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Chapter 23 - While strange creepy creatures came out of their dens...

Wednesday, January 22, 1997

It was the time of the breakfast meal. The ceiling of the Hogwarts Great Hall showed a shade of grey that was almost completely uniform. By looking of the charmed ceiling, one could not tell where the grey sky ended and the grey winter ground haze began.

Harry, Hermione and Luna had taken to eating at the front end of the Gryffindor or Ravenclaw tables, nearest the teacher's dais, where the first year students normally gathered. Where the stares and frightened whispers of ickle firsties may once have annoyed Harry, he now preferred it to the stares and frightened whispers of the rest of their house.

On this particular day, they were at the Gryffindor table, having a quiet meal with their friends, when amurmur rose above the noise of cutlery on plates. Looking up, Harry noticed that two chairs at the teachers' table were being filled; those of the Headmaster and the Potions Master. And not with their replacements, either, but the original occupants.

Dumbledore and Snape had returned. Saying nothing, they sat to breakfast on the cold Wednesday morning, while those in the hall around them tried to make sense of what they were seeing. Neville Longbottom in particular was especially interested -- he appeared to be quaking in a cold sweat and shaking his head side-to-side.

Harry didn't seem at all surprised to see his head of house standing at his elbow. "Harry," she whispered through clenched teeth. "The Headmaster has instructed me to convey to you that he wishes you to report to his office after breakfast." He had never seen her so distressed.

Glancing at his two companions, he said quietly, "Here we go." He then turned his head and leaned back so that he could be seen and heard from the head table. Speaking clearly, just loud enough to be heard, he said, "If Fudge wants to try to railroad me, he can come down out of that office and do it in front of witnesses. No, thank you." He turned back to his plate, displaying no interest at all.

Just as anyone could have predicted, the first outburst came from Snape. "Potter!" he spat. "Insolent, self-absorbed little--"

"Coward," interjected Harry.

Snape sputtered, rising from the chair he just occupied. "W-what? What did you just say, whelp?"

"I said 'coward', you coward." Harry stood, leaning upon his staff. "A coward who gets his rocks off by bullying little children." He made a pinching motion with his free hand, and Snape started turning pink. This may well have been the only time any student had seen any color in his cheeks besides green. Harry limped to stand before the center of the table. "Coward, weakling, liar... hardly more than a squib."

A collective gasp was heard throughout the hall. For a student to say such things was... unthinkable. For anyone to say such things to Snape, of all people, was nearly unimaginable. But for an emancipated legal adult to say them was grounds for a duel.

"In fact," he continued. "I would suspect you of bestiality, but you're so greasy that no self-respecting sow would let you mount it."

This time, the response was much more than a gasp. It was a loud groan, interspersed with gleeful comments at his profanation. "What?" "Whoa!" "No way!"

Harry said, "Severus Snape, I challenge you to a duel, here and now. The loser leaves Hogwarts, nevermore to return. What say you, you porphyritic pus-bag?" Then he released his magical hold on the darkening teacher, letting him breathe again.

Snape started coughing, getting as much wind as he could back into his deprived lungs. With a wild look in his eye, he started "Ava--'

"Severus!" called Dumbledore sharply, stopping his potions master from finishing the curse that would send him to Azkaban for life.

"Very well!" growled the reinstated Potions Master through his stressed throat. "The hard way, then... Sectusempra!" He sent his trademark cutting curse toward the Boy-Who-Lived. "Reducto! Sectusempra! Confringo! Defodio! Deprimo! Expulso!" Snape had started with his trademark cutting curse, but his mouth didn't stop moving. He walked down from the dais, casting all the time, a barrage of spells coming from his wand.

Harry was walking with the aid of his staff, and held a muggle pencil in his other hand. No one had seen him draw it. Snape was cursing so quickly that his spells hadn't time to land before the next was begun. He moved with a fluidity that none would have suspected of him, his long cloak partially masking his movements.

Harry continued in a much different manner. He knew that were he to use the method he'd used against the Death Eaters at the entrance of the Burrow, innocent students could be hit by Snape's fire. So he stood still, waving his pencil as if conducting an invisible orchestra. He appeared to be defending himself with spells that could not be seen, but that was not the case. His "wand" movements were meaningless, to confuse and enrage his enemy. Using only his mind, he was directing Snape's magic to harmless destinations, or transfiguring them into harmless light en route.

Taking time to magically amplify his own voice, Harry kept speaking -- now loud enough for all to hear. "That's some pretty nice dancing, you nasty, spotted prancer. Where'd you learn to move like that? It certainly wasn't at charm school," he waved his wand to deflect a brown curse that smelled off. "And it definitely wasn't here at Hogwarts, since they don't actually teach fighting here."

"Mister Potter," complained Dumbledore. "That is quite enough! Stop this in--"

"Dumbledore," interrupted Harry, seeming not to be working very hard. "Are you actually trying to interfere with or subvert a wizard's duel, in violation of the Arts of Canly and the law? Come now, don't stammer," he said as Dumbledore momentarily lost his words. "Are you actually stupid enough to violate the dueling act in front of over four hundred witnesses? Hmm..." he said, then, "Oh! No, that was very naughty, Sevvie-poo. A bowel-loosening curse?" He continued to walk slowly toward Snape, taunting him.

The greasy Potions Master appeared to be going quite mad; spittle flying from his mouth with every doom-laden utterance, his greasy hair flapping quite vehemently past the wild look in his eyes. "You're nothing but a spoiled little brat! You have nothing! No talent," boom "no knowledge," boom "no intelligence, no family," BOOM, "no URK!!" Snape collapsed forward gagging, having just had a boot connect sharply with the soft, dangly collection of objects in his trousers.

A small, rather pathetic, high-pitched whine came from the gullet of the man kneeling before Harry, as the air was driven from Snape's lungs by a panicked diaphragm. He was still conscious, but had dropped his wand.

"You really are a very petty, cowardly, small-minded little pissant, aren't you, Snape?" Harry asked, still under sonorus to the entire hall. "I have seen the memory accounts of when you joined Voldemort, and took the dark mark, and became Moldy-Goit's little apple-polisher. You told yourself you'd get them all, didn't you? You'd get the ones who taunted you in school. You'd make them /pay/," Harry said, pounding his staff to the floor for emphasis. The hall was deathly silent, students trying to hide behind each other with nowhere to go.

"Aurors!" came the voice of Cornelius Fudge, having come down to find out why Harry hadn't come up. "Arrest that boy immediately! I saw you assault that man!" He flinched in fright when most of the people in the hall started yelling and pointing at him. Too late, he realized there were no aurors within the sound of his voice. They had stayed in the office to wait for the young man.

Harry wasn't finished. "Snape, my father humiliated you because he was an arse-hole. I saw what he did, and it made me ashamed." This was said quietly, without the benefit of the sonorus spell, just between the two of them.

"Pot-- Potter! Just like your father!" The wounded man managed to wheeze a few words.

"I am not my father. I am humiliating you because you are an arse-hole, and a bully, and an unrepentant terrorist, and an all-around creep. Years from now, I shall honor this memory with pride, and two generations of Hogwarts Alumni will call me 'hero'. You have until sundown to gather your things."

"You arrogant little prig," said Snape, much stronger. Harry saw that he had recovered his wand. "You think you have the power to remove me? Sectusem--"

He never got to finish the word, as the blunt end of Harry's walking staff broke Snape's jaw, loosening a few teeth into the bargain.

"Never mind then; courtesy doesn't seem to work on you. Now you may leave right away. By the way, you may want to find a new 'signature spell'," said Harry. "That one takes you way too long to say." He waved his pencil for effect, and Snape's rocketing body smashed a very old casement window on its way out of the castle.

Both Fudge and Dumbledore tried to take some sort of control, but nothing they said was even heard above the roar. Four-hundred-plus students, and acouple dozen of the faculty, shouted and cheered their approval, slamming cups on the tables, stamping their feet, and whistling. It was some long moments before any speaking was possible. Harry waited patiently.

"Potter! I--" began Fudge, but he stopped when he saw Dumbledore's raised hand.

"Cornelius, please. Perhaps a... a lighter touch is in order. Harry," he said. "Have you done something to my office? The warding and protections no longer function. Most of the monitoring devices appear to be broken, and the gargoyle will not close off the moving staircase. Could you put them back in order?"

Harry stared. "I'm not sure what you mean. You don't have an office in this castle."

"Alright, Potter; we've taken just about enough out of you," butted in the minister. "Undo whatever it was you did, and do it quick. You're only making it worse for yourself!"

Harry's left eyebrow rose about a quarter of an inch. "You don't understand; I don't have anything to do with it. The entity that is Hogwarts no longer recognizes Mister Dumbledore as Headmaster -- nor indeed as holding any other position. The castle has decided that he doesn't belong here."

"Now see here," bellowed the reddening face of the minister, his dewflaps wobbling ominously. "That's enough of... Albus, you just have to... I mean..." his eyes grew as his voice shrank. Pointing to the entrance, he said, "What... what's going on?"

Madame Amelia Bones, head of the DMLE, strode down the center of the hall, followed by at least ten aurors(although the crowd made it hard to be certain).

"Cornelius Oswald Fudge," she began. "By order of the Queen of England, you are removed from your post of Minister to the Crown until such time as investigation is complete concerning charges brought by Her Majesty's solicitors against you for corruption, fraud, selling pardons for money, and treason. You are under arrest." Gesturing to those around her, she said, "Take him."

The bellowing of an enraged minister was audible, but not decipherable. By the time the anti-apparation manacles were locked on him, his face had turned as purple as one of Vernon Dursley's towering rages.

"Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore," continued Madame Bones. "By order of the Queen of England, you are removed from your post of Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot until such time as investigation is complete concerning charges brought by Her Majesty's solicitors against you for subversion, sedition, fraud, conspiracy to establish a shadow government, conspiracy to commit abuse of a minor, attempted assault on a monarch, interfering with the succession of an Heir, attempted disruption of a Family line, interfering with free elections, and petty treason under the Treason act of 1351. You are under arrest." Looking up with almost no inflection at all, she said, "Take him."

Dumbledore wasted no time, and immediately tried to escape -- to no avail. The old wizard wasn't strong enough to apparate within Hogwarts, and Harry had negated his portkey.

As his shocked face regarded Harry, Madame Bones continued. "You are also named as defendant in two civil suits for 'grievous harm' by the head of House Potter and House Black."

"After the criminal charges and lawsuits," Harry said, "your family will be destitute, and you will be a pariah. You really should not have tried to Obliviate the queen." He could see the shock deepen on the shamed man's face. "Especially since I was behind the tapestry at the time." Harry turned his back on his former mentor, no longer interested.