OK, I have a bit of a bone of contention to pick with something in one of the reviews for this story, the opinion stating that it was 'all a little too easy' and therefore Harry's character wouldn't develop. Let's see, first his parents are both murdered on the same night when he was fifteen months old, with his Mummy being killed right in front of him while pleading with a monster to spare him even as she was murdered. Then the manipulative old bastard (MOB) has him forcibly taken away from his rightful guardian (who he had thrown into Azkaban without a trial), and dumps Harry on a doorstep in the middle of the night in winter, leaving him to the tender mercies of people who'd rather torture and kill him than care for him…. So he's locked up, starved, beaten almost to death numerous times, flogged, burned and worked until he drops on a daily basis from the time he can walk up until he escapes after he was almost killed yet again at the ripe old age of six. Once he escapes and is healed by the goblins, he works day and night with gruelling physical training sessions morning and night (if not morning, noon and night) to ready himself for the trials of the magical world, and this is easy? Sorry, if that's easy in your experience, I really don't want your life!
NB: After thinking about it, there was a minor change in regard to the founders' swords, because there was usually a companion knife or something that went with swords and a battleaxe in medieval times, so each of the four now has a matching set of sword, half-sword and battleaxe, and the half-sword can also shrunk to a dagger or extended to a short sword or spear and the battleaxe shrunk to two foot long or extended to six feet with the corresponding axe blade as well. The others were using magical goblin silver swords, half-swords and battleaxes that could be shrunk or extended too as the goblins' leading families had had and used these for two thousand years, in fact the designs for the Founders' swords, half-sword/spears and battleaxes came from them.
Another clarification which will probably come out over the next few chapters is the goblin floos, these are actually enchanted mirrors which can do everything and more than the wizarding fire based floos. James and Sirius got the ideas for the Marauders' communications mirrors from notes in the Potter library about the goblin floo mirrors. While basic functions used for the communication mirrors are powered by runes they also draw power from their users for more demanding things, so the floo mirrors would have similar ranges to the wizarding floo networks for wizards and witches of normal magical power, but more powerful witches and wizards can reach much further. Pocket mirrors can also be expanded to be used as portals if the users have the ability to do so.
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.
Arthur's active punishment of the use of forbidden terms and forcefully debunking the myths of blood status, 'Pureblood' breeding and superiority over non-magicals certainly threw the cat among the pigeons, but the so-called Purebloods couldn't stand against the voting majority the Council Alliance held in the Wizengamot, or the power of the International Confederation of Wizards. What the other side didn't know of course was that the Alliance had been working towards this point for two years now, as soon as Sirius was cleared and accepted the title of Heir Black, Lord Arcturus Black had made it known to everyone in the Magical world who had alliances with or did business with the House of Black that Heir Sirius Black spoke for the House of Black and had therefore had full authority to make deals, call in commitments and form alliances in the name of the House of Black.
Therefore, as the family toured all of their houses' holdings and businesses around the world, Sirius was using the Black and Potter alliances to share information about the true might of the non-magical people of the world and what they could do to the Magicals if they were given any reason to feel that the Magicals were a threat to them with the local Magical communities. He was also sharing information about the increasing use of non-magical technology which had removed any possibility of effectively covering up magic use in the non-magical world. While understanding of this outside of Magical Britain was generally better than the Brits', they'd spent most of the past two years manoeuvring and leveraging relationships in enough countries of the ICW to get the ICW to take an official stance on the matter and update the International Statute of Secrecy to reflect this.
That stance was to issue the mandates which stated that drawing the non-magicals attention to the magical world by displaying magic, denigrating them or attacking them in any way was a serious enough breach of the International Statute of Secrecy to justify the ICW officially calling for sanctions against the guilty parties, be they Magical individuals or Magical countries. The other mandate was if anything, more controversial than the risk of riling the non-magicals (which showed where the so-called Purebloods' priorities lay), as this was the banning of any references to blood-status and forbidding and penalising any and all related uses of the terms 'Mudblood', 'Muggle', 'Muggleborn', 'Half-Breed', 'Beast', 'Blood Traitor' and 'Pureblood'. Use of the term 'Mudblood' was fined a thousand galleons per utterance, 'Half-Breed', 'Beast' and 'Blood Traitor' cost five hundred galleons a time and saying 'Muggle', 'Muggleborn' and 'Pureblood' cost them a hundred and fifty galleons each time they were uttered.
All of these words and phrases were added to the taboo words that were monitored by the DMLE and the fines were levied automatically, and under the terms of the new rules if there wasn't enough gold in their vaults to pay the fines, their property was seized and sold to provide the gold needed. A few who couldn't or wouldn't control their mouths were destitute inside a week. What the traditionalists didn't notice at first was that prosecution of the unforgivable curses was also made into an automatic process. The system always gave the information of what witch or wizard cast what unforgivable, but while the traditionalists controlled the system they made judgement calls on the basis of who cast them and who the victims were so most occurrences were swept under the rug without any punishment. That practice was now over, if an unforgivable was cast it, the identity of the magical signature casting it and the date, time and location were automatically recorded and Aurors or Hit Wizards immediately port keyed to the location to apprehend the offender. If they tried to mask their magical signature that pushed the charges even higher because it confirmed criminal intent.
On top of the forbidden taboo words, the rules about exposing their world to the non-magicals were strengthened and revised to meet the ICW's new requirements. Anyone who entered any area that wasn't officially designated as Magical only without first ensuring that they were dressed and behaving in a manner that would blend in with the non-magicals was fined five thousand galleons per person for each instance (parents were fined for their children). Any display of magic in front of non-magicals who weren't already cleared to know about magic was fined ten thousand galleons per instance, the only exceptions being accidental magic performed by young children of non-magical backgrounds who didn't know what was going on. Idiots who ignored these new laws about exposing Magical Britain were often caught by their use of the term 'Muggle' in non-magical areas. They were also tagged by surveillance cameras in Non-Magical Britain and this information was fed back to Magical Britain via Demi-Britain in real time and between these monitoring methods very few visits which threatened the Statute of Secrecy slipped through the cracks.
Also, any obliviations or other memory charms or compulsions (on magicals or non-magicals) performed without the Director of the DMLE's explicit approval resulted in an automatic ten thousand galleon fine and a month in Azkaban per instance and they added all of these spells to the taboos so that they would be automatically recorded and acted upon. The 'time honoured' practices of Muggle baiting and having fun with Muggle girls then wiping their memory of the occurrence were quickly stamped out and those who attempted it paid in gold and prison sentences. When the traditionalists got all up in arms about this, their ICW representatives were called in to explain how all member countries of the ICW were now being told 'Fix this mess or we'll fix it for you!', because the Magical world finally understood that it couldn't afford to be exposed. The fact that the International Statute of Secrecy had been revised to include these measures was a major shock to the 'traditional' houses as they strongly believed in their inalienable right to do as they chose, so being told that this could be enforced by international law was something they had trouble grasping.
Hearing that the Goblin Nations now had official representation in the ICW was another thing that the traditionalists had serious trouble accepting, because two years of pointing the facts of life out to those who really ran the Magical world with thinly veiled threats and hard bargaining had resulted in an official position of equal but different and each of the Goblin Nations having a representative in the ICW who had equal authority to a human representative. Balrog was the nominal ICW representative for the Goblin Nation of Britain and Gamling was the Magical People of Britain's nominal Ambassador to both Magical and Non-Magical Britain, but as twins their magical signatures were close enough to allow them to exchange the two roles when they chose in order to gain more varied political experience for when they eventually took over from their Uncle Gringott as the leaders of the Goblin Nation of Britain.
Those who really ran the ICW secretly thanked the goblins for weeding out the brainless traditionalists who couldn't accept the fact that the world was changing and nothing could stop it. Every one of the fools who challenged the Goblin Nations' representatives to duels to 'get rid of the filthy beasts' faced a goblin wielding a magical buckler and extended goblin silver half-sword and was chopped to pieces, their vaunted 'wizards' superiority over lesser creatures' being shown to be nothing but empty invective. The rest of the ICW representatives watched with increasing amusement and appreciation as the goblins cleared away the dregs of the wizarding world for them, nominating wizarding houses to accept the seats, titles, holdings and wealth of their vanquished challengers. The wealth and power of the Houses of Potter and Black grew even more in Magical countries across the world as a result of these nominations, and the line of the Potters reaffirmed its place as the Friends of the Goblin Nations because Harry and Hermione had been the ones who came up with the idea to push for this.
Of course, taking away the members of the traditional houses' 'right' to do as they pleased to anyone they believed to be below them had the effect of pushing some of the unaffiliated houses into the arms of Madam Bagnold's factions in Magical Britain, but the brighter traditionalists were now beginning to open their eyes, seeing the true state of their world and questioning whether they really wanted to go back to the 'old' ways. This in turn led to some of the unaffiliated houses and even some from Bagnold's factions realigning themselves to stand with the Wizards Council Alliance, and Madam Bagnold was most definitely not happy about that, because the houses which aligned themselves with the Alliance were mostly wealthy and powerful (being the more intelligent of the traditional houses) while she acquired…. Well not to put too fine a point on it, she got the dregs, those traditionalists who were too stupid and hidebound to accept the fact that no matter what they chose to believe, the magical world was united on this and anyone who fought against it would be stepped on. Millicent began making plans to scrape together everything she could and get out of Britain before it was too late, cursing the ones who were behind this revival of the Alliance as she did so.
In the first month of the fines for using the forbidden words being implemented, the family members at Hogwarts were having a great laugh at the flood of owls arriving every morning with increasingly harsh and threatening letters from parents to their children telling them to shut their fool mouths before they bankrupted their families. The favourite sport at the Lords table had become winding up the more bombastic and arrogant of the traditionalists' children to see who could induce the biggest fines for a single incident. Hermione was crowned as the hands down winner of this after she managed to raise nearly a hundred thousand galleons from one rabid purist and well over a quarter of a million galleons more from what his other friends were shouting at her at the same time with just one 'sympathetic' question that she made sure that they 'overheard' as they were passing. "Don't you think it's a shame that all the families who insist on holding to their 'traditions' of marrying close relations will have a hard time having children who are capable of reading and writing, let alone wielding magic, within a couple of generations Professor Hagrid?" Having a Muggleborn and Half-Breed discussing Pureblood families in less than deferential terms was guaranteed to get a reaction from the set upon traditionalists, and it did…. the fines piled up unbelievably fast because every second word seemed to be 'Mudblood' or 'Beast'.
She was so successful that a laughing Arthur and Amelia came to Hogwarts to ask them to tone it down a little, because the fines being generated at Hogwarts were exceeding what was generated in the rest of Magical Britain so demanding questions were being asked in both the Ministry and Wizengamot. More to the point, they need pensieve memories of the incident to take back and display in the Wizengamot because others there didn't believe that it was possible for nearly four hundred thousand galleons in fines to be legitimately levied from one incident. When they stepped out of the mirror floo they were greeted with a flurry of cries of "Uncle Arthur!" "Auntie Amy!", "Dad!", "Minister" and "Director". Andi, Cissa and Griselda came with them to hear first hand what they needed to clean up in the Wizengamot so there were plenty of calls of "Auntie Andi!", "Auntie Cissa!", "Auntie Griz!", "Mum!" and "Gran" too. Once the greetings and hugs were out of the way they sat down to discuss the incident and view the memories.
Amelia was shaking her head and trying not to laugh when the memories finished playing. "You're a wicked, wicked girl Hermione! You knew exactly how those inbred idiots would react and you set up that scene in the Great Hall perfectly to make them explode."
Hermione gave her a smile that was the very essence of innocence. "Whatever do you mean Auntie Amy? It wasn't my fault that those boys were eavesdropping on a private discussion I was having with Professor Hagrid about the perils of inbreeding and suddenly started shouting all those terrible, nasty words at us! Surely you cannot be blaming me for their behaviour?"
That was the straw that broke the camel's back and Amelia cracked up, with tears of laughter streaming down her face. When she got herself under control she came back with. "Oh I'm so sorry Dear! I should have known that you'd never do anything so base as to bait pathetic creatures like that who hardly have a enough brain cells to walk and talk at the same time, because after all that would be cruelty to dumb animals, which is just plain wrong."
The guilty look that crossed over Hermione's face at that cracked up everyone else, because they could see that she was actually taking Amelia's jibe seriously. She was obviously hurt by the laughter though so Harry hugged and kissed her, saying. "Don't cry Mione, we aren't laughing at you, it's just the way you looked guilty about the thought of actually being cruel to poor defenceless creatures when Auntie Amy said that. You weren't! I'll concede the fact that they're no brighter than the trolls that they were obviously descended from but they're hardly defenceless, they attacked you remember!"
Seeing the hurt on Hermione's face had quickly sobered Amelia up. "I'm sorry Sweetie, I never meant to hurt you like that. Harry's right, we weren't laughing at you, it was just the idea that you could actually feel guilty about baiting those pigs so successfully struck us as hilarious….."
She glanced at the Black sisters. "In fact I think you'll find that Auntie Andi and Auntie Cissa are trying to work out how to get away with doing something similar to their fathers in the Wizengamot, because most of the fathers aren't any brighter than their sons."
Andi laughed. "Indeed! It's quite a treat to see Cissa so jealous because she didn't think to do something like this to them before now."
Cissa stuck her nose in the air, playing the haughty Pureblood lady which she could pull off better than anyone else. "You are incorrect sister! I am most definitely not jealous! I am merely exceedingly envious that our sweet little Hermione managed to show the rest of us up so well by coming up with such a masterful stroke against the troll-gets before I could. I obviously need to put more effort into my own planning.… Actually…. My Lord, would you grant me the boon of allowing me to make use of your information about so many of them being descended from trolls? That information could reap quite a harvest in the Wizengamot if I played it right."
Harry gave her a regal nod. "Of course my dear Baroness Black, anything for family."
That had Hermione laughing with the rest of them, and she gasped like the other girls when they heard that her play in the Great Hall had actually reaped three hundred and eighty seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty galleons in fines which could only be used to help fund the new departments and education programs created for the purpose of bridging the gaps in magical people's knowledge and relations that the traditionalists were arguing about. What they weren't about to admit of course was those programs hadn't been created as a result of the ICW's new rulings, they had been established in Demi-Britain over the last couple of years to help the ex-weres, Newbloods and other magical beings, and related Nomag people. These new fines were lessening the financial burden that the Potter and Black families had been carrying before this though, and in fact they were now being reimbursed for part of what they'd invested to establish them because the allocated budgets had included coverage for the necessary costs to establish them.
The family knew full well that the changes they wanted to make would take years to achieve, but their campaign over the past two years in Magical Britain, Non-Magical Britain and the rest of the Magical world had already pulled the rug out from under the traditionalists. The only reason they hadn't moved to squash them yet was that doing such a thing without first driving a wedge between them and the others who still thought the old way could lead to a desperate uprising of those with a similar mindset in hope that they could wrest control of Magical Britain back from the Wizards Council families and return to the old ways.
To move things in the right direction they had been stripping away the discriminatory laws that the traditionalists had implemented to shore up their infrastructure and give them leave to do whatever they wished. Getting the might and rights of the non-magicals and other magical people recognised by the ICW so that they could use the power of the ICW and the Statute of Secrecy to push through the same recognition in Magical Britain was major step. The traditionalists were so stunned by that that they failed to see the danger of making the forbidden words into laws until it was too late, as between the ICW's mandates and the power the Wizards Council Alliance had in the Wizengamot those laws couldn't be repealed without a major revolution.
Using the Wizards Council and Wizengamot laws to strip away the wealth, power and prestige of so many traditionalist families and destroy them had done quite a good job of pulling the traditionalists' teeth, and the fines for the forbidden words, threatening the Statute of Secrecy and unauthorised obliviations, memory charms and compulsions was quickly eating into funds that they may have used to buy support for whatever activities they may be inclined to try to regain their 'rightful place' in Magical Britain. The troll heritage of many of the most ardent traditionalist families was enough to finish them.
Jean Granger would have fitted in with Lily Evans and Pandora Cathbad as well at Hogwarts as Hermione fitted in with Harry and Luna, because she had the same razor sharp wit and drive to delve into the depths of any issue that challenged her. The debate that Harry had sparked with his musing about the probability that it was the descendents of the troll soldier breeding programs that had been used to keep so-called Pureblood lines from dying out had Hermione and Luna diving in to help Harry prove his theory, their mothers joined them in this and they ended up taking over much of the research because the children were already studying and training more than twelve hours each day.
What few humans knew was that the goblins had been the world's knowledge keepers since time immemorial, and that their most secure vaults around the world were actually used to store several millennium's worth of this knowledge and the evidence to support it. This knowledge was how the goblins had guided much of the world through the ages, and contrary to the beliefs held by most humans, it was knowledge rather than gold that they held most dear. Therefore when Harry, Hermione and Luna, then Jean and Pandora, respectfully begged permission to delve into this knowledge in order to trace the lineage of prominent so-called traditional Pureblood families back to the ancient troll soldier breeding programs, they were all given the honour of being officially blood adopted into Gringott's family so that they could access the secret vaults where the goblins' archives were kept safe, the fact that this was a mark of great respect wasn't lost on anyone either.
It had taken them nearly eighteen months to unearth and verify the requisite knowledge and have the evidence formally accepted into the goblins' blood records, but they could now offer incontrovertible proof via the universally accepted goblin inheritance tests that the fertile young Muggle women that many of the traditional houses had stolen from their families and forced to bear heirs to save their failing bloodlines were in fact descended from the ancient troll breeding programs. They hadn't done anything with this knowledge as yet, but as Narcissa said, one of their ever present rants in the Wizengamot about how disgusting and unacceptable it was for decent wizards and witches to be forced to accept creatures such as goblins as their equals was the perfect opportunity to make use of it, so they made plans to do so.
The next time the Head of one of the more prominent and powerful of Bagnold's traditionalist Houses launched into this rant in the Wizengamot, Narcissa struck, standing and being recognised by Griselda immediately as the Steward of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. "Lord Shafiq, I find myself confused by the position you present….." She paused long enough for him to try and respond but spoke again to cut him off. "If you are arguing that those with the blood of non-human beings should have no rights within Magical Britain, what are you doing here?"
She somehow sent a bundle of parchment to the Court Scribe and had them quickly duplicated and sent to everyone on the Wizengamot benches with a wave of her hand as she continued. "As everyone will see on the parchments before you, the lineage of the Head of the Noble House of Shafiq shows several instances where young non-magical girls as young as ten were stolen from families of proven fecundity to beget heirs upon in order to prevent their line dying out. I can only presume that the extreme youth of the children being stolen from their families was intended to ensure their purity, but it appears that Lord Shafiq's family, and the other families listed, were only interested in the girls' fecundity and purity, not their bloodlines. You see research into the bloodlines of these children has revealed something quite interesting, as these weren't the first instances of them being selected for breeding because of their fecundity. It was discovered that in ancient times, the ancestors of these girls had been bred to giants to create troll armies and there were numerous crossings shown with other bloodlines used for the same purpose, so a significant portion of their makeup was troll. Therefore, by Lord Shafiq's own argument, he and his entire family should be permanently banned from the Wizengamot and the Ministry as they have no right to be involved in any matters of import related to Magical Britain. The same applies to the other Noble Houses listed on the first page as their Lords have all expressed the same views before this august body, so I hereby move that these families all be removed and permanently banned from both the Wizengamot and the Ministry of Magic."
She had stunned them into silence momentarily with this so Andromeda jumped up and seconded the motion as the Steward of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Potter just before the chamber erupted in a maelstrom of shouts of outrage and threats, and Griselda had to fight to stay her laughter as she silenced them to ask whether anyone else wished to speak before they voted on the matter which had been now moved and seconded. Shafiq and the other Heads of House nominated of course argued and swore blind that Narcissa's claims were false, but refused to take inheritance tests as challenged as they knew that the Houses of Black and Potter would have ensured that their information was correct before they tried something like this.
After another few hours of weak and ineffectual arguments (and, of course, shouted threats and curses), several houses being fined heavily for trying to deceive the Wizengamot after they were forced to take the inheritance tests and several million galleons more being levied for forbidden word fines, a vote was called and the motion was passed by a strong enough majority to prevent the decision being challenged, so every member of the listed families was permanently banned from both the Wizengamot and the Ministry of Magic. Their reactions when they realised that they would not be able to sell their Wizengamot seats or titles to try and recoup some of the fortunes they'd expended to obtain them because their seats had been taken from them by the Wizengamot and their titles had been made a part of what was permanently banned were priceless.
The only real value of titles in contemporary Magical Britain was their voting power in the Wizengamot, how they could used to garner benefits for your family. Therefore, once the titles had been rejected by the Wizengamot they were worthless, even the bragging rights of being able to call yourself a Baron or Earl were invalidated by the fact that most people in Magical Britain (and the rest of the Magical world too) quickly learned that those titles were longer worth the ink it would take to write them down, so anyone trying to use them would just be laughed at. The few individuals in the ejected families who disagreed with their families' official position on this matter strongly enough to renounce their families were soon rehired on their own merits as no-names.
This was a major blow for Bagnold's factions, because they had lost close to half of the votes they could rely on in the Wizengamot, and on top of that, they only had enough titles left to grab one or two at most of the Wizengamot seats that had been made vacant so the Council Alliance obtained most of them, further extending its majority. While some of the family pushed to get started on their plan to give the ordinary people of Magical Britain a say in how the country was run while they controlled most of the Wizengamot, calmer heads advocated waiting until things had settled down again and pointed out that that would give them time to include the recent achievements they'd made with the help of the ICW before they made a move.
Even the most outspoken had to concede that that advice made sense once they settled down, because they wanted to ensure that the Newbloods and ones with non-human blood were fairly represented in the new structure, including voting seats for the ambassadors of the non-magical human and other magical creature nations (by agreement the goblins represented the other magical beings with the voting seat while they held non-voting representative seats). They would not have had any chance of getting this organised any time soon if they hadn't been working on it in the Demi-Britain space for the past two years, and working with non-magical Britain and the other magical beings for centuries, but they were getting closer to their goal.
A/N: I realise that some will think that taking so long for a short chapter like this is too little, too late, but what can I say, life gets in the way so I decided that this would have to do for now in case anyone has actually been waiting. Sorry, but that's the way it is, at least they're heading towards the ultimate changes they're trying to make to Magical Britain.