DISCLAIMER! This Harry Potter story was written for fun. All rights belong to the wonderful lady (JK Rowling) who gave the world Harry Potter to read and enjoy—looking forward to the next movie! Yeah, fanfiction is a great place to stretch your imagination and enjoy someone else's creativity!
Repercussions from the Trial and then Winter Break.
Chapter 8: BargainsDesolate still from the testimony by that 'thing' in the courtroom, Amelia sat in her office and tried to stop shaking. One of her Aurors forced her to drink a calming potion before many minutes passed, and it worked well enough to allow the Director of the DMLE to think.
Her head rose from her desk when her thoughts returned to her niece. She declared aloud, "Susan! I must get to Susan before anyone tells her any of this! I'll cut pieces off Dumbledore if he's said anything to her!"
As she hurried toward the DMLE floo (with her guard), her thoughts strayed to the boy. 'Andrew – Merlin and Muggle God! What will happen to that boy?'
The formidable woman growled and muttered, "I don't care if Lucius is comatose! I'll still decapitate him!"
CHANGE: Chasing MoodyAlmost as soon as the courtroom had cleared (the body of the dead defendant was sent to the Department of Mysteries to be thrown through the veil), Rufus Scrimgeour left the ministry with a large team of Aurors to arrest Alastor Moody at Hogwarts. Without success, they swarmed into the castle and searched for the 'retired' Auror. The man pretending to be Alastor Moody had set some charms on the front door and the floo that was sometimes available for visitors; when the charms registered the arrival of a large number of adults without any warning, he moved immediately for the hidden exit that would take him to Honeydukes Chocolates.
The Polyjuice wore off as he walked along, leaving the leg and the eye behind with the potion container – the Aurors would stop to gather the evidence, giving him extra seconds to reach the statue of the One-Eyed Witch Passage on the third floor. There the secret tunnel led to the cellar underneath Honeydukes in Hogsmeade. It was late in the day, and with a notice-me-not spell in place, the wizard in clothes too large for his frame slipped out of the shop. Once away from the centre of the village, he apparated away.
Rufus swore dangerously after the team recovered the peg leg, magical eye, and a container of Polyjuice after many minutes of searching.
"It's Polyjuice. The real Alastor must be close by! Find him!" the Head Auror commanded.
The only positive result of an otherwise terrible day was that Alastor Moody was discovered, imprisoned in a large trunk in the office of the DADA professor. The Aurors took the weakened Auror to Saint Mungo's for treatment but kept the leg and eye as evidence. A spare leg and an artificial eye were located in Moody's belongings and sent to the hospital.
As Rufus Scrimgeour reached the entry hall of Hogwarts with his guards, Amelia Bones was coming through the door and moving toward the Great Hall.
"What's the meaning of this?" asked Deputy Headmistress McGonagall when Amelia stormed through the door, her guard behind her with more Aurors standing in the entry hall. McGonagall knew the Aurors were in the castle, but she kept the children in the Great Hall, where they were safer.
"Susan! Come with me this instant!" Amelia said, holding out her hand. "Come, dear, please."
"Auntie? Are you alright?" asked Susan, rising and instantly going to her aunt.
"I will be," Amelia said before she looked toward the Slytherin table and found Draco Malfoy watching her and Susan. Tears and a sob broke through the woman's stern exterior. Susan, who had never heard her aunt cry before, wrapped her arms around Amelia as Aurors led them from the hall.
"Where are you taking Miss Bones?" called out McGonagall. "You can't just walk in here and leave with a student!"
Amelia stopped, turned around and shouted, "Stand between me and the door, and I'll feed you to the nearest dog, you stupid cat! And tell Dumbleass that I said he should go stick his head up the backside of a dragon!"
The Great Hall was silent as Amelia Bones, Director of the DMLE, her niece, Rufus Scrimgeour, Head Auror, and all the Aurors in their guard left Hogwarts. At the Slytherin table, Draco noticed the look Madam Bones directed at him before she began to cry and sob. He didn't make a sarcastic remark to anyone around him for some reason.
At the Hufflepuff table, students gathered around Hannah Abbot, who was shocked and startled by the sudden departure of her best friend in the arms of her distraught aunt. Professor Sprout sent for a mild calming potion and left the staff table to sit with her badgers.
The lack of appearance by Dumbledore led thoughtful individuals to decide that things had not gone well at the Wizengamot. The intelligent ones catalogued a few possibilities but wasted little time on speculation. At the Dramstrung table, the students spoke calmly and quietly about 'crazy Brits', while Madame Maxime decided that she would take her students back to the sanity of France and the safety of Beauxbatons.
In the confusion that spread through the Great Hall, Ron Weasley decided to cast a tripping jinx at Harry Potter while everyone was filing out to return to their dormitories. Professor McGonagall ignored the spell casting as she walked by, which spurred the weasel to up his attack. However, Harry and Neville cast hexes back, which drew Ginny into the spell exchange. The Weasley twins joined in the attack while Hermione, Lavender, and Parvati began defending Harry and Neville. George and Fred pulled out several nasty pranks to throw at the Gryffindors who supported Harry Potter, when a loud voice declared, "Non! Not tonight!"
With several other Beauxbatons students, Fleur Delacour joined the fray and left George and Fred glued to the wall, Ron Weasley rolled up in a conjured carpet, and a glassy-eyed Ginny Weasley playing hopscotch over and over.
Covering the injured Gryffindors from further attack as they exited from the Great Hall, Madame Maxime gave Professor Sprout and her older Hufflepuffs a lecture on responsibility! In conclusion, she mentioned to Cedric Diggory that he certainly didn't act like a 'champion' that evening standing back and allowing older students to attack younger students.
Fleur Delacour spoke to Hermione Granger in French in the entry hall and invited the students to sit with the Beauxbatons students at breakfast. Madam Pomphrey in the infirmary treated the injured students, and when the Weasleys stumbled in an hour later, she made them wait until all the others were well before she began their treatments.
"I'll tell my mum you treated the mudbloods before the purebloods!" threatened Ron after the other students had left. "Why aren't you helping me? Fred and George aren't bent in half like me!"
CHANGE SCENE: Too-Many-BloodsAlbus Dumbledore ignored everything the following day. His mind remained fuzzy with the details from the previous day, but he rose, showered, and dressed in an eye-searing set of robes before attempting to apparate from his office to the castle's entry hall. However, his usually powerful wand didn't seem to cooperate, and the elderly wizard was forced to walk from the tower where he hid his office to the entry hall of his castle. He ignored questions from students about Professor Snape or the Aurors in the castle the previous evening.
'A brisk walk, just what I needed,' he decided. 'But how to get back up to my ivory tower? Ah, yes, I'll floo from the Great Hall anteroom back to my office.'
Settling onto his throne, he realised he'd completely missed Minerva's announcements, and now the Gryffindor Kitty was hissing at him. Adopting a woebegone expression, he muttered an apology that included 'yesterday was difficult' before asking her to repeat her news.
Her mouth pinched with anger; Minerva began her recitation once again. "Madam Bones was here last night. First, she sent Aurors through the school looking for Alastor. All they found were his peg leg, magical eye, and a bottle of Polyjuice. Then they found another Alastor Moody – the real one – locked in a trunk in his office. They took him to Saint Mungo's. Then Amelia walked into the Great Hall, bold as a brass cauldron, and took her niece out of school. The woman was quite rude in her final remarks too."
"Oh, dear," Dumbledore replied.
"What happened? Who are you going to get to teach the DADA classes now that Alastor is gone?"
"I'll think about it and place a couple of calls after breakfast."
"But…" McGonagall began to argue when the owls arrived with the Daily Prophet. There were several exclamations from the student tables and the staff table as they read the article reporting on the trial of Severus Snape. About halfway through the paper, Professor Sinestra threw her teacup – full of hot tea – across Professor Flitwick to land on the arm and lap of Headmaster Dumbledore.
"Idiot! Fool! It would help if you had told me last night!" she shouted before moving from the staff table to the Slytherin table, where Draco Malfoy was obviously in shock. An elf (bearing a calming potion) popped into the Great Hall just to one side of the angry witch who hurried to her fourth-year student. The teen had just learned he was not Draco Malfoy – or maybe he was – but his life was one big lie.
Flitwick rolled up the newspaper and beat Dumbledore in the head, shouting, "That piece of filth abused children for thirteen years, and you're complicit in every crime!"
Pomona Sprout shed tears after reading about the testimony concerning the two small boys in the Bones family and hurried to her table of children, particularly to comfort Hannah Abbot, who appeared to be crying. She would be on the floo to Mrs Abbot for certain this morning.
Dumbledore began to connect the dots as his memories of yesterday's last trial became clearer. When he felt Narcissa Malfoy at the edge of the wards, he denied her entrance and closed the school to all visitors for the day. He also closed the owl windows in the wards and ordered that all letters meet a proscribed set of standards before they could be delivered. However, several howlers from Molly Weasley were already falling through the air toward the Beauxbatons table, where several Gryffindor students had sought refuge. Madame Maxime lifted the wand and performed a complicated charm that grabbed the five letters and pulled them into a whirlpool of magic that vanished.
At the Gryffindor table, Ron Weasley stopped eating long enough to shout, "Oi! Those were from my mum to the duffers who attacked me last night! Mum's howlers leave you deaf for an hour!"
No one responded to the wizard's rant – not even his brothers or sister, who noticed the cold shoulder from their classmates this morning. Hermione enjoyed the French conversations with the students from the French school, and the other girls did too, especially when they discussed fashion. Neville found a witch with many questions about different magical plants in the Hogwarts greenhouses. Harry enjoyed the quiet talk with Madame Maxime about the classes offered at her school in the Pyrenees in the south of France.
By lunch, stories about Draco Malfoy and Susan Bones replaced the usual stories about Harry Potter. Draco found his position in Slytherin had crumbled to dust – he wasn't a Malfoy. Goyle and Crabbe ignored him. Pansy Parkinson was repulsed by his presence. She pointed her wand at him, and demanded he keep his 'weird blood' self away from her! Blaise Zambini and Theo Nott were reserved but firm when they informed Draco he would walk behind them now.
Beginning that day, Madam Maxime escorted her students from the pumpkin to the castle before and after meals. Headmaster Karkaroff observed everything quietly and sent multiple owls off with messages and memories (outside the wards). After managing the wards of his school and limping back to his office (the floo didn't work correctly this morning), Dumbledore found himself dealing with floo calls from Minister Fudge, the French Ambassador, and three gentlemen from the ICW in Switzerland.
Turning his attention to Draco Malfoy now (the hexes and jinxes from the French birds had hurt!), Ron began taunting the white-haired Slytherin that he couldn't claim to be pureblood. Fred and George, recovering from their jinxes, joked that Draco was a 'too-many-bloods' now. This began Ron's chant in the hallways and classrooms, where teachers turned a blind eye to the bullying.
SCENE CHANGE: Plans to Wreak HavocProtected from the other students in his classroom, Harry pulled out his copy of several essays Dobby printed from the Teachers Compendium about problems at Hogwarts. The essays addressing the mudblood (muggle-born) problem from the 1950s were disheartening. Then in the 1980s were several essays about the damage being done by Severus Snape because the wizard was not teaching potions properly. In the past, almost all the healers came from Hufflepuff and potion masters graduated from Ravenclaw. But in the years since Snape became potions professor, there had been no students to enter those fields without two or more years of tutoring from outside resources. Poorer students who could not afford the tutors were forced to move into other fields of employment.
One student, Helen Doge, forecasted a decline in the health of the average witch and wizard in Magical Britain by the year 2000 because there were fewer healers and people who could brew potions properly. Harry was captivated by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore's notes at the bottom of the essay that Professor Sprout was not to share this seventh-year student's essay with anyone. Dumbledore wrote, 'The greater good demands that everyone makes sacrifices.'
Harry also noted the student received a Troll as the grade, but he remembered, 'Hogwarts decided the essay was important enough to keep and show to other students.'
When Winter Break began, Harry was confined to the castle for some reason that Dumbledore refused to explain. Remus and Padfoot were in Madrid at a computer conference that was very important, and Harry pretended to understand though he was disappointed.
At least the Weasleys all left for the holiday – Fred and George explained to their friend Lee that the Howlers their mother had sent a couple of weeks earlier had all appeared in the kitchen of the Burrow and exploded simultaneously. Grievously wounded, Mrs Weasley had spent two nights in Saint Mungos before using the floo to return home to recuperate. The four Weasleys were needed to help care for their mother. Ron's absence seemed like a vacation for Harry, so he made the most of it.
Neville and Hermione had also gone home. When Dumbledore mentioned something about a ball, Madame Maxime laughed and left the same afternoon with her students packed into the pumpkin. Igor Karkaroff also scoffed at the notion of confining his students to the castle for three weeks and the ship simply disappeared during the night.
In Slytherin, Draco Malfoy was almost the only student left. He kept to himself and received no mail from his mother or anyone else. Professor Andromeda Tonks, Narcissa Malfoy's sister, offered to act as Draco's conduit for correspondence with his mother to slip letters around Dumbledore's embargo of letters, but Draco politely declined the offer. Harry was not interested in any overtures to Draco yet. Their contentious history remained too recent and raw.
Seated back at the Gryffindor table, ignored by the professors and few students who remained at Hogwarts, Harry Potter found himself imagining ways to hurt all the stupid people in Hogwarts – students and teachers.
'Can I get them to try to read my mind? The dial-up rune would leave a trail of mindless corpses around me. I don't want to kill everyone – that'd make me as bad as You-Know-Who. And it would be like a zombie movie if I'm the only person left at Hogwarts. And I'd get the kiss…but the Dementor would die.'
He watched Dumbledore traipsing around the Great Hall talking about Christmas Decorations and Harry noticed the drops of magic continued to fall from the funny wand the headmaster used.
'The dripping started at Halloween and now we're at Yule. How long will it keep losing magic? And what's Hogwarts doing with the magic?'
He finished his pudding and picked up the cup of milk to finish it. 'Hogwarts is the only good thing here. I can't do anything that would hurt Hogwarts.'
CHANGE SCENE: Overheard Library ConversationOne quiet afternoon in the library, Harry overheard a conversation between Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe about studying for their OWLS in the spring.
"These tests are too important not to study all winter break and spring break!" Marietta insisted. "I have to get at least three grades of Acceptable to keep my wand and keep coming to Hogwarts. My father said he'd not throw away money if I'm not going to study and get good grades."
"You'll get three Acceptable scores! That's the minimum to keep your wand and my mother says that the purebloods make certain all purebloods pass."
"Can I copy your charms essay?"
"Sure, change the order up some so Flitwick doesn't notice."
"He never does."
"I wish someone would just hand my homework to me! Already done!" Cho whined. "Even if I look at the old notes in the common room, I still have to write it down again."
"And what does Cedric say about grades?" asked Edgecombe.
Cho grimaced slightly, "Cedric doesn't have to take the NEWTs – he gets Acceptable on all his classes this year because he's a champion. But he wants to sit for the exams and score better. The grades he gets can determine what kind of job he can get at the ministry."
Later in the library, Harry searched through a copy of Hogwarts A History to find the article on the OWLs and NEWTs, and the grading scale. After reading and refreshing his memory, he remembered, 'Class participation, and practical examinations during the three terms count for nothing on advancement to next year's classes. The only thing that matters are the examinations at the end of the year. There's written and practical portions that count equally for the final grade.'
He kept reading and found that OWLs and NEWTs can only be taken twice and that every wizard and witch MUST pass at least three OWLs to keep their wands. He remembered while he read that the Wizarding Examinations Authority came to Hogwarts and administered the tests. The Hogwarts professors sat at the back of the room, but they could not interact or interfere with the examinations.
He kept reading and another fact registered in his mind, 'A student must pass OWLs with an 'Outstanding' or 'Exceeds Expectations' to be admitted into a class at N.E.W.T. level. That's why Puffs, Claws, and Ravens drop out of potions in the sixth and seventh year.'
Remembering the paper written by the Doge witch, Harry thought, 'Dumbledore knows that Severus Snape destroyed potions in Great Britain. Thirteen years of Snape's favouritism for Slytherin…I hope they both need healers, and they aren't available.'
Harry remembered then that Snape was dead, and the Daily Prophet had included a magical photo of the Death Eater in agony that was unpleasant to watch but helped give the young wizard some closure. 'Snape's dead, but I hope Dumbledore needs potions or a healer and can't get them.'
'How do I sabotage everyone and screw up the exams? I want the OWLs to moult and the NEWTs to die from dry skin. Everyone cheats…how do I help them cheat more and then fail their exams?'
Then he remembered the bruhaha that enveloped Ron Weasley the first week of school – the summer homework Ron turned in was all thrown out. He'd been on probation until Halloween and blamed Harry (rightfully). The wizard still refused to do his own work and stole homework from Dean, Seamus, and Neville when he could.
'Would they use homework if it just appeared in their book bags? If it appeared in their own writing?' he wondered. 'They'd be lost when the end of year examinations come.'
"I've got the Teacher's Compendium on my computer, and it has all the essays," Harry muttered aloud. "The teachers use the same questions each year…this year, especially with the Tri-Wizard Tournament."
After another five minutes of debate, Harry left the library and used the Marauder's Map to make certain no one was lurking while he made his way to the Come-And-Go room. Once inside with the door closed, he called, "Dobby."
After some discussion on more tasks that required printing and secret delivery, Dobby admitted he was very busy taking care of his Mr Harry Potter as well as Remus and Padfoot. Not wanting to overburden his dependable elf, Harry asked, "Dobs…are there any more elves that need jobs?"
END SCENE