Chapter V –Aurors–
Chapter V
–Aurors–
Friday, 9 June 2000
HP’s POV
Harry stared at the official badge he was being given by Head Auror Scrimgeour, Minister by the side in complete silence. Harry glanced at the man, who nodded back to signal that he’d back Harry up in whatever he would choose and then Harry glanced at the Aurors who were all staring at him.
“I always wanted to be an Auror. It started when former Auror Alastor Moody was my fourth-year’s Defence Against Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts School. He taught me about the wonders of what it could be. Of what it takes to be someone for the people. To be needed and to be able to help the world into a better place…” Harry started as he picked the badge, looked at it with the words Auror Potter and then closed his hand, using his magic around it and smashing it. “I’m not a kid any longer. The only reason you are doing this is to sooth down the Minister. I’ll be put at the bottom of the bottom line in Auror ranking with no way to ever rising in the ranking and will be sent with Teddy to patrol some godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere so you can all forget this ever happened.” Auror Scrimgeour gasped in outrage. “I happen to like my job. My real job that is, not the make believe that you were offering.” Harry turned around and returned towards Minister who was by the Aurors’ office’s door.
Minister set a hand on Harry’s shoulder and the two left down the hallway.
“They probably won’t offer again.” The older remarked pointedly. “It was already hard to make them do it the first-time.”
“They already had a location chosen for me. The most empty and nothing happens station far away in the continent’s north. Population practically non-existent.” Harry shrugged back.
Minister hummed.
“You want to continue working for me then? Until they actually start looking at you like a human being?” The older asked.
“Until you fire me.” Harry argued, making the Minister actually look back surprised. “Unlike what other people believe: Working with you and for you is the best feeling in the world.”
Minister smiled back as they entered the lifts. Harry blushed and looked away, only to throw the Rebel out the lift magically and into the frontdoor of the Aurors’ office by an Auror’s feet who looked at the Rebel and then back confused just before the lift’s doors closed.
“Was always told that it was what you wanted by you over the past half-year, hence why I was insisting on it. But, Harry, you are the best one to ever work for me. I’d have trouble letting you go.” The Minister argued truthfully.
Harry avoided looking at the man beside him from how red his face had to be right now.
“Your favourite restaurant is Perthro, correct?” He wondered and Minister hummed affirmatively. “I have the full-time nanny hours. They put the 24/7 timeline considering I am working for you and there is no way to know if I’d need extra hours…”
“Are you proposing to leave Edward at the Ministry kindergarten tonight?”
“Over dinner.” Harry argued immediately. “I mean…”
Harry shrieked surprised as a hand showed before his chest, grabbed him by the robe and pulled him into the Minister’s personal space. Only for the man to kiss him. On the lips. Actually kissing. Shit! Harry was actually getting kissed!
“I’ll be looking forward to tonight.” The Minister promised lustfully, then he released Harry and stepped back into full Minister’s posture just before the lift’s doors opened again and someone entered inside.
“Minister.”
Minister nodded back respectably, as if he hadn’t just taken Harry’s breath away a second earlier. Harry wasn’t even nodded at. He was the Minister’s lapdog after all. He wasn’t ‘worthy’ of the people’s time. Something that Harry was alright with but that he could tell angered the Minister by the way his eyes darkened practically turning black with no hint of red. Definitely not lust this time.
Harry frowned at feeling a strange magic in the lift. He hurried to release the top holders that he had been holding so not to fall off and kneeled down, before bringing his hand up and then punched the floor, using his own magic to take hold onto the foreign magic under the lift.
“Harry? Is it a bomb again?” Minister asked and Harry nodded, not daring to move more than he already was with the way he was holding the bomb magically. Immediately the Minister touched on the button to stop the lift as the Ministry’s Member held Harry to keep him from moving too much. “Do you need to go outside to undo the bomb?” Minister asked.
Harry closed his eyes as he felt the magic in the bomb through the floor of the lift.
“Yes. I can’t undo it through here without making it release the lift and activate.” He agreed, opening his eyes.
Minister hummed and opened his hand in the lift door’s direction, that opened magically in the place where they were in between two floors. Harry laid on the floor with his chest outside the lift and his legs inside, which the Minister and the Ministry’s Member took hold of so he wouldn’t fall off. Harry could tell that the one who previously had not even deemed him worthy was now scared shitless, probably hopping that Harry could actually undo the bomb and not kill the three of them. He leaned over the bottom of the lift and took hold of the bomb with his hands this time instead of magic and undid it, taking it from its hiding place under the lift floor. Finally, he moved upwards and was helped to get out the hole, with the bomb in his hand.
“How did they put it there?” The Ministry’s Member asked.
“There was a Rebel inside the lift when we entered.” Harry explained as he moved the least possible not to provoke the bomb. “I have to return to the Aurors, Sire. This was meant to explode as soon as it arrived our floor so each movement can still activate it, I don’t dare to undo it with you present.”
Minister nodded and clicked on the lift, activating the Auror alert button. Immediately the lift started moving upwards, but the Minister kept it from going too fast so not to activate the bomb. When the doors reopened, they found the Aurors outside the doors wands in hands confused, only to see the bomb on Harry’s hands. Harry stood carefully and walked away with the Minister several steps behind him, within safe distance from Harry but still close enough so Harry could keep an eye out on him. Harry entered the Aurors department and carefully set the bomb before the Rebel that was sitting by one of the Auror’s table being interrogated, who palled drastically. Once the bomb was set down carefully enough not to activate, Harry turned around and stepped away.
“Hey! Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind? Don’t just leave this…”
“Why not? You were ready to do it to me and the Minister of Magic. Why shall I not do the same to you?” Harry snapped back, making the Rebel actually shiver at Harry’s coldness and anger tone.
“Are you insane? Are you…?” The other shrieked, actually scared of Harry. Of what Harry might do to him.
Harry stopped by the Auror’s department entrance and looked back at the Rebel.
“You are the one who doesn’t have the balls to face the Minister himself and use bombs to attempt at killing him and I’m the insane one? I’m the one who put myself in peril to get it out of the location where you put it! I’m the one who held it in my hands! And I’m the insane one!? Because I dare face you guys? Because I refuse to let you kill me? Because I do my job and actually protect the Minister unlike the Aurors?”
“Potter!” The Head Auror snarled outraged.
“He is right, Rufus!” Minister interceded in a commanding harsh tone that made even the Head Auror shiver from head to toe. “Harry and his family have turned into a target because, unlike you and your Aurors, Harry actually stops the Rebels and their strikes on my person.” The Head Auror looked to be seething and even Harry was looking at the Minister surprised at how angry and Dark he sounded and looked in that moment. “Let’s go, Harry. Let the Aurors try to hold back the explosion that you are still holding back. I have to arrive a meeting in half-hour and I still need to pass by the office.”
Harry nodded and held back his magic, the bomb immediately returned tic-tacking. Both left the office as the Aurors immediately hurried to attempt at stopping it.
“Are we actually letting them deal with the bomb by themselves, Sire?” Harry wondered as he looked at the older beside him, uncertain if he would have to deal with the Minister’s anger.
Minister smirked back and a totally different shiver went down Harry’s back.
“It’s time they learn exactly how powerful you are and what they threw away.” The older argued as his red eyes started to return. “Although, I have to admit…”
Harry glanced at the Minister as they entered the lift alone and the door closed behind them.
“What?”
“Your magical control is quite a turn-on.”
Harry’s face turned deep red.
“Sire… we’re working!”
The smirk only made Harry want to hide even more which was impossible while inside the small rectangular lift.
“You can’t blame my once non-existent libido to now be unable to resist you. Principally when you show-off right before my sight.”
“I don’t show-off, Sire. And if I do… I don’t do it with that thought-line!”
Harry really wished he could wipe out that smugness from the man’s smirk. They arrived the bottom floor and a speaking Patronus showed up.
{I have deactivated the bomb successfully, Potter. Warn the Minister that the Head Auror has decided to start a Veto campaign to get him out of his office and take his place instead.} Kingsley Shacklebolt’s voice put in.
“Didn’t Rufus fire that one?” Minister asked as he set-up the paperwork for his meeting, looking up at Harry.
“Kingsley is the only one they had who would be able to undo the bomb and Auror Scrimgeour knows it. The Aurors most likely didn’t even dare to do it themselves.” Harry shrugged. “But if Kingsley is warning against the Head Auror then…”
“Rebels don’t kill people.” Minister put in and Harry looked at the man. “Everyone knows that. And yet it’s you family that is the first casualty in a decade.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed.
“You think that it was the Head Auror who…?”
“At the least a new type of Rebels. A Darker version that isn’t scared to get their hands dirty.”
Two different type of Rebels…
They left the office and climbed again, only for (when they arrived the Auror’s floor) Kingsley to be about to enter to climb. The black man tensed at seeing who was in and was about to step back to take the next one when a wave of magic made him enter the lift.
“Are you a Rebel?” The Minister demanded as the doors closed.
“Yes, Sir.”
“What is it that your side has against me?”
“Segregation.” Kingsley put in truthfully.
Minister’s lips thinned and then turned towards Harry.
“Can you tell him what your Muggles did to you? The Muggles that Dumbledore himself put you living with illegally?”
Kingsley looked at Harry surprised.
“I was their House-elf. I lived in the cupboard under the stairs. I was told everyday how much I was hated and was told as well that magic doesn’t exist practically every day. They knew I was a Wizard by the way. They taught Cousin Dudley to have a game: Harry Hunting. I run, I get caught, I get beaten into a pulp.” Harry offered and Kingsley’s eyes grew as his mouth fell open wider by each line.
“And Dumbledore supposedly had someone keeping an eye on him.” Minister agreed. “The Wizard you follow? He was declared insane decades ago for a reason. Although I have to admit that Rufus is walking the same way with the way he refuses to apply my laws and even fired your apprentice because she fell in love with a Werewolf.”
“Sir…” Kingsley started.
“My laws are that Creatures have rights, Shacklebolt!” Minister snarled as the lift arrived the atrium, making everyone that was in there stare back surprised. It was not every day that you saw the Minister lose his temper after all. And when he did it was something to be feared…
The three left the lift and the former Auror stayed quiet as he walked by their side. They arrived the free apparating area and the death-like white-skinned man turned again towards the black-skinned man.
“Sir, we need to go or we’ll be late.” Harry put in.
“Just a few minutes more, Harry.” Minister argued. “Learn to think with your head, Kingsley Shacklebolt. Go read the laws that I passed and go check how many of them do the Aurors actually implant. Go check why I passed them. Go check who killed Healer Andromeda Tonks, because it wasn’t the Order of the Phoenix. That isn’t Dumbledore’s style. Even if his style is to send people to do his dirty jobs for him. He does not kill, even if he is in favour of Muggle abuse. …”
Harry looked at his wristwatch, counting the minutes as the older gave the former Auror a run for his money. Finally Minister nodded at Harry.
“Are you done, Sir? If we get behind schedule, do not blame me for it later.”
“I know that if I do that you’ll find a solution.” The older retorted amused and took hold onto Harry’s shoulder. “Take a deep breath.”
Harry obeyed and Minister side-apparated the two of them.
(TBC)