Guardianship provides a person with the ability to act in the best interests of the child and handle their affairs including finances and any legal representation. They also have the ability to grant custody where they feel the child would be best cared for. A guardian may also exercise the right to take custody of the child themselves and also adopt them. Dumbledore is Harry's magical guardian, and he exercised that right and placed him in the care of the Dursleys who were only given custody of him and allowed to raise him but had no authority to act in his name for anything in the magical world. It was actually a rather smart move on his part for as muggles the Dursleys could not represent Harry in the magical world and thus he would face less challenges to the legitimacy of his status.
Dumbledore however could have only obtained guardianship if first there was no available competent magical family members of Harry's or someone already appointed by his parents in the event of their deaths which in this case was Sirius.
Since Sirius was in prison he of course was deemed unsuitable for this position and Dumbledore managed to get himself appointed instead. Once Sirius is declared innocent however Sirius now has the legal right to regain this position or pass it onto someone else of his choosing deemed competent to do so, such as Narcissa.
Chapter 25
Sweet Freedom
Harry reminded himself once again of trying to follow the plan as he sat aboard the Hogwarts express along with all of the girls on their way back to school for the summer.
The plan was of course being tricking Dumbledore into thinking that Tonks was really an Atlantean girl now betrothed to him.
They had rehearsed how to act over 100 times so he felt like he knew how to handle himself.
Tonks was currently outside wearing his invisibility cloak so that she could spy on Draco, to which they were grateful as the compartment was now too full for her as well.
Of course he wasn't complaining as he now had both Gabrielle and Fleur sitting on either side of him while he ran his fingers through Gabrielle's hair.
"What do you think we'll have to fight this year?" Su asked excitedly.
"I can't imagine anything worse than what we've already fought," Susan surmised.
"More like Harry's fought, he's always getting the decent monsters," Su pouted.
"I'd happily have let you fight the basilisk if you had been there," Harry claimed.
The truth was he really couldn't think of anything that could possibly be worse than the basilisk, nor would he have ever let Su get anywhere near it.
It was at that moment, however, that the lights went out and he began to feel very cold and clammy as he began to hear a woman's voice begin to scream.
"Not Harry, not Harry," the woman said.
"Step aside girl, step aside," came another voice sounding almost inhuman.
It was then that he saw a hooded figure enter the compartment, only it seemed to glide in and had mottled green hands.
Whatever the creature was, it was absolutely terrifying as it reached towards them.
To his surprise, he felt Gabrielle collapse onto his shoulder, evidently having fainted.
He cast a spell at the creature, but to no avail. It didn't even seem fazed by it.
Finally he began to feel lightheaded himself as he struggled to remain conscious all the while the woman's voice repeated over and over again in his head, which he now realized was somehow the memory of when his mother had been killed by Voldemort.
The compartment began to fade and a vision of the inside of a house began to occupy his sight.
It would get to where he would see a flash of green light before the memory would start all over with his mother pleading for his life until she was hit by a killing curse.
"Expecto Petronum," someone yelled.
Wait, what? That wasn't part of the memory.
Instead he found himself now totally aware of the real world as a silvery white large chameleon charged at the creature, forcing it back and causing it to glide away.
"I can't believe they allowed dementors onto the train," Tonks fumed as she removed the invisibility cloak she was wearing, "are you all alright?"
Harry went to go check on Gabrielle, who was only just now beginning to come to.
"What happened?" Gabrielle blearily asked.
"You must have fainted when the dementor came in," Tonks explained.
"What's a dementor?" Gabrielle asked.
"It's a creature usually used by the ministry to guard Azkaban," Tonks informed them, "I"m guessing Fudge must have decided to order them onto the train to search for Black. I'm confident if Madame Bones had known about this she wouldn't have allowed it, at least not without telling us first."
He had been focused on Gabrielle, but as he looked around he noticed that all of the girls didn't seem to look too good, especially Fleur who looked like she might faint as well.
"If you've still got some chocolate frogs I'd suggest you have some, it should help," Tonks suggested, "in the meantime I've got to go check out the rest of the train and make sure there aren't any dementors left.
She put the invisibility cloak back on and headed out.
Tearing off pieces of the chocolate frogs he still had left, he gave some to each of them and as he bit into the chocolate he instantly began to feel better.
"Did everyone relive their worst memory?" Susan asked.
"Is that what was going on?" Gabrielle asked.
"What did you see or hear Gabby?" Pansy asked.
"I saw myself back inside the house that the slave traders were keeping us in," Gabrielle answered.
"So did I," Fleur admitted.
"That must have been awful," Susan said soothingly.
"I saw my mother get killed," Harry admitted.
"Ooh Harry," Pansy said.
"It's okay," he said, "it was actually kind of nice, just to hear what my mother's voice sounded like."
"That's still messed up though," Su commented.
"I think I'll leave to let you all go change," he announced, not particularly wanting to discuss his rather morbid curiosity as to watching his mother be killed.
DUELDUELDE
Tonks or as she now had to refer to herself, Aqua stood with the nervous looking first years in the great hall as she pretended to listen to McGonagall blabber on about the houses, although she found it interesting that she chose to disregard entirely house peeves. Evidently either Dumbledore had asked her not to or she still refused to recognize it.
She did however listen rather attentively to the sorting hat's new song:
McGonagall chose to disregard what the hat said in the song and began calling the names of the students one by one.
Finally her name was called at the very end.
"Aqua Hydro," McGonagall called as she went up to go put the sorting hat on.
She noted that everyone was staring at her, and several were whispering, probably about being a transfer student, her green skin, or they just found her attractive.
Choosing a body had been difficult for her as she knew that she should have a body that would not attract too much attention yet it was kind of difficult with green skin and a very attractive body.
The attractive body had actually not been her idea as she was obliged to pose as the actual daughter of an Atlantean noble who had died in an accident several months before while vacationing at a muggle beach resort. Poulti had managed to convince him to hold off on announcing her death so that she would have a decent and verifiable cover.
Since he and Poulti were actually good friends and he owed a huge favor to him, the noble had agreed, even though the few weeks that she stayed with him in order to build up her cover had been tough for both of them as she served to be a constant reminder on the daughter that he lost.
Putting on the sorting hat, she tried to block the sorting hat from reading her mind by using Occlumency.
"I'm afraid that won't work Ms. Tonks," the sorting hat told her.
"How did you know it was me?" Tonks asked.
"I like to think that I'm rather skilled at such things," the hat told her.
"You aren't going to say anything to Dumbledore are you?" Tonks worriedly asked.
"Why should I? After keeping me stuffed in his desk drawer all year I would hardly consider us friends, and I'm not required to tell him anything," the sorting hat said.
Relieved, she chose to ask the hat, "I'm sure that from being in Dumbledore's office has allowed you to hear a lot of things, perhaps anything illegal that Dumbledore may be up to."
"I'm afraid I can't help you there, I'm forbidden from revealing secrets about the headmaster to anyone," the hat informed her, "wish I could though."
She had been expecting that, but it didn't hurt to try as it would certainly have made her job much easier.
"If you could manage it, I'd really like to be put in Peeves as that should help my cover," she asked the hat.
"I don't just put someone into any house they feel like, although I never put someone into a house that they don't want to be in," the hat told her.
"Very well," she said quietly back, "then please not Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin."
The hat seemed to laugh at that and said, "you think you're so smart don't you?"
"I try," she answered cheekily.
"Dumbledore threatened to shove me back into his drawer if I sorted anyone into Peeves this year," the hat informed her, "you do realize you'll be consigning me to darkness and a very cramped space."
"I'll get Peeves to steal you if that happens, I'm told he's now into that sort of thing if we ask him," Tonks suggested.
"It appears we have a deal," the hat concluded, "and at any rate you would be best suited for PEEVES."
The hat shouted out the last word and she instantly pulled off the hat and went over to the house peeves table where Harry and the girls were sitting.
"How did you manage to get the hat to sort you into Peeves?" Pansy asked, "none of the first years got sorted there."
"I'm going to need you to convince Peeves to steal the hat later," Tonks informed her without answering her question.
They both turned to listen to Dumbledore get up and begin delivering his speech.
"As most of you should know by now we currently have an escaped criminal on the loose but you should all know that certain security measures have been enacted to keep you all safe," Dumbledore informed them.
"We all know that's a lie," Susan muttered.
"Part of the security you may have already noticed on the train ride here when the dementors came and checked the train," Dumbledore continued.
"So that's why Fudge had such an easy time with sending the dementors, Dumbledore and he probably collaborated and decided to do it, probably to both at least appear to be concerned about security," Pansy concluded.
"The dementors will remain on school grounds ready to act should they be needed," Dumbledore said.
"I find it very interesting that he'll allow dementors but not aurors to patrol school grounds," Pansy pointed out.
"Dementors wouldn't care about anything that he's secretly doing, they just care about sucking the happiness out of everything and catching Black," Tonks said.
After Dumbledore finally got done speaking, he sat down and the food arrived as they began hungrily eating.
"Did we get a new student?" a voice from just behind her asked.
"We did Peeves," Pansy replied calmly as if having Peeves float invisibly behind her was a common occurrence, "this is Aqua."
"I am the great founder of House Peeves," Peeves claimed in the same tone of voice one might use to announce that they were ruler of the world.
"You got any pranks for me?" Peeves asked.
"I do actually Peeves," Tonks asked, "I'd like you to steal the sorting hat."
"I asked Pansy newbie," Peeves snidely said.
"I'm afraid you're going to have earn your stripes first before you're ready to start making requests of a master prankster like Peeves," Pansy said, "we'll have to show you how things work, won't we Peeves?"
"Absolutely," Peeves agreed in a gleeful tone that suddenly made her very nervous just what she meant.
"Still stealing the sorting hat would be a great prank," Pansy agreed, "how about I bet you 3 firecrackers Peeves that you can't steal the sorting hat right now without anyone else noticing?"
"I could steal Dumbledore's own nose without him noticing," Peeves bragged, "better be ready with those firecrackers."
A few seconds later, they watched as the sorting hat mysteriously disappeared from its stool that it had been left on, although no one seemed to notice.
"Pay up," Peeves claimed a moment later.
Pansy reached into her bookbag, apparently already keeping the firecrackers for just such a purpose and handed them to Peeves, where they quickly disappeared.
"I think I'll hold onto the hat for awhile," Peeves suggested.
It took awhile for anyone to actually notice the hat had been stolen as it could have simply been put away while they weren't looking, but Dumbledore eventually noticed even though they were all already on their way out of the great hall when he did.
He hurried up to them and stopped them in the hallway.
"Would you know what happened to the sorting hat Ms. Hydro, you were the last one wearing it and now it's gone?" Dumbledore asked her.
"I put it back down onto the stool," she claimed trying to sound like a nervous new student, "everyone should have seen me leave it."
At that moment, he looked into her eyes and she immediately noticed that he was trying to use legilimency on her, probably to ascertain if she was telling the truth or not.
She kept up her shields and forced him out, causing a look of surprise to form on his face. His attack hadn't been very strong but then again he probably wasn't expecting a defense to be used against him.
"Where I'm from, mind reading without permission is illegal," she said.
"I have an exemption to do as I see fit for the safety of the school and its students," Dumbledore claimed.
"I believe I still have the right to mentally defend myself," she pointed out.
Dumbledore tried next to scan Harry, followed by Susan, but both of them forced him out as well.
"It was part of pre-auror training this summer," Harry informed him to prove just where they had suddenly learned occlumency, "and now I'm definitely glad I learned it if you are going to go around trying to do that to us."
"I'm merely trying to help you Harry," Dumbledore told him.
"I certainly wouldn't say mind raping to be helping," Harry said, "we didn't take the sorting hat."
Dumbledore was about to reply when suddenly Peeves materialized directly in front of Dumbledore.
"Lookee what I gots!" Peeves cackled with glee as he held up the sorting hat for Dumbledore to see.
"Give that back Peeves, that is the property of the school," Dumbledore demanded.
Once upon a time Peeves was at least somewhat respectful of Dumbledore but evidently now being considered a founder with his own house sort of changed things. Now it appeared he was only listening to people in his own house, particularly Pansy.
"I like this hat," Peeves claimed as he twirled it around for good measure, "if you want it, you'll have to take it from me."
Peeves bravely grabbed Dumbledore's beard and tugged on it before floating away out of his reach.
"You'll give that back Peeves," Dumbledore roared.
Dumbledore fired a spell at Peeves, but Peeves quickly dodged it.
"Nah nah, you'll never catch me," Peeves said as he continued to taunt Dumbledore.
Taking advantage of Peeves' distraction they made their leave and headed down through the castle into the House Peeves common room.
DUELDUELDE
Over the next few days, Dumbledore was unable to get the sorting hat back from Peeves, who now wore it proudly like a trophy and evidently wasn't very happy with finding out from the sorting hat that Dumbledore had told the sorting hat not to allow any new students into House Peeves.
They all could only wonder just how the sorting hat was feeling being worn around the castle by Peeves.
Still they had bigger problems to focus on, mainly getting dirt on Dumbledore, who remained entirely secretive and unhappy that he could no longer steal information from their minds, which only meant that he had evidently been doing it for quite some time.
For their first defense against the dark arts class, they all minus Fleur had doubled up class with the Gryffindors to find out more about their new DADA teacher and took bets on just how long he would last.
When Professor Lupin finally strode into the class, Tonks couldn't help admitting quietly:
"He is rather handsome at least."
"Aren't you rather young for him?" Harry asked.
"Aren't you a little young for me?" Tonks countered back.
At the look of several of the girls, Tonks shrugged her shoulders and asked, "What? I have a thing for guys a lot older or younger than me. Just because I'm here on assignment doesn't mean I can't find Harry cute like the rest of you."
She immediately clammed up, not because she was afraid someone overheard her but simply because she needed to avoid making similar references to her undercover assignment in the future.
After going through a brief introduction of the class Professor Lupin had them start their first lesson: tackling a boggart.
Yet when it came for Pansy's turn, it instantly transformed into Draco beating a likeness of herself. The likeness of her actually had a ring around her finger with what appeared to be the Malfoy family crest on it.
She seemed upset at the image but she quickly cast the riddikiculus spell, causing Draco to turn into a bug and the likeness of herself squashing it with her foot.
Susan's turned out to be a likeness of a dead Amelia, Su's was a dead Harry, Tonks a monkey, which caused the class to immediately laugh even in its original form.
She sheepishly told them she had had a bad experience with a monkey at a zoo when she was little.
When it got to Gabrielle however, the boggart assumed the form of Gabrielle, only in chains and in tattered clothing, obviously abused and malnourished as she looked holocaust survivor thin with numerous bruises and cuts all over her exposed body.
She immediately burst into tears, preventing her from being able to cast the spell.
At this time, Professor Lupin stepped in and pushed the boggart back into the closet it had been hiding in.
He tried to console Gabrielle, but Gabrielle instead put her arms around Harry and cried into his shoulder.
As Lupin got back to dealing with the rest of the class, she confessed:
"You must think me so silly, not even able to handle a boggart."
"I don't think that," he informed her, "you've just been through something more horrific than the average person ever has to to go through. Most people never actually have to live out their fears in real life, whereas for you it might have been all too real."
She looked at him and asked, "just where did you get so smart Harry?"
"Reading all those human behavior books Susan got me for my birthday," he admitted, "they've actually been a lot more informative than I thought."
She gave him a long kiss, not even caring if the rest of the class and their professor happened to look over and notice.
"You know I never get tired of kissing," he claimed, causing her to laugh.
"Neither do I," she admitted as she gave him another quick kiss just for that.
DUELDUELDE
After having Narcissa to look after him, Sirius' health was steadily improving.
She seemed to dote on him and he realized that in spite of everything, she still quite obviously very much loved him, causing him to continually feel bad for leaving her to marry Malfoy.
Still she seemed to take it in stride and at least a friendship had blossomed between them, rekindled after so many years.
She kept him apprised of just what he had missed during his long years of incarceration, including her family life.
Most importantly, however, they focused on the plan as she had finally gone to Lucius to see if a deal might still be struck.
He had agreed, on the condition that he meet with him in person, so now he and Narcissa were headed over to a neutral location for them to work things out.
This was easily the most stress filled moment for him since his initial escape as Lucius could very easily try to turn him in and stab him in the back. He was prepared to apparate out as soon as possible, but there were still no guarantees, other than the one that Narcissa gave him.
Lucius wouldn't risk passing up such a deal like that.
Entering the abandoned house that would serve as the meeting place he and Narcissa found Lucius currently standing there waiting for them.
His instincts told him to be cautious, as he couldn't fully trust Lucius, but he seemed to have an entirely different attitude toward him now.
"Ah Lord Black," Lucius greeted him in a very respectful tone.
Evidently if it suited him, Lucius could act like a very different person than what he was used to, even though the title that he had called him by was actually defunct as a convicted murderer had any titles removed.
"Lord Malfoy," Sirius said in an equally respectful tone, having already been coached by Narcissa as to how to behave.
"You're looking much better than when I last saw you," Lucius observed.
"I've been eating better," he admitted in return, although failing to mention that it was actually because of his wife nursing him back to health.
Narcissa had wanted to keep the extent of her constant visits to be known by Lucius to be only a few different times so as not to raise any suspicions.
"I'm glad to see that you finally came to your senses, this deal will be life changing for you I'm sure," Lucius pointed out.
"I do believe that it will be mutually beneficial," Sirius admitted, following the script Narcissa had already rehearsed with him, although not wanting to speak too much as he didn't trust himself not to give anything away.
"Why don't we get started shall we?" Narcissa recommended.
"Of course," Lucius said.
"As you both know I will be serving as intermediary to you both," she began as she pulled out a long piece of paper, "and I've taken the liberty of drafting a magically binding contract which you both have had the opportunity to look over before hand. In it, Lucius agrees to submit evidence that will allow for Sirius' pardon. Once reinstated Sirius will then pass magical guardianship over to me and allow for the adoption of Harry James Potter. If neither of you have any further objections please sign here."
She pointed at two lines for them to sign at the bottom.
Lucius paused with his quill pointing over the signature line and asked him:
"Tell me Black, why would you so willingly allow me to adopt a godson you profess to care so much about? In our last meeting you threatened to hunt me down and stop me from killing him."
"I thought better of it," Sirius answered, "as a runaway criminal I really can't do much to stop you and this way Harry stays safe, better than safe in fact as I imagine it would be in your best interest to keep him safe, he will be a huge asset to you as your adopted son after all. I'm also not pleased with how Dumbledore is using him and you are the only one with the power to keep Dumbledore in check."
"What makes you so sure I can be trusted?" Lucius asked.
"I don't trust you as far as I can throw you but I have to choose between you and Dumbledore and you can make me a free man. I'm personally tired of either languishing in prison or running from the law. I'd have sold out my own mother if that would have gotten me out of Azkaban."
This was actually true as he had watched his mother do enough illegal stuff for her to deserve to have been in prison, and even had the gall to visit him in prison when he had been first arrested and declared that being a death eater and killing all those muggles was actually the one good thing he had done in his life. She had actually seemed to be proud of him. He never even bothered to try to convince her that he didn't do it.
His godson however was another matter.
In truth he actually felt like he was sending his godson to live with the devil, but he wasn't about to tell Lucius that. If Narcissa failed to get him put in prison in time, he would be forced to take action against him. However, he had learned to trust Narcissa long ago. When she felt she could do something, it was going to happen.
Lucius however seemed satisfied with such a response and signed the contract with a flourish.
Sirius leaned over and signed it as well.
"Pleasure doing business with you," Lucius told him.
DUELDUELDE
The next morning Ron Weasley was currently in his dorm room, trying to feed rat tonic to his sick looking rat Scabbers when he was entirely surprised by the Minister of Magic and the entire Board of Governors for the school, recognized by pictures he had seen of them.
"What on earth are you all doing here? This is a Gryffindor dorm room." Ron asked accusingly.
Before even bothering to answer, Lucius Malfoy seemed to point his wand directly at him, and in fear Ron shut his eyes.
Fully expecting to get hit by a spell, he was shocked as he reopened his eyes to find that he hadn't been hit at all, yet when he glanced down at Scabbers, Scabbers was knocked out.
"What did you do to my rat?" Ron angrily asked.
"We just need to examine your rat for a second," Fudge informed him.
Without further explanation, one of the governors pointed his wand at his rat and to his alarm Scabbers began to grow bigger.
In alarm, he leaped back only to find no longer Scabbers but a fully grown man now lying on his bed
"It was as you suspected Minister," Lucius claimed, "Pettigrew really is still alive."
"I'm still wondering just how you could have known," one of the governors asked Fudge.
"I received some anonymous evidence this morning on my desk that appeared to be legitimate," Fudge claimed, "someone must have known that only I could be trusted to do the right thing when it came to this."
Fudge was the Minister of Magic so of course he would, Ron thought, but that still didn't explain why Scabbers had been turned into a man.
"What happened to Scabbers?" Ron demanded.
"Sorry boy, it's top secret still," Fudge told him, "we'll just take this man with us and be on our way."
One of the school governors levitated the body of the man and they all started to head out, yet one of the governors stopped as he noticed the many empty or full bottles of various alcoholic beverages, Seamus and him finally having managed to turn water into rum, beer, and a few other things he wasn't sure exactly were but Seamus had insisted were great.
"Is this yours?" He demanded.
"That's um cleaning solution," Ron tried to argue.
Cleaning solution, good one, he thought mentally, who said Hermione was the smart Gryffindor?
"Picking up one of the bottles, the governor sniffed it and said: "It's rum."
"I've never seen 13 year olds behave in such a way," a pompous lady governor insisted, "drinking at this age!"
He didn't bother to inform them that they had been trying to do so since the beginning of first year.
"We're going to have to confiscate these and inform your head of house once we've finished dealing with this piece of trash," one of the other governors said, kicking Pettigrew for good measure.
This had to be a horrible dream, Ron thought.
DUELDUELDE
A few hours later found Amelia at her desk, once again filling out stupid paperwork.
Amelia was entirely unprepared for the firestorm that would suddenly greet her as Fudge came into her office without any warning or introduction.
"There is a lot to tell Amelia, but to make a long story short, I've just fixed the mess you've made with Sirius Black," Fudge informed her.
"The mess I made!" She asked incredulously.
No way was Fudge trying to blame it all on her again.
"It turns out that Black never killed Pettigrew or those muggles and I have Pettigrew himself in custody as proof as well as a great deal of other hard evidence," Fudge claimed.
This was a total shock to her, she even wanted to reject Fudge's claims but he put down several documents, including a recent picture of Pettigrew down.
"I do believe you'll find it is all there, I went with the Board of Governors for Hogwarts myself to collect Pettigrew," Fudge told her.
"You really should have contacted me about this sooner Minister," she said.
"The Board of Governors were more than happy to help me out and with them there it was not necessary to inform you about anything before hand," Fudge informed her, "you should probably also know that Sirius Black also just surrendered himself to me and my office an hour ago."
"What!" She asked.
"He seemed to have heard about Pettigrew and knew that he was likely to be exonerated. With the evidence at hand I've already issued a full pardon and scheduled an emergency trial in the Wizengamot for Peter Pettigrew to be conducted late this afternoon."
As alarming as all of this news was, Fudge acting without her knowledge and so quickly was equally alarming. She knew that there was no way that he could have come up with all of this himself, he must have had help.
The problem was who would have helped him? The only person she could think of that could pull this off was Lucius Malfoy and she thought it unthinkable that he would choose to help Sirius Black, an apparently innocent man so that the real death eater and killer could be convicted. She couldn't help but wonder what his angle was.
"I'd like to go see both Pettigrew and Black," she asked the Minister.