On the day the twins told her about the rune markings, Molly had stormed the Castle. She was determined to see for herself what Harry had done to her babies and force him to remove the brands. She also wanted to deliver her own brand of justice on him for daring to mark them at all. She'd even brought her spoon to punish him for his atrocious behavior in marking her babies like that.
But Augusta refused to let her see any of them. Her own children didn't need to be exposed to her angry tirade when they were only just now beginning to come to terms with their disfigurement and Harry had had every right to mark them as she and Albus had put them into a place where they were his responsibility and everything they did reflected on him as their patron.
Augusta coldly informed her, "If you'd done a proper job of parenting them in the first place those runes wouldn't now be on their faces. As you didn't, they mistakenly thought they could do as they liked. Now they're paying for it when it turned out their patsy, who's also their patron, didn't like the game they'd been playing."
Augusta then pointed out that she was in no way Harry's parent or guardian and therefore had no right to punish him at all. One unkind touch from her upon Mr. Potter's person and Augusta would be forced to call the aurors to have her arrested for child abuse and assault. She didn't deny Harry had marked Molly's children. Nor did she point out the fact he did indeed have the right to discipline them as Albus and Molly together had given him that right by paying the children from Harry's vaults behind his back. She simply pointed out Molly didn't have the legal authority to do anything to Mr. Potter about his actions.
Arthur had shown up three days into the new semester asking to see his children. Augusta conceded to his requested because he was asking. Not demanding. Nor did he ask to see Harry at the same time. Besides which, his entire body language screamed heart break. Not revenge.
So she had called the youngest two Weaselys to her office and let them visit with their father though she didn't leave them alone with him. He asked them, "How did this happen? Albus assured us everything was going fine between you. He said Harry was dating you now, Ginny, but he was keeping an eye on things making sure it didn't go too far too fast. And he said you, Hermione and Harry were all tight friends again, Ron. But the twins said he marked her too. And she got expelled for cheating. I don't understand this. What happened?"
Ron sighed and hung his head. "First off, we got cocky. Figured since he hadn't caught on to us being paid to be around him or just helping ourselves to his stuff yet, we didn't need to be so careful about what we said or did. I mean, when I think back I can see we weren't exactly subtle or cautious about what we were doing. And there were several times when he caught us red handed going through his stuff. But we just blew it off and pretended we weren't doing anything wrong. And he just let it go, you know. So we assumed he didn't know. Just like we assumed he didn't understand what we truly thought about him. Hermione kept telling us how stupid and blind he is. I guess we just came to believe it, you know."
Ginny was nodding as she added, "But he isn't. Not stupid and definitely not blind. He knew exactly what kind of 'friends' we actually were."
Ron spoke around her continuing his tale. "So when we couldn't get into the vaults at the end of summer and Mum couldn't get us good stuff for this year or new clothes, we put our heads together. Figured we get him to give us back our access and then, on the first Hogsmeade weekend, put his money to our use again. We thought we were so smart, see. Since we've spent all our time here helping our former Headmaster set up his training scenarios and driving Harry into them which allowed the old headmaster to keep his control over Harry and his reputation, we really did think we could do anything we wanted. Any time one of the teachers started getting onto us, Dumbledore would handle it for us and keep us out of trouble. So yeah. We got cocky."
"We decided to confront him about it. Rather stupid of us, now that I think about it. I mean, we were cocky because we thought he was too stupid to know we were being paid from his vaults. Yet we were going to go straight to him and browbeat and bully him into giving us new keys when our old ones didn't work any more." He shook his head as if amazed at how stupid he could be.
"As if he actually had our keys in his pocket," muttered Ginny snorting derisively. "He's not a damn goblin and we all knew the goblins recalled our old keys. We also knew only a goblin can hand out a new key. Yet we confronted him and demanded like children asking for candy that he hand over our keys. Hands out to him and everything. We were so stupid."
Ron nodded flushing with embarrassment. "Mione said he owed us because it was his need to be the Hero that always got us into tight spots where our lives were in danger and neither of us questioned that at all. We should have because we both knew it wasn't true. I mean we set those damn things up so we knew how dangerous they really were. And we always chose to go with him because Harry always tried to stay out of the dangerous part of things. He always wanted to go get a teacher and just tell them what we knew about things. So the teachers could take care of the problem. We never let him because Dumbledore wanted to be able to show the public he was the hero they could count on. And none of us were actually in any danger that we didn't bring onto ourselves. I mean, yeah Gin was in danger her first year here and Mione and I found ourselves in plenty of tight spots over the years. But that wasn't Harry's fault. If it was anyone's, it was Dumbledore's because he insisted we push Harry to solve each years trouble."
"But anyhow, the first time we knew Dumbledore was out of the Castle,"
Ginny interrupted with a frown, "He's been gone a lot this year for some odd reason. He's usually never gone when school's in session. Sometimes he'll go somewhere for a few hours but usually never for a full day. But this year he's gone more than he's here."
Ron rolled his eyes. "Doesn't matter now, Gin. He's not Headmaster anymore." He turned back to his Dad. "Anyway Hermione found out the Headmaster was going to be out of the Castle. Something about a mess at the bank. I don't know how she found out and honestly, I don't really care. We should've stopped right then as soon as she said the word 'bank' but we didn't. I mean, it doesn't take much brain power to realize we no longer had the keys to the vaults he set up for us and now he's having Banking issues? Must mean he's already working on the problem. Right? But we didn't stop. Figured we were smart enough to solve our own problem."