The Minister's Response
While the Slytherins were writing their letters and Roy and Bernie – who didn't need to write to their Muggle parents – were going to the Hufflepuff dormitories to get Bernie's stuff, at the Ministry of Magic in London the everyday bustle of bureaucratic activity was going on. Only unusually attentive observers would have noticed that more often than usual officials who met in the corridors stopped to whisper to each other in a low voice, but with visible excitement. Of course, they had all read in the Daily Prophet that the Minister's visit to Hogwarts had taken an unforeseen turn, and Prantice's comment seemed to indicate a fundamental shift in the Ministry's policy. It was the kind of their excitement – some anxious, others combative – that told you who was a Slytherin or had children there and who was or had not. Said attentive observer would also have noticed that the two groups didn't mix.
In her office, the Minister was studying the dossier Higrave had prepared at her command on Sunday. It was depressingly short. She frowned discontentedly.
"Percy," she called through the open door into the next room. Her brother-in-law Percy Weasley, also her personal assistant, came to her office door.
"Yes please?"
"I want to see Dagobert in ten minutes and Harry in twenty. Please let them know."
"All right." Percy returned to his desk to write the two memos. With a wave of his wand, he made them fold to paper aeroplanes and sent them off. Ten minutes later, Dagobert Higrave appeared in the doorway.
"Good morning, Minister."
"Good morning, Dagobert. Please enter and close the door behind you." Higrave did as told and sat down vis-à-vis her.
"I've read your dossier," she got straight to the point, holding the slim file up. "Frankly: It's not very informative. I've learned far more from Professor Longbottom and the Gryffindors than from your dossier."
"I'm sorry, Minister, but this is all the Ministry has in its files on MacAllister. The Hogwarts files would no doubt be more detailed, but you certainly know the law: The school may disclose the files, but needn't do so. And unfortunately, Professor McGonagall was not very cooperative. She refused to hand them over."
"And we have no means of forcing her?" asked Hermione indignantly.
Higrave answered with a gentle cough, as he always did when he wanted to signal his embarrassment. "I'm afraid we haven't. All public services have to make their files available to the Ministry, but Hogwarts is autonomous by law. We would have to change the law and explicitly force Hogwarts to provide information."
"All right," Hermione said in a businesslike tone, "so we'll change the law. It's time to abolish this kind of law anyway. Prepare a bill to this effect. Your deadline is next Monday. Is that enough?"
"To prepare the bill, certainly. However, please allow me, Minister, to point out to you that the governors have to be consulted before any changes are made to laws relating to Hogwarts."
"So what?" said Hermione, shrugging. "Then we'll consult them."
Again, Higrave answered with a slight cough. "They will not agree. Any change of this kind interferes with their authority."
"Does it matter if they agree? To consult them means: We tell them what we are going to do, they disagree, and we still do it," she said dryly.
"Well, Minister, it is a good tradition that such decisions are taken by agreement ..."
"Please spare me those sacred traditions!" She wrinkled her nose. "You heard my speech. I've called for a fundamental rethink in all areas, and you, as one of my closest assistants, ought to set a good example!"
"Certainly, Minister," Higrave hastened to assure her. "I just consider it my duty to make you aware of potential opposition."
"I appreciate this very much, Dagobert." Hermione smiled politely. "And it goes without saying that I would like to be made aware of this in the future, too. So please do not misunderstand my comment as criticism. However, you will do as I say. I expect your draft by next Monday."
With a discreet glance towards the door, she indicated to Higrave that the conversation was over. The Head of the Hogwarts Department rose, took a bow, wished the Minister a good day and left her office.
In the corridor he met Harry Potter.
"Good morning, Dagobert."
"Good morning, Harry," Higrave replied courteously, trying to walk on.
"Oh, Dagobert?"
"Yes please?"
"You were with her at Hogwarts yesterday. Is it true what the Daily Prophet says?"
Higrave answered with his usual gentle cough. "Let's say the Daily Prophet has allowed himself a certain degree of journalistic freedom."
"I see." Harry grinned. This was typical of Higrave. He had answered the question while keeping a low profile. "So don't let me keep you." They said goodbye and Harry entered the outer office.
"Good morning, Percy!"
"Hello Harry, feel free to go through, she's awaiting you."
Harry knocked and on Hermione's "Come in" he entered the Minister's office.
"Good morning, Hermione, how has it been at Hogwarts?"
"Not as successful as it should have been – Good morning too – but I'm sure you've read it in the papers. But I'm supposed to say hello from Neville, James, Rose, and Victoire."
Harry was irritated. "Not from Albus?"
"Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to speak with him. I've paid a visit to the Gryffindors, but not to the Slytherins, as you can guess."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "Okay. How's Ron?"
"He's well so far. Excuse me, I don't have much time this morning and I want to get straight to the point." She cleared her throat. "Harry, you are probably the best Auror the Ministry has ever had. You solve every case you're set on, and you do so with a legendary instinct and ingenuity."
"Thank you very much," Harry smiled, "but now surely you have a big But for me." He knew his friend far too long, and now for over a year as a Minister, not to know that this kind of general praise had to be the prelude to very specific criticism.
Hermione smiled too. "Relying on these outstanding skills, I upgraded your Auror Unit to a Department and considerably expanded its authority. In particular, fighting Death-eaterdom is now one of your responsibilities." She paused for effect.
"Well?" asked Harry.
"Unfortunately, I cannot see that you are particularly committed to this task. There doesn't seem to be a single case that has been prosecuted by the Aurors."
"Hermione, you know that the Aurors can only take action in case of contravention."
Hermione replied with an annoyed sigh. "This is exactly what I mean by lack of commitment. I expect you to have the mindset of a hunter, not of an angler waiting for a crime to swim by and bite, so to speak. It is well known who the people are who have such views. Commitment would mean to keep a sharp eye on them. You would probably then also find that they are committing crimes."
"Or not," Harry returned. "We are already pushing hard at the limits of the law. Old Macnair, for example, we summon virtually every time a connection to him cannot be ruled out in cases of Dark Magic. I don't have a clear conscience about it, especially since there has never been the slightest evidence that he is doing anything illegal."
"If you always keep summoning only your old customers, you won't find anything. You have to actively search!"
"Are you saying that we should take the precaution of surveying the views of every citizen, and watch anyone whose opinions are suspicious until they are doing something forbidden?"
"That would indeed be commitment."
"That would be unlawful."
"Laws can be changed."
"Come on, Hermione! There are virtually no active Death Eaters, and I'm not going to invent some just to please you. And as for the laws: The nonchalance with which you talk about such things is highly irritating. It's true you have the power to pass laws that amount to a police state, but this doesn't mean you have the right to do so."
Harry didn't know that MacAllister had said something like that not 24 hours earlier. Hermione glared at him:
"There are no active Death Eaters, no? Don't you read the papers?"
"If you mean the Daily Prophet, I do, but I don't believe anything. Just like you didn't believe anything they said before you became a Minister and Northwood became your bosom buddy."
Hermione's chin tightened energetically and her eyes flashed with anger:
"Shall I tell you something, Potter? You simply don't want to do something. You're using burnt-out old men like Macnair as alibi suspects. You are looking for reasons to ignore today's new endangerers. Dangerous people who are walking around before your face, but who you don't seem to see!"
Her tone had suddenly become sharp.
"And why are you reaching for your scar?"
Hermione had got him.
"It's been prickling again since yesterday morning." Actually it was even burning a little, but this was something he didn't want to admit.
"Oh, it's prickling?" she asked with a sneer. "My chief Auror, the only person with a built-in Dark Magic detector, gets alarm from his scar but tries to make me believe everything is fine!"
"It's not a detector for Dark Magic, only for Voldemort who died almost twenty years ago. It's probably just the aches and pains of getting older. Who do you actually mean by the dangerous people walking around before my face?"
Hermione leaned back in her modern Muggle executive chair and looked at him haughtily.
"For example, do you know who your son Albus is friends with in Slytherin?"
"If you mean Roy MacAllister, I know about that," Harry replied with deliberate equanimity.
"Oh, you know? You know your son is friends with an active Death Eater, but you don't care. Oh sorry, I forgot, there are no Death Eaters at all!"
"Hermione," said Harry, looking earnest, "this is a serious accusation. Since his start of term, my son has been writing to me regularly and in detail about his friends, including MacAllister, and I cannot find anything in his letters to support your charges."
"Harry, you're not serious, are you? You're talking about the letters of an eleven-year-old! How could he be able to judge the ideological undertones? And how couldn't he feel flattered when the sixteen-year-old alpha dog of his house is obviously trying to befriend him? Along with a Lestrange, by the way!"
"Julian, I know!"
"So draw the obvious conclusion and do something!"
Then she paused, leaned back in her chair, took a deep breath, calmed down. When she continued, she was no longer the bossy Minister, but his worried friend.
"Harry," she said at last, "I don't want ... both of us don't want Albus to fall for anyone the way Snape fell for Voldemort."
That hit home.
By addressing not the Auror Harry Potter, who would never have stooped to spying on people's convictions, but the father Harry Potter, she had checkmated him. She gave him time to gather his thoughts.
"All right," he finally said. "The Auror Department cannot do anything as long as no laws are violated ..."
"The expressions Blood traitor and Mudblood are indeed unlawful ..."
"But he didn't call you or any specific person that, did he?" asked Harry, who knew very well how to read between the lines of the Daily Prophet.
"That's right," she confirmed.
"Then it's reportable, but not punishable, and none of the Auror Department's business. So, as an Auror, there's nothing I can do. But there is nothing to prevent me, as a father, from privately getting a picture of the situation at Hogwarts and making enquiries. If your fears turn out to be justified, I would inevitably get information relevant to my office, which I would then also be authorised to use. If not, we have obtained certainty without violating any laws."
Hermione did not seem thrilled, but Harry's logic was irrefutable.
"How do you want to proceed?" she asked him.
"First of all, please tell me everything you know, everything you've observed, and everything you've been told, starting with yesterday's debate," Harry said, pulling his self-writing quill – a gift from Ginny – from his cloak and asking for a sheet of parchment.
Hermione first reconstructed, with the aid of her brilliant memory, the course of her discussion with Roy, and did so quite soberly and objectively. She knew that it would have been useless trying to hoodwink her best Auror, even if she had wanted to.
"Well, that's a far cry from the Daily Prophet's account," Harry stated when she had finished.
"Well, you know how these pressmen are," she said, a little embarrassed, "always need lurid headlines. But in a certain way they are right. This MacAllister is of course far too intelligent to write his real views and intentions on his forehead. He's proceeding step by step, thus gradually creating acceptance for his ideology. He's provoking to the point where it cannot be ignored, but never to the point where it becomes impossible for him to play the persecuted or misunderstood innocent. If you ask me: a savvy strategist and tactician for his sixteen years. Extremely dangerous precisely because he isn't directly violating the law, and because he is only saying things he can count on approval for without having to put his cards on the table."
Harry looked at her thoughtfully. "Well," he said, "what else do you know?"
It became a long conversation because Hermione not only told what she had learned from Neville and the Gryffindors, but both of them also repeatedly deviated from the subject. When Harry finally rose to leave the office, the usual lunch break time was already ending, and his stomach was growling.
"Thank you, Hermione," he said finally, "then I am so far informed for now.
I will have to work out the exact proceeding."
"Don't let anyone take you in," she warned him.
"Didn't you say I'm the best Auror the Ministry ever had?" he grinned.
Hermione grinned back.