Sorry, I got my timeline muddled in the last chapter, so I had to go back and remove any mention of marked Death Eaters after Harry and the others started at Hogwarts, because they were eliminated in the previous year.
Warning: Amos Diggory is cast in a very bad light in this chapter, and it gets rather nasty in a few spots a bit past three quarters of the way through.
Usual disclaimers, no rights to any HP characters portrayed, and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale, it's fiction but not a kid's story. There will probably be changes made over the first hour or so as I find things that didn't come out quite the way I wanted.
Dora and Bill had decided to go to Luna first to ask about her predictions on the Hogwarts Express, and it turned out that Charlie was already friends of a sort with Penny. He had been kind to the quiet Second year Gryffindor the previous year, talking to her when she was upset, protecting her against the blood bigots' bullying and showing her how to look after herself. He'd also gotten her away from Gryffindor's Quidditch Captain when he was trying to convince her that her chances of making the team would be greatly improved by some private 'coaching' from him when she tried out for the team just after she turned thirteen (something the bastard obviously hadn't forgotten about, given the way he'd gone after her again on the Hogwarts Express).
Basically, what it came down to was that while Charlie liked Hestia, he didn't really do much with her outside of maintaining their pretend relationship and he had a lot more in common with Penny than he did with her. On the other hand, Hestia had spent a lot of time studying and hanging out with with Bill and Dora, both at Hogwarts and at the Potter Estate, over the last year and a bit because Dora was her closest friend and she fitted in with them quite well. From what Luna saw, Hestia didn't have type of the attachment with Charlie that Dora had with Bill, but she'd felt a little as though she was being set aside by Charlie as he grew closer to Penny after she joined the group, and she bonded more with Bill and Dora when they comforted her over that. While telling them almost made this a self fulfilling prophecy, it sat comfortably with both of them and knowing allowed Dora to accept and embrace it, so when it happened, it all went smoothly and they became a happy threesome.
Charlie was quite apologetic when he realised what he'd done, but the fact that they all understood and accepted what was happening allowed Hestia to maintain a close relationship with Charlie and become close to Penny, so everyone was happy. The other girl who Luna had prophesied that Charlie would be with was a bigger surprise, because this was Lady Cecilia Selwyn, Heiress to the titles of Baroness Selwyn and head of the Noble and Ancient House of Selwyn. The surprise was that she was the one who had so publicly ended her betrothal to the Ravenclaw ex-prefect who was in the group that tried to attack Penny. As the Heiress to a Noble and Ancient House, Cecilia qualified to be in the Lords Tower and she was one of the first to move in outside of the original group.
The six oldest of their generation were quite close, and most of the ten youngest were even closer. Percy in between and Ginny and Draco with the group at Potter Manor were still working to fit in, but they were included as part of the family in everything and they were getting there. They also looked into the other three girls Luna mentioned in her prediction, Alicia Spinnet, Angelina Johnson and Katie Bell, and started taking measures to bring their families into the fold so that they would get the benefits of being part of the group, and to ensure that Katie started next year with the others.
At least they'd managed to get rid of the rest of those abominations that Riddle had created in an attempt to anchor what he had for a soul to the realm of the living. The goblins had seen this before through their centuries of breaking down the defences of ancient tombs for wizards who wanted to rob them (unless they located them before the wizards of course). Vainglorious wizards or witches who were so desperate to ensure that they returned to enjoy the riches that they had accumulated by whatever means that they used dark rituals to anchor parts of their souls to this realm. That was why, when they removed the abomination contained in the scar on Harry's forehead, they immediately recognised what it was, a small fragment of the 'soul' of Tom Riddle, the one the humans called Lord Voldemort.
Their biggest worry was the size of the fragment they removed from Harry, because they knew the process used to create these anchors split the wizard's 'soul', 'core' or whatever they wanted to call it in two so that one half could be attached to the anchor. This meant that for the fragment from Harry to be so small, Riddle must have performed this ritual a number of times, especially as they had torn memories from Death Eaters' heads in the war which showed Riddle performing other dark rituals to steal witches and wizards' power to increase his own, not to mention using his Death Eater slaves' dark marks to leach power from them.
The way to discover just how many of these anchors were out there didn't show until Dumbledore was arrested and Harry called his missing heirlooms to him, because when the Peverell family ring that the Gaunts had had and Salazar Slytherin's mother's locket came to him, it was obvious that they both had the same taint as what had been removed from Harry, and Godric Gryffindor's Armlet showed signs of being prepared for something like the horcrux ritual as well. This must have been meant to receive the soul fragment the night Harry's parents died, seeing as Harry was supposed to die and the spells to begin its preparation for the task were cast around then. They had the others call for their houses' missing heirlooms to be returned as well and Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem and Helga Hufflepuff's Cup both showed Riddle's taint too. This meant that they now had five pieces of Riddle's 'soul', the first in the Peverell ring, and the last from Harry's scar going by the 'size' and age of the fragments, but that just presented another problem, because the fragment in the ring wasn't anywhere near big enough to be half of Riddle's soul, so there must be another one out there, the first one.
It was actually Narcissa who pointed them to where the primary anchor was. They were discussing the fact that the primary anchor was probably with one of his trusted followers, but it apparently wasn't an heirloom of one of their houses (it would have been stupid as well as cruel to exclude her from the discussion, seeing as she was around Riddle and his followers before he was destroyed). Narcissa had been there when the Peverell ring came to Harry and had cringed away from the foul feel of it like everyone else, but that had triggered a memory and she turned to the goblins. "Could this anchor be a diary?"
That had their attention, so the goblins said yes and asked what she was talking about. "When he was trying to convince himself that his Master would return, and everyone else how important he was to the Master, Lucius was waving an old diary about, saying that the Dark Lord told him to keep it safe because it may be needed to ensure his return. I remember it now because it had the same foul aura as those heirlooms, only stronger. Come to think of it, Bella said that the Master left something with her as well, but she was doing as she was told, not waving it about and showing it off. This was at a meeting of the inner circle Death Eaters in the chamber hidden under the parlour at Malfoy Manor just before Bella and the others went after the Longbottoms…." She turned to Frank and Alice. "I didn't know about that, I swear! I was only down there to hear the other because Lucius made me come serve them to show them how much I was under his control, and probably to show me how powerful he was among the Death Eaters, he sent me away again straight after that."
They debated the matter and agreed that this diary may well be the primary anchor, so they asked where she thought it would be now. "I'm certain it would still be in that chamber at Malfoy Manor. Lucius is almost as sure of his own infallibility as Riddle or Dumbledore, so he wouldn't believe that anyone could get through the wards and traps he put on the chamber, and he probably thinks that everyone would have forgotten about it by now because we don't have his great mind. The fact that he's too paranoid to try and get something like that through the wards at Gringotts means that it will be at the Manor and that chamber is the most secure place at the manor, so it will be there, I'm sure of it!"
That was good enough for them, so they asked to see her memories of the chamber and both Amelia and the goblins were furious because there were many obvious forbidden dark objects in there, and many of them were created from goblin artefacts. While they wanted to swoop in there and clear everything out of that chamber, they knew that a blatant move like that would make Bagnold and the others band together to support Malfoy, because they'd be worried whether they'd be next if they allowed them to go after him. This created a problem, because while they knew that Malfoy's controls wouldn't be as strong as he believed, they'd still need curse breakers to get past them to get the diary, and that would both make it obvious that Narcissa had told about the chamber and let the Death Eaters know that they were going after something in the chamber. Unfortunately one of them was bound to remember about the diary if they publicly broke into the chamber. Saul was musing out loud. "No, what we need is a way to get into that chamber without Malfoy knowing. The only thing I can think of is tunnelling in from underneath but even that's dangerous if anyone thought to put wards underneath, or the perimeter wards go deep enough to catch the attempt to tunnel into the Manor…."
That was when they were reminded again of the brilliance of these children, because a small voice piped up. "What about the elves? They can go anywhere can't they?"
Gringott bellowed a laugh and kissed Hermione on the head. Amelia just shook her head, but she kissed her too. It was so simple when the children pointed out things like that. There was no way that Malfoy would have bothered to ward against anything so insignificant as a house elf, and the fact that the chamber was clean in Narcissa's memories said that the elves must go down there to clean it. Narcissa's personal elf had been at Malfoy Manor up until Narcissa left (Dobby had been given to her when she went to Hogwarts, so he wasn't reclaimed with her dowry when her Great Uncle annulled her marriage the first time), so they called him to ask whether he'd been in the secret chamber under the parlour.
"Oh yes, we has to keeps it clean or the Master get angry!"
Dobby was a bit of a strange elf, so Narcissa took over the questioning. "Dobby, how did you get into the chamber to clean it, did Lucius open it to let you in?"
He looked at her as if she'd grown a second head. "No Mistress, the Master only opens the chamber when he wants to go in, we pops in to clean it."
The humans and goblins looked at each other, wondering whether it could really be this simple. "Do you know whether anything has been done to block you from any part of Malfoy Manor since we left there Dobby, or can you still get in the way you did before? We need to get something from that chamber Dobby, an old diary that was being kept in there. You'll know the one I'm talking about because it feels bad."
She should have known better than to ask him like that, because he immediately nodded and disappeared. He reappeared a couple of minutes later, dropping the diary on the floor and scuttling back from it, wrapping his arms around himself and shivering as he said. "That bad thing! Many bad things in chamber but that worst!"
Narcissa fell to her knees and hugged him, she hadn't meant to send him in there like that. The best idea would have been to have him take a container with him and levitate the diary into it so that he didn't have to touch it, but Dobby was even more eager to please than most elves.
They didn't really need any confirmation because they all felt the foul presence of the thing as soon as it appeared in the room, but the Head Curse Breaker waved his hand over it and nodded grimly, this was definitely the primary anchor! He quickly conjured a container and levitated the diary into it, sealing it in straight away to contain that foul presence.
Now that they had all six of the anchors Riddle had created though, the question was what to do with them, and what to do about the Riddle's shade, which was his seventh and final soul fragment. For that matter, they wanted to do something about the remaining Death Eaters, but the tool that Riddle had left them to do that would require his magical signature to activate it.
Unfortunately, they needed Harry to go into Riddle's memories to determine how he used the Death Eaters' dark marks to take magic from them. The goblins had determined during the war that he had been constantly drawing off the Death Eaters' magical energy to boost his own, but it was at such a low level that most wouldn't have noticed. Riddle being Riddle, they were certain that he would have built the capability to take as much as he wanted of their magic when he felt he had a need for it into the spells of the dark mark, especially after he created the first of the soul anchors and worked out that he lost half of his magic each time he did so. That was what they were looking for now, the way to activate this capability and suck out all the Death Eaters' magic.
The Purebloods in the Wizengamot would never allow prominent Purebloods to be executed unless there was irrefutable proof of them committing acts that even they couldn't stomach, not even Death Eaters, their core belief in Pureblood sovereignty was too deeply engrained for that. Bagnold and her factions were bound to spread rumours about this being a plot to wipe out the Purebloods of Magical Britain and they would be accepted at face value because critical thinking wasn't something that had ever taken on in Magical Britain apparently.
Putting the Death Eaters into Azkaban wouldn't be enough to stop them being a threat either, because the mindset that allowed them to commit the atrocities they did with wild abandon meant that the dementors didn't effect them as much as normal people. This meant that if Riddle did manage to return, he would have a ready made army waiting for him in Azkaban, and for matter half of the staff there were likely to join him because it took a similar mindset to the Death Eaters' to handle working around the dementors for any length of time. Yes, the Death Eaters would be less than they were before they went in, but Riddle would just sacrifice the ones who couldn't do what he wanted them to, probably using their sacrifices to motivate the others to improve or else.
No, the only way to ensure that the Death Eaters couldn't rise again would be to wipe them out. Doing this by any normal means would most likely have the majority of the Purebloods banding together to fight back though, probably under Bagnold's banner, so they needed to find another way, and using their own dark marks to drain them seemed the safest and most effective. After all, if they were all found dead, drained and clutching their dark marks, hopefully even the Purebloods would surmise that Voldemort's own methods had been used to take the Death Eaters' magic, which would in turn imply that either he was trying to return or someone in his inner circle was trying to take out the competition. With any luck, that would frighten enough of the Purebloods to get measures against the Death Eaters approved to stop them taking over, especially if they used the Daily Prophet to point out that the time to stop them was now, before they grew strong enough to terrorise Magical Britain again.
The goblins and the Unspeakables all agreed that the stronger Ridddle's presence was in the soul fragment that was used as the focus to call for the Death Eaters' magic, the faster they would be drained, so after much debate they agreed to combine the fragments extracted from everything but the diary into one container so that it would have almost half of his 'soul', and use that as the focus for the ritual. They tried to use this container to locate Riddle's shade (because the mechanisms they used to locate tombs via the soul anchors stored in them were more effective with stronger soul fragments too), but the most they could determine was that it was somewhere outside of the British Isles, perhaps in Eastern Europe. Harry reminded them that the last place that Riddle had successfully created a soul anchor was in Albania, when he found Rowena's Diadem, so he might have been dragged back there by his magic when his attempt to create another one in their cottage failed. The others agreed that that made more sense than anything else they could think of.
Once enough goblin warding experts and curse breakers had been assembled to ensure that they would be able to contain the soul and enact the ritual of banishment, they initiated the ritual to drain the Death Eaters' magic through their dark marks. This was done during a full Wizengamot session so that the most prominent of the marked Death Eaters were on display while they were being drained. It was quite impressive, as the Death Eaters all screamed and fell to the floor, clutching at their dark marks. The same thing happened all over Magical Britain, including Azkaban, everyone with Riddle's dark mark was struck, but the further they were from Gringotts, the longer it took for the process to start.
The goblins had added the locator spell to the ones that drew the magic through the dark marks, and they noted that the closer to Gringotts the Death Eaters were, the faster they showed up and the faster they were drained. The ones doing their banking and shopping in Diagon Alley were quickly sucked dry and died first, then the Ministry building and St Mungo's in London, the estates in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and finally Azkaban. As they died, their locator threads disappeared and the goblins working to identify who they were pointing to moved on to the next threads.
As the 'soul' they were using as the focus fed on the magic it was drawing into itself to grow bigger and stronger, it reached out further. At the start, the magic could only reach the ones in London, but as they were drained, it reached out to locate and latch onto other dark marks further away. They soon had confirmation of the Death Eaters dying in Gringotts' banking chamber and Diagon Alley, and word came in of the deaths in the Ministry building and St Mungo's too. Within half an hour, the only Death Eaters left alive in the British Isles were the ones in Azkaban, but they seemed to be lasting longer than expected.
On a hunch, Gringott sent Balrog and Gamling to the prison and they found what he had expected, that the reason the Death Eaters were lasting longer there was that the dementors had flocked to feed on them when they suddenly became vulnerable. When the dementors tried to feed on them though, the spells which were draining the Death Eaters had actually reversed the process and they were drawing magical energy from the dementors. This was too good an opportunity to pass up, so Balrog and Gamling did as their uncle had ordered and quickly broke open the doors of all the Death Eaters' cells to let the dementors reach them.
Watching the memories Balrog and Gamling brought back of almost the entire dementor population of Azkaban packed into the Death Eaters' cells in a feeding frenzy, trying to get at the Death Eaters and any other dementors which had started to flag (because that was how they sustained themselves when they couldn't feed on humans, they attacked weaker dementors) was rather disturbing, but most of them shared the goblins' grim satisfaction at what was achieved to some degree.
About half an hour after the magic latched onto the first of the Death Eaters' dark marks in Azkaban, they were all gone, as were the vast majority of Azkaban's dementors. Any thoughts the Ministry may have had about trying to see whether any of the dementors could be recovered were dashed by the fact that no-one would go anywhere near them because as soon as they died, they had immediately began to rapidly decompose and the overpowering reek from nearly three hundred decomposing dementor husks soon emptied the prison.
Amelia was fairly certain that the guards hadn't made much of an attempt to get the last of the living prisoners out of the high security section before they sealed it up and scoured it out with Fiendfyre because they were too afraid that there may be more dementors in there looking for someone to feed on, but she wasn't at all bothered about the fact that the few remaining dementors which had stayed in their containment area beneath the prison were also burnt out by the Fiendfyre. Between the fact that the dementors had burst out of their containment area and fed on the guards when the feeding frenzy began and the Fiendfyre half melting everything in there, they were fairly confident that no-one would question the story that the dementors had broken into the Death Eaters' cells when the feeding frenzy started. After all, no-one had ever studied dementors in a feeding frenzy so there was no conclusive evidence that they couldn't do that.
As soon as the last of the Death Easters died and the locator threads disappeared, the goblins drained the magical energy from the 'soul' into ward stones that they had waiting and then banished it, because after feeding on all those Death Eaters and the dementors, it had grown to several times its original size and they were having considerable trouble containing it. All in all, they considered the exercise quite a success though. They still had the soul fragment from the diary which would allow them to track down Riddle's shade if they wished, but they had eliminated all of his Death Eaters in the British Isles, the fact that they'd eliminated the vast majority of the dementors as well being an unexpected bonus. According to DMLE and the goblins' records, the only known marked Death Eater on the Continent was Igor Karkaroff and they had a lead that he was teaching at Durmstrang. The goblins had no problem with eliminating him to ensure that he couldn't be used to help restore Riddle's shade, and in fact they were already organising it.
The only argument was about the amount of time and effort it would take to track down and identify whatever animal Riddle was currently possessing in the forests of Albania and banish his shade. Some were arguing that they should just wait until he tried to return to Magical Britain and finish him off then, but others were pointing out that that could give him a chance to find a way to restore himself, not to mention the added risk of having to keep the larger soul fragment from the diary to locate the last piece with. Eventually they compromised, using the soul locator to narrow it down to the glade that the shade or possessed animal was in and burning out the entire glade with the goblin version of Fiendfyre. According to the locator, the soul fragment had pretty much stayed in one place until disappeared when the fire was released and there was no sign of it afterwards, so they took the diary's soul fragment back to Gringotts London and destroyed it. With the last piece of Riddle and all the Death Eaters in Britain at least gone, the family allowed itself to relax a little.
With Lucius dead and the House of Malfoy eradicated, Draco went back to the name of Rosier again (his mother's maiden name), because Lord Black wasn't prepared to have him in the line of succession for the House of Black. While he was living with his mother at the London Townhouse and being trained at Potter Manor with Harry and the others though, Draco was initially too arrogant and lazy to make the effort needed to catch up so they thought he would probably be starting two or three years after them, but the humiliation of being left behind by the younger girls made him start working. They still had doubts, because he wasn't anywhere near as bright as their brilliant girls, or a match for Neville or Sue either for that matter, but they left it up to him as to whether he was going to make the effort to try and start with Neville and the others, and Narcissa reminded him that if he didn't keep up that effort when they got to Hogwarts he would be left behind.
In Magical Britain, Minister Bagnold and most of the 'dark' houses had really started panicking by then, because all the goblins would tell them was that the houses of all the Death Eaters and everything they owned had been successfully claimed by right of conquest. This gutted the dark houses' power base, and took a rather large bite out of the Pureblood Houses' overall power too. They had lost sixteen houses and nine noble titles (two of them Earls) when the Death Eaters' houses were claimed by right of conquest, and they were sure that the other side had gained even more votes by allocating those titles to Most Ancient, or at least Ancient Houses because while the Wizards Council representatives in the Wizengamot weren't saying anything, they looked quite satisfied and their votes obviously had more effect than they did before.
By the time Harry and the others went to Hogwarts, the balance of power had swung well and truly to the Council, so with the scandals of the the sons of her strongest supporters being expelled and arrested, and even worse their Heads of House disappearing or being arrested, Minister Bagnold was getting desperate. This was what drove her to ignore the advice of anyone who knew Harry in her attempt to hitch her wagon to Harry's star with the Halloween celebration and Order of Merlin award. While brighter than most Pureblood witches and wizards, Minister Bagnold still couldn't accept that the way everything had blown up in her face was her own fault, so while she was planning on retiring before she could be thrown out, she decided that she'd still be the force behind her Wizengamot factions and would be watching the Wizards Council Alliance like a hawk, waiting for a chance to get back at the ones she saw as being responsible for her downfall.
Of course, with typical Pureblood short sightedness, she couldn't see that the Wizards Council Alliance was only one part of what she was up against. Even leaving the elves out of the equation, she had the Goblin Nation of Britain, Her Majesty's Government and everyone else who was part of Demi-Britain and the International Confederation of Wizards (because they were worried about the potential fallout of the traditional Purebloods of Magical Britain's arrogance exposing their world) opposing her. Poor Millicent, she didn't have a chance…. Or a clue for that matter.
By Halloween, Harry and the others had settled into Hogwarts, they still weren't too impressed with the way they were being taught there but they were working with it, helping Percy, Penny and the others in their class move ahead much faster than they had before so they quickly left the rest of the Third years behind. Their interactions with students from all four houses was helping break down the barriers between the houses as well, and the Lords group got on quite well with most of the school (except the sons and daughters of the powerful Pureblood houses who saw them as taking away everything that was rightfully their's).
That was why Harry had received quite a bit of support from his schoolmates and most of their families at the Halloween Feast when the Minister's plans blew up in her face, because many of his schoolmates had come to accept and like this quiet little boy for who and what he was, not the ridiculous stories that were being told about him for the last seven years. They had also been telling their parents about the real Harry Potter and the altercations he was having with the children of the Pureblood families, so most of them were better disposed to him as well. That was why their anger at being attacked over their lack of consideration and support had so quickly turned to sorrow, because they could see that he was right, they had failed both him and Sirius Black terribly. Of course, human nature led them to redirect their ire onto someone else, but not many felt guilt over doing this to the Minister, because she was one of the ones directly responsible for what happened to them.
After Halloween, many Houses had their children approach Harry at Hogwarts to offer their apologies for allowing this to happen to him, and their fathers apologised to Sirius as well. Many of these apologies led in turn to discussions which had quite a few houses aligning themselves with and joining the Wizards Council Alliance.
Only about a third of the seven hundred and fifty or so houses still recognised in Magical Britain were currently extant. About a hundred of these were Minor Houses which had been created by rich common families buying a Baronet or similar to give them higher status since the Wizengamot had been created. Another sixty odd houses had been ennobled since the Wizengamot was created, ten or fifteen legitimately, the rest by nefarious means, these were the Noble Houses which made up the core of the Pureblood factions. The last ninety or so Houses were the Most Ancient and Ancient Noble and Druid Houses which had been recognised before the Wizengamot was created. The majority of the Most Ancient and Ancient Houses had begun as Druid Houses, the families of Druids recognised for their wisdom and magical power, and most of these had been part of the guiding families that made up the Druids Council and Wizards Council at some point in the one and a half thousand years that they guided Magical Britain.
The Wizengamot had come out of the ambition and hunger for power of rising wizards who used their powers to get titles from the British rulers and then used their noble status to lord it over others. These were the houses that the 'traditional' Purebloods came from, and with their wits addled by six or seven hundred years of inbreeding, they believed that it was their absolute right to rule over Magical Britain, so they weren't about to give up control without a fight.
While Millicent was resigned to retiring before she could be kicked out, she wasn't ready to give up control, so she gave careful consideration to the matter of her successor. She dismissed Delores Umbridge from consideration immediately, the woman's rat cunning and total lack of scruples or morals were very useful attributes, indeed, that was why she was the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, but she was incapable of covering up these attributes so just about everyone loathed her. If she somehow managed to get voted in as Minister she'd be voted out again within six months, but quite aside from that she needed Delores to stay in the Undersecretary's position to guide her replacement, or sabotage them if the wrong person got in. Ministry tradition was that the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister remained in that position for at least a year to maintain continuity and ease the transition between Ministers, this meant that she could use Delores to control what was happening in the Ministry for long enough to ensure that things went the way she wanted.
No, Delores was out, but who would do? Lord Abbot would be accepted by the people of Magical Britain and he supported the Pureblood beliefs, but he wasn't part of the Ministry and unfortunately tradition also required the Minister to have come from the Ministry. Fudge wasn't a viable option either, he had a good dose of Delores' rat cunning and ambition but he was an idiot…. Hmmm, he could still be useful though, promoting him as an exemplary senior Ministry official might help keep attention off her real choice. That would hopefully give those Council people less of a chance to dig up the dirt on the one she ended up putting forward. It was a given that there would be dirt to be found because she couldn't think of anyone of any real importance in her factions who was truly clean….
Elphias Doge might have been a candidate, if not for the fact that he was a doddering old fool who had been Dumbledore's lap dog for more than a century so the stench of failure by association clung to him, and everyone knew that he was largely, if not completely ineffectual.
She frowned as she came to the conclusion that Amos Diggory was the only viable candidate she had to put forward. He was far from ideal, while not an idiot like Fudge he didn't have Delores' cunning, but then that should make him easier to control via Delores, so it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He had enough seniority and experience in the Ministry to make him a credible candidate, and the fact that he hadn't insulted the goblins enough to make them kill him yet said that he could hold his tongue when he needed to, not that she'd ever seen it. He was more presentable than Fudge, and his Great, Great or even Great, Great, Great Grandfather had bought the Baronet to make the Diggory family a Minor House, so they were almost Noble.
She snorted in a most unladylike manner at this last, as dealing with the smug superiority of their factions' nobles was one of her biggest bugbears, but being from such an established Minor House would hopefully make Amos more acceptable to them than someone like her or Fudge who'd bought their titles themselves. Malfoy wasn't the only one who had been always ready to demand satisfaction for the slight of failing to address them as Lord, not by a long shot, and the newer the title, the touchier they seemed to be.
Yes, as limited as he was, Diggory would have to be her factions' candidate for the next Minister. At least she didn't have to worry about the dark houses splitting the vote with their own candidate now, because losing the Death Eaters with all their wealth and votes last year had brought the dark houses to their knees so they had finally learned to shut up and do as they were told. She would have to cover up how he'd killed those Muggles in a panic when he was caught Muggle baiting in his youth, trying to impress future Death Eaters like Malfoy and Nott, and he may well have some Half-Blood bastards running around somewhere from the times he'd been having fun with Muggle bints, maybe even at Hogwarts. She snorted again at the thought that his beloved Cedric might be at Hogwarts with half brothers and half sisters that he didn't know about….. But as far as they knew the Muggles had all been obliviated and that and the money he took for bribing those goblins to grant illegal access to wizards' vaults were the only real skeletons in his closet, which made him a lot cleaner than most of their people.
The goblins were the biggest worry, because the ones he'd bribed that time had apparently been caught and executed for betraying the Goblin Nation, so they may know about Diggory's part in that, but the old houses assured her that the goblins didn't talk to humans unless they absolutely had to, and as Diggory was the current Goblin Liaison, they didn't have anyone else to tell tales to anyway. If they tried to stir up trouble once he was Minister…. Well amending the terms of the treaty so it cost them money should be a good deterrent, and if not, threats of much harsher measures if they didn't do as they were told should get the message across, she'd been waiting for the excuse to put those creatures in their place ever since she became Minister anyway.
Unfortunately for Millicent, the people she was up against, both human and goblin, were far brighter and more observant than she gave them credit for, so they immediately caught onto what she was doing when she started pulling back from the public eye and Cornelius Fudge's 'achievements' began being touted. They knew quite well what Fudge was like, so there was no way they'd accept him as a viable candidate to replace her unless it was as a puppet with Bagnold's hand up his jacksie to control his every move. So they stepped back and watched to see who else was being praised, and soon enough Amos Diggory's name started showing up.
Gringott told them about the goblins who had been executed because they accepted bribes from Diggory to give wizards illegal access to others' vaults in Gringotts, and they smiled when they saw the names of the holders of some of those vaults, because they were among the richest houses of the Pureblood factions. Rich wizards tended to be like the dragons of legend, they guarded their gold very closely, so hearing that their faction's candidate for Minister had played a key role in thefts from their vaults would almost guarantee that he wouldn't get their votes, or anyone beholden to them's either.
Unpleasant things pop up from here on.
Alastor also had news about Diggory, because he had kept records of anything and everything which might be important since he first became an Auror, and he remembered a number of incidents involving young Amos Diggory that Magical Accidents had had to be called in to cover up around the start of the war. As the Director of the DMLE, Amelia had no trouble getting the records out of the archives and with Alastor's help ensured that the records clerks were too scared to say a word to anyone about it.
They were sickened to read what Amos the Lad had gotten up to, and when the information was shared with the HMG units they worked with, they demanded that he handed over to them for murder and multiple cases of rape, especially the rape of minors. Her Majesty's representatives agreed to hold off until they had used this to destroy Bagnold's nomination for her replacement, but only after they were given the guarantee that they would get him.
Interfering with Muggles wasn't something that most wizards cared about, especially the traditional Purebloods, but Minister Bagnold wasn't the only one clever enough to think about the possibility of Half-Blood children resulting from his raping Muggle girls so they started investigating. They soon discovered that there had been a few pregnancies resulting from those rapes, and at least one of them was indeed a Half-Blood wizard, a Seventh year Gryffindor by the name of Henry Jones who's mother had only been twelve when she had him. Henry agreed to do whatever they wanted when they contacted him and offered him a chance to help bring down the wizard who was responsible for his mother's death.
She had been on her on the way home from school when she was snatched and viciously raped in a back lane, to be left all but naked and bleeding to death from the damage that had been done to her. Someone had found her just in time to get help to save her, but she had no memory of the rape, and neither did anyone else. Having a baby at twelve destroyed sweet little Helen Jones' life, because while her parents stood by her and just about everyone knew that she was a good girl who was in no way to blame for what had been done to her, the vicious taunts and rumours thrown at her and the boys and men who wanted some of what they said she was obviously ready and willing to give up were too much for her to bear, so she threw herself into the river and drowned herself soon after she turned thirteen to escape it.
Henry was raised by his Grandparents after she died, but he grew up an angry young man because of what they and everyone else told him about her. When Minerva came to their flat to explain to them that Henry was a wizard and offer him a place at Hogwarts, he finally found somewhere to focus that anger. There had been too many unexplainable things about the day his mother was raped as an innocent schoolgirl, it had happened in a lane just off High Street in broad daylight, right around the corner from her school and from the state she was in she had obviously put up quite a fight, but no-one remembered seeing or hearing anything, not even her!
Being told that he was a wizard suddenly made things start to fall into place for Henry, so he asked the lady lots of questions about what other sorts of things could be done with magic and over the course of the questioning she let slip enough to convince him that magic had been used to cover up what was done to his mother, so the one who raped her must have been a wizard. Oh yes, he'd go to their school and he'd learn everything he could about magic all right, and then he'd hunt his father down and kill the bastard for what he did to his mother!
Like Her Majesty's representatives, Henry agreed to hold off until any evidence they uncovered had been used to bring his father down, but he demanded to have first go at him, and everyone agreed that no-one had a higher claim to justice than he did. It was his inheritance test that gave them the perfect tool to use against Diggory, because Henry was confirmed as the first son and true heir to the House of Diggory. It also showed that one of his mother's grandmothers had been a squib from a Noble and Ancient House. Inheritance tests were accepted as conclusive proof of lineage in the magical world, and while wizards and witches didn't generally care about Muggles because they regarded them to be beneath anyone magical, due to the drastically declining birth rates in Magical Britain over the past century, children were regarded by most as a gift to be treasured, all children. (Even squibs who ended up being banished to the Muggle world to cover up the fact that the family wasn't all magical.)
Therefore, having Amos Diggory's Half-Blood son and heir telling Magical Britain how his father had raped the descendent of a Noble and Ancient House almost to death and then left her to die in a filthy back lane with her blood and other fluids leaking from her body, only for her to be saved and forced to become a mother at twelve and then kill herself while still barely thirteen because of the shame of what had been done to her, Amos Diggory was lucky to live long enough to be taken by the Aurors. The ones who witnessed it said that Diggory didn't seem to believe that he was lucky when his son was extracting retribution for what he had done to his mother though. The only one who seemed more impressed than disturbed by what he did to him was Alastor Moody, though the head of one of Her Majesty's magical strike units must have been impressed too because he offered Henry a place with them as soon as he finished at Hogwarts. Sirius wasn't surprised that Henry took the government's offer over his own to join the Black Guard, because he understood that Henry would see him as a wizard, and killing his father wouldn't have been enough to appease his hatred of wizards. He might have felt sorry for the wizards that Henry would be sent after if he didn't believe that most of them would deserve it.
Millicent had believed that everything was going to plan when she made the teary announcement that she was retiring because she realised that she'd failed the Boy-Who-Lived and Heir Black, as everyone was lapping it up at the ball. The announcement went over so well that she took the opportunity to strike while the iron was hot and endorse Amos Diggory as the best choice for the new Minister.
When the Wizards Council Alliance nominated Arthur Weasley as their candidate she thought that they had it in the bag, because Weasley was a joke! He'd barely been able to hold together a lousy two person office looking at Muggle toys a year and a half ago and her people in International Magical Cooperation told her that he was nothing but a figurehead, he didn't stand a chance against a respected senior Ministry official who'd been holding an important position for years.
The fly in the potion didn't appear until about a week and a half before the new Minister was to be voted in. That was when she went to some of the richest houses of their factions to ask for the money to make a few donations to ensure that there would be no upsets on the day, and they refused her. Her blood ran cold when one said. "You won't get another knut from me to support that little toad! My account manager showed me proof that he was involved in the thefts from my vaults two years ago. He also showed me proof that you knew that Diggory was helping Nott steal from me and didn't say a word, so you won't be getting another knut from me, period. Minister!"
She was told similar things by over half of the richest and most powerful houses in the Pureblood factions and any houses affiliated with them. Not having their money to buy the votes she needed to ensure Diggory was elected was bad enough, but it was obvious that she'd lost all their votes as well, and that was a disaster! She couldn't understand why the goblins would suddenly be coming out and telling wizards what went on in their world and why those wizards were angry at her instead of the goblins who had allowed it to happen? (It never occurred to her that goblins would return the gold that had been stolen when they told the vault owners about the thefts, and their gold's return was enough to induce wizards who valued honest dealings and gold over deceitful alliances to change sides. The thefts hadn't amounted to much before the goblins involved were caught because they had been trying to keep it quiet by doing a little at a time, so it was an easy decision for the Alliance to front the gold needed to get those wealthy houses to split from Bagnold's factions.)
Losing those houses' gold and votes wasn't the biggest blow though. No, that came less than a week before the new Minister was to be voted in, in the form of the entire front page of the Daily Prophet being taken up by articles which showed incontrovertible proof that the first born son and heir of the House of Diggory was in fact a Half-Blood wizard who's mother (the descendent of a Noble and Ancient House) was a child who had been snatched by Amos Diggory on the way home from school and raped so brutally that she almost died in an attempt to impress his friends, the future Death Eaters Lucius Malfoy and Thaddeus Nott. They included prominent pictures to show what a sweet, innocent little thing Helen Jones had been at the time she was raped and told how she was only twelve when Henry Jones was born as a full term baby. Then they went on to tell how, because she and every other witness had been obliviated by Magical Accidents, there was no proof of what happened so she was reviled and degraded so much that she killed herself to escape the torment when she was barely thirteen. Diggory only made it out of the Ministry building alive because the Aurors arrested him and delivered him to the Muggle authorities before fathers who had daughters around the age that Helen had been when he raped her could get their hands on him.
Elspeth Diggory trying to argue that the girl was just a Muggle so Amos hadn't committed any crime under their laws led to her being questioned and admitting under Veritaserum that she'd known how young many of the Muggle girls Amos raped were even before she married him. That in turn led to her and her son being thrown out of the House of Diggory and the Diggory home without a knut as soon as Henry was accepted as the Head of the House of Diggory (though someone paid Cedric's school fees through to the end of his time at Hogwarts anonymously, making it clear that he wasn't being held responsible for what his parents did). Elspeth's family took them in, but Cedric's request to be made the ward of a friend's family was granted because he couldn't stomach being around his mother and her parents when they kept arguing that his father had done nothing wrong. He neither knew nor cared where they'd gone when they disappeared a year or two later, because he stopped speaking to them when he left.
In desperation, Millicent had Fudge nominated as her replacement after Henry Jones was accepted as Head of the House of Diggory, confirming that Amos was dead, but follow up articles showed that she had known exactly what Diggory did and had in fact ordered Fudge to give her any and all records of the incident so that she'd have Diggory in her pocket when she needed him (they omitted the fact that all records were magically copied into the archives and that was how Amelia located her copies). These articles ensured that most of the ones who were still considering doing as they were told and voting for Fudge turned around and cast their votes for Arthur Weasley on the day, so it was a landslide victory for Weasley.
The final blow came when Weasley arrived with the major Department Heads for the formal handover as she left the Minister's office for the last time, because Bones brought a team of Aurors with her and arrested Delores. Millicent saw a side of Weasley that she'd never seen before when she demanded that Delores be released and he laughed at her. "I don't think so Millicent, you see we have been looking into Delores' activities and I have decided that I don't want her type in my Ministry. In fact I don't want her type running around Magical Britain making trouble so the Department of Magical Law Enforcement will be asking her a few questions and if her answers match what we know, well Delores will be spending a lot of time on a certain island retreat that we maintain."
Millicent sent Delores a look to warn her. 'You better keep quiet if you know what's good for you!'
But the look she got in response to that was. 'You better get me out of there before they ask me anything if you want your secrets kept quiet!'
It was clear to see that she wouldn't get any concessions out of Weasley or Bones, so she got out of there as quick as she could without making it too obvious that they had her on the run. She had to get to Rufus before Delores got into the system, because he was the only one she had left who could get her out of this.