Chapter six

The team all touched the portkey and arrived inside the ministry. Kingsley asked Harry to come to his office the following day, as he had some things he wanted to discuss with him. Harry agreed before Arthur and Kingsley went straight up to their office to begin work on some of the idea's they worked out with the ICW. Harry, Neville and Sally decided to go have some lunch. Lee went straight to Diagon alley to see how George was doing at the shop.

'I know Kingsley is going to work out to use the merlin scale for employee's at the ministry,' Neville said.

'I think he should. We saw some of the idiots that worked there and we know most of them bought their jobs or had family high up in the ministry. Like Dawlish, he was fudge's nephew and he was hopeless.'

'Who is Dawlish?' Sally asked.

'An auror. He mainly played body guard for the minister, Fudge, his uncle. But he should never have been able to join the aurors,' Harry said. 'If Kingsley uses the scale for ministry employee's we know that some people don't need to be magically powerful to do their jobs. But for heads of department, or people like unspeakables and aurors, they need the power to do those jobs. Do you think the same should be done for Hogwarts?'

'Definitely. Only McGonagall and Flitwick was any good out of the wand based classes. Professor Sprout might not have used her wand often but she had to know how because some of those plants could be dangerous she just didn't need a lot of power for her job. It's not known as a wand based subject, she just needs to know certain spells. It's like what you said about Snape, he was brilliant at potions and powerful, but he was a terrible teacher.' Neville said.

'He was powerful so even if we use the scale he would pass. I just hope whoever ends up headmaster makes sure they hire people who can actually teach.'

'Tell me why you ended up teaching some students?' Sally asked.

Harry and Neville went on to explain about Umbridge and how they put together the DA. But they also explained about her punishments. Sally grabbed Harry's hand to see the scars he had due to Umbridge.

'Did she get punished for this?'

'She would have after it was all over, but she was killed at the ministry the same night Voldemort died. When Voldemort and most of his death eaters turned up at Hogwarts, some people on our side headed to the ministry. There was a fight, which didn't take long as he had most of his supporters at Hogwarts. She refused to stop and ended up killed. She was hit with a dozen stunners at once, her heart gave out,' Harry said.

'My father and I had a few fights with some death eaters. We were lucky to escape.'

'Did they go after you specifically because you're a muggleborn or did they just happen to find you?'

'We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dad shot one of the death eaters. He said he might not be able to do magic but he could use muggle things like guns to protect me.'

'Then he was smart. I was going to see about getting a gun just as a back up in case something happened to my wand. We know how easy wands can be broken or we can be disarmed. They couldn't disarm me if I had a gun and they are a bit hard to lose.'

'Even though I would have supported you Harry, you do know the Wizengamot could have thrown you in Azkaban if you used that muggle weapon against a witch or wizard?'

'I had no idea. See, you are right Neville, people like me, Sally, Hermione and others have no idea about some laws in this world. We could get into big trouble for something we knew nothing about, but it's also something people like us grow up with, so we think it's normal to have.'

'Kingsley wants to implement those classes at Hogwarts. But if you ever want to learn, I can give you the basic information.'

'I might take you up on that Neville. If you offer it to Hermione you know she will want to learn all about it.'

'I don't mind but my grandmother can't find out. She believes things she teaches me should not be taught to others. She's one of those old pure-bloods that want to keep most traditions. She told me a couple of years ago she was going to see about a betrothal contract for me and some girl. I told her I would leave and she would never see me again and when I was of age, I would kick her out of the family. But I found out that since my parent's are still alive, gran can't officially sign things like contracts for me. I didn't speak to her for months after that. Now I'm an adult, she has no say over what I do.'

'People still do things like betrothal's?' Sally asked.

'Only the real traditionalists like my gran. I haven't heard of one being done in more than a hundred years.'

'Malfoy and Parkinson had a betrothal contract,' Harry said, 'I overheard Parkinson and Bulstrode talking about it once. See, Bulstrode heard that Malfoy was interested in one of the Greengrass girls. She heard that he said he couldn't marry her but it didn't mean he couldn't have his fun with her. Bulstrode said that Malfoy had his…um, privates hexed so they were covered in painful boils by Greengrass when she found out what he said.'

'Good,' Sally said, 'but he should have had it cut off.'

Harry and Neville glanced at each other. They had been thinking about what made Sally leave Hogwarts. Now they could see her face and heard what she said and wondered if maybe some boy tried to force her to have sex. They knew she had been only eleven at the time. But they both knew things like that happened all the time and to girls that young. They also knew it had happened to others at Hogwarts.

'I went through a lot of records after I ended up inheriting a lot of old family vaults. I wanted to make sure there were no such contracts that could affect me. There was one but the two people involved had to be no more than ten years in age different and male and female. If that was different, I could have been stuck married to an eighty year old man,' Harry shuddered. Neville understood just how that could have happened and he wondered if others who inherited had checked to see if there were any betrothal contracts for them.

The following day Harry went to the ministry to have his meeting with the minister.

'Hello Arthur.'

'Harry,' Arthur grinned, 'Before we go in, the rest of my family would like you to test them.'

'I don't mind, I'll come over on Sunday. If that day is fine?'

'Yes, yes, and expect to stay for dinner. Molly will insist.'

Harry grinned, 'I would never turn down one of your wife's dinners.'

'Let's get in.'

Harry and Arthur stepped into Kingsley's office and took their seats. Kingsley began talking about using the merlin scale for the ministry and Hogwarts. Harry was amazed at how much Kingsley and Arthur had already worked out. Then he was surprised when he was offered a job, the job of test every employee or people applying for a job at the ministry. But he was going to implement it for Hogwarts and also St Mungo's, to make sure healers were actually powerful enough to do the healing charms needed. Part of the job would mean after testing the person, Harry would have to add that score to their personal files. Harry would be placed under special oaths so he could not reveal anything from the files he had read.

Harry could see how excited Kingsley was. He could understand as he knew this might get the right people in the right jobs and hopefully allow their world to go forward instead of stagnating as it had done for years.

Harry accepted the job straight away. He had been wondering what he would do if he couldn't learn how to make brooms. This way he could work but also have time to do things he wanted, which meant he could still work part time on making brooms. If he got good enough then he might just start his own broom company. He knew wands was out since there was only one wand maker in England and he already had his apprentice. Making brooms didn't really need to work for anyone. He could study everything himself, which is what he planned to do when he wasn't working at the ministry.

That afternoon, Harry got an owl from Sally, asking to meet up. He arrived at the restaurant that Sally mentioned in her letter and saw her sitting at one of the tables. She smiled and blushed as he walked towards her.

'Hi,' Harry smiled.

'Hi,' Sally blushed again, 'Thanks for meeting me.'

'I'm actually glad you wrote. I was going to send you an owl after I finished my meeting with Kingsley.'

'Oh, why?'

'Um, well, I was hoping you might want to go out with me, maybe have dinner.'

Sally smiled, 'We're about to do that now. But I would have said yes.'

'Great,' Harry grinned.

Harry and Sally ordered their drinks and their food, 'So what did the minister want?'

'He offered me a job.'

'As an auror?'

Harry smiled, 'No, I did think of being an auror at one time. But after Voldemort and his death eaters, I said enough. I don't want to have a life of fighting dark witches and wizards. No, he's going to implement the merlin scale at the ministry and he's working on having it for the staff of Hogwarts as well, but also healers at St Mungo's. He wants me to do all the testing before anyone goes through an interview. I'm starting off with the ones employed already.'

'That's great. But that probably wouldn't be a full on career, would it?'

'No, it's going to be part time, which will give me time to work on making brooms. I figured I could study brooms and the charms that are on them then see if I can design and make my own. It's more of a hobby than a job, but it's something I really want to do. Since I inherited a lot of money, I don't really need to work but I like keeping busy. But if I do end up making some good brooms, I might turn it into a business. It means I'll always have something to do.'

'I get that. I like to do art and I hope to eventually make a living out of it. I've sold a few but it was mainly from people talking to other people. I've been studying how the portraits in the magical world works to see if I can do those types of portraits.'

'That's great. Do you only do portraits?'

'No, portraits are my favourites but I do anything that takes my fancy. I've done a few landscapes, done some animals and I've even done Stonehenge.'

'I can draw, but I'm not good at faces. I used to draw my owl, Hedwig, I did her a lot. I did Dobby the house elf and Fang, Hagrid's dog. I did a few of the other creatures at Hogwarts. But that was just a hobby and something to help take my mind of what was going on at the time. Did you go back to the muggle world when you left Hogwarts?'

'No, my father and I moved to Australia, I went to the magical school there. Being such a young country, they didn't have things like pure-bloods.'

'Right, they were colonised by convicts from here. So it would mostly be half-bloods and muggleborns.'

'Exactly. The school was really good and it wasn't cold like it was at Hogwarts. But my father and I always planned to return. When we heard you killed him, we knew it was time. It was a week after we arrived back that we were attacked by those death eaters. We almost turned around and went back to Australia. But we spoke with a few people who explained they were rounding up the last of them so we decided to stay. We had only been back a couple of months when the minister contacted me. I didn't know anything about him, not until the conference.'

'Kingsley's a great bloke. He was part of the order of the phoenix and he was my guard at one time. He was supposed to be guarding the muggle prime minister but left so he could be my guard as I was being moved to one of the order of the phoenix headquarters. He didn't agree with a lot of what Dumbledore wanted, especially how he told the order to stun only, but he stayed to help out.'

'But that would be dangerous. Someone could wake them up while he was busy fighting others.'

'Exactly and it did happen, a lot. So Kingsley and a few of the other order members used to use more aggressive spells. They would use reducto a lot, on their legs or wand hand. They just never told the old man.'

Harry and Sally talked right through dinner and ended up taking a walk after where they continued to talk. They had a goodnight kiss, a small chaste kiss, then organised to see each other in a couple of days. Harry did officially ask Sally to be his girlfriend. He wasn't sure what it was, but he was just so comfortable with her. There was no awkward silent moments like his date with Cho and Sally was a lot calmer than Ginny was. They also had a lot in common. Even though Harry was looking forward to starting his new job, he couldn't wait to see his girlfriend again.