A Knut to Start the Revolution
Chapter 7

Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to J. K. Rowling.

The next day, Harry woke up, and continued his reading. He decided to slog through the second of three books Hermione had gotten on Occlumency. All three had the Hogwarts seal on them, with a prominent warning on the inner cover stating that they were from the Restricted Section and that they had better be returned when Madam Pince said so or else. He decided not to think about what sort of timed spells might be on a library book from the Restricted Section, and got on with his reading.

Hedwig had left the room around then, and why she did so became clear when she came back towards eleven o'clock. Hermione had owled over instructions on how to apply for a change of magical guardian, and it seemed that the process was designed to be as boring as possible – fill in birth information, current residence, current guardians, circumstances surrounding guardianship, reasons for desiring a change of guardian, and any special circumstances with respect to any of the above, and fill in said information in triplicate.

Harry eyed the rather thick packet with distaste, as he noted that there was to be one form for himself, one for the Ministry, and one for the current guardian. He got a cramp in his hand just looking at all the paperwork, and hoped that a duplication charm would alleviate some of his trouble. With that in mind, he read over Hermione's letter, and realised he'd forgotten to turn the page; sure enough, she had written that he could use a spell named 'Effingo stilus', to reproduce his handwriting on the documents, as they were not charmed against the use of that spell.

Before Harry got to work, however, he decided to clear the way by sending off the letter to Amelia Bones. Hedwig gladly scooped it up in her beak, and zoomed out the window, as he sat down and got to work filling out the forms.

Later on, Harry gave up halfway through, having gotten bogged down in the paperwork. He turned back to his Defence reading, and was absentmindedly practicing the wand movements for some advanced protective shields for most of the afternoon. He was thus a bit surprised when Hedwig returned close to suppertime. Madam Bones had replied.

Dear Mr Potter,

It comes as a bit of a surprise that you are petitioning for a change of guardian. In point of fact, your situation is a bit unusual. I have been doing some quiet investigating, and you seem to have slipped through a crack in the system.

Because you are a half-blood and not Muggleborn, your magical guardian was not automatically registered as Albus Dumbledore. You, in fact, have no magical guardian. This has not been an issue in the past as your Muggle guardians can act as proxy magical guardians, or when at Hogwarts, Albus has acted in loco parentis.

If you still wish to petition to have Remus Lupin officially named your guardian in the magical world, then please submit the appropriate forms. If you have not already obtained them, please request a Change of Guardian packet from the Ministry.

Sincerely,
Amelia Bones
Head, Department of Magical Law Enforcement

Harry was puzzled. Was this the same sort of flaw in the system that had kept him from undergoing some kind of basic orientation for Muggleborns? There had to be one, surely. For all intents and purposes he was one, so why had Dumbledore not sent McGonagall instead of Hagrid? The lovable half-giant had helped Harry as best he could, and Harry was certainly grateful for it, but Minerva McGonagall could have given him a more comprehensive overview of the wizarding world, and in particular what could be expected of him at Hogwarts.

Or, for that matter, some Ministry flunky could have come over and given him the basic once-over for what to expect at Hogwarts. Heaven knew if the Ministry had employees who could waste their time on cauldron bottom memos, they could spare the manpower to handle the ten to twenty Muggleborns that cropped up every year as they turned eleven years of age.

Ah well, it can't be changed now, he mused. He wanted an official connection to his father, somehow, even if it shamed him to realise that James had acted like a boorish prat on at least one occasion (and probably more). He wondered if Remus was patrolling that day, and looked out the bedroom window at the street. Sure enough, a nondescript, somewhat shabbily dressed man was ambling down the road, apparently unconcerned with anything except the fine summer weather. Harry rushed downstairs, and stuck his head out the front door to get Remus's attention.

Shortly after, the werewolf was in Harry's room again, and the latter sat on his bed while Lupin took the chair.

"Thanks for coming up," Harry said. "I've got a package here where I request a change of guardian, and… well, you can see how nasty it is."

The Marauder replied, "I can see that. Perhaps you'd like some help?"

"Yeah. That's sort of why I asked you to come up, but there's something else I wanted to ask you about. You see…" Harry sighed, "…Sirius gave me this at Christmastime."

He dug through his trunk and carefully lifted out the broken hand-mirror, along with the shards of glass that had scattered around it at the bottom.

Lupin's melancholy expression rankled, and Harry snapped defensively, "Look, I didn't mean to shatter the mirror, but I was so out of sorts, I'd promised myself—" He sighed. "Well, it doesn't matter now. The point is, I had a way to communicate with him and I didn't even use it!"

The werewolf spoke softly. "I had been meaning to ask you about this, as I have the mate to that mirror now. It was on Sirius's bedroom desk, and I found it when I briefly went into his bedroom after that horrible night. But anyway, perhaps we should get your mirror fixed. Then we have a way to communicate."

Harry nodded resignedly, and handed over the mirror frame plus the shards of glass.

The professor in Remus returned, as he began speaking in the familiar tone that Harry recalled from his third-year Defence classes.

"Now let's see – perhaps a simple Reparo will fix it, although I don't know if it will restore the charms James and Sirius put on it. So, let's give it a try."

Remus cast the spell, and the mirror was restored – at least to its function as a reflection of an image. He returned it to Harry and said, "All right. Now, I'll take my mirror and go outside your door briefly. Hold it in your hand, and we'll see if it works after I call your name."

Not wanting to get his hopes up too much, Harry nervously fiddled with the mirror as he watched the werewolf step outside the door. A few seconds later, a tinny, "Harry Potter!" could be heard, and he fumbled to respond. He held up his mirror, and he could see Lupin's careworn visage looking out at him. Harry couldn't help but grin at the opportunities this presented.

He called, "Could you come back inside now?"

The door opened, and the older man grinned.

"I'd forgotten how fun this could be. I borrowed this once from Sirius when James insisted he needed help during a detention. I believe it was sixth year, and Miner-ah, Professor McGonagall insisted that he do some homework for once in a detention instead of, as she put it, 'doing yet another brainless chore such as cleaning the floor of the Transfiguration classroom without magic'. Well, as luck would have it, James got stuck on one of his Charms assignments, and of course, Lily hadn't yet started going out with him so she couldn't tell him the answer, so he had to deal with me. I remember giving him a bit of a hard time about it, but the mirrors lent a bit of clandestine excitement to a simple homework assignment."

Harry laughed and said, "Hermione would have just huffed at Ron and told him to mind his own business, but I think she'd have given in eventually. She has a real helping-people thing, you know."

"I've met very few who can match her for sheer brainpower, Harry. She's simply a treasure, and I'm happy to see that you two are friends. They sometimes say the friends you make at Hogwarts are the ones that see you through the rest of your life, and I'm forced to admit that's true. I don't really know anyone else as well as I ever knew the other Marauders; even Tonks doesn't really come close as she's not Sirius's age."

Remus got the melancholy look on his face again, and Harry, with a bit of effort, shifted the topic. "Could you tell me about some more of the pranks you say my Dad and Sirius did?"

With understanding in his eyes, the werewolf began to spin the tale.

"Well, it was Halloween in first year, if memory serves, and we wanted to play a prank on the Slytherins. James had Sirius and Peter tell us when no teachers were looking, while James and I were to shatter one of the pumpkins hovering in the air. We'd filled them all with a bit of Shrinking Potion, so that if one broke it would spill over the students. In retrospect that was a pretty foolhardy thing to do, but I plead the usual childish exuberance.

"Anyway, so we tried to blow up a pumpkin. The original intent of this was to prank Severus, but as it turns out – I think you'll appreciate this, Harry – we aimed slightly wrong, and our Reductor curses ended up striking several pumpkins as the spells scattered off each other. Well, Bellatrix Black… Lestrange now, was under one of them, and the potion got all over her, shrinking her head down to the size of a snitch!"

Harry's initial tenseness at the mention of Snape and Lestrange vanished as he chuckled, and then began laughing uproariously at the notion of the two of them getting their heads shrunk in front of the entire school. Finally, he ran out, and he gasped for breath as he tried to avoid falling off the bed. He got an idea or two for the Weasley twins to work on, if he could get hold of them sometime during the summer. A head-shrinking potion of some kind could be a useful thing during a battle, although he wasn't entirely sure how to get the maximum impact out of it.

Hiding his thoughts at the applicability of pranks to wartime uses, he recovered himself and said, "Got any more good ones like that?"

Remus grinned and said, "Well, there was the time…"

/\/\/\

After a few more stories, Harry and Remus got down to the nitty-gritty of filing for a change of magical guardian, and the latter expressed his surprise at finding out that no magical guardian had been formally appointed. Harry wondered why he had been given the impression that Dumbledore was his official magical guardian, and concluded he had simply jumped to that notion with insufficient information.

Under the "special circumstances surrounding the reason for petition to change guardians" section, Harry emphatically pointed out that he was aware of the precautions to take when being around a werewolf during the full moon, and that he would be at Hogwarts for ten months out of the year in any case.

He tried to avoid making digs at that idiot Fudge, knowing he'd nail the man sooner or later anyway. Instead of owling off the Ministry form, Remus said, "I'll have Arthur deliver these directly to Madam Bones. That way there will be no tampering with this application, and we can keep it out of the press if you like."

Harry breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Thanks. It's not that I'm ashamed of you or anything, but you'd become a target if it were too widely known that you were my magical guardian, because Voldemort seems to like to get at me by getting through the people I know."

"Now, Harry, listen. None of us in the Order are stupid people. We all joined up knowing full well that we're putting ourselves on the front lines against Voldemort. So don't you think for one second that I'm any bigger of a target. I'm honoured that you want me to be a guardian to you, and hopefully I can make up for not being there for you in your Hogwarts years."

At the nod the younger wizard gave him, Remus continued. "Anyway, I'm afraid I have to go again. Now that we have the mirrors, call me any time – well, except perhaps at one in the morning."

The two grinned, and Harry mumbled, "Thanks for coming over."

Placing his hand on the boy's shoulder, the werewolf replied, "Don't feel that it's an imposition on me. I'm glad to have been able to spend some time with you. Alright?"

Harry nodded and embraced Remus briefly, then shyly withdrew from the hug. Harry saw the older man out the door, and then penned another brief missive to Amelia Bones.

Dear Madam Bones,

I have had the paperwork sent off. You can expect to see it at some point.

I am writing, however, to ask a favour of you. If a movement is not already afoot, can you please begin proceedings in the Wizengamot for a vote of no confidence in the Minister? I've been told I could petition before the Wizengamot for the removal of Minister Fudge, but the resulting vote requires sixty-six percent of the Wizengamot for successful removal.

However, if the Wizengamot convenes itself and votes no confidence, the requirement is less stringent owing to the likelihood that the situation is dire enough to not require a petitioner and you can get away with only needing fifty percent plus one of the Wizengamot to successfully remove Minister Fudge via a vote of non-confidence.

I have one final question; I know this may seem unusual, but it is my understanding that many of the pureblood families hold seats on the Wizengamot. If so, do the Potters have a seat, and can I assume it?

Sincerely,
Harry Potter.

Hedwig was in her element as she delivered the letter, charmed and sealed as the previous one had been, with all due speed to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Author Note:

The prank story that Remus relates here is reproduced from Sellea's Distant Memories, and has been used with her kind permission. It's a great HBP/TDH-canon-compliant Marauders-era fic. :)

Thanks go to Maddevillechilde for the beta reading of the original of this.