2. Governor Black

The very next day there was a special announcement on the WWN, the Wizarding Wireless Network. Molly had the wireless on most of the time and when she heard a crackling announcement that there would be an important news report directly from the Ministry at noon she called everyone in the house to the living room to listen. Their eyes all went wide when they heard Sirius' voice:

"Ladies and Gentlemen!

As of this time you hear the voice of your new ruling Governor. My name is Sirius Black. I have been able to gain the support of the Aurors to overrule old Minister Cornelius Fudge. I am highly aware of the illegality of my actions, but I think you all might forgive me for this once you'll be informed of the new government's reasons and our plans. At first I'd like to tell you who is behind our coup d'état and supports us: Chief Auror Alastor Moody. Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Amelia Bones. Head of the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Amos Diggory. Head of the Department of International Cooperation, Percy Weasley.

We have reasons to believe that Cornelius Fudge has gone insane. We have reasonable suspicion that he has acted not for, but against the wizarding community. He is extremely corrupt, has taken money from at least four different sources to grant favours. The crowning of his actions took place when he had the audacity to apparate into my sick room at my current living quarters to threaten me that I would only really get my freedom back if I handed over 80 of the contents in mine and my family's Gringotts vaults. And finally when we arrested him, we have found out that his left forearm is blemished by the Dark Mark. In other words, our Minister has been a servant of Lord Voldemort.

I will strive to unveil all of his political misdeeds. I promise and take the responsibility to clean up the Ministry from within, top to bottom. I am aware that all of you who are out there listening to this statement will not believe me, but I will prove to you all that you are not going to be governed by a dictator. I will hold this position of Governor until the Ministry is back to what it should be. A place where people work for the wizarding society, not against it. All current laws will remain valid.

We will find the people in here who do good and honest work. There are many of them. But we will also find all the ones who are cheating the witches and wizards of the street of their money, which they take for favours, or do no real work at all. We, that is the afore mentioned reliable members of the Ministry and I. You should certainly know their names and their integrity.

Now this may not be the right way to go about it, but with the fall of Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters we should take the chance to build up our society again and in peace. No one, and I repeat, NO one will have anything to fear from me than those who have done wrong.

Knowing that this will be a huge change in our community I would like to assure you all that I have no wish to remain in this position for a day longer than necessary unless I should be called back because people will believe that I'm doing the right thing. And knowing that we will soon need good personnel for the Ministry I call out to you people out there who would be willing to come and help cleaning up and start working again. Not working for a career only. I will conclude my statement with a quote from a Muggle ruler who once said: In these times ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

All howlers, comments, advice or votes of confidence are to be sent to my office at the Ministry. I will probably not be able to reply personally to every letter, but I promise that all of them shall be read and all who state name and address should get a reply of some sort."

The people in Molly's living room all sat frozen and almost terrified. None of them would have believed Sirius to be capable of such a thing. They all stared at each other, open mouthed and finally, Minerva was the first to find her voice again.

"I can't believe he did this."

Molly shook her head.

"I always knew he was rash! Oh, he'll pay for that so dearly. How could he do this?"

"I'd say he's got a lot of support inside the Ministry, if it's true what he said just now, and we know he's not usually lying," Hermione remarked.

"I think, as illegal as it may have been, but we should all support him. We all knew Fudge wouldn't go without being forced out of his office, and now hearing he has the Dark Mark… that practically legitimates Sirius' action," Arthur commented and surprised his wife.

"What? You must be out of your mind, Arthur! It's still an illegal action, how can you support that? How? Just tell me? And he claims Percy supports him, too!"

"Well, he's got MY support, too," Ginny said.

"And mine."

All the young people in the room looked determined to jump to Sirius' ranks. Molly didn't want to have any part in it and ordered Ginny to keep quiet.

"Sorry, Mum, but I'm an adult now and I will not let you rule my political views. Sirius may have been rash, but he did what was needed to be done, because Fudge was certainly on the way to have the Wizengamot be overthrown. I'm pretty sure, Sirius plans no such thing. And I won't be surprised at all if the Wizengamot will grant him permission to do what he wants to do," Ginny said calmly.

"I think, Ginny is right," Minerva said.

Molly looked at her, flabbergasted.

"Minerva! Just think about it. He said it himself, it's a coup d'état! I can't believe that Remus was supporting this!"

The discussion went on for hours, but Molly found herself alone in her position. She disliked Fudge just as much as anyone else, but she also didn't have too many feelings left for Sirius Black, so she stuck to her decision not to support the man.

After a while they were fire-called by Albus Dumbledore. He informed them, that the Wizengamot had just decided by a small majority to give Sirius a chance to follow up on his promises. Molly gasped, the young people grinned. Arthur was pleased. The statement was being transmitted several times during the day and the next day as well, interspersed with new statements from the Ministry. The day after that a press conference was held. Sirius gave another statement, granting press freedom and asking for critical, but fair articles.

"We are willing to be looked at with critical eyes. We need the press to remain critical and comment our actions. But we ask for fairness and not to criticise just to say something negative. Reasonable critics will be considered. We shall, however, use our legal rights against slander and disrespect."

He was tired looking and one reporter told him so. Sirius looked straight at the man's eyes and said:

"I have only just recovered from extended exposure to the Cruciatus curse. I've landed myself with a flu. I think that yes, I do look rather tired. I intend to recover quickly though. We have a lot of work to do and I'll not just delegate it to others."

"Do you plan to hold trials against faulty Ministry members?" one other reporter asked.

"That depends upon the degree of their wrong doing. We will certainly hold hearings and then the Wizengamot will decide whether a trial will be needed. There will be a trial against Cornelius Fudge. He's hid his traces well, but I suppose we will be able to get some witnesses to testify against him. Besides he is a Death Eater, therefore the Aurors will pursue him already for that fact. He cannot hide behind political immunity. Ministry officials who have just done minor illegal deeds will be sacked, but not pursued legally. Expect a few trials against some of the higher positioned staff who received their positions by either granting the Minister favours or bribing him."

"And what will you change inside the Ministry?"

Every time Sirius started to answer a question, a forest of wands was aimed to catch his replies.

"We definitely will do our best to return to a functioning service at the Ministry. If memory serves me right, some of you have continuously criticised the Ministry for its lack of initiative, for its slow going processes and for an over-abundance of laws that were offering too many loopholes for criminals. I remember reading a lot of such articles. We are certain that these laws have been created this way on purpose. One of the main jobs will be to work over the complete legal body that governs the wizarding society. Once we have the professionals ready to start their work there will be more detailed press statements about their proceedings and their progress."

"The Wizengamot has granted you the position you now hold. It's still a coup d'état. You've committed a crime doing this!"

"Yes, it is and yes, I did. This is the reason why I will clear this position at the earliest convenience to leave it to someone competent. I do not claim to have the competence. You might remember that I've lost fifteen years of my life to circumstances over which I had no power. And that means I'm lacking fifteen years of life experiences. But grant me the benefit of the doubt that I will be able to gather a group of people around me who have the necessary kind of experience, skill and knowledge, many of them who are already working at the Ministry.. I'll be merely their voice to the outside. The "group" consists of many reliable Ministry officials, most prominently I'd like to mention Madam Amelia Bones, who will have the lead on the legal renovation. Every member of that group will become publicly known."

"Are there going to be consultants from outside of the Ministry?"

"Yes, I think there will be some of those. The Ministry will have to be completely reformed and some of the departments will probably suffer more loss of personnel than others. These positions must be replenished and thus we strive to gain more competence, ideas and quality of service."

"Can you name possible outside consultants?"

"One of them will definitely be Albus Dumbledore."

Sirius stood for about two hours, then he had to take a seat, because he was so tired. Remus looked at him from the back of the room, worry in his eyes. The two of them had moved right into the Minister's suite inside of the Ministry to be available whenever they would be needed.

"Can you elaborate on the arrest of Fudge?"

"It was astonishingly easy. We practically plucked him walking through a corridor and put him into a detention cell inside the Ministry. His wand has been handed to the lawyer of the prosecution, who will lead the trial. Amelia Bones has already named Jeffrey Smith as the lawyer of the prosecution."

"What are you going to do about Azkaban?"

"The Dementors are all back at Azkaban. For the time being we will have to go on with the prison, though my personal experience is telling me it's wrong. But it hasn't first priority on the list of things to work out. It's not, however, forgotten."

"You're Harry Potter's godfather, will he be honoured one of these days for vanquishing You-Know-Who?"

Sirius smiled.

"Surely you can say his name, now that he's dead! Yes, Harry will be honoured for that, but we will grant him what he wishes for, privacy. He has been through a terrible ordeal and deserves a good long while of rest, before he has to face the public."

"Where is he now?"

"His current location is a secret. He doesn't want it known, therefore I shall not tell."

"Is he alive at all?"

"Oh yes, he's very alive and fine! He was badly shaken up after the battle, I hear, but he's just fine now."

Slowly the questions started to die down. Finally Sirius made a last statement:

"I have one last thing to say, which I hope will convince you of my sincerity, not to gain personal power or play a revenge game against former Minister Cornelius Fudge. Though the latter might have had a say in my action. I was sent to Azkaban for life without a trial and Cornelius Fudge pushed the decision through with the help of Bartemius Crouch. I will not press further charges for that. I will not accept any kind of payment for my work. I would like to discourage anyone who considers offering me money for favours. I will do what will be needed to be done because of my deepest belief that we need to take the chance to reform our community after the end of a terrible war, after years and years of a false sense of freedom and security. I'm calling each and everyone of you to your duty to respect your neighbour, be they witches or wizards, Muggles, half-giants or werewolves. I ask you all to concentrate on your work and thus help the community to prosper. My only demand on anyone is to try and see past prejudices.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you."

With that Sirius stood up and ended the conference. He was too tired to even stand anymore, so Remus helped him to their quarters where he pushed Sirius on the bed and gave him a mild sleeping potion. The situation seemed to be stable now after the statements of support of the Wizengamot. Remus cast an anti-apparition ward over the bedroom and left Sirius alone to sleep as long as he needed to. Sirius' first action as ruling Governor had been to make Remus his personal assistant and that had been granted by the Wizengamot upon urging of Albus Dumbledore. Remus went to the living room, where he met up with Albus.

"How is he doing?"

"Just exhausted, Albus, I think, he is fine otherwise. A few square meals…"

"Good. That was an utterly foolish thing to do, Remus, and you know it. I am surprised you supported this."

"Fudge just went that one little step too far this time, Albus. What he did was at least as illegal. It was time someone took the initiative. You can imagine how shocked we were seeing the Dark Mark on his arm! Sirius is as sincere as anyone and he'll be a very good Governor. Simply because he has a good sense of reality, in spite of what some member of the Weasley household who will remain unnamed thinks. We have a lot of really good ideas and I'm quite sure, that Sirius' determination not to take any money will win him a lot of sympathy. Because he'll live up to it. I take none either, by the way."

Albus sighed.

"Utterly foolish, Remus. But very, very courageous. You two are true Gryffindors." He smiled.

Remus returned the smile. He called for the house-elf to bring them some tea and a light dinner. They ate together in companionable silence, only occasionally Albus asked Remus for more concrete plans. Remus outlined some of them that could be started in the next days and some that would have to wait until the newly hired personnel would be trained up enough to execute them.

"One of them should be to overthrow some of the laws against werewolves, Remus. You're still walking on an illegal ground."

"Which is why I won't accept payment. With Sirius backing me I don't need any. No one can yet press charges against me for illegal employment when I'm volunteering."

"Good thought. But work on it."

"I'm a bit afraid to do that, Albus. It's very well known that I'm a werewolf, people would think I'm seeking favourites. But Amos, though not eagerly, is working quietly on it. It will be part of the legal reform. I have a lot of time, with the Wolfsbane potion I'll be able to live for a long time, so there's no worries for me. And I have my mate supporting me."

"Then I am content."

"Umbridge will have to go though. She'll certainly be sacked. There are a couple of other sycophants and I'm actually in the belief that Percy Weasley is one of them, but he at least does quite effective work in his department. And he's worked for our side partly against Fudge in the last two years. In other words, he's not been working for favours. He'll quite certainly be one of those who get second chances. Not only because he supported our little uprising."

"I have spoken to Amelia Bones. She was all smiles. She said the two of you went straight to the Aurors."

"We did. And Mad-Eye was right indignant when Sirius told him about Fudge's threat. Said that this was just the last straw and that he'd have the Aurors back us. In the past two days I've found out that about two thirds of the staff here are very uncomfortable with Fudge. We're starting to interview those people next week. We'll need the Wizengamot, or at least two members at any given time, to follow those interviews."

"How come, Alastor had not been able to spot that Dark Mark on Fudge's arm?"

"I don't know, but it might actually have been acquired very recently. He seems to have been able to conceal it very well. Of course, if Voldemort wanted Fudge in his ranks, he didn't want to have everyone know of the fact. We hope to find that out at the trial. We won't be able to work without the truth serum though, I believe. Fudge shouldn't be able to resist it."

"That makes sense then. – Now, tell me how you are, Remus! It seems to me that you have been pulled into this…"

"…certainly not against my wish, Albus. On the contrary! Seeing, that Fudge just apparated into Sirius' sick room at the Burrow and threatened him with the Dementor's Kiss if he didn't give him most of his money was the last straw for me as well. You should have seen his face when we found out about his Dark Mark. He just slumped down on the floor and gave up. And that was that. As Sirius said, almost much too easy. Not that we were sorry about it. Maybe he'd have been out of the office soon anyway, but I hate to think that he's just put aside so much money through all his dirty games. I would hate it even more if he could get away on that."

"Well, you can regard yourself as the counsellor of the Governor now. Do you know why Sirius chose to be called by this title?"

"A minister in our society gets elected or appointed, Sirius is neither. He wanted to make sure that people understand he doesn't see himself as the Minister of Magic."

"It is not me you need to convince of Sirius' integrity and sincerity. You will have to do a lot of good to get the people to trust him, for right now…"

"Oh, believe me, we have received a load of response already. Sirius has made the address public enough, hasn't he? Look at those boxes there! I'll be going through them in the next days and I'll sort them out. The ones I've read so far are amazing! We had three howlers, one by the Weasley twins with congratulations. The other two were mildly disapproving and one said he'd have his eyes closely on our further actions. I'll have the letters put in folders and they will be open to the public eyes once they received proper replies. The least we want to do is to acknowledge them and Sirius wants to read them. Though I'm not sure if he manages to do that in a reasonable amount of time. There's still a lot more letters coming in and at one point we'll have to do some of the work we promised to do. I might ask the kids to help with the replies."

"Do you know what they have planned?"

"I think they all want to have a really relaxing vacation. Hermione thinks of joining the Ministry, she'd be a great asset anywhere! Ron wants to start Auror training. Harry just wants to vanish out of the public for a while. He'll have to think of some reaction to the way he's being used by the press. There's only so much slander you can take and if I were in his position I'd have sued them long ago. Blatant lies are blatant lies after all. But maybe the journalists will be a bit more careful now that Sirius has warned them to leave Harry alone."

"Harry would be a great asset as well."

"I know."

"What are the next steps?"

"Cleaning up," Remus said with a shrug, "We've received about thirty resignations in the past two days. All from people out of Fudge's circle. We'll have the Aurors investigate a little and if they have any dirt they'll face the judge."

"Anyone I know?"

"Oh certainly! Most of them were your students at some point, Albus! Or all of those who resigned. There's Herbert Macnair, Walden's brother. Not a Death Eater, but close to them and, as you well know, head of the Department of Mysteries. Those blokes will not go unchecked, by the way! Then there's Elsa Kenneth, secretary of Fudge's. We're thinking of telling Hermione to apply for this position, she'd love to have a load of knowledge about everything that's going on and she's a great organiser. This post needs someone with a well organised mind like her. Important job, too! Jasper O'Connor, Head of the Department of Internal Affairs. He's been a close friend of Fudge's and he's highly suspicious of having gained his position by granting Fudge lots of favours. He'll be investigated as well."

Remus looks through a small folder of resignation parchments.

"Here, my favourite: Orion Mulcahy, Werewolf Registry. No one will cry if that one is gone! There were only ten cases of new werewolves to be registered in the past twenty years, but the guy kept inventing new laws to put us down. With the kind assistance of Dolores Umbridge of course, and Fudge's. I'd say that about ten of those legislatives were aimed directly at me personally. As you know he's practically put the Support Unit out of service."

Dumbledore sighed. He knew well enough that these people had not done their work honestly. The Ministry was practically in shambles.

"Well, there is not much we can do directly, Remus, but the majority of the Wizengamot has given you both green light to go ahead and do your best. You will be watched very closely and you will probably not get much time to yourselves for some time, but let me assure you that if you should succeed, you will both deserve to be honoured!"

"We intend to do our best. And watch our backs, too."

After a long conversation Dumbledore left Remus, who still had to write out an order to every head of a department to turn up at the conference room for a staff meeting the very next day. Now that they had the 'appointment' from the Wizengamot they intended to set the positions clear and Sirius had to work out who would cooperate and who would not. Three departments were already bereft of a head as their leaders had already abandoned the service. One was the Department of Muggle Relations, which Remus thought was an important one. Arthur would have to move out of his tiny office, Remus thought. He prepared a short memo to him, which Sirius would have to sign first thing in the morning to get Arthur to join the staff meeting. In the two other departments, Remus called for the deputy.