When Sirius first heard Hermione's plan to oust Gaunt from the Ministry, he laughed.
It sounded like a lark, like something he and his mates would dream up in one of their large, more grandiose teenage fits. They'd sit around the dorm, sneaking tipples of smuggled firewhiskey in bottles of lukewarm Butterbeer and say ridiculous things. They'd talk about becoming Minister, fighting Death Eaters, or solo dueling Voldemort in submission. All their nonsense came to the same result in the end; nothing.
Afterward, when he had a moment to think about it, Sirius let his mind replay Hermione's tentative outline, and he realized he may have made a mistake. Remus often pointed out the girls weren't like others their age, and they definitely weren't a group of boastful Gryffindor boys like he and the Marauders had been. Elara, Harriet, and Hermione weren't anything like the witches he remembered in his youth.
The contrast had never been as sharp as it was with other teenagers in the house. The Weasley children and Frank's boy worried about their summer assignments or which Quidditch team advanced in their bracket. The twins talked about their inventions and baubles while Neville lamented not going abroad for the holidays and McGonagall assigning too many projects. Arthur's youngest two traded their Chocolate Frog cards, bemoaned the Chudley Cannons, or speculated on the Order. The looming war touched their lives, but it didn't shape them. Not yet.
On a good day, Sirius or Remus could coax Harriet to meals and have her eat more than a few mouthfuls. Otherwise, she spent her time holed up in her room or staring at the bangle on her wrist, numb to the world around her. Elara's explosive fits happened more often, rattling the timbers of the house—and Hermione obsessed over her notes day and night. The notes for the scheme Sirius had laughed at.
Fred, George, Ronald, Neville, and even Ginevra had heard about the Order of the Phoenix and had immediately wanted to join. Naturally, they'd all been denied as minors, and Molly had a row with Arthur when he'd pointed out the twins were very nearly of age. All the Gryffindor children complained bitterly about the decision, criticizing how it wasn't fair when they were already neck-deep in it, and Sirius had been inclined to agree. He remembered what it was like to be young and feel ineffectual, stuck in school.
"That's absurd," Remus had told him when they settled into his room that evening, either wizard laying on his side of the bed, a stretch of empty sheets between them. Sirius felt like an entire gulf of resentment and old anger rested there too, but it was nice to be close. It was nice to hear Remus' comforting voice, thick and raspy with sleep. "They're too young, just as we had been too young. We were stupid, frankly."
"It's not stupid to stand against oppression."
"Of course not."
"If we'd sat back, too afraid to tell Voldemort and his lot to piss off, everything'd be more fucked than it is, Remus. Don't they have a right to fight for what they believe in?"
"Not yet. And we were intolerably young and naive. All of us—Peter included. Don't give me that look. We drew battle lines in the sand, then went about starting families barely out of school, throwing ourselves knee-deep in the muck of it. Look where that got us all."
It took Sirius longer than it ought to have to realize Harriet, Elara, and Hermione hadn't said a word about the Order—or, at the very least, any desire to join in. Elara had plenty to say about it when she got on a tear, but none of the trio of Slytherin witches had expressed interest in partaking in the group's activities. At first, it'd alarmed Sirius. He'd wanted to know why they wouldn't seek to help or take a stand, why they differed from the other teens—and the answer turned his stomach.
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."
Sirius hadn't known a lot of this information. He knew the ascension rites and whatnot had gotten rather blurred after the war—after Sirius himself got shut up in Azkaban on that godforsaken island. Habeas corpus had been suspended for many trials, Department heads in the Ministry got shuffled like a deck of cards, and one of Gaunt's terms had actually been extended for one year through a vague loophole that briefly saw the Wizarding world operating under military rule. Remus had explained it to him as a result of the ICW's reclassification of 'state of emergency' and the Americans threatening war if the Ministry didn't do something about its magical fugitives fleeing across the pond.
Sirius shook his head. Hermione fidgeted as Professor Dumbledore spoke. "Professor?" the young witch asked, her voice quiet but firm. "Did Minister Gaunt kill Minister Bagnold? Because of the emergency vote?"
"It is very much my opinion that yes, he did." The Headmaster's voice matched Hermione in severity, an old, tempered echo of anger rattling about like a ghost in Dumbledore's eyes. "Millicent Bagnold was a friend of mine. She was a wise witch who survived much during the war as she led our government. Her death coming so swiftly after the war's end, though ruled an accident, rattled her supporters and family. Yes, Hermione, I do believe the man who calls him Marvolo Gaunt was responsible for her end."
Sirius saw Hermione's throat bob as she swallowed, her hands tight upon her notes.
"Millicent's fate might very well be a factor in why successive legal coups have failed against the Minister. We have, on separate occasions, attempted to split the vote of what you have cleverly named the Omega party. I understand our Muggle government has political parties, but such a custom—for better or worse—hasn't flourished among Britain's magical counterparts. Oh, there's been movements before, a particularly memorable one when I was still a lad—but I digress. The lack of parties makes it a touch more difficult to predict how votes in the Wizengamot might be placed, and doesn't account for other circumstances that suspend votes from being counted. The fluid nature of House politics and rights means the volume of votes might not be fully present. For example, I myself have held the ballot of House Potter in abstention to keep it from falling into Lucius Malfoy's hands while Harriet is a minor, though I refrained from using those votes myself."
"Why so, Professor?"
"Oh, several reasons. To apply those votes to my own would mean to proxy the House, and that would suspend Harriet's rights until she came of age. As it is, and because I've never used those votes to register with my own, she may take up the mantel of House Potter within the Wizengamot as she pleases. Many other Houses are tangentially counted apart from a singular whole on paper, but are still in proxy."
"You mean the Death Eater families, don't you, sir?"
"Certainly. But also the Houses of several lines that went extinct in the war, poor souls. The proxy for those Houses may have used those votes differently in varying settings within the Wizengamot meetings. This is why our attempts to split the vote and dissuade those 'Omega' families from voting for Gaunt has failed in the past."
Hermione frowned at her notes. "...some of the numbers would be skewed, then. If some proxied votes don't follow the Houses that are proxying them. He...he does that on purpose."
"Yes." Dumbledore peered over his half-moon spectacles and studied the young woman's face. "Make no mistake, Miss Granger. Mr. Gaunt is a calculating, devious opponent, both within politics and without. He is notorious for purposefully having his followers skew statistics with their votes to thwart probability predictions. He preys upon technicalities and weaknesses in the law that create exploitable points of pressure, often utilizing panic to sway those he might not usually have in his camp. I would say he is not a wizard to be underestimated in any circumstance."
The more Dumbledore spoke, the more Hermione appeared disheartened. "So it's impossible to try. If you and the Order couldn't do it—."
"No, no, Miss Granger. You mistake my meaning." Dumbledore held up his hand to forestall her quiet defeat. "If I have learned anything in my long years, it is that very few things are impossible in this world if one is willing to put in the effort and challenge convention. Why, I've seen you and your friends do a dozen impossible things before! Simply because others have failed in this endeavor does not necessarily mean you will as well." Dumbledore smiled. "If you wish for my advice, Hermione? Someone must be convinced to run against Minister Gaunt before any further thought to votes should be given. It may prove a task more difficult than anything else."
When Dumbledore finally took his leave, Hermione exhaled as if she'd just shoved a huge weight from her shoulders, and she sagged into the chair behind her. "Well," she commented, tossing her notes onto the desk. "That could have gone worse. Could have gone better, but could have been worse."
Sirius agreed.
xXx
Over the next several days, Sirius couldn't shake the conversation in the study from his head, no matter how busy the Order got or other impending worries such as Harriet's trial. It crept up on him in the dead of night, and he'd rise to stare out the window or go pace the garden, desperate for a drink and feeling mad for want of it. He'd throw his mind into anything to escape his demons for a while, and Hermione's plan proved a worthy distraction.
For all that Sirius had been born and raised in one of the most preeminent pure-blood households, he didn't much understand nor care for the intricate nature of Wizarding politics. He followed along with Hermione's explanations of voting priorities and trends, but it settled like nettles in his brain, a frustrating crown of ineffectual jargon tying all their hands. Sirius was the kind of man who saw an enemy and identified him. He wanted to jab a finger in Gaunt's face and shake the nearest idiot, screaming, "That's him. That's the bastard. Why can't any of you see it?!"
But he couldn't. People had tried. Dumbledore had all but named Gaunt the Dark Lord himself in the early days, and he'd lost his position as the Head of the Wizengamot. Every year, he sought help from the International Confederation of Wizards, but he had to be careful in slandering Gaunt, lest he lose yet another avenue of aid. Allies had done everything they could to open people's eyes—all to no avail. People didn't want to open their eyes. The truth was as bright as a midday sun, and no one wanted to look it dead on.
Tied hands, Sirius thought.
He didn't like politics. He'd taken no part in them for as much of his life as possible, but Sirius was a Black, born and bred, and he despised having his hands tied, doing nothing. He grew up surrounded by witches and wizards who made it their business to play the Ministry, toying with their strings until they skipped to their tune. He knew the game, and twelve years in Azkaban had done little to diminish the weight behind the name of Black. With a bit of effort, he could throw it around better than his daughter could.
In this way, Sirius found himself strolling the hallway of the Ministry on a Thursday afternoon, on his way to an impromptu meeting with the head of the D.M.L.E.
He found Amelia Bones seated behind her desk, making efficient progress through an obscene pile of paperwork. Even as she worked—hands moving like lightning from quill to stamp to parchment and back again—Sirius watched folded notes fly through the open transom and continue to stack themselves upon the teetering inbox pile.
"Black," Madam Bones said without looking up.
"Amelia!" Sirius replied, sweeping into an exaggerated bow. "It's been too long! I think last I saw you, you were deciding if I should go back to rotting in prison."
The witch's eye twitched. She was a stern woman, cut from the same tartan cloth as McGonagall—without the nurturing urge that sent Minerva to Hogwarts and kept Bones here, heading the Aurory. Her monocle flashed when she finally raised her head, and Sirius detected the faintest bit of softening around her pressed lips. He'd known her sister, Abigail, in school, and had met Amelia more than once in his youth. He always made it his business to get the older witch to laugh—and never really succeeded.
"My assistant assures me your need for a meeting is urgent."
Of course he did. Sirius had shoved half a dozen galleons into the greasy little man's grasping hands yesterday at the pub, and had waited for news. "Nothing terribly pressing. I promise, I'll be out of your hair before you know it," Sirius assured her, inviting himself to sit on the wooden bench set before her intimidating desk. He pondered why she didn't have bloody chairs—until he noted the rings recessed into the floor, perfect for attaching the chains of prisoners' fetters.
He grimaced.
"Why are you here, Mr. Black?"
Sirius appreciated Bones' forthright manner, especially when so many other people in her position wanted to mince words and play games.
"I mean to bend your ear about the upcoming election for Minister."
Bones huffed. "That isn't until the end of the year, as you well know."
"Course. But candidates have to put their names forward by Mabon, and that isn't nearly so far away."
She caught on to his purpose then, her hands stopping their endless, easy rhythm as she fixed Sirius with a gimlet eye. It was common knowledge prospective Ministers usually came from two of the government's sectors, either the Department of International Magical Cooperation or the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Outliers existed, and people outside of the Ministry could get pushed for candidacy if they had enough support, but a usual shoo-in for nomination was always head of the D.M.L.E.
"Don't waste my time," Bones said. She picked up her stamp and swung it with some force on the next sheet of parchment. It rolled up and scampered away.
"Who's wasting time?" Sirius held his hands up and open. "Here I am, just making conversation. Have any thoughts on who's running this year, Madam Bones?"
"You'd have made for a poor Slytherin," she informed him. "Your brother was much better at appearing guileless."
The remark about Regulus stung. The poor, dead bastard.
"Fair enough. I'll be honest with you, Madam Bones—Amelia. If anyone asks, I came in to talk about my goddaughter's pending case, but I mean to speak with you about running for Minister."
Bones retrieved her wand and fired a silent spell at the door, sealing both it and the transom above. Little purple notes began to pile up outside the frosted glass immediately. "You'd be better off asking for the Potter girl's amnesty," she retorted, sliding her wand back into the pocket of her robes. "For all the good it will do you."
"Well, if you're offering—."
"Mr. Black, I have a demanding schedule. If you intend to dither about—."
Merlin's arse, he groused in his own thoughts. "Right. So you're not looking to run, then? Why's that? Content to have Gaunt run things?" Sirius lowered his voice. "You're not daft, Amelia. You have an idea of what he is, even if you dare not say it aloud."
Her eyes cut toward the door again, the to Sirius, narrowing. "It's a fool's errand to run against him. At the last election, he swept the Wizengamot. He was unopposed because the lad who'd put his name in suddenly got...cold feet."
"You're no green toadie about to be run off by threats, idle or not."
"No," Bones agreed. "But I strive to keep both my department and the Ministry as a whole running as efficiently as possible. There's a plethora of immediate dangers out there, Mr. Black." She pointed at the stack of parchment waiting to be processed. "Causing problems won't help me address them."
Sirius fidgeted on the bench, clasping his rough hands together between his knees. He wasn't getting anywhere. He needed to try something else. "My best mate was an Auror, you know?"
Some of the tension in Bones' shoulders relented, regret flicking through her lined eyes. "Yes. I remember Mr. Potter well."
"He told me how you lot were taught a bit of emergency triage, just in case. You never know what you'll be walking into as an Auror, and it was always possible to come across someone too hurt to make it to Mungo's. So James told me the first thing you had to do was stop the bleeding. It was the most...immediate danger."
Sirius tipped his head toward her work.
"In the end, it wasn't the bleeding they had to worry about so much as infection. Muggle or wizard, if there's dirt behind the wound, it doesn't matter if you seal it up and stop the bleeding; it's going to fester. It's going to rot and kill you."
Bones grimaced, her nostrils flaring, though she didn't look away. Sirius leaned forward so he could press his hand onto the surface of her desk.
"They arrested my goddaughter," he said, his voice low and steady, thick with anger. "A fourteen-year-old girl. They arrested her under absurd charges and threw her in an Azkaban holding cell for three days."
The witch startled, almost unseating her monocle. "That's not protocol," she snapped. "I have no knowledge of this!"
Sirius leaned back, keeping his expression aloof despite the frustration gleaming in his eyes. "That's the kind of Ministry Gaunt runs. It's his doll house, and he treats you all like his puppets, moving you how he likes. Imagine what else could be happening around you without your knowledge."
"All right," Madam Bones relented. "Yes, I see your point. It doesn't negate mine, however. Even if I were inclined to entertain the idea, a competitor can't win against Gaunt. Not with the Wizengamot as it is."
"What if I told you there were to be...waves? A healthy jolt of reconsideration among the voters?"
Brow rising, Bones quickly said, "I'll hear nothing to do with any form of insurrection or outside group moving against Ministry officials, Mr. Black. Not a word."
"You're no fun, are you, Amelia?" Sirius stuck out his lower lip. "A bit of mayhem is good for the soul."
"So it may be, but not in my hearing range." He suspected Bones treated with the Order on occasion, but only in the strictest of confidences, as it'd mean her job and most likely her head if Gaunt could prove she'd anything to do with Dumbledore's group. As far as she knew, the Order of the Phoenix didn't exist.
"This has nothing to do with anybody other than a private citizen making polite inquiries and promoting the benefits of a new Minister," Sirius told her. He didn't roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. "It'd be nice to see a different face in the office, wouldn't it? Maybe a few less of those ugly pins about the department? Gaudy gold things."
The corner of Bones' mouth twitched in a half-smile. Oh, Sirius could only guess at how it must rankle a no-nonsense, rule-stickler like Amelia Bones for the Guardians of the Magical Right to infiltrate her Aurory and form weaknesses in the ranks. Gaunt had spies in every corner of the Ministry, like a pervasive weed with roots reaching far past its perceived limits.
"I make no promises," Bones finally replied. "I need time to consider it, but I cannot disagree with you, Mr. Black. It would be nice to see someone else as Minister, and if no one else is willing to try...so be it."
Sirius decided it best he leave her with her thoughts before he annoyed her into changing her mind. "It's nice to see good people still in the Ministry."
"There are no good people in the Ministry," Bones corrected him, a heavy solemnity replacing her pensive mood. She returned her attention to work before her, and like Sisyphus, started in once more. "Only those who want to do what's right and those who don't. Good day, Mr. Black."
Sirius excused himself for her office. The door shut behind him with a click.
-
A/N:
Hermione: "I want to overthrow the government."
Sirius: "Ha, good one."
Hermione: "..."
Sirius: "...Oh no."