Trust Revoked

Disclaimer: The usual stuff. I still don't own anything of the largest children's book publishing and movie franchise in history (outside the Disney empire). Damn.

Warning: Course language and some nastiness. Dumbledore bashing.

Cornelius Fudge was trying desperately to figure out a way to cover his ass given the latest revelations. If nothing else, he could blame some of it on the previous administration, but having four marked death eaters among his security staff, and disillusioned at that as if he himself was trying to hide this fact from the wizarding world, it certainly did not look good for him at all.

As he was mulling over his future, or rather the lack of one, Minerva McGonagall and a bunch of others burst into the Headmaster's office. With the irate senior witch was Angus Filch, the caretaker, holding a cat which was howling, apparently in pain. Also in the group were Filius Flitwick, Hagrid and Madame Pomfrey the school medi-witch. Hagrid was carrying a limp naked body over his shoulder, which he lay down on the floor.

As this group arrived, Dumbledore's floo flared green and Amelia Bones, the head of the Department of Magical Law enforcement, stepped through with some of her more senior and trusted aurors. She looked at McGonagall, and said, "Minerva, you asked me to come and said it was very serious. Please explain!"

Fudge looked at the chief of his law enforcement department, and breathed a bit of a sigh of relief, as she apparently had come for something besides his own humiliation.

McGonagall gestured to Hagrid who laid the body on the floor. The Dark Mark on his left forearm was clearly visible to all.

Amelia and Albus Dumbledore gasped. Bones looked over at McGonagall and exclaimed, "But that's Peter Pettigrew!

Fudge shook his head. "That's impossible. Pettigrew is dead! He was murdered by Sirius Black!"

McGonagall looked at the politician in utter disgust. "Well, he's certainly dead. He is now anyway. Mrs. Norris," gesturing to the injured cat, "just killed him. Obviously Sirius Black did not kill him, and the Ministry throwing Black into Azkaban for it was a serious miscarriage of justice."

Bones looked at Minerva, and asked, "You say this cat killed him. How on earth could a cat kill a fully grown man?"

At this the aforesaid cat yowled, and Poppy Pomfrey aimed her wand at the animal and cast a mild stunner. She said, "Sorry about that, but I wasn't able to give her a pain-reducing potion."

Fudge asked, stupidly, "Why not? You're supposed to be the medi-witch. Why couldn't you give a simple potion to a dumb animal?"

Poppy looked at the Minister who clearly, in her mind, was the dumb one. She smiled slightly, and asked him "Have you ever tried to give medicine to a cat? Apparently not. Hagrid and I each needed a whole jar of scratch ointment! And that was just for trying to give her a pain reducer."

Smiling, Minerva turned to Bones, ignoring the Minster who as always was trying to seize control of the situation, and said, "You need to know that Pettigrew and two of his friends were animagi, as I am. His animal form was a rat, and in that form he has been hiding for the last ten years as Percy Weasley's pet. He has been sneaking around the castle like that for a couple years now. Anyway, Mrs. Norris, the cat, catches rats and tonight she caught and killed him in his rat body. Unfortunately for the poor creature, when he died he changed back into his human form while she still had her jaws locked on him. Her jaw was badly dislocated and she lost a couple of teeth as well."

The cat yowled again.

"Poppy did what she could for the moment, but this needed to be brought to the attention of the law and the Headmaster, immediately."

Turning to Dumbledore, McGonagall's face displayed her intense anger. As she turned, she felt a subtle weakening of the charms the castle provided the headmaster, and she no longer felt compelled to accept his authority. It seemed that the magic of the castle itself anticipated her anger and her subsequent actions.

"Albus, the castle's wards should have kept him out! During the Voldemort war, the wards were reinforced and adjusted so no one with a Dark Mark could enter. This was absolutely essential for the safety of the students!"

Dumbledore took on his self-important posture. "That part of the wards were removed after Harry Potter banished the Dark Lord, as they were deemed no longer necessary, and also to allow Severus Snape to join the staff."

McGonagall raged, "You mean you removed a critical safety measure so that your bloody spy could come in, and put the whole school in jeopardy just for him. Even knowing that all his Death Eater friends were being left loose in the world to wreak havoc! He's the worst teacher Hogwarts has ever had!"

"And as a spy, he has been completely useless! He has never given us any intelligence that allowed us or the aurors to stop any of their more recent attacks. We only get there after the attacks to count the bodies. Bloody useless as a spy, wouldn't you say!"

Albus put on his best 'hurt' look. "I trust Severus with my life. He is a fantastic teacher."

Minerva gasped in shock. "A fantastic teacher? Have you lost your fucking mind? The only fantasy here is your unquestioning belief in him! The man couldn't teach a pigeon to shit on a statue, and you dropped the wards so he could hide out in the castle. Albus, you know damned well that the Ministry let all the Death Eaters off with, at worst, a slap on the wrist, and you removed the most critical safety wards without even consulting me the Deputy Headmistress, or the rest of the senior staff! Is this what you are telling me?"

Dumbledore nodded. "It was for the Greater Goo…"

McGonagall interrupted his standard excuse. "Don't give me that Greater Good bullshit! You put the students and staff of this school at risk, so your pet spy could come in. And now, you brought that bloody stone into the castle, you say to keep it safe, but you are using it as bait to see if Voldemort's ghost will come after it. Is that because you still cling to that stupid prophecy?"

Dumbledore was frantically trying to wave Minerva into silence, and even tried to cast a Silencio spell at her, but Moody, Bones and Flitwick had just as quickly put up shields around the irate witch. It was now obvious that the castle no longer accepted his overriding authority.

Minerva shook her head and continued her rant. "Albus, that prophecy was given to you by a drunken charlatan who was so desperate for the job that, if you had not bought her babbling about the Dark Lord, would probably have jumped your bones and banged you until your eyes rolled back in our head! Prophecy be damned, and you made Harry Potter's life a living hell because of it!

Minerva turned and pointed at Hagrid. "And Albus, this man has worshipped you for years, and you have not gotten his expulsion revoked, even though you knew the truth! You knew! He was innocent."

Dumbledore said meekly, "With his heritage, I didn't think that I could ever get it through the Board or the Ministry."

McGonagall gasped. "You didn't think it would go through? Did you try? No! So in all the years that you have been Headmaster, Supreme Mugwump and Chief Warlock all together, you didn't think you could get it through, even for a man who has been your most loyal devotee? You fucking idiot, you didn't even try!"

She straightened up and extended her arms. Dumbledore knew what she was about the do, and waved his wand, but the shields still held, as the others poured power into them.

McGonagall declaimed "I call on the power of the Founders, and the Magic of Hogwarts, and I declare that Albus Dumbledore has proven himself unworthy to be Headmaster of this School. I call on the school to remove his authority over the School and its Wards!"

The group felt a surge of magic, as the wards reset themselves. McGonagall felt a surge of power entering her body, and Fawkes the phoenix flew over to land on her shoulder as the school accepted her as its only lawful authority. Dumbledore sagged in his chair.

She looked at the firebird, and scowled. "Thank you Fawkes, but I don't want the bloody job. I want to teach, not run this place!"

Amelia Bones spoke up softly. "You know, Alastor Moody was a very good teacher and administrator when I was at the academy. And I happen to know he is currently unemployed."

Trilling a joyous song, the phoenix flew over and landed on Moody's shoulders, and rubbed its head on his gristled cheek. He growled, and said 'Ami, you've been trying to get me back on the force for years, and now you want to stick me with this job. Ah well. I suppose I could do it until they find somebody who actually wants it."

While this was going on, Poppy Pomfrey had run over to Dumbledore, who had collapsed into his office chair. As the power of the castle left him, he visibly changed from looking like he was in his 90's to his actual hundred and a half years. The years had not been kind to him, and it was obvious that he was now feeling every minute of them.

Moody shook his head. "You know, he has been slipping badly the last few years. I thought it might be his obsession with the Potter boy, but I see it might be his age too. My always questioning him about who he was, which seemed to be me being even more paranoid than I know I am, was my way to check if he still had his marbles. Minerva, he was failing. Fading slowly but surely. He did a lot in his life, but he is old."

Minerva smiled, "Mad-eye, I am sorry I had to do that to him, but it was necessary. Thank you for taking on the position, even if it is only for a while. But I have to ask, why did you quit the DMLE? You were at the top, and an excellent teacher."

Moody sat and tapped his false leg, and pointed his wand at Fudge, who was sitting with his mouth hanging open at all of what he had just witnessed. "At the end of the last war, the administrators were all getting rich on bribes we weren't being allowed to investigate, from people we were not allowed to prosecute, or go after, and they let those killers walk free. I felt I didn't have any more body parts to spare, certainly not for the Ministry pay scale anyway, while they were all getting rich and letting loose those who had murdered my friends. I decided, no damned way I was going to put myself at any more risk for Them!"

Lucius Malfoy was not having a good day. Instead of being instantly shown into the Minister's office as had been his right, he was told that the Minster was too busy to see him that day, or indeed for the rest of the week.

As he left Fudge's office suite fuming, he noticed that his carefully installed personnel were not where they should be, and all of the aurors he could see were the ones loyal to Bones and the blood-traitors, and not his own men. He was about to storm down to Bone's office and lay down the law to her, when Dobby his house elf appeared at his feet.

"Master, you must be coming home. Master's special friends are there and wanting him. Mistress is entertaining master's friends, but she is not enjoying it."

Malfoy knew the kind of entertainment his fellow Death Eaters preferred as he had been part of their festivities so many times himself, and had organised many of them, so he quickly moved to the apparition point and an eye-blink later arrived in the foyer of his mansion. He was the head of their organization, and it sounded like he was going to have to assert his authority.

In the large parlour, there were more than twenty Death Eaters, in full regalia. His wife was, as Dobby had said, entertaining them and not enjoying it, giving how this group liked to be entertained. Her unclothed body was levitated over the large table, turning slowly in the air, and her naked back and buttocks showed recent acquaintance with the cat-of-nine-tails that was being passed from person to person.

As Malfoy moved into the room demanding to know what the hell they thought they were doing, there was a slight shifting of the group so that they were surrounding him. It became impossible to keep his eyes on them all. He recognised the execution circle as it formed.

Yaxley smiled and said, "Lucius, you have been a naughty boy. You were supposed to be keeping all the gold to further the Dark Lord's program, and here we see you living in luxury while most of us have to work for a living. That doesn't seem to be an option anymore, because of your failing us. And when you fail us, you fail our Lord too."

"And now, the boys you had tailing Fudge have all been caught, and instead of keeping their mouths shut, are singing like birds. You were supposed to keep Bones off our backs, and most of our people were just detained for questioning. Only this time, I hear they are breaking out the veritaserum, in large doses." Gesturing to the group, he continued, "Those of us loyal followers of our Lord just got away in time."

"And we hear from Hogwarts that your son is going soft. These days, he is turning into a blood-traitor! This is not acceptable! So we have decided that you need to give us the Dark Lord's treasures and his money, and we will look after it. We don't think that you're one of us any more!"

Lucius stood tall. "How dare you speak to me this way? I have been working day and night to bend the Ministry to the Dark Lord's policies and programs. We need to use those galleons to keep our people free and effective. If we dole it out, the Dark Lord's whole plan falls apart!"

McNair shook his head. "Lucius, you may have been handing out the bribes, but from what we see today, it's not working. You see, our problem is that we don't trust you anymore. We can't trust you anymore."

Lucius knew well what the next step would be when the Death Eaters did not trust you. He had often been the one leading the executions.

Malfoy's wand dropped into his hand as the ring of Death Eaters raised their wands and shouted the killing curse. Malfoy had the presence of mind to drop to the ground and all but one of the curses flew over his head, hitting all of the other Death Eaters, proving once again that Malfoy had been one of the brighter ones.

Unfortunately for Malfoy, McNair had been the executioner of magical beasts, and knew how they would try to avoid his axe. His wand and his killing curse followed Malfoy to the ground, and the curse was on its way by the time Flint's curse hit him, and the executioner received what he had given out so many times.

As the Death Eaters finally ate their fair share of what they had dished out to so many others, the levitation spell holding Narcissa in the air ceased, and she dropped painfully onto the large table.

Dobby and the other house elves popped into the room, and looked at the bodies of the most feared group in Britain for the last twenty years or so. He looked down at the wizard who had mistreated him and his kind for years, as had his father before him, and then turned to the witch who had always treated his folk with contempt, but never brutality.

Dobby went up to Lady Malfoy as she lay groaning on the table, and smiling asked, "Will Mistress be wanting us to clean up the room before dinner?"