Sirius stood in the centre of a group of Aurors about to do a Side-Along hot drop, which was a difficult piece of magic that he hadn't done since the war. Not just because it took a lot of power, but because it took a lot of focus. When Side-Along Apparating, the person controlling the spell had to concentrate enough not to splinch whomever they brought with them, and the level of concentration went up the more people you were bringing. A Side-Along hot drop was when one person Side-Alonged an entire group into the middle of a combat zone.
The only reason the Aurors were accepting Sirius doing this was because he could Side-Along them inside the wards of the Granger's house, as he was the one in control of the wards. Anyone else would have had to Apparate them outside the wards, and in this case possibly right in the middle of a group of Inferi. Frankly, the Aurors would all rather risk splinching rather than getting injured by a rotting corpse animated by dark magic. The dark magic would resist any healing magic, and healing any infections would have to be done the muggle way.
Sirius concentrated with everything he had and Apparated, taking six Aurors with him. They landed in the back garden of a London house with only the light of the stars to see by.
"Okay everyone do a body check, is anyone missing anything important?" one voice asked. There was a chorus of all-clear notifications save for one witch who complained, "Black you owe me a new manicure, you left half my fingernail behind."
"Stow it Mags, a finger nail is not a real problem. Butters, Rosewood, go through the house and check the front road for hostiles and report back, Otters, Rivers, the two of you go and have a look over that fence. Larch, Disillusion yourself and fly overhead and do some recon, we need to know how many there are and over what area. Black, you stay here inside the wards, you're on medical evacuation duties if it's needed." Auror proudfoot barked out his orders.
Immediately two witches ran to the back fence and climbed up to see over it, two wizards ran into the Grangers' house to get to the front, and one wizard pulled a Nimbus 2000 out of an expanded pocket in his robes and Disillusioned himself with a tap of his wand before Sirius heard the rush of wind as he took to the skies. Sirius himself wasn't going to sit around and do nothing. He was under orders to stay on the property, but staying on the property and doing nothing weren't the same thing. He was a maverick after all, bending the rules was what they were best at.
Sirius turned on the spot, and with a crack he disappeared from the garden and reappeared on the Grangers' roof. From his vantage point he had probably the best view of the situation except for perhaps Auror Larch. He could see a large group of undead corpses in the street; without trying to count them individually he established there to be forty of them, and judging by the screaming from the other houses maybe another ten in the surrounding houses.
"If this isn't cleared up soon there is going to be a major breach to the Statute of Secrecy," Sirius said to no one in particular. With the screaming, there was a good chance that someone would try to contact the muggle authorities, and even If the muggle teli-what's-its wouldn't work right now, before top long someone would get the idea to go to the nearest station or working phone on foot, and then things would really get difficult.
Sirius pointed his wand at one of the Inferi that was with the majority trying to overwhelm the house's wards. An overpowered cutting curse that bisected the thing right down the middle, leaving its body in two flailing halves. This stopped its attack on the wards but didn't stop it from trying. The only things that would completely stop it would be fire or sunrise. Sunrise was hours away yet, and falling balls of fire running around setting everything on fire would just cause a bigger problem, especially as a large cloud of smoke would almost definitely alert the muggle firefighters to come and stop the city burning down, again.
Soon, Proudfoot and all the other Aurors came and joined Sirius on the roof and he had them all report. They agreed with Sirius's assessment of around fifty, though Larch said he suspected forty-nine as "it's seven times seven, a powerful magical number, and I think I read somewhere before that Inferi could be raised in a maximum batch size of seven."
"Okay, here's the plan. We are going to deal with them quietly and without fire for now. Once we cut them all down, we will get an expanded trunk from the office and levitate all the parts into it and burn them away from prying muggle eyes. Black, I want you to grab any muggles who see anything and put them in this house safely, we can have the Obliviation squad and the cleaners in and hopefully have everything back to normal before dawn," Proudfoot told them. Sirius turned on the spot immediately, going first for the houses where the Inferi had already broken in. He hoped that he would get there before anyone died, but he knew that it was probably too late for that before he even left Potter Manor.
-ϟϟϟ-
Dan and Emma were walking down one of the hallways in the manor, looking for the room Charlus had directed them to so they could try and get some sleep. They were counting the doors as they went past, because the directions they had were the fourth door on the right, but when they passed an open door Dan froze at what he saw.
Emma, noticing that her husband wasn't walking any more, turned to see what he was looking at. As she looked through the door, she saw Hermione and Harry laying down together in a bed, both still wearing everything they had been in when they met just after arriving from the fire. Her daughter was clinging tightly to her boyfriend in her sleep, obviously not going to let him go any time soon.
"Leave it Dan," Emma said, giving her husband a little tug on the arm.
"Emma, our fifteen year old girl is sharing a bed with a boy." He sounded like he was considering marching over there and dragging her out of the bed.
"Our almost sixteen year old daughter is sleeping in the one place she feels safe after a traumatic night. If you do anything, all you will succeed in doing is keeping her awake for the next three days. Do you think that will be good for her?" Emma sounded stern.
"But what if she ends up pregnant?" He insisted.
"First, all they are doing is sleeping. Look at them, and I mean really look: fully clothed, on top of the covers, and the door left purposely open. They are only cuddling as they sleep and very deliberately showing us that. Secondly, if she were to get pregnant, which she can't by the way because she is on the magical equivalent of the pill, then we would handle it." Emma told him sternly while pulling his arm more firmly. "Now let's go to bed, I don't think I could sleep alone eather.
Dan gave up and followed his wife. "Okay, but why is Hermione on the pill?" He asked.
Emma rolled her eyes. "Because she is a teenage girl who has been dating a boy for over a year, and I made sure to send a letter to her school nurse, just like I would have taken her to a doctor if she was in a non magical school. We discussed options and came up with one for Hermione, she takes a potion once a month while the healer watches."
"I still say they are rushing things," Dan refused to concede the point.
Emma rolled her eyes. "No they aren't, just think what you were doing at fifteen."
"Em, that's exactly what I'm afraid of," Dan said as his wife pulled him into the room they were going to be borrowing.
-ϟϟϟ-
Sirius watched, exhausted, as the clean up crew did its work. Some were fixing the damage that the Inferi had done, broken windows, dented cars, smashed doors, that sort of thing. Others were coming up with muggle worthy excuses for the things they couldn't fix. Things like the people who had died. Fortunately, in a macabre way, most of the dead were elderly - better than them being kids, at least. Speaking of kids, there was one girl, five maybe six, who sat weeping next to her parents. They had both died protecting her from the monsters before Sirius had arrived to evacuate them. It was heartbreaking to see the little girl so distraught, her story now so similar to Harry's.
Sirius tried not to remember the mouthed words of gratitude from the girl's dying mother as he appeared to save the little girl, yet every time he closed his eyes all he could see was the woman struggling to sit up and do something surrounded by a pool of her own blood. He really wanted to do more to help the girl, but there was nothing he could do for a Muggle child. Legally it would be considered kidnapping, and there really was no place for the girl in the magical world he lived in. He had cast a charm on her to check she wasn't a Muggleborn or an adopted-out squib that he could help, but she was as mundane as the next muggle. There was nothing he could do.
He watched as a few healers healed what they could. A lot of it was cuts and scrapes, but a lot of the injured, including Auror Rosewood, had bite marks. Those were definitely going to be infected, both with rotting corpse bacteria and with dark magic that would prevent any healing magic from helping. All the healers could do for that is swab the infected area liberally with iodine and mundane antibiotics.
Of course, getting those mundane antibiotics could be difficult as you couldn't just walk into a mundane shop and buy them. You needed paperwork signed off on by a mundane healer. Actually, that was something that Sirius would have to have a word with Dan and Emma about; they were mundane healers, maybe they could sign off on the antibiotics?
Finding a Muggle-worthy excuse took a lot of effort. They needed to account for the very human bite marks on the people who survived, so cover stories like a gas leak or an animal attack just wouldn't work. In the end, the only thing they could come up with was an escaped man from a mental hospital, combined with a bunch of people killed going out into the street when they heard a struggle. It wasn't a great story, but it's what they had to go with. The Obliviation squad ran with it, modifying everyone's memories, while yet more wizards set up the scene to look exactly like what would be expected so they could hand off the situation to the mundane authorities.
Dawn was just breaking when Sirius decided it was time to go home. Everyone was out of the Granger's house by then, so there was no need for him to stick around. He told Auror Proudfoot that he was going and was informed that he would need to go to the D.M.L.E. later in the day to give a full report of what he saw and did. Sirius Floo'ed back home directly from the upstairs fireplace in the locked third bedroom that had long ago been converted into a home office.
The manor was completely silent when Sirius arrived, likely he thought because everyone else was fast asleep. Yet when he arrived in the kitchen, thinking of making himself a sandwich before going to bed, Charlus was there waiting for him with two mugs of hot tea on the table. "So, tell me what happened," Charlus not-quite-asked, and Sirius sighed before telling his uncle everything that happened from his point of view.
-ϟϟϟ-
Breakfast was pretty quiet the next day, as no one felt like they had enough sleep. That is, until two owls arrived, one addressed to Harry and one to Hermione. Hermione went from sleepy to bordering on an anxiety attack in minutes as she read her letter. It was an official notice from the Ministry regarding her use of underage magic. Apparently the Hopkirk woman who ran the office hadn't bothered to investigate at all and had sent out the notice as soon as she got in the office this morning.
Hermione was being called in for a disciplinary hearing, and the letter was very clear that Hermione being expelled from Hogwarts and having her wand snapped was on the table. This was why she was having a near panic attack. Charlus assured her that at nine o'clock he would be contacting his solicitor, and the three of them were going to go to the Ministry and get everything sorted out today, rather than next week on the date of her hearing.
The other letter was from Gringotts. It was informing Harry that they had finished with the sale of the basilisk, and the gold from it totaled 758,500. Harry had decided a while back that he was going to take 140,000 of that and share it with the people who were affected by the basilisk. That meant Colin, Justin, Penelope Clearwater, Hermione, Ginny, Ron, and Filch. Shared out equally, that would be 20,000 Galleons each. Though Harry was considering giving Filch less, as it was only his pet that was petrified; the other petrification victims actually had to catch up on the life they had missed. He had been considering giving the caretaker 8,000, leaving 22,000 each for everyone else.
But Harry had plenty of time to focus on all that later. For now, he had to focus on Hermione. He pulled Hermione into a hug, and as she cried about losing her magic and having wasted the last four years of her education he kept repeating reassuring things to her. "Don't forget Hermione, you are in the right. It doesn't matter how old you are, in an emergency you are always allowed to defend yourself and others. No Ministry jobsworth is going to do anything to you, and grandfather and I will make sure of that."
"What can you do, Harry? You're not even fifteen yet," Hermione said between sobs.
"I'll go to the Prophet and give an interview. How much shit do you think I can start by getting a story of a girl stripped of her wand rights for defending herself from a horde of Inferi that, let's be honest, were probably sent by Voldemort?"
"Harry, you can't do that," Charlus responded. "It would cause way too much trouble. With everything that's happening the public needs to support the D.M.L.E right now-."
He tried to say more when Harry cut him off. "No, what I can't do is let anything happen to Hermione. With a few individual exceptions, the rest of the world can go hang for all I care." Harry was glaring at his grandfather the whole time.
Charlus sighed at his grandson. He agreed with Harry that Hermione needed protection from the bullshit this Hopkirk woman was throwing, yet Harry's plan was overkill. "Harry, I'm not saying we let anything happen, just let's not burn bridges we may need later. First we do this quietly, then if we have to we do it legally, and finally if all else fails we do it your way. If we jump straight into overkill, we may lose an asset we don't want to." With that, he went to make the Floo call to Gripsack - Anne Twist. Ten minutes later, he came back with both Miss Twist and a goblin that Harry assumed was Gripsack. There was a quick round of introductions for the people who hadn't met before, and Harry was indeed right, the goblin was the named partner in the law firm he hadn't met yet.
They had Hermione and her parents recount their recollection of the previous evening and looked over the letter Hermione received. Then they asked Sirius to recount what his experience was of the situation after they were told Sirius had provided transportation for the responding Aurors. All in all, the two lawyers agreed they had a solid case and didn't think it wasn't going to take more than an hour or two to sort everything out in the Ministry.
With a game plan in mind, Charlus, Sirius, and the two lawyers left the teens in the care of Dan and Emma and Floo'ed to the Ministry. Once the four of them had gone through the kerfuffle of getting through the welcome wizard, the man doing everything he could to try and deny entry to Gripsack because he was a goblin, they took the lift to the floor of the D.M.L.E. Charlus and Sirius had expected them to head straight to the Office of Underage Magic, but Gripsack and Miss Twist both insisted on going to a number of other offices first. The two split up to save time and left Sirius and Charlus standing around not knowing what to do.
While they were waiting, Arthur Weasley happened by. His office was also part of the D.M.L.E. and it was just around time for his morning tea, so he was heading to a small kitchenette on the floor to make himself a cup when he came across the two of them.
"Sirius, Charlus, I heard about what happened last night. The entire office is talking about it. Are Miss Granger and her parents okay?" He asked when he saw the two men milling in a hallway.
"Hello Arthur," Charlus said, smiling at the man. "Hermione and her parents are fine. They are all at the manor right now."
"Thank Merlin. I have only met them a few times but they all struck me as good people. How bad was it last night? I went to the site this morning to fix the jinx on the streetlights in the area, but it was all cleaned up and normal looking by the time I got there," Arthur asked Sirius.
Sirius looked tired as he considered how he was going to answer. "It was… not as bad as it could have been. But it was still a horde of Inferi in a Muggle city. People died, more got hurt. And after what happened to Harry at the end of the tournament, it's only the tip of the spear. We all know You-Know-Who will do worse before this is over."
"Speaking of what happened to Harry, did you get an invitation from Albus?" Arthur asked in a low voice so he wouldn't be overheard. That reminded Sirius and Charlus of the letter they had gotten the night before. The incident with the Inferi had pushed the matter to the side in their minds. But they had to make a decision shortly about how they were going to handle that, as by 8 o'clock tonight if they hadn't made a decision it was going to be made for them.
"I take it that the Burrow was also graced by a letter appearing in a ball of fire?" Sirius asked.
"Dumbledore always did like his theatrics. But what are you going to do? Personally I'm on the fence. On one hand Voldemort has to be stopped, on the other I have four under age kids and three who, while of age, are still practically kids. But You-Know-Who is likely to target some of my kids anyway. My family is known to hold, shall we say, an opposing view. Ginny was already targeted once and Harry saved her, and Ron is Harry's best friend. One side of me thinks we shouldn't expose ourselves to danger, the other is saying we are already in danger and the best defence is a strong offence." It was obvious from the way the Weasley man rambled that he was going in circles in his own head.
"I'm not sure about all that, my question is can we trust Dumbledore?" Charlus said.
"Who else can we turn to? It's not like we have a lot of choices. And Albus is experienced," asked Arthur,
"Experienced at losing. No, hear me out," Sirius said at a harsh look from Arthur. "Look at what was happening with the war last time around. We were losing. We did things Dumbledore's way and we stuck with stunning, incapacitating, and disarming spells while they were using spells to kill. Our forces were being systematically slaughtered while theirs got back up and continued fighting. Our biggest victories were when our people got so overwhelmed that they abandoned our rules of engagement. The country was months away from being lost before whatever happened in Godric's Hollow that night. Then after that, everything Dumbledore had done shows he is not a good person to lead a choir, let alone a war."
"Do we have any other reasonable options? The only other option I can see is hiding behind our family wards and waiting for the Aurors to either sort it out or fail, and to hope we aren't targeted before it's all over," Arthur said.
"We aren't sure yet. We will at least attend his meeting tonight and see what he is saying, but unless there are some major changes from last time I won't be joining again," said Sirius.
"Any ideas what changes you want?" Arthur asked.
The three of them continued to talk about their ideas for a while, even migrating to the kitchenette as they spoke. Eventually Miss Twist came to collect them, saying that they had gotten all the paperwork they needed and it was time for them to go speak to Ms. Hopkirk. Arthur was surprised when he realised just how long they were talking, so he wished them luck and had to hurry back to his office.
Once Miss Twist led them back to where Gripsack was waiting, the two men were surprised to see an Auror waiting with him. Charlus didn't recognise him but Sirius did. "Proudfoot. After last night I would have thought you earned the day off."
"Black, Potter." He nodded both to Sirius and Charlus. "I'm on light desk work. Got to fill out the reports and file paperwork over what happened last night. The downside of being promoted, I'm afraid. Gripsack was telling me the girl who raised the alarm is being charged with underage magic?"
Sirius nodded. "Yeah she fired a cutting curse at one of the Inferi before she ran."
"Aren't the kiddos allowed to defend themselves?" Proudfoot asked. As an Auror he was technically still on the roster for the regular law enforcement, but he specialised in dealing with violent offenders, not regular crimes, and so was rusty on the details.
"Yes, that's what the law says," agreed Charlus.
"That's why I wanted the copy of your report, providing evidence that it truly was a life-threatening circumstance," said Gripsack.
"Well screw the report, I will tell her in person, in excruciating amounts of detail if I need to. Let's go deal with this bullshit." With that the Auror turned and strode towards where Hopkirk's office was located, the four slightly surprised people following in his wake.
When he got there he simply knocked once and walked in. "Hopkirk, what's this I hear about you charging a kid with breaking the Reasonable Restriction on Underage Magic for defending herself from Inferi?" He demanded.
"Oh come on, that story is ridiculous, what the hell would a horde of Inferi be doing in muggle London? If the mudblood is going to fake a story, she should come up with a better one," Hopkirk answered, not having seen Charlus, Sirius, or either of the lawyers yet.
The four people outside the office froze at what they had just heard. "Well I can confirm that there was indeed a horde there last night. My team and I were dispatched to deal with them," Proudfoot said, not sounding put out by her words at all.
"Then she should have run, not used magic outside of school. The law is clear."
At that perfect opening Miss Twist walked into the office. "Yes, the law is clear. Under the degree of the reasonable restriction of under age magic," she stressed the word reasonable, "any underage magical, be they witch or wizard, pureblood or first generation, may use any magical means at their disposal to defend their life or the lives of others in an emergency. A single Inferius is classified as a three-X threat. An entire hoard can be classified as a four- or five-X threat depending on the numbers. They clearly fall in the included exceptions that are part of the law."
"Who the hell are you?" Hopkirk demanded.
"Solicitor Anne Twist of Gripsack - Anne Twist, law witch for the Potter family and by extension Miss Hermione Granger." She produced a business card from somewhere and held it out to the woman, who refused to take it so Miss Twist left it on the table.
Charlus took that as his opening as well and stepped into the office. "And I'm Warlock Charlus Potter, sitting member of the Wizengamot and Miss Granger's magical guardian. I don't have a business card, but I'm sure you won't have any trouble remembering me." He smiled at the woman but it had no warmth to it at all. "And if I hear you calling my ward by that disgusting term again, I will have no choice but to file a suit against you for discrimination and abuse of authority. Not the Ministry, you."
The woman paled at the threat, and outside the door Sirius shook his head. "You know this morning he was the one telling Harry to keep a cool head and to not make more enemies than necessary," he muttered to Gripsack.
Gripsack just shrugged. "The two are cut from the same stone. They may have been facetted and polished differently, but a ruby will always be a ruby."
"This is intimidation of a Ministry official. I can have you all arrested for that." Hopkirk said, sounding nervous.
"Good luck with that," laughed Proudfoot. "You know as well as I that that accusation will have to go in front of the Wizengamot. Not only will that mean a full investigation into the whole incident, but no way those high-horse self-serving assholes will ever set a precedent that they can't sic their lawyers on someone. Uh, present company excluded." He said when he remembered Charlus was in the room.
Charlus laughed. "I'm well aware of how bad some of my colleagues are, and for what it's worth you're right. Most of them forget that we are supposed to do things for the benefit of Wizarding Britain as a whole, rather than ourselves."
"Hopkirk, why are you doing this? You know that if you push this you're going to have to justify the expense of the legal battle to Director Bones, and she is going to take one look at the reports on Inferi and is going to throw the case out.
"Why? You're asking why? That monster is back, I'm not going to be targeted because some lunatic thinks I didn't take the opportunity to get the Boy-Who-Lived's mudblood girlfriend kicked out of the magical world!" she screamed half-hysterically.
That's when it clicked into place for everyone there. Hopkirk was just caving under pressure. There was no way she was going to cut Hermione any slack, and any other muggleborn who needed to defend themselves would face the same issue. She was going to need to be removed from her position before she made things a lot worse.
Finally understanding, Proudfoot sighed and said, "Hopkirk I'm going to do you a favour here. I'm placing you under arrest for abusing Ministerial power. You do not need to say anything and you may not be compelled by magic to speak without your consent. It also may harm your defence if you do not mention during questioning something you later rely on before the Wizengamot. Anything you do say will be given in evidence."
"You can't be serious, that charge will never stick," Hopkirk sounded outraged.
"Probably not," he shrugged, "but it will take the decision about Miss Granger out of your hands, and will create a public record of what you tried to do. By your logic, that should keep you safe. However, I hope you have another job lined up because you know, win or lose, Bones is going to kick you out."