Refer Chapter 1 for disclaimer.
Harry knew that Dumbledore would try and get into the Chamber of Secrets now that he knew where the entrances to the tunnels were, as the fact that there was a very valuable basilisk carcass in there and he was likely to need money soon if Harry made good on his threat was added incentive for him to try and claim what was in the Chamber…. So as soon as they were back in the Lords Tower, Harry contacted Uncle Jareth to get the Clan's crews started on harvesting the basilisk, as well as removing the Chamber doors and everything else of value in the Chamber and filling in the main chamber to stop Dumbledore or anyone else finding it. As the accepted Head of the House of Slytherin, it was his right to dispose of the contents of Slytherin's Chamber as he saw fit.
As the age old Patrons of the Fae, the Potter Family was very important to the Fae, and to get around restrictions of both the Wizarding World and the Goblin Nations, most Heirs of the House of Potter were blood adopted into Clan Gringott once they were accepted by the Potter Family Magic. Most of the Heads' Consorts were also blood adopted into Clan Gringott after the Potter Magic accepted them…
Lily was an exception to the rule because Charlus had blood adopted her into the Potter Family and the Potter Magic accepted her as a daughter of the House of Potter soon after they signed the agreements for Evans Industries, then she was blood adopted into Clan Gringott because what they were creating with Evans Industries was very important to the Old Families and the Fae… This was why Lily had been accepted as the Potter Regent even though James was never accepted as the Heir.
Mind you, Harry was a unique case as well. He was accepted by the Potter Family Magic as Heir Presumptive and blood adopted into Clan Gringott as Harfang Gringott in early November 1981 (nearly a decade earlier than most Potter Heirs) so that the Goblin Nation would be able to give him all the protection and training he needed. They were all given Goblin names when they were blood adopted, as that was how Clan Gringott got away with giving them access to things that were supposed to be restricted to Goblins, but Harfang had been chosen for Harry because he was still a toddler and being called different names would probably confuse him.
The key point here was that Harry could request this as a member of Clan Gringott, which bypassed all the restrictions placed on dealings with Wizarding kind. Requesting it as a member of Clan Gringott gave Clan Gringott a share of the profits, but it also gave Jareth a degree of control over the orders. That was why, once the teams discovered that the environment in the Chamber was magically controlled and the enchantments were still working quite well due to the ley lines going through it, Jareth overrode the order to fill in the main Chamber. The orders were amended to have the antechamber outside the doors expanded into two more chambers as big as the main chamber and wall off the tunnel, then extend the existing enchantments in the main chamber to include the new chambers, while applying equivalent wards to what they created around the Lords Tower over the whole environment. This gave them a stable and secure chamber with a magically controlled environment which could be used for many things. Jareth instructed the teams to satisfy the spirit of what Harry was after another way, by removing all trace of the tunnels leading to Hogwarts.
They started this work immediately, so by the time Dumbledore got a chance to sneak away to Myrtle's toilets, there was no trace of any entrances or tunnels. They kept the recordings from the surveillance crystals they hid in Myrtle's toilets to see what he did when he couldn't find the entrances, because it was hilarious. Dumbledore got frustrated when Myrtle just kept pointing at the sinks on the wall where the access tunnel for the basilisk used to be and in the end he just blasted a big hole in the wall. That made the enchantments which supplied water for the taps go mad and broke the waste water vanishing enchantments, so he flooded the toilets far worse than Myrtle had ever managed. This brought Filch running in, eager to punish the students who had done this, only to find a thoroughly soaked Headmaster trying in vain to stop the water that was gushing everywhere and turning the dirt etc that had fallen through the hole he blasted in the wall into mud…. Yes, it was definitely a popcorn moment.
Jareth briefly considered relocating part of their Acromantula farm operation into the chambers to take advantage of the better environment there, but decided against it. Back in the early Eighties when they started removing Dumbledore's mind manipulations from Rubeus Hagrid, Hagrid had recalled the massive Acromantula colony just inside the 'Forbidden Forest' that Dumbledore had induced him to start in the Forties, while thinking that it was his idea. The colony had long since grown far too large and dangerous to be anywhere near a school, or in a forest which had large Centaur and Unicorn populations in it, but Dumbledore had kept compelling Hagrid not to worry about the danger and encourage Aragog, the original Acromantula who grew from an egg he gave Hagrid, to keep expanding his family. Once Hagrid was free of Dumbledore's influence, he tried to convince Aragog to relocate the colony so that it wouldn't be a threat to the students or the forest's other inhabitants, and that almost got him killed. Aragog was only ready to call Hagrid 'friend' and let him come and go in peace so long as Hagrid was willing to look the other way as they overran the forest and treated everything else in the forest as a food source. To him, Hagrid saying that they had to move because they were threatening the students and the forest's other inhabitants meant that he was no longer useful to him, so his status immediately changed to food.
Luckily, Lily and the Goblins were less trusting than Hagrid and they'd sent disillusioned and masked Golem and Goblin warriors into the Colony with him, so Hagrid was extracted safe and sound, while Aragog and the other larger and more aggressive Acromantulas were killed and then the rest were chased through portals to the island fortresses hidden under the dragon colony on Na H-Eileanan Dubha, the Black Isles. The above ground portions of the original fortress on the main island Eilean Dubh had been destroyed in a Wizards' battle in the Tenth Century and a breeding pair of Hebridean Blacks had claimed the island before any Wizards had a chance to do so, but the extensive underground portion of the fortress was largely undamaged, as were the extensive wards, which were kept strong by the ley lines passing under the islands. The Potter Family removed all mention of Human occupation of Black Island from the Humans' records and had the group of unforgiving islands in the Outer Hebrides that no-one else wanted declared sovereign soil of the Goblin Nation, to be used for a dragon colony. Then the Goblins and Dwarfs shored up and extended the underground fortress, as well as building more on the other islands to house the Fae People who came to live there.
When the Wizarding World outlawed breeding basilisks in the Fourteenth Century, the Goblin Nations moved their basilisk breeding operations to the Isles. The Goblins and Dwarfs had been extending the fortresses ever further downwards for centuries to make room for all the Fae People seeking refuge from the savage Humans in the Black Isles through the Middle Ages... But more and more of their people had been moving to the Gringotts Business Houses being established in London and other major cities as the People jumped into the expanding businesses of shipping, trading goods and money lending in order to encourage and profit from the growth of the Human World in areas other than war, so they had plenty of tunnels free to be converted for the purpose of basilisk breeding. They normally harvested the basilisks after a hundred and fifty to two hundred years or so as they were starting to get too dangerous to handle, but that was enough to maintain the lucrative trade in basilisk potion ingredients, skins etc as side line of their dragon breeding and products (the wards over the isles were strong enough to keep breeding pairs apart without conflict, so the isles supported a much higher population density of Hebridean Blacks and Welsh Greens than would have been possible otherwise). With the amount they harvested from Slytherin's Basilisk though, they would need to reduce their basilisk harvests for at least a decade or two, because it would take that long to sell all that off without driving the price of basilisk products down.
Jareth couldn't understand Wizard thinking though, they held to the belief that there hadn't been any live basilisk sightings in over four hundred years, but never stopped to ask how potion ingredients and skins from basilisks could still be purchased? How long did they think those sort of things would keep for?
There were only a fraction of the people who used to live in the Black Isles there now, so there were many levels of empty tunnels, which meant that they had plenty of room to create extensive Acromantula farms, and having them in the Isles gave the added benefit of being able to use the basilisks to keep the Acromantulas under control. Spiders were for some reason terrified of basilisks, so putting the Acromantula farms behind the basilisk pens made it easier to keep them in their place. Feeding thousands of Acromantulas wasn't a problem either, as Acromantulas' primary food source was normally other Acromantulas (this was a population control mechanism to keep the colony size down to what the food supply could support), they just reversed the natural order by killing the bigger ones off when they became a problem and feeding them to smaller ones, rather than allowing the bigger ones to prey on the smaller ones.
The People quickly became the major suppliers of Acromantula silk and potion ingredients in Wizarding Europe (as they already were for dragon and basilisk products), which upset the Houses which had been making a nice income from this niche market. They also made Acromantula silk more readily available, which the richer Pure-Bloods weren't happy about because the material wasn't as exclusive as it used to be.… But they got an unexpected side benefit from their new business. Most of Magical Britain believed that the Goblin Nation was all housed inside Gringotts in London (The Black Isles had been unplottable since the Thirteenth Century, so most in the Wizarding World had forgotten about them, and to most British Wizards, nothing of any great import existed outside their country). Therefore the Goblins pretty much cornering the market in Acromantula products made some wonder just how far Gringotts must extend down to have room for Acromantula farms that big, which in turn led to the question of just how big the Goblin Nation was… This had the effect of making the more sensible ones in Magical Britain be a bit more polite in their dealings with The People.
Another benefit of removing the Acromantulas to the Black Isles was that the Old Families and Goblins regained the trust and good will of the Centaurs. The original treaties had made the Centaurs the masters of what was later called the Forbidden Forest. It was their domain to maintain and they protected the weaker inhabitants of the forest, but the Acromantulas had not only been preying on the lesser creatures of the forest, they had been preying on the centaurs themselves, so getting rid of the colony was welcomed as an act of good will and friendship, which restored their relationship with the Old Families and Goblin Nation. Relations were still bad with the Ministry and most Pure-Bloods of course, but the Centaurs exempted them from the loathing they felt for the Ministry and 'normal' Wizards.
The Centaurs felt an even deeper loathing for Albus Dumbledore, because they had seen that Dumbledore had known about and encouraged what the Acromantulas were doing. Dumbledore had been searching for the Colony, presumably to get it moved back into Centaur territory, ever since Hagrid told him that Aragog had decided to take his children and move deeper into the forest away from humans because some of his sons were arguing about not being allowed to prey on the students or the people in Hogsmeade. The problem with that was that the wild magic that existed in the older parts of the deep forest made it impossible to search for things in there with magic most of the time, so he would have to physically walk around the deep forest to find them, and he wasn't prepared to take the risk of getting eaten. He'd been rather miffed with Hagrid when he 'asked' him to find the new Colony for him, but Hagrid just put on his sad face and said that he'd promised Aragog that he wouldn't try to find him.
The Family decided to strike before Dumbledore and the Ministry could cover up what had happened, so the headline on the front page of the Daily Prophet the next morning screamed.
'MALFOY HEIR DEAD AND SIX OTHER STUDENTS NEAR DEATH DUE TO POSSESSION BY GRADE EIGHT DARK OBJECT REPORTEDLY GIVEN TO MALFOY HEIR BY HIS FATHER'
Needless to say, that caught everyone's attention and ensured that the articles were read. Harry didn't bother trying to hide his vindictive smile at Dumbledore struggling to hide his fury as he read the articles, because they were outing a lot of information that he'd been hiding to allow his plans to develop, not to mention the fact that he'd probably been planning on using this as another 'test' for the Boy-Who-Lived, but the only things Hadrian had even heard about were the message in blood on the wall in the corridor in the dungeon, the fact that a Mudblood student was petrified and that something happened to the Gryffindor House Ghost.
If anything, Dumbledore was even more furious about being portrayed as a bumbling old fool who was too feeble minded to take notice of the warning from Hogwarts' wards that a Grade Eight Dark Object (which was so foul that it earned an automatic death sentence for anyone stupid enough to be caught bringing one into Gringotts) had been brought through her wards. That article also pointed out the Dark Object warnings to the Headmaster were impossible to turn off because they were woven into Hogwarts' core wards, so Dumbledore couldn't claim that there had been no such warning. He either had to accept being portrayed as so addle minded that he had missed or ignored an important warning from Hogwarts, or admit that he had knowingly covered up something that important for some undisclosed reason, which would do far more damage to his image as the 'Leader of the Light'. So he grudgingly decided to play it as a 'senior moment', no matter how much having to do that angered him.
They also used this to ward off the argument that being a Parselmouth was the mark of a 'Dark Wizard' by pointing out that two people teaching at Hogwarts had managed to put together the clues about what was happening and questioned the ghost of the student who had been killed the last time that Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets was opened (raising the question of why Dumbledore, who was the Deputy Headmaster at the time, had never done so). When they determined that the Monster was in fact a basilisk (again questioning why Dumbledore or anyone else hadn't done this the first time it was opened) and that Tom Riddle and the possessed Draco Malfoy had both used Parseltongue to open the way to the Chamber, they got Lord Potter-Peverell-Black, who also had this rare hereditary talent, to see whether he could manage to open one of the ways down. It went on to say that Lord Potter-Peverell-Black had used his Parselmouth talent to get them through a number of portals and into the Chamber, where he tried to distract the shade of Tom Riddle while they attempted to break the possession which was holding Draco Malfoy and the Imperius curse that was controlling the other five students for the purpose of draining their life force from them. However Riddle's shade had called forth Slytherin's basilisk, so they had been forced to kill the basilisk before they could destroy the Dark Object in order to free the students and banish the shade.
They finished the story of the rescue with a white lie, saying that the protections of the Chamber of Secrets must have been somehow linked to Slytherin's Monster, because while they were allowed to return safely to Hogwarts with the students, the portals had disappeared once they passed through them and Lord Potter-Peverell-Black couldn't call them up again, so the Chamber of Secrets was gone forever. It was only a white lie because the portals had indeed been removed, just by Goblin and Dwarf efforts rather than Salazar Slytherin's Magic. The beauty of this was that it gave a plausible explanation for why Dumbledore couldn't find the entrances, and why no-one other than Tom Riddle had been able to find any trace of the Chamber of Secrets in over nine hundred years. The article went on to explain in quite a bit of detail about how and why the Parseltongue talent was well respected all over the Wizarding World, except for Magical Britain over the past fifty years or so, where it was reviled because of the actions of one Wizard, and certain people blowing that up out of all proportion for unknown reasons.
Harry had to laugh at the speculation in the article about whether the one behind poisoning public opinion in Magical Britain against Parselmouths had done so because he was jealous of them having such a valuable talent, when the only notable talent he'd gotten from his own Family Magic was something like the ability to transform lesser creatures into willing and eager slaves… Because that was precisely what the carefully hidden records they dug up had indicated the Dumbledore Family had been known for…. There had also been some rather pointed gibes made about the Dumbledores and Animal Husbandry in Daily Prophet articles from the late Nineteenth Century, and from the stories, that was what Aberforth Dumbledore had been convicted for about forty years ago too.
With Narcissa's permission, they included an article about how in a shocking move, she had supplicated herself before the young Lord Potter-Peverell-Black and begged as a disgraced and disowned daughter of the House of Black for sanctuary from the House of her birth. Telling them that she had not actually been Lady Malfoy for over ten years, since the previous Lord Black called for the disillusionment of her marriage and cast her out of the House of Black for willingly serving a branded slave of the pretender falsely styling himself as Lord Voldemort as a dutiful wife… Revealing the fact that since that day she had been Narcissa Rosier, the lowly unwed chattel of Lucius Malfoy, imprisoned in poor conditions in Malfoy Manor and only leaving the Manor when he needed to use her to promote the false image of their being a proper family… And that now that her son, the Malfoy Heir, was dead, she feared what he would force her to do to entertain his associates. The article reported the fact that Harry had accepted her back into the House of Black, making her Narcissa Black again, and officially granted her the sanctuary and protection of the House of Black if she vowed to honour and uphold the values and requirements of the House of Black… Adding that the Black Magic obviously accepted her her vow to do so because there was not only a glow of acceptance, the Black Family Magic was returned to her, strong enough to cause a visible reaction.
There was also a small article which noted that Albus Dumbledore's actions had finally angered Lord Black enough to act on the feud that had been declared against the Minor House of Dumbledore and its allies the previous September.
His interactions with the other students and staff at Breakfast left Harry confused, because aside from Dumbledore, Flophart, Filch, Hadrian and his hangers on, none of them appeared to be too antagonistic towards him. Slughorn and some of the Slytherin students had actually sought him out to thank him for helping save their housemates, and so did some of the Hufflepuffs after Professor Sprout let it slip that he was the anonymous benefactor who was getting the rare and expensive ingredients rushed in to create the restorative potion for Justin.
Those against him didn't even include all of the Weasleys, because the twins appeared to be impressed by his courage in going down into the Chamber to help save his fellow students…. Of course, from what he overheard, part of that could have just been the fact that they were sick of listening to Hadrian's empty boasting. From what they were saying, he was obviously claiming that if he had been the one who went down to the Chamber, as a true Gryffindor he would have made sure to save all the victims, even if they were filthy snakes.
One of the jibes the twins threw at Hadrian made Harry think though, because they asked whether he was a Parselmouth too… And when he responded with an indignant "No!", they asked how he would have gotten into the Chamber to save anyone, seeing as that was apparently how the Chamber was opened. Given that Hadrian had the same bloodlines he did, that raised the question of whether he had the latent ability and was blocking it because he was afraid of having a Dark talent, or it was something that only manifested after you were accepted by the Slytherin Family Magic?
All in all, the articles made Lucius Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore look rather bad, but the articles weren't even close to being their biggest worry. Amelia knew that Fudge would be bending over backwards to get Malfoy released as soon as he found out that he was in custody, so as soon as she got him back to the DMLE cells she pumped him full of Veritaserum to get the answers to all the questions she'd been prohibited from asking him before this.
There were three main reasons she wanted to question him immediately. The first was that by taking him straight there from the meeting in Dumbledore's office, there wasn't much chance of him having anything to block the Veritaserum in his system. The second was that between the shocking news of their being in Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets and what they faced and defeated there, and the quite possibly even more shocking move Narcissa made of supplicating herself before Lord Black and begging for, and getting, sanctuary from the House of Black should have put him well and truly off balance, which would help get the truth out of him. And the Third was that Fudge was sure to do his best to get him out, so she wanted to get a properly certified Veritaserum testimony registered in the system before that happened.
She had a field day when they questioned the bastard, as he testified that he'd lied about being under the Imperius curse, and gave up the names of the ones who had been bribed to let him off. He also testified to committing enough foul deeds as a Death Eater and afterwards to guarantee that he would be thrown through the Veil of Death. Fudge would obviously be trying to seize the Malfoy estate if he couldn't get him off, in the name of the Ministry of course, but they had an ace up their sleeves to beat that, Xeno Lovegood.
Xeno was actually born Armand Abraxus Malfoy, Heir to the House of Malfoy because he was the First-Born and older Fraternal Twin of Lucius Brutus Malfoy. His father Abraxus wasn't at all pleased when his Heir took after his Veela mother instead of him or that he was sorted into Ravenclaw, while Lucius, the 'spare', took after him and went into Slytherin. Armand placated his father by paying lip service to his ideology, and succeeded in pulling the wool over his father's eyes most of the way through Hogwarts.
That all fell apart though when Abraxus tried to force him into an arranged marriage to Andromeda Black to get the House of Malfoy elevated to Noble status (and get their hands on some of the Black fortune), but Armand refused. When Armand made it clear that he would not marry anyone against their will (Andromeda and Sirius Black were the only ones in the current generation of the House of Black who had minds of their own and she was refusing to be married off to support her parents' political agenda), Abraxus disowned him, casting him out of the House of Malfoy and making Lucius his Heir. Then a new betrothal contract was created between Lucius and Narcissa Black (because Andromeda's parents had demanded that she also be disowned for her disobedience). Abraxus stripped both their family name and his own name from Armand in an attempt to shame him, officially proclaiming him to be Armand Xenophilius No-Name to make him an object of public ridicule and using the Malfoy Family Magic to make people forget that he used to be Armand Malfoy.
His attempt to ruin Armand's life failed however, because Armand embraced his new name up until he married Pandora Lovegood, officially taking on her family name and adopting Xenophilius as his given name. The fact that he'd already been recruited by the Department of Mysteries and was well on his way to earning his first couple of Masteries obviated the stigma of being disowned and having his name stripped from him, so his father had wasted his efforts.
Normally being disowned and having the family name stripped from him would have precluded him claiming the title of Head of House and the family fortune, but if Lucius was put to death as they expected, Armand would be the last of the Malfoy blood, so if the Family Magic accepted him, they would be rightfully his…. And Amelia had slipped him into the Wizengamot Chamber overnight so he could use the Stone of Truth to test whether the Malfoy Family Magic would accept him, and it had confirmed him as a son of the House of Malfoy so they were cautiously optimistic that this would work.
And Albus…. Well Albus was unfortunate in that Gringotts was open 24/7 because many magical beings were by nature or profession nocturnal and the Goblins were constantly doing business with their counterparts all around the world, so Ted and Harry's Account Managers didn't wait until morning to initiate proceedings against Dumbledore and his allies….. Which meant that all Albus achieved when he started contacting his remaining allies after breakfast the next morning to warn them was convince them that they and their families were less important to him than his breakfast.
What Ted and the Account Managers had set up was similar to what Arcturus had done with the Diggorys. Dumbledore's remaining allies were left with their names and just enough to survive with a bit of effort, but lost everything else. While Aberforth Dumbledore's Hogs Head Inn in Hogsmeade was hardly worth anything, he had supported his brother in the past and they wanted Albus feeling vulnerable enough to hide rather than try and interfere in Harry's business, so they took the Hogs Head off him and gave Aberforth a small farm down in the Welsh hills with enough gold to live comfortably if frugally. The Dumbledore Name and Family Magic were completely eradicated, with Albus' Order of Merlin and the Baronetcy that came with it being stripped from him when evidence was presented to show that they were awarded under false pretences (given that his lover Gellert Grindelwald was alive and living fairly well), so the Dumbledore brothers were forced to revert to their mother's common Muggle maiden name of Jones. Aberforth just shrugged and went on with his life, but Albus was ropeable.
Albus and the others who had been stripped of their wealth and position still tried to whip up public opinion against Harry for this, but everyone else saw it as being harsh but fair. The ones who had had enough sense to actually sever all their connections to Dumbledore took great delight in pointing out that Harry had very publicly warned that this would happen to Albus Dumbledore and his allies more than six months ago and nothing had happened to those who had taken his warning seriously and acted on it.
While the Ministry didn't work at night, Auntie Griz (Countess Griselda Marchbanks, Head of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Marchbanks and Noble and Ancient House of McLachlan, Clan Chief of Clan McLachlan and Governor of the Wizarding Examination Authority) did, and she got started on the preparations for Harry and the others' OWL examinations as soon as Lily contacted her. She sent out notices overnight to call in all the staff she'd need to conduct the exams and they got to work on setting things up as soon as the WEA offices opened, so Harry and the other kids only attended one class before they disappeared for the rest of the day. It wasn't unusual to not see them through the day, so Dumbledore felt secure in focusing on the more immediate issue of the brat's feud nonsense. He was confident that it would take a week or more to organise OWL exams, so the preparations to expel him could wait until after the immediate problem was dealt with.
Needless to say, he was shocked when Minerva informed him the next day that the Lords Group had finished their school year early and departed Hogwarts, because they had already passed their OWLs…. Gleefully adding that none of them had gotten anything less than an 'EE' in their OWL results, and most of them had gotten straight 'O's. He tried the challenge the results of course but they were already officially recorded, and Griselda had taken care to implement more measures to ensure that no cheating could occur than they did on normal exams to prevent the expected challenges. All Albus could do was throw a temper tantrum and tear up what he was preparing to use to expel the brat.
Cornelius Fudge wasn't worrying about the damage that the articles were doing to Dumbledore, he was sure the old man would get himself out of this, but he was desperate to clear the name of one of his biggest supporters (in donations at least), because having Lucius in Azkaban would be disastrous for him. That was why he was panicking and had to keep reminding himself that rushing would only make his desperation obvious as he made his way down Diagon Alley to the Daily Prophet offices as quick as he could without obviously hurrying.
He was accompanied by James 'Potter' as his new Senior Undersecretary, ex-Auror John Dawlish as his Head Ministerial-Guard-Auror…. (Minister Bagnol had created this title for the Minister's new squad of bodyguards after the bent Aurors in her pocket who couldn't be convicted or dismissed from the Ministry were banished from the DMLE. Amelia was not at all happy about the low-lifes that she'd kicked out of the DMLE having a title which included the term Auror, but Minister Bagnoll had been careful when she went about creating the role and hyphenated title so there wasn't anything she could do about it)…. And his other eight Ministerial-Guard-Aurors to present a more imposing image. The fact that the Ministerial-Guard-Aurors' robes were copies of Senior Auror Dress Robes was entirely intentional, as most people couldn't tell the difference and believed them to be Senior Aurors.
Unfortunately for Cornelius, the Family was expecting this, and even if they hadn't been, surveillance crystals which were powered by the ambient magic in Diagon Alley had been set up all along the Alley since Harry took over the Daily Prophet... So they saw him coming and had plenty of time to have some real Aurors and Ted Tonks, as the Prophet's owner's Law Wizard, waiting for them in Chief Editor Adrian Fawcett's office, plus a squad of MLE Patrol Officers waiting in another office in case there was an altercation.
Fudge barged straight into Adrian's office with his entourage, shouting "I demand you retract those lies you printed about Lucius…."
He stopped when he realised that Ted Tonks (whom he knew to be afraid of) and a couple of Senior Aurors were there with Fawcett, going through the notes spread across his desk.
"What is the meaning of this?"
Fudge had enough sense to be uneasy of the smile Emma gave him. "We are here getting copies of the material supplied to the Daily Prophet for their articles, to see whether there is anything in there that will assist us in our investigation into the activities of Lucius Malfoy Minister… But I'm sure you will understand that I am not at liberty to say anything further than that about an ongoing DMLE investigation, and I know your companions will, being ex Aurors…. And Mister Tonks is here as the Daily Prophet's Law Wizard to ensure that the transfer of any information to the DMLE is perfectly legal. What I cannot understand Minister Fudge, is what you are doing, barging into Mister Fawcett's office unannounced with Mister Fleamont and what appears to be all your bodyguards, shouting about retracting lies?"
She looked each of them in the eye, daring them to say something. She held James' gaze the longest, because as an ex-Head Auror, he had the least excuse for being involved in something as blatantly illegal as this. While James had enough sense to keep his mouth shut though, Fudge didn't.
"How dare you speak to me like that woman? I'll have you fired for this insubordination! Auror Dawlish! Collect everything on that desk. You and James will be contacting everyone who wrote that drivel and getting them to recant their lies!"
The smile on Emma's face turned positively evil as she thanked Fudge for that, then turned to Dawlish. "Please do Auror Dawlish, because that will give us the excuse we've been looking for to put you in Azkaban where you belong. Come along James and the rest of you, help Auror Dawlish comply with the Minister's order…."
Dawlish, James and the others stood there, frozen in fear, because they had a very good idea of what was about to happen. Sure enough, the door crashed open again and a furious Director of the DMLE stormed in with the MLE Officers who had been waiting in the other office.
"What in the Seven Hells do you think you're doing Minister? Officers, take James Fleamont, John Dawlish and the rest of these thugs impersonating Aurors into custody. As Senior Auror Vance noted, they are all ex Aurors, and as such must have known that they were taking part in an illegal act! Auror Vance, please tell me that Dawlish was stupid enough to touch some of the evidence on Mister Fawcett's desk?"
Emma shook her head regretfully. "I'm afraid not Director Bones. I think that may be my fault though because I jumped the gun and taunted him about giving us the excuse to throw him in Azkaban…."
Fudge, idiot that he was, latched onto the one thing she said that he didn't recognise at all. "Gun? What's a gun and why would your jumping on it do anything?"
Amelia stared at him, amazed that he could actually surpass the level of stupidity she expected of him, then shook her head and waved dismissively at Emma. "Don't worry about it Auror Vance, the fact that he's here committing an illegal act while impersonating an Auror will be enough to get him into court and once we get some Veritaserum into him I have no doubt he'll be admitting to more than tampering with the evidence of a DMLE investigation."
With that she turned back to Fudge. "Well Minister, I'm waiting… What are you doing forcing your way into the offices of a respected law abiding citizen and businessman of Magical Britain, attempting to force him to falsify a report in the Daily Prophet? Not to mention ordering your staff to steal evidence that was in the process of being formally registered for use in an on going DMLE investigation… And tamper with the witnesses who supplied that evidence! As those idiots my Patrol Officers just took out of here should have been able to tell you, everything on Mister Fawcett's desk already qualifies as evidence, the Daily Prophet is just assisting the DMLE by ensuring that there can be no legal challenge to the chain of evidence in case there's something significant there that we haven't obtained from other sources…. And by the way, Senior Auror Vance will not be dismissed or disciplined in any way for doing her duty, and if you or anyone working for you tries to do anything like that without going through the proper DMLE processes, I will challenge it before the Wizengamot!"
"Are you going to answer me Minister Fudge, or are you just going to keep standing there trying to think of something to say?…."
She shook her head in disgust at the idiot, turning back to the previous occupants of the office.
"Mister Fawcett and Mister Tonks, on behalf of the Ministry, you have my apology for this incident. If you choose to take legal action over the incident, Senior Aurors Vance and Savage will of course be made available to testify... And on behalf of the DMLE, you have my thanks for your cooperation."
"Come along Minister Fudge, in case you missed it, your bodyguards have already been taken into custody, so unless you wish to take your chances on your own out there with Death Eaters and whatever else running around, I suggest that you come back to the Ministry with me. Good day Gentlemen, Auror Vance, we will leave you to go back to what you were working on before you were so rudely interrupted."
Fudge hadn't missed the point about his bodyguards and scurried out of the office on her heels. His fear of the ominous 'Death Eaters and whatever else' comment made it worth being hissed at in a low, vicious tone for most of the trip back to the Ministry in his mind if it meant that he was with someone he was told was still a very dangerous Witch... Of course most of what she said about being the Minister not exempting him from the Laws of Magical Britain, and in fact meant that he was held to a higher standard than ordinary citizens went in one ear and out the other… But he did have to change his drawers as soon as he was safely back in his office…. Luckily he always kept a change of clothes in his private bathroom for just that eventuality.
The Minister's rash move at the Daily Prophet offices resulted in him, James and the Ministerial-Guard-Aurors being summoned to the Wizengamot Chamber for the Emergency Wizengamot session that had been convened for Lucius Malfoy's trial that afternoon. With the Veritaserum confession they extracted overnight, there was no justification to delay the proceedings to prepare a defence, because there was no defence that could negate the crimes he'd willingly committed….
In the minds of the Pure-Blood bigots, the fact that he gave his son and Heir the cursed diary, knowing full well that it would almost certainly lead to his death, the fact that the Diary had almost killed five other Pure-Blood children with his Heir and that he had degraded the Pure-Blood daughter of one of the oldest and most respected lines of Magical Britain and treated her as no better than a common Muggle chattel for ten years were worse crimes than the orgy of rape, torture and slaughter of those of lesser blood status he had indulged in as a Death Eater and afterwards… But whatever their bias and whichever crimes they considered more heinous, the Members of the Wizengamot were almost unanimous in the decision that Lucius Brutus Malfoy must die for his crimes.
They were still in the Wizengamot Chamber, judging James Fleamont and the Ministerial-Guard-Aurors' actions, when the Malfoy coat of arms mounted on the wall behind the Chief Warlock's bench flashed and disappeared to confirm that the line of the current Head of the House of Malfoy was now extinct, but before Fudge could get one of his lackeys to claim everything belonging to the extinct line of Malfoy for the Ministry (him)... Xeno stood to be recognised by the Chief Warlock.
"I, Armand Xenophilius Lovegood, born Armand Abraxus Malfoy, First-Born and Heir to the Minor House of Malfoy, demand the opportunity to reclaim my birthright as Head of the House of Malfoy!"
It took over ten minutes to silence the outbursts at that, and then the Chief Warlock asked Xeno to explain how he could claim to be the rightful Head of the House of Malfoy. Xeno had no problem airing the dirty laundry of the Malfoy family, he even turned and bowed to Andie where she was sitting in the Black box as Steward of the House of Black when he described the events which had led to him being disowned and un-named…. The Pure-Blood bigots didn't like being reminded that Andie was another one who had rejected their traditions and chose to marry a Muggle-Born rather than do her duty to her family, or that she'd actually been rewarded for that by the previous and current Lord Blacks, but there was nothing they could fo about it.
Those of the Old Families were laughing to themselves that the so-called traditional Pure-Bloods couldn't see that this was all theatrics and Xeno was only doing it to make his position clear. If the Malfoy Family Magic accepted him as its rightful Head of House, as they were confident it would, no amount of political posturing by anyone could overturn it, and that was enough to stop the Ministry claiming the still fairly substantial assets of the House of Malfoy.
Tiberius allowed Xeno to have his fun for a while, then called for him to validate his claim with the Stone of Truth. Even after the Stone proclaimed him to be Sir Armand Xenophilius Lovegood, Head of the Minor House of Malfoy, Fudge and others protested that he must have confounded the Stone, but they shut up quick smart when the Chief Warlock challenged them to try to prove that it was possible to confound the Stone of Truth, because many of them had never officially been accepted as Heads of their Houses and were afraid that their Family Magic would find them unfit to hold the role. (Which just showed how ignorant the ones holding Wizengamot seats were, because the Wizengamot magic would not have accepted their right to vote for their Houses if their Family Magic hadn't accepted them.)
After Xeno's side show finished, they went back to the trials. James Fleamont managed to keep his position as Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, but was made to pay a penalty of Five Thousand Galleons to the Daily Prophet for his part in the illegal invasion of its Editor's office, because as the ex-Head of the Auror Operations Office, he could not claim that he did not know that he was performing an illegal act. Unfortunately, while two of Fudge's Ministerial-Guard-Aurors did end up in Azkaban because of the severity of the crimes they committed on behalf of the Minister and others, they could only get enough evidence on Dawlish and one of the others to fine them Three and Two thousand Galleons respectively and permanently dismiss them from the Ministry. The other five Ministerial-Guard-Aurors were fined between Five and Fifteen Hundred Galleons and put on five years' probation…. And the Wizengamot ordered the Ministerial-Guard-Aurors' uniform robes to be changed to something sufficiently different from any legitimate DMLE uniform robes to prevent them being used to impersonate legitimate DMLE personnel.
Fudge's position as Minister protected him from being prosecuted on criminal charges unless they were serious enough to get him dismissed as the Minister, but that didn't prevent him being forced to pay Ten Thousand Galleons compensation to the Daily Prophet, and another Ten Thousand to Adrian Fawcett himself, for invading his office and attempting to intimidate him into publishing a false retraction of the facts reported in that morning's edition. Even with all the 'donations' he'd been getting from his supporters, the Twenty Thousand Galleons he was forced to pay took a large bite out of what was in Fudge's vaults. This made the penalty that was paid to Adrian Fawcett quite a windfall for him, because he was an ordinary member of a well respected but not overly wealthy family and before he returned to Magical Britain to become the Daily Prophet's Editor, he'd been part of the editorial staff of a Pan-European Wizarding News publication. That had been a rewarding but not terribly high paying job, so Ten Thousand Galleons was equivalent to several years' pay for him.
As Amelia had predicted, Harry and the other kids headed to Isla Negra in the Caribbean as soon as they left Hogwarts, because everyone believed that they deserved a break after all the shite they'd been put through that year….
But of course someone like Albus Percival Jones who believed that he was a Machiavellian genius (even if he didn't have a clue who Machiavelli was) doesn't allow one setback to put an end to his plans, so he pretended to have a change of heart and congratulated Harry and the others on their excellent OWL results, saying that he was looking forward to their return to Hogwarts as NEWT level students next year. While he was putting on what he thought was a good face for them, he was desperately trying to convince his co-conspirators to bring the revival of the Triwizard Tournament (commonly known as the Death Challenge up until it was banned Two Centuries before) forward to the next school year, rather than the following year as they'd been working towards.
The plans Albus had been working on up until now were to get the Quidditch World Cup Final to be held in England this year, and have the Triwizard Tournament hosted at Hogwarts next year, showcasing the Boy-Who-Lived at both events to milk his fame for everything it was worth. Now that the other Harry Potter had taken just about everything from him though, he needed to speed up those plans. James Fleamont was still in firmly his pocket, so if he could get the son who had rejected him and stolen the fame and fortune of the Houses of Potter and Peverell from him and Hadrian killed off, leaving the way clear for Hadrian to claim their Houses… He was sure that James would be suitably grateful for all he'd done for him and would be willing to return what had been stolen from him…. This made it imperative to get both Henry Potter and the Triwizard Tournament to Hogwarts for the next school year….
Diverting suspicion onto the Death Eaters by staging something at the Quidditch World Cup Final should help keep Bones and other irritating people looking in the wrong direction…. In fact, he'd been hearing reports from the area where he 'suggested' Quirrell go last year to get the experience he needed with Dark Creatures so that he would encounter Tom's shade since Christmas which sounded like Tom's shade might have returned there… Perhaps it would be worth sending another servant to him to help speed up his return to Britain? Having their Lord return would surely stir up the Death Eaters and make them more active…. Yes! Fletcher was no real use to him at the moment and his constantly moaning about his fear of being arrested in case the DMLE found his Dark Mark was getting irritating. It was a shame to use up the last of his 'spies' for something as trivial as this, but they'd only ever been good for sending Tom's people after the ones who were becoming a problem for him anyway, and he would be able to get more when things started heating up.
It wouldn't be too difficult to convince Fletcher to go to the right part of Albania to dig up a suitably valuable object for him, once he heard 'valuable' he was bound to be begging him to let him go… Perhaps the Ravenclaw Diadem? That would be quite plausible actually because it was known that Helena Ravenclaw had fled to Albania after she stole it from her mother…. Yes, that was how he would play it, implant enough memories of the Tournament and Harry Potter to entice Tom in Fletcher's head and then offer him the chance to retrieve the Ravenclaw Diadem for him. That should get Tom back to Britain in time for him to try something in the Tournament, which would make it quite easy to pin the blame on him when Lord Potter was killed in the tournament…. Oh, how he wished he'd had that boy and his mother killed off when he had the chance in Eight One, they'd been nothing but trouble for him.
A/N: This one was a bit of a filler chapter, but necessary to follow through on the events of the previous chapter and set up the next one IMHO.
Yes folks, the Something-More-Than-Tri-Wizard-Death-Challenge is returning to a HP universe near you!
I realised that there was another change from canon that I didn't clarify. Bill Weasley is nearly two years older than he is in canon because he was conceived just before Arthur left Hogwarts in this version. Therefore Bill would have been born around January-February '69 instead of November '70 and around Four by the time Charlie was born, which meant that he had more time to bond with his Dad.
He's also about four years older that Dora, but that's much more appropriate IMHO than being with a self-pitying Woe-Is-Me-Werewolf who's thirteen years older than her when she's a fun loving girl in her late Teens/early Twenties. I always thought that that was the second worst pairing in canon.
NB: Yeah, I know I've used Xeno as Lucius's disowned older brother, with their real mother being Abraxus' Veela concubine, and the Dumbledores going back to their mother's name of Jones before, but they're devices that work for me.