While Dewey was teaching Harry how to face a Boggart, on the other side of the school, Snape hurried off to see Dumbledore. Standing before the Stone Gargoyle, he calmly spoke the current password.
"Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans."
The Stone Gargoyle lazily raised its eyes to look at Snape, then lowered its eyelids even more slowly. It turned and shuffled aside.
With a creaking sound, it swung around, clearing a path.
Snape tugged at the front of his robes and strode up the spiral staircase.
If he hadn't heard wrong, the Stone Gargoyle had let out a deep sigh as it turned back.
"Ugh."
Snape paid no attention to the stone creature, lazy to its very core, and entered the Headmaster's Office.
The Headmaster's Office was quiet. Many of the headmasters in the portraits had gone out to enjoy themselves, while the few who remained were each occupied with their own pursuits. Fawkes stood on a perch, watching Snape.
Dumbledore sat with his eyes closed, apparently dozing.
As a master of Legilimency, Snape could tell at a glance that Dumbledore wasn't dozing. He was searching his memories for something.
After a good while, Dumbledore finally opened his eyes and saw Snape. But before Snape could speak, the flames in Dumbledore's fireplace turned green.
Someone was coming through with Floo Powder.
"Just a moment, Severus. I'm afraid he's come to see me again."
Dumbledore gestured for Snape to wait and turned toward the fireplace. Sure enough, a plump, greasy head appeared in the flames.
Minister for Magic Fudge.
Dumbledore casually waved his wand. Snape felt an invisible barrier form around him. If he wasn't mistaken, the spell was meant to keep the person in the fireplace from seeing him.
He could still hear the conversation.
An invisibility cloak made by magic.
Fudge had arrived in the Headmaster's Office fireplace. Only his head appeared in the Floo Network fireplace—a clever trick that Snape himself knew how to perform. When using the Floo Network to communicate, you could choose to send over just one part of your body, as Fudge had done.
But a trick was called a trick for a reason: it took a long time to master.
If you weren't skilled, one little slip could send the features on your face flying off along with your botched attempt.
The flames formed a head, and Fudge's voice came from inside it, panicked and utterly lacking in confidence.
"We need your help, Dumbledore. The Ministry is in complete disarray. It's a terrible mess."
Fudge asked Dumbledore to help the Ministry.
He had thought of Dumbledore again.
Dumbledore was the only one who could help him.
"Those people have gone on strike!"
Fudge complained.
More than ten days had passed since Dewey and Sirius had last appeared. During that time, Fudge had intensified the search for the two fugitives. Some "reformed" "former" Death Eaters had also seized the opportunity to join the Ministry. "We're your loyal subordinates, Minister. We're ready to obey your every command." After joining the Ministry, they made lavish donations to Hogwarts and St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, and donated generously to the Ministry as well.
They had also handed over contributions to the Ministry's senior officials.
Fudge was extremely pleased. He thought these former Death Eaters supported him. "Voldemort is dead. Those Death Eaters were good people who were misled and threatened back then," he told himself, as if hypnotising himself. These "former Death Eaters" had held senior positions under You-Know-Who, and now they had parachuted into the Ministry and taken up senior positions there too.
They had done nothing, yet they were already among the Ministry's senior officials.
They banded together, sidelined Half-bloods and the other old hands who actually did the work, and commandeered resources. In a very short time, they had united into a vast web.
Fudge was pleased with this. He felt the whole Ministry was getting along splendidly, and that with these people's help, he had gained a firmer grip on power!
That was where things went wrong!
What he hadn't realised was that his string of foolish decisions had brought the entire Ministry almost to a standstill. Perhaps it had never occurred to him that power didn't flow from the top down.
Power rose from the bottom up. He wasn't a magical master with Dumbledore's astonishing charisma. He had control of the Ministry because he was Minister for Magic. It was because he held that position that he could issue orders to the Ministry's employees.
Without the position of Minister for Magic, he was nothing!
It was like ancient Rome: only an emperor who commanded the Praetorian Guard and the legions was a true emperor.
Whether you were Octavian or Caesar, if you lost the loyalty of your officers, you were nothing but a corpse!
The Ministry of Magic was made up of many wizards. People like Lucius Malfoy weren't going to capture two fugitives themselves.
The ones who actually did the work were frontline grunts like Walker. They had no leave, no extra pay, nothing. They were thrown onto the front lines and repeatedly stabbed in the back.
The credit went to Lucius. Walker and the others got nothing.
"Get those idiots out of my world, or I'll show them what 'Crucio' means!"
That was Mad-Eye Moody roaring at Goyle in front of Fudge. Even with Scrimgeour, Head of the Auror Office, right there, Mad-Eye Moody had shouted the same way.
He didn't care at all that his immediate superior and the Ministry's top boss were present. After his outburst, he took a large group of Aurors with him and went back on patrol, but refused to obey "those stupid superiors" any longer.
As for the Aurors who stayed behind—well, when the poor fools had helped capture Hagrid at Hogwarts last year, countless spells had landed on Hagrid, only to rebound off him. They had done perfectly on the Defense Against the Dark Arts written paper for their N.E.W.T.s, but they'd done very poorly on the remaining twenty percent, the practical portion.
On the job, that made them look, well, rather ridiculous.
Hagrid was only a Half-blood Giant!
He was still a Half-blood!
He wasn't a Pure-blood Giant!
Aurors handled the Ministry's most dangerous missions and were supposed to be its strongest people. Yet apart from Mad-Eye Moody and the others who had fought in the war against Voldemort, the rest weren't much better than Hit Wizards.
What a joke.
What drove Fudge to despair was that these Aurors, along with the Hit Wizards and employees from the other departments, hadn't actually left.
They had merely stayed!
They were all slacking off.
With only his "loyal" subordinates to rely on, Fudge simply couldn't control the Ministry. Nor could he fire every Ministry employee who was dragging their feet.
With no other choice, he turned to Dumbledore for help.
After listening to him, Dumbledore gave Fudge a casual, noncommittal response. Before long, Fudge was beaming.
Hidden by magic, Snape let out a faint, scornful smile.
Cornelius Fudge. What an exceptionally rare fool.
He found Fudge's shortsightedness and stupidity laughable. Dumbledore was an incredibly clever man. If he wished, he could make anyone who spoke with him feel happy and at ease.
Just as he had done now.
He hadn't offered Fudge any help, yet Fudge was delighted. Perhaps he hadn't wanted help at all; he had wanted emotional comfort.
After sending Fudge away, Dumbledore waved his wand again.
"What happened, Severus?"
He invited Severus to sit down and poured him a cup of tea. Snape caught the strong smell of honey and set it aside.
"Lupin's tutoring the boy alone," Snape said. "They're meeting in private.
But Lupin is a Werewolf."
Dumbledore looked at Snape with a kindly smile, indicating that he understood his concern.
"He won't hurt Harry, Severus. Remus may be a Werewolf, but he's never actually hurt anyone."
At that, Snape couldn't help furrowing his brow. He disagreed with Dumbledore. They nearly killed me, he thought.
But Snape also knew that arguing about it with Dumbledore would accomplish nothing.
"So you knew about this all along? You allowed it to happen?"
He got straight to the point.
"Yes, Severus," Dumbledore said readily. "I only found out about it recently as well. Remus and Harry have an unusually close relationship.
Nothing will happen while they're together.
If you're still worried, how about this? For the week before every full moon, you can also take over as Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
What do you think, Severus? Can you find the time?
Would you teach the children Defense Against the Dark Arts?"
After a few words, Snape, now in a better mood himself, soon left the Headmaster's Office.
Only Dumbledore remained there, the sole living person.
Dumbledore sat down in his chair, looking a little tired. He picked up a Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean from the desk, then spat it out almost immediately.
"Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!"
He spat repeatedly, looking thoroughly unlucky.
"Earwax flavour again. Oh, honestly!"
Dumbledore cried out in dismay, took a sip of tea, and carefully rinsed his mouth. Only then did he pull a book of Dark Magic out from beneath the desk.
The book murmured with an eerie voice, capable of turning any reader of weak mind into a Dark Magic puppet.
There was no doubt it was a great work of Dark Magic. Unfortunately for the book, its reader was Dumbledore. He opened it without a care, and the Dark Magic bounced harmlessly off him. Dumbledore studied the writing, then took out a map and began comparing notes.
On the cover of the map, a sinister-looking Dark Wizard held a wand and repeatedly cast "Avada Kedavra." Unfortunately, his Avada Kedavra had no effect beyond adding a green glow to the cover!
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