Harry Potter and the Stitch in Time

Chapter 10

Finally, Dumbledore thought as he arrived back at his office in Hogwarts. Between his week on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, the summer meeting for the international Confederation of Wizards, and the running back and forth between Beauxbatons and Durmstrang he had to do for the preparations for the Triwizard Tournament, he hadn't been in the country for weeks. It was a pity that the Triwizard Tournament had been restarted, as it meant he had to miss the Quidditch World Cup final. He had lobbied for it to be held in Britain this year so that he would get the chance to see it without travelling, but alas it seemed that luck wasn't on his side this time. Brazil had won the bid for the next World Cup in three years. so maybe he would be able to go watch that one.

Now, though, he had to catch up with what had happened while he was away. He winced when he looked over at his desk and saw the pile of envelopes there waiting for him. One of the Hogwarts elves had sorted them into the order in which they arrived, so with a sigh he opened the first one. He read a bunch of drivel about a proposed bill to standardise the thickness of cauldrons. Boring, but potentially a good thing, so he moved it to his "worth an in-depth look" pile.

Next was a circular for a proposed bill to sanction muggleborn who don't completely renounce the muggle world. That one went in the "hard no" pile, a.k.a. the bin. He did, however, make a mental note to let it go far enough that he could be seen to squash it publicly. It never hurts to remind the sheep who their shepherd was. After that was a notification from Gringotts that the student fees had been transferred to the school account, followed by a note from his goblin inside Gringotts that wages for the History of Magic professor and the Care of Magical Creatures professor had been transferred to his war chest account. Binns had no use for gold and Hagrid hadn't noticed that he was doing two jobs while only being paid for one.

Next up was a notification for a trial he had missed. He was just throwing it away when he noticed the name of the defendant was 'Sirius Orion Black'. Depending on the outcome, this could either be very good or very bad. If Sirius had been able to convince the Wizengamot that he was innocent, then that was a wild card in preparing Harry to deal with Voldemort that Dumbledore really didn't need. There was also the fact that fingers could be pointed at him over the fact that Sirius went to Azkaban without a trial in the first place. He wasn't the main force behind it, but of the three that signed off on skipping the trial, he was the only one who currently still held the same office. He was going to need to discover what had happened.

It ended up worse than Dumbledore could have imagined. Sirius had found Charlus Potter alive and caught in a temporal storm, which explained why the wards of Potter Manor never faded. Dumbledore had assumed they were linked to Harry for control while remaining powered by being connected to a layline or something similar. Apparently all Dumbledore had done was to prove an old advice about making assumptions.

So Charlus was alive, Sirius had been cleared by the Wizengamot, and the two of them and Harry were now living in Potter Manor. Harry was now shielded behind a man Dumbledore had no hope of cajoling or manipulating, and he should expect to see the man as an irate parent. After all, Harry would tell Charlus everything, and when Harry laid out his life story from his point of view, Dumbledore didn't come across as looking that good. Not checking up on Harry's welfare while he was at Privet Drive, and then when Harry got to Hogwarts: a troll, a Cerberus, a trip into the Forest, a possessed teacher that tried to murder Harry during a Quidditch match, a Basilisk, school-wide bullying, and a colony of Acromantula. He was just glad that he could lay the Dementors at Fudge's feet.

The one silver lining he could find was that as he went through the court transcript it seemed that he hadn't been implicated too much. Yes, it was true that he had been mentioned as the one who suppressed Lily and James's last will and testimony. but he had long ago prepared counters for those attacks he could face. Now he just needed to rework his strategy to work out another way to make sure Harry was prepared to deal with Tom.