Certain Dark Things || Book Five

ix. the bones of the operation

The Weasleys, Longbottom, and their lot knew about war. They'd lost family members to it, and they knew—in the abstract—how dangerous it could be. A new war was bubbling like a cauldron left untended on the hob, as Voldemort wouldn't stay silent forever, and those kids were as earnest to fight against him as Sirius and James and Remus had been at their age. They had an idea of what was to come and wanted to assist, but they still didn't know. Not really.

Sirius hadn't understood at first that for Harriet and Elara and Hermione, the first war had never ended. They weren't looking at the future as a spectral bogeyman about to descend; it'd already landed on them years ago. People had been trying to kill Harriet since her birth, and Elara grew up among religious zealots not afraid to tell a little girl she was a monster. Hermione might not have been involved for as long as the others, but her entire life in the Wizarding world had been indicative of Voldemort's continued dogma. Her boyfriend had been offed for no good fucking reason. She hadn't seen her parents in Merlin knew how long.

They didn't need to join the Order to fight the Dark Lord and do what was right. They'd been doing so already. Sirius needed to remember his girls weren't normal teenagers. They never had been and never would be.

"Tell me your plan again," he told Hermione the next time he caught her in the study. "From the beginning. I want to hear it once more, please."

She hesitated, clearly stung by his prior amusement, but Sirius kept his face earnest, and Hermione eventually relented. She tugged out her notes and, from the beginning, began to outline her designs for the Minister election at the end of the year.

Sirius listened, and when she ran out of breath, he went to get Professor Dumbledore.

Hermione repeated herself again.

The old Headmaster showed none of Sirius' initial irreverence when Hermione spoke, no matter that she wasn't yet sixteen nor fully confident in her plan. Her voice faltered at several points, and she'd cast her eyes down, brows furrowed, before she rounded her shoulders and went on. Professor Dumbledore waited, expression thoughtful, until she came to an end.

He leaned back in his Conjured chair, tucking his long, wizened fingers in his beard as Hermione folded her sheaf of notes together again.

"It may surprise you," he said. "But we've seen similar ideas implemented before. Or attempts, at least."

Hermione's shoulders visibly dipped. "Oh?"

"I haven't seen so organized a plan put together, to be sure! Excellent work, Miss Granger."

"Thank you, sir. But if it's not useful—."

"Forgive me, I didn't mean to imply it isn't useful. I simply mean to point out more variables than you might be aware of, my dear." He cleared his throat. "As soon as Minister Gaunt was elected, the Order sought to invalidate his appointment or gather the resources to have him unseated in the next election." Professor Dumbledore turned his face toward the window, seemingly lost in distant thought. Sirius leaned his shoulder into the wall, crossing his arms to get comfortable. "He rose very swiftly—and silently—to power within the Ministry, and utilized an emergency election to hang the Wizengamot's vote. When an emergency vote is convened, the entirety of the able Wizengamot—those whose Houses are not tangled in legal dilemmas that preclude their ability to vote—are not required to attend or abstain, though one Minister candidate suggested within the meeting must reach one-hundred votes to qualify as Minister. Mr. Gaunt, as he was then known, managed to throw the Wizengamot into a quandary, as they refused to come to a consensus and grant one candidate one-hundred votes. The meeting would have been reconvened and the vote held again at a later time in normal circumstances, but Gaunt's election came so very precariously close to the end of the war, and the Wizengamot refused to leave our world without a government in such a tenuous time. It was finally decided that Gaunt would be our Minister."