Besides, she had surreptitiously cast listening and tracking charms to monitor.
As Harry stepped out of the floo in the Leaky Cauldron, before he did anything else he scanned himself for listening charms and the like.
Shrugging his cloak off and checking it, he found two tracking charms and two listening charms up near the collar at the back
Quietly, he firmly stated, "Placing listening or tracking charms on a Lord of a Noble House is grounds for having you bothbefore the Wizengamot for your effrontery alone. Do it again and that is what will occur to the both of you; aurors or not." Then he immediately banished all four.
Halfway between the Minister's office and her own, Hammer stopped and scowled. She didn't see one of her aurors, the male of the two, also scowl.
Turning around, she demanded, "Which one of you two also cast listening and monitoring charms on Peverell?"
The male auror, replied, "I did, Ma'am."
With a huff she said, "Points for being proactive. But, next time, gain my permission from me first."
"Yes, Ma'am," he replied.
At the Leaky and after re-donning his cloak, Harry then recast his silencing ward around himself and the floo, tossed in a large pinch of floo powder, barked out his destination and follow-up password and was away.
After giving it a couple of days, Dumbledore again tried to contact Longbottom at his family home. This time he managed to get the call to connect, but again had to wait on a house elf to inform his 'protégé' he was on the floo for him.
As he waited, he went over in his mind what he needed to say to get the boy... young man... to return to Hogwarts.
However, the elf did not collect the young Longbottom Lord. Again it was his grandmother, the Dowager Longbottom, who walked into the room.
"Mister Dumbledore," she said. "To what do I owe what is not a pleasure?"
A little frustrated behind his Occlumency, Dumbledore said, "I need to speak with young Ne- Lord Longbottom, most urgently."
"What about, Al- Mister Dumbledore?" she demanded, throwing his own 'slip' back at him. "Unless you provide an honest and straightforward answer to that question, I am under instructions from my Lord not to request him to come speak with you."
"He needs further training in facing his destiny," Dumbledore huffed. "His... reluctance to face it will be his downfall. And only I can properly guide him towards a successful conclusion of it."
"According to him, you've done very little of any of that," she smirked. "Instead, you've been palming him off on others, while you sat back and did nothing but serve him platitudes and condescending cordiality, telling him to work harder.
"As such, based on your own actions to date, he only needs to contact others who can provide him with that training you... clearly... will not yourself provide. He then merely needs to hear from you approximately once every few days, where you'll tell him to work harder, and nothing will have changed other than where he lives. "Is that not true, Mister Dumbledore?"
With a slight scowl, Dumbledore said, "Perhaps if I was to step through and speak―"
"That's not going to happen," she snapped over the top of him, cutting him off. "The wards are specifically set to instantly and forcefully eject you from the grounds if you attempt to enter, even if you use your phoenix."
He'd also temporarily forgotten he wasn't allowed to leave the school grounds.
"If you wish to speak with my Lord you will continue to provide satisfactory answers to my inquiries before I then inform him of your responses," she continued. "Even then, it is entirely up to him whether or not he speaks with you.
"Now, my Lord wishes to know what efforts you have made towards discovering whether or not Lord Hardwin Peverell is the true Chosen One. What have you so far discovered?" "That is sensitive information I am not willing―"
Before he even had a chance to finish explaining, again Augusta's wand flashed up and down and again Dumbledore found himself forcefully ejected from his own fireplace.
"Merlin, damn it!" he furiously muttered, climbing back to his feet.
When he turned to look at the two aurors in the office with him, both were lightly smirking at him; infuriating him even further. He was further annoyed at the reminder he could do nothing about getting rid of the two and their compatriots who followed him everywhere in the school except the toilet and his private apartment.
Even then he had to tolerate them affixing him with a tracker and wasn't allowed to remove it. The first time he tried was also the last time. Within moments of his removing it, both on-duty aurors burst into his room with wands drawn.
After being told off for it, they immediately affixed another to him and told him if he or another removed it they'd immediately drag him off to a cell at the DMLE.
"And don't go thinking you can just transfer it to something or someone else. As soon as you fiddle with it, we'll know," he was firmly told.
That was a point concerning the DMLE-level tracking charm he had forgotten about. And he knew the auror had told him the truth... as far as he was aware.
The DMLE had been provided the charm by the Unspeakables on their request. They needed a tracking charm that could not be removed or transferred without the caster immediately noticing it and the Unspeakables had come through for them. What frustrated Dumbledore the most was that the Unspeakables were unwilling to share with him the secret of how to remove it without the caster knowing. He knew they had to know, as they both designed the charm and would have left that loophole in for themselves. He was very disappointed with them for not sharing that information with him. They'd told him there was no such loophole, but he knew they were just attempting to mislead him.
If he'd known the truth it would have surprised him to discover they actually didn't leave such a loophole, after all.
Later that day and at the Ministry, Augusta Longbottom was now sitting with the Minister, Bones, in the discussion armchairs at the front of her office. These were two armchairs sitting 'kitty corner', ninety degrees, to one another with a small coffee table between them. Each of them held a tea cup and a saucer in their hands as they talked. "So," said Longbottom, "We've all been fools in automatically accepting that 'the seventh month dies' is the last few days of July; or that it even refers to 1980."
"Yup," said Bones. "I ran it past Saul and his boys and girls down in the DoM and they concur. Actually, Saul said, 'We'll, it's about bloody time you folks started to open your minds to other possibilities. We've known that, right from the start.'"
"Then, why didn't they say anything?" asked Longbottom.
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