Hogwarts One Half
Chapter Twenty
by Lionheart
I O I O I
Lucius Malfoy was a happy man, and came merrily down the halls of Hogwarts to his sister's room, swinging his cane on the way.
"Ah," he spotted her with a group of children, including her daughter, whom he smiled upon, then ignored. "I'm sure you'll have heard the news." He faked a moment of grief. "Tragic, isn't it, that so venerated a man could have gone so foul? Still, you've said as much in the news, that's Albus has become barely better than a Dark Lord. So it's for the best, I'm sure. Now it's time for congratulations. I wanted to be the first to tell you, so you'd hear the happy news from my own lips. I am going to be the new Headmaster, and will ensure that all your children get a proper education."
That 'all your children' was too obvious a mistake, when she only had one. It was obviously bait, but for what she dared not say. So Nodoka said nothing, just drew her daughter closer and waited for the other shoe to drop.
Lucius noted the gesture. "Ah, I see you caught the reference. Yes, I see no point in postponing the happy news." The former Death Eater feigned a concerned and fatherly gaze. "As Head of the Malfoy family I am responsible for all of its members, including my dear and yet wayward sister. You've had a child our of wedlock, 'Doka." He tsked. "Very shameful. And yet nothing that we can't rectify. As used goods you can't expect the same type of marriage I could have arranged for you in our youth, yet I've managed to find some poor but generous soul willing to take you, an old friend of yours as a matter of fact. So, as Head of our little family I've agreed for you to be wed to Severus Snape. I'm sure you'll be very happy together."
He gave her white, shocked face a very nasty smirk, then pretended concern. "What? Nothing to say? I was so sure you'd be overjoyed, but to be speechless? Why, that's even better than I anticipated. I shall have to tell Severus at once how his future bride is so overcome with joy that she nearly fainted. Why don't you girls get your Defense teacher to a couch, hmm? I believe she needs to sit down for a moment."
With a happy twirl of his cane and swirl of his cloak he set off marching to the dungeons.
"Ah, Severus. Good to be home?" The new Headmaster walked into the Potion Master's suite near the Slytherin common room, clearly expecting to be thanked.
"Your planning and execution were flawless, as ever." Snape replied with less of his usual severity, getting to the heart of the matter by addressing the real need - stroking his patron's ego. A man like Lucius Malfoy did not do favors without expecting thanks.
"Did you expect otherwise?" Lucius twinkled cunningly, seated himself without being asked and poured himself a large goblet of red wine, which he sniffed and raised. "A toast, to the happy future I see ahead for both of us!"
"Both of us?" Severus asked politely, restraining several of his worse impulses to do so, even as he poured himself a goblet from the same bottle and moved to match the toast.
"Of course!" Lucius, not a man to make so obvious a mistake as drinking something he'd just found in Snape's quarters without examining it first, dipped a rod of unicorn horn in his wine. Only when the indicator failed to reveal any poisons or potions did he sip the red vintage. "I've got the Wizengamot so bogged down in procedures they'll be years before they bring you to trial - years for the public to forget, then not to care when those charges are dropped or witnesses disappear... or forget. Don't you agree?"
Snape did his best to sneer in an approving way. "Obliviate is such a useful spell, isn't it?"
"I know enough to know that you couldn't have graduated Hogwarts without it. Expelled as a first year, was it? Or, you would have been if certain folks had recalled what happened to them," Lucius said with a direct and piercing gaze, settling down when Snape meekly failed to respond. Suddenly he was the gracious host again, setting down the barely tasted goblet and shoving it away. That one, brief touch of wine on his tongue assured him that the myth he'd once heard that certain potions could be brewed that not even a unicorn horn indicator could detect, was in reality quite true. He knew the vintage that bottle claimed to be, was intimately acquainted with its flavor, and that had tasted nothing like what it was purported to be. Although a man with less discriminating taste in wines would not have noticed a thing.
He admired that kind of cunning deviousness in a man, so long as that man knew his place and wasn't of a mind to challenge his betters.
"So I am to be resuming my classes." Snape filled the hole in this conversation. "I don't know whether to be relieved, or annoyed. Without school resources my little..." he paused as if to taste his tongue, then tried out the words. "Side business? Would grind to a halt, but I wouldn't be hip-deep in arrogant little brats, either."
Lucius sniffed, a form of chortle that showed his amusement. "And half the dark powders and potions in England would suddenly become unavailable, without you supplying them." He threw on an innocent face, saying softly, "And we can't have that, can we? Not when so many doors are opened by a judicious use of a little touch or dash here or there." He ended with a nasty smirk showing how much he reveled in his superiority over lesser beings, and revealed quite plainly just who had been using so many of those forbidden potions and powders that he couldn't afford a restriction on their availability.
Suddenly Lucius was standing, his cane back in hand as he moved to pause at the door. "Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the Deputy Headmistress had something to say about you getting all of your classes back. She'd already hired a replacement Potions teacher in the form of Cologne, who now holds two courses, and with you back on staff Minerva used her authority to arrange for the scheduling of classes. You only teach one day a week, my friend. The one day that Cologne woman goes down to the Ministry for God knows what. I still haven't gotten that Edgar fellow to say a word, although I have..." a nasty smirk came again, "other resources who should be able to inform me what he and Nodoka and Cologne are up to very shortly."
Lucius gave a very condescending gaze to Severus. "Interestingly enough, you'll teach only your own Slytherins. Perhaps you could make use of this opportunity to better our prospects for the future, Mm?"
Snape was tasting his own lips, and not liking the flavor. He spared a swift and nervous glance to his new patron. "I shall need more class time than that to cover for my activities. The consequences of discovery could be... dire, and I don't need people wondering what I am up to in my copious free time."
Lucius gave an amused facial twitch. "Then I shall arrange for you to take the other unclaimed course. Presently Filch is substituting for my dear younger sister when she takes a day off to go down to the Ministry - and I've learned enough to know this is her long-term schedule. You can take over her Defense class on Fridays, when she's busy meddling on my home grounds. You know? I even believe that's another day full of Slytherins. You'll have more opportunity to mold your House than any other Head in our lifetimes." Lucius finished these last words in honeyed tones that concealed venom. "Don't disappoint me, Severus."
"And McGonagall?" Snape snapped off the question quickly, before his patron could depart.
"Oh, did I forget to say?" Lucius paused at the door with an oily, self-satisfied grin. "As the new Headmaster, I am expected to perform discipline, and when necessary replace those school officers who displease me. Minerva made a mistake when she acted without asking my permission. So I had her removed from her post as Deputy Headmistress. She now is just a simple Transfiguration teacher, and Head of Gryffindor, of course. I don't want to wake those sleeping lions by upsetting them too much all at once. You ought to recall clearly how dangerous those who wear the red and gold can be when they get riled. So they get to keep their Head of House for now. We'll see if that needs changing later on."
Snape spoke slowly. "The charter requires that a male Headmaster have a female deputy and vice versa. So I know that your new assistant isn't going to be me." He meekly met his patron's eyes and carefully formed one syllable. "Who?"
His reply was an arrogant smirk, and a jaunty, "You shall know soon enough. After all, there is the small matter of the official who is to be appointed to watch over your probation, and I wouldn't want to keep my contacts waiting. Who knows who it might be if I let them decide these sort of things for themselves?"
As the door closed behind him, Lucius' voice carried back from the cold dungeon corridor, "Oh, and I let my sister know who her future husband is going to be. Either she goes along and is yours to do with as you please, or she resists, which is just as well, if not better. It ought to be interesting either way."
I O I O I
"Are you going to be alright, mom?"
"I'm not sure," Nodoka told her daughter as they helped to her a seat in her tower. "Lucius has just appeared to open another front. I was on the attacking side, now I've got to defend. It is not a welcome change, nor would I have selected him for my opponent."
"What's so scary about him?" Ukyo asked.
Nodoka chuckled dryly. "Lucius is a grand plotter. Moldyshorts wouldn't have been half as effective if he hadn't had my brother at his elbow whispering schemes. Between the two of them they'd often flummoxed Dumbledore, and that was before they'd inserted Snape as a double agent. With him in place supplying so much information, they became twice as effective and had in effect won that war before Moldy lost it in the upset when he attacked the Potters. They'd all but crushed the last resistance by then, even the Order members were going into hiding as not even Dumbledore's closest friends could be sure of their safety anymore. The only reason Lucius couldn't carry on in Voldemort's place was that Dark Lords are jealous and always on the watch for backstabbers, so he'd very carefully kept the reigns of power out of the hands of plotting subordinates. Moldy's Death Nibblers had conflicting interests that required him to coordinate them, and answered to no authority but his. Spies reported to Moldy alone, and so on. Like a spider in his web, Moldyshorts controlled every string. He carefully made sure he was central to everything, that nothing could go on among his followers without his awareness. Otherwise I'm sure my brother would've taken command in his absence."
Cologne was nodding. "Historically speaking, the worst threat any Dark Lord or Lady faces is from their own followers. More Slytherin uprisings have fallen to internal fighting than any other cause, and those are the ones that grew great enough to notice. Nothing is or can be said about the plots that die stillborn. But all their attempts that we know of have had serious infighting issues that weakened those they did not destroy."
Nodoka nodded at that input. "Yes. So, much as my brother would've liked to, Moldy's setup made him unable to step in and take over in his place when the Dork Lord got in a stupid accident and shot himself in the face with a killing curse."
"After bouncing it off Harry Potter." Ranko snickered.
"In magic you must always remember to stay on your toes. Nobody knows everything, and if you aren't prepared for the unexpected you'll never go very far in it. If he'd only been wary enough to duck when it came back at him he'd be ruling England now, and would have been for over ten years. A prophesied defeat of an enemy is all very well to talk about, but sometimes he is just stupid. Magic is too vast for anyone to be aware of all of the variables, so if you can't adapt you're done for, and that is why I fear my brother."
"Uh, you lost me, Sugar." Ukyo double-blinked. "You fear your brother because he can adapt? I thought anybody could do that."
"On a personal level, yes, you're right, though some are noticeably better at it than others. But I was thinking in terms of scheming and plotting. A plot can be a delicate thing, and to twist it at the wrong moment often brings the whole thing down. Dumbledore's style is the delicate art of crafting airy plots so thin that hardly anybody notices them, and that's put him at the top of wizarding government in Europe - no small achievement. But Moldyshorts had a different approach that favored more brute force. Tom Riddle is among the most powerful wizards Hogwarts has trained in a century, and he's added to that decades of self study. He is sufficiently powerful all alone that few could stand against him with any degree of success, and he enjoyed using that power personally, granting more of a 'Smash and Bash' style to his search for more and more power.
"My brother, on the other hand, is despite his overweening pride, more of a pragmatist. He is like me in that he takes the 'whatever works' approach to scheming, and is able to change gears at a whim to better suit his situation. Sometimes that is weaving a few airy, delicately crafted and hard to detect schemes, on other occasions he uses brute force, and still others he employs different methods. That makes him much harder to counter. As soon as you've uncovered one of Dumbledore's plots they fall apart easily enough, the tricky part is finding them, and once Snape was in place that was childishly easy. A pure 'Smash and Bash' plotter is simple enough to trip up, and finish off once they are down. But Lucius is more dangerous than either type alone because to him those are just tools in his bag, and he'll pick which one best fits each scenario. I earnestly believe that without his help Moldyshorts would've been dealt with by magical law enforcement in the first year or so of his open bid for power. But my brother kept him around and successful long enough for the fear to kick in, and in the end it was fear that was winning that war for him.
"In fact, from what Edgar has been telling me, my brother has been so successful plotting since he got the charges against him from the last war dropped that now he more or less controls the Ministry of Magic in Britain. It is still an uncertain control, subject to setbacks and upsets by others who still hold an influence. But his power there is still rapidly eclipsing Dumbledore's. Without my interference he probably could have ousted the Headmaster in another year or two. With it... well, I am afraid that I've accidentally advanced his position considerably. My attacks on Dumbledore shook loose alot of power and influence from his grasp, that my brother has been eagerly snatching up. And between the two, I'd far rather I had Dumbledore as my enemy."
Nodoka swallowed and then licked her lip thoughtfully. "The worst thing is, I think I've got them both. Dumbledore is still a powerful figure in government, and I'm afraid he and I aren't allies. In this arena, that makes us enemies. And I don't know what I could do at this point to change that. Any offer I made would sound insincere, nor do I think he'll make another. I was very inelegant when turning down his last offer of mutual support. I regret that now. If I'd only been more polite about it we could more easily reopen negotiations, but I fear that's not possible now. Too many bridges have been burned."
Ranko smacked her lips, making a sound to draw her mother's attention, then calmly replied, "Then build another."
Nodoka laughed. "I wish it were so easy. But as you say, I'll make an attempt. Even if I get turned down that evens us out on that score, and makes a future deal more possible."
"So, aren't you worried about Snape at all?" Hermione asked around her bookbag.
Cologne laughed. "Why should she be?"
"Well, he is supposed to be married to her..." the bookworm hedged uncomfortably.
Ranko's mother raised her head and shook it, overcoming her shock at the attack. "No, dear. I said my brother is a plotter. No matter what Snivellus may think, to Lucius he is just a pawn to be disposed of. A sweet few words to comfort him, a delay in his trial and a promise of aid, all of those cost my brother next to nothing because he has no intention of fulfilling that promise. It will be 'unavoidable', he will be 'outmaneuvered', or so he'll say, just in case some scrap of Snape survives his future and Lucius wants to salvage a bit of him later. But you can be absolutely sure that my brother is going to throw him to the wolves. He'll just wait for an appropriate time to come so he can do so for his own advantage. He'll even help turn Snape in so he can be on the winning side. He quietly did much the same during the end of the last war. No, what Lucius is planning to do here is fairly obvious. He threw a reprehensible thug in my face hoping that I would spend my time and efforts shooting him down when Snape is already certain of destruction all on his own. Thus, I would be wasting my time and attention to no purpose doing what was already going to happen anyway, and Lucky Lucy would be free and unfettered by opposition in doing something else. It's a fairly basic tactic, but it's been ages since he's seen me and I wasn't much of a schemer the last time. Before I left all I wanted was to be left alone. It was he who helped convince me that wasn't possible, when he assisted Voldemort's chosen man to 'recruit' me. I had a very nasty wake up call. But life on the run, and looking back on my memories of plots I'd never cared to be part of but knew about because of my proximity to Lucius, that taught me most of what I know now about scheming and manipulation. The trouble is, he is a practiced expert, while I am still a novice. So far a very lucky one, but still a novice all the same."
Ranko was wide-eyed. "So, my cousin, Draco (that was his name, right?). Is he going to be some super-plotter in the future. Is that something I have to guard against?"
She was answered by a dry chuckle. "No, Ranko dear, I don't think you'll have any trouble from Draco. While my acquaintance with him was fairly brief, I did get a good measure of your cousin. He certainly idolizes his father, but isn't half so intelligent. And trying to copy his father's methods without his father's sharp wits is a recipe for disaster. He'd do better as a simple thug, doing Smash and Bash. It's more suited to his personality and mental ability. Trying to be a copy of his father is like a pig admiring a swan and trying to fly. No matter how you paint him, he's just not suited for it."
"So Voldemort wasn't subtle, huh?" Tiny, eleven year old Ukyo put her hands on her hips and smirked.
"He could be, it was just not his natural inclination. His first impulse was toward grand and often poorly thought through, yet impressive, gestures like loosing a thousand year old basilisk in a school full of children during the year, when he wanted people to feel safe letting kids like him stay there over the summer. No, Tom was not ever pure 'Smash and Bash', but it was a definite leaning of his. However, he was certainly clever enough to seize on a good scheme proposed by others, sometimes modifying or adapting a plan on his own to make it less likely for the one suggesting it to have much control over the outcome. He was a very paranoid man concerning his underlings." Nodoka quipped primly.
"As I said before, a necessary trait for his position. Dark Lords who aren't wary about their underlings end up six feet under them." Cologne agreed. "It's a universal rule."
"Ah, mom?" Ranko ventured, gesturing to the rest of the school-age girls. "We've gotta go. There's a big meeting about the Allied Houses. Meet you after?"
"Sure, hon. Go and enjoy yourselves. Cologne and I have to talk anyway."
I O I O I
A large number of advanced students met and greeted each other in a freshly cleaned, yet unused classroom to report on their findings of the search for lost spells used by Gryffindor House.
A seventh-year Ravenclaw girl got up to summarize the efforts of her House. "Here is what we've managed to discover so far: Godric Gryffindor DID leave behind spells for pupils of his House to use, and by early reports they were the most significant by far of the legacies to students by any of the Founders. All of our research agrees on this, but none of them can tell us what they are. Apparently they were never written in a book, and those who learned them couldn't communicate them or write them down, due to some part of the process of acquiring them. Now, several of us went and asked some friendly ghosts, which is generally a very good habit to get into when you want to know some history, but they are being surprisingly close-mouthed about this. The paintings are the same. Often you can get tips from them on almost any issue, so the silence of both is remarkable, even unique. None of us Ravenclaws have ever, and I'd like to repeat EVER, found an issue either the paintings or the resident ghosts couldn't shed some light on. Here, they won't even discuss possibilities. They're hiding something, that's obvious. What isn't obvious is why."
A prominent Hufflepuff boy, also a seventh-year, rose to reveal his House's findings gotten by turning out all able members to systematically rake through the available sources of information. "We've discovered several ancient diaries, and to put those rambling mentions we found into a coherent summary we come up with this: Not all Gryffindor students knew all of those spells Godric left them, which is a departure from the way both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff have done things. We get all ours at entry, and yet Gryffindors do not. But there is more: Most of the references we've found refer to getting clues from ghosts and portraits. Our best guess is that Godric set up a giant treasure hunt, sort of a quest to prove a student was ready or worthy or whatever before they learned a spell, and that some charms could be learned early, and some later, as you mastered more material. There's even books of poetry on this, telling tales of Gryffindors peering in attics or answering rhymes though all seven of their years here. And most of the early books about Hogwarts talk about 'Eternally Questing' Gryffindors. Our conclusion is that, like we in Hufflepuff have this big mechanism of traditions built around incorporating our new students and training them up to be loyal and hard working, Gryffindor set up something to train his heirs to be brave, and that he'd used this whole castle as part of his maze for teaching bravery and courage, as well as a degree of cleverness - we do have to recall that he was best friends with Slytherin for a long while."
Ravenclaw was impressed that Hufflepuff's findings were at least on a level, if not more significant than theirs.
"I have something to add to that." Hermione surprised them all by standing up, a first year with something to say that older kids had not yet discovered.
At least, thought the Ravenclaws, she was one of theirs. Gryffindor was thinking the exact same thing, which was ironic, but comforting to them as they'd not had anything else to add and that was embarrassing.
"First you all must understand that Hogwarts wasn't always as it is now," The bushy-haired girl told the group. "About three hundred years ago large sections of it were sealed by a ruler named Oliver Cromwell, who was in control of England at the time, and was against magic and felt threatened by witches and wizards. He closed portions of Hogwarts that have never been recovered, and since they are under a Royal Seal, the spells preventing their use cannot be removed. Those of you who have read Hogwarts: A History know about the Rose Tower, which is the original DADA classroom dating back to the founding. There are other sealed portions as well, to which we no longer have access. Now what do you think happens when you take a treasure map and tear it up into little pieces, then seal some of those torn bits away? This is what occurred three hundred years ago. If Hogwarts is a maze, set up to teach Gryffindors how to cast unique spells, then what happens when someone like Cromwell bricks up half of those doors? It would've been nearly impossible to follow the clues correctly anymore."
"If the Rose Tower was a Defense classroom, then Gryffindors, who've always felt that was 'their subject', probably began the whole course of questing after spells and clues there." A Ravenclaw boy in the fourth year mused aloud.
"That doesn't explain why the ghosts and paintings are silent, though." A Ravenclaw girl responded.
" But it does! Don't you see?" Hermione interjected emotionally, having thought this through very carefully before presenting it. "What if you couldn't rely on enough older Gryffindors always having passed all of the tests so they could pass on those clues? You never could rely on that, because every so often you'd get a bad crop that wouldn't find them all, and then no one after them could gain mastery beyond what was passed down to them. The same with teachers. The only place where you could leave those clues and riddles without a risk of someone losing them during a bad generation would be to leave them in the care of the ghosts and paintings to tell to students who'd passed certain tests! So at some point, either because of sealed portions making the quests impossible or too confusing, or because of a Headmaster or Minister thinking that those spells were too dangerous to go on being allowed to students, someone in authority gave the order to the ghosts and paintings to stop giving out clues!"
"Wow." many of the students there agreed.
"So, we've got two obstacles before us." A Gryffindor Prefect of the sixth year mused. "In order to get back House Gryffindor's spells, we've got to break a Royal Seal on areas of Hogwarts so we've got the whole puzzle to play with instead of bits. Then we've got to convince the ghosts and paintings to talk again so we can get our clues to start hunting."
"I don't think we can do it," a Ravenclaw girl objected. "In five hundred years that we know of there's no record of any witch or wizard breaking a spell under Royal Seal. In order for those spells to be removed, the person holding the Seal has to first give permission, and the last magical Seal of Britain was lost hundreds of years ago. I don't think our world's best Charms experts could make another. Those secrets have been lost."
Everyone sat in gloom for a few minutes. Especially gloomy were the Gryffindors.
"So we'll never get those spells," someone gloomed despondently.
"Well," a Hufflepuff broke the silence. "On a related note, we've found more charms that Ravenclaw once had. Apparently, during a Goblin Rebellion seven hundred years ago they attacked Hogwarts and the oldest two years of students were drafted for defense. None survived, and the Goblins occupied the castle, but the lowest five years of students who had been barricaded in their dorms were saved by a counterattack two days later that drove out the goblins and freed the castle. Now unlike the Hufflepuff spells, which any third year (and, as Ranko and her friends proved, even some first years) student could cast, two of Ravenclaw's spells were NEWT level casting, and with all those NEWT students gone, killed by goblins, they didn't have anyone left to teach them to the next generation growing up. Nor did enough of the staff survive to rekindle them. But there were one or two families that kept them alive as family secrets until those lines died out, and using those fast reading charms Ravenclaw had already taught us, Hufflepuffs have gone through half of the moldy texts in the least used corners of the library and discovered, in some of those tomes willed to Hogwarts as part of dying family's estates, a charm book containing those spells."
"No one's looked at them since they arrived. They were just shelved to be sorted later, and later never arrived." Another Hufflepuff confirmed.
A Gryffindor whistled, and a Ravenclaw mumbled, "Now I know why they call you guys the House of Hard Workers."
"Thank you," the Hufflepuff Prefect acknowledged that as praise. "Now the three charms you already had were to read more swiftly, to retain what you read, and to increase comprehension by helping you believe what was being taught. The other two are even more versatile. One allows the user to hold more complex thoughts and concepts more easily and completely. We've already tried that one and it makes a world of difference in learning difficult subjects, almost like you're three times as smart without really being so. The other makes the subject a lightning calculator, able to do complex math with hardly any effort at all, once you've learned it in the first place, that is. But some of our muggleborns who went to muggle schools say that equations they had to use paper to work out before they can now do in their heads, no problem. So we went and tested, getting people who had done the first two charms to read some muggle math texts one of our Puffs had forgotten in an old school backpack and accidentally brought along, and it seems very easy to us. Also, our Arithmancy essays have gotten very simple too, since we started to apply the charms this morning. It's hardly any effort at all to do most of our calculations."
"This makes me wonder," a Ravenclaw third year mused. "What spells did Slytherin once have? And do they still have them?"
I O I O I
Several changes had occurred at Hogwarts after that first hectic week of frantic activity.
Out in Hagrid's stables, Nabiki's portrait was reading books which a newly enchanted stand flipped for her. This was better for both girls in many ways, as Nabiki got to hear her voice, which oddly soothed her sister also, and being intelligent, rather than a self reading book, her portrait responded to requests to skip a bit or go back to reread sections as the sisters desired. And the painted girl was fairly good at anticipating what their tastes called for.
Kasumi had grown a full sized unicorn horn, and her friends still brushed out her coat and mane twice a day, using charms to gather bales of fine, long golden hair. They gathered so much, they explained, because once this chance was gone there may never come another. There never were any before. So they gathered, not only a lifetime supply for themselves, but what they all hoped would be a family supply to serve their children for generations.
Besides, they had to get enough gold colored unicorn hair to go with the eventual silver and finally white, for when her coat changed colors - if things lasted that long. Everyone dreaded her staying cursed the two years it would take for her coat to change to silver, then white. But looking on the good side, Kasumi did enjoy the attention of her twice daily brushings.
Nodoka had surprised her whole study group, inviting them in for private fitting sessions, where she used Profile Charms she'd invented to show what an injured wizard should look like when whole (so she could know how best to rearrange tissue to erase large scars) and tweaked them a bit for sewing purposes, revealing what those girls would look like at their full, adult growth. She sized their protective garments to that (unfortunately naked) image, then shrank the clothes to fit the dreadfully embarrassed girls at their current, younger sizes. Shrinking charms didn't last forever, and would have to be redone each month, but they'd grow into their garments over time. Then they'd be fit for a lifetime.
While Ranko, Ukyo, Shampoo, Padma and Parvati, plus Kodachi, Ginny, Hermione, Luna, Azusa, Lavender and Susan all tried on their new layered silk undergarments, dragonhide teddies, and gorgeous gowns, Cologne was making them layered silk ninja outfits, close fitting dragonscale armor, and other combat accessories, putting all of that to soak in foul smelling baths of various magical oils to increase their protective value and flexibility. The dragonhide at least would fit like a second skin, invisibly and literally blending with their own until they'd almost certainly forget they wore it - which was fine, it would grow and adapt as their own skins did, shifting to always fit their bodies, so even if they got pregnant the armor would always be adjusting to accommodate them.
However, the greatest changes to the school had been upon Slytherin. They had received so many shocks in the period of a week that it was quite reasonable for them to be feeling a little shaken. That House had been rocked to its foundations more than once with the events that had transpired.
Slytherin had their Head of House arrested (more than once), also beaten bloody in front of their eyes after it had been revealed that he still had an unfulfilled Unbreakable Vow to force another into the service of Lord Voldemort.
With Snape dancing in and out of prison for a week, being relieved of his post and other sundry catastrophes occurring to him, he hadn't been much of a stabilizing influence on his favorite students as they'd had to deal with being exposed to their parents as Dark Witches and Wizards in training, had been subject to a police search, and many of them fined or arrested for hoarding Dark Arts artifacts or having cast Dark Arts spells.
The mass transfer of former Slytherin students to other schools was completely predictable. But it left behind those who didn't mind their dark reputation, had parents who supported a future of dark magic or just plain didn't care, and were more determined than ever to do what they liked and just get better about getting away with it in the future.
They had, in short, stripped that House of all those who weren't truly committed to evil.
With the moderate Slytherins gone, horrified by their treatment and looming bleak future and so fled to other schools, only the really extreme ones were left. However, with the recent arrests of some few of their older members, they were going to be sneaky about doing whatever it was they wanted to do.
Events had conspired, as a matter of fact, into purifying out the weak ones, the uncommitted and the mere dabblers, transforming that House into a student base Slytherin himself could have been proud of. One that was proud and ruthless and ambitious, without a care for how the rest of society thought of them except to spur them on to hiding how very rotten they were before outsiders and those who had authority to hurt them for cruel and wicked deeds.
It was the first, very vital Slytherin House in a long while, strong and united in their desire to do whatever they had to do to get more money and power, and determined to conceal how they did so from others.
Salazar Slytherin would have been so proud.
They still wanted to do awful things, they just wanted to continue getting away with them.
Of course, those changes to the Serpent House had some good fallout. Those who didn't particularly want to be the scourges of the wizarding world got out and were glad to do so. Ronald Weasley had pleaded and pleaded with his parents, expecting much greater resistance than he got, but after the scandals breaking earlier and their own ingrained dislike for the House he'd wound up in, had faced virtually no resistance in getting transferred to Beauxbatons in France, where the youngest boy found, to his great surprise, that he was no longer living in the shadow of his elder siblings. Using some of Molly's new salary and hiring bonus, he had brand new school supplies and clothes instead of hand-me-downs, and no one had even heard much of his family when he got there. It was quite a change from facing down the legacy of so many successful older siblings, and he felt certain that he could grow into his own man there. He had actually achieved his prime ambition by the transfer.
The only downside was learning how to speak French in under a week.
Percy, unusually enough, did not care for a change. With one of the Slytherin prefects gone, expelled for casting a cutting curse on Professor Malfoy's prize magical bull and destroying Snape's Potions classroom and injuring a whole year of Slytherin students as a direct result, young Percy had once again become a prefect, and was not willing to leave that position of power to go to another, more unfamiliar school where he'd have to start all over impressing teachers and becoming a leading figure among the student body.
Having had a taste of power, Percy found that he liked it. He liked it so much that he wanted more of it, and more and more of his attention had been focusing that way as the years went by. He fell in love with power and a pursuit of it had gradually been consuming him from the time he'd first discovered his taste for it.
Transferring him to Slytherin was only too appropriate, sadly enough, and the pureblood boy found too many who were willing to offer him power in return for his allegiance.
No, Percy had found his true place in Slytherin.
I O I O I
Author's Notes:
Sadly, I fear most people underestimate poor Lucius. Sure, he's a bastard, but he was able to bounce Albus 'I can't remember all of my titles' Dumbledore's wrinkly bottom out of Hogwarts once - something the Minister himself couldn't manage later.
Some people favor Umbridge for a villain. Really, she's easy to hate. But that's what makes her a poor choice for a long term antagonist. After she's done making everyone her enemy she's fairy easy to take down.
Lucius, at least makes for a clever antagonist. He makes people, important people, need him in ways such that they never want to give him up.
Lucius gets more power over time, not less.
