One of the reviews showed me that I need to explain a little more about how things work in this world, or more specifically, how things work with the magic of this world better. The family magic of a House allows the Head of House to cast out any members of their House and disconnect them from the family magic. The Head of House can also annul the marriages of members of their House and reclaim anything that rightfully belongs to their House.
The eradication of the magic of the House of Lestrange (which was the most important part of eradicating the House) and reallocation of what they owned is something else. This is part of the magic of the Wizards Council, the original Law of Magical Britain, as is the ability to magically remove a Head of House and replace them with their Heir when they're incapable of carrying out their duties as Head of House. Only the Heads of the remaining Guiding Families can be part of the Wizards Council, and any judgements of the Wizards Council require a majority vote of the Wizards Council for them to be enacted. Only if the majority of the Wizards Council agree on what is called for will the Magic of the Law of Magical Britain carry it out. Hope this explanation made as much sense to you as it did in my head.
Usual disclaimers, no rights to any HP characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale. There will probably be changes in the first hour or so as I see things that didn't come out the way I wanted.
Dora was met with one of what they'd come to think of as Hermione's hug-tackles from Harry when she came back from a discussion with her mother that she really wished that she could forget about. She hadn't been planning on doing those things and now she wasn't sure that she was ever going to, that was so embarrassing! As Harry ran off, she turned back to Bill and the fond smile she'd sent after Harry turned to a frown, because Bill had a very thoughtful, calculating look on his face that was tinged with respect as he looked after Harry. Her protective instincts kicked in and she snapped. "What happened here?"
Bill snorted. "Harry was doing what you're doing now, protecting you. He just warned me that if I ever did anything to hurt you, he'd destroy me."
"Don't..."
He cut her off with a raised hand. "Stop it! I am not laughing at Harry! He loves you more than anyone but Hermione and I have no doubt that if I were to ever do anything so stupid as to hurt you, he would ensure that I was destroyed. He was very careful to explain that while he was quite aware that he has no chance of beating me in a fight yet, the Houses of the Potter family do have the power to destroy me and anyone else who tried to hurt you, and he would use everything he has to do so in that event. Your cousin is a very impressive young man Dora, and I truly admire the way he's so protective of the people he loves. I understand where he's coming from, because that's what's been driving me since I was his age, keeping Charlie, the twins and our Dad safe from our mother, Dumbledore and everyone else….."
He looked at her thoughtfully for a while and then pulled her down onto the seat beside him, she sensed that whatever he was about to tell her was important. "No-one but Charlie knows this Dora, but my true talent is that I see magic and its intent. That was how I saw what Mum's intentions were when she first put Dad under those potions to cover up the fact that Dad wasn't Percy's father. It's also how I know that Charlie and the twins are my true brothers… Weasleys, but Percy, Ron and Ginny aren't. It works for magic like wards and things but it works even better for witches and wizards' magic. What I saw in Harry is that he will be incredibly powerful when he grows up…. Merlin he's amazingly powerful now, but more importantly that you, Hermione and your families mean everything to him, and he will do everything in his power to protect you. He may only be six but he is determined to keep you safe, and he will use everything he has to do so. That will is shining out of Harry's magic and I assure you that I have nothing but respect and admiration for him for that Dora."
That made Dora very emotional, and ashamed of what she'd been thinking of Bill, so she just came in for a cuddle, hoping that the cuddle would tell him what she meant.
One thing that Bill wasn't happy about was the fact that they had to pretend that he was getting Dora alone to do what he wanted with her any time they took off to Potter Manor for training and meetings involving him. Dora still had her 'detentions' to cover getting away for her training sessions, but as a Prefect they couldn't use the same excuse for him as it would have lost him his prefect's status, so they had to use slipping away to have sex with the potioned witch as a cover for him. (The fact that Charlie and Hestia Jones, Emmeline Vance's ward, had to pretend to be slipping off to snog for the same reason (Charlie could get detentions but Hestia was a prefect too) was almost as embarrassing, more so for Hestia because she was being called a cradle snatcher by her girlfriends, who were jealous that she'd realised that the other Weasley was almost as fanciable as Bill and got in before they could, but at least Hestia wasn't being called a slag behind her back like Dora was.)
The problem was that Bill needed those training sessions to give him the occlumency skills he needed to protect his mind against Dumbledore, and to improve his combat skills. They also had quite a few planning sessions about how they were going to keep Dora safely away from Molly Weasley and Dumbledore at the end of the school year and Bill and Dora had to be there to have their say on what they would and wouldn't agree to. Dumbledore's current plan was to have William's 'girlfriend' spend a week or two at the Weasleys' early in the break, and then unexpectedly 'disappear' on her way home after that, making sure that she was seen in Diagon Alley after she left the Weasleys' to allay any suspicions.
None of them were about to let Dora get anywhere near the Potions Queen, even with what Pandora and the goblins had come up with to counter her potions, so their counter plan was to have Andi require that Dora's new boyfriend spend the first couple of weeks of the holiday with her family so they could get to know him before she went to stay with his family, and have the Hogwarts Board fire Dumbledore while they were officially at the Tonks' (but would actually be safe inside the protection of the Potter Estate's wards).
They'd already decided that Dumbledore remaining at Hogwarts represented too great a risk to the students, their kids in particular, so he had to go. The improvement in the students' grades accruing from the changes they'd forced Dumbledore to make at Christmas should be ample evidence that Dumbledore's incompetence was dragging Hogwarts down. If that wasn't enough to convince the more recalcitrant members of the Board, they had official reports from the ICW which documented the decline of Hogwarts from at least an acceptable if not respected school which was turning out a reasonable number of admirable graduates in the Forties when Dumbledore first became Headmaster, to the joke it currently was, a school that no-one from overseas had sent their children to for over a decade because its reputation was so bad (including the figures of how many foreign students went to Beauxbatons and Durmstrang each year).
Quite aside from the academic evidence to show that the only logical choice was to terminate Dumbledore, just before the end of the school year they were going to pounce and recover the Potter and other houses' priceless heirlooms that Dumbledore still had locked away in his chambers. Their elves had located James' invisibility cloak, the Potter pensieve and what appeared to be James and Lily Potter's magical portraits hidden away in his chambers (the only reason they could think of for Dumbledore to steal James and Lily's portraits was that he was afraid that they had left information about his betrayal of them for Harry, as part of the images of themselves that were bonded to the portraits. Unfortunately Dumbledore had warded the portraits' hiding place too strongly to remove or switch them without his knowing, so they had to leave them there until they were ready to move on him), along with heirlooms of other important houses that had 'disappeared' over the last fifty years or so. Once Amelia had the DMLE raid Dumbledore's chambers and recover all the heirlooms, the criminal proceedings for stealing from Noble and Ancient and Noble and Most Ancient Houses, especially the magical portraits of the last Lord and Lady Potter, should be quite enough to see him removed as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards (he could hardly hold that position when he was dismissed from every other position in disgrace).
Everything was saying that their plans were foolproof, but it was Dora's safety, her life, at stake here, so they were all nervous.
While all this was going on, Harry and Hermione were doing very well at Primary school, in fact they had been moved up a year just after the new Headmistress took over Crawley, because she'd had them do the end of year tests after she looked over the results of the students who were at the centre of the storm that had swept through the school and she saw how far ahead of the other students they were. She had further discussions with Roger and Jean about the possibility of their children testing out to skip another year at the end of the school year, so they'd start the new year with a class that was closer to their level. Roger and Jean discussed it with the kids and then agreed when it was obvious that they wanted this. The occlumency training had doubtless helped them learn more quickly, but the fact was they were both brilliant and they could get through far faster than ordinary students anyway.
As soon as all the OWL and NEWT exams were finished so they wouldn't put off the ones sitting them, they pounced. Amelia brought a team of DMLE and Department of Mysteries witches and wizards and Gringotts' Curse Breakers and Estate Managers in through Minerva's office and headed for the Headmaster's office, with Minerva letting them in. They made a show of the Unspeakables casting a few spells to discover Heirlooms, then they started pulling out the ones that they knew about, with the Curse Breakers stripping away the wards over the important items. The Curse Breakers' formal report that the wards over the Potters' portraits had been set to destroy them if someone tried to grab them without first disabling the wards added another significant charge to the ever growing list for Dumbledore. After they had retrieved the Potter heirlooms and the other ones that the elves had located, they went through every inch of Dumbledore's chambers, and they found far more.
After the surprise raid and the extent of what Dumbledore had stolen was known, there were very few arguments raised against his termination as Headmaster, or indeed any role at Hogwarts, it was only his staunchest supporters and those under orders to prevent his dismissal who even tried. There were even fewer arguments against Minerva being elevated to Headmistress, but unfortunately as expected they couldn't get past the ingrained bigotry to have Filius made the new Deputy Head, so Pomona became the new Deputy Headmistress. At least Arcturus claiming back everything belonging to the House of Black from the Houses of Malfoy and Lestrange had been enough to lose Lucius Malfoy his seat on the Board, and they had used their votes to have that seat allocated to Sirius as Heir Black, to look out for the interests of current and future students related to the House of Black. Aside from Filius, everything had gone much as they'd hoped there.
Dumbledore's trial also went much as expected, if not hoped, the Minister used her influence to force the charges against him to be reduced, but even with her calling in all the favours she could he was still sentenced to seven years in Azkaban's minimum security cells without parole (while they'd been forced to give him a minimum sentence, they insisted that that would be the sentence he actually served). With the evidence of crimes against the Noble and Ancient and Noble and Most Ancient Houses which held the power in the Wizengamot, Bagnold couldn't stop the Wizengamot summarily dismissing him as Chief Warlock, and as the ICW representative roles actually represented the Wizengamot rather than the Ministry, she could not prevent them dismissing both of Magical Britain's current ICW representatives either, which automatically lost Dumbledore the Supreme Mugwump role as he no longer held a position in the ICW.
Baroness Griselda Marchbanks was voted in as the Chief Witch, and immediately proposed that the position be made a dual role to prevent the type of abuses of power that they had seen committed by previous Chief Warlocks, citing the illegal sealing of Lord and Lady Potter's wills and Heir Black being illegally incarcerated in Azkaban for over five years without a trial as two examples of this type of abuse of power. When asked how this would be handled she responded with. "I am envisioning both holders of the role presiding over all major sessions and making rulings on them together, but alternating presiding over the less important sessions. However, if a minor session were to suddenly become important, then the other Chief Witch or Wizard would have to be called in so that they address the issues together."
The majority of the Wizengamot could see the sense in that and voted in favour of changing the Chief Warlock's position to a dual role. Dumbledore's trial had brought every Wizengamot member in to see the show and either help save or destroy the old wizard, so they called for nominations for the second Chief Witch or Warlock then and there and Baron Tiberius Ogden was voted in. They also had Earl Cyrus Greengrass and Earl Francis Longbottom voted in as Magical Britain's two new ICW representatives (Cyrus was seen as progressive and Frank was seen as traditional, but both of them were well enough educated in Magical cultures of the world not to embarrass Magical Britain or cause the type of incidents that both Albus Dumbledore and Lucius Malfoy had while in those roles.)
Minister Bagnold was not at all happy with what was happening to the balance of power in Magical Britain. The 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch your's' arrangement that she'd had with Dumbledore since she became Minister had worked out quite well for both of them, and the 'contributions' she'd gotten for letting Malfoy and the other rich and prominent Death Eaters off scott free and ensuring that international trade agreements favoured their families' businesses had made her quite a wealthy witch. Now though, she had two totally unyielding elders of the Wizengamot in place of Dumbledore, and she knew better than to try and propose anything of a similar nature to either of them.
Being unable to prevent Lord Malfoy (hmmm, that at least should be amusing, because she couldn't see Baroness Marchbanks, Baron Ogden or any of the rest of the titled heads of the Noble Houses for that matter allowing Malfoy to continue calling himself Lord now that the Black title which had been bequeathed to his wife as part of her dowry had been claimed back by Lord Black when he cast her out of the House of Black... she'd actually heard a rumour that Lord Black had then turned around and bequeathed that title to her sister who married a Mudblood, which implied that Heir Black wasn't the only Black who hadn't been disowned as everyone said) being dismissed as their ICW representative would cost her, because even after Lord Black had taken back so much of the Malfoy fortune the others had been paying their contributions to keep the favourable trade agreements, there was no chance of Longbottom ever being agreeable to those arrangements and she didn't hold out much hope with Greengrass either, so she'd be losing a lot of contributions there.
Perhaps she could recover some of that from the Hogwarts funding though? She'd had to keep the funding up for Hogwarts to appease Dumbledore, but now that he had lost his position there, no-one would know if that funding was diverted would they?…. yes, that should help her recover some of her losses.
One thing Bagnold and Dumbledore's supporters didn't know about was that the Guiding Families had invited Dumbledore's younger brother Aberforth (who few people knew was actually the proprietor of the Hogs Head pub in Hogsmeade) to a meeting to discuss the future of the Minor House of Dumbledore. Aberforth had hated Albus ever since their younger sister was killed in a fight that broke out between Albus and his lover Gellert Grindelwald over ninety years ago, because the fact that Albus never had the broken nose Aberforth gave him for that healed was as good as an admission of guilt in his book. On top of that, when Albus was caught altering goats for questionable purposes, he'd used his mind magic skills to convince everyone that Aberforth was the guilty one and had him sent to Azkaban for five years to prevent him talking to anyone about it because the Dumbledores were naturally resistant to mind magic... no, he had no love for his dear brother.
That was why, when the representatives of the Guiding Families Alliance made him a proposition, Aberforth jumped at the chance. The Wizards Council formally ruled Albus Percival Dumbledore (he'd apparently added Wulfric and Brian himself as people with more names always seemed more important) unfit to serve as Head of the Minor House of Dumblebore and elevated Aberforth Dumbledore, as the only other member of the family, to Head of House. Then they talked Aberforth though the process to expel Albus Percival Dumbledore from the House of Dumbledore for bringing shame on the name of Dumbledore. Aberforth did lose most of the money Albus had swindled and stolen because the Guiding Families had claimed it to return it to those it was stolen from, but the satisfaction of making Albus pay was enough.
When this happened, Aberforth's brother collapsed in the minimum security cells of Azkaban and was left feeling feeble and confused, because the rules of family magic are that major magical achievements of members of the house become family magic, for the benefit of the family. As the Head of the Dumbledore family (the Minor House of Dumbledore since he was awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class in Forty Five for vanquishing his lover), Albus had always enjoyed the full benefit of all his and his Dumbledore ancestors' magical achievements through the family magic, but in two separate hits over the space of five minutes, he'd lost all of his family magic and the associated knowledge, and he was suddenly feeling every bit of his hundred and ten or so years.
He couldn't understand what had happened to him (which he could only blame himself for, because when he became the Deputy Headmaster at Hogwarts, and then again when he became Headmaster, he'd sworn an oath to ensure that he understood and upheld the official Hogwarts Charter, which incorporated the first official documentation of the Magical Laws of Britain as the Druids Council officially became the Wizards Council when Hogwarts was founded and as Magical Britain's seat of power because Hogwarts was its only school and court, Hogwarts' Head and Deputy Head were in effect the first nominated government officials, so he had sworn that oath to uphold the laws incorporated into the Hogwarts Charter twice without bothering to read what he swore to uphold, and what had just been enacted was part of those laws), but he did know that he had lost something significant.
Once Dumbledore had been dealt with, they turned their sights on their next target, the adulterous potions queen. Part of the problem there was that they really needed Arthur in a state where he could present his case and look after his family before they moved on her, and then there was the question of what to do with the other wizards' children. Amelia was adamant that Arthur would insist on looking after all of Molly's children as his own, and the other adults deferred to her as the authority on Arthur, after all, she had been Arthur's girlfriend up until that harlot used potions to steal him off of her.
They were careful to ensure that she didn't hear them talking about how her pain and suffering over losing him had actually been to Magical Britain's benefit, because that heartbroken young witch had turned hard as nails in her final year at Hogwarts, going on to Auror training and wiping the floor with every other witch and wizard there, including most of the trainers. Her impressive performance led to her catching the eye of the legendary Auror Alastor Moody and him taking her on as his first apprentice, which took her skills to even greater heights…. but even though she was indisputably the best Auror and Investigator in living memory after him, by the end of the war she still hadn't received any real recognition from the old fools in the Ministry who held to the belief that witches were only good for one thing, irrespective of what all her operations reports and the legendary Alastor Moody were saying about her.
That was when Barty Crouch Junior was discovered to be a marked Death Eater who was almost as bad as Bellatrix Lestrange, and even though Barty Senior had sent his only (as far as most of Magical Britain knew) son to Azkaban, his son's actions, in conjunction with his own questionable actions led to him losing his position as the Director of the DMLE. All of the political factions were putting forward their own nominations for the new head of the DMLE, looking to get the DMLE in their pockets so they could do as they wished, but they'd all forgotten that there was a group who had a historical imperative to assure the prosperity and security of Magical Britain.
The Guiding Families had a candidate of their own who was more qualified and had more integrity than any of the other nominations, and perhaps even more important, who had recently acquired the responsibility of being both Guardian and Regent for her nearly two year old niece, the next Countess Bones, Head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Bones, so they wanted to get her out of the field before some incompetent partner got her killed.
The Ministry and the rest of the Wizengamot were reminded why the Guiding Families had been the leaders of Magical Britain for two thousand years when they fenced with and then finally just steamrollered over any and all resistance to Madam Amelia Bones becoming Director of the DMLE. Bagnold and Dumbledore's factions were the last hold outs against Amelia being confirmed as the DMLE's head, but they didn't have the power to block the Guiding Families after the rest of the Wizengamot had conceded that she was the best for the job. Amelia had taken over and had done a superior job of it as they'd all expected, but now she was face to face with what forced her to go down that path and the others were keeping their heads down because they remembered the old rule about not looking a wild animal in the eye in case it attacks.
Amelia had enlisted Alastor's help to get Emmeline Vance transferred into the Investigation group towards the end of the war after Emma had become the guardian for the daughter of her Auror partner when he and his wife were killed by Death Eaters, much like Amelia had become her niece's guardian, and Emma and Hestia moved in with Amelia and Susan so that the two witches could help each other raise the girls, though Hestia was almost ten years older than Susan. Amelia and Emma had been friends before, but looking after the girls drew them even closer and this closeness was what helped Emma settle Amelia down over the business of Arthur and the Harlot.
While they agreed that Amelia was probably right about Arthur, they needed to get him back on his feet before he would be in any position to make that decision, and to do that they needed to find a way to get him away from the Burrow (the Weasleys' home) for a week or more. Sirius was trying to keep a straight face when he said that they obviously needed a Muggle Artefacts Emergency, but gave in and burst out laughing, until he realised that he was the only one laughing, because everyone else was looking thoughtful. Amelia shook her head ruefully. "As crazy as that sounds, and I'm sure that was meant to be a joke, it's actually the only thing which would have any chance of working. We need 'find' a large collection of enchanted muggle artefacts at a muggle location that we can't remove the artefacts from so that we will have to send our Muggle Artefacts expert to the artefacts to evaluate them and determine what to do with them."
They got to work on finalising the details while Bill was spending a week at his 'pretend' girlfriend's family's home. This hadn't been anywhere near as hard as they'd expected to pull off, because Molly was so deluded that she actually believed that this business with Albus was all a big mistake and everyone would be apologising to him when they asked him to come back. So she happily sent 'William' off to the Tonks' with a parcel of potions in his trunk (the idea of a smaller bag for a short stay never seemed to occur to the wizarding world) to keep the girl under control while they were preparing their 'Muggle Artefacts Emergency'.
While he was researching potential issues with his father's treatment with Dora and her mother, Bill snorted, because his current relationship would have been a dream come true for any rational mother in Magical Britain. His girlfriend was pretty, intelligent and magically powerful with rare magical talents. Her Noble House was a little unusual in that it was her mother who held the title (as it had been for the Malfoys when they were a Noble House), but while they couldn't talk about it yet, her mother was also the magical guardian and Regent of the young Duke Potter and the Houses of the Potter family, and on top of that she was a daughter of the House of Black who had been publicly and affectionately acknowledged as close family by both Earl Arcturus Black, Head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, and Earl Sirius Black, Heir to the House of Black, not to mention being acknowledged by the Heads of the majority of the other Noble and Most Ancient Houses, so the Noble House of Tonks was about as well connected as they could be, but to his mother, the bigoted Harlot of Hogwarts (he'd been shocked that it was the sweet, kindly Professor Sprout who had told him what his mother was often known as when she was at Hogwarts), his wonderful girlfriend was nothing but a Half-blood demon spawn that needed to be exterminated, because the great Albus Dumbledore (actually Albus Jones now since he'd lost the right to use the Dumbledore name) said so!
He laughed out loud as he thought about Charlie's admission that he was finding that he really liked getting 'caught' snogging a girl as pretty and nice as Hestia. It wasn't that surprising really, because they hadn't had time for friends since they came to Hogwarts as they'd been mainly focussed on studying and finding a way to help Dad and the twins, so suddenly having to do all these things to make it look like they had girlfriends with girls like Dora and Hestia stirred up…. feelings… that they hadn't had before. He certainly wasn't complaining because Dora was amazing, and the smiles on Charlie and Hestia's faces when they were together said that they had no complaints either, but this wasn't the way he'd expected to get a girlfriend, and he was willing to bet that Charlie felt the same way.
Arthur was called away on the 'Muggle Artefacts Emergency' the day after Bill got back from 'the Tonks'. As expected, Molly flew into a panic when Arthur told her that the Director of the DMLE had advised him that he would be away for at least a week or two, going through everything in this site, but the potions in his system made him accept it when she told him that he was recovering from a new strain of magical flu, so he had to take the potions she was giving him without fail. Having those potions made their job easier actually, because between them and what was already in his system, they came up with what they needed to flush the potions out of his system and counter the residuals in his body a lot quicker.
They had him to the point of being aware of himself and what had happened to him in less than a week this way, and then they saw something that very few people had ever witnessed, Arthurus Septimus Weasley in a towering rage. Amelia managed to get him calmed down, but then they had to wait for him to stop crying about what he'd done, leaving her for that Prewett slut. Arthur was indescribably proud of his sons Bill and Charlie when he was told what they'd been doing to protect the family since his wife had put him under the potions that he'd just been released from. With the potions out of his system and the memory charms, compulsions and the like that Dumbledore put on him removed, Arthur could remember who Percival's father was, Bartemius Crouch. Going by Bill and Charlie's memories of their siblings, they were willing to bet that Ginerva was Crouch's as well, there were too many similarities between her and Percy for them not to be the same blood.
Ronald was a problem at first as Arthur couldn't remember anything about who his father was, until he suddenly snorted as he was watching the boys' memories of him. "Oh there can't be anyone else that he could get those traits from, his father has to be Cornie Fudge!"
The others looked at the memories with new eyes and had to admit that he was correct, and they were embarrassed that they hadn't seen something that obvious before. That was going to cause a problem, because for some reason Minister Bagnold seemed to be protective of Fudge, but they couldn't argue blood evidence and when Ronald's blood confirmed that he was Cornelius Fudge's son, there was nothing she could do about it. Mind you, he would probably argue that he was just one of many who had sex with her and get away with a slap on the wrist and repaying what the House of Weasley had spent raising him (probably arguing it down to a pittance, seeing as the boy was only seven and the Weasleys were a big family), but Bill and Charlie had made it clear that they really wanted Ronnie to be sent to live with his father. Percy and Ginny were pampered and irritating, but they would probably come out alright with a proper upbringing. Ron's behaviour on the other hand was disgusting, his personal hygiene and table manners were enough to make everyone around him sick, and his accidental magic whenever he had a temper tantrum (which was all the time) meant that they were always cleaning up after him.
All Arthur could do was promise to see whether they could get Ronald made his father's ward, because with their mother going to Azkaban (there was no way she wouldn't with the number of charges that she'd have against her), he wouldn't have a blood parent in the house and Arthur had never really been involved in his upbringing. Amelia got a grateful smile from Arthur when she pointed out that Fudge and his wife had no children, so under those circumstances the most logical thing would be for Ronald to be with his father, she also mused that Barty Crouch had been a widower since his wife died soon after the war and he had a job that required him to go overseas regularly, so he wouldn't really be a good choice to raise two young children on his own.
Molly Weasley was arrested that day, and the children were all taken to St Mungo's and Gringotts to be examined and do formal inheritance tests (this was the most reliable and accepted way of determining parentage in the Magical world). Only one significant surprise came out of this testing, as they were all healthy and had the expected parentage, though the twins were both under potions to moderate their behaviour, which added yet another charge to what was being compiled against Molly. The surprise was the fact that Percy wasn't Heir to the Minor House of Crouch because the Crouch Heir was still alive! Considering that Barty Crouch Junior was supposed to have died in Azkaban before Mrs Crouch died, there were obviously some serious questions to be answered!
Amelia sent a team to secretly retrieve the remains of Barty Crouch Junior from Azkaban, because while the commonly known methods of identification in the magical world only applied to live witches and wizards, Gringott had told her that the goblins had the means to identify at least the family of a corpse as well, they'd developed this to deal with challenges to inheritance. When the goblins tested the body, they found that it couldn't be Barty Crouch Junior because there wasn't any trace of the Crouch bloodline in it, and what's more it was an older female, who just so happened to be of Mrs Crouch's bloodline. At that Augusta pointed out that Mrs Crouch had been a frail, sickly woman who had been stricken when she heard what had happened to her beloved son, and Amelia added that she and her husband had actually visited their son just before he supposedly died.
Half of them went white at the thought that a deranged monster like Crouch's son may have been released back into their world by his father, but calmer heads prevailed and pointed out that Barty Junior wasn't likely to curb his urges to rape, torture and kill if he was running around free and there hadn't been any significant evidence of that sort of thing happening, so a team went in to scan what was supposed to be Mrs Crouch's grave. When they unfortunately found it empty, they scanned the Crouch house and found that there were two human forms, plus a house elf in there. Considering that Barty Senior supposedly lived alone with his house elf, it appeared that there was a good chance that Barty Junior was alive, and in that house.
A call over the communications mirrors that the marauders had created had the trunk one of the team was carrying un-shrunk so that additional Aurors and Sirius' ex-werewolf and goblin security team could use the goblin floo in the trunk to come through with Amelia. When they were all ready, the goblins popped some of the security team straight into the house while the Aurors burst in. Barty Senior was shouting that they couldn't do this and he was going to have all of their jobs until one of the ex-werewolves located Barty Junior by his scent and pulled the invisibility cloak off of him. Crouch was smart enough to shut up then, but they had to stun his elf Winky because she was attacking the Aurors trying to arrest her master.
They didn't want Bagnold to have time to prepare for this so the Wizards Council transferred the Baron Weasley and Head of House titles for the House of Weasley back to Arthur and he accepted them, taking back the Weasley voting proxies and having the Prewett voting proxies transferred to him while Griselda called an emergency Wizengamot session to hold a number of criminal trials in the morning. The owls summoning Wizengamot members to attend were sent after most of them would have gone to bed, so the majority of them didn't know anything about the trials until an hour or two before they started, this meant that they'd completed Barty Junior's trial and sentenced him to be sent through the Veil of Death (they'd harvested everything in his head the night before and he'd done enough to merit the death sentence a dozen times over), and they were halfway through Barty Senior's trial before the doors of the court room burst open to admit a furious Minister Bagnold.
She demanded that this trial be stopped and Barty be released, but she was flabbergasted when over half of the Wizengamot burst out laughing at her. They'd already heard enough from Crouch's own lips that the only question would be whether life in Azkaban was sufficient, or he should be put through the Veil of Death too for what he had done. The Chief Warlock reminded Bagnold that she had no authority to interfere with a Wizengamot trial, especially when she obviously had no understanding of what the accused was being tried for, and told her to be quiet or she would be expelled from the court. Bagnold could see that he was just waiting for her to give him the excuse to expel her, so she shut up and went to sit in the box reserved for the Ministry's observers.
The fact that Crouch wasn't removed from the court once he was sentenced to life in Azkaban told her that something else was going on, and she had a good idea what that was when the next item was announced, the trial of Molly Muriel Weasley for Line Theft against the Noble and Most Ancient House of Weasley, for illegally potioning Baron Arthurus Septimus Weasley, Head of the House of Weasley and his sons, and for several counts of adultery and forcing Baron Weasley to raise three children sired by other wizards. Bagnold was going to leave, as siring a child on the Consort of a Noble and Most Ancient House, as bad as it was, was hardly a patch on what Barty had already been convicted of, but the 'other wizards' stopped her, because with how her luck had been going so far, there were probably be even more of her people caught up in this and someone had been doing a good job of keeping her out of the loop so it would be best to hear it herself.
Bagnold was shaking her head by the end of this trial, they had eradicated the Minor House of Crouch and announced everything belonging to Barty Crouch and the House of Crouch forfeit to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Weasley, Molly had been expelled from both the Weasley and Prewett families, defaulting to her mother's maiden name of Selwyn, everything she owned was forfeited to the House of Weasley and she had been sentenced to forty years in Azkaban's Minimum Security cells. Her Aunt, Muriel Prewett was also expelled from the House of Prewett and forfeited half of what she owned to the House of Weasley for her part in the plot to use forbidden potions to trap the Weasley Heir into marriage, thereby interfering with the pending negotiations between the House of Weasley and the Noble and Most Ancient House of Bones for the hand of Amelia Bones, a daughter of the House of Bones, thereby incurring her own Line Theft charges, in addition to her involvement in covering up Molly Weasley's adultery and further attempted Line Theft charges for fraudulently representing the children of Bartemius Crouch and Cornelius Fudge as being in the line of succession for the House of Weasley.
She wasn't too surprised by how much trouble Fudge had gotten himself into, as he always was an idiot, she only kept him around because he was useful to have as a blunt object. Fudge was found guilty of being involved in adultery and attempted line theft charges in relation to his son, born Ronald Bilius Weasley. He was ordered to pay a thousand galleons per month for the period from his son's birth to the current date (a total of eighty eight thousand galleons) to recompense the House of Weasley for the upbringing of his son, and he was further ordered to formally and publicly claim his son as his own, taking him into his family and assuming control of the upbringing of his son from this day. The boy was allowed to retain the name Ronald only, as they were forbidden to use anything that may connect him to the Weasley family in any way, which his middle name did.
Just as she thought that everything was over and done with, Minister Bagnold was reminded that it ain't over until it's over, because Magical Britain's ICW representatives proposed and seconded that Baron Arthurus Weasley be appointed to replace Bartemius Crouch as the Head of the Department of International Cooperation, and it was voted in before she had a chance to stop it. When she raged at them and said that they didn't have the authority to dictate Ministry appointments, the Chief Witch actually laughed at her!
"It would appear that your knowledge of the rules and practices of Magical Britain is as lacking as our predecessor's Madam Minister. For your information, the Ministry of Magic is merely the administrative body of the Wizengamot, and as such, the Wizengamot had the authority, and in fact the duty, to direct the Ministry as required. From the evidence we have seen here today and in previous trials, it is quite apparent that the Ministry's processes for selecting appointees to significant roles in the Ministry are flawed at best, and perhaps even questionable. Therefore, the Wizengamot cannot sit by and allow any further appointments to be made which may cause damage to Magical Britain's reputation. You are on notice Minister, our appointment of Baron Weasley stands, and we will be reviewing the appropriateness of other significant Ministry appointments as well. Perhaps the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes would bear further scrutiny, as after seeing Mister Fudge's performance today I have a better understanding of its role in the false imprisonment of the Heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black."
The gaze boring into her made Bagnold shiver, because she quite understood the message she'd just been given…. 'Set your house in order or we will!' but this could ruin her. She'd been paid a lot of galleons for the various factions to get their people into key roles in the Ministry….
Oh no, how could she have she forgotten that? This was exactly what they'd done back at the end of Eighty One when everyone was fighting to get control of the DMLE, they'd used the power of the Wizengamot to force the candidate they decided was the best choice to get the job…. and aside from the fact that Bones was a pain in the arse most of the time, she had to concede she was the best qualified for that job, but that didn't help her at all because if they started going through the Ministry doing this her contributors would start asking what they were paying her for, and that was a question she most definitely didn't want to try to answer!
The discussions among the Weasley family that night were difficult, because the first questions were, of course. "Where are Mummy and Ronnie?"
Luckily, while Crouch was an unscrupulous bastard, he was quite intelligent, so his children were almost on par with Arthur's clever sons and they didn't have too much trouble getting them to understand that Mummy had done something very wrong and she'd been taken away for a long time. They had all been disgusted by the way Ronnie smelt and acted most of the time, so it wasn't too hard for them to accept that he belonged to another family and he'd gone to live with his Daddy (they seemed quite happy about that actually), but Arthur could see that Percy at least was already wondering who else didn't belong in the Weasley family, and that sooner rather than later he'd work it out, so he decided to come out and tell them. "Percy and Ginny, you have a different father too, but he's gone away like your Mummy and we want you in our family if that's what you want. Do you want to be Weasleys?"
It took a while for the tears to die down enough for Percy and Ginny to say that they most definitely did want to be Weasleys, and once Arthur and the other boys made it quite clear that that was what they wanted too everyone was happier. Arthur did quietly tell Percy that some things about his behaviour were going to have to change, but he made it clear that he knew it was only because he'd been given bad examples and that he was a good boy underneath.
There were a few more tears when they heard that the Burrow was being sold and they were going to be living somewhere else, but Ginny's tears dried up when she was presented with the challenge of getting to the bottom of the mystery of why Charlie had gone so red when Daddy said that they would be living in Bones Manor from now on. Big brothers could be so much fun sometimes!