Changes and Memories
The portraits on the walls of the lounge were gazing at the memories from the pensieve in silent awe, shock, wonder, fury, and sadness. They had been watching the memory projection for the last three hours - how could you cope if your entire life was being projected on fast forward for just three hours, it was mad. - and they'd seen everything, from his earliest childhood memories where he had been loved by Lily and James, and the several close calls they'd gone through before Voldemort had murdered them after Pettigrew's betrayal, the years of abuse he'd taken from the Dursleys where he had gone from being a happy child to a colder, angrier, and darker character who had merely adopted a kinder facade because he did not even want to be like them, but he was more than willing to be a darker character and he showed it here and there as he used an 'ends justifies the means approach' after he used his nascent control over his magic on several occasions to fight back.
And then there came his Hogwarts years. If Lily and James's portraits hadn't been horrified before they were as the years unfolded; the Philosopher's Stone and Harry's discovery of the return of Voldemort, and how big a coincidence it was the Dark Lord had happened to come back as a wraith possessing a brainwashed teacher who carried him on the back of his head just as Harry Potter began his years at Hogwarts.
When they discovered the Philosopher's Stone was a con, one of the Potter ancestors had stopped it. "Wait, how did you know the Stone was a fake long before Dumbledore met you in the Hospital wing?"
Harry was almost pleased with the interruption. He didn't like projecting his memories anyway. "It just never rang true with me," he replied. "Okay, even if the Flamels were getting tired of life, they could have still needed to use the Stone at a later date. They were centuries old and yet they couldn't find a better way of hiding the Stone in a Gringotts vault, and they would allow it to be taken out? I also didn't believe that Dumbledore destroyed the Stone anyway since it was too valuable; okay, even if you didn't want to be immortal, the elixir could work wonders, surely? Also, there was the factor it could transform anything into gold, and yet the Flamel's allowed it all to happen. Why would they do that? Even if they were the most oldest, most careless people to live on the planet, they could have still made some use of the Philosopher's Stone, and yet they allowed it to be destroyed.
"It wasn't until my next year at Hogwarts, I discovered the truth. The Stone isn't an alchemical wonder. It just transforms metals into gold. There's no such thing as an elixir of life, the Flamels spent decades trying to find it, and in the end they had to use a different method of immortality. They were just in time, they were nearly dead," Harry finished.
"What did they use?"
"They used essence transfer," Harry replied.
"Merlin," one of the ancestors used, and others from the same period muttered among themselves.
"What's essence transfer?" Dorea asked.
"It's a magical technique where the soul of a person is transferred over to a different body, Aunt Dorea," Harry replied, to the surprise of many. "It was classified as a dark art because dark wizards used it to steal the bodies of their enemies. Picture it a moment, a Dark Lord who has just been defeated, and they use this technique to hijack the body of one of their enemies and then carry on as before. That's why it was labelled dark, despite its beneficial use."
"How do you know all of this?" A Potter portrait from the 1900s asked the question in the minds of all the portraits.
"Through the resources of the Room of Requirement. The room is five-dimensional, meaning knowledge once lost is recoverable. I found it in my earlier years at Hogwarts and I used it to collect the books and things I thought I would need to become strong enough to shake off Dumbledore's grip on me," Harry replied.
Lily and James shared a look, neither of them was happy with what their son was forced to do to just live. They had wanted their child to live a good, happy life, one of laughter and toys. They hadn't wanted him to be treated as a slave. More than once, Lily had wanted nothing more than to leap out of her portrait and curse her stupid bitch of a sister.
Harry kept playing with the memories; the portraits were stunned he was a parselmouth. Unlike the students and teachers at Hogwarts, they kept quiet, since Harry threatened them again with a nasty curse to use on them should they even think of saying anything. Harry's threat was taken very quickly.
The Potter portraits saw that he was tempted to leave Hogwarts during his second year, only he had decided to stay and it wasn't to play the hero - he only killed the basilisk because it had interfered with his plans.
But then something happened when Harry confronted Lucius Malfoy. He had no proof the slippery dark wizard had given Ginny Weasley that diary, and was stupid enough to get it back and not bother giving it over to a teacher, or alert the DMLE of what was going on and only cared for herself, but after Dobby threw Malfoy away, and Malfoy senior threatened him, Harry tore Malfoy's wand away from him and punched Malfoy in the gut and almost strangled him before he partly wiped the older man's memories.
The Potters, seeing this ruthless side to Harry, were stunned, but he was not finished. James was furious with Marge Dursley's drunkenness and her insults towards himself, his son, and to his wife, and if he were alive and that fat muggle had said those things…he would have cursed her so badly he would have crippled her, and fuck the consequences. Better yet, he would do it right in front of Petunia, Dudley, and Vernon and make it clear it was to teach them their place.
Yeah, he would have to admit it would justify their fears of magic, but it was better to be scared than stupid.
But then Lily shook her head and scoffed in disgust when Fudge made one of his clueless comments when he'd met Harry at the Leaky Cauldron.
"Stupid people," she scoffed. "Everything Dumbledore, Fudge, and everyone else believes about me being related to Petunia is a lie."
Harry turned to her in shock. "What do you mean?" Harry asked. One of his oldest dreams and desires was for everyone to turn around and admit he and Petunia were not related, and everything would go right afterwards. Unfortunately, it was a dream he quickly grew out of, and even when he'd had the opportunity to check at Gringotts, he was so used to the idea of him being related to the horse-faced muggle that he hadn't bothered.
Lily sighed and drew in a breath, but she shook her head. "I'll tell you when you're finished, sweetie, and keep playing the memories," she said.
Harry was tempted to demand a proper response, but his desire for all of this to be finished won out, and so he kept playing. Remus's inclusion stunned James because it was so sudden; he had been disgusted with his friends for abandoning Harry. Pettigrew did not count even if in a sick, obscene way he had been there for Harry, even if he had just been in his rat form.
But Remus and Sirius had no excuses either. While Sirius had sat in his cell in Azkaban and sulked for a decade when he had the means to get out, Remus didn't have the excuse. He had just abandoned Harry with no word, no visit. Nothing.
"The fucking cowardly bastard," Lily summed it up really nicely, "anything could have happened to you because Dumbledore put you with Petunia and Vernon, and Remus would not have cared."
It was when the Dementors were seen on the Hogwarts Express - unsupervised - there was a colossal explosion.
"What the hell?"
"Those idiots let those things on a train full of children!?"
"Did the Ministry want those kids kissed?"
"It's the effects of the Dementors that worry me; if Harry here could be affected this badly, then so could others," a witch's portrait said.
"What in the name of fucking Merlin is wrong with the DMLE? They should never have allowed those things anywhere near the Hogwarts Express, never mind get on it!"
"Never mind the DMLE, what was going on in Fudge's mind, or the Wizengamot? Why didn't anyone complain?"
A portrait shook her head. "I worked for Torquil Travers, who was the Head of the DMLE when Grindelwald was gaining power; he might have been a bureaucrat and inflexible, but he would never have let anyone post Dementors around the Hogwarts grounds, let alone allow them to leave Azkaban."
"I always hated the thought of those foul things being around Azkaban," Charlus shook his head.
"Worse is to come," Harry said gravely, and he projected more memories.
-8-
Augusta Longbottom was one of the most intimidating figures in British Magical Society. A contemporary of Euphemia Potter and a friend of Amelia Bones, the woman was a political powerhouse from a strong pureblood family line going back centuries, married to another pureblood family, she was also a powerful witch who was not afraid to fight dirty.
For the last few days, the Ministry of Magic had been experiencing a long overdue shake-up. The ICW had become tired of Britain, and it was a long time coming. The European countries had long since been disgusted with the British Ministry for many reasons, but the primary reason was their corruption, and their nonchalance for what happened to the muggle-borns who were taken in under the Statute's laws to properly train them so they didn't break the Statute.
For decades the British had been lying to the muggle-borns shamelessly, taking them in, teaching them, and once they had graduated from Hogwarts, they didn't give a damn what happened to the muggle-borns. Was it any wonder they took whatever job they could, even if they had aced their OWLs and their NEWTs, only to be denied applications because of their Blood Status, only to return to the muggle world after saving up enough money to find a way back?
As a pureblood, Augusta hadn't even known the problem existed, and if she was honest, she was more than aware if the problem had been presented to her a decade before she might not even care. It was shameful, but it was true. The ICW had wanted to deal with the Fudge administration for a long time, with the reports of Fudge's own undersecretary using a Blood Quill, of all things, on students, torturing them and spying on them and harassing them, while a Dark Lord had returned and an innocent child had been thrown into one of the worst magical prisons on the planet, the ICW had decided enough was enough, and it didn't help that Dumbledore had been deliberately dumbing down the educational levels at Hogwarts. They wanted to shake the British out of their complacency, and Augusta and Amelia had been responsible for that.
They had complained to the ICW, going behind the backs of Dumbledore and Fudge and providing them with evidence, something that hadn't pleased Fudge or Dumbledore, but since the toad had been lynched by the disgusted ICW in Diagon Alley mere days before it was revealed Harry Potter was innocent of mass murder, there was little the two men could do. Both were on strict probation now, and there was talk of revitalising the Hogwarts curriculum and overruling Dumbledore and the Board, which was Augusta's domain. She was supportive of the whole thing, given how she had fond memories of many of the classes the old fool had thrown out when he took over as Headmaster.
Nodding politely to the ICW inspectors as they went about the Ministry, Augusta headed for her own target.
She didn't bother knocking, and she glared down at the secretary of the office before she flicked her wand and barged in. Amos Diggory, who was in the middle of a lot of paperwork, looked up in shock. "Augusta, what can I do for you?" He stuttered in shock at her unexpectedly forceful arrival.
"Lady Longbottom to you right now, Amos. Why are you trying to get Harry Potter sent back to Azkaban or given the Dementor's Kiss?"
Lady Longbottom was capable of being diplomatic when the need called for it, but on occasions like this, she felt the more blunt approach was the best.
Diggory's face went grey and slack. "I-I don't know what you're talking about?"
"Don't insult my intelligence, Diggory. There was an order that was sent through different channels, to have the DMLE and the Hit Wizards keep a watch on Potter and his activities. You should cover yourself, Amos, you were very slapdash," Augusta commented.
She was telling the truth, but she'd had to spend the last year listening to how Amos Diggory just would not stop trying to plunder the Potter family fortune. The stupid man was under the delusion everything would be well, that somehow Cedric would jump back into the land of the living if the fortune of an innocent family was used as some kind of sacrificial offering, but the goblins at Gringotts had put the Potter family vaults on lockdown and it would remain that way until Harry Potter was at least 17 years old.
Augusta knew she was being hypocritical in her way of thinking. She had once wanted to plunder the LeStrange family of everything before she had calmed down enough to realise it would not bring back Alice or Frank, although it might have been enough to find something in their family library that could help them, or fund the research into their recovery.
But in Diggory's case, Augusta had learnt the wizard before she had proven to be in denial, saying Potter was responsible, that he was jealous of his son and wanted Cedric to die, no matter what. It had failed to enter his mind until it was shoved into his face and ears Peter Pettigrew's long list of crimes included the murder of Cedric Diggory. But during Potter's second trial, Augusta had noticed the fury on Amos's face and she was able to read without resorting to the mind arts the elder Diggory just wanted to find a way of making him pay.
And… she had also learnt about Amos's plans from his wife. Olivia Diggory had suffered a lot recently and she was becoming tired of her husband's obsessions, and she was scared he would do something really, really stupid.
"Amos, don't do this," Augusta warned him, "you are chasing a wizard who hasn't done anything other than have an unflattering opinion of your son. Why are you so determined to punish him? And with the Dementor's Kiss, too?"
"He wanted my son to die!"
"He didn't care about your son! Cedric bullied him for months and months, and even when he succeeded in the first task, your son would not stop bullying him and jeering at him. Beyond that, Harry Potter didn't even care about your son's existence, and Cedric wrestled with him and the portkey to that graveyard was triggered, and Cedric was murdered before either of them could react. That was not Potter's fault," Augusta argued.
"But the boy is unstable; we've all seen the signs, even you can't be blinkered to deny that!"
"Don't you dare, Amos!" Augusta spat, her eyes narrowing dangerously, and if Diggory wasn't so obtuse he would have paid heed. "I've seen enough signs to know an innocent boy was thrown into a prison cell and came out so traumatised that his hair went white-."
"Oh, yes," Diggory sneered, "here we go. The boy was so traumatised his hair went white. Therefore he should be pitied. I've lost my son!"
"AND MY SON AND DAUGHTER-IN-LAW WERE TORTURED UNTIL THEY COULDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THEIR OWN NAMES, THEIR OWN LIVES, AND THE WHOLE TIME DUMBLEDORE MADE SURE THE DEMENTORS WEREN'T USED THE WAY THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE, AND BELLATRIX AND HER HUSBAND AND BROTHER-IN-LAW WERE SHOVED INTO AZKABAN! YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY PERSON TO HAVE LOST FAMILY BECAUSE OF THAT INSANE MONSTER, DIGGORY, SO STOP ACTING LIKE IT!" Augusta screamed, finally losing her composure.
Diggory was stunned by the onslaught.
"How many families have suffered because of this war, Diggory? Amelia Bones lost almost all of her family, the only family she has is a squib brother, two distant cousins and her niece, Susan. The McKinnon family is gone, one of the victims in that massacre was a 7-month-old toddler. 7 months! Your own wife, you selfish fool, lost almost all of her family. It's only by the grace of magic and Merlin alone that she still has her brother and a cousin I believe, and you've got two small children of your own, and one of them is starting at Hogwarts this upcoming term, yes?" Augusta had done some research before coming to confront him. "Is this what you want, for your children to be punished and blamed for what you're trying to do to a boy who's seen as a hero once more?"
Diggory was silent and still.
"You don't care about the safety of the magical world, you're just looking for an excuse to put an innocent wizard into prison or have his soul sucked out. But it is going to stop, now. I have informed the ICW about what you're planning," Augusta dropped the potion on the matter.
"What?" Diggory was roused from his shock and he stared at her in horror. "But you can't!"
"I can and I have. Don't presume to tell me what to do. You and I, sir, move in different circles, and its high time you understood that," Augusta had originally planned on delivering a stronger warning until Diggory saw sense, but the man's selfishness had resulted only in her unleashing her inner agonies and she hadn't liked it.
Still, as she turned to leave the room, she made sure her wand was visible.
-8-
Ever since the revelations of Dolores Umbridge, Lord Thingy and Harry Potter had come out, Cornelius Fudge's wife had left. She had taken with her the children, and they'd been gone for a while, and as things stood now with his administration being revealed as being corrupt and dangerous even, Fudge had quickly grasped the fact he would likely not be seeing his wife in a while.
If he were a smarter man, then he would have recognised that the whole collection of messes was all down to his own stupid mistakes, but Fudge was not a smart man and he had been blaming a whole collection of people for his woes. The ICW had moved in and had slowly but methodically begun stripping the Ministry and the Fudge administration of a large chunk of its authority when crimes Fudge had not seen as crimes had been revealed. With each example revealed to them, the ICW investigators had redoubled their efforts with new teams being brought in. Fudge was not the only person furious with Amelia Bloody Bones and Augusta Longbottom going to the foreigners, and he hated seeing them in the Ministry. They had no business being here any more than filthy muggles.
Fudge poured himself a strong firewhiskey, and he sat down and sulked.
-8-
Percy Weasley was in a state of shock. After a year of working for Minister Fudge, he had been fired. The investigators from the ICW had determined that Percy didn't know how he had taken the reins after Mr Crouch had gone missing and he had failed to inform the DMLE that anything was wrong, and while Crouch's death wasn't investigated since Fudge had made such a mess in steamrolling all over the proper protocols, some half-arsed work was done and determined the old wizard had been brainwashed for some time, and because of the sheer incompetence, the ICW was trying to clean up the mess before they discovered Percy had known something was wrong but he hadn't done anything about it.
As he prepared tea in his flat, Percy put his head in his hands and moaned to himself. He had spent years sucking up to others, learning all about pureblood customs as his family didn't follow them properly and learning all he could while dealing with the incompetence around him, and look where it had gotten him in his quest to become Minister?
He had been thrown out before he could shine, and he didn't know where to go from here.
-8-
Harry smirked to himself as he and the Potter house elves worked to free the animals from London Zoo. So far they had managed to banish three-quarters of the zoo's population and return the animals to their real homes. Harry knew it was a risk since most of these animals had likely never been in the wild and would be confused, but with a little bit of luck, they would survive.
He had spent an exhausting few hours at Potter Manor, showing the portraits the memories he had growing up and how everything led to Azkaban before he killed Voldemort. All of them had been horrified by what he had seen, and everything he had gone through, and hardly any of them were ultimately surprised by his desire to just leave the magical world in Britain and go off and try to rebuild without any reminders of his life.
Okay, one or two of his ancestors had been shocked by his decision to be mind healers, but they understood it although they believed that his willingness to speak to someone like Chloe was a godsend, and even better they had offered their own services; while some standards might have slipped, Harry decided to accept their offer to counsel him. He needed all the help he could get.
Harry was not wildly surprised in the least there had been Potters who'd believed in Grindelwald; all witches and wizards varied in personality, and had their own opinions, desires, and beliefs. And there had been a few who'd followed Voldemort and had been lulled into a belief they could get power.
Harry had known about Esmerelda, Emily, Natalie, and Chloe Potter for a long time. He had found out about them when he had first entered the magical world, and Bloodbringer had told him they had been Death Eaters, only they had gone on the run. Harry just wished they had tried to find him, regardless of their beliefs, and speak to them since he knew they had undergone a ritual shortly after James and Lily had been killed; the fact their lord had murdered the family their brother had made had been the final deciding factor, they had found life as Death Eaters to be unbearable. Chloe had been James's twin sister, while Natalie and Emily had been twins, and Esmerelda was slightly older. Harry didn't know their stories but he had learnt from Bloodbringer that they had undergone a delicate, lengthy and expensive ritual to rid themselves of their Dark Marks, so they could be freed from Voldemort's influence. After that, they had just vanished. Their vaults were cleared out, and then they were gone.
James, Euphemia and Fleamont had asked after them, but Harry had never heard from them although there was always the chance they might try to return now, especially if they still received the news. Harry's own feelings towards them were neutral; he knew so many people would have their own views before Voldemort's revelation of what he was really going to do after the Ministry tried to stop them from building up his power base, and he knew dozens would have been attracted to his views.
Harry was not going to hurt any of them, he just wanted to see them. He would ask the MACUSA Potters if they'd seen them, but if not then he would see if Hedwig could find them.
-8-
Natalia smiled as she looked at the various reports she'd been getting. The ICW's presence in Britain had been received well by everyone in Europe who'd grown tired of the incompetence of the British wizards, and the death of their last Dark Lord had stirred up enough chaos for them to make waves in other countries.
Right now she needed to work on her plans. Voldemort was a powerful wizard, but he was a truly stupid powerful wizard who had failed to take on the dozens of possibilities.