592No, I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, though I do own copies of all the books and films. The people who do own the Harry Potter franchise are JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros. and a few other publishers. Thank you to JKR for letting us play about in the sandbox of the Wizarding World
IMPORTANT A/N:
I hate when people upload Author's Notes as chapters and then leave them up and continue the story after them (at the end is fine though), so if you didn't read the A/N that was here before here it is again:
Just to let you know that I've made some tiny adjustments to Chapter one. I've increased Harry's age to thirty, I've reduced the number of wizards that came to see him, and I've altered the names of all of his kids.
The changes are in line with some suggestions that I received in reviews, all of which were good points.
It is not really essential to the plot that you re-read chapter 1, as the changes were not that big, just know that "Lily" is now called "Jess", "James" is now "Ryan", "Sirius" is now "Jack", "Remus" is now "Calvin" and "Luna" is now "Emily".
Damn Wizards
Chapter Two: How Did We Get Here?
Wearily, Harry slung his suit jacket over the back of his chair and then sat down. His eyes itched with sleepiness, and he longed for his bed. That cabinet meeting had gone on about an hour and a half longer than he expected, so the paperwork he had set aside to do afterwards had meant that it was going to be nearly midnight before he was done for the day.
He had just picked up the first document to look through when there was a knock at the door to his office.
Who'd be coming for a visit at this hour?
"Come in." he called, and the door opened to reveal his personal aide, Luna Lovegood.
"Luna, what're you doing here at this time of night?" he asked in surprise.
Luna smiled at him and said "You're not the only one with work to do, Harry. But if you must know, this is my last task before heading home. Here."
She handed him several sheets of paper. He took them and looked through them as Luna continued.
"Lilith thinks that this will be an effective way to get people to have a bit more faith in politicians."
"I'm sure it will." said Harry "Cut MP's salaries by ten percent and their expense allowances by fifteen percent, then bung the lot into the NHS. That'll get a few naysayers to back off a bit, I suppose."
"It would instil a bit more faith into politics." agreed Luna "Or at the very least move public perception of politicians a little bit away from "a bunch of greedy, thieving, undeserving, selfish bastards.""
"Oh, no" said Harry "Until we cut all tax rates by one hundred percent, we will always be "a bunch of greedy, thieving, undeserving, selfish bastards." to the public. And that's a reputation that really has been earned."
He looked back down at the paperwork that Luna had given him "Still, I'm impressed though. We haven't been in power for even a full forty eight hours yet, and Lilith's already churned out these figures for us."
"You made her Chancellor of the Exchequer for a reason." replied Luna "Plus that time-turner Neville and Hannah were able to pilfer for us probably helped her get more time to work on it."
Harry chuckled "Be in six different places at any one time, that's the secret to politics. We're probably going to need to do some convincing to push this sort of thing through without a fuss, though."
"I'll see Tracey in the morning and have her brew up a few batches of the resistance reduction potions. That should make them more agreeable to our plans."
Harry nodded "Maybe chuck in a couple of calming draughts as well, just to make sure that they don't go into a panic."
Luna nodded "Alright. Well, see you in the morning."
"Good night." Harry called after her as she made her way towards the door.
He put Lilith's papers aside and returned to the paperwork before him, but try as he might, he could not concentrate. With the events of the past two days, he could not help but think over the events that had led to him being in this position today.
At the age of fifteen he had walked out of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, having had enough of the backwards society and the corrupt people who allegedly ran it.
He had been planning it for a while, and had made the necessary arrangements for his escape. Knowing the politicians for the corrupt, money-grabbing bastards that they were, he had written to the Goblins of Gringotts Wizarding Bank and ordered that his family vaults be closed until such a time that he or one of his heirs should ever see fit to open them again.
He had enlisted Dobby the House Elf, an old friend of his, to find a derelict house in which he could reside. Following his leaving of Hogwarts, Dobby and twenty other house elves that he had persuaded to enter into Harry's employment had erected the most powerful protective wards that they could. Extra security was gained from the fact that House Elves used their own branch of magic, something that many wizards would fail to think to look for. After that they had gone to great lengths to make the house inhabitable.
The end result had been luxurious. Harry had gotten himself a quiet job that would pay for what few bills there were, and he settled in for a life of peace and solitude.
But this lonely existence was not to last, however.
In the July of that very year, just a few days after the Hogwarts Express would have taken the students home for the summer, Harry was on the receiving and of a most distressing vision; Voldemort and his Death Eaters had gone after Hermione and her parents in their family home.
Harry had thought that he could cut himself off completely, but he couldn't, not when it was her, not when she needed him so desperately.
At his instruction, Dobby led a rescue team of six other House Elves to the Granger family's house. As they blasted the Death Eaters into walls and recued Hermione, both her parents and her pet cat Crookshanks, Harry involved himself in another task.
Forgetting everything that Snape had ever shouted at him amongst all the insults in their supposed occlumency lessons, Harry had closed his eyes, and concentrated. He concentrated on that point in his mind that told him when Voldemort was nearby; that point in his mind where the visions and dreams of the Dark Lord's actions came from. He found it and he attacked it.
And in doing so he attacked the mind of the Dark Lord himself.
Snape had once said that giving Voldemort access to his emotions was giving Voldemort power over him, but it wasn't. It gave Voldemort ideas for whom to go after, true, but it was also a weapon that Harry could use against him. Voldemort did not understand many of Harry's emotions, and love in particular was one emotion whose concept he completely failed to grasp. In fact the emotion of love was something that hurt him. Once upon a time, the love that Harry's mother had had for her son in life was enough to destroy Voldemort's physical being. And now Harry used his love, the love he felt for Hermione, to torture Voldemort's mind.
Harry had no idea what happened to Voldemort immediately following that, though the Dark Lord never attempted to torture Harry through mind games again.
He had had more important things to deal with, though; most important being the crying young witch who had thrown herself into his arms the second she realised he was there.
He was, of course, treated to a lecture about running away instead of talking to her, but with her emotions running high and her guard down (and a few pointed words from Hermione's mother Emma) Harry realised that her anger was not so much at the fact that he did a runner, but more at that he didn't take her with him.
They had been inseparable ever since.
Following that night, Harry had allowed himself a temporary concession to his refusal to re-enter the Wizarding World; Hermione wanted to send a letter for Professor McGonagall, announcing her withdrawal from Hogwarts School, and Harry was damned if he was going to let her got to the post office in Diagon Alley all on her own.
Dobby had used a bit of Elf magic to give Harry a disguise that managed to successfully fool everyone.
Everyone that is, except for one person: Garrick Ollivander.
Harry had no idea how or when the old wand maker had spotted who he really was, but Harry and Hermione had ended up standing next to the man in the post office. Ollivander had taken a wand from his pocket and surreptitiously pushed it into Harry's hand, which grasped it out of instinct. None of them said anything, but when Ollivander had finished with his business in the Post Office, he had Harry a subtle wink and then walked off.
Back at home, Harry had tested the wand and found that is worked well for him, so he decided to keep it. The attack on Hermione had proved to him that he could not escape the influences of the wizarding world quite as easily as he had hoped.
Hermione's reasons for abandoning the wizarding world were quite understandable. With Harry's departure, Hermione had discovered that her friendship with Ron was not quite as close as she had thought. In fact, in Harry's absence, Ron had made a play for dominance, and had been marginally successful. Of course, having girls like Lavender Brown hanging onto his every word had gone straight to his head and within a month of Harry's absence, Ron had become someone whom Hermione could no longer stand to be around.
Then there was the Ministry.
The running of Dumbledore's Army was one of the many things that Ron had attempted to hijack in order to garner more favour (another being top Quidditch player). Completely forgetting the need for secrecy, he had blabbed about it in the middle of a corridor in an attempt to impress a group of sixth-year Hufflepuff girls. Unfortunately Pansy Parkinson had overheard him and went running to Professor Umbridge.
in retrospect, calling themselves "Dumbledore's Army" had been a bad move, as that name alone was enough for the Ministry to boot Dumbledore out of Hogwarts and grant Umbridge even more power over the students. She had set up a group of students known as "The Inquisitorial Squad" to help in her reign of terror. One of their powers had been to take house points from students who misbehaved. It was something they abused terribly, and in the first week alone, Hermione had lost seven hundred points for "being a Mudblood". No one in a position of power seemed to even bat an eyelid.
The final nail in the coffin for Hermione's desire to be a part of the wizarding world was the attack on her. Well, not so much the attack itself, but two of the people involved.
Severus Snape, someone Dumbledore insisted everyone trust in despite their better judgement, had taken great joy in holding her mother under the cruciatus curse, whilst Draco Malfoy, a student in their year group and one of the Inquisitorial Squad's worst offenders, had been there on a training mission and had been one of the ones to hold Hermione herself under the cruciatus curse.
They received a reply letter from Professor McGonagall two days after Hermione sent hers, and their now former head of house was quite sympathetic, and accepted Hermione's withdrawal, though, she admitted, it pained her to lose such a promising student. She had assured them that she would be having strong words with Dumbledore.
What she had said to him, neither of them knew, but Dumbledore definitely got wind of her desire to leave the school for he wrote her a letter, insisting that it was not safe for her beyond Hogwarts wards. Apparently Aurors had arrived at her house mere minutes after her escape, and they had seen a barely conscious Voldemort make his escape. The Ministry had now retracted all their denouncements of Voldemort's return, and Dumbledore was now back in power at Hogwarts. Predictably in his letter, he made excuses for Snape, chief amongst them being that he was a spy who sometimes had to do terrible things in order to conserve his position, as well as how much Dumbledore trusted the man.
The usual tripe.
He also insisted that efforts were already being made to "bring young Draco back to the light."
Hermione's letter in response had been disrespectful, snarky and, at times, downright vicious. Using five years' worth of evidence, se rubbished every claim as to the supposed safety of Hogwarts, suggested hanging Draco by the neck from the rafters above the Great Hall as a warning against the other Junior Death Eaters, and pointed out that having a spy in amongst the Death Eaters was only useful so long as anyone acted on the information given, as reacting helped no one.
Dumbledore had not tried again.
They heard nothing more from the wizarding world for about a year and a half, during which time Hermione's parents, Dan and Emma had convinced the pair to continue their muggle education through the use of tutors with the plan being to eventually go to university.
Then one day, completely out of the blue an owl turned up, carrying a letter for Hermione. It was from Luna. Her father had been killed in a Death Eater attack, and she needed help. She was under the age of seventeen and she was an orphan. This meant that it was up to the Ministry to decide what to do with her. Some of the more prominent families had made very generous offers to look after her, offers that the Ministry was seriously considering, especially with the amount of gold switching hands. Unfortunately these families were also the families of the Death Eaters that run around right under the Ministry's nose without being noticed.
The letter was a plea for help, and neither Harry nor Hermione could find it in themselves to refuse. Dobby brought Luna to them half an hour after the letter's arrival.
Luna had brought with her terrible news. Every day more and more Muggleborns were disappearing. With each passing school holiday fewer and fewer were returning to the castle, and an ever increasing number of students would arrive in the Great Hall in the morning where the Owl Post would leave them distraught at the sight of a black envelope. These came from Ministry and were used to report deaths of family members.
The light side was losing badly.
Despite his repeated failed attempts to do so, Dumbledore was still putting considerable effort in his plans to bring Draco Malfoy back to the light, even going so far as to make him Head Boy this year. He abused it immensely, of course.
Since the attack on Hermione, Draco's known actions had resulted in Katie Bell spending six months of what was supposed to be her seventh year in St. Mungo's Hospital (she was now repeating that year), the poisoning of Professor Slughorn, who had stepped into the role as potions master after Snape moved over to teach Defence, and it was only the quick thinking of a group of students in a club that he ran that saved his life, a shocking attack on three third year Muggleborns (two Hufflepuffs and a Ravenclaw), none of whom returned to Hogwarts after the Christmas break, an explosion in the corridor on the fifth floor that resulted in Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott spending a week in the hospital wing, and a whole range of curses and injuries that befell many a student. Dumbledore, of course, insisted that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on Draco's part (even though he and everyone else knew that there was), but no one listened to him. They knew it was Draco and his cronies. Just as they knew he was at least partly responsible for so many of them losing family members, especially amongst the D.A. students.
And no matter how much Dumbledore insisted, none of them trusted the Head Boy, just as none of them now trusted Professor Snape.
"Through his own actions or inactions, he both created Voldemort and drove Harry away," Hermione had said to that "and he's trying to ease his soul in a misguided attempt to bring out traits in Snape and Malfoy that simply are not there."
"And in doing so" Harry had continued the thought "he's alienating himself from the rest of the school, as well as driving the wedge between Slytherin House and the other three houses even deeper."
And it was true, Luna had admitted. The more and more Dumbledore let Draco off, the worse and worse he got, and the more he and his cronies thought they could get away with.
Katie, Slughorn, Hannah, Susan and the three Muggleborns could probably have died and Dumbledore still would not have given up on Draco.
The man was not fit to lead anymore, and the Ministry was failing.
Harry now saw even less point in returning, and Hermione and Luna agreed with him.
It was Hermione's mother who had come up with a good suggestion, however. They had Luna provide them with a list of vulnerable students and gave them a way out. Not many of them took it, most of the Muggleborns that hadn't already been killed had fled, and most of the purebloods were far too proud to consider living in the muggle world, no matter how much of a danger their lives were in in the wizarding one.
They'd gotten some out, however, and simply made contact with others. Some of those they had gotten away, like Justin Finch-Fletchley, had left the country. Others like Lilith Moon accepted the offer to stay with them. Those who they made contact with, like Neville Longbottom, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones and Tracey Davis had agreed to keep an eye on things, and point anyone who could benefit from Harry, Hermione and Luna's help in their direction.
Eventually University beckoned for Harry and Hermione. They used a couple of potions to get into the same University together. Lilith and a few of their new friends joined them, but Luna was not amongst them. She, like most of the purebloods who had taken up the offer for help, did not have the same level of non-magical education as Harry, Hermione and the Muggleborns, and so stuck with the tutors.
As Hermione went into law, Harry was troubled with what he really wanted to do. He was toying with the idea of becoming a doctor and using magic to help him when Hermione took matters into her own hands and dragged him into law with her.
Having never been quite the academic that Hermione was, he was quite surprised to find himself enjoying it, and was soon involved (at Hermione's insistence) in things like the debate club. It turned out that leading the D.A. had helped him get over his fears of speaking to large crowds, somewhere along the line he had picked up Hermione's knack for making rational arguments.
In fact he was so good at it, that Dan suggested a career in politics. Harry didn't really like the sound of that, but Hermione's eyes had lit up at the idea and she proclaimed to all their friends that Harry would be the future Prime Minister of Britain.
They had all had a good chuckle at that, or at least they did until Hermione unveiled her plan.
Those fellow politicians of his who met her often joked that whilst Harry was the one to get things done, Hermione was the brains behind it all.
None of them really realised just how right they were.
Hermione's plan had been simple: use the subtlest of magic to get Harry into the top spot, make sure he was surrounded by his friends, and change Muggle Britain for the better.
Well, that plan was now halfway through; Harry was in the top spot, and those close friends surrounded him, having risen through the ranks using the same methods as Harry, they now helped him run things.
Slipping potions into drinks had been an effective way to raise Harry to high rank within his chosen political party, until eventually (they didn't want to do it straight off as that would seem suspicious no matter how much magic they used) he was the leader of the party. Two years later it was election time, and bewitching voting ballots with compulsion charms had not been easy, but Luna had been the one to find a way, and just two days ago Harry's party had seized their victory.
At the age of twenty, Harry and Hermione had married. Both had agreed, however, that kids were off the cards for a while.
All that had changed, however, just a few days after Harry had become the leader of his party.
The war within the wizarding world was having a greater and greater impact on the muggle world with each week that passed.
But on that day, Voldemort had launched his most vicious attack yet, and in its wake many office buildings and apartment blocks were nothing but rubble.
Harry had been in a press conference at the time with several other politicians. When word came in, the politicians all made their way over, each hoping to get a good publicity shot (once the danger was confirmed to have passed, of course).
As the other politicians loitered off to one side waiting for the cameras to turn up so that they could be "seen to be doing something", Harry actually did do something. Hermione had come with his to the press conference and now had followed him to the sight of the destruction, as had Luna, who was not his P.A., and fellow politician Lilith. With a simple "come on," he had led his way over to the rescue workers and volunteered their services. The workers were more than happy for volunteers and threw each of them a hard hat and a pair of gloves out of the back of their one of their vehicles.
The BBC camera crew had gotten there just in time to get shots of Harry slinging his jacket aside as he and the other three followed six others into the devastation.
Harry guessed that the Ministry was either busy elsewhere or had simply stopped caring about the Muggle world for none of them turned up on the scene, not even to investigate their surreptitiously cast "Homenum Revelio" spells as they searched for survivors.
In the end, the photograph that appeared on the front page of every newspaper in Britain, and quite a few others worldwide was of Harry, still in his hard hat, carrying two injured little girls towards a waiting ambulance.
It was never a publicity stunt for Harry, he simply could not just stand there and not help. And somehow the public seemed to sense that. Harry was never sure, but that probably had something to do with him yelling at a group of reporters to "put down those bloody cameras and microphones and lend a hand!"
They had as well.
Aside from those two little girls, Harry pulled three boys from the rubble. All were badly injured, and later all were confirmed to be orphans.
They were Jess, Emily, Ryan, Jack and Calvin, and each of them had been adamant at the meeting the man who had saved them.
This was made into a political stunt, unfortunately. Too many people saw it as an opportunity to make themselves look good, and Harry was sort of stuck in the middle of it. But it didn't matter. The rescuees got to thank their rescuers, Harry got his hand shaken more times than he cared to remember, his party's approval rating went through the roof and, overshadowing the lot of it was Hermione's request of the evening: "Let's adopt them."
Harry could not say no.
Some in the party were concerned about him having a young family, but they shut up when they realised that that too raised the public's opinion of them. Nowadays, the image for a politician to project really was "family man".
Jess, Emily, Ryan, Jack and Calvin loved their new home, and their new parents. And whenever Harry and Hermione could not be around, they had a pair of doting grandparents to look after them as well.
Jess, being the oldest, had been able to get the strongest grasp on what her new Daddy's job was, and simply loved the idea of her dad being in charge of the whole country, though she soon learned to hate it when he had to spend so much time campaigning. She didn't like him being so tired whenever she saw him.
Emily, being four years younger than Jess, was unable to say "Prime Minister" and so settled for telling everyone that he the "New King." That made everyone laugh.
Ryan and Jack were both football mad, and, although they thought Harry being the Prime Minister was "cool", both said it didn't compare to being in charge of a football club. Harry promised to look into becoming the England manager someday (especially as a bit of magical trickery seemed to be needed there these days as well).
Calvin, having been just barely six months old at the time of the attack by Voldemort, was now two and a half and didn't have much grasp on the concepts of what Harry did or why it was important. His biggest worry of the day was to make as big a mess for the adults to clear up as possible.
Harry shook his head wearily and pushed the paperwork aside. He'd have to do it tomorrow.
As he walked upstairs to bed, he recalled one piece of information that he had discovered about two months after Voldemort's attack. Before those offices and apartment buildings were there, the area had been the location of Wool's Orphanage. Originally this had no significance, until a couple of Harry's contacts did some sniffing around and brought up a startling piece of information; Wool's Orphanage had once been home to an orphaned boy called "Tom Marvolo Riddle".
There was no way in hell that that was a mere coincidence.
The incidents that Harry could attribute to Death Eater activity never reached the same destructive power at that attack again, but they were on going.
And now the leaders of the light knew just where Harry was, and they wanted to meet with him.
Harry would have to speak to Dobby soon. It was time to put more protections around his family.
A/N: And there is chapter two. I hope that you enjoyed the backstory and that there aren't too many plot-holes.
As much as he wanted too, Harry could not abandon the wizarding world entirely, and now it looks like he might be ensnared again, just as his and Hermione's plans for Muggle Britain are beginning to take shape.
Stay tuned for more!