In the summer of 1994, Nymphadora Tonks receives extra training from Alastor Moody before he begins his year as DADA professor at Hogwarts. The training culminates in a major change of events in late August. Changes cascade from this major change across the rest of 1994. Six chapters are planned. No ships and not really any Harry.
Kittens &&^^&& SCENE CHANGEWalking toward the elevators in the Ministry Atrium, Auror Nymphadora Tonks was eager to report for duty in the new year. She had rotated out of the Hogwarts cadre for the winter term and was glad she'd not be in the castle during the coldest months of the year.
'Or worse, traipsing around Hogsmeade in the snow chasing teenagers,' she thought. 'And I'm not on the Azkaban list either. Ugh, what if I get minister's detail – Scrimgeour is better than Fudge, but I don't want to deal with politicians all day. There'll be offers of bribes for information too.'
The elevator opened on the proper floor and Dora stepped forward, nodding to different familiar faces before coming to the Head Auror's office. The new Head Auror was Franklin Moody, Alastor's youngest son. The younger Moody wasn't scarred like his father, but he did have the same attitude about situation awareness and bluntness.
"Tonks, you've been a complete waste of time for the DMLE!" the man declared the instant she stepped into the room.
"Sir?" Tonks asked before Moody handed her a single sheet of paper and frowned as the young witch's face lighted up.
"Well? Why are you standing there? Go on and don't worry; the enchantments mean I can't say anything to anyone. My father will hunt you down someday and yell, but someone will have told you how to deal with those situations."
"Thank you, sir," Nymphadora Tonks said before she turned and tried to casually walk back to the elevators. She was to report to Unspeakable23 without delay. Standing at her office door, Amelia Bones watched a promising Auror head out for a different career. There'd be a few weeks of mixed service while everyone was fed a backstory of some sort before Auror Tonks vanished and became an Unspeakable. By the end of winter, there'd be a new Unspeakable.
Minister Scrimgeour would not be happy – he'd hoped to marry the girl to his eldest son and secure the Black family metamorphic genes into the Ogden family line. Amelia smirked and thought, 'Dora would have made mincemeat of Carter Scrimgeour the first time she met him. That would have never worked.'
&&^^&& SCENE CHANGE / BACK TO SCHOOL 2 January 1995It was a cheerful Harry Potter who stepped through the floo in the train station with his godfather, Lord Sirius Black following him through the flames. People stepped back as the pair walked from the receiving room onto the platform.
"Now, do you have everything?" Sirius asked, attempting to portray an adult for a moment.
Harry shook his head and sighed, "I forgot and left the girls in bikinis on the beaches. I'm sure you can go back and find them again, can't you?"
Lord Black laughed aloud and hugged the teenager. "I will go back to the beaches in a few days. But you enjoyed your Christmas in Hawaii I think."
"I did!" Harry agreed. "But now I'm back to the books and listening to McGonagall drone on and on about transfiguration of seashells into stain glass goblets for Ogden's finest."
"Hey, I sent her a bottle of Fire Whiskey for Christmas to get you on her good side!" Sirius reminded him. "Don't forget to tell her I asked about her cat."
Harry smirked, "I'll ask about her grandchildren. No young man dares ask about the cat. You're just trying to get me in detention my first day back."
"True, true," admitted Sirius. "But what's a godfather to do when his teenage godson is a monk?"
Sorry to leave his godfather after their time together, Harry asked, "Will you come for the second task in February?"
"Of course," Sirius said. "Wouldn't miss that exciting show."
"Is it going to be exciting?" asked Harry. "The dragons were so cool in the First Task. Everyone is still talking about the dragons over a month later."
All during their vacation, his godfather dropped hints that he'd been informed of the events remaining in the tournament since becoming a member of the Board of Governors. There'd been one loud argument over the floo with Albus Dumbledore before they left London for Hawaii, but Sirius deflected all questions about the tournament and the conversation. Once they arrived on the islands, Harry's attention was captured by the scenery, beaches, bikinis, and fun.
Sirius grinned, "From what I heard, it'll be totally unlike anything you've ever seen before."
SCENE BREAK / The Second TaskShivering in the cold despite warming charms, Harry Potter muttered curses at his godfather who continued talking with Minister Scrimgeour. With a negligent wave, Sirius cast a warming charm that heated up the entire area around Harry and his friends.
"What was that spell?" asked Hermione. "Was that another Black Family secret charm?"
Luna laughed and replied, "That was just an overpowered warming charm. I think Sirius hoped Harry would figure out to push more of his magic into a simple spell and make it more effective."
"Huh?" asked Harry before his eyes suddenly grew brighter. "So, if I just want more magic in a spell, I can push it out."
Neville Longbottom, glad to be warm finally, asked, "Who said this was exciting? We've been watching Black Lake for an hour on the coldest day in February. My plants are more fun to watch! At least they grow!"
Harry said, "just think how cold that water is? Cedric, Fleur, and Victor all jumped in and swam to the bottom of the lake to recover their most prized possession."
"When Dumbledore planned the event, it was supposed to be a person but Harry's godfather pitched a fit with Dumbledore and the other judges. He got the minister and the DMLE involved, and they demanded that the tournament use a thing, not a person," Luna explained. "Daddy has an article ready to run tomorrow in the Quibbler and Daily Prophet.
"The Daily Prophet?" asked Hermione.
"Oh yes, they pay Daddy for his articles that expose mundane corruption in the Ministry."
"Wait!" Harry exclaimed. "Hermione, you've been dating Victor. That could've been you down there instead of Victor's new broom!"
"I hate cold water!" Hermione declared. "And his broom cost so much money! I hope nothing happens to this one."
Harry grimaced. "How much longer?"
"Ten minutes at least," Luna replied.
"So much for excitement in the second task," said Harry, the boredom evident in his voice.
Neville grinned, "We could always invite Ron over with his chess board."
SCENE BREAK Third TaskWarned by his godfather about the specifics of the upcoming Third Task, Harry Potter decided to change things for the audience. Luna and Neville proved excellent sounding boards for ideas and brainstorming. Hermione still had problems with the idea of not following the rules as set out by the Headmaster and left their study group.
"You'll all get expelled!" she warned them when she left them in the deserted Herbology classroom.
Neville watched the witch leave and waited to make certain she'd really left before he cast the charm to make certain there weren't any listening charms left around the room. "Think she'll go tattle to the headmaster or Miss Kitty?"
Luna chuckled. "No, Professor McGonagall gave Hermione a tongue lashing when she told on us plotting to prank the headmaster with the snake whiskers charm."
"I still think that would have been great if his beard turned into fifty snakes in front of the Board of Governors," Neville said.
"Yeah, but Sirius would have laughed and told 'em it was me who did it," Harry said. "We'll use it someday, just not this year."
"So, what are you thinking about for the Third Task?
"Hagrid's going to have lots of dangerous animals in this maze they've planted on the Quidditch Pitch. The champions are going to get eaten but if no one sees it, they won't protest or yell at Dumbledore."
"How do we show everyone what's going on?"
"I want to use enchanted mirrors that will show us what's going on."
Luna seemed to be thinking very hard for a minute before she said, "Okay, I'm in, but you have to agree not to use these magic mirrors to spy on the girls in their dorm rooms. That's something your godfather could never get to work right, and he never figured out that your Mum cursed the mirrors to display horror shows to Sirius."
"Horror shows?"
"Sirius saw things in Dumbledore and Miss Kitty's rooms that left him blind for a couple of hours. He swore to never ever try magic mirrors again," Luna said while Neville and Harry looked sick.
"Uh…maybe this is a bad idea."
"Nonsense, you and Neville are honorable young wizards."
"Luna, we're still men…uh…young men."
"Good! I look forward to the three of us dating in a couple more years," Luna declared. "Now, what do we want the mirrors to do?"
Both boys were speechless for a minute but then began talking about the mirrors. After deciding they wanted three mirrors to display over the maze and follow each champion through the twists and turns while dodging the dangerous creatures, Luna frowned and said, "Harry, write to your new cousin, Nymphadora Tonks about levitation charms and expanding mirrors that can be tagged to follow a person."
"She's an Auror. Would she know about those things?"
Luna grinned. "Your cousin was invited to join the Unspeakables back in January. She's Unspeakable99 now but still a trainee. Tell her I said hello and ask for help."
"Luna, do you want the Department of Mysteries to know you can see stuff?" asked Neville.
Smiling at Neville's concern, Luna replied, "I might need an ally in the department someday and Harry's cousin is better than anyone else. Besides, I like the number 99 very much."
SCENE BREAK
The evening of the third task arrived with the trio of champions prepared and nervous. Another trio consisting of two wizards and a witch was equally nervous but also prepared. As Victor, Cedric, and Fleur stepped into the maze, a large mirror appeared above their heads as they ran along the narrow pathways among the hedges. The audience responded with ooh's and ah's as they watched Cedric deal with a bogart, Fleur destroy a blasted end skrewt Hagrid had bred, and Victor deal with a young Acromantula.
While Dumbledore attempted to take credit for the mirrors, the audience screamed when Fleur was grabbed up by a minotaur and thrown out of the maze. She landed outside the Quidditch pitch and slowly rose to her feet before changing into her vela form and launching herself into the air. The mirror showed her tracking the minotaur and then raining fireballs onto the monster until it was a burnt skeleton.
"Who brought a minotaur into Britain?" shouted Amelia Bones. "They're restricted to the island of Crete for a good reason!"
Cedric slipped past the sphinx (another rare creature supposedly restricted to Egypt) and then battled one giant Acromantula after another. Victor was close behind Cedric and with the help of Hermione Granger's tutoring, answered the sphinx's riddles correctly and was allowed to pass. He joined Cedric's fight against the third Acromantula. There was a great deal of shouting in the judge's box by this time about the use of multiple forbidden animals in the third task when suddenly, the hedges dropped.
Fleur Delacour reached the cup first and appeared on the stand as the winner. But rather than accept any applause, she shouted, "Aurors! Wizards! Fight the creatures! They are all loose now!"
Indeed, a dozen of the giant spiders, another Minotaur, bogarts, and the sphinx were free from the magical constraints that confined them to the maze. It took heavy spell use by two dozen Aurors and every adult wizard and witch in the stands to deal with the creatures. The sphinx was mollified by being allowed to eat the carcasses of the spiders and the minotaurs; in an exclusive interview with Luna Lovegood for the Quibbler, the sphinx admitted barbequed bull tasted better than the raw one.
The bruhaha about the fierce creatures used in the maze was dismissed by Dumbledore but not by the Board of Governors for the school. They restricted the headmaster's budget for the next year and required board approval for all expenses, even for lemon drops.
The mirrors used were carefully packed away by Sirius Black, Lady Longbottom, and Mr. Lovegood until the creators reached their majority and could make formal announcements about the new devices.
Thus, Harry Potter's fourth year at Hogwarts, with the Tri-Wizard Tournament ended.
SCENE BREAK / Dolores Umbridge / January 1995Stranded in her home all day, every day, Dolores Umbridge was stir-crazy. With Cornelius arrested, tried, and sentenced to Azkaban, she had no chance of wheedling her way back into the First Secretary's job. To occupy her hours, she turned to her hobbies.
First, she made illegal contract quills. There was a market for the items among the wizards and witches who enjoyed torture and painful deaths from infection – or at least enjoyed inflicting those tortures on their victims. But after making a dozen, her magic was weakened for several months, and she turned to another hobby that gave her equal happiness – trapping cute kittens inside small plates used with a tea service.
Using an illegally modified potion created to decorate plain porcelain plates with flower blooms, Dolores expanded her collection of plates with kittens in them. There were over fifty such plates on the wall in her dining room after the first month without a job at the ministry. She learned several charms to summon regular cats and kneazles to her back stoop where she fed them milk stolen from the neighbors and tuna stolen from the grocer two streets over.
Growing bored with capturing single kittens in plates, she experimented with pairs of kittens on larger plates. In an unusual moment of inspiration in early spring, she brought a mother cat with a litter of half kneazles into her home and trapped the queen and her kittens on a large platter. The mother cat was feeding her litter and didn't realize anything was happening until it was too late.
One kitten, (half-kneazle) escaped from the table before the enchantment captured him. He hid under the furniture and didn't make any sound while watching, looking for his mother and littermates. He listened carefully to the evil witch and peered out from under the China Cabinet.
"This platter is my masterpiece! A queen and her litter…drat, I thought there were five kittens, not four. Five is a much luckier number than four," the evil witch declared.
"Well, next time, I'll count better," Dolores decided before she walked to the back door to look over the collection of cats gathered there that afternoon. The kitten continued listening as the witch returned with an obviously pregnant cat, sat the new feline on the table and read the instructions on the potion bottle sitting beside another platter.
"Simply place the hair of the cats on the plate and pour in the potion," she murmured.
"Now, I need a large plate with several kittens playing with a mouse or a bird for my next creation. How long until you give birth, dearie?" Dolores asked the cat lapping milk from a kitten plate. "Do I want newborns or playful kittens? Where can I find more kittens?"
The long afternoon finally ended as night fell slowly for the bored witch. Dolores drank a large tumbler of muggle bourbon and fell asleep seated in the chair at the dining room table. The cat that had drunk all the milk and eaten a can of tuna waited until the witch nodded off and began to snore. Then the mother-to-be carefully moved from the tabletop into a chair and then the floor before slipping out the cat door in the kitchen. Her litter would be born somewhere away from the evil witch.
From underneath the China Cabinet, the half-kneazle kitten slipped back into the room. He missed his mother and litter mates. The kitten approached the witch's chair and examined the floor around the four legs. There he found several hairs that had fallen from the witch's head. With the hair in his mouth, the kitten climbed up the tablecloth and placed the hairs inside the plate where his mother and siblings were trapped. Tilting over the potion bottle, he watched as a large portion of the brew fell into the plate.
After only two minutes, there was a flash of light as the magic took hold, moving the cat and kittens back to the tabletop and placing the witch inside the platter. Happy now, the kitten leapt over the tabletop to be greeted by his mother, forgetting about the witch who disappeared.
Dolores woke slowly with a headache. She remembered drinking and falling asleep at her dining room table last night. With no job at the Ministry, she only had her kitten plates for solace.
'Something's not right,' Dolores decided as she looked around with blurry eyes. Then she tried to stand up, but the chair was glued to her back, bottom, and upper legs. Grabbing her wand from the tabletop, she tried casting spells but the only things that came out of her wand were a few sparkles. Glancing around the room, she noticed that except for the table, the details everything else was indistinct and faded away.
There was a window – a round window in front of her – that looked out on her dining room! There were kittens everywhere in her house – on her desk, her chairs. The lovely plates had fallen from the walls and freed the kittens that were busy climbing the curtains and destroying her home. And worse, the creatures refused to listen to her commands to stop.
It was three weeks later that Auror Nymphadora Tonks lead a team into the home of Dolores Umbridge, searching for the woman. This was her last day as an Auror – tomorrow she began her work in the Department of Mysteries as an Unspeakable Trainee.
'Merlin, I hope I'm not a trainee forever,' she thought as the team searched through the house for any sign of the wanted witch.
The cats had long since escaped through the back door left open by Tillman Fletcher, son of Mundungus Fletcher who'd disappeared last November. The young man robbed the house of galleons, interesting artifacts, and bobbles. (The thief never considered the plate with the frantic witch yelling at him worth taking).
However, the appearance of the black quills in the marketplace drew the attention of several notable persons and came to the attention of the goblins. All of the illegal contract quills – poorly made– were recovered and delivered to the goblins. Tillman Fletcher was tried by the Wizengamot and could have been set free if the goblins hadn't demanded someone to blame.
Spells proved that the black quills had been crafted by Dolores Umbridge and so the Aurors came to question the witch. While examining the house and contents for clues as to the whereabouts of Umbridge, Auror Tonks recognized the woman's screaming face on the plate. Diagnosis with spells proved this was Dolores Umbridge imprisoned within the platter, so Nymphadora carried it to her bosses in the DMLE.
That same day, Tonks escorted Director Bones to Gringotts where the plate was again tested to authenticate the soul in the enchantment. Amelia handed over the plate with the imprisoned witch to the goblins. They accepted the 'prisoner' and hung the platter on the wall of the Goblin High Council chamber for the next two hundred years.
EpilogueAlbus Dumbledore spent three years as Headmaster Emeritus at Hogwarts, searching for any signs of Tom Riddle trying to return from the dead. During Spring Break 1998, during Harry Potter's seventh year, he attempted to apparate without a clear destination in mind and splinched himself. He arrived at his destination without his right arm and wand.
The unexpected arrival of the elderly wizard at the shot-gun wedding for Ginny Weasley and Albert Gutman, a German Wizard who played Quidditch for the Chutney Commons, only added to the tension. The bride's brother and sister-in-law, Bill and Fleur Weasley, provided triage for the headmaster, send for healers from Saint Mungos and attempted to discover 'where' he sent his arm and wand. There was no evidence of the arm or wand in his office or bed chamber at Hogwarts.
In her weekly report to Unspeakable23, Unspeakable99 (a.k.a. Nymphadora Tonks) discussed the incident as evidence the Elder Wand had some sentience and chose to leave the Headmaster Emeritus before he passed away from natural causes. Dumbledore did return to Hogwarts and after the students left for the year, he sat down at his desk and passed away.
There was a single funeral service for Albus Dumbledore at Hogwarts that was well-attended but the headlines in the Daily Prophet that day and the next focused on stories concerning the British National Quidditch Team's upcoming participation in the Quidditch World Cup tournament after their new seeker, Harry Potter, led the team to three consecutive victories over the French team to qualify.
Speculation ran rampant about Potter's love life and his first relationship with Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom. He later married an American witch but remained close to the Longbottom couple his entire life. The two couples were godparents for all the children that came along. The families refused to discuss such matters, sued anyone pursuing invasive information relentlessly, and appeared to be very happy.
Sirius Black recovered from his experiences at Azkaban and led the movement that ended the use of the prison. He proposed simply binding the magical core of convicted magical persons and paying the muggles to incarcerate them. The costs were cheaper than paying for guards at Azkaban and all the galleons spent to maintain the impossible wards around the place. When the wards fell, the Dementors faded away as well.
Sirius Black's prison experiment was tried for a time (ten years). Cornelius Fudge died in a muggle prison – even though it was dubbed a 'Gentleman's Club Prison' where the inmates were non-violent – he succumbed to boredom and heart disease since his magical core was bound and potions weren't available.
Then in 2009, in a move by the Scrimgeour administration to save money, all wizards and witches imprisoned for life were removed from the muggle prisons and brought to the DMLE offices. Once in the ministry offices, the prisoners were individually enchanted to exist inside porcelain plates. The plates were displayed in the Department of Mysteries for a century before being broken and recycled.
Minister Rufus Scrimgeour served as minister for almost twenty years until he died in a reflected transfiguration spell accident in 2004. Madam Amelia Bones followed him in office, and she served for twenty-five years.
Nymphadora Tonks vanished from Magical Britain and thrived in the atmosphere in the Department of Mysteries that encouraged equality for all members. The intelligence of the individuals and the goals of the department left no room for prejudices. Tonks found herself enjoying her work and when she began a relationship with Unspeakable96 (Elliot Scrimgeour), her parents were very supportive. Elliot was the younger son of Minister Rufus Scrimgeour without prospects of inheriting his mother's family title, but Nymphadora was very pleased with her beau who became her husband in 1999.
The couple had four children, two boys and two girls who continued both family names, exhibited their mother's metamorphic capabilities, and all married muggle-borns.
The remaining Polyjuice potion with the contaminated hair of Nymphadora Tonks in Polyjuice Pants, along with the hairs collected from her head while appearing to be Alastor Moody, was thrown through the veil before the Tonks / Scrimgeour wedding.