Chapter 135: Echo

If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

2 July 1993, Ministry of Magic, London

It was the day of Harry's custody hearing, and he was pretty nervous. The way everyone was scrambling around like idiots didn't help matters. 

"Is the ministry always like this," he asked.

"You mean completely chaotic?" the Black Patriarch replied with a snort.

At Harry's nod, he continued, "It's always messy, but not quite like this. Azkaban's destruction has everyone on their toes. The fact that a lot of missing high-level Death Eaters are missing is making everyone nervous. Antonin Dolohov, Augustus Rookwood, and Evan Rosier still haven't been found. Neither were most of the high-security prisoners for that matter, since they were high up. All they're doing is wishing that they're just dead and waiting for the Aurors to find any of the bodies in the sea."

"Yeah, but that wouldn't really mess with the entire ministry, would it?"

"You'd be surprised. Barty Crouch has been going all out for his comeback next summer. He managed to get the Quidditch World Cup to be held in Britain, and he's currently negotiating with schools in Europe about holding the Tri-Wizard Tournament, a ridiculous bloodthirsty event if you ask me, but if it's done correctly, it could spearhead Crouch's career. He never really recovered after that scandal about his son and his wife's suicide. Anyway, a crisis like the destruction of Azkaban worries investors and foreign dignitaries. Everyone has to be on damage control."

The last Potter nodded thoughtfully, "And they haven't found any of the missing prisoners?"

"Not a single one."

"You'd think that tracking down half-dead starved prisoners that have stayed in a miserable hellhole for over a decade, would have been easy, right?"

The Black Patriarch burst into laughter, "With the countless idiots in the Auror Department? Of course not. They wouldn't even be able to fight against a troll if they were confronted with one. Dumbledore has been slowly lowering the standards of Defense and potion classes. Hogwarts graduates barely know how to cast a stunner, and the Auror department being crippled makes whatever training they require to be minimal at best. I'd only trust an Auror with at least a decade of experience in the field and considering that most of them turn into administrators within a few years of getting a job, there aren't many of those lying around, especially after the casualties of the last war."

Harry closed his eyes in consternation for a second or two before reopening them. The entire mess was revealed to be more and more of a disaster as further information was revealed. Arcturus had told him about what the ministry figured out about the attack on Azkaban. It was remarkable how much the Department of Mysteries could uncover even with the whole fortress being destroyed. He also kept him up to speed about the consequences of the ongoing crisis.

A good chunk of Voldemort's inner circle was missing, the ministry lost control over the dementors. Apparently, Dumbledore was able to help with that mess somehow. No one knew anything, other than that he appeased them somehow, the prison that the ministry used to send their worst inmates was destroyed, so there wasn't any place to hold security risks and high-level offenders anymore, which brought a rise in crime.

And the ministry didn't even reveal who was responsible. Faith in Fudge was starting to dwindle, and the man was desperate to keep any shred of political power to turn things around for his career.

Everyone only cared about the consequences of what happened. They wanted to see someone punished, but they never thought to ponder on the 'why'.

Why did this happen?

Why would anyone attack Azkaban, not to break out some prisoners, not to kill an inmate, not for revenge, but to destroy the entire prison? To make it impossible to be used in the same way again.

The thing about Azkaban was that it was a fortress made by the dark lord Ekrizdis, who was more like a mad scientist than a dark lord, although he was obsessed with blood and soul magic. He had a tendency to capture his victims and lock them up in the fortress. He started to rise in infamy after he kidnapped a member of the royal family to test if they had anything special in their bloodline. They sent armies, tens of thousands of wizards and witches, twice the amount of muggles, to attack his island. He responded with an army of dementors that he had somehow convinced to serve him. The Patronus charm wasn't developed back then, and muggles couldn't even see the creatures. In the end, the number of survivors could be counted on one hand.

To combat this terrible threat, the court mage decided to do something unorthodox and seal off the ley lines underneath the island, like a dam in front of a river. By the time the man realized what was happening, there wasn't any ambient magic left for him to do anything, and he was killed by muggles. The dementors remained there but still went to hunt for food, terrifying muggles and mages alike. Centuries later, the Ministry of Magic used the fortress as a prison. The inmates couldn't use any magic, and dementors could be satisfied in their little slice of hell. Everyone won. The ministry got its prison. The dementors got their farm.

And someone blew it up. A symbol of the ministry's terrible corruption, of its merciless sense of justice. This wasn't an ordinary crime, that's for sure.

It was tactically calculated. The wizards to stop the outer detection charms meant that it was a collaborative effort. The dementors didn't sense any of the vampires, which means that whoever planned all of this had an intimate understanding of their senses and how to fool them. The vampires who would have been killed by the dementors just walked through a nest of soul-sucking monsters without any fear. They were also selected because their inherent magic stayed in their own blood for a long time. Wizards absorbed the ambient magic in every spell they cast. They fill their own magic circuits and then shape the output. Vampires didn't need to do that. They grew stronger with age, their body adapting to the power absorbed by their blood. They would be able to stay in an environment without any magic for months before feeling that something was wrong.

That's not even talking about the ritual. Seven vampire lords sacrificed themselves to empower an elder, who sacrificed himself to pulse the magic back into the atrophied ley line which caused the explosion and destroyed the fortress while awakening the ley lines for the first time in centuries.

Self-sacrifice means that there had to be an ideology of some sort. The vampires had to be convinced that what they were doing was the right thing…

One thing was clear, this was a planned strike, calculated down to every single variable.

Someone wanted Azkaban destroyed and had gone to great lengths to make sure it would be.

The result was easy to analyze, but the motivations…

Something big was going on.

His thoughts were interrupted by a hand that grasped his shoulder. He stiffened and turned to the concerned eyes of Arcturus Black, "Are you alright, Harry?"

"Yeah, I was just lost in thought."

The man's face relaxed slightly, "It's perfectly understandable to be nervous."

"I'm not nervous," the last Potter interjected.

The man raised an eyebrow, and Harry took a deep breath, "Fine, I'm a little nervous. I just don't like what Dumbledore has planned. He wanted this hearing."

"He did. However, even though I'm a little out of practice, I think I can handle him. You have to remember that you're in the right. Whatever he's planning on doing, Dumbledore will have to resort to dirty tactics since he has no legs to stand. The law is on our side and everyone there will know it. You have no relatives on your father's side. The closest relative you have on his side of the family would have to be through a cousin of your grandfather's, not that I think he had any. So, your closest magical relative is through your grandmother, my sister. Adding in the fact that your godfather was my grandson, it's logical that your guardian be a Black."

Harry shrugged, "What about the other Blacks?"

"The only ones left are Narcissa and Andromeda. Narcissa agreed to support my guardianship in exchange for a monthly stipend for her and her son, as well as a small mansion in the countryside that they could stay in if there was an emergency. Her husband's passing was very hard on her. Andromeda just signed it without any stipulations. Getting kicked out really hurt her. I never expected my son to make that much of a mess. He forgot how much trouble he made for me when he was her age."

"So, all Dumbledore has to argue is to get me back to my muggle relatives…"

The Black Patriarch nodded, "Yes, which will be a real challenge to argue in front of a board. Ever since the statute of secrecy was put in place, magical guardians always had a preference. It's not always a good thing, but it is, in this case."

"What about Dumbledore's supporters? They could just rule in his favour for no reason."

"Then we can appeal this judgement in front of the Wizengamot, which we're pretty much guaranteed to win. We could also use this to charge them with corruption, and this will be a DMLE matter."

Harry hummed, "Fine, but I don't understand why they didn't push the hearing until the whole Azkaban mess was cleared. I know they pushed a lot of meetings. You'd think after one of the biggest disasters in magical Britain, they wouldn't really prioritize a guardianship hearing of all things."

The incredulity in his voice demonstrated just how much he was done with the ministry politics already. Why couldn't he just stay at home and tinker for a bit? This was why he dreaded the idea of being part of the ministry, in any department. The useless politics and sabotage just weren't his cup of tea. Oh, he could probably do well as a politician, but he would hate every second of it.

Harry always thought that being happier was more important than some illusion of power in some bureaucracy. And it's not like he's hurting for gold ever since the Firebolts started selling like hotcakes.

He was really proud of that one. He really spoke to Terrence Smythe at the exact right time to get the most profit. The man was on the verge of giving up and he had told Harry that he got an offer from Nimbus a month later to buy his entire company for twenty thousand Galleons after they realized that he wasn't going back to beg them to sponsor his project.

So, Harry literally got him just before he sold the entire company, and the gambit with the Chudley Canon worked. They started winning, not because they were good, but because the Firebolt was leagues ahead of the market. They ended up insisting on buying the brooms after a couple of weeks of using them and actually panicked when the 'trial run' was over.

Of course, the other clubs followed. Each one making higher offers is to be considered first and thus, win more games. The brooms took the wizarding world by storm, and there was talk about international teams even ordering the brooms.

Smythe had stated that by the end of the month, all of the British teams would be equipped with a Firebolt, and afterwards, he would make a few just to make them available for the public. Meanwhile, he would start preparing for production for the coming Quidditch World Cup.

Long story short, the brooms are generally sold for three thousand galleons, five hundred are for material costs and another five hundred acts as Terrence's salary – since he's the only one who can make the brooms.

This left around two thousand Galleons per broom as profit, which was around eight hundred Galleons of profit for Harry's share for a single broom, and since Smythe made one broom every day, Harry made around eighty-five thousand Galleons in the span of a few months, which was honestly obscene, and it didn't look like it was stopping anytime soon.

Thankfully, the ministry didn't have time to audit his vault before he got adopted, and Gringotts wasn't going to allow them to do that without Harry knowing about it either. So, the ministry shouldn't know how much gold he had, just assume that it was the small inheritance that his parents had left him, which meant that they wouldn't try to be too controlling in the hearing.

But if a goblin somehow leaked it…

If the ministry knew how much gold, he had…

The hearing was going to be very complicated.

On a whim, Harry asked, "Who's the one who's supervising the hearing."

"The main panel who are going to make the decision is made up of three people, even if there could be any number of witnesses to argue both sides of the problem. Selene Avery, who is the head of the Department of Magical Children Welfare, there's Rufus Scrimgeour representing the DMLE since Amelia Bones is busy with the Azkaban mess, and a representative of the minister, specifically his undersecretary, Dolores Umbridge."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.