Black Fortunes

Chapter 25

Harrigan sat in his office, carefully writing on a long sheet of parchment. His self-inking quill and never-ending parchment were certainly coming in handy, this report was going to be truly massive. He set out and wrote this report far more carefully than anything else he'd written, laying it out just so and placing all of the truly damaging pieces of information where they would have the most impact. This was his final report for the Board of Governors after a year at Hogwarts School and he knew once they read these words, once they realized the amount of damage one Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore had been doing to their children, the future of Wizarding Britain, the man was done for.

The most gratifying part of this report was the fact that absolutely none of it had been falsified. The most damning pieces of evidence had come from students, willingly offered and backed with Veritaserum authorized by their parents. Sirius and his friends had agreed to speak with him, all but Pettigrew which bothered Harrigan for a reason he couldn't quite pin down. He would have offered to leave off the Veritaserum but unfortunately, without it, the testimony didn't hold the necessary weight. No matter, James, Sirius, Severus, and the graduated Lucius Malfoy had given some of the most weighted evidence in the whole report. Harrigan could only commend Sirius, James, and Severus on their courage to speak about the matter that had happened one night on Hogwarts grounds below a very dangerous tree.

The 'Willow Incident' as it was referred to was one of the most powerful pieces of evidence that Harrigan had towards the blatant favoritism by Dumbledore of one House over others. As much as Harrigan loved his stepson and was fond of his distant cousin the two boys should never have gotten away as lightly as they did for endangering the life of another student, leaving him exposed to a powerful, dangerous transformed creature. Yes, he understood James had pulled Severus away, but he should never have gone down there himself in the first place. The right thing to do would have been to get a teacher, but he had been more afraid of his friend being expelled than what could have gone horribly wrong.

Harrigan slowly ceased writing, laid down his quill on a scrap piece of parchment, and stood, stretching his cramping fingers. He stared out the window down to the Black Lake, pale jade eyes thoughtful. He had enjoyed teaching this past year, his classes had been entertaining, some of the students were openly disappointed that he would not be returning the next term. All of his 7th-year students had improved as both open-minded individuals and as witches and wizards, aside from one.

Lily Evans. Bright, beautiful, clever. A powerful witch despite her Muggle parentage, not that he had anything against her for her parents. No, his sole problem with her was her closed-minded attitude. She loathed the idea that Dark and Light were anything more than what she had conceived them to be at the beginning of her education, she refused to learn about Magical religion, tradition, and laws. She was one of those that had refused to attend Wizarding Studies in her first year. It was a real waste. She would go out into the magical world after her graduation and find that very few doors would be open to her due to her lack of ability to consider other things than what she herself believed in.

Thoughts of Evans brought to mind another aspect he'd been noticing over the past year and it brought a twitch of a smile to his lips. It seemed the revelation of Sirius' relationship with Lucius and their mending of broken fences had been something of a cue for their friends. He had noticed that Remus and a rapidly improving Bellatrix were rather close over the past couple of months, often found in the Library researching more into a topic that had intrigued them in class. And then there were James' almost painfully shy advances towards Regulus, whom Harrigan could tell was close to reaching the end of his tether with his patience for James to finally make a move.

Severus remained in the close-knit circle of friends, from what Harrigan had seen he was getting steadily closer in his own reserved way to Lucien Lestrange's oldest, Rodolphus. The two suited each other, closed-off in public with sharp wits and an even keener mind. Severus was rapidly on his way to becoming a Potions Master of great renown while Rodolphus was no slouch himself, taking on the difficult, dangerous but rewarding field of Spell Crafting with the voracious appetite of a perfectionist.