Harry Potter and the House Divided

Chapter Twenty-Four The Wizarding Council

Thoughts of his conversation with Daphne distracted Harry through most of Sunday. Had Tonks not kept him busy with preparations for the Wizarding Council, Harry would have noticed that, though unobtrusively, the Slytherin sixth-year was almost always near him, particularly at times when there were many students present.

Tonks drilled him on Parliamentary Procedure, the traditional alliances between the great wizarding families, crammed his head with the latest information on which side of the war each and every representative to the Council was expected to stand, and got him ready for the order of events as they would happen on Thursday morning.

First Professor Dumbledore, acting as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot would give an opening speech. Then Minister Fudge would have his say, followed by the first House to demand his removal. Unfortunately, as Harry had made the first call for the resignation of the current Minister, Tonks would have to speak before the Council on his behalf, expressing things that he wasn't sure he even felt anymore. There would then be a short break and a vote on the Minister's future would be held. Depending on how that went, they would either return to Hogwarts before lunch, or be stuck in London for quite some time while the Council debated who the next Minister should be.

With the Quidditch match against Slytherin less than a week away, Ron didn't take kindly to Tonks' demand that Harry miss Monday evening practice. However, a deadly glare from the young Auror silenced his objections, even if they weren't put to rest. For his part, Harry would have been glad to go to practice as it would have given him a few hours' rest from a study schedule that made Hermione's revisions for the O.W.L.s seem careless by comparison.

Wednesday evening finally came and there was nothing more that Tonks could do. Harry couldn't resist sighing with relief when she closed the last folder.

"There's loads more to teach you, but we've not got time."

"I know," Harry sighed, glad that the waiting was over but afraid that they hadn't done enough.

"Just remember, follow my lead and answer questions from Dumbledore only. He'll not lead you into any traps and he'll help you if something comes up that we've not prepared for."

"How likely is that?" Harry asked.

"Pretty," Tonks said honestly.

"Great," Harry groaned.

*-*-*-

The next morning found Harry in the Great Hall, wearing the ornate red robes with black trim that Professor Dumbledore had told him to order over the summer. The high, white collar was stiff with starch and Harry would have been afraid for his modesty, had the single fastening under the throat not been reinforced by a thick dragonhide belt that included a holster for his wand. Tonks was in equally formal robes that exactly matched Harry's except that they didn't have the collar that he was sure would drive him mad before the end of the day.

Professor Dumbledore was absent from the staff table, and Harry could only assume that the Chief of the Wizengamot had gone ahead to make arrangements for the Council meeting, which would begin at 10am precisely.

In glancing around the Great Hall, Harry saw that a number of other students wore similar robes, with Malfoy's green with grey piping making him look a bit like a moss-covered sapling. Malfoy, of course, would be represented before the Council by his mother, who would act on behalf of his family since his father was running from Ministry justice.

"You look very nice, Harry," Hermione said as she slipped onto the bench just to his right.

"Uh, thanks," Harry said, "I feel like an idiot, though."

"Those robes do look a bit uncomfortable," Ron said, laughing at Harry's obvious discomfort.

"They are!" Harry groaned, "and Tonks told me that I'll have to wear them till the end of the session."

"But that could take days!" Hermione cried.

"Sure could," Harry agreed. "I read that one session took thirty-seven days to name a new Minister. Tonks told me that they've taken less time over the last couple of hundred years because they only have to name a Minister, not pass laws like they used to. So hopefully we'll be done in time for the game on Saturday."

"Got that right," Ron said grumpily. "Because otherwise I'll have to put Ginny in as Seeker and get one of those other gits to be the third Chaser."

"Take my broom and give it to Ginny if I'm not back in time," Harry said.

"But..." Ginny started to object.

"We've got to win this one," Harry said to her. "Luckily Malfoy'll be at the Council because his parents want him to see how they're done or something like that."

"So you mean he doesn't have to be there?" Hermione asked, curiously.

"Nope," Harry said. "Since his dad's still alive he can tell Mrs. Malfoy what to do. Tonks said that a lot of the really old families make their heirs go because it's important to be seen or something like that."

"Of course it's important," Hermione said. "After all, it's one of the few times when all of the representatives of the most powerful families will be in the same place. They probably get a lot of deals made while they're together."

"That's what Tonks told me," Harry agreed before reapplying himself to his sausages.

"If this weren't such an important time, I'd ask you to speak out on behalf of house elves," Hermione said, wistfully.

Harry grunted, not wanting Hermione to know that he didn't really care all that much and wouldn't take up the cause for house elves even if she asked him to.

"You think that their rights aren't important?" she asked, shrilly.

"I don't," Ron said with a laugh, "since with the exception of that nutter Dobby, they don't seem to want rights."

"Just because they don't know enough to want rights doesn't mean that they shouldn't be given them," Hermione shot back.

"Will you two shut up?" Harry barked, tired of the debate and needing to think about all that Tonks had taught him.

"Sorry," Ron and Hermione said, contritely.

"Me too," Harry said, "but I've got a lot to think on this morning and I just can't deal with you two bickering today."

"Do you want us to leave you alone?" Hermione asked, solicitously.

"No," Harry said. "I just need to have my friends this morning and not, well, my friends fighting, if you know what I mean."

"Maybe we should find new ways to argue about things," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"What'd be the fun in that?" Ron asked, laughing.

"Oh, I don't know," Hermione said, "there are better ways to use our energy you know."

"Yeah," Ron said thoughtfully, "maybe we do need to cool it down a bit."

"Don't change too much," Ginny said, glancing up from her conversation with Colin. "After all, there's got to be some way to find you when Ron's sitting down and, without the bickering, we'll have to figure out how to do it without following your shouting."

Hermione's face flushed in embarrassment and Ron's ears reddened, but neither seemed willing to respond to Ginny's teasing. Harry couldn't tell whether it was because they knew she was right or simply respected his need for peace amongst his friends.

*-*-*-

"That old bat!" Tonks grumbled several minutes later as they rode the spiral stairs leading to the Headmaster's office.

"Who?" Harry asked, curiously.

"Aunt Narcissa!" Tonks said, waving her arms and accidentally punching the wall as they reached Professor Dumbledore's door.

"You allright?" Harry asked, trying not to laugh at Tonks who was sucking her knuckles.

"Yeah," Tonks grumbled. "Did that fourth year when I got in trouble for playing practical jokes on one of the Slytherins. Should have remembered how bloody hard that damned wall is."

"Play a joke on the Slytherins?" Harry asked, curiosity at Tonks' anger toward Mrs. Malfoy diverted for the time being.

"'course," Tonks said, opening Professor Dumbledore's door. "Drove one of the sixth year boys crazy making him think that his girlfriend was in two places at once. Would've got away with it if Professor McGonagall hadn't caught me out and showed him that the fat cow was doing a detention."

"Not bad," Harry laughed, imagining how confused he or Ron would have been if they'd started seeing Hermione or Ginny in places that they simply couldn't be.

"Being anyone you want to be does have its advantages," Tonks said, sagely.

"Yeah," Harry sighed, wishing that he wouldn't have to go through the responses to one of the people whom Tonks planned to mimic.

"I know you don't want to do things this way," she said gently. "But there are a lot of people who are afraid of Voldemort and, if we can remind them that it is possible to beat him as well as the sacrifices that others have made for them, I think it'll help swing some votes."

"Maybe," Harry said, "but I'm not sure that I'm ready to see my mum enter the Wizarding Council and have that be only the fourth time in my life that I'll have seen her doing something other than waving at me from a picture."

"Well, we could start now," Tonks said gently. "After all, there's nothing that says that I have to wait 'til we get there."

"Do you mind?" Harry asked, suddenly glad that he wouldn't have to face the public while coping with the sharp edge of newly formed anger at the wizarding world when Tonks morphed into a thirty-six year old version of Lily Potter. He'd already seen her do it once and had been so furious that he'd had to leave the room in order to keep from hexing Tonks and doing some serious damage to the space that Professor Dumbledore had given them to work in.

"No problem," Tonks said before her face screwed up in concentration.

Moments later, she had been replaced by a woman who was just as tall as Tonks' real form but who couldn't have looked more different.

Where Tonks' hair was black, Lily Potter's had been a rich auburn. Where Tonks' eyes were the grey of a late November sea, Lily Potter's were the emerald green orbs that Harry saw every morning when he looked in the mirror. Where Tonks was athletic, Lily Potter was slender and somewhat softer than the woman who now wore her body and face.

"Wow," Harry said, awed by Tonks' skills in a way that he could not have been the first time he saw her take this particular shape.

"Yeah," Tonks said. "Takes a lot of concentration to be this precise with someone else' form. 'Course, I have to be that careful if I'm trying to mimic a Death Eater or something."

"Have you?" Harry asked, curiously.

"Twice," Tonks said, "and I shouldn't tell you more, just in case."

"Right," Harry said, nearly mad with curiosity and concern for his guardian but willing to let it drop because he knew that she was right not to tell him what she'd been trying to do.

"Well," Tonks said, voice now eerily like that of the reflection of his mother that Harry had seen in Professor Snape's penseive, "we'd probably better be ready, it's two minutes 'til the portkey goes."

"Right," Harry said, many terrible and equally confused emotions clutching his chest in a vice tighter than any bindings could ever be. He was furious at having to attend the Council and angry that everything about his life, including his mother's face, was being used in a war that was ultimately his alone to end. He also felt terrible sadness that he would never see his mother, or someone who looked exactly like her, walk the world as Tonks would do in her place for as long as the Council might last. All-in-all, Harry was tired of having to give and give for others and more than ready to have a few things break in his direction. The fact that they weren't likely to for some time to come added to the confusion that he felt, and left him feeling incredibly lonely, even though he knew well that he would soon be in a room with more than a thousand people.

"You all right?" Tonks asked, solicitously.

"Yeah," Harry said gruffly.

"I'm sorry," Tonks said softly, a tear rolling down the cheek that Harry desperately wished could really belong to his mother.

Whether out of sympathy for the pain that it caused him, or the need to keep her assumed identity secret, Tonks pulled the hood of her cloak up over the hair that fell past her shoulders in thick auburn waves. She was barely in time as only moments after she'd released the edge of her hood, the portkey swept them from Professor Dumbledore's office and off to the first meeting of the full Wizarding Council since the height of the first war with Voldemort.

*-*-*-

Harry was reminded how much he hated portkey travel when they landed in the Great Chamber of the Wizarding Council. Tonks promptly tripped over a non-existent something, and he fell, partly out of sympathy, and partly because he simply couldn't envision himself standing after using one of the bloody things. No matter how much training he might have had from Remus, Tonks, Bill and so many others over the summer, he still had trouble converting the will that he had in abundance to the practical effects that everyone said should be possible for him, if he were sufficiently determined.

Confusion over their landing meant that it took a few moments to appreciate the grandeur of the Chamber into which they had been brought.

The vaulted ceiling reminded him of some of the cathedrals that Hermione had told him and Ron about after the trip that her family had taken to France during the summer before their third year. Unlike those cathedrals, the room needed no columns to support its ceiling and an enormous skylight that was at its exact centre let in the hazy grey light of the late October morning in London.

Harry saw that the room was about half full, witches and wizards moving about in clumps, family colours mixing freely though there was almost no interaction between those wearing red and people wearing green.

"That old cow," Tonks muttered next to Harry, her face directed toward the tall, blonde form that Harry recognized as Narcissa Malfoy.

"What do you have against her?" he asked, curious.

"She wanted me to bring cousin Draco here since I'm listed as security for the meeting."

"Oh," Harry said, very glad that he hadn't made the trip from Hogwarts with the boy who thought of him as a rival.

"Yeah," Tonks said with a snort. "She said that since I was a Black and an Auror, I had a responsibility to keep him safe."

"And?" Harry asked, curiously.

"And I told her that Aunt Bella's a Black and her sister, and so she should ask her to do it instead."

"What did she say?" Harry asked, laughing under his breath.

"Just cut the Floo connection," Tonks said dismissively.

"Any chance that he won't be here?" Harry asked, hopefully.

"None," Tonks sighed. "Aunt Narcissa's not sufficiently intimidating by herself so she'll bring MiniMalfoy along to remind them that the family has an heir. That'll be enough to keep a lot of the houses that might otherwise go for some other candidate in line."

"So Madame Bones would be elected, then?"

"Count on it."

"Well, hopefully she messed up and didn't have a back-up plan."

"Like I said," Tonks muttered angrily, "no hope of that."

Malfoy appeared, odd robes and all before Harry could say anything more.

"Damn," he couldn't resist saying before turning his attention to the dais where Professor Dumbledore now stood.

"Witches, Wizards, members of the Ministry, the Wizengamot and representatives of the Wizarding Community at large: I now open the 164th meeting of the General Wizarding Council of Great Britain and Ireland. The question before us today is whether the current Minister of Magic, one Cornelius Oswald Fudge should be relieved of his office. If he is relieved, this Council will replace him with an interim Minister until elections within the larger community can be held.

"As is traditional in these settings, the current Minister will be given a chance to defend the actions that have led to a petition for his replacement. It is my duty as Chief Warlock to announce that as of this morning, 7,326 witches and wizards have called for the Minister's immediate replacement. This is more than 1/4 of the voting population of the British Wizarding Community. Of the houses named as signatories to the Wizarding Codicils of the Magna Carta that can still claim representation on this body, 2/3 have also called for the resignation of the current minister.

"It is therefore up to this body to listen to the words of the current Minister and take a decision that will have a profound impact on the wizarding community in a time of great difficulty."

Harry was not surprised by anything that Professor Dumbledore had said. He felt more than a little guilty that he had been one of the first of the "Old Families" to call for the replacement of the minister. He didn't feel guilty because he thought Fudge didn't deserve replacement, but rather because he now understood that there was a chance that whoever came after him could be much worse.

"Witches, Wizards, members of the Ministry, the Wizengamot and representatives of the Wizarding Community at large: I come before you today to admit several mistakes on the part of my government over the past few years and to ask for your forbearance as I work to correct them in the future."

"First: I was wrong not to recognize the return of 'You-Know-Who' when it was first reported to me by the Chief Warlock and Mr. Harry Potter, who sits here today along with a guardian who represents his family's interests in this body."

Robes rustled as everyone turned to look at Harry and the still-cloaked form standing next to him.

"Mr. Potter suffered terribly as a result of the actions of Dolores Umbridge, who was once a close friend and important member of my staff. However, evidence has come to light that she tried to set dementors on him last August, forcing him to use underage magic to protect himself and his muggle cousin against the beasts which had been sent against him, either in hopes of destroying him, or in pursuit of forcing his expulsion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"She did not act on my orders. However, I will admit that at the time I would have been glad to see him expelled, as it would have helped to silence his claims about the return of 'You-Know-Who'."

There was much shouting and groaning at this and Fudge hurried on, knowing that he wasn't helping himself.

"Mr. Potter's successful battle against 'You-Know-Who's' servants in the Ministry itself has forced me to realize that my actions were extremely wrongheaded."

There was much muttering at this, some supportive but a lot of it was angry. Harry noticed that all of the families that Tonks expected to be angry were, but he was worried that some families she had hoped would be supportive, seemed to be either silent or angry as well.

"This war has been forced on us by 'You-Know-Who's' determination to concentrate absolute power in his own hands and it was this determination that I did not see as early as I should have. I obstructed many actions that Professor Dumbledore tried to take and in so doing have made it more difficult for us to fight. However, as everyone knows, no Minister has been as active in fighting any conflict as I have been since 'You-Know-Who' appeared in the ministry of Magic last June. I am now working closely with Professor Dumbledore and am willing to work with anyone who hopes to see peace in our world. I cannot undo what I have done but am better able to correct my mistakes than anyone and more willing to fight for peace in our time than anyone who might replace me."

"Not bad," Tonks muttered, "if you want to surrender to Voldemort that is."

Harry couldn't help but agree. Fight for peace? Of course that was what he wanted, but he was having trouble imagining peace in the wizarding world even when Voldemort was destroyed. Even if he could kill the most dangerous wizard in many centuries, there were many who supported him who were, as Professor Dumbledore had put it, "nearly as terrible as he." Surely one of them would try to take up where Voldemort, and Grindelwald before him, had left off.

"Yeah," Harry sighed, "I know that Dumbledore wants him to stay on but..."

"Well," Tonks said softly. "It's our turn to have a say."

"Right," Harry said, rising next to her as she got ready to cast off the hood of the travelling cloak that she wore.

"And now," Professor Dumbledore said, his eyes profoundly sad as if he

knew what Tonks planned to do, "the Council will hear from House Potter,

which is the first of the Great Houses to call for the resignation of the

current Minister."

With these words, Tonks cast back the hood of her travelling cloak and Lily Potter rose from the grave to speak on behalf of her son.