Nancy Bones was euphoric. She had to get a team of staff to help. The business was booming. Catering, gardening, cleaning. Personal shoppers. Several other businesses started in Diagon Alley as Nancy had to admit she could not cope with all the demand.
The newly turned ex-squib Witches and Wizards were delighted as they found it easier to get part-time work in the Wizarding World to supplement their incomes when they were at college.
The penny dropped for business owners that more disposable income would be flooding into their stores imminently. Tom the barman saw an upturn in business almost immediately. Overall, it was seen as a good thing by most except the most devout Riddle followers who had treated their own house-elves abominably.
The Ministry was doing their usual flaying around making life more difficult than they needed to regarding the rights for the elves. Countless silly arguments were to be heard all around the ministry.
Elfish welfare was eventually decided to parallel that of the centaurs. Sentient beings that didn't have the sense of a human. Hermione had snorted with derision when they read that in the Daily Prophet.
'It'll get better,' Ron had said to her. Hermione did not look remotely convinced.
'It's outrageous. Centaurs can read the planets and the stars. They are so wise. The elves are just like Witches and Wizards. Well, except in general, a lot better looking. These laws are ridiculous,' she said to them at dinner.
'Why don't you become the Minister for Magic? You can change the laws then,' Iris proposed the idea to her.
Hermione beamed, 'I really do like the sound of that,' she said. She tested it out, 'Hermione Granger. Minister of Magic. Yes. That will be my life goal. There is much that needs to be rectified in the world.'
Iris grinned as Harry groaned quietly. He did not doubt in his mind this could eventually happen. A nation being bossed about by Granger. Still, she would be loads better than Riddle, he mused.
Ron simply looked disturbed by the whole idea.
Elves were apparating in from overseas as each evening after dinner Iris would meet with them to free them from their bonds. Gabriel had taken the elves to see their homeland and castle.
It had been an overwhelmed group of elves that returned to Hogwarts one evening.
Iris had gone with a few of the other interested Gryffindors to visit them and see how their day had gone. The elves were staying near Dumbledore's office in an expanded room. She had greeted Kreacher with a long hug.
'So?' she asked him. They all looked very wistful. 'What's it like?'
Kreacher looked at her with tears in his eyes.
'Oh no. It's not a shit hole, is it?' Iris asked with horror.
Hermione nudged her sharply.
Kreacher grinned, 'Quite the opposite, Iris. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.'
'Better than Buckingham Palace?' Harry asked.
The elves all nodded, 'Much better.'
The Gryffindors all relaxed at this.
'It is called Valinor. It has been held in a sort of stasis all this time, so it is like new,' Binky said to them, 'It is untouched. The castle is a sort of marble white. It glows. The library is vast and filled with countless books about our magic. There are Grimoires written in elvish, but we can understand it. The trees and plants are not like any I have ever seen. We returned and the castle seemed to wake up. It is like Hogwarts. We can feel her magic. She was so very pleased to see us,' Binky sobbed at this.
'It is larger than Hogwarts. Vast,' Dobby said, 'The lands seem to go on forevermore. Fields. Parks. The bluest river runs through it. We shall take the unicorns and centaurs with us when we move in. They have been languishing in the forbidden forest for far too long. It is very dangerous there for them. We shall ask all manner of magical beings to join us as well. One of the books said this is their land too. The area shut down after the curse was put on us all. Our homeland hibernated until we could return. They will love it there. We shall start moving in tomorrow.'
The Gryffindors felt a lovely calming aura flooding off the elves as they smiled at their happiness.
'It sounds a lot like Equilibrium,' Iris said to them, 'You should all be very happy there.'
Many hugs were exchanged at this announcement.
'How are the other elves doing?' Ron asked them.
'A real mixture,' Mitty told them, 'All kinds of experiences. We are different types of elves, but we have all come together. There are more of us than I first thought. We have been reaching out. They hear our thoughts and are coming from far and wide. Things will take time, but the main thought we all have is we have a real future now. We shall tell them the good news tonight.'
It was with lighter hearts that the days continued. The silver snakes were working brilliantly. Now the intensity of the first week was becoming a memory a lot had settled down somewhat. For the harder of hearing students, the fact that both Flint and Nott had come off worse in their encounters with the young Gryffindors had led a lot of students to give them a wide berth.
Iris could focus on her lessons. Harry was enjoying belonging to the Quidditch team and they were more than happy to have him once they saw his talent on a broom. Hermione was devouring the books and with the help of Lily to guide her, sort out the blurred lines between her logical mind with the sometimes illogical magical studies. Now the young Gryffindors had the facts about what was actually happening in the world they could focus more on their learning. They had known something was definitely occurring before it was confirmed.
Lavender and Parvati struck a good balance between working out which house had the cutest boys and studying harder. They knew they needed to be prepared. Now they had actual motivation, it proved easy. They had it confirmed Flint had been merely transferred to Durmstang without any punishment. This reeked of injustice. This seemed to spur them all on. Neville and Dean especially really applied themselves. The good news was that Frank and Alice had offered the Order their assistance because of this.
Neville had started using his magic again. He did say his spells felt stronger than they had which Hermione had quizzed him on relentlessly. She was compiling her research already and Lily and she were planning experiments.
When Amelia Bones confirmed to Albus that Nott and his father had somehow managed to escape Muggle authorities and had disappeared, the young Gryffindors really applied themselves then. Professor McGonagall was suitably impressed. There was something about these young Gryffindors this year that was definitely different from previous years. They already seemed more like a family. She put it down to that terrible incident with Neville. She also thought that by now Harry and Iris may have briefed them more on RIddle's plans. It had bought them all much closer. Adversity seemed to do that to people. That Iris seemed to have a very good relationship with most of the first-year Slytherin's did not go unnoticed either. That she was Slytherin's heiress and a Black, invoked a bond with the Slytherins that had been sadly lacking between the two houses in previous years. Daphne Greengrass was a natural-born leader and the others in her class seemed to listen to her.
That Draco Malfoy, the Professor shook her head. No. That Draco Black and his mother had made their allegiance clear to all and sundry that they were siding with their Black family and that Narcissa was publicly divorcing Lucius certainly screamed volumes. Through Iris and Daphne, both houses seemed to be spending a great deal of time with each other and forming their own friendships within the group. Certainly, Iris was very unlike her father in that regard. Sirius had enjoyed stoking the houses animosity to each other.
Many of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were gradually getting closer to the Gryffindors and Slytherins too. It was the most united year Professor McGonagall had seen in decades. There were some outsiders but she had heard that Iris had said to the other first years that they were young and in the prat position and needed to make up their own minds. No nasty words were fired at each other from what the Professors saw amongst the first years. Well, not about Riddle anyway. They had difficult decisions ahead. Pansy Parkinson certainly seemed to spend a lot of her time deep in thought.
Whispers about Riddle were common in the Wizarding World. They all knew something was brewing. That there finally seemed to be a real, credible opposition to him amongst some of the wealthiest, powerful Purebloods in the country was creating a lot of private contemplation. Many had thought the writing was already on the wall and had been prepared to accept the inevitable, not wanting to put themselves on the losing side and face the wrath of Death Eaters.
The Ministry was now declining into a cesspit of corruption and very few of them could be trusted. They could not be relied upon when the time came to stand strong against the onslaught. Riddle and his gang terrified them. That his grandaughter publicly called him a lunatic had fired up private hope within many magical homes. The strange things that were happening in the castle made people peer over the wall for a change instead of burying their heads. Silver snakes slithered around the castle. A gift from Salazar and controlled by a parselmouth. They all knew these snakes were capable of much more than simple restraining. Iris only had to hiss the command.
Crabbe had been almost catatonic when he described what Iris had done with Nott. When he whispered about a veil to Hell, Lucifer and seven Devils, many thought he was making up fairy tales. When their parents spoke in whispers of Theodore Nott having his mind broken they stopped doubting Crabbe. Nott and his father had been taken to South America. Theodore had simply curled up in a ball and had become mute. Crabbe had spoken of the purest black magic that Iris could produce. That it could flood through you and make you feel you could crush buildings. That had made many ears prick up.
A three-thousand-year-old curse broken on the elves and dozens of squibs being healed on top of everything else was not the normal run of the mill things the Wizarding World was used to.
Riddle's followers at Hogwarts would watch Iris Black discreetly and report back to their parents and superiors about Iris. She looked a lot like her father, Sirius Black. Even though he had walked away from his wife and child when Iris was little due to finding out Hayley's true parentage, Iris was still widely regarded as his. Iris had black hair, pale skin, grey eyes and aristocratic features which were typical for the Black family. She looked very much the refined Pureblood she was until she opened her mouth.
The distinguished illusion quickly crumbled at that point. Many of the older students saw her as arrogant and occasionally very obnoxious when she was provoked. She seemed to enjoy a heated row. A typical Black then. But. She also had immense pride in being Salazar's descendant. She wore a silver snake ring on her right hand with respect to him. She had given three of the silver snakes to Draco, Hermione and Daphne to protect them and their friends from the older students. This open display of friendship started to affect some of the older student's conscience when they saw how little these kids were. The fact they thought it was needed was a wake-up call for some of them.
Iris was clearly close with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley and had saved Neville Longbottom's life on the Quidditch pitch. As if to rub salt into the wound she had appeared to have struck up a close friendship with the most annoying Muggleborn ever to attend Hogwarts in its entire history, Hermione Granger. They were rarely seen apart.
Granger did not know her place. They had been told she would answer questions in class. She would have the audacity to actually know the bloody answers when many of the Purebloods didn't. It just wasn't right. Mudblood's should just sit there and shut up and be grateful they were even allowed to be at Hogwarts, they seethed. She even had one of Salazar's snakes so it wasn't as if they could attack her for her inappropriate behaviour.
If they had their way all the mudbloods would be slung out. But then. Granger always did know the answers. She was very smart. Just as deserving as them to be there? No. They couldn't think like that. Your Pureblood meant you automatically had brains. Mudblood's were just stupid. A plague. Freaks of nature. Weren't they? That is what they had been told since they were little.
They had all been told to wait. They had been informed from the top that Iris Black and her little friends would certainly get what was coming to them very soon. Somehow though, quite a few of these students didn't truly believe it was going to be that easy. At the back of their minds acorns were growing. They were asking themselves questions they never had before. Other rumours were coming through about this New World Order that the Dark Lord had planned that was making many of them even more uncomfortable.
Older students would look around at those people in the hall they had grown up with and would shift uncomfortably. This wasn't going in the direction of what they had initially thought it would. They were young and the implications of an alliance with the wealthiest, most brutal Muggles on the planet hadn't properly sunk in. Naively, they had originally thought the Magical and Muggle worlds would be separate. That there would be different rules for each side.
Of course, they didn't give a Bernie Botts bogey flavoured sweet for Muggles. Wherever they were from. It was how they were raised. If a billion Muggles perished then, whatever. It just meant a billion fewer Muggles. There were plenty of them. Their parents had told them a purge was necessary for humanity to evolve. The news was coming through that eventually Riddle and Hitler planned to merge their two worlds. Even the younger years could see the massive problems with this. Witch hunts were not that long ago. There was bound to be unintended consequences. People could get frightened of magic and could lash out. Muggles had guns after all.
The all-white global hierarchy also posed many dilemmas for them. Would they be expected to turn on their friends in the future? Push them out and down the ladder? Would they be ordered to kill them? They hadn't realised that would be part of the deal. Tensions were beginning to fester between classmates. The most frightening of all was the manic smiles of their fathers as they told them the brutal plans Hitler and Riddle were already implementing. Potion masters and scientists were working together to invent the most effective chemical warfare.
Muggles were being tested on. 'Results were marvellous,' came the sickening reports. Death was instantaneous. Nuclear and the power it wrought was being explored to their maximum capacities. Magic combined with Muggle might was going far better than anyone could have predicted. The whispers were they had found ways to kill millions in seconds. Concentration camps continued to expand around the world. The profits generated were exceptional.
Their minds would wander back to simpler times. Before their parents had taken Riddle's dark mark. When their homes didn't reek of that particular insidious dark magic and their parents didn't always have that malevolent look in their eyes. Cracks were starting to appear in a lot of their minds now. On their seventeenth birthday, it was mandatory for them each to take that dark mark. Many were looking forward to this honour. Others though, for the first time, were starting to have their doubts.
Students had discreetly been reading Muggle books about the Second World War and the last time that a self-styled Dark Lord had allied with Hitler. They certainly knew a lot more about Gellert Grindelwald now and had a lot more grudging respect for the current Headmaster. It was not like the last Wizarding War. That was for sure. This was something else entirely. It made for long, sleepless nights for many of them.
Things were certainly changing at Hogwarts.