Poison Pen

Chapter 6: Trust Issues

Emily Anderson blew out her cheeks and huffed in frustration. She'd spent the past three days wading through mountains of files in the Daily Prophet Archives as well as the Ministry Hall of Records.

The tip from Lovegood was a good one. He'd been right on target. The Ministry was trying to bury their mistakes with Sirius Black. According to Fudge, Black was being blamed for everything, from being a Death Eater to being responsible for the nasty, over-flowing urinal in the men's loo. Anything and everything, the Minister was trying to pin it all on the escapee from Azkaban. According to public opinion it was working.

When Lord Charles came out of that fateful meeting with the barrister last week, he announced that the Prophet was under new management. The Ministry no longer had any real say on what was, or wasn't, printed. Also, under the new policies, all news stories had to be backed up with solid facts, and hard core evidence. No more quick quote pens were allowed. If you couldn't back it up, then the story, no matter how exclusive, would not be printed. Several reporters already had turned in their resignations, unfortunately Rita Skeeter wasn't one of them.

Which is why Emily was digging in the files. Lord Charles had given her a week off, with pay, to do some dirt digging. Since the day that Lord Flinchley-whatever came into the offices of the Prophet on behalf of the primary stockholder, Lord Charles had been looking more like his old self. Emily was quite pleased with the shake up since Rita was demoted to the garden columns. The news reporting was now less biased towards gossip and dealt more with the real issues.

Rita was finding herself with more and more trivial garden club assignments than actual hard core journalistic stories. The rumor mill had it that Rita was out for blood, anyone's blood. If it was Harry Potter's, even better. She didn't like her new assignments, even if they were more her style of writing.

Which is why Emily was now digging in the Hall of Records. She was looking for everything pertaining to the Potters and Blacks that wasn't classified. So far, she was coming up with nothing. No will was on file for the Potters. Strange, as the Potters, a wealthy ancient and noble house, knew that the Dark Lord was hunting them so they had to have a will made up to protect the interests of their infant son, Harry. There wasn't even proof of guardianship arrangements for their son that she could find.

All this smacked of a cover up, but how to go about proving it?

~~

Harry was getting used to the small amount of sleep he'd been getting since his return to the Wizarding World. At least once a week, around midnight, he would port-key to Gringotts for a meeting with his advisers, Lord Peter, and Director Ragnok. Both were very helpful in their advice on Harry's legal and financial dealings.

Harry however, had been looking over some law books and had a question for both. Tomorrow would be his fifteenth birthday. So he felt it was only fitting to ask this question.

"So hypothetically," Harry queried in the meeting the night before his birthday, "If three government bodies declared, for legal purposes, a minor to be an adult in such a way that it became public record, would said minor, due to the precedence set, be considered an adult in the eyes of the law?"

"What do you mean, Lord Harry?" Lord Peter asked, a bit stunned by the question.

"Well, let me put it this way," Harry said. "Say a fourteen year old boy's name came out of a magical artefact that had a magical age restriction of seventeen on it, and yet said authority figures in charge required said underage teen to honor the magical contract without the written permission of parent or guardian – would that constitute acknowledging the teen in question as a legal adult? Then, the same fourteen year old boy, was brought before the whole Wizengamot for violation of underage magic use and was tried as an adult. Would this mean said fourteen year old could be considered an adult in the eyes of the Ministry? After all, the Supreme Mugwump and member of the ICW, the Minister and the Wizengamot themselves, acknowledged said fourteen year old as an adult in their eyes."