The Daring Win | By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2 |
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Chapter Two—The Ministry
Dolores had worked enough with people in different Departments of the Ministry down the years to know exactly how to handle a swift adoption. There were people who owed her favors, and only a few who knew her secrets.
Dolores was prepared to work with both.
As they walked towards the Ministry’s entrance, she gave the boy a swift education in exactly why he was so important.
“Your parents were fighting a Dark wizard called You-Know-Who.” The child gave her a glance full of curiosity, which Dolores ignored. She would give the boy books later. She would not speak a name aloud that was dead and gone. “He broke into the house where they were staying and killed them. Then he tried to kill you.”
She turned Potter to face her. He stood tamely enough, which might be the one praiseworthy legacy his Muggle upbringing had left him. Dolores touched his scar. “This is the only remnant of that curse.”
“People think that makes me special?”
Dolores nodded. She didn’t like children, and she had to admire the boy’s quickness in seeking out the reason she would want to adopt him. She was sure he knew that she didn’t like children. Most brats knew instinctively. “It is. The curse that You-Know-Who used on you is one that most of the time, no one can survive. The Killing Curse. It always slays instantly.” She looked down into Potter’s eyes. They were as bright as legend said, as bright as a cat’s. “Except with you.”
Potter nibbled his lip for a moment. It was a loathsome habit that Dolores would work on correcting later. “But no one knows why I did it?”
Dolores relaxed. An intelligent boy would be easier to be around. “Exactly. Or how, which is more to the point. You’re known as the Boy-Who-Lived in our world. The world you should always have lived in.” Time to expose him to one more home truth before she took him into the Ministry. Well, perhaps two. “First, you aren’t to think that you can give yourself airs with me. I don’t know yet if you’re magically powerful or if you survived the Killing Curse for another reason.”
Personally, Dolores had always thought the seemingly perfect Potters had performed Dark rituals to protect their child. People did always get so sickeningly sentimental about their brats. But it wasn’t politically expedient to besmirch the Potters’ names, and so she had never tried.
“Yes, madam,” Potter whispered, voice so low that Dolores had trouble making it out.
Elocution lessons could also come later. “Second,” Dolores said, and reached out to put her wand beneath the boy’s chin so he would look up at her, “someone placed you with your Muggle relatives instead of raising you in the wizarding world the way they should have. I have my suspicions about that, and I’ll try to get revenge on that person for you. But until I know for sure, you can’t mention anything about it.”
“Do you know who they are?” Potter’s eyes were so wide, and believing. That pleased Dolores. People often thought she was lying even when she wasn’t.
“I have my suspicions,” she repeated, and Potter looked abashed. “But I can’t tell you right now, or you might look out of place if we meet that person.” She looked towards the Ministry entrance; she would have liked to Floo in, but on the other hand, presentation was important. “Sometimes he visits the Ministry.”
“I understand.”
And Potter sounded as if he did, was the wonder! Dolores thought, guiding him towards the Ministry entrance again. She decided that perhaps the Muggles had taught him his place. Well, not his real place, of course; he couldn’t have any while he lived with Muggles and had to be their servant. But something like it, the way a child should act around adults. He seemed much more mature and understanding than Dolores had been afraid of.
Yes, she thought she could live with Harry Potter.
*
Timing is everything.
Her father used to say that to her when he got drunk, which was the only time he ever tried to give her advice. But he meant it about the sweeps of a broom, the only thing he knew, and he would go on, sobbing, to tell her all about some office he failed to clean properly years ago and how guilty he felt about it.
It had taken a lot of time and trouble for Dolores to find the useful advice in among the useless things. And longer for her to be sure that no trace of guilt would ever trouble her.
She marched into the Atrium with her head held high and her hand on Potter’s shoulder. She’d told him to look around but not gape. And it seemed Potter was having a hard time holding his jaw shut as he stared at the sparkling fountain and the wizards and witches hurrying in and out of fireplaces.
Well. He should stare. The Ministry was the most important institution in their world, and Dolores didn’t think the general population had as much awe of it as they should.
But she also cast a small spell, the opposite of a Notice-Me-Not Charm, that drew their attention. And either more people than she’d thought would recognized the shape of the Potter hair and face, or the scar stood out as the most noticeable thing on Potter, because quiet spread around them even before someone shouted out the truth.
“Blimey, it’s Harry Potter!”
A circle of admirers surrounded them immediately. Dolores made sure to keep herself in between most of the gabbling adults and the overwhelmed child. “Yes, he’s Harry Potter,” she said over and over. “I found him living with Muggles who mistreated him. Disgraceful. Yes, the scar is real, but you can’t touch it. Do you think he’s a thing to be pawed?”
She saw Potter watching her with a new emotion in his eyes. It might be gratitude. Dolores hadn’t seen enough of that in the past to be sure of it.
“We must see the Minister at once, of course,” said Dolores, passing a hand across her forehead and trying her best to look overworked. Of course, not too much so, because someone might think Harry Potter should be with someone less busy if they took it too seriously. “This is a matter for the Minister!”
And of course once she had said that, then everyone else saw it, too. Dolores swept into the lift with her head proudly held back and her hand on Potter’s shoulder, and she wondered again at the power of names. Hers meant nothing. Minister Bagnold’s meant everything.
And perhaps Dolores Umbridge’s would come to mean something, too, if only as part of the trailing stars surrounding Harry Potter’s.
*
“What’s this, then, Dolores?”
Dolores bowed her head. She was impressed that Minister Bagnold knew exactly who she was. It was good sense to know the rising power players in the Ministry, but once one reached a certain level of power, most people let that go. They expected others to know who they were, instead.
Not that Dolores intended to be like that, but most reports said Minister Bagnold was.
She came around her desk, a tall brown-haired woman who didn’t know the value of keeping a desk between her and any visitors. She studied Potter critically, and then nodded and looked up at Dolores. “So it is him.”
Does she think I would have tried to get in here with a fake? But when Dolores thought about it, she supposed someone might have tried that tactic. People would come up with any means to grasp at power, including ones that any fool could see were an excuse.
“Yes,” said Potter, after Dolores planted a careful elbow in his ribs. She couldn’t be seen to be coaxing or cueing him too much; that would earn the very suspicion she was trying to avoid. And Potter reached up to flatten his hair and made such a poor job of it that Dolores wanted to roll her eyes. “I’m Harry Potter. Um, Minister,” he added, after Dolores gave him another jab in the ribs.
Minister Bagnold sighed like she was letting go of a lot of responsibility and held out her hand. “So nice to meet you, Mr. Potter. I think I need to thank you personally for what you did for us on that night long ago. You made sure that I wouldn’t lose my office.” She winked at him. “Think about what would have happened if You-Know-Who had gone on fighting longer than he did! I’m sure he had his eye on the Minister’s position.”
Potter gave Dolores a panicked glance. Dolores couldn’t advise him, though. She was at a bit of a loss herself. Since when would the Minister actually say something like that?
She’s not fit to be Minister, then, Dolores told herself, and pasted a smile on her lips. It didn’t really matter. It just meant Bagnold might be easier to fool.
Potter shook the Minister’s hand, in the end, and mumbled some words that could easily be taken for real ones about how much he admired her and how devoted she was to her duty. Bagnold smiled and took a step back.
“And why is Mr. Potter here with you, Dolores?”
Dolores had given an abbreviated version of the story in the Atrium, because she knew she could get away with it. But this would need something more. Luckily, she had never heard rumors that Bagnold was a Legilimens, the way stories said Dumbledore was. She leaned in and lowered her voice to the breathy whisper that made her sound softest.
“I was in a Muggle shop with Mr. Crouch and the French Minister’s son, to show him something of Muggle life.” From Minister Bagnold’s sympathetic grimace, she knew exactly what kind of chore Dolores had been saddled with. “I saw Mr. Potter with a woman I can only conclude was his Muggle aunt.”
Bagnold glanced at Potter. In spite of what must have been an enormous temptation to stare at his trainers, he managed to glance up and nod.
“My Aunt Petunia, Minister.” His voice whispered and scraped. Dolores wondered if there was any truth to the archaic tales about Muggles pouring acid down children’s throats as a form of discipline. If it made them sound like that, though, it was something she would never try.
“Last name?” Bagnold had moved back to a pile of paper on her desk and was leafing through it.
“Potter—I mean, oh, my aunt?” Potter corrected himself hastily as Dolores jabbed him again. “Dursley, Minister.”
“As I thought.” Bagnold held something up and squinted at it, then turned around, shaking her head. “I have Lily and James Potter’s wills here. There’s a list of people they trusted, in case the Fidelius was broken and someone had to have charge of raising you, Mr. Potter. The Dursleys aren’t listed. I do wonder how you wound up there.”
She glanced at Dolores, and even though it was probably absent and not meant for her to speak, Dolores did. Rumors spread now, as long as she was careful in the way she phrased the words, could do as much damage to the people she hated as truth. “I think—I mean, it’s probably wrong, Minister, and…” She lowered her eyes and bit her lip anxiously.
“Do go on, Dolores.” Bagnold turned and perched on her desk, sliding a little down it as she watched Dolores intently.
“I think it might have been Headmaster Dumbledore.” In public, Dolores was always careful with titles. “I remember the speech that the Daily Prophet wrote about right after You-Know-Who’s fall. You know, the one where he refused to reveal the wizarding family who had adopted the boy because he said fame wouldn’t be good for a child? Maybe he thought the best way to make sure his fame wouldn’t trouble the boy is for him to grow up completely outside our world. Muggles don’t know who he is, after all.”
Bagnold gave a thin smile. She was a well-known ally of Dumbledore’s, at least most of the time. She had to be, in order to survive the political climate where Dumbledore was the darling of the realm, Dolores thought. But Bagnold gave mostly passive support when she could, and didn’t join Dumbledore’s intense pro-Muggle measures.
She’s deciding between the cost of opposing his will and the sweetness of being able to get one over on him.
“Maybe he did think that,” Bagnold finally chose to say, temperately. She was probably already thinking about how she would sound if someone chose to request Dolores’s Pensieve memories in a trial. Dolores didn’t mind that. It made her a lot more tolerable, knowing the Minister was like her.
“Yes, maybe he did,” said Dolores, and smiled at her. She reached out and caressed Potter’s hair, pretending not to notice the way he flinched when her hand rose above his head. That might be useful, in the end, some way of helping control him. For now, she would pretend, as she did with many of her superiors in the Ministry, that she didn’t notice his missteps. “But I think the cure has proven worse than the problem. The poor boy didn’t know what magic was, or who he was.”
She let her voice sink on the last words, pretty sure that Bagnold would be interested in them since she’d wanted to thank Potter personally. From the way Bagnold’s eyes glinted and she shifted her weight, the message had been received.
“Yes, I see what you mean,” Bagnold murmured thoughtfully. She raised her wand, and several spells clicked into place around the room like invisible shutters. Dolores heard the snap and clatter, and was impressed. Some people thought noisy magic meant the person was less powerful, but she had heard spells like that raised around some of the meetings she’d attended, ones meant to reduce the chances of eavesdropping. That Bagnold could cast them at all was the impressive thing, not how silent she could keep them.
“I think you may be the best choice to raise him, for several reasons.”
Dolores blinked. She’d never wanted to let Potter go, of course, but she’d expected much more difficulty in talking the Minister around to her side.
“Why is that?” she finally asked, when she saw from the expectant tilt of Bagnold’s head that she was waiting for the question.
“Because there are others who would try to bring him back to his Muggle relatives,” Bagnold said, and looked at Potter. He had wandered over to the side of the room to stare at the moving photographs. Dolores couldn’t interpret the expression on his face very well. “And others who would agree with Dumbledore. And others who would raise him without—a firm hand, let us say.”
“The firm hand I can provide,” said Dolores mildly, although her heart felt as if it would explode through her throat. But in truth, she knew why the Minister was letting her keep Potter. She was the one who had ended up with him, and she was more favorable to the Ministry than many of the most prominent they could find.
And I don’t have much power. She must think that having Potter with me won’t increase it that much. Letting someone like Mr. Malfoy take him would make the Malfoys too independent.
Dolores quieted her thoughts, especially as she noticed Potter turning back to watch her fearfully. “But not too firm, of course,” she said, and smiled at him. Potter smiled back, a little tremor at the corner of his mouth.
Dolores would have to correct that. She hated signs of weakness in children.
“Of course not.” Bagnold walked over once more to shake Potter’s hand and pat him on the head. “After all, we still owe Mr. Potter an enormous debt for all he did for our world.”
From the wild eyes that Potter turned on Dolores, he didn’t understand that debt. That was all right. Dolores could teach him.
She would teach him everything. How to react as a wizard, how grateful children acted towards their guardians, why the Ministry was right and worth following. All the things that she had often thought parents should teach their children, if they wanted them to grow up into responsible citizens instead of the brats most of them insisted on being.
And her power would grow because of that. Dolores had never believed that the hand that rocked the cradle was the hand that ruled the world, but she could believe that the hand that disciplined the celebrity was the hand that wielded the fame.
There is power here like nothing else in the wizarding world. But no one else has the wit to grasp it.
And when Dolores held her hand out and smiled again, Potter came over and took it.
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