Not everyone can keep up with best practices- sometimes, corners must be cut.
Content warning: Lucius Malfoy. His internal monologue is scummier and more slur-y than I was expecting, especially since this was supposed to be a Fudge POV.
To the guest who left the review whining about racial politics and gender and what you assume I'm gonna write in this fic: I genuinely hope that you do enough personal development to move past your preconceptions and prejudices.
Cornelius Fudge was not, as a rule, a man given to pacing, thought Lucius Malfoy.
He'd never really been a man for physical activity in general- even during his time in the Obliviators, before the encounter with Sirius Black that had made (and was threatening to break) his career, he'd repeatedly expressed gratitude that he'd made a job with the law enforcement power that didn't require the physical fitness of an Auror or a Hit Wizard, and that had only been furthered by his indulgences in the finer things in life in the years since.
That said, he appeared extremely tempted to start pacing now, purely for the way to expel some of the nervous energy that was eating him alive.
"Lucius," Fudge said, a quaver in his voice, "I take it you're, ah, aware of how precarious my position is?"
"No more precarious than Crouch's, surely," Lucius Malfoy said, looking refined and polished in his acromantula silk robes despite his heart having more in common with that of nifflers or perhaps Smaug than the quivering lump of flesh he'd chosen as his catspaw to date (not that he'd ever admit it even if he knew what Smaug was). "He was far more directly culpable in Black's imprisonment, despite your… presence at the scene, and if he were to hold a grudge against anyone over it, he'd be more inclined to pursue Crouch over you."
Malfoy, of course, knew that this was not true. Crouch's decision to imprison Black was driven by a number of factors, including political pressure from Dumbledore and his own, ah, gentle persuasion of Cornelius to seize the opportunity that Black's seeming guilt in a major breach of the Statute of Secrecy brought about.
He'd been well aware of the state of the Black family, having been caught in the Ministry a mere few months before in part because of his desire to scrutinize some of their records on the ancient family. As it turned out, at least according to the records, the Black family was fabulously wealthy and yet had a desperate lack of heirs. Most of its members were aging, even for Wizards, and of those that weren't, Andromeda had been disowned, Bella and Narcissa were firmly under the Dark Lord's and his thumbs, respectively, Regulus had vanished on some sort of mission for the Dark Lord, leaving only Sirius as a major threat to their ability to claim the Black fortune for the pureblood cause.
As such, when the opportunity came, in the form of the Obliviator he'd decided to keep in his hip pocket contacting him to ask what to do after it appeared that Sirius Black was implicated in a major crime, he'd jumped on it with both feet. Arcturus' injuries from his service in Grindelwald's War meant that he wasn't going to be having any more heirs, and with all those that remained (aside from Narcissa and Draco) being either ineligible to inherit, disowned, or imprisoned now that Sirius was handled, and that left all the monies and properties of the Black family on a one-way trip down the line of Malfoy.
Or at least, that's what he thought.
In the months since Arcturus Black died, he had been forced to confront the truth- that being that securing the wealth of the Blacks would be much harder than he'd prefer.
Arcturus Black had not, unfortunately, died without a will, and that will was the sticking point.
He hadn't, as Lucius expected, accepted the standard heirship inheritances, which would be child's play to subvert- after all, the existing heir was imprisoned until such time as he may pass through the Veil of his own volition, and good riddance, so making the claim that Narcissa (and thus Draco, since after he'd dosed her surreptitiously with several potions that induced enough scarring on her womb to make having another child impossible) was the only viable heir to the family. He'd barely have to bribe anyone, just a few Galleons to anyone who was willing to kick up a fuss about the blood traitor, her mudblood husband, and the unfortunate changeling they'd spawned.
The mudblood hadn't made any friends among the Wizengamot, what with representing others of his ilk and assorted degenerates for a pittance, so the convincing wouldn't have been particularly hard, if Lucius had had the chance to execute it in the first place.
Unfortunately, Black was a cunning old bastard, and had tied the entire Black Estate to the recognition of the Black Family Magics as Head of the Family, which an off-the-books visit to Azkaban confirmed fell to the blood traitor.
Truth be told, even that wasn't insurmountable, given enough time- if he'd had the time to have a proper forgery commissioned, based on the original will, or even convince the Wizengamot to make it illegal for denizens of Azkaban to inherit, he'd have been in the clear to hand over the goblins' largest held vault to his Lord upon his return.
But no, the changeling bitch had to ruin that by invoking the Family Magics.
Now, Black was free, and with the force that was the Black Family Magics in his corner, it would be all but impossible to circumvent him again, and a paid off nurse from Saint Mungo's confirmed that the changeling had been the Black heir, so compromising her was right out.
So, that left them as they were: niffler-furred and desperately trying to shave enough off that Black wouldn't notice, or at least comment on it.
Fortunately, Dumbledore was a far more visible target for Black's wrath.
"Ah… are you sure?" simpered Fudge, a sheen of sweat gathering along his temples and forehead.
"Absolutely," lied Malfoy, feeling no guilt at lying to the ostensible head of state of Magical Britain. "But, for the sake of your nerves, I'm sure that I could, ah, make sure to lay some trails that would divert Black's attention away from us."
Lucius Malfoy was, in this case (as in many others), lying like a cat in a sunbeam. He had no more intention to actually help Cornelius to cover his crimes than he had mudbloods for affair partners (not to say that he didn't have any affair partners, just that their blood was clean, in his eyes at least). That said, given the, ah, procedural irregularities surrounding Dumbledore's involvement with both Black's trial and the Potter brat's placement, Black was sure to dive down those jarvey holes instead of hunt for the gnomes nibbling at his outlying cabbages, and the sighting of him storming out of the Muggle restaurant where he had dragged Dumbledore's pet functionary and his entourage into seemed a good sign in that direction.
Fudge seemed to deflate, stress lines smoothing over as his grimace turned from the man's expression of concern to what he called a smile. "Thank you, Lucius, my friend. I'll, ah, let you get to it."
"Thank you, Minister," said Malfoy, inclining his head. "I do so hope that you'll bring your lady wife around for tea this weekend?"
"Always, Lucius," Fudge replied. "You and your wife are the best hosts, and I very much do look forwards to it."
"Until then." Malfoy bowed out of the Minister's office (a touch more literally than he'd prefer- he was a Malfoy, he bowed to no man) and made his way out of the Ministry, plotting all the while.
While the addition to his Lord's war chest that was the Black Family Estate was out of reach, that was by no means the only option that he could seize control of- plenty of Pureblood lines were teetering on the edge of annihilation, and while Amelia Bones' existence meant that he couldn't get his hands on the orphaned Susan, other families were not nearly so staunch in their resistance of his overtures. For example, Cyrus Greengrass, while not so pliable as his maverick cousin, was eminently predictable thanks to the unfortunate condition his daughter had…
Sirius loped onto Privet Drive, jaws lolling open as he sniffed the air and sneezed- the scents he was hoping to find were present, but sublimated under the stink of the cars and at least one oil leak, neither of which were his favorite things to smell.
He followed one of the scents down the street, then ducked into a shadow behind a tree, emerging on two legs just in time to meet the man he'd asked to meet him there.
"Black," said Mad-Eye Moody. "Back on your feet?"
"For now, at least," responded Sirius, completing the old call-and-response-style identity confirmation that Moody had insisted on, back during the war. "Might need to get me a new pair of boots, though. My old pair wasn't in my belongings when I checked them out and Robards was looking a little nervous when I did, and I don't know I'd want anything he put his feet in."
"Probably smart," Moody replied, mad eye training itself on Sirius briefly before whizzing back into motion like a fruit fly on a sugar high. "Now then, what is it you wanted me for?"
"Second pair of eyes. I'm checking up on, ah, Harry's guardians, and I want someone to make sure Azkaban didn't scramble my judgment too much." Sirius turned to the house in question, striding towards it even as his wand dropped from his holster into his hand and he flicked it in a circle, pulling a Notice-Me-Not charm around the pair of them as Moody started stumping after him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the neighbors turn away from the window as if someone had warned her that the sewage was about to start backing up into the bathroom and she had to move the towels before they were sprayed with the contents of the sewers.
Number Four Privet Drive didn't look any different than the rest of the houses on the street, but looking at it, Sirius was irrationally convinced that there were old bloodstains and holes in the wall scattered all over it, like if someone had made a lenticular print out of a before and after of a haunted house.
"Well," said Moody, glaring at the house as if that would get it to reveal its secrets (which, to be fair, had worked before, and not just on people), "there are definitely wards here. Don't tell me what diagnostic spell you're casting, for the sake of independent results."
"Right, yeah," said Sirius, waving his wand in a distinctly different pattern than Moody did.
Neither of them were particularly pleased with the results.
"Whatever protections he was trying to place," said Moody, "they weren't powered properly, that much I can tell."
"No shit they weren't powered properly," growled Sirius, teeth lengthening slightly within his mouth and specks of light appearing in his eyes. "The daft bastard tried to use a temporary protection permanently by peeling the Potter Family Magics away from Harry and trying to use them as a damn power source."
Moody blinked. "He what." His voice was flat and rough, as if someone had taken a chisel to carve away any sort of emotions.
"He tried to use the Potter Family Magics to power a Notice Me Not-based protection, which failed because the Family Magics were already in use elsewhere." Sirius ran his hand through his hair, growling almost animalistically in frustration. "He doesn't know the first fucking thing about Family Magics, and it really shows."
"I mean, how hard can it be to configure a ward to draw power directly from them?" asked Moody.
"Think less water wheel and more trying to draw power from the waves of the ocean, in the middle of a tropical storm." Moody's eyebrows rose. "They're more force of nature than magical phenomenon, in a way that's… difficult to explain to someone who doesn't have the experience of actually wielding them. Doesn't matter. Point is, I would be very surprised if anyone who hadn't spent a lifetime studying either altering wards or their own Family Magics could use them to power any kind of enchantment without crafting the enchantment whole cloth out of the Family Magics, like some of the Longbottoms' protections are. Merlin, even that would take years, maybe even decades, worth of study before I'd be willing to try it, if I were a Longbottom. The Black Family Magics are… they have different tendencies that leave them less inclined to that kind of construction, let's leave it at that."
Sirius shook himself in a manner eerily like a cat dropped into a tub full of cold water, glaring at the house, with all the impotent fury entailed therein, then frowned, looking first down and then, when that failed to return his mental fur to its previous, drier state, to Moody. "Where was I?"
"Waves of the ocean," grunted Moody.
"Ah. Right. Point is, Dumbledore's actions here show at best dangerous levels of hubris in his attempts to create these wards without a proper understanding of the energies he was working with and negligence in not coming back to make sure the wards were operating as intended."
Moody's face soured as he contemplated the various worse options. "I can sign off on an emergency transfer of custody order with Bones as long as you're okay with Potter staying the break at the school- it'll take about that long to sneak it past Malfoy and his ilk, and it should buy you time to get somewhere worth calling a home."
Sirius offered one last sullen glower to the house, his temper cooling like the last moments of twilight, then he sighed. "That's… probably wise. I'd sooner burn Grimmauld down than try to raise a child there, so I'll see about finding a house or a flat that isn't stuffed to the gills with who knows what, these days."
"Stay safe, Black," said Moody, nodding briefly. "I'll tell Podmore you said hello."
The mention of the blonde WEA proctor brought something else to Sirius' mind- or rather, someone else. "Hey, Moody. You know what's up with Remus? The owl I tried to send him came back unopened."
Moody frowned. "Not since… July of '81, I think. No, April. Dumbledore told me he was going deep cover in the werewolf clans in July, but I hadn't seen him since he led off Yaxley after that mess in Kilwinning."
Sirius, too, frowned. "Huh. I'll see if I can't shake things up and see if he falls out."
Moody snorted. "He'll show up. Hell, if half the stories Podmore told me were true, he's likely to show up on his own, to rein you in if nothing else."
"One can hope, Moody. Good night."
"Don't chase your tail too much, mutt," said Moody.
"I can make you no promises- if I'm not on my own tail, who would be?"
With that, the two men parted ways once again- Moody to the Ministry, and Sirius to try and hunt down a ledger with all the Black family properties.
And that's that!
If I didn't call it here, dollars to donuts it would blow up on me. Well, more than it already tried to- there was supposed to be a Dora scene here.
Next chapter, whenever it comes, should be back to Hogwarts.
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