Oops, had to go back and make adjustments to the previous chapters sorry, I got the years mixed up for Dora and was thinking that she was still in Hogwarts when Harry started, but she wasn't.
NB: One thing that always aggravated me in the stories, how obvious a name was Remus Lupin for a werewolf? By the third book when he was introduced they were presumably meant for teenagers, surely that was an obvious insult to their intelligence? For that matter, the story line was that Remus was bitten as a small child because his father was outspoken against werewolves, if that was the case, why the hell would he ever call his son Remus Lupin (even if the family name was Lupin)?
Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.
By the time that Harry returned to Hogwarts, the other students had been moved into Nobles Tower, and Hermione had been moved into Harry's chambers. Harry wasn't at all put out by that, in fact he was quite happy, but asked how that had come about. It was Andi who answered him.
"We were here working on the plans for the most effective way to organise your tutoring around the regular classes you're thinking of doing, which Hermione pointed out will most likely only be Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures soon enough because as much as you two like and respect Professors McGonagall and Flitwick, you will be bored silly sitting in the first year classes when you've both done your NEWTS and got 'O's for most of them, when the Grey Lady came to us to say that Hogwarts was making the changes to the tower to cater for the new students moving in. She also said that Merlin had told them what he had seen in your heads, so now that the rest of us knew the truth about you, they could see no reason to separate you."
She stopped and smiled. "She said that she and Hogwarts had agreed that the two of you are sensible enough to know that your eleven year old bodies are too young for a physical relationship, so they could see no reason in withholding the comfort that you can give each other by being together."
Hermione blushed as she gave Harry a shy smile, which he realised was probably a replay of her reaction when the Grey Lady had said that. Andi smiled at her before she continued. "So Hogwarts made your chambers into a more suitable suite for you, with a private sitting room, dressing room and the like. I believe that it will be quite comfortable for the two of you and your four familiars. Hedwig has been moved down from the owlery and she, Fawkes, Bastet and Crookshanks will generally live in your sitting room."
She turned more serious as she looked at Harry. "I believe that you should consider telling your friends the whole truth about what happened so that they can understand this. The way that Hermione told us last night left no doubt in the minds of any of us who were in the Head Goblin's office about the facts of the matter and I expect that Augusta and Amelia will be sharing that with Neville and Susan, but the others will most probably be an on-going part of your lives and are better off knowing the truth. It will be safer for them when they stand beside you to face the trials ahead of you as we all know they will."
Harry and Hermione looked at each other, nodding in agreement and Hermione said. "I think we should tell Fred and George the truth about their family as well, do we know whether Arthur went to St Mungo's as we suggested?"
Andi nodded. "Yes, he did. He went straight there from the Wizengamot chamber and was understandably upset to find that what you warned him about in the note was true. He will be in there for a few days at least while they cleanse him of the potions and charms that he's been subjected to for so long. He would like to meet you to thank you for telling him… it is your decision but I believe it would be best to tell him the whole truth as well, Arthur is a good man and with what came to the houses of Weasley and Prewett yesterday, he and his sons will be able to give you valuable support in the battle that's in front of us."
Harry and Hermione nodded again, it would be good to have the Weasley men behind them.
When they asked, Andi said that St Mungo's had created a story about an unknown aliment to enforce a standing no visitors rule for Arthur, mainly to keep his wife away, but they had a way around that. Going to St Mungo's with the Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Arthur's boss, meant that they got past the restrictions without trouble.
With Amelia's support, Arthur accepted their story about how they knew about things that they shouldn't, and once he accepted where they had come from, they told him the painful truth about their interactions with his wife and her children. Finding out that three of his children apparently weren't his and that he'd been blindly following a man who had a large part in destroying his life was, of course, hard to take for Arthur, but the healers had already cleared him of enough of the potions and charms for the weak, befuddled man that his wife and Dumbledore had made him into to have disappeared.
Arthur readily agreed to an alliance with them, and to support what they were trying to do. He was confident that his sons would support that as well, but first he needed to talk to them and find a way to address the cancer in his family. Of course it was Hermione who came up with a solution for that. Her suggestion was simply to use his supposed ailment as an excuse to bring the entire family into St Mungo's for testing. All of the Weasley children could be put through the official inheritance tests with or without their knowledge, and they could be tested for potions and charms at the same time. They could put Molly through the potions and charms tests as well to confirm whether she had been acting of her own accord, or was compelled to do so by someone else. If she had been compelled to do it, the only likely suspect was Dumbledore, of course.
While they were here for the tests, Charlie and Bill could officially accept their positions as the Head of the Noble and Ancient House of Prewett and Heir to the Noble and Ancient House of Weasley respectively, and Charlie could assign Arthur as his Proxy, thereby unseating Dumbledore's minion who had been occupying the Prewett seat up until now. They made arrangements with St Mungo's to do the potions and charms tests, and to bring the goblins in to do the official inheritance tests (which Amelia would witness to ensure that there no question as to the veracity of the results).
With everything agreed, Gringott made the arrangements to bring Bill and Charlie in via Port Key immediately, because Bill was a curse breaker in Egypt for Gringotts and the goblins had a controlling interest in the dragon reserve in Romania where Charlie was working as well.
The testing showed no great surprises for Charlus and Bilius, they were indeed Arthur's sons and aside from some residual compulsions that had had little effect on them before they were cleared by St Mungo's healers, they were clean. They went through the process to formally accept their places as the Head and Heir of the Houses of Prewett and Weasley respectively and Charlie formally assigned his voting proxies to his father. Bill and Charlie agreed with their father's wish to support Harry and the others' efforts once they'd heard the story from Harry and Hermione, and they stayed with Sirius and Narcissa, helping clean up Black House, while they waited for the testing on the rest of the family to be done, and the inevitable trial.
Fredericus and Georgius were also proven to be Arthur's sons and had no more than ineffectual compulsions on them that the healers at St Mungo's cleared from them.
It was a different story with Percival, Ronald and Ginevra, as they proved to be the children of Barty Crouch Senior, Cornelius Fudge and Rufus Scrimgeour respectively. When they were tested for potions or compulsions though they showed no signs of either, so their behaviour was apparently purely the result of their mother's upbringing and their own natures.
When Molly was brought in for testing in regard to Arthur's 'ailment', she too was proven to be free of potions and compulsions, so her behaviour was purely due to her own nature.
Arthur only had a day to deal with his wife's actions before the trial date that Amelia had set up, and it was hard on him to have everything she had done to him and his family, her infidelity and the fact that he had been raising three other men's children as his own come out publicly in the Wizengamot as it did, but he was a stronger man now and he dealt with it head on. He gained a lot of respect in the Wizengamot and much of the Ministry from the noble way he handled the whole mess of his life and family being aired in front of everyone.
Percy, Ron and Ginny stood by their mother and tried to argue that the charges against her were lies, so they had obviously chosen their side.
Both Arthur and Charlie formally cast Percy, Ron and Ginny out of the Weasley and Prewett families and Charlie cast his mother out of the Prewett family after Arthur called for and received the dissolution of his marriage to Molly. All of this was before Molly was sentenced to twelve years in Azkaban as Molly No-Name for potioning Arthur to coerce him into marrying her, and then keep him under her control ever since. Under the old laws, three years was added to her sentence for her infidelity and having children to three other men while married to Arthur.
Five years were also added to Dumbledore's sentence for the illegal compulsions and memory charms he had cast on Arthur and his sons to further Molly's plans for them. No-one expected Dumbledore to survive the fifteen years in Azkaban he had already been sentenced to, but protocol required the additional sentence.
Fudge and Scrimgeour only escaped being charged themselves by testifying under Veritaserum that they had been unaware that Ron and Ginny were their children. It was presumed that Molly had been keeping that information to herself in hope of pulling it out when she really wanted something so they were let off the hook.
With their mother going to Azkaban and having been cast out of the Weasley family, Percy, Ron and Ginny were automatically made their fathers' wards and given their names. Their fathers would have to formally cast them out of their families to change this, but with the charges they'd just avoided still hanging over their heads, neither Fudge or Scrimgeour were about to do anything which might bring about a reversal of the decision, so they just accepted the situation and took them in.
Crouch was not in a position to cast Percy out of his family, as he was already in Azkaban for life. This had been the default sentence for his crimes of breaking Barty Junior out of Azkaban and then using the unforgivable Imperious curse on him for thirteen years. Barty Junior had been questioned under Veritaserum to provide evidence on his and his father's crimes, and then sentenced to the same Kiss and Veil fate as the other rabid Death Eaters.
Percy, Ron and Ginny's personal belongings were sent to their new homes, and Molly's personal things were sent to Crouch house as well. Percy could decide what to do with his mother's things, Arthur didn't really care what he did with them.
At Sirius's invitation and the elves assistance, Arthur moved into Black House with him and Narcissa after the trial, and Fred and George would live there when they came home from school as well. They also took Bill and Charlie's things to Black House because Arthur was selling the Burrow to close off that chapter of their lives.
Drowning his sorrows in Firewhiskey after the trial with Sirius, Narcissa and Amelia, and Bill and Charlie before they returned to Egypt and Romania respectively, Arthur suddenly shook his head and laughed. When they looked at him with a question about what was so amusing he said. "Harry and Hermione."
The questioning looks didn't change so he explained. "They've only been back in this world for just over a week, but they've turned it upside down!"
The others had to laugh at this, because it was true. Those two supposed children had taken down most of the Death Eater menace, along with Voldemort's other supporters. They had also exposed Albus Dumbledore as the monster that he was and exposed the cancer in Arthur's family as well. They hadn't defeated Voldemort as yet but they were well on the way to that, and everyone was confident that it would be done before the end of the week, by which time they would have achieved far more in two weeks than the so-called Leader of the Light had managed in over half a century. Yes, Harry and Hermione were certainly a force to be reckoned with!
After Bill and Charlie went back to work, and while he was finishing the treatments to purge the potions from his system, Arthur pitched in to help get Black House straightened out. The work was progressing well but there were invariably scuffles between the elves when Kreacher tried to stop the enthusiastic elves who came with Narcissa from changing things in the house but Sirius used his authority as Lord Black to force him to co-operate. Without that foul horcrux, Walburga Black's portrait or the other dark objects spread through the house and tainting the atmosphere though, Kreacher was improving day by day. He may never be quite so enthusiastic and bouncy as Harry's elf Dobby, but he was already far more polite and helpful than he'd ever been in Sirius's memory.
One incident that caused a big scene was when they tried to throw out the grisly display of elf heads that had been up on the wall, as Kreacher viewed this as dishonouring the elves who had faithfully served the House of Black. In the end the compromise reached was that Kreacher was given them to keep in his personal cubby, that way the others in the house were spared the grisly exhibition but Kreacher managed to hold onto something that was very important to him. They also gave him the Slytherin locket after it had been cleansed of Voldemort's soul fragment as a memento of his master Regulus, who had always been his favourite.
Turfing out the dark objects and other grisly objects that were reminders of what the House of Black used to be went a long way to turning Black House into a place to live in, but repainting the rooms and changing the furniture and rugs to lighter, brighter colours improved it even more.
One thing that Narcissa remained upset about was that Draco was refusing to change, insisting on cleaving to the teachings of his father. He even tried to hang onto the Malfoy name until he was bluntly told that the blot on their society that was the Malfoy family no longer existed and that the very name had been eradicated to allow them to be forgotten. To spare Narcissa more anguish, it was Sirius who told Draco that he would retain the Black family's name and support only if he opened his eyes and honestly renounced the Death Eater teachings and Pureblood bigotry of his father. Draco was left in no doubt by the Head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black that if he did not soon make an honest and visible attempt to change as required, he would be Draco No-Name and would have no support from anyone. The harsh reminder that he'd had everything done for him all of his life and didn't know how to do anything for himself made that thought quite daunting and not a little frightening for Draco.
It wasn't all doom and gloom though as with the extra students residing in it, Nobles Tower was becoming a happier place. Between battling Voldemort and his Death Eaters and dealing with Dumbledore and Molly Weasley's ruthless machinations to take everything they could from them and then toss them aside, both Harry and Hermione had been forced to grow up far too quickly in the last cycle. Being around adults (especially Alastor) all the time, they were usually serious, and dealing with the weighty matters that they were when they first arrived did not provide many opportunities for fun or happiness either. With nine other children in the Tower though, five of them eleven like Harry and Hermione's bodies, there was much more laughter and fun to be had.
Horace Slughorn had returned to Hogwarts as the Portions Master, and they were hearing mixed reports about the creepy but brilliant Potions Master from the ones who had attended his classes. Emmeline Vance and Hestia Jones had been located and had joined the family in Nobles Tower, starting the tutoring sessions that the others would be sharing with Harry and Hermione once things settled down.
Sirius and Narcissa (or Siri and Cissi as they insisted on being called) had also started giving tutoring sessions, but they tended to pop in and out from Black House. Once Emmeline and Hestia had moved into the tower, Andi moved back to their house with Ted, popping in and out to give tutoring sessions or deal with the business of Harry's houses.
Remus Lupin had been located, but he was staying at Black House until he got himself straightened out. While the last ten years hadn't been as hard for him as it had for Sirius, living rough and dealing with the monthly problem of being a werewolf had taken a lot out of him.
There were ten other non-human residents in the Nobles Tower family. As Hermione had requested, Barty Crouch's elf Winky had been rescued and bonded to her, while the ex-Malfoy elf Dobby had begged to be able to serve the great Harry Potter and Narcissa had released him to do so. Two of the senior house elves from Potter Manor, Tommy and Missy, had also moved in to look after the Master, his Mistress Hermione and their friends. Tommy and Missy would be teaching Harry, Hermione and the others Elf Magic.
The goblins were there because it was accepted that it would be a lengthy and difficult process to get one of the laws that Dumbledore and Fudge had had enacted repealed. This law stated that if the Head or Heir of a House died without a legal Heir before they reached their Majority, all assets of that house would default to the Ministry. It was an obvious attempt to grab the assets of rich houses, and as they didn't put it past Fudge and his supporters to make attempts to kill Harry and Hermione (given Umbridge had tried to kill Harry in the last cycle), Gringott had assigned six of the best warriors of the Goblin Nation to protect Harry, Hermione and their friends around the clock. Wherever Harry or Hermione went, Emmeline or Hestia, sometimes Andi and Cissi, and at least one of the goblins accompanied them. They were usually accompanied by Alastor and Dora, Sirius or Remus as well.
The goblins would also be teaching the students (and adults) the Goblin arts of Defence and Goblin Magic. While Harry, Hermione, Amelia and Alastor didn't turn a hair, the goblins were greatly amused to see some of the others obviously having trouble with their names, because to witches and wizards who are uncomfortable with goblins to start off with, the names that they chose for themselves when they proved themselves as warriors like Fangfist, Ironclaw and Trollbane were intimidating. Hroarr, Snorri and Ulfr's names didn't seem to worry them as much, though that may have been because they didn't know what they meant.
Ulfr had been selected by the Grand Chief to head up the hand picked goblin guard for this young human and his mate. At first he could not see why the Grand Chief would take such an interest in a human child, but it only took a few days of observing and listening to him to come to understand. Unlike most wizards, this child knew and respected the language and ways of the people, and he was a warrior. He may not have been fighting his current battles with a blade, but he was fighting great battles and defeating powerful foes nevertheless. Ulfr had also been in the Grand Chief's office when they met with the other humans, and the trials and feats of another life that this Harry had gone through from the age he was now were astounding, not to mention the monumental things he had had a large part in achieving here.
Most humans believed that they could fool goblins, but goblins at his level could see through most humans quite easily and he knew that Harry's mate, Hermione, had been telling the truth when she recounted his feats and said that she'd fight for him. Ulfr saw this in her eyes as well as Harry's. This was what made both of them worthy of his respect, and the Grand Chief's as well. After that night, Ulfr ensured that he accompanied them whenever they were likely to be in danger, so he had been with Harry when they went to recover that dark object from the snake house.
The way Harry had concentrated on the task and ignored the danger of the attacking snakes as he dove into the strange wards of the house to bring them down showed the courage of a true warrior, and so did the way he had gone into the ritual to remove the same type of dark soul piece as that object had held from himself. He had known that they could not offer him any surety that he would survive the ritual, that they hadn't been able to test what they were doing on a live subject before, but he just comforted his mate and then walked into the ritual chamber with his head held high. The ritual had tortured Harry, that was plain to see, but he didn't complain or beg for it to end, he was determined to get this thing out of him.
Yes, Ulfr would willingly stand by this human and give his life to protect him if needed, because he had earned this respect. That was something that could be said for very few humans. It certainly couldn't be said for the poor excuse of a wizard that they removed from the school just before they extracted the soul piece from Harry. The shade of the wizard who all of the wizarding kind had apparently feared had desperately tried to escape like the lowly pig it was transferred into. The scream as the shade was destroyed had been just as despairingly satisfying as the scream of the soul piece that was taken from Harry (and he presumed the others, but he hadn't been there when they were destroyed).
On the other hand, the wizard who had willingly offered to host that shade in return for empty promises from this Voldemort had shamefully begged for his life. Ulfr had witnessed the execution of the wizard by putting him through the veil of death after he was subjected to the Dementor's Kiss for the Grand Chief, but it was unsatisfying because the wizard had kept begging for his life right up until the dementor sucked his soul out. It was not a good way to die, it was a coward's death, but then that was what he was.
After Voldemort's shade, and they were confident Voldemort, was destroyed, more changes were ahead for the family, and especially Hogwarts. As expected, Minerva was confirmed as the Headmistress and Pomona Sprout was confirmed as the new Deputy Headmistress, so they had to organise for a new Transfiguration teacher and a new House Mistress or Master for Gryffindor. With great trepidation, Minerva brought in Sirius as the new Transfiguration teacher, while Madam Hooch took over from her as the House Mistress for Gryffindor (Minerva had, not unreasonably, applied the same argument to Sirius as Harry had to Slughorn). Now that Professor Quirrell had mysteriously disappeared, they also needed a new Defence teacher. In attempt to put the supposed curse on the position behind them, they dropped the 'Against the Dark Arts' from the name and moved the classroom when Minerva brought in Tom Hardy, an ex-Auror recommended by Amelia, to take on the position.
While they were making changes, Minerva banished the ghost Professor Binns from Hogwarts and brought in a renowned historian to teach more than the slanted, two hundred year old view of the Goblin Wars which was all that Binns had ever really taught. She also replaced the Pureblood wizard teaching Muggle Studies with a Muggleborn Witch and renamed the course to Muggle World Studies. She worked with the new teachers, interested parties and the Wizarding Examination Authority to totally revise both the History of Magic and Muggle Studies courses into something that actually would actually provide the students with real and useful information about the Magical and Muggle worlds.
Minerva also scrapped the ineffectual Divination course and dismissed Sybil Trelawney. She had always shared the opinion of Madam Marchbanks that the Divination course offered was a farce, and now that she knew that the primary reason Dumbledore had taken Trelawney on and kept her at Hogwarts for the past twelve years was to protect his precious prophecy (the one that had been used to destroy the Potters and the Longbottoms and Merlin knew how many others), well she wasn't going to allow the batty witch to waste any more of their students' time or continue to put silly ideas into their heads.
At Harry and Hermione's suggestion, she replaced Divination with a new Magical World Studies course that they quickly put together to teach students how to navigate the social and political aspects of Magical Britain, and to a lesser degree other Magical societies. Muggle World Studies and Magical World Studies were still the easy elective options, but they now offered the students something far more useful than the old Muggle Studies and Divination courses had.
The option was also added to allow students to choose self study for any of the electives and then sit the exams at the end of the year, so that they could avoid unnecessary class work if they knew the material. Some Pureblood parents tried to argue that this was just an attempt to give an advantage to the Muggleborn students, but they shut up when it was pointed out that Pureblood students should be able to take advantage of the same option for Magical World Studies if they knew the subject matter well enough, so neither side were being given an advantage.
Arrangements were made for any students who were serious about studying Divination to get occasional instruction from the centaurs in the Forbidden Forest while they continued it as a self study option, which would do far more for them than sitting in Trelawney's classroom would have.
When the Ministry got wind of the course changes at Hogwarts, they attempted to stop them, because when the students started to learn the real situation on these subjects, their parents started to pick up on it as well, and that led to people questioning what the Ministry was doing in many areas. Minister Fudge and his lackeys weren't dealing with someone with his own agenda for maintaining the status quo any more though. Minerva was determined to do the right thing by Hogwarts and its students, and with plenty of support, full knowledge of the Charter and rules for Hogwarts and the international education requirements of the International Confederation of Wizards, she had little trouble shooting the Ministry's arguments down.
Fudge's problems didn't stop at Hogwarts through, because many of the victims who had been awarded the titles and holdings taken from the Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters on the day that they were purged were Muggleborn, so for the first time, the Muggleborns had a voice in the Wizengamot, and the new Wizengamot members were now settling into their roles and making themselves heard. This meant that more and more people in the Wizengamot were questioning why whatever the Ministry was proposing promoted the interests of Purebloods over Half-Bloods and Muggleborns, and they were demanding explanations for the anti-Muggle and anti-magical creature proposals. Madam Marchbanks, as the Chief Witch, quickly stepped on anyone trying to shoot down the questions of the new Wizengamot members, which meant that the Ministry and traditional Pureblood factions were suddenly having a hard time in the Wizengamot.
Part of the problem for the traditionalists was that they had always presumed that they would be able to just continue on as they had been done for generations, but Harry and Hermione (especially Hermione) had thoroughly researched the rules of the Wizengamot and the Ministry and used their own rules against them to push whatever they were working for. One rule that they took advantage of was the one which stated that underage Lords, Ladies, Heirs or Heiresses had the right to sit in the Wizengamot with their Lord, Lady, Regent or Proxy so that they may learn the processes of the Wizengamot for when they assumed their position upon reaching their majority. With privacy charms, no-one could determine whether they were asking questions or giving instructions, though it was obvious to the brighter members of the Wizengamot that it was the latter when their Regents would raise points just after Lord Potter or Lady Granger 'asked' them something.
Harry and Hermione's knowledge of what had been done in the last cycle also allowed them to recognise much of what was being proposed and raise questions which would in turn make the new Muggleborn Wizengamot members question the intent of these proposals. This led to most of these proposals being shot down.
A more lucrative aspect of their knowledge of the coming events of the next seven and a half years was that it enabled them to make some killer investments, so that their side had the funds to do whatever they had a need for. The fortune that they had spent on that large order of trunks with extensive security charms and wards and floo connections had been recouped in no time at all.
Another thing that the traditionalists in the Wizengamot did not appreciate was how the newly assertive Lord Weasley had joined the votes of the greatly elevated Noble and Ancient Houses of Weasley and Prewett to those of the also elevated Houses of Potter, Prewett, Gryffindor, Slytherin, Black, Tonks, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Moody, Granger, Longbottom, Bones, McGonagall, Greengrass and Davis. With the Muggleborn houses and many of the neutral factions generally voting with this Potter Alliance as well, the traditionalists were losing nearly every time they went up against them.
Their world had been changing faster than it ever had before in the past two months and the traditionalists who had ruled this world up until now did not like these changes at all. Their children were even being expelled from Hogwarts and having their wands snapped just for attacks on their inferiors and lesser Half-Bloods and Muggleborns, as was their right, this would not be countenanced! They knew that the root of their problems was these two children who had suddenly nowburst onto the scene when they started at Hogwarts. That gave them a target to strike at to redress the problems of their world and many began planning to get rid of this blight on their world, hopefully without exposing themselves when they did so.
The Pureblood traditionalists were forming up behind the Minister for Magic, because he had been the first one to identify the threat and make any move against this new Dark Lord after he ripped apart and decimated the Pureblood ranks that day in the Wizengamot. They listened when Minister Fudge told them that this Dark Lord Potter had taken over their news standard, the Daily Prophet. The esteemed editor of the Prophet had been torn from his position and replaced by some puppet of Potter and his accomplices. The respected reporter Rita Skeeter had also disappeared, and they were saying she was killed by Potter and his followers for reporting the truth. The Minister was reportedly so worried about the Daily Prophet turning into nothing more than a propaganda rag for the Potter camp that he was canvassing support among the traditionalists to create a Ministry approved newspaper, the Official Herald.
He had also tried to get support to start a new school that would be free of the Potter Alliances's influence, citing the controversial changes being made by the new Headmistress who was part of this Alliance in the Wizengamot, but that idea was shot down, because even the traditionalists could see the benefits of many of the changes she was making and their children at Hogwarts were already reporting improvements. It was one thing to help fund a Ministry newspaper, but they had no interest in bankrupting themselves trying to fund a new school that had little chance of success, and even less of meeting the rising education standards of Hogwarts under its new Headmistress.
Another thing which shut down support for the Ministry school proposal was word that the changes currently being wrought at Hogwarts were helping the school regain the international recognition it had lost over the past few decades, and as many of the old families had holdings and connections on the Continent that they held onto so that they could leave Magical Britain if necessary, the prospect of having their children's education credentials recognised there was a major issue to them. That prospect wouldn't be available if their children went to a sub-standard Ministry run school.
At Hogwarts, the students and teachers were trying to accept the new world order. One of the big surprises was that Draco had been frightened enough by what Sirius said to him to change his ways.
Sirius's response to him when he promised to comply with the new rules of the House of Black was. "You can stay a Black so long as you live up to what it means to be a Black now. If you slip, you will be cast out and cut off."
Things were made easier for Draco by the fact that the two goons he had started the Hogwarts with, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, had both had had their wands snapped and been expelled when they tried to attack Harry after their fathers went through the Veil of Death for their crimes in the Death Eater purge. While Theodore Nott had also lost his father in the purge he hadn't reacted the same way, but they were keeping an eye on him as they suspected that he might be playing a smarter game.
Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Balstrode's fathers were both Voldemort supporters who had gone to Azkaban for what their crimes, but while Pansy had apparently aligned herself with Nott, Millicent seemed to have taken this as an opportunity to turn her life around.
Seeing the changes in Millicent led Harry, Hermione and some of the others to draw some unpleasant conclusions, because now that her father was no longer in a position to force a marriage on her, Millicent had totally changed her diet, behaviour and personality. It appeared that her overweight condition had been purely the result of intentional overeating because in less than two months her weight loss had been quite noticeable, and she had totally changed the rest of her appearance as well. Sirius, Andi and Cissi mentioned that her mother had been a beautiful woman before she died, and it appeared that Millicent now felt safe enough to uncover her own beauty. She was also proving to be quite a bit brighter than she had been letting anyone see when she first arrived at Hogwarts.
Unfortunately, the changes in Millicent caught the eye of more than their little group, and she attracted unwanted attention from some older students. One day Harry and Hermione were taking Bastet and Crookshanks outside to give them a run (with Hestia, Sirius, Ulfr and Snorri), and Bastet and Crookshanks suddenly took took off. By the time they caught up with them, they were clawing at the door of a disused classroom. A mental call from Harry had them move out of the way seconds before Sirius blasted in the door. The boy from their year and four older boys in the room all turned to fling curses at whoever it was coming in the door, but they were rather forcibly disarmed, because Harry and the others had seen Millicent spread over a desk all but naked and one of the boys jumping off of her as they came in.
Hermione and Hestia went to look after Millicent while Harry, Sirius and the goblins dealt with the boys. They used the communications mirrors that Sirius and Remus had revised and improved (they now used a private network like their trunk floos instead of being fixed connections between two mirrors) since the family had come back together to call Madam Pomfrey to come and see to Millicent. They then called Amelia to bring a team of Aurors to Hogwarts and Minerva to a) expect the Aurors and b) come and deal with the issue. The Headmistress's office was still the only location in Hogwarts that could be accessed via the regular floo network, so the Aurors had to come in via her office.
Once they had been questioned under Veritaserum, their memory's collected for pensieve review and the recent spells cast from their wands checked, the boys' wands were snapped and they were expelled before being taken away to be tried for what they had done. The three who were of age and the sixteen year old were all sent to Azkaban because they had been stopped in the process of raping the barely twelve year old head of a Noble and Ancient house (as the last member of the House of Bulstrode, the title had gone to Millicent after her father was convicted and sent to Azkaban for twenty five years, which was effectively Life in Azkaban). The penalties levied for her father's crimes had seriously reduced their house's worth and power, but in terms of severity of the charges, the fact that she was the underage Head of a Noble and Ancient House was all that was taken into account.
One of those boys had been the son of a Death Eater so there was nothing left of his house, but the remaining titles, holdings and wealth of the other three houses were taken from them and awarded to the House of Bulstrode in compensation for Millicent's ordeal, and this was enough to bring the worth and power of the House of Bulstrode up to over one and a half times what it had been before her father's trial.
Twelve year old Blaise Zabini was spared Azkaban, but taking a third of the wealthy Zabini family's holdings and worth in recompense for his part in the attack on Millicent more than doubled the House of Bulstrode's worth and votes again, so her future was secure. Blaise's mother sent him off to Beauxbatons as soon as the trial was done, as much in hope of having Magical Britain forget about him and what he did as because he'd been expelled from Hogwarts, but the Headmistress of Hogwarts felt honour bound to tell the Beauxbatons Headmistress the truth about what was coming into her school, so Zabini was closely watched.
As the Headmistress, Minerva had become Millicent's guardian when her father was sentenced to Azkaban and she had no living relatives to take responsibility for her, but when Minerva asked her what she wanted to do, Millicent had said that she just wanted to stay in Slytherin as a normal student, so she had allowed her to stay there. That was obviously no longer a suitable option, so Millicent was moved into Nobles Tower and began studying with the other students there. After she moved in and learned what they were trying to do, Millie accepted her titles and officially made Andi the Regent and Proxy for the House of Bulstrode, to further strengthen the Potter Alliance.
Three more Gryffindors had joined the group in the tower just after the nine moved in, Angelina Johnson, Katherine Bell and Lee Jordon, Fred and George's girlfriends and best friend.
Two other girls also started at Hogwarts and moved into the tower at the same time. One was Daphne Greengrass's younger sister Astoria, who'd just turned ten days before and so would have been two years behind Daphne normally. (The option to start students younger than eleven on merit at Hogwarts had always been there, but Dumbledore had buried it so that no-one could ever use it.) Harry, Hermione, Minerva, Andi and Sirius convinced their parents that Astoria would be much safer and progress much better if they allowed her to start early and go through school with Daphne and the others. Astoria was sorted into Slytherin as she had been in the last cycle, but she shared Daphne's room in the tower and studied with them.
The other girl was Luna Lovegood, who was turning eleven in February. Neither Harry or Hermione wanted to see Luna go through what she had in the last cycle again, and they didn't think that spending an extra year at home with no-one but her father would have done her any good either, so the same group went to the Lovegood home and talked Xenophilius into letting her start at Hogwarts a year early. Luna was sorted into Ravenclaw again, but she too lived in the tower and studied with the rest of family.
When they made the case for Luna, it appeared that they may have saved her father as well, because hearing what he had become and what that had done to Luna was a wakeup call for Xeno, and he regained his feet as a result of that. By the time they were in a position to force the editor of the Daily Prophet out, Xeno had pulled himself together enough to take over the paper and turn it into something worthwhile.
Between their 'regular' tutoring sessions and the extra tutoring sessions they had with Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout and Slughorn, the students from the tower were pushing through their courses at a lot faster rate than the rest of the students. Harry and Hermione were only attending some of the 'regular' sessions because they had already gone through all of this and they were just brushing up.
Neville, Sue, Padma, Daphne, Tracey, Millie, Astoria and Luna were pushing to get through years one, two and three in their first year so that they could go into Fourth year next year with Harry, Hermione, Cedric, Fred and George, Angelina, Katie and Lee. Katie was working through years two and three in one year to catch up as well. The group had all accepted that they'd have to work harder and work through the holidays for all of them to get through the final Third year exams by the end of the year but they regarded this as an acceptable trade-off.
The plan was for them all to go through years four and five and do their OWLs in their second year.
Penny would be completing her OWLs at the end of the year, and hopefully doing years six and seven and her NEWTs the next year. She was also hoping to work on her masteries in her second and third years.
Providing everything went to plan, the rest of them would do year six and seven and their NEWTs in their third year, though Harry and Hermione were hoping to get some of their OWLs out of the way in their first year and some of their NEWTs out of the way in their second year. They were also planning on working on their masteries in their second and third years, but they hadn't decided how many they would be trying for yet.
Harry and Hermione had also been working on their animagus transformations ever since they started at Hogwarts, and they'd already mastered their transformations. They knew from the last cycle that they could do the Animagus transformations, it just took time to go through the process, but they were shocked by the animagus forms they both took because last time they'd had wolf forms. This time, they both took Mngwa forms, when according to what everyone 'knew' about animagi, the forms taken could not be magical. Mngwas are definitely magical creatures though, and both Harry and Hermione could transform into either Mngwa form and then change into the other one at will.
Of course, everyone also 'knew' that metamorphmagi couldn't take animagus forms, but Dora had recognised the signs of a metamorphmagus in Harry, and had helped him master his metamorphmagus transformations a lot more quickly and easily than she had. In return, Harry had shared the fact that he had achieved the animagus transformations in the last cycle when he didn't realise that he was a metamophmagus, so Dora had gone through the steps of the animagus transformation with them and with her metamorphmagus talent she had already mastered her animagus transformations, taking the form of a lynx.
While they were challenging the accepted rules of who could perform an animagus transformation, they prodded Remus to go through the process as well, and while he hadn't mastered it as yet, he had achieved his first animagus transformation successfully, into a wolf of course. Penny, Cedric, Fred and George, Angelina and Lee had also jumped at the chance to try for animagus forms under Minerva and Sirius's supervision and like Remus they had all achieved their first transformations successfully. Penny's form was an owl while Angelina's was a falcon, Cedric's was a wolfhound, Fred and George's were twin red foxes and Lee's was a foxhound. The other students weren't advanced enough to attempt magic at that level yet.
Harry and Dora were not sure which transformation 'law' they had broken after that, because too little was known about the extremely rare inherited metamorphmagus talent, but they believed that it was the metamophmagi 'law'. The accepted 'laws' of magic stated that metamorphmagi could not take animal forms, they also stated that witches or wizards could not take more than one animagus form.
Once they had mastered both animagus and metamorphmagus transformations however, they discovered that they could transform into animal forms at will, just as they could change into other human forms at will. These were not normal wizarding animal transformations though, as they remained as themselves and had no need to fight for control with their animal minds.
The steps and feeling of both the animagus and metamorphmagus forms of transformation were similar, so they could not be certain which talent they were employing to do this, but the fact that these animal transformations took more time and concentration than their animagus transformations did lead them to believe that they were metamorphmagus transformations, as did the fact that they could not include their clothes and they appeared to have restrictions on the size of their animal forms. They both tried turning themselves into beetles like Rita Skeeter's animagus form, but ended up as giant beetles the size of a turtle, they also tried to turn themselves into dragons, but were no bigger than a hippogriff in that form, they took this to mean that they could not alter their size as much as an animagus could.
Harry and Dora discussed this and they believed that the inaccurate so-called 'laws' for metamorphmagi came about because the ones who showed the talent in the past hadn't had the ability to become animagi, so they just decided that it wasn't possible for metamorphmagi.
They had had other tasks that they needed to complete over the past couple of months too. The first was to dismantle the obstacles of the so-called 'protections' that had been placed around the Philosopher's Stone, and return the stone to Nicholas Flamel. The only pieces that the professors assisting them had no idea about were the riddle used for the potions challenge and how to extract the stone from the mirror. This was not a problem because Harry and Hermione had the memories of how they'd resolve these challenges easily. Luckily Quirrell hadn't brought the troll in for his obstacle yet, as he was to do that on Halloween.
It was considerably more difficult to track Nicolas Flamel down, as Dumbledore had never revealed Flamel's whereabouts to Harry, but between the minds of those who made up their family and the resources of the Grand Chief of the Goblin Nation, they managed. Nicholas and his wife Perenelle were shocked and horrified to hear that Albus Dumbledore had used something as precious and as potentially catastrophic as the Philosopher's stone as bait for Voldemort, and that he had done so without any care that they both would have surely died if it had been lost to Voldemort. They were also horrified to learn what a monster Dumbledore had proven to be, as they hadn't seen any sign of that in the time they'd known him.
The Flamels agreed that they needed to leave the country and disappear again, now that their identities were known in Magical Britain. They gifted what they had previously given to Dumbledore (including that marvellous pensieve) to Harry, and officially assigned the voting proxies in Britain for the Noble and Ancient House of Flamel to Andi to strengthen the position of the Potter Alliance in the Wizengamot before they disappeared, taking two of Sirius's communications mirrors with them to keep in touch.
After they'd left, Andi told Harry that they had also made him the Heir to the House of Flamel and sole beneficiary to the vast Flamel fortune, as they had seen the greatness and humanity in him. Harry wasn't really surprised when they refused to answer the call when he called them to ask them to take it all back. After arguing the matter for a while, he called for and accepted the ring of the Heir to the House of Flamel, as in this world it added to the status and power of the Potter Alliance.
The other thing that they had to deal with was rather more dangerous, getting rid of the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. The problem was that Harry didn't know whether it had been as crazy as it was when he faced it in the last cycle because of what Tom Riddle did when he returned, or he had already corrupted its mind fifty years before when he made it do his bidding and attack the Muggleborn in Hogwarts.
In Harry's mind, the basilisk was like a dragon, so if it still had its mind, he was hoping that it might be possible to send it away to live out its life as a free creature away from men and therefore remove the threat that it represented at Hogwarts.
As much as he hoped for that though, they had to plan for the eventuality of having to kill it, and while Harry remembered the statement about the roosters' crow being death to basilisks, he didn't relish the idea of going up against it with nothing more than a bloody rooster. The Sword of Gryffindor had definitely proven itself capable of killing the basilisk (with Fawkes' help), but he would like to be able do so without the near death experience from the basilisk venom this time if possible, so he asked Gringott whether other weapons existed in the Goblin Nation which might be capable of killing the basilisk.
Gringott paled as he watched Harry's final battle with the basilisk but he nodded. "We do have a weapon which should be suitable for this task, if it finds you worthy. I must warn you though, if the spear does not find you worthy, touching it would mean your death."
Harry just looked at him. "The Spear?"
Gringott nodded. "Yes, the Spear of Lugh."
Hermione was the one who reacted the most to that as she'd studied more history and mythology than anyone else there (except Gringott), so Harry looked at her with a question in his eye.
Hermione nodded. "If there is any truth to the legends, the Spear of Lugh is more powerful than the Sword of Gryffindor. Also, being a spear, you hopefully wouldn't need to put your arm in the basilisk's mouth and risk getting caught by its fang again."
Harry turned back to Gringott and bowed. "I thank you for your offer Grand Chief Gringott. May we see whether the Spear of Lugh will accept me?"
Gringott returned his bow. "It will be my honour to escort you Lord Potter, and you Lady Granger." With that, he led the way out of his office.
The vault that held the spear was one of the oldest vaults that were buried far below Gringotts, on the same level as the Potter, Peverell, Black, Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff vaults. Before he approached the spear, Gringott suggested that Harry call the Sword of Gryffindor to him, to show the spear who he was as it were. Harry just nodded and held up his hand to call the sword.
Ulfr was watching as Harry approached the spear with the Sword of Gryffindor in his hand, and the moment that the spear had judged him worthy was obvious to everyone in the vault, because the foreboding atmosphere suddenly vanished. Harry looked at Gringott, who nodded to say that this appeared to be a good sign, so he reached out to take it up. There was no doubt that the Spear of Lugh had accepted him as its master when the spearhead blazed for a moment and then settled down as Harry picked it up.
Before they left the vault, Gringott led them over to a stack of mirror faced shields. He explained that these had been meant for Gorgons, but perhaps they could help against the basilisk's gaze. After all, they didn't know whether the basilisk was immune to the effects of its own gaze.
They agreed with him and Harry shrunk the dozen shields to put them into Hermione's bag. He would have shrunk the Spear of Lugh and put it in his pocket, but it was resistant to magic, so he had to settle for disillusionment and notice-me-not charms on the spear.
When they got back to Hogwarts, Ulfr had Harry conjure a facsimile of the Spear of Lugh and put on his dragon skin armour, then took him to the training room for the first of a series of punishingly intensive training sessions in how to effectively use the spear and shield. Hermione joined them for this training, of course, as did Sirius, Remus, Alastor, Kingsley Shacklebolt and any of the goblin guards who weren't off escorting the others at the time. (Kingsley was Amelia's right hand man and a very capable warrior, so she insisted that he be the one who rounded out the twelve who would be going to Slytherin's chamber to deal with the basilisk. When Alastor supported this, Harry agreed.)
They spent a few days, training against transfigured basilisks (and even though these didn't have the killing gaze or venom of the real thing, both Andi and Poppy Pomfrey were put to work each night healing them of the injuries they'd accumulated). By the end of the third day, Ulfr decided that they were as good as they were going to get without months of training, so it was agreed that they would be going in the next day. No-one bothered trying to talk Hermione out of accompanying them to the chamber, because they knew that there was no way she was going to let Harry face the basilisk without her again. Hedwig was put out, as she was Harry's only familiar not participating in this task.
The next morning, six humans, six goblins, two Mngwas and a phoenix gathered in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom with Professors Flitwick and Hardy (the new Defence Professor) and then after talking to Myrtle briefly, Harry used parseltongue to open the entry to the pipe leading down to the tunnels and activate the stairs in the pipe. The professors wished them luck, because they would be staying there to keep everyone else out and try to deal with the basilisk if it somehow got past them, and then they headed on down. Harry, Hermione, Sirius and Remus changed into their animagus forms before they did so because it would be easier and their senses were far sharper in their animal forms.
As soon as they reached the bottom, Alastor and Kingsley cast spells to detect any sign of living organisms while Harry and the others in animagus form used their senses. When none of them detected anything, they headed down the tunnel. There was no question which way to go, because the tunnel floor in one direction obviously hadn't been disturbed in several centuries, while the layers of mud covering the floor in the other direction had been pushed to the sides of the tunnel by a very large serpent.
Alastor and Kingsley were casting light down the tunnel in front of them and they, along with the goblins, carried their mirrored shields on their arms, ready to cast the basilisk's killing gaze back at it. Whenever they came across a side tunnel, Alastor and Kingsley cast life detection spells up it while the others used their animal senses, but they were all clear.
About fifteen minutes down the tunnel, the four Mngwas saw a shape at the edge of the light, closely followed by Alastor's magical eye and Remus's wolf form. Harry and Hermione knew that it was nothing to worry about, but let Alastor cast the life detection spell to give himself peace of mind. When they reached the shape, it was the twenty five foot cast off basilisk skin that Harry had discovered here in the last cycle.
Ten minutes after that they came to the doors of the Chamber of Secrets. The four animagi changed back into their human forms then, taking their mirror shields and spears off of their backs and getting ready to enter the chamber. The eight who hadn't transformed all readied the silencing charms on the rooster cages hung from the back of their shields for a quick removal (just because they didn't want to rely on the roosters didn't mean that they weren't willing to use them if they did work).
After Harry used parseltongue to open the doors so they could enter the chamber, it was rather anticlimactic, really. Harry called for the basilisk in parseltongue and then tried to control it when it came, but whatever Riddle had done to it had already driven it mad and it immediately attacked them so they removed the silencing charms from the roosters' cages. When the basilisk heard the roosters crowing, it dropped dead, just as it had been written. Just to be sure, Harry thrust the Spear of Lugh up through its open mouth and into its brain, replicating how he'd killed it with the sword in the last cycle. Fawkes was happy that she hadn't needed to recreate the rescue that she had seen in Harry's memories from the last cycle.
Alastor and Kingsley cast spells to detect anything else living in the chamber, but there was nothing other than the twelve of them and the familiars, so they sealed up the chamber and returned to Hogwarts after letting the others know that they were OK. While the contents of the chamber were rightfully Harry's as the Head of the House of Slytherin, they would come back later to have the goblins harvest the basilisk carcass and whatever else Harry said could be sold off. Harry would take advice as to how the proceeds of that should be divided, but all of those present and Hogwarts would get a share of it.
When they returned to the tower, they took the Spear of Lugh and the Gorgon shields back to Gringotts and left their memories of the basilisk so that the experts could plan how to best harvest it.
With 'Slytherin's Monster' dealt with, they used Harry's memories of the chamber from the last cycle and Myrtle's testimony of how she died to clear Hagrid's name and get his expulsion overturned. On the family's advice, Hagrid agreed to let everything go if Hogwarts paid the costs to have all of the memory and compulsion charms and bindings that had been placed on him removed at St Mungo's, and assisted him in finishing his education so that he could get his qualifications. Andi, Alastor, Amelia, Augusta and Arthur ensured that this was approved by the Hogwarts Board and Hagrid began studying with the family.
A/N: Yes, I realise that Remus as an animagus has been in other fanfics, but I'd had the idea before I read those stories, I was just trying to find the right way to work it into the story. That's one thing that's always amused me, how many writers come to the same great (IMHO) ideas independently. That's actually part of my criteria for choosing which writers to read more extensively, as I enjoy reading stories from others who choose similar rabbit holes to what I do in my stories.