"That was the original idea," acknowledged Sarah "But your arrival at the Ministry on Friday did not go entirely unnoticed. The glamour charms did work, but apparently someone thought that the unknown young man being escorted through the building by the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement warranted further investigation. Dumbledore spent all of that Friday sniffing around the Ministry, calling upon every one of his contacts in each department, as well as a few other people, in an attempt to discover who you were. Madam Bones had a word with the Minister and they agreed that Dumbledore's attention needed diverting, so they called a Wizengamot session for last night, keeping Dumbledore out of the loop. By going after Binns Fudge was able to tackle a weak point, with even some of the staunchest Dumbledore supporters having to concede that something had to be done. There were only a handful of cases like old Elphias Doge's."
"So it's going ahead then," said Harry "the whole plan?"
Sarah gave a nod in reply before saying "You have meeting with the Minister to attend on Tuesday afternoon, so that everything can be finalised."
Harry nodded, fully expecting that to be when the Minister would ask him to be the student who assisted Dolores Umbridge in her Hogwarts mission. He still felt a little unsure about taking up such a role, but it had been he who had played a large part in creating this situation, and while he no longer had any doubts about Hogwarts needing a severe inspection, he knew that an overzealous Ministry bureaucrat like Dolores Umbridge was likely to do more harm than good. The students of Hogwarts, no matter how Harry felt about many of them, would need protecting, and if it fell to Harry to do so, then he would. He just needed to do it in a way that ensured that once Fudge and Umbridge came crashing down (as they would when the truth about Voldemort's return was finally revealed for all to see) that he, Harry, would not be dragged down with them.
He also did not entirely know what he wanted to ultimately happen to Dumbledore. He was sure that the man would be very useful in the inevitable war against Voldemort and his wicked forces, but at the same time Harry had had his eyes opened to the real man behind the grandfatherly mask, and people needed to stop believing that all of their problems could be solved by that one man. It was detrimental to society. He had never thought about it before recent events, but there very much as an attitude at school, especially amongst the Gryffindors, that anyone who did not believe that the sun rose in the sky because Dumbledore willed it to was obviously a dark wizard or witch of the highest order.
That attitude in the least had to go.
Albus Dumbledore was beyond furious. In fact, he could not remember the last time he had been this angry.
How dare that bumbling buffoon Cornelius Fudge, the supposed Minister for Magic, attempt to interfere with his running of his school?
What hurt worst was the fact that there was nothing that Dumbledore could do to stop it. The Wizengamot had voted, with the vast majority voting in favour of the action.
There were, of course, some members that Dumbledore expected this kind of thing from, for they and their families had long sought to supplant him. But that the likes of Griselda Marchbanks had voted in favour of this move was a shock. He counted such people as friends, and their not trusting him to run his school in a suitable manner was as unexpected as it was unacceptable.
This could easily be the start of a long and slippery slope, as anyone with an above average level of brain power would be able to turn this to their advantage. With his running of Hogwarts being called into question, the public would begin to doubt him and others within the ranks of the Wizengamot would gain the courage to make further attempts to go against his will.
This was exactly what he had hoped to avoid when he had retracted his statements about the return of Lord Voldemort. The earlier attempt to force Dolores Umbridge onto the staff through that educational decree had been a nuisance, sure, but had thankfully been avoided by simply filling the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor before the new school year began. This time there was nothing that Albus Dumbledore could do to prevent that woman coming to Hogwarts, and he knew it.
If he attempted to block her placement in the castle, then the Ministry would accuse him of refusing to co-operate with their review of the History of Magic class, and that would only cause the public to doubt Dumbledore even more.
Obviously the Daily Prophet would then ask the key question of "what did he have to hide?"
Too much, was the answer to that. Dumbledore simply could not afford to have the Ministry snooping around Hogwarts castle, reviewing the staff. In fact, the four members of staff that they were most likely to want to get rid of (and in one case already had) were also key pawns in his on-going chess game, which featured the whole of wizarding Britain as the board.
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