"So, he's a career bureaucrat that actually keeps the Ministry running and providing services to people whilst Fudge and Umbridge here run about making a lot of noise and generally mucking things up?" Harry summed up. The pair of Marauders had to supress their laughter when Percy and several of the Aurors and sycophants started to nod in agreement before catching themselves.
The crowd that had gathered to observe the confrontation were not so restrained. Titters of laughter broke out at Harry's summary and the impotently furious expressions on Fudge and Umbridge's faces. Several in the crowd started jeering the Ministry officials. The fact many of them carried bags with the MME logo added to Harry's feeling of satisfaction.
Faced with the public humiliation, the Ministry people fled the scene.
Well, most fled the scene. Harry noticed a few slip into the crowd waiting for their chance to enter the shop. With Sirius's offer of a Ministry discount, he was willing to bet a few more Mirrors would be mounted on the Ministry workers' walls that night. Remus was their technical genius but Sirius with his bad boy image had the charisma with that gift for sales and marketing that would take the company far.
Where Voldemort fought his war with violence, the Marauders would fight with ideas - and a bit of violence when required.
....
12 August 1995
The Aurors were thick lining the area of Diagon Alley. The Alley itself was filled with shoppers preparing for the new school year. Old magical families walked casually passed wide-eyed non-magical parents escorting their first-generation magical child. This year's inflow of new students at Hogwarts represented the 'high water' mark of the post-Voldemort baby boom of the 1980's. Fully ninety percent of the Hogwarts student body would now be Fourth year and younger. If the years had been level that percentage would have been just less than sixty percent. Harry's year and the two preceding it however were particularly small due to the particularly brutal turns the war had taken the last few years before the attack on the Potters. The retailers were enjoying the surge in sales but the high concentration of people in the Alley, particularly the first generation magicals and the non-magical parents, was making many people nervous.
Two days before had been the first confirmed Death Eater attack since Voldemort's resurrection. Six figures in Death Eater robes attacked the house of a middle level manager in the Ministry's Muggle Relations Department. Alexander Cull had been the primary contact with the Muggle government's law enforcement bodies. A Muggle-born and trained with Scotland Yard, many in mundane law enforcement thought the man was simply an Inspector with the Yard. Instead Cull watched mundane cases for bleed over from the magical world and alerted the DMLE to attacks on non-magicals or other magical crimes in the mundane world. Cull, his wife, and a son were killed in the attack. His daughter, a Second year Ravenclaw, survived simply because she'd walked down to the local library and lost track of time in the stacks.
The attack on Cull sent shockwaves through the magical community. While a first generational magical himself, Cull was highly respected in the Ministry. His wife, Alice, was a Pureblood from the old Catchlock family. The Catchlocks were not significantly wealthy but were a large family with connections throughout the magical world. Their deaths along with the sunny-faced six year-old son shocked the magical world to their core. The attack was a classic terror tactic. It horrified and scared the community and at the same time reduced law enforcement's ability to counter future attacks.
As a result, today's shopping was performed under the watchful eye of many of the Ministry's law enforcement resources. It did make some feel safer and allowed business to be conducted as normal. The visible sign that the Ministry was taking things seriously was comforting to most although some asked if all the Aurors and Hit Wizards were in Diagon Alley, who was patrolling the rest of Britain?
There was no attack that day but the Ministry could not be everywhere every day, and there would be other days.
....
Harry followed Remus into the conference room they had hired in the Marriot hotel Glasgow. Following behind them were Padma and Hermione. All four wore mundane clothing of good quality and fit right in amongst the hotel's business class clientele. When they entered the room there were four people already present. Three were expected but the final was a bit of a surprise.
Claire and Oliver Westen sat at the table with an older man in a slightly wrinkled and out of date suit with an air of frustrated bafflement with the world around him. He seemed distracted and not really present with the rest of the room. The fourth occupant was a teenage girl Harry was familiar with but not too pleased to see.
"Oliver, Claire, it is good to see you," Harry said. Remus had drilled Harry on what passed for manners between Alphas and the fact only Harry would initially speak. "You of course know my Second, Remus, but with me are Padma and Hermione. They have performed extensive studies on my… condition and will be providing most of the technical data for this meeting." Oliver simply nodded at Harry's opening but Claire smiled with approval.
.....
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