Well! Nothing like good reviews to light a fire under a guy's ego. I think I've got my divider issue settled. And yes, I am going somewhere with the WWII sequence. All will be revealed at the proper time.
He should'na done that.
He'd kill him. Rip out his guts and garrote him with them. Throw him into the Thames, or maybe just strangle his slimy politician's neck. Fudge had been a nuisance but Scrimgoeur had gone too far.
And he'd helped him do it. By being so trusting. So naïve. He'd given the heartless thing the political capita he'd needed to pull this off. And Scrimgoeur hadn't even stuck to the terms of their deal.
There was no denying it, Harry Potter was pissed. He threw the newspaper onto the desk where any unseen observers in the room might read it.
Dark Creatures Outlawed!
In a long overdue move, Rufus Scrimgoeur, the Minister of Magic, pushed through legislation banning all inherently evil beasts. Perceval Weasley, a rising star in the Ministry explained the new legislation in a Ministry Press Conference.
"I would just like to tell the people of Great Britain that the new act will go a long way towards keeping us all safe. As of this moment, any werewolf, vampire, giant, siren, sorcerer, necromancer, or half-breed variety of these on our soil do so as burdens on the Ministry of Magic and likely spies of the Dark Lord. All such found on our isle will be detained by the ministry in a special prison being constructed as we speak. By ensuring the bulk of the Dark Lord's followers and those most likely to follow him are safely locked away, this administration has gone further than any other in ensuring the safety of the British people. That is all.
But has the Ministry gone too far? The motion appears almost unanimously adored as the most daring move undertaken by a Minister this century. Some, however, would disagree. Mathilda Marchbanks, noted Ministry tester openly scoffed at the act.
"Son, I've been around for a very long time. I've seen things you couldn't guess at. And I know, for a fact, that so-called 'Dark Creatures' are hardly the monsters the Minister's fairy-tales would have you believe."
Scantly an hour later, Miss Marchbanks was taken into custody by a plainclothes auror for knowingly and willingly associating with a Dark Creature. She is being held now pending an inquiry. The Minister was unavailable for comment, but his secretary told us how 'very disappointed' he is in Marchbanks.
Harry restrained himself, with great difficulty, from screaming again. It wouldn't help anything and it wouldn't even make him feel better. Besides, he was sure people on the other side of the world heard that one.
Dumbledore wouldn't scream. Dumbledore would walk into the Ministry the very picture of calmness, barely restrained rage and power evident in his voice he would politely greet the Minister and equally politely demand what was going on. Okay, if Dumbledore could do it, so could he. The last time he'd talked with Scrimgoeur he'd held all the cards. That hadn't changed. The only question was if he'd really needed his support in the long term or just wanted it to get that bill passed.
Bellatrix was getting close. It had been difficult to track down Potter. She couldn't wait for him to go to school and couldn't go to Hogwarts anyway. If Dumbledore was still alive he just might've hired her to teach DADA, but he was dead.
All she knew about his summer arrangements was that he stayed with his Aunt and Uncle, the Dursleys, in a house warded so heavily even her former master hadn't dared to reach him there. And He was one of the world's most accomplished curse-breakers, having studied extensively in Asia. None of which helped her find the whelp.
Then she vaguely remembered the Muggle Studies course her parents had insisted she take to make it plain how superior wizards were. So, she looked in the phone book. No such thing existed in the wizarding world. Floo addresses didn't require special numbers. Besides what sane person would put all the information needed for a successful attack on their home in a book distributed to thousands of people? Sometimes the stupidity of these muggles awed her.
So here she was, prepared to take the plunge. If she read these wards correctly, there would be painful consequences for anyone the wards deemed a threat. She only prayed Dumbledore had created the wards with independent reasoning as opposed to just giving it a list of people who weren't permitted. Or he could have done both, in which case she was in trouble. As she screwed up the courage to take that risk, it suddenly occurred to her that, wards or no wards, Potter wouldn't be unguarded. She cast a quick invisibility charm that would hide her for five minutes. Then she closed her eyes, held her breath, and stepped.
Minerva McGonagall was sitting in the office that was now hers, lost in her memories of an old friend, when a small light, subtly placed over the door, started pulsing gently. Now what kind of alarm light would Albus place where only he could see it? The only alarms she knew of were ward-based, but the Hogwarts ward indicator was on the desk. Where else…Harry! The wards on the Dursleys house couldn't be removed, they must have fired on some intruder. A wizard, no doubt, without one of the special pendants that allowed wizards onto Harry's street. She recalled that Fletcher was on watch today, to keep him from gumming up anything important. She prayed for Harry's sake it was just another crazed fan.
'Dung' Fletcher was suddenly stirred from a wonderful dream involving himself and a beautiful woman. Well, perhaps 'stirred' isn't the best word. 'Shocked by the amulet on his neck' would be better. He got to his feet, cursing the small self-aware piece of metal, and noticed how hot it had gotten. Someone tripped the wards! If he didn't get to the edge of them before the intruder recovered enough to escape, McGonagall would have his head. He pulled off the cloak, reasoning that he looked muggle enough and that secrecy wasn't really his problem, and ran to the scene.
But where he expected to see someone sprawled on the ground, he saw…nothing. He or she couldn't have escaped. He stepped out from behind the ward and started looking around frantically. Perhaps they'd crawled into the bushes over there… Then everything went black.
Bella looked down at the unconscious man in front of her. He was wearing an amulet on his neck, to exclude him from the wards, she assumed. She put it around her own neck and hesitantly stepped through again, expecting the pain again. Nothing. She glanced again at the man.
"Thank you, friend." Then she banished his still form into a hedge.
End of chapter three
I will say this again, review! I'm still making up a lot of this as I go. Staying within the rules of the challenge.
