11 Harry Potter Meets with Cornelius Fudge 04 August

Disclaimer: This Harry Potter story was written for fun. All rights belong to the wonderful lady (JK Rowling) who gave the world Harry Potter to read and enjoy. No ships. Bashing around everyone.

CHANGE SCENE &&***

Cornelius Fudge was a lazy politician, but he did enjoy the perks of the office of minister – especially the donations to his re-election campaign made by grateful patrons. If these patrons asked for certain considerations with bills they wanted to see forwarded, Cornelius felt these generous wizards were to be rewarded.

It was unusual but not unheard of for a patron to ask to meet anonymously at Gringotts without minions or guards present. Recording charms or stones all failed inside Gringotts so Cornelius didn't consider making the attempt. Expecting to collect a tidy sum from one of his regular patrons he made his way to the floo with his Auror guards and stepped from the ministry into the Leaky Cauldron. There he glad-handed several folks, and then hurried across the alley and into the bank.

Lucius Malfoy was leaving the bank as Fudge entered and the men nodded while wondering what the other wizard was doing in the bank.

'Will this be another request from Roundtree to free his brother from Azkaban? There's not much money left in that family,' Cornelius decided.

Grumbling slightly that they must remain behind when Fudge was escorted deeper into the bank, one Auror told the others, "The goblins will protect him with their blades. No one will land a spell on the minister."

"The man has his wand! What if he panics and pulls his wand?" asked one Auror.

The first one replied, "He's not that big of an idiot."

Outside a secure door, the goblins motioned for the minister to enter the chamber when the portal opened, and Cornelius stepped through. Once he saw the other occupants of the room, he snorted and demanded, "What is this? Potter, how did you escape from Dumbledore's clutches?"

It was the unnamed goblin who spoke, "Minister Fudge, Mr Harry Potter has come into possession of information that is important to share with you."

"Not likely!" Cornelius replied and turned to leave.

But the wizard paused, turned aback around and threatened, "If this is another attempt to spread the rumours about the Dark Lord returning, I shall bury you, Potter! Azkaban will seem like a vacation spot compared to what the ministry does to you! And to Dumbledore as well!"

"Minister, it causes me great distress for you to begin our conversation with accusations and threats of pain and imprisonment!" declared Potter.

At the end of his tether, Fudge demanded, "What do you want? Boy!"

Ironstream noticed that Lord Potter-Black's magic reacted to the wizard's use of that term and there was a stirring in the atmosphere in the room. Thankfully, the elf was present, if invisible, to touch the young wizard's leg and calm him.

"Since we cannot have a pleasant conversation, allow me to share the information I have collected," stated Harry as he motioned toward a table where several documents lay. Cornelius sighed and stepped forward as the young wizard continued, "It has come to my attention through secret magic that you are a cuckoo in the Fudge family tree."

"What? How dare you make such a libelous accusation!"

"This information has been verified and certified by Gringotts Bank's magic," Harry replied. "Here is the actual Fudge family tree that shows your half-brother Maurice as the true heir of Samuel Fudge."

Attempting to discredit the story, Fudge declared, "You just cut me out…"

"No, the family tree of your mother Ophelia Fudge is here, and it shows her married to Samuel Fudge, but she committed line theft with a wizard named Edmund Makepeace to spark you in her womb. You were born in 1935 during your mother's marriage to Samuel Fudge and that makes you Cornelius Noname if the information is released."

"But…but…" Fudge floundered. Then he demanded, "Where did you get this information?"

"And there is no magically certified birth certificate for you at Saint Mungo's or at the Ministry of Magic that lists your parents as Samuel Fudge and Ophelia Fudge (née Longtree)."

Overwhelmed, Cornelius sat in a nearby chair as the Potter boy continued, "I understand your elderly mother would go to Azkaban for line theft while Maurice would have control of your vaults – all of your vaults."

"What does Dumbledore want to keep this quiet?" Fudge asked with resignation in his voice.

"Dumbledore? Merlin's bollocks, Minister Fudge, why do you think this has anything to do with the headmaster of my school?"

Honestly confused, the minister asked, "What do you want, Potter?"

Realising he needed to be more polite, Cornelius revised his question, "What do you want, Mr Potter?"

"Minister Fudge, I see no need to send these documents to the Daily Prophet, the DMLE, or to Albus Dumbledore so long as you and I can reach an agreement today in this room."

"Again, what do you want?"

The young wizard replied, "Leave me alone."

Unable to comprehend the request, Fudge sputtered, "What? What do you mean?"

"I don't want to see my name in any press release from the Ministry. No one from any newspaper has spoken to me about what I experienced in the third task of the tournament. If you remember, I was poisoned by an Acromantula bite in the maze and my thinking was confused for several days."

"If you check carefully, you'll find that it is Headmaster Dumbledore who stated that I said the Dark Lord had returned. I never said those words to a reporter after I recovered from the exhaustion of the third task."

Cornelius appeared pensive and asked, "What else?"

Shrugging, Harry continued, "I intend to concentrate on my studies at Hogwarts this year. I take my OWLS next June and won't pay attention to Dumbledore's declarations about Death Eaters or the Dark Lord."

"So, the Dark Lord didn't return?"

Harry shrugged and said, "Ask the headmaster if he has seen the Dark Lord since his supposed resurrection? Ask the reformed Death Eaters…I won't say such a thing to any newspaper."

"And if I chase after Dumbledore's credibility? If I tear down the myth of his being all-knowing?"

"Politics do not interest me…the politics of Magical Britain do not interest me in the slightest, Minister Fudge."

Again, thinking of his plans, Fudge said, "It is my intention to send a…an aide of mine to Hogwarts this autumn to examine the quality of instruction in the school. She will be the High Inquisitor."

"So long as this inquisitor confines her examinations to the staff and Dumbledore but stays away from the students and their lives, I will wish her well with her efforts to improve Hogwarts."

Rising from the chair, Fudge stated, "Then we have a binding agreement, Mr Potter. My office – the ministry will not use your name in any future articles about Dumbledore and his assertions that the Dark Lord has returned. And you will destroy all that information!"

"No," Harry replied. "I shall not publish it but simply hide it once again. If you send Aurors to arrest me for any trumped-up charge, all the information will be provided to the Daily Prophet, the Quibbler, the DMLE, Albus Dumbledore, other leaders in the Wizengamot, and…"

The boy looked at the goblin for the name of the last organization. The still unnamed goblin replied, "The ICW in Switzerland."

"Fine," Fudge said making the word sound like a curse. He left the room without any galleons added to his coin purse, and a threat hanging over his name and wealth. He'd have to investigate this Makepeace fellow Potter claimed was his sire and speak to his vault manager about moving wealth to other vaults that Maurice would never be able to claim.

"What a waste of an hour of my time!"

Then Cornelius thought about Dolores and realise she would be difficult to rein in at this point. The undersecretary had a bloody frame of mind and in her opinion, Harry Potter was as guilty as Dumbledore for spreading fear in the population of Magical Britain.

'I'll make Potter off limits…untouchable by the High Inquisitor,' he decided. 'If I'm lucky, some curse or ghost at Hogwarts will rid me of Dolores Umbridge before Yule.'

CHANGE SCENE &&***

Betrothal Agreements 05 August

Ironstream kept Harry and Dobby inside the meeting room until he received confirmation that Minister Fudge and his guards had left the bank. Then Sowsbreath appeared at the door and the two goblins escorted the young lord to the opulent office where Sowsbreath managed the vaults of the Black family.

"Do you think the blackmail will work?"

"Definitely with Fudge," Sowsbreath answered. "I am less certain if the stooges surrounding the minister will cease attacking you."

"At least at the beginning," Ironstream added. "Sowsbreath and I can alternate sending reminders to Cornelius Noname about consequences of not keeping his underlings in line."

"Thank you," Harry replied. "Prompt Fudge to sic 'em on Dumbledore."

"What is sickem?" asked Ironstream, enjoying the expansion of his understanding of modern human syntax and expression.

Harry grinned, "It is a muggle expression; combining two words and you drop off the beginning of the second word, so it sounds like one word, 'sic them' means to command a dog or other trained animal to attack a person or another animal. We shorten it to sound like 'sic-em'."

"You performed well for your first time as Lord Black," observed Sowsbreath. "Even though Cornelius didn't know that."

"I don't want anyone in Magical Britain to know about the lordship thingies."

The two goblins exchanged looks but didn't ask for an interpretation of 'thingies' today. Sowsbreath did ask, "Is there anything else today, Lord Black?"

"Yes," the teenager replied.

Then he explained about his mother's diary entries about the forced betrothal between herself and James Potter. "My mother had begun to like James Potter but then found herself forced into a betrothal where she had no say about what happened. She never knew how she really felt about my father because the magical of the betrothal made them get together."

"The practice is common in Magical Britain and appears to have been common even in muggle societies in the past where a young woman finds herself given in marriage to a man that her parents selected…her father selected."

"But my mother didn't have a choice…she expected to select her husband herself," Harry argued. "She and James were dating and if they fell in love, she would have wanted to marry him and have me. But McGonagall, Dumbledore, and Magical Britain took that choice away from her."

"We understand your position, Lord Black," stated Sowsbreath. "But since both individuals are deceased there isn't anything that you can do about it now."

Ironstream added, "And that was more than sixteen years in the past."

"But they're still doing the same thing today."

"Which is none of your concern," Ironstream said. "Lord Potter-Black may control his destiny, but you cannot tell other Lords of the Wizengamot what they can and cannot do without passing proper legislation."

"Which will never happen," Sowsbreath replied. "The lords will never relinquish their privileges to improve the lives of the working purebloods and half-bloods. They probably daydream of inflicting harsher penalties on the muggleborn."

Harry growled with displeasure but then asked his vault managers, "Please review all recent betrothal agreements in the Potter and Black family vaults…the last sixty years will be sufficient. Let me know what you find, please."

CHANGE SCENE &&***Cornelius Consults with Dolores after Gringotts

When Minister Fudge returned from his meeting at Gringotts, Dolores was pleased to be summoned into his office to discuss his (their) plans for the month of August. With her subdued pink ensemble today, Dolores hoped to appear demure and amenable to the minister's directives.

"Sit," he commanded when the door was closed. He continued, "Dolores, we have…no – you have a problem."

"I'm not understanding, Cornelius," the undersecretary replied, blinking a few times. "Our campaign to discredit Dumbledore and Potter is going smoothly. The Daily Prophet prints articles every day that denounce them as liars and charlatans of the worst kind.

"Yes, yes," Fudge agreed Fudge. "But effective immediately, there is to be permanent change in our press releases and anonymous articles."

Listening closely, Umbridge asked, "What shall I change?"

"Nothing negative is to be included about the Potter boy," stated Cornelius. "I have reached an understanding with the boy about the situation. He won't say anything about the Dark Lord…he says he was confused by the poisonous spider bite. And we won't mention his name in any official press release or any of those anonymous articles that you send to Skeeter to publish."

"But Cornelius, the boy is a liar! Draco Malfoy assured me that Potter is a muddy loving liar!"

Fudge stood and stared at Dolores to her chair as he commanded, "Do what I tell you! If anything gets printed about Potter after today, you will be back in the accounting department counting the knuts collected for floo powder sales."

The horror of that threat seemed to get through to the witch though her mouth remained twisted in a sour expression.

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